[Python-Dev] Parrot -- should life imitate satire?

[Guido van Rossum]

> Perl 5.7.x has such a library, and it's my expectation (another sideways
> glance at Dan) that if we did Parrot, it would include this library.
> PerlIO attempts to be a very portable stdio (it's running on everything
> that Perl runs on, AFAIK) and it supports "line disciplines" in the sfio
> sense: you can stuff processing modules between the file and the
> filehandle. This allows us to do anything between altering buffering
> semantics, and decompressing and decrypting files on the fly.

Great!

> It'll need to be somewhat rewritten for Perl 6, at which point I'm
> hoping it'll be done in such a way that it'll make it easier to extract
> from the Perl mess around it and be made available to other projects.

I hope that even if the Parrot goal is to support all languages,
PerlIO can be made a separate and independent project, not relying on
Perl internals.  (And I'd change the name, but maybe that's asking too
much. :-)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)