Jarkko Hietaniemi writes:
: > * XS, the system for extending Perl with C or C++, will be replaced
: > with something much easier to use. This will give people very
: > convenient access to existing code libraries, and write C or C++
: > subroutines that can be called as Perl subroutines from Perl code
: > to take advantage of C's speed and memory flexibility.
:
: I disclaim having any inner access to Larry's current thoughts on this
: but just as a datapoint check out the latest Perl Journal and its
: article on the Inline module.
:
: Also, having recently been subjected to the pain and horrors, ummm,
: thrill and joys, of trying to use a very deeply C-like (1) library to
: from Java, allow me to voice my fervent, errr, humble hope that we
: steer clear of the JNI disaster (2).
:
: (1) Synchronous and asynchronous callbacks implemented using
: function pointers and void pointers being used both
: as event type specific data containers and as user-specified
: opaque cookies. Yum.
:
: (2) There are 200+ functions in the JNI API -- but enough to do (1).
: I do understand that mapping a type-unsafe language to a type-safe
: O-O language is hard but the resulting API is simply disgusting,
: and even Sun admits this, slow as a drunken limping pig.
The hope is to extend Perl's subroutine declaration syntax (via types
and attributes) to the point where a "forward" declaration in Perl of a
C, Java, or C# routine can supply all the glue information formerly
supplied by XS. While this will undoubtedly give us some rather
strange looking Perl, I'd rather look at potentially strange Perl than
certainly strange XS.
Larry
