Re: Markup wars (was Re: Proposal for groups)

2000-12-07 Thread Alan Burlison
Russ Allbery wrote: I've fiddled with this before and can do text to HTML; the rest is just a question of picking different backends and shouldn't be *too* hard. All the heuristics for parsing text are inherently fragile, but if you follow a standard text formatting style, it works

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 01:22:08PM +0100, Roland Giersig wrote: How about a two-step requirement? 1) Native compiler must support ANSI-C. 2) If 1) doesn't hold, gcc can be required, which fulfills ANSI-C. strictly and really pedant point no it doesn't quite, as ANSI specifies the compiled

RE: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread David Mitchell
(whoops, correcting my own post!): sva-refcount=0; sva-refcount++; // these first 2 combined if we get the implemention right svb-refcount=0; svb-refcount++; // ditto sva-refcount++; ... if (--sva-refcount == 0) ... // branch not taken if (--svb-refcount == 0) ... // branch taken, if

Re: Perl6 in Java? (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 10:54:09AM +, Piers Cawley wrote: "Bradley M. Kuhn" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2) GCC produces slow code on all platforms where there's an alternative. This is likely going to change with the release of GCC 3.0,

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Roland Giersig
Dan Sugalski wrote: I object to targetting GCC specifically for two reasons, though, neither of them VMS related: 1) Targeting a single compiler, no matter whose it is, is a bad idea. We're writing in a *language*, not for a compiler. Targeting a specific compiler restricts us even more

RE: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread David Mitchell
There's evidence in the literature that switching from reference counting to a more sophisticated GC scheme can also save us 5-10% in CPU overhead. (Though that's not a guarantee--LISPlike languages likely have different GC performance characteristics than perl does) [warning: vague

Re: Opcodes (was Re: The external interface for the parser piece)

2000-12-07 Thread David Mitchell
Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dave M wrote: That was probably me. (Which means it was probsbly a daft proposal, and everyone rightly ignored it ;-) The basic idea was that all numeric SV types must provide methods that extract their vlaue as an integer or float of a size

Re: OO AV/HV's and tie (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread David Mitchell
Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: print $foo[0]; is foo-get_string[UTF_8](ARRAY, 0); while print $foo is foo-get_string[UTF_8](SCALAR); Just to clarify: does the get_string method in an AV's vtable do an indexing lookup, grab the relevant SV pointer, then call that SV's

Re: Opcodes (was Re: The external interface for the parser piece)

2000-12-07 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 01:14:40PM +, David Mitchell wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All the math is easy if the scalars are of known types. Addition and multiplication are easy if only one of the scalars involved is of known type. Math with both of unknown type, or

Re: Opcodes (was Re: The external interface for the parser piece)

2000-12-07 Thread David Mitchell
Nicholas Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 01:14:40PM +, David Mitchell wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All the math is easy if the scalars are of known types. Addition and multiplication are easy if only one of the scalars involved is of known

Re: OO AV/HV's and tie (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 01:20 PM 12/7/00 +, David Mitchell wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: print $foo[0]; is foo-get_string[UTF_8](ARRAY, 0); while print $foo is foo-get_string[UTF_8](SCALAR); Just to clarify: does the get_string method in an AV's vtable do an indexing

Re: Guaranteed object destruction (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 11:24:06AM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote: I think I'd just as soon always call DESTROY in a predicable manner and not do *anything* perlish at GC time. If nothing else it means that we don't have to worry about having a valid perl context handy when the GC runs. (Since

Re: Guaranteed object destruction (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 05:55 PM 12/7/00 +, Piers Cawley wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think I'd just as soon always call DESTROY in a predicable manner and not do *anything* perlish at GC time. If nothing else it means that we don't have to worry about having a valid perl context handy

Re: Perl6 in Java? (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread John Porter
Piers Cawley wrote: And, it will make the barrier for entry for new internals hacker lower. Err. How do you get to that conclusion? The thing that really stops me mucking about with perl's internals is the fiendish complexity of said internals. Changing the programming language will

Re: Perl6 in Java? (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 12:06:36PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: I think that that would be a 'courageous' decision. Making decisions now that make it hard to use anything other than 1 compiler are as wise as decisions that make it hard to use anything other than one implementation

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 11:22:35AM -0500, John Porter wrote: [C++] It's nearly as portable, Uhm. Is this actually true? C runs pretty much anywhere. Are there any non-fragile implementations of C++ yet? nearly as fast, Why have nearly as fast, when you can have as fast? and WAY WAY

Re: OO AV/HV's and tie (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 03:11:33PM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote: I'm in favour of the exact opposite: an AV is "just" an SV-alike vtable with array methods instead of scalar methods and a pointer to some storage, (probably an array of SVs) and likewise an HV. That would allow (array-length)()

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 12:24:50PM +, David Mitchell wrote: In a Perl context, I find it hard to believe that reference counting takes up more than tiny fraction of total cycles. On a vaguely related note, here's the flat profile from gprof run cumulatively on the test suite. (I haven't

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Jarkko Hietaniemi
often. What the *hell* is wrong with modulo? It does sort of stand out, doesn't it...floating point divide? -- $jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/ # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen

Re: Opcodes (was Re: The external interface for the parser piece)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 02:01 PM 12/7/00 +, David Mitchell wrote: Nicholas Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 01:14:40PM +, David Mitchell wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All the math is easy if the scalars are of known types. Addition and multiplication are

