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From: jbarrett@hal.cs.depaul.edu (J Barrett)
Subject: Re: An alternative to Tcl, python, etc...
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Date: Fri, 14 Oct 1994 00:39:19 GMT
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Tom Christiansen (tchrist@mox.perl.com) wrote:
: :-> In comp.lang.tcl, davis@amy.tch.harvard.edu writes:
: :In article <36s66i$c1u@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU>, Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> writes:
: : : That's nice.  But it looks (deceptively) like C.  As has been said before,
: : : if people want C, they know where to find it. :-)  I can't imagine why I'd
: : : embed s-lang code in a C program rather than just flat-out using C, or
: : : perhaps creating a better C library to encapusulate the level of
: : : abstraction at which I'd like to work.  The C++ folks keep telling me that
: : : with the right library, even C++ is an HLL.  (Not that I quite believe
: : : them...)
: :
: :But how do you do this in an extensible, safe manner?  I can develop S-Lang
: :code in a fraction of the time that it takes me to write C code.  The reason
: :is that there is no compile/link/run cycle.  I do not have to worry about
: :memory allocation.  

: That's very nice, but you realize I hope that those of us using tcl, python, perl,
: or icon are going to make identical statements, so it's not as though it's some
: new argument.

: :For example, in S-Lang, you can say:
: :
: :   define add_hello (s)
: :   {
: :      return strcat ("hello", s);
: :   }
: :
: :but the same function in C will almost surely crash:
: :
: :   char *add_hello (char *s)
: :   {
: :      return strcat ("hello", s);
: :   }

: That just doesn't seem like much of a notational gain to me.  Being
: able to say 

:     sub add_hello { "hello $s" }

: or better yet, just

:     some_function("hello $s")

: Is much easier.  Basically, it just doesn't seem far enough removed from C
: to be worth the bother.  If you're going to write interpreted C, that's
: one thing, but not very impressive.  By introducing a radically simpler
: notation, you get far greater gains.  In this case, it's the mere
: intuitive interpolation of variables within doubly-quoted strings, not a
: particularly new concept, but certainly a useful one.  Small incremental
: improvements over C won't buy you much.  

: --tom
: -- 
:     Actually, you'll know we're nearing the end when I make |$foo| mean
:     "absolute value"...  :-) Larry Wall in <1994Feb25.192042.17196@netlabs.com>
