Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: (*(dump = GNU ? unexec : undump))("perl.$$");
Message-ID: <7166@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 25 Feb 90 07:40:00 GMT
References: <100236@convex.convex.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 29

In article <100236@convex.convex.com> tchrist@convex.Com (Tom Christiansen) writes:
: I've been thinking about how to make the dump operator useful for me, and
: I've an idea.  I happen to know that our (Convex's) distributed version of
: GNU emacs has a working dump-emacs routine (I don't actually use emacs,
: mind you; see .signature for details :-), and I figured to stick it into
: perl for its dump operator.  Has anyone else contemplated this action?
: What should be the name of the a.out file generated?  Should it be
: "perl.$$" or "$0.$$" or something like that?  Should dump take a 
: string expr argument as the name?
: 
: I'll work on it as soon as I can get a hold of the guy who did our
: version of unexec() for GNU emacs, but he's on vacation right now.

I looked at the unexec() option and rejected it because it's difficult to
make portable, and because undump already does most of what I want.  One
pays a rather large premium to be able to restart the process exactly
where it left off, and you can get most of that effect by using the label
on the dump operator.

If you want to be able to produce an undumped executable under the control
of the program doing the dump, just write a routine that forks, waits for
the other process to dump, and then runs undump for you.

In other words, you'll have to be rather persuasive to get me to include
unexec() in the official perl.

Am I getting sufficiently grouchy in my old age?

Larry