While I'm not sure of the structure of the internals of the parsing piece
of perl at the moment (and, unfortunately, language parsers aren't one of
my strong points), I am reasonably certain of the interface we'll present
to the rest of the world and the other pieces of perl. So... comments?
---------------
int perl6_parse(PerlInterp *interp,
void *source,
int flags,
void *extra_pointer);
The first parameter is a pointer to a perl interpreter--this'll be used if
any code needs to be executed, as well as being a repository for any
variables that compiled code may set. (Standard stash stuff) The syntax
tree the parser generates will also be embedded here. (One fewer parameter
to deal with, and one fewer thing for an embedding program to track)
The second parameter is a pointer to the source to be compiled. This is
generally a char pointer, but it may also be a FILE * or a pointer to a
function that returns a char pointer.
The third parameter is the flags parameter, and it's optional. If omitted
or set to PERL_CHAR_SOURCE, the second parameter is treated as a standard
null-terminated string. If set to PERL_COUNTED_SOURCE, the second parameter
is treated as if it points to a stream of bytes, where the first four are
the length of the source to be read followed by the source. If set to
PERL_FILE_SOURCE it's assumed to be a FILE *, while if set to
PERL_GENERATED_SOURCE it's assumed to be a pointer to a function that
returns a char pointer. If it's OR'd with PERL_UTF8_SOURCE then the stream
is assumed to be in UTF-8 format instead of platform native.
The fourth parameter is only used if the flags are set to
PERL_GENERATED_SOURCE, in which case it is passed back to the function
whose pointer we got as parameter two.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
