http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=189951


in reply to Re: How much of Perl can be removed?
in thread How much of Perl can be removed?

What hacker is looking to do here is not create a Perl executable for PalmOS, but rather a set of libraries. A programme could call the Perl libraries to run certain functions that might perform better in Perl rather than machine code or C. It's also easier, sometimes, just to use Perl because, heck, it gets the job done.

If someone had a bit of Perl code they wanted to run that would, say, sort an array, the coder would write the C code for the programme, then write the Perl code for that function, and using the Perl library, he would call the Perl code from within the Palm executable.

The Palm series of handhelds has no filesystem, but it does have methods of storing data. It stores data into a built-in RAM chip that gets written to ROM on power down. Data is stored in Palm database files (known as .pdb's on a computer file system) that are transferrable to the computer to which the Palm normally HotSyncs.

Yes, I do own a Palm ;^).

~Michael Ryan
michael (at) lacklustre.net