Piers, Regarding your Perl6 Essentials summary:
>Or, he can write code for IMCC using Parrot Intermediate Language (known as PIR for reasons that aren't entirely clear even to one who has been watching the mailing list since the Parrot project started) I suppose noone has much read the README in languages/imcc PIR is what I named the IMCC language and you are correct in your quote, but I've frequently seen people wondering where the name came from. It isn't really an overlay, it is a compiler with an optimizer and register allocator which just happens to emit PASM. If you have Steven Muchnicks book (spelling?) you will notice it is common to name intermediate languages as something with IR in it (MIR, LIR, HIR). Hope that answers your trivia. I suppose I could have provided some more explanation (I haven't read the book yet) but as the original author of IMCC & PIR, I wasn't even contacted out of courtesy to write the chapter and was informed after the book was finished. :/ This has been a major stumbling block for me in getting back the motivation to help with Parrot again. -Melvin
