Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!eris.berkeley.edu!mwm
From: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Dealing with multiple scripting languages (was: Elinating the 'rx' from AREXX)
Message-ID: <1989Aug31.004647.12718@agate.uucp>
Date: 31 Aug 89 00:46:47 GMT
References: <721@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca> <1989Aug29.031707.9022@agate.uucp> <7782@cbmvax.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.uucp (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44)
Reply-To: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 47

In article <7782@cbmvax.UUCP> jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes:
<In article <1989Aug29.031707.9022@agate.uucp> mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) writes:
<>Fixing the recognition problem isn't hard - you just have to find a
<
<	This was discussed at length months ago on BIX in amiga.dev/
<suggestions.  The final more-or-less consensus was that you should look
<for the string #!...!# (... being name of interpreter) anywhere in the
<first line.  This allows embedding it in any type of comment.

Someone who knows what's going to happen. Lotsa question...

Is the search going to be length-limited, as well? Or will it search
in vain through a megabyte of database for the newline that isn't
there?

Did anyone consider the advisability of using a character that has
different graphics representations in different countries (#) as one
of the magic characters?

One of the first uses of #! on Unix was for a Pascal P-code
interpreter - the interpreter was tweaked to skip the first line, and
the compiler generated "#! pcodeinterpreter" as the first line,
followed by binary. What happens if someone has a similar binary
"script", the first word of which is 0x00000f3f? Or will that be
considered an error on the part of the compiler?

I assumes this code is going into Execute(), as it needs to read the
first part of the binary in any case. That is the case, isn't it? It's
not going into the shell, is it?

If Execute() fires off an ARexx script, how will the script
communicate with the shell as a client? Or will the default shell not
be a client?  (Does the contract with Hawes specify that CBM not
provide a client shell, so he can still sell copies of WShell? :-)

<There still needs to be some hard-coded recognitions of executables,
<AmigaDos scripts, and _perhaps_ ARexx scripts.

Why? Backwards compatability, or does #!Execute!# fail?

	Thanx,
	<mike
--
[Our regularly scheduled .signature preempted.]		Mike Meyer
The Amiga 1000: Let's build _the_ hackers machine.	mwm@berkeley.edu
The Amiga 500: Let's build one as cheaply as possible!	ucbvax!mwm
The Amiga 2000: Let's build one inside an IBM PC!	mwm@ucbjade.BITNET