http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=595650


in reply to That rewrite feeling...

I know a guy who once completely replaced the init system on his Linux box with a custom system written in Perl.

I made serious headway into recreating the complete set of standard unix core utilities (excepting C compiler, et alii) in Perl, but ultimately gave that up as a goal because I discovered I actually want to complete that task in OCaml -- including, eventually, an OCaml compiler. First, I've got to learn more Ocaml, though. I'm not even at a level of mediocre competence in that language yet.

I'm currently looking at the possibility of using Perl to write interpreters for other languages -- such as Logo -- in Perl such that I can upload the interpreter to the cgi-bin of shared hosting accounts. This, of course, would be for the purpose of using some rather edge-case languages for web development, mostly for the perverse joy of it.

Maybe someday I'll use Perl to write a binary compiler for Perl. I sincerely doubt it, though.

print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

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Re^2: That rewrite feeling...
by blazar (Canon) on Jan 25, 2007 at 14:38 UTC
    I made serious headway into recreating the complete set of standard unix core utilities (excepting C compiler, et alii) in Perl,

    Sounds much like the Unix Reconstruction Project. Last time I looked, I had the impression that the project was sleeping, and a random look in some of the code revealed stuff like ad hoc handling of cmd line switches, whereas one would reasonably use some Getopt::* module nowadays. I wanted to check just to be sure not to shout utter nonsense but the site seems unreachable today...

      I seem to recall seeing something similar at the URP, and it seems down today for me too. It's unfortunate to hear about the ad hock option handling.

      I didn't know about the URP when I first started work on the Perl reconstruction of core utilities, else I might have just contributed to that (or at least investigated whether contributing was something I wanted to do), but it's kind of a moot point now since I changed my focus from Perl to OCaml for that purpose.

      print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);
      - apotheon
      CopyWrite Chad Perrin