Re: date interface (was Re: perl6 requirements, on bootstrap)

[Nathan Torkington]

J. David Blackstone writes:
>   Re: #1, above, I'd go so far as to suggest that nearly every system
> call in Perl (along with just about every punctuation variable) should
> find itself in a module and only in a module.

(nat as nat)

I'd like to suggest that Pascal is a language to *avoid* emulating.

Move to modules those things that aren't frequently used (shared mem),
and/or are easier to use with a different interface (select and those
poxy bitvectors).

You want to keep in the core those things that everyone uses.  I/O
definitely falls into that category.  Directory manipulation does too,
IMHO.

Networking is a gray area: I'd rather use IO::Socket::INET than
socket()+bind()+connect() and All Those Bloody Constants [tm] any day.

Moving things to modules (a) does little for the size of Perl, and (b)
promotes Pythonization of the language (i.e., all programs begin with
20 lines of `load this module, load that module, load the other
module').  Your criteria for moving to a module can't simply be
whether it's a system call or not, you must use something that takes
into account the hindrance and the payoff.

Nat