Perl Apocalypse 4
Joe English
An interesting note from the latest Apocalypse (Larry Wall's
series of manifestos for the design of Perl 6):
| <URL: http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2002/01/15/apo4.html >
|
| Perl 5 has several different ways of exiting a block:
| return, next, last, redo, and die, for instance. The problem
| is that these various keywords are hard-wired to transfer
| control outward to a particular built-in construct, such as a
| subroutine definition, a loop, or an eval. That works against
| our unifying concept that every block is a closure. In Perl 6,
| all these abnormal means of block exit are unified under the
| concept of exceptions. A return is a funny kind of exception
| that is trapped by a sub block. A next is an exception that is
| trapped by a loop block. And of course die creates a "normal"
| exception that is trapped by any block that chooses to trap
| such exceptions. Perl 6 does not require that this block be
| an eval or try block.
This sounds awfully familiar :-) Tcl has done things this
way from the beginning.
--Joe English
Kristoffer Lawson
: An interesting note from the latest Apocalypse (Larry Wall's
Larry Wall once said about byte compiling that perl, of course, has done
that since the beginning. OTOH he doesn't seem keen to mention where perl
gets all its ideas from (there are a lot of very familiar things that have
appeared over the years).
Stephen O. Lidie
e> Joe English <jeng...@flightlab.com> wrote:
> : An interesting note from the latest Apocalypse (Larry Wall's
> : series of manifestos for the design of Perl 6):
> : This sounds awfully familiar :-) Tcl has done things this
> : way from the beginning.
> Larry Wall once said about byte compiling that perl, of course, has done
> that since the beginning. OTOH he doesn't seem keen to mention where perl
> gets all its ideas from (there are a lot of very familiar things that have
> appeared over the years).
Incorrect. You can go through a decade of literature and glean whence
Perl came from. Larry is a humble and intelligent man, and is the
first to note that he has used ideas from scads of other languages -
not all mere programming langaues. Do you feel he's wronged you or
Tcl?
Steve
--
@_=map{eval"100${_}"}split/!/,'/5!*2!+$]!/10+$]';use Tk;$m=tkinit;$t='just an'.
'other perl hacker';$z='createText';$c=$m->Canvas(-wi,$_[1],-he,25)->grid;$c->$
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'ter>',sub{$y=int(rand($m->screenheight));$m->geometry("+$y+$y")});MainLoop;
Anno Siegel
> Kristoffer Lawson <se...@fishpool.com> wrote:
> e> Joe English <jeng...@flightlab.com> wrote:
>
> > : An interesting note from the latest Apocalypse (Larry Wall's
> > : series of manifestos for the design of Perl 6):
>
>
> > : This sounds awfully familiar :-) Tcl has done things this
> > : way from the beginning.
>
> > Larry Wall once said about byte compiling that perl, of course, has done
> > that since the beginning. OTOH he doesn't seem keen to mention where perl
> > gets all its ideas from (there are a lot of very familiar things that have
> > appeared over the years).
>
> Incorrect. You can go through a decade of literature and glean whence
> Perl came from. Larry is a humble and intelligent man, and is the
> first to note that he has used ideas from scads of other languages -
Indeed. After all, Larry is the one who put "eclectic" in "Perl" :).
In fact, it is hard to come up with features in Perl that don't have a
precursor in one or another language. What makes Perl unique isn't
features. What *is* unique is its nonchalant way of picking up features
left and right, making them work together even if they come from worlds
apart.
Anno
Kristoffer Lawson
:> Larry Wall once said about byte compiling that perl, of course, has done
:> that since the beginning. OTOH he doesn't seem keen to mention where perl
:> gets all its ideas from (there are a lot of very familiar things that have
:> appeared over the years).
: Incorrect. You can go through a decade of literature and glean whence
: Perl came from. Larry is a humble and intelligent man, and is the
: first to note that he has used ideas from scads of other languages -
: not all mere programming langaues. Do you feel he's wronged you or
: Tcl?
Actually, I'm sure you're right. I've just often stumbled across his
anti-Tcl comments and maybe, being the person that I am, I would like
to see references to Tcl being made when a new idea arrives that has clearly
been motivated by our favourite language. Just for educational purposes.
Randal L. Schwartz
Kristoffer> Actually, I'm sure you're right. I've just often stumbled
Kristoffer> across his anti-Tcl comments
Before you commit libel against Larry Wall, can you be specific?
