At 12:58 PM 8/29/00 -0500, Fisher Mark wrote: >Although Perl interpretation is divided into several passes (parser/lexer, >optimizer, tree/bytecode runner), all these passes are grouped together in >one binary. Under some memory-constrained conditions, it could be better if >each pass ran as its own program, passing the transformed data onto the next >pass similarly to the way compilers usually work. This would be an >advantage in embedded systems where there might be a great deal of ROM >(perfect for storing pass programs) but not as much RAM (so you can't load >the whole interpreter into RAM at once). This should be an option at perl >creation time, as most non-embedded systems would not benefit from splitting >the interpreter into separate programs. This is a good idea, and I've had fuzzy thoughts along this line (more or less) myself. There's a proto-RFC in the works. Dan --------------------------------------"it's like this"------------------- Dan Sugalski even samurai [EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even teddy bears get drunk