[Coco] Perl PL for OS/9

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Paul Fitch<pfitchjr at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> [Ignorance Detection mode OFF]
>
> Isn'r PERL just a series of english like words strung together in a
> predesignated fashion which are then fed to preprocessors and compilers and
> such?  Resulting in some sort of binary that can instruct the computer to
> perform a series of instructions?
>

Not really, perl is an interpreted language like BASIC.
Unfortunately, a modern version of the interpreter alone is over 1MB
in size on disk.  A quick ps shows that merely starting the
interpreter requires 3MB (on one linux system at least), and there are
probably some shared libs it is using as well.  almost any perl
program is going to call some perl libraries on top of that.  I don't
think running perl on a coco is a realistic goal.

However, I'd bet there is a way to do whatever the OP wanted to do
with perl, using coco native tools.
-Aaron



> I'd think you COULD port PERL to the Coco, but that's doesn't address the
> speed issue or the fact that 30 year old microprocessors just don't contain
> the onboard resources we take for granted today.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com
>> [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Steven Hirsch
>> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2009 7:58 PM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Perl PL for OS/9
>>
>> On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Steve Bjork wrote:
>>
>> > Perl is a modern programming language that has grown to use
>> (and need)
>> > the power of 32/64 CPU.
>> >
>> > Perl on most computers modern computer 75 MB or more.  As a Perl
>> > programmer, I use it on PC, Mac and Linux (web server) but
>> could never
>> > see running on a CoCo.
>>
>> The smallest machine I'm aware of that had a working Perl
>> port is probably the AT&T 7300 (aka Unix PC).  And that was
>> an early version of Perl 4.
>>
>>
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