I know Larry pretty well, and I know he doesn't have an incredible
dispassion for TCL, as you seem to paint him. Are you just looking to
get into a religious argument now?
print "Just another Perl hacker,"
--
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Uri Guttman
AS> In fact, it is hard to come up with features in Perl that don't have a
AS> precursor in one or another language. What makes Perl unique isn't
AS> features. What *is* unique is its nonchalant way of picking up features
AS> left and right, making them work together even if they come from worlds
AS> apart.
a few years ago i started a thread which tried to list the origins of
perl features. dunno the subject but it should be too hard to find on
goggle. maybe keywords like 'perl features origin' would do.
uri
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Cameron Laird
Randal L. Schwartz <mer...@stonehenge.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Kristoffer" == Kristoffer Lawson <se...@fishpool.com> writes:
>
>Kristoffer> Actually, I'm sure you're right. I've just often stumbled
>Kristoffer> across his anti-Tcl comments
>
>Before you commit libel against Larry Wall, can you be specific?
>
>I know Larry pretty well, and I know he doesn't have an incredible
>dispassion for TCL, as you seem to paint him. Are you just looking to
>get into a religious argument now?
.
.
Kristoffer probably can be specific, although perhaps not
until after the weekend. In the meantime, I'll observe
that Larry's lighthearted good cheer sometimes touches on
listeners' or readers' sore spots; hence <URL: http://
mini.net/tcl/640.html >.
In any case, it's good to have you here, Randal. Are your
customers talking much about Web services, XSLT, and PDF?
Do you PerlCurl? Those have been of local interest lately.
Posted and e-mailed, as usual.
--
Cameron Laird <Cam...@Lairds.com>
Business: http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal: http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
Randal L. Schwartz
Cameron> Kristoffer probably can be specific, although perhaps not
Cameron> until after the weekend. In the meantime, I'll observe
Cameron> that Larry's lighthearted good cheer sometimes touches on
Cameron> listeners' or readers' sore spots; hence <URL: http://
Cameron> mini.net/tcl/640.html >.
OK, from which I quote:
Larry Wall
<1997051019...@wall.org> Tcl long ago fell into the Forth trap, and is now trying desperately to extricate itself (with some help from Sun's marketing department).
Larry Wall
<1997100717...@wall.org> Tcl tends to get ported to weird places like routers.
[How is this a "Tcl sucks" quote? --setok]
Larry Wall
<1997100717...@wall.org> Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings. (With 8.0 they're rethinking that. Of course, Perl rethought that from the start.)
I don't see *any* of those as being a "anti-tcl", other than declaring
what's so. In fact, I agree with the "how is this a tcl sucks"
message there. In fact, the "forth trap" message is probably even a
compliment for TCL. Forth is a cool language, but never got the big
market share because it was *too* cool. :)
If that's the strongest evidence to claim that Larry actively
disrespects TCL, then I rest my case. :)
I'll give you a stronger anti-TCL quote than that, which I will take
responsibility for having said in many public forums:
If it weren't for Tk and Expect, TCL wouldn't even be around now.
Then again, you might say the same things for "Unix Sysadmins and the
web" regarding Perl. :)
Cameron Laird
.
.
> [How is this a "Tcl sucks" quote? --setok]
>
> Larry Wall
> <1997100717...@wall.org> Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings. (With 8.0 they're rethinking that. Of course, Perl rethought that from the start.)
>
>I don't see *any* of those as being a "anti-tcl", other than declaring
>what's so. In fact, I agree with the "how is this a tcl sucks"
>message there. In fact, the "forth trap" message is probably even a
>compliment for TCL. Forth is a cool language, but never got the big
>market share because it was *too* cool. :)
>
>If that's the strongest evidence to claim that Larry actively
>disrespects TCL, then I rest my case. :)
>
>I'll give you a stronger anti-TCL quote than that, which I will take
>responsibility for having said in many public forums:
>
> If it weren't for Tk and Expect, TCL wouldn't even be around now.
>
>Then again, you might say the same things for "Unix Sysadmins and the
>web" regarding Perl. :)
.
.
So we're all agreeing to agree, eh? All cases are rested.
The part that makes this thread hilarious, and that you
probably don't realize, is that "setok" who wrote that
those aren't anti-Tcl comments, happens to be the same
person as the Kristoffer Lawson to whom you originally
replied! Treat him nicely, and he might get you in to
<URL: http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~ateras/party/altparty/ >.
Phil Ehrens
Joe English
>You can go through a decade of literature and glean whence
>Perl came from. Larry is a humble and intelligent man, and is the
>first to note that he has used ideas from scads of other languages -
>not all mere programming langaues. Do you feel he's wronged you or
>Tcl?
Not at all! I just thought Apocalypse 4 was interesting because
Tcl's uniform treatment of exceptional control flow was IMO one
of John Ousterhout's more elegant ideas, and I was pleased to see
it adopted by Perl. (I'm *guessing* that Larry got the idea from
Tcl, could be wrong though.)
--Joe English
David Gravereaux
>I'll give you a stronger anti-TCL quote than that, which I will take
>responsibility for having said in many public forums:
>
> If it weren't for Tk and Expect, TCL wouldn't even be around now.
