Re: Perl and ZSH

[TGAPE! <tgape@cyberramp.net>]

Jonas Bofjall wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 1998 tep@colltech.com wrote:
> 
>> I've actually been tinkering with the idea of embedding a Perl
>> interpreter inside ZSH but I got stumped when it came time to
> 
> zsh is good because it keeps the executables size within bounds even
> while having all these features. But Perl is *complex*... Wouldn't it
> be time to modularize zsh some? And I don't mean autoloading of shell
> script functions but of compiled code.

First, I seem to recall hearing something about that already.  Second,
no.  Do not encourage them.  Perl is embeded *enough*, simply by it
being a unix shell.  If I need the power of perl, I'd rather write a
perl script.  I realize a powerful shell can be nice, but there is
something called sanity which must be kept track of.

I'm actually of the opinion that the zshexpn is possibly getting a
little too complete - benchmarking shows that find is better suited for
most complex tasks.  That having been said, I do find virtually every
feature of zshexpn useful, so long as you use them within reason.
Remember that find still exists, and is better for the major endevor.

Perl is not only complex, but it's a fairly efficient piece of code.  It
could be improved significantly, but I don't believe the people who are
talking about putting it in zsh will necessarily have the time or
patience to even match its efficiency.

All this having been said, I wouldn't complain too loudly over an
optional perl expression parser, though I'd like it to be a compile time
option.

>On 17 Apr 1998, Karsten Thygesen wrote:
>
>> another project. We have a lot of resources available to projects like
>> Infoseek searchengine, newsgroups (if that is prefered over
>> mailinglists) and even CVS servers for distributed development.
>
>btw is there a cvs repository for zsh?

Not that I know of[1]; what's wrong with RCS?  You have it on your
system if you have CVS.  Since CVS uses RCS to do its work, it should be
trivial to convert.  Unfortunately, I've just shared pretty much my sum
total knowledge of CVS...

Ed

[1] Though Bart Schaefer might know better.