That all sounds great. So what's stopping you from building a module to implement buffers and putting it on CPAN right now? Surely it's possible to implement an elisp-style buffer system in Perl and/or C.
The Perl5 object model isn't up to it. Yes, in theory
it maybe could be done, but it's beyond my powers to
do it. As far as doing it in C... I'll have to leave
that to someone who can stand working in low-level
languages.
The Perl6 object model will bring it within reach,
however. It was reading the Apocalypse articles that
got me to thinking about doing it in Perl. I'm
pretty sure I can put the basic pieces together in
just a few weeks in Perl6, once Perl6 comes out.
for(unpack("C*",'GGGG?GGGG?O__\?WccW?{GCw?Wcc{?Wcc~?Wcc{?~cc'
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p(0..7){for$a(1..45){$_=($h[$p-1][$a])?'#':' ';print}print$/}