>
>Then again, you might say the same things for "Unix Sysadmins and the
>web" regarding Perl. :)
Hmmm... "if it wasn't for cgi, perl wouldn't even be around now."
That's got a nice ring to it, I have to admit.
"if it wasn't for the bizarre concept of pointers, C would have died long ago."
That's got a nice ring to it, too.
--
David Gravereaux <davy...@pobox.com>
[species: human; planet: earth,milkyway,alpha sector]
Please be aware of the 7.5 year ping times when placing a call from alpha centari
Randal L. Schwartz
Joe> Not at all! I just thought Apocalypse 4 was interesting because
Joe> Tcl's uniform treatment of exceptional control flow was IMO one
Joe> of John Ousterhout's more elegant ideas, and I was pleased to see
Joe> it adopted by Perl. (I'm *guessing* that Larry got the idea from
Joe> Tcl, could be wrong though.)
He's not mentioned it, even in private conversation. My guess is
design from first principles, rather than a copying of a particular
solution. Kinda like two people both standing at the Statue of
Liberty both taking pictures and getting similar results, even though
one is not a copy of the other.
Benjamin Goldberg
>
> mer...@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote:
>
> >I'll give you a stronger anti-TCL quote than that, which I will take
> >responsibility for having said in many public forums:
> >
> > If it weren't for Tk and Expect, TCL wouldn't even be around now.
> >
> >Then again, you might say the same things for "Unix Sysadmins and the
> >web" regarding Perl. :)
>
> Hmmm... "if it wasn't for cgi, perl wouldn't even be around now."
> That's got a nice ring to it, I have to admit.
There are many many many perl programs which have nothing to do with
cgi.
You might however say, "if it weren't for it's exceptionally good text
processing capabilities, and it's shallow-but-long learning curve, and
the social atmosphere which allowed us to create, and have access to, a
comprehensive set of freely available modules, perl wouldn't even be
around now."
> "if it wasn't for the bizarre concept of pointers, C would have died
> long ago."
>
> That's got a nice ring to it, too.
Hmm, yeah. Not too many non-trivial C programs don't use pointers,
somehow or other.
The concept of pointers helped bring about about the flat-memory-space
model of memory management, which in turn helped make C compilers easier
to write.
--
A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5
Kristoffer Lawson
:>>>>> "Kristoffer" == Kristoffer Lawson <se...@fishpool.com> writes:
: Kristoffer> Actually, I'm sure you're right. I've just often stumbled
: Kristoffer> across his anti-Tcl comments
: Before you commit libel against Larry Wall, can you be specific?
: I know Larry pretty well, and I know he doesn't have an incredible
: dispassion for TCL, as you seem to paint him. Are you just looking to
: get into a religious argument now?
You know, I'd like to apologise for my remarks. They're really uncalled
for, and I didn't actually mean them to be as derogative as they turned
out. It's just sometimes you stumble across these "Tcl hate" pages
which collect all kinds of bad stuff about the language, for whatever
bizarre reason. Based on what I've heard about Larry Wall, he's an
intelligent, witty guy with a good sense of humour. These hate pages
definitely paint a one-sided picture of the issue and based on what I've
heard here, Larry also has a lot of respect for Tcl, and other languages.
I'm definitely not looking for a religious argument. They're mostly just
utterly pointless. Hopefully we can just sit back and learn from each
other.
Randal L. Schwartz
Kristoffer> Based on what I've heard about Larry Wall, he's an
Kristoffer> intelligent, witty guy with a good sense of humour. These
Kristoffer> hate pages definitely paint a one-sided picture of the
Kristoffer> issue and based on what I've heard here, Larry also has a
Kristoffer> lot of respect for Tcl, and other languages.
I think we're agreeing to agree here. Thank you for not being
trigger-happy. There's enough nonsense around here without another
"emacs vs vi" debate in the midst.
print "Just another Perl hacker," # and someone who has a working familiarity with Tcl as well
Ploni Almoni
<gol...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>David Gravereaux wrote:
>>
>> mer...@stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz) wrote:
>>
>> >I'll give you a stronger anti-TCL quote than that, which I will take
>> >responsibility for having said in many public forums:
>> >
>> > If it weren't for Tk and Expect, TCL wouldn't even be around now.
>> >
>> >Then again, you might say the same things for "Unix Sysadmins and the
>> >web" regarding Perl. :)
>>
>> Hmmm... "if it wasn't for cgi, perl wouldn't even be around now."
>> That's got a nice ring to it, I have to admit.
>
>There are many many many perl programs which have nothing to do with
>cgi.
>
As there are many many many Tcl programs which have nothing to do with
Tk or Expect.
Andreas Otto
Hi,
does perl has a "Compiler" ????
mfg
aotto :)
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Randal L. Schwartz
Andreas> Hi,
Andreas> does perl has a "Compiler" ????
