andrew cooke writes:
Hi,
I am thinking about using Parrot as the VM for a small, experimental
functional language. My priority is ease of getting things working. I
was wondering if:
- this is the right list for parrot (parrot-porters-subscribe bounced)?
parrot-porters and perl6-internals are supposed to be synonymous - I have a
ticket into the postmaster to see if we can resolve this issue, sorry about
the confusion.
- whether there was a more suitable venue (more focussed on developing
languages with parrot than on perl/parrot itself)?
Not really.
- if anyone could recommend some good code (an already implemented
language) to copy and hack?
I would recommend you check out some of the languages in the languages/
directory: abc in particular was designed to be an intro to using parrot's
compiler tools, and is probably the easiest to grasp at the moment.
On the last point, all I really need is first class functions, basic
types, eager (partial) evaluation
pattern matching (where is that handled?)
Pattern matching is provided with one of the PGE compilers. See
languages/tcl/runtime/builtin/regexp.pir for an example (there is probably
better documentation, I just happened to know I was using it there in tcl.)
and a little mutability. In other words, I don't care much
about first class continuations, exceptions, (static) types or
inheritance.
Also, am I right in thinking that I can use whatever language I want for
generating the IR?
Sure. languages/BASIC used perl, as did tcl some time back. Most are
generating PIR with PIR these days, though. (ISTR plumhead is generating PIR
multiple ways)
Are there any libraries/toolkits for various
languages?
Don't think so. Is there one you'd like to see?
I hate to admit it, but I would prefer not Perl (sorry,
haven't used it for years...), although if that's hugely easier I guess I
go that route anyway.
Parrot itself is probably easier than perl at the moment.
Thanks,
Andrew
Hope this helps.
