Dviip has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello,
I want to know if Perl6 can support external libraries (like BLAS, LAPACK, etc). I heard that Python can do, and know that Perl5 cannot. To me at least, that's the major factor in deciding the language to code for certain projects, and any input regarding this would be of help.
Thanks,
-D

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Re: Perl 6 and external libraries
by jonadab (Parson) on Apr 28, 2007 at 14:25 UTC
    I... know that Perl5 cannot

    Actually, Perl5 can, if there is a module for it. Writing such a module requires more than surface-level knowledge and usually involves C (and sometimes also XS), but for well-known libraries there is often one already written and available on the CPAN.

    Perl6 (err, Parrot, actually) will hopefully make the writing of such modules rather easier, and allow them to be written once (in any language (that targets Parrot)) and used many times (in every language (same caveat)), but I have not closely tracked the progress on that front.

    -- 
    We're working on a six-year set of freely redistributable Vacation Bible School materials.

      Parrot does make bindings to shared libraries that use C calling conventions much easier, and that works fairly well at the moment. I suspect that HLLs will all share the native Parrot bindings, but there will be HLL-ish and HLL-specific wrappers around the low-level bindings for individual languages.

Re: Perl 6 and external libraries
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 28, 2007 at 06:24 UTC