I've seen what can be done with the inline modules even in Perl 5
XS and Inline::C (which is essentially the same) are things that I find very attractive about perl 5, as accessing C routines by writing perl programs is far more appealing than accessing C routines by writing C programs.
Of course, other languages also provide interfaces to C but I don't know how they compare with perl's C interface as I've not yet felt the need to investigate the alternatives.
Cheers, Rob
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