From: Yuri Leikind <YuriLeikind@...>
Date: 2001-09-19T23:44:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21392] Re: The Parrot lives!

Sean Russell wrote:
> 
> Edward Wilson wrote:
> 
> > What is Parrot?  I went there and got tired of looking for what it is.
> >  You would think one would post an intro on the first page.  At least
> > brag about the product.
> 
> Parrot was originally an April Fools joke which is turning into a real
> project.  Parrot is supposed to be a merging of the Perl and Python
> interpreters so that one runtime would run the source from either of the
> languages or, indeed, as the Joke was perpetrated, run a frankenstein
> Perl+Python language.
> 
> I think it is telling that both the Perl and the Python camps realized that
> their respective languages were somehow lacking enough to make such a
> project worthwhile.  (ObRuby -->) I can't, for example, see what Ruby would
> get from a merging with either Python or Perl, although both of those
> languages could benefit from Ruby.
> 

First of all Parrot is Perl6 runtime (or interpreter, or Perl6 VM) that
takes
bytecode and executes it. Parrot is part of Perl6 project, and NOT 
"merging of the Perl and Python interpreters", as you put it. Not a bit.

Perl6 compiler (now non-existent) will produce Parrot bytecode.
But the way they write Parrot will make it possible to use it as
runtime for other dynamic languages, say, Python or Ruby. At least
I hope it will be so.

In the Parrot package there is a directory called
'little_languages', and there you can find a compiler for a language
called Jako. The compiler is written in Perl, and produces Parrot
bytecode. Jako is extremely primitive, but it seems to be just a proof 
of the concept  of using Parrot for other languages.

Yuri Leikind