Approaching m4

Bernhard Schmalhofer

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Aug 12, 2003, 2:04:22 PM8/12/03

to perl6-i...@perl.org

Hi,

I have started an implementation of m4 in PIR. See
http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/m4.html.

Initially I wanted to tackle Ruby or QCL,
http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~oemer/qcl.html. But I found those too intimidating.

The goal is to make a lot of tests work, and eventually getting a drop
in replacement for GNU m4.
The plan is to implement everything in PIR, thus building on existing PMCs.

The curious can take look at the present status in:
http://www.schmalhofer.info/schmalhofer/bernhard/projects/m4/.

Is there already a testing framework in PIR or PASM? For now I've just
tweaked the Makefile from bf.

CU, Bernhard

--
*************************************************
Bernhard Schmalhofer
Senior Developer

Biomax Informatics AG
Lochhamer Str. 11
82152 Martinsried, Germany

Tel: +49 89 89 55 74 - 839
Fax: +49 89 89 55 74 - 25
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Sean O'Rourke

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Aug 12, 2003, 2:14:32 PM8/12/03

to Bernhard Schmalhofer, perl6-i...@perl.org

Bernhard Schmalhofer <Bernhard.S...@biomax.de> writes:
> I have started an implementation of m4 in PIR.

The implications are staggering... Sure, plenty of
compilers can bootstrap themselves, but how many can
generate their own configure scripts via autoconf? With
p4rrot, we may live to see this dream.

/s

Leon Brocard

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Aug 12, 2003, 3:38:59 PM8/12/03

to perl6-i...@perl.org

Bernhard Schmalhofer sent the following bits through the ether:

> Is there already a testing framework in PIR or PASM? For now I've just
> tweaked the Makefile from bf.

This looks excellent.

First, may I be the first to say that I'm happy that BF is the
inspiration for so many Parrot projects ;-)

We've used the Perl testing framework (Test::Harness, eg: 1..1\nok 1)
in the main parrot test suite. It's working well for Perl and a Parrot
version of it might be nice idea...

Leon
--
Leon Brocard.............................http://www.astray.com/
scribot.................................http://www.scribot.com/

... I'm not smart enough to lie

Chromatic

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Aug 12, 2003, 5:32:16 PM8/12/03

to Leon Brocard, perl6-i...@perl.org

On Tuesday, August 12, 2003, at 12:38 PM, Leon Brocard wrote:

> We've used the Perl testing framework (Test::Harness, eg: 1..1\nok 1)
> in the main parrot test suite. It's working well for Perl and a Parrot
> version of it might be nice idea...

Anything that emits the Test::Harness protocol is fine. Anything that
understands the Test::Harness protocol is fine. Just support the
protocol and everyone's happy.

(I think Parrot is capable of interpreting the protocol right now.)

-- c

James Michael Dupont

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Aug 15, 2003, 11:22:01 AM8/15/03

to Bernhard Schmalhofer, perl6-i...@perl.org

--- Bernhard Schmalhofer <Bernhard.S...@biomax.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have started an implementation of m4 in PIR. See
> http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/m4.html.

That is amazing!

>
> The goal is to make a lot of tests work, and eventually getting a
> drop
> in replacement for GNU m4.
> The plan is to implement everything in PIR, thus building on existing
> PMCs.

I have looked breifly into extracting high level information from m4,
I wonder if that would be possible using your implementation or if one
could use the existing m4 to generate code for your backend?

mike

=====
James Michael DuPont
http://introspector.sourceforge.net/

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