This and other RFCs are available on the web at http://dev.perl.org/rfc/ =head1 TITLE Request For New Pragma: Shell =head1 VERSION Maintainer: Bryan C. Warnock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 5 Aug 2000 Last Modified: 18 Sep 2000 Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Number: 42 Version: 3 Status: Frozen =head1 CHANGES Added the heavy footnoting about name-clobbering with C<Shell.pm>. =head1 ABSTRACT Perl 6 should add a new pragma, previously thought to be called C<shell>, but now called something else, although I don't know what. So I'll stick with C<shell>. Although quite frankly C<Bob> would be just fine with me. =head1 DESCRIPTION The shell that Perl uses for shell interpretation is defined at compile time. Furthermore, it is optimized away when no metacharacters are found within the command string. There are times when one may need (or desire) to change the shell used for interpretation, as well as force shell interpretation, regardless of optimization, for consistency's sake. Perl runs on many platforms. Many of these platforms, either by default, desire, or need, may have multiple command interpreters that Perl may want to interface with by default. (ie, through the use of backticks or system().) Perl is not just a glue language, but a SuperGlue language. I ab^H^Huse Perl to interact with a lot of home-grown command interpreters as either a driver, a hardware controller, or Expect-type engine. It's a lot more DWIMmer when I can operate in that environment, vice the standard OS one. Furthermore, there are times when speed be damned! I need every `` to go through the command interpreter in order to get back consistent results, and I don't want to have to mangle the output string in order to force a metacharacter. It is important, however, that this be lexically scoped. One can't really afford to have some unknown module expect /bin/sh and accidentally send the command to turn on a robot's "Kill Human" mode, for instance. =head1 MOTIVATORS Laziness, and perhaps a bit of Hubris. =head1 IMPLEMENTATION This was an easy hack in Perl 5, except for the scoping issue. Ideally, there'd be a -force flag to check, and a method to change the location of the shell, the shell arguments, and perhaps what is defined as a shell metacharacter. =head2 SUMMARY OF IMPLEMENTATION See above. I hacked this for Perl 5 in about two minutes, minus the scoping, which I never could figure out. :-( The scoping lament is continued in RFC 40. =head2 IMPACT =over 4 =item * Impact on Perl 5. Mutual compatibility between Perl 5 and Perl 6, with the exception of C<use shell> and the semantics it would add. (Obviously, other changes to the language notwithstanding.) =back =head2 UNKNOWNS =over 4 =item * What if the interfaced modules return things that `` and system() don't expect? =back =head1 STATUS Frozen. There has been little discussion, other than pointing out that Shell is already a module, and on platforms that are case insensitive, the two would clobber. Furthermore, it was agreed that this C<shell> doesn't fit well into that C<Shell>. Hence, this pragma is more or less the ubiquitous "player to be named later." =head1 REFERENCES RFC 40: Module Scope Control.
