Re: A philosophical proof that, a perl6 implementation can be written only by Larry Wall


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Re: A philosophical proof that, a perl6 implementation can be written only by Larry Wall

by JavaFan (Canon)

on May 07, 2010 at 09:16 UTC ( [id://838897]=note: print w/replies, xml )

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in reply to A philosophical proof that, a perl6 implementation can be written only by Larry Wall

I may be wrong here, but thats what I felt after reading the statement 'Only perl can parse perl'.

The statement "Only perl can parse Perl" (mind your capitals!) doesn't come from the fact that it's hard to parse Perl, or that it requires a Larry Wall.

It comes from the fact that to parse Perl, you may have to run Perl. And there's only one executable that runs Perl: perl. (For the sake of the argument, I'm excluding any Perl6 implementation - they didn't exist when the phrase was coined).

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Re^2: A philosophical proof that, a perl6 implementation can be written only by Larry Wall
by jettero (Monsignor) on May 07, 2010 at 10:34 UTC

... doesn't come from the fact that it's hard to parse Perl, or that it requires a Larry Wall. It comes from the fact that a parse Perl, you may have to run Perl.

This is the only correct response I can see so far. Perl6 already has more than one parser. The problem isn't that it's hard to parse it's that it has to be executed during the parse so you can't have Vim or your syntax checker always doing the parse correctly.

-Paul

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