Let's table this discussion, please. There are two different concerns
here:
1. IO::Handle et al *are* too damn big and slow.
2. Bareword filehandles *are* a pain to deal with.
Perl 5.6 already has a lot of this solved by allowing lexically-scoped
variables to hold filehandles. We should see how far we can take this
approach.
True OO filehandles would be nice, and I have written a couple RFC's to
this effect. However, I'm sure nobody wants Perl IO to be 10x slower. I
sure as hell don't. I'm optimistic that core vtable support in SV's will
help solve a lot of performance concerns; however, in the end
performance for IO functions is definitely the most important issue.
Flexibility takes a back seat when you have 200 print's but only one
$STDOUT->autoflush(1) in your script.
Let's hold off on this - which is largely a discussion of performance -
until later when Perl 6 internals become even a remote vapor of a
reality.
-Nate