Guaranteed object destruction (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 11:17 AM 12/7/00 +, Piers Cawley wrote: Buddha Buck [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It seems to me that there are three types of thingies[1] we are concerned about, conceptually: A) Thingies with no DESTROY considerations, which don't need refcounts. B) Thingies with DESTROY methods,

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Jarkko Hietaniemi
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 02:33:53PM -0500, John Porter wrote: Simon Cozens wrote: On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 11:22:35AM -0500, John Porter wrote: [C++] It's nearly as portable, Uhm. Is this actually true? I don't know. Sounds reasonable! :-) Aside from lame-o solutions like

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 02:33:53PM -0500, John Porter wrote: I'd say, screw 'em if they don't have a C++ compiler. No. -- "The best index to a person's character is a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and b) how he treats people who can't fight back." -- Abigail Van Buren

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 07:42:26PM +, Nicholas Clark wrote: What was Sapphire's implementation language? What were its lessons? See http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/09/sapphire.html -- Hildebrant's Principle: If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread John Porter
Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: You seem hell-bent to gain popularity and support, don't you. Do I? "Hell-bent"? When it comes right down to it, the likelihood that I personally will contribute to the core is vanishingly small, regardless of language. So, I guess you can defend your own choice of

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Simon Cozens
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 03:40:37PM -0500, John Porter wrote: When it comes right down to it, the likelihood that I personally will contribute to the core is vanishingly small, regardless of language. Great. When it comes down to it, what are you doing here? I wonder: In what order will the

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread John Porter
Simon Cozens wrote: Great. When it comes down to it, what are you doing here? Excellent question. -- John Porter

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Sam Tregar
On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Simon Cozens wrote: On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 11:22:35AM -0500, John Porter wrote: [C++] It's nearly as portable, Uhm. Is this actually true? C runs pretty much anywhere. Are there any non-fragile implementations of C++ yet? Which also brings up another point -

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread Nicholas Clark
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 02:33:53PM -0500, John Porter wrote: Simon Cozens wrote: On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 11:22:35AM -0500, John Porter wrote: [C++] It's nearly as portable, Uhm. Is this actually true? I don't know. Sounds reasonable! :-) What did Chip learn from Topaz?

Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread John Porter
Sam Tregar wrote: Which also brings up another point - choosing anything but C is likely to have a direct impact on our existing userbase. I have a suggestion - if a system compiled and ran Perl 5 then it should be able to compile and run Perl 6. No upgrades required. The Backwards

Re: Supporting architectures without native C support (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Jarkko Hietaniemi
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 10:23:55PM -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: At 07:49 AM 12/6/00 -0800, Daniel Chetlin wrote: Simply deciding that `eval STRING' is "unimplemented" on these theoretical ports and binary compiles is the best idea I've heard yet, but we should remember that

Let's not be C-specific even if we use C (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Bradley M. Kuhn
Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It seems like everyone has their axes to grind on this one: Bradley thinks the world must be built in Java, I don't believe that. There has been a misunderstanding, and I apologize if I didn't communicate that effectively. I don't really care *that*

Perl6 on handhelds (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Bradley M. Kuhn
John Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Almost. You're potentially taking away Perl6, which is vaporware. I wonder: In what order will the following exist on Handheld Device Foo: - C - C++ - Java - Perl6 I know of at least one hand-held on the market

Re: Supporting architectures without native C support (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Adam Turoff
On Thu, Dec 07, 2000 at 10:23:55PM -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: However, the JVM is a powerful environment for generalized bytecode and for allowing bytecode of different languages to communicate. So's Microsoft vaporware ".NET platform". And the second version of that bytecoded runtime

Re: OO AV/HV's and tie (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 07:02 PM 12/7/00 +, Simon Cozens wrote: On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 03:11:33PM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote: I'm in favour of the exact opposite: an AV is "just" an SV-alike vtable with array methods instead of scalar methods and a pointer to some storage, (probably an array of SVs) and

Re: Call for apprentice: was Re: Meta-design

2000-12-07 Thread John van V
I would like to do this, but I think its a bigger job than you imagine, and... "I tend towards insanity from time to time. Good thing its only perl." (you can quote me) (It comes from stresses developing sysadm apps around the single largest depository of human wealth. They actually

Perl6 compatibility with non-C enviornments (was Re: Perl6 in Java? (was Re: Meta-design))

2000-12-07 Thread Bradley M. Kuhn
On Wed, 6 Dec 2000, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: And, it will make the barrier for entry for new internals hacker lower. Sam Tregar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Really? Do you honestly believe there are more Java programmers than C programmers? Particularily in the Perl development community!

Supporting architectures without native C support (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Bradley M. Kuhn
At 07:49 AM 12/6/00 -0800, Daniel Chetlin wrote: Simply deciding that `eval STRING' is "unimplemented" on these theoretical ports and binary compiles is the best idea I've heard yet, but we should remember that `require' is built on `eval STRING'. On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 08:30:06PM

Re: Perl6 on handhelds (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 10:46 PM 12/7/00 -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: John Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Almost. You're potentially taking away Perl6, which is vaporware. I wonder: In what order will the following exist on Handheld Device Foo: - C - C++ - Java - Perl6 I

Re: OO AV/HV's and tie (was Re: Meta-design)

2000-12-07 Thread Dan Sugalski
At 06:01 PM 12/7/00 +, Piers Cawley wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 01:20 PM 12/7/00 +, David Mitchell wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: print $foo[0]; is foo-get_string[UTF_8](ARRAY, 0); while print $foo is