Ah, there you go, I didn't know about reader macros in Lisp. And C++ template expansions are Turing-complete (I believe), so that's another exception. C preprocessor macros let you do some of that stuff, but they're very restricted (you can't nest an #if inside a #define, for example).

The reason I bring up prototypes is that Perl code can decide whether or not to install them, like this:

use warnings;
BEGIN {
   *foo = rand() < .5
      ? sub { print "@_\n" }
      : sub ($) { print "@_\n" }
}
foo 27, 42; # Parsed as "foo(27,42);" or "foo(27),42;"

[download]

In any case, I was just making an observation, not arguing about which language is "better" or "more efficient" or "more flexible."

In reply to Re^10: Pre-compiled Perl? by Anonymous Monk
in thread Pre-compiled Perl? by bbs2web

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.