Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!pasteur!sprite.berkeley.edu!jhh From: jhh@sprite.berkeley.edu (John H. Hartman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl Subject: Re: Merged Tcl and Perl? Message-ID: <12516@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 6 Apr 91 00:09:58 GMT References: <21782@shlump.nac.dec.com> Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 40 In article barnett@crdgw1.ge.com writes: >In article <21782@shlump.nac.dec.com> evans@decvax.DEC.COM (Marc Evans) writes: >>If so, have you found yourself thinking the same thoughts as I? My principal >>question though is (Larry) Are you fimiliar with Tcl and does it seem reasonable >>to merge the two packages in some form? > >How about merging perl, Tcl, and Xtk? > >Then we can write X Window programs in Perl! >And since Tcl can communicate with other programs that also use Tcl, we >can have pwm (Perl window manager)! > >(Half :-) > >-- >Bruce G. Barnett barnett@crdgw1.ge.com uunet!crdgw1!barnett I thought about doing this a few months ago, but haven't got around to it. I'm not sure what you mean by "merging" tcl and perl, but I want to create a tcl/perl interface that is similar to the tcl/c interface. That way one could write a perl script that creates tcl interpreters, passes them commands, and has the tcl interpreter call perl routines when necessary. This would make it very easy to write X applications in perl, as well as applications that communicate with one another. What I just described shouldn't be too hard to do. There are a couple of reasons why I haven't done it yet, other than a lack of spare time. First, I was waiting for John Ousterhout's first "official" distribution of tcl. Second, my previous attempt to add user-defined subroutines to perl was not entirely successful. Third, I'm not sure how to go about calling perl subroutines from tcl. In theory, though, it shouldn't be too hard for someone with a better working knowledge of the perl source than myself. I would be happy to help out on a project to make this happen. John ----------------------------------------------------------------------- John H. Hartman Graduate Student, UCB Sprite project jhh@sprite.berkeley.edu