Personally, I think the best approach would be to have a desktop application you run on a Perl script to turn it into an easily-parsable form, and then reimplement the parser in your Palm code to read that form and create the optrees from it. Yeesh.

There are a lot of differences between Palm OS and traditional desktop OSes, for example the existence of a heirarchical file system. Some commands might need different syntax to do this, ie, open.

One of the big plans in Perl 6 is that you'll be able to rip out the parser and replace it with something else, so a Palm port would be (relatively) easy to implement--just load up the interpreter (codenamed Parrot) with a bytecode loader, stick the bytecode into a database, and run Parrot on the bytecode database. You lose certain functionality, such as eval $string, but you also end up with a Perl that doesn't crash your Visor or fill up its memory.

I wouldn't recommend the zlib technique--in order for Perl to be a glue language, it has to interact with other program's databases.

Simon Cozens said a long time ago on perl5-porters that he was almost finished with a Palm port. Maybe you can contact him and ask about it.

I'd be happy to help. I have a Visor Prism (mmm, color...) and an itsy bitsy teeny weeny bit of experience with both Palm OS programming and Perl internals. Lemmie know...

=cut
--Brent Dax
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