Meanwhile, if you really really want a (small) single exe file solution, I can suppose that (a) you specify what you want to include or leave out, and get an error if you violate that; or (b) the compiler knows what you used or didn't, and leaves things out at link-time automatically. If nothing in the program called eval(), for example, eval() doesn't get pulled in by the linker. (If you do include eval, you might as well pull in everything, so don't worry about the lack of static analysis).

That doesn't mean we *want* to copy VB. Personally, I hate having to haul around a runtime with my (few) VB programs.

evals are the reason I want you to *tell* the compiler if you're using something. One of the things I really don't want to do is outsmart the programmer. We should have switches to exclude certain functionality that already exists in the Perl core for size reasons. (For the purposes of this article, I'm using a --no=feature switch.) Perhaps we can have it say, "WARNING:  You don't seem to be using regular expressions.  Support for them can be excluded with the --no=re flag.  (This warning can be disabled with the --notips flag.)" (Or whatever.)

To pull that off, someone needs to wade through the core and find all the entry functions for regexen--then we just make those die on entry and delete the other regex functions. Unless someone already knows this--anybody?

=cut
--Brent Dax


@HPAJ=split("", "rekcaH lreP rentonA tsuJ");
print reverse @HPAJ;  #sucky but who cares?
[download]

I've read that Larry wants to move more stuff out of the core in Perl 6. He mentioned format.

Regular expressions are rather central. But maybe you're not using all the exotic features such as zero-width lookahead assertions. Maybe another choice could be a simpler regex module that's substantially smaller but is enough for ordinary grepping and handling your switch statements.

We also need choices as to static linking vs. loadable runtime libraries. You might prefer a self-contained EXE, but I want 10 little EXE's sharing one runtime library. Depends on the intended use, too.

—John