On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 05:17:56PM +0100, Dave Mitchell wrote: > 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:
There's more than one way to do it :) Having a perl5 interpreter (or parts of one) embeded in perl6 may be useful for some things. But the reference passing problem makes me think it's not going to be practical for XS. But we might not know for sure till we try. Tim. > > 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".
