On Wed, Aug 02, 2000 at 11:17:56AM -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> At 12:11 PM 8/2/00 +0100, Tim Bunce wrote:
> >Thinking about that some more, I can imagine that...
> >
> >a) The 'use' of an 'interface definition' could optionally just define
> > stubs that will trigger the 'use' of a module to implement it when
> > first called.
> >
> >b) An 'interface definition' could cover multiple modules
> > (or, more strictly, multiple interface definitions for those modules).
> > Thus a single 'use' of an 'interface definition' thingy could save
> > many lines of individual 'use' statements.
>
> Yup, that pretty much summarizes things. I'm thinking of some sort of list
> of functions (pre-munched appropriately, so the lexer has fast access to
> it) with attached prototypes and shared library routine names. You use,
> say, localtime and perl automagically loads in perl_localtime.so.
I don't think we'd go to quite that level of granularity! But we could.
Where we differ, I think, is that you expressed a desire for things like
the SystemV IPC functions to be 'known' by perl in advance. I'm saying
that we shouldn't have many, if any, pre-defined hooks to extensions.
Let the 'use' of an 'interface definition', or something like it, bring
in what you need.
Tim.
