Memory Footprint of Perl System Calls (was Re: Date interface ( wasRe: perl6 requirements, on bootstrap))

[mooring]

On Tue, Aug 01, 2000 at 09:09:09PM -0500, J. David Blackstone wrote:
> 
>   I suppose the suggestion I made about stripping out every system
> call is more along the lines of the microperl idea.
> 
>   How about this: perhaps we should compile a list of system calls
> that _should_ remain in the core language.  I think it will probably
> be very small.

Not to pick on Mr. Blackstone, but the memory/LOC footprint of the bunch of
system calls that Perl supports is counter-intuitively small. Using Perl5 as
a reference, pp_sys.o (which contains pretty much all of the syscall 
interface to perl) is about 6.5% of the size of the perl executable. This includes
such indubitably useful system calls as mkdir(), rename(), and the sysopen() 
family.

You may save a little bit in programmer mental space, but looking for large
space savings in this part of perl is chasing mirages.
-- 
Ed Mooring ([EMAIL PROTECTED])