Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!jarthur!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Perl != shell (was: Patch 9 from outer space)
Message-ID: <7300@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 6 Mar 90 23:33:35 GMT
References: <15178@bfmny0.UU.NET> <7105@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <1422@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 34

In article <1422@kuling.UUCP> jand@kuling.UUCP (Jan Dj{rv) writes:
: I'd like to have some basic tty diciplines as builtins in perl.
: Things like CBREAK and ECHO modes would help a lot.
: (Save's me from creating a ioctl/termio[s]/sgtty for each machine :-).

I don't have much trouble with

	`stty -echo cbreak`;

or equivalent.  Yeah, it starts up one whole extra process, two if you throw
in any shell metacharacters.  How often do you want to do it?  Usually
not more than twice per script.

: A basic curses interface would be nice also (move, clear and standout
: would be enough) but this is perhaps asking to much.

I'd probably never do that.  But I have SERIOUSLY considered adding a pager.
Seems it would make writing a new rn easier...

	$what_they_typed_last = page(@article, *keyboard_map_subroutine);

It would presumably be able to add to @article while it was waiting for
keyboard input.  So you could do all kinds of nifty tricks like emulate
the less program, start displaying something even while NNTP is still
talking, etc.

We're talkin' hypertext here, boys and girls.

: There must be other things people would like to see in perl, or is perl
: already perfect (Perfect Extraction and Report Language :-) ?

I laugh in your general direction.

Larry