Hi Monks,
I invented the "eval 'exec'" hack
Don't know about you guys, but little snippets of history like this, are what makes Perl Monks so special to me.
I am filled with shame.
Why. Isn't a hack which stands the test of time a Good Hack (tm).
It reminds me of a statement which Guido van Rossum attributes to his father.
"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution"
Long life to your hack, Chip. :-)
cheers
thinker
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Well, if wetting my pants in public saved the world,
I'd do it, but I'd still be pretty ashamed about it....
As for history: I found Perl while using SCO Xenix/286.
I actually did the original port of Perl to a mixed 16/32-bit
architecture -- but that's probably a Meditation for another day.
SCO Xenix was
thoroughly behind the times -- it didn't support the "#!" feature
until long after BSD-based systems did. So I started
trying to figure out how to run a Perl program as easily as the
users of more modern systems because I was, yes, too lazy
to type "perl programname" a hundred times a day or create two
files for each script. The breakthrough was realizing that Perl
and shell both understood eval STRING, but they had
different ideas about where statements end.
BTW, SCO's Bourne shell would use the C shell to run any
script whose first character was a "#". That's why Perl to
this day ignores a first line that starts with a colon....
-- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos
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[d/l] |
Hi Chip and Thinker, its a fine philosophical discussion,
but i am too young to understand your philosophy.
Please come to my world and teach your lessons.
Thank you
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