Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: can we ever compile perl?
Message-ID: <12432668@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 18 Dec 90 00:51:14 GMT
References: <1990Dec13.034336.21769@usenet@scion.CS.ORST.EDU> <93725765@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <1990Dec15.161911.27401@NCoast.ORG>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 27

In article <1990Dec15.161911.27401@NCoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes:
>As quoted from <93725765@bfmny0.BFM.COM> by tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff):
>|  2. For many of us, it would be enough to be able to make fast-loadable
>|     "Perl object files," i.e., write all data structures to disk after
>|     compilation & before execution.  The resulting "compiled scripts"
>|     would run faster because the parsing pass would be eliminated.
>|     Especially wonderful with large scripts!
>
>I mentioned this to Larry once; he pointed out that Perl's internal structures
>aren't particularly easy to save/restore in a portable way.  Of course, it
                                               ^^^^^^^^
>might be possible to write(savefd, etext, sbrk(0) - etext), but this is also
>nonportable.

Is portability the issue here?  This would be a proposed speed optimization
for individual sites.  Precompiled scripts would not be inherently
portable across disparate OS's or machine architectures; but neither are
today's UNDUMP executables!  Also, precompiled scripts might not be
portable across major Perl versions even on the same platform; but it
would be fairly straightforward to record the version number at the
beginning of the precompiled script file, so that Perl could check for
incompatibilities before beginning execution.


-- 
"DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT blow the hatch!"  /)\   Tom Neff
"Roger....hatch blown!"                   \(/   tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM