On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 04:45:37PM +0100, Tim Bunce wrote: > On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 11:35:20AM +0100, Dave Mitchell wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 11:08:53AM +0100, Tim Bunce wrote: > > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 12:23:34AM +0100, Dave Mitchell wrote: > > > > Of course, another approach is to embed the existing Perl5 interpreter > > > > within the Perl 6 interpreter; Perl6 subs call glue which calls Perl subs > > > > which calls perl5 XS. > > > > > > How would you deal with passing references? > > > > (wild hand waving follows) > > > > a perl6 reference is substituted with a perl5 scalar that has attached > > magic that 'does the right thing'. > > I don't think that'll fly.
Quite possibly not. But Larry's reply to one of my postings on p6l led me to belive that was the direction we were going to head in. I may have misunderstood him: > From: Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Dave Mitchell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > cc: Simon Cozens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 10:06:44 -0700 (PDT) > Subject: Re: Half measures all round > > On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, Dave Mitchell wrote: > > Having said that, I have real, real doubts that Perl 6 will ever be able > > to execute Perl 5 code natively. Its not just a case a writing a new > > parser and some P5-specific ops; P5 has so many special features, boundary > > conditions and pecularies, that to get P6 to execute P5 is a task > > equivalent to reimplementing P5 from scratch. I'm wondering if instead, > > we continue to maintain the P5 src tree, and embed P5 within P6 (embed in > > the sense of Apache and Mod_perl). Sick and ugly, but maybe more practical > > than the alternatives. It also means that the P6 src doesn't have to be > > saddled with knowing (much) about P5. Eventually of course the P5 bit > > would have to be thrown away. > > That's exactly what I've been arguing for all along. Grr.... > > And that's why I see the "package" hack and the new :p5 modifier as > having the weight of two features, not the weight of an entire > re-implementation of Perl 5. > > It's really not that difficult to run two interpreters in the > same process. I already made Perl and Java run together nicely. > If anything the impedence mismatch between Perl 5 and Perl 6 will be > even less. > > Scaffolding is supposed to be ugly. You wouldn't believe how ugly > the transitional form between Perl 4 and Perl 5 was, when half the > opcodes were interpreted by the old stacked interpreter, and half by > the new stackless one. > > Larry -- In England there is a special word which means the last sunshine of the summer. That word is "spring".
