At 12:11 PM 4/16/01 -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>There are a number of reasons to *not* claim to parse perl 5 code.
>
>*) We won't load any perl 5 XS code
>*) We won't be getting the corner cases, and perl5 has a *lot*.
>*) It complicates the interpreter if we need to add code to support things
>that perl 6 doesn't do. (*ocugh*typegobs*cough*)
>*) It makes the parser that much more work to write. Even if we switch
>parser code entirely when going from perl 5 to perl 6 and back, someone
>still has to write the code in the first place.
>*) It's even more complexity, which is just that much more stuff we can
>potentially break
>*) It sets up the expectation (rightly so, IMNSHO) in the user community
>that we eat and process all perl 5 code correctly, and we just aren't
>going to. Despite our best efforts we're not going to.
As a very low-tech solution, why not bundle perl 5 *with* perl 6 so that
once perl 6 detects that it's been fed perl 5 code, it can send it to the
perl 5 compiler/interpreter.
Yeah, I know it makes the resulting bundle huge, but at least it separates
the tasks of parsing perl5 and perl 6 into independent projects.
--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies
