Re^7: I wrote an expression parser for PPI

> Yep, PPI worked

Not sure if you got my point.

PPI is a static parser, this (should?) mean if it sees at "compile" time something like ...

use Try::Tiny;
it won't try to search @INC
to require the first .../Try/Tiny.pm
run Try::Tiny->import()
"export" try (&) {...} (among others)
with an accurate prototype

to keep on parsing correctly if it encounters a try {...}

I haven't tested this, but I bet you will need to patch PPI to handle this.°

At least if you want to construct a decent Perl dialect and not just some interesting demos.

I say dialect because it's very hard to achieve full compatibility.

OTOH once your parser and compiler really work, you can try to transpile it into your target languages to bootstrap a stand-alone dialect which is consistent in all those languages.

At least in theory...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)

see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

updates

°) There is a whole bunch of more things happening at compile-time...

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Re^8: I wrote an expression parser for PPI by BerntB (Deacon) on Jan 11, 2026 at 11:24 UTC
Sorry, I was unclear. Yes, the `use` dependencies are loaded and prototypes (like in `Try::Tiny`) etc are extracted. I had a problem with this by the way, and realized why Perl don't cache its byte code. I wanted to do a cache of compiled code, with key from the hash of the file content. But it just seems too fragile. You would need a cache of used files (so they could be loaded) and everything would need a recompile if a file further down in the stack was changed. I put on the todo to compile a program with dependencies to a standalone code file, instead. Edit: If you tell me that `Try::Tiny` works with `require`, then I am totally wrong. :-) That should only work with `use` right? (I had to read the code, there was some claim that it was slow so I never `Try`:ed.)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^9: I wrote an expression parser for PPI by LanX (Saint) on Jan 11, 2026 at 13:58 UTC
> the use dependencies are loaded and prototypes (like in Try::Tiny) etc are extracted. By standard PPI or by your project? update > and realized why Perl don't cache its byte code. Do you mean pre-compiling modules before a program starts? This wouldn't work in general and IMHO even not add much speed. I suppose re-compiling a module with every startup is negligible compared to starting Perl and loading the code from the file-system. But I've seen attempts to work with a precompiled bytecode versions of a program/module for compatibility reasons. IIRC they have the extension .plc, but I couldn't find the documentation yet. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :) see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply]
Re^10: I wrote an expression parser for PPI by BerntB (Deacon) on Jan 12, 2026 at 10:08 UTC
Uh, I don't understand what you are asking about PPI? But I wish I published earlier so you asked it a few weeks ago. :-) It is like this: A routine trawling some Perl code after `use` statements aren't hard to do with PPI, almost a oneliner. PPI works well for me. As it is, it will need to be two phases (first to find declarations). I will put up changes the coming weekend, I hope. This transpiler is in Perl, so it will be slower to compile than Perl (edit: for instance, see the deep dive into `use`:d files). In the end, it will probably be generation of a compiled file, with runtime etc. (Edit: I also saw tries with compiled bytecode, now I understand why it never became a thing.) Edit: I am trying to solve `BEGIN` now, that is trickier than sub prototypes. But totally doable in CL. The problem now, is that my attempt at a demonstration Perl transpiler to get something to compile to other languages is getting a too complex output.	[reply] [d/l] [select]