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Postings from July 2000
At 12:36 PM 7/20/2000 -0400, Joshua N Pritikin wrote: > > Build a meta-language system using Perl5 that allows > > you to define a new language. The output of the system > > would be C++ code that implements the new langauge. > >It doesn't have to be so formalized. The "meta-language" could be a mix >of perl5 and configuration files, or a group of domain specific >languages. It would help to formalize it, since I'm assuming there will be hundreds of people working on the development. It seems that many people are suggesting using Perl5 as the language to write the C/C++/etc. code for Perl6, I think building a language construction language would work better in the long run. > > The reasons for going with C++: > > - Portable across many platforms > > - Standard Template Library > > - Large community of programmers > > - Feature rich > >I'm not sure whether these advantages hold when using C++ strictly as a >target for a code generator. In any case, I don't feel strongly. It >should be (relatively) easy to retarget the backend. True, that target language just has to provide some minimum set of features as needed by language generation system. I was thinking that for optimization staying with one language might produce a better end product though. I think a model like this is what most people seem to be advocating: Rather than building application X in language A build an application Y in a very portable language B that will generate platform specific optimized code in language A to build application X. eg: Write Y in B (write Perl6 builder in Perl5) Y writes X in A (Perl6 builder writes Perl6 in C++) This is great, since when I've done this in the past with simpler projects it's greatly reduced the amount of bugs in the final application and made debugging easier all around. What I'm advocating is another level of indirection: Write a meta-language interpreter in Perl5 that works off extensions. Write extensions that build up the meta-language. Use the meta-language interpreter to write Perl6 Have the interpreter output the C++ code for Perl6 This would make extending Perl6 code much easier for embedded platforms since they could modify the meta-language to include only what they need, and build custom meta-language extensions to handle oddities of the embedded system. It also forces your code to orientate around building the meta-language and not just outputting C++ code to do X.