On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Bart Lateur wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2001 21:39:25 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >Why the urge to move it out of the core? Should perl6 be like Python,
> >where you first need to do a gazillion imports before you can do anything
> >useful? Say goodbye to quick one-liners then.
>
> It doesn't have to be like that. Functions that are not in the core can
> still be automatically loaded, but only if your code actually uses them.
> That could make the perl kernel a lot smaller than it is now, and
> hopefully, make it load faster.
This is a persistent myth. Moving such functions out of the core may
indeed make the perl kernel cleaner, but I seriously doubt it will make
it "a lot smaller" or have any significant impact on load time. You
can try it and see with perl5, or search the perl5-porters archives for
my previous reports on the subject.
For example, removing time() from the perl5 core means excising the
following from pp_sys.c:
PP(pp_time)
{
djSP; dTARGET;
XPUSHi( time(Null(Time_t*)) );
RETURN;
}
and replacing it by the appropriate auto-loading glue. This is not a big
space savings.
--
Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042
