Re: RFC 146 (v1) Remove socket functions from core

[Larry Wall]

Fisher Mark writes:
: > For instance, if I'm running Perl on my Palm, I'd just as soon that
: > index() were implemented in Perl using repeated substr() comparisons.
: 
: How small do we really need to go?

It's not so much a matter of small as a matter of pluggable.  But small
will continue to be important.  I think microcontrollers will keep getting
smaller and smaller physically, which will tend to keep down the amount
of memory they can have.  In 20 years we may have nanocomputers that
are limited to 2 megs...

But the pluggable is important for scaling up as well.  Consider
pluggable string methods for multiple string encodings.  A small Perl
might just coerce all encodings into utf8 or utf16 or whatever.  A
medium Perl might put separate implementations for several different
string types, and use a common intermediate type such as utf8 or utf16
for conversions.  A large Perl might put in a complete crossbar that
can convert any string type directly to any other.  All hand coded in
assembler for the Pentium 18.

Larry