Yes. Since 1987. The very first version compiled Perl to internal
syntax structures, ala "awk". Recent versions also convert those
syntax structures to bytecodes or C threaded code.
Frédéric Bonnet
> You might however say, "if it weren't for it's exceptionally good text
> processing capabilities, and it's shallow-but-long learning curve, and
> the social atmosphere which allowed us to create, and have access to, a
> comprehensive set of freely available modules, perl wouldn't even be
> around now."
"If it weren't for its exceptionally good Unicode support, and its conceptual
simplicity and overall consistency, and its embeddability, and its event
model, and its networking capabilities, and its extensibility, and its
dynamicity, and its beautifully engineered code, and its kind, helpful and
competent community, Tcl wouldn't even be around now."
;-)
--
Frédéric Bonnet <fbonnet at users.sourceforge.net>
--------------------------------------------------
"Your mission: getting flamed on comp.lang.tcl. This email will self-destruct
in 5 seconds."
Richard Suchenwirth
> In fact, it is hard to come up with features in Perl that don't have a
> precursor in one or another language. What makes Perl unique isn't
> features. What *is* unique is its nonchalant way of picking up features
> left and right, making them work together even if they come from worlds
> apart.
Well, Tcl also goes part of that way (and in quite enjoyable fashion):
it combines elements from /bin/sh and its followers, Lisp/Scheme, C, and
what more...
See "Tcl heritage", http://mini.net/tcl/985.html
--
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Siemens Dematic AG, PA RC D2, Buecklestr.1-5, 78467 Konstanz,Germany
Personal opinions expressed only unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Laurent Duperval
wrote:
> "If it weren't for its exceptionally good Unicode support, and its
> conceptual simplicity and overall consistency, and its embeddability,
> and its event model, and its networking capabilities, and its
> extensibility, and its dynamicity, and its beautifully engineered code,
> and its kind, helpful and competent community, Tcl wouldn't even be
> around now."
>
Let me emphasise: its kind, helpful and competent community.
L
--
Laurent Duperval <mailto:ldup...@microcelli5.com>
L'opprobre me submerge quand je médite des choses pareilles, mais comme j'ai
une volonté granitique, je me domine et je refoule ma honte. Hop.
-Achille Talon
Andreas Otto
>>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Otto <ao...@t-online.de> writes:
>
> Andreas> Hi,
>
> Andreas> does perl has a "Compiler" ????
>
> Yes. Since 1987. The very first version compiled Perl to internal
> syntax structures, ala "awk". Recent versions also convert those
> syntax structures to bytecodes or C threaded code.
>
Hi,
just to test you words:
please compile an easy perl code-example into "C"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub OTTO {
foreach $s ( 0 .. 10 ) {
print "got $s\n"
}
}
OTTO
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
and post the result as answer to this message.
Please add the tools you are using and the steps to
create the output.
Logan Shaw
Andreas Otto <in...@compiler-factory.com> wrote:
> just to test you words:
>
> please compile an easy perl code-example into "C"
This seems like a goofy test for whether something can be compiled.
You seem to be saying that if a compiler cannot produce code in C, then
it does not exist. By that definition, most of the compilers ever
written are not compilers.
- Logan
--
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( http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020117/re/life_fashion_armani_dc_1.html )
Bryan Oakley
Let's not get into this. Andreas, if you really want the answer to the
question, ask it in comp.lang.perl.misc. If you don't want the answer but
rather wish to fan the flames of a language war, do that in
comp.lang.perl.misc, too :-)
Let's keep talkin' tcl here, not perl. It serves no one to say either is
better than the other because of one particular feature.
Andreas Otto
Hi,
you are right and not at the same time.
If you ask perl guys if they can compile perl they say
"yes we can", but if you give them an example they
can not do the job. It is just the right answer for
the message befor:
>Recent versions also convert those syntax structures
>to bytecodes or C threaded code.
lvi...@yahoo.com
According to Andreas Otto <in...@compiler-factory.com>:
: If you ask perl guys if they can compile perl they say
: "yes we can", but if you give them an example they
: can not do the job. It is just the right answer for
: the message befor:
:
: >Recent versions also convert those syntax structures
: >to bytecodes or C threaded code.
Just always make certain you define what you mean by compile before
you ask the question. If you mean "create a directly executable binary
image, with out the need of a run time interpreter", then say that.
Some people call the conversion of script text to byte code compilation
(for instance, in tcl, it is called the bytecode compiler... I think Java
and Perl call it about the same thing).
--
"I know of vanishingly few people ... who choose to use ksh." "I'm a minority!"
<URL: mailto:lvi...@cas.org> <URL: http://www.purl.org/NET/lvirden/>
Even if explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting
should be construed as representing my employer's opinions.