On Apr 4, 2011, at 17:35, smiley@zenzebra.mv.com wrote:

> All combined (forking read/test/echo, forking awk/sed/dd, parsing
> /mnt/acme/%d/events, etc.)... this, I think, is why languages like Perl
> came into existence and became so popular.  I could definitely write an
> Acme event parser in Perl, or even in bash(1).  rc(1) is just a few
> small features shy of making it practical to do in rc(1).

I think this does a very good job of summing up the issue. I think the point
you might be missing, though, is that most of the Plan 9 community is quite
happy about the current state of things. You're likely right that considerations
like this led to perl and bash - but rc's state is not an accident. We know
where to get perl and bash if we want them.

Put another way, your problem seems to be "I can't write an acme client in
rc with performance I'm happy with" (leaving aside, for the moment,
questions of measurement). Your solution is "expand rc"; I suspect the
consensus of the community would be either "deal with it" or "use C".

Actually, that might be the consensus of the community on *most* issues. :-)

Anthony