Simon Cozens wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 03:17:47PM -0400, Ken Fox wrote:
> > That's fine for the VM and the support libraries, but I'd *really* like
> > to see the parser/front-end in Perl. There are dozens of RFCs that require
> > some non-trivial extensions to the parser. It would be nice to code these
> > in Perl
>
> Are there any better reasons than "It would be nice?"
The dogfood theory? One of the design goals for Perl is to make text
munging easy. Parsing falls into that category and therefore we should
use it, i.e. eat our own dogfood.
There are other reasons though.
Syntax extensions for Perl should be more naturally written in Perl because
one of the prototyping tools is to design equivalent implementations of a
new feature in Perl. Damian has taken this to a new extreme with his switch
statement.
A Perl programmer who needs a syntax extension may only use Perl, so mandating
any other language is an additional constraint. It may limit the number of
people able to work on Perl.
Parsing Perl in Perl may provide new insight on how to improve the speed
and expressiveness of perl.
Perl parsing code may not suffer from the computer-science-itus of ideas
like "maximal munch" or context free grammar restrictions. The community
is rich and interesting and may produce something better than (or at least
different from) what's been done before.
- Ken
