Re: Cygwin survey: Next vim version with perl support?

[Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha at cs dot nyu dot edu>]

On Fri, 2 May 2003, Andrew DeFaria wrote:

> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 12:35:26PM -0700, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> >
> >> I think what's left out is what exactly does this Perl support do?
> >
> > If you dn't know it, you probably don't need it. ;-)
>
> You do not know that! I use vim. I write Perl. Perhaps it would be
> useful for me.
>
> > Actually I don't use it, too. Basically it adds sort of a perl
> > scripting capability to vim, including new perl functions to
> > manipulate the running vim by using VIM::foo functions. Just start vim
> > and type ":help perl".
>
> Interesting, perhaps useful. Probaby not worth making the dependency.
> Again, couldn't it be optional? IOW if Perl is present then the
> functions work otherwise they do not?

FWIW, there is nothing in the perl scripting capability, FWICS, that
cannot be achieved with an extra '!' on the command line, except for the
VIM module, and that looks useful only to vim hackers and macro writers,
which most of us aren't.  So, unless you're planning to download macros
written in perl, this feature is of no use to you.

I can see one way out of this that would keep everyone happy: make the
has("perl") test dynamic, and check for the presence of the needed perl
DLL before invoking the feature (instead of just returning the
compile-time value).  IMO, vim shouldn't try to load the perl DLL unless
the perl scripting feature is used.  Putting a test for perl in
has("perl") will guard against accidental use. The same goes for all the
scripting features.  This will most likely require rewriting some of the
vim code and convincing upstream maintainers to apply the patches, but is,
IMO, "the right thing to do"...
	Igor
P.S. I just looked through eval.c in the vim source, and it seems some
kind sould has already gone through the trouble of implementing the above,
when DYNAMIC_PERL is defined.  Same goes for other scripting languages.
Don't know if you can set it from configure, though...
-- 
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  -- Leto II


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