From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2003-01-18T09:30:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Automating Perl -> Ruby translation?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Carrera" <dcarrera@math.umd.edu>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: Automating Perl -> Ruby translation?


> Seriously, I'm sure that this is possible, but I'm not sure it's worth
> it.  It might be better to translate CPAN to Ruby.  Unfortunatelly, nearly
> all of CPAN is written with XS, which is a Perl-only tool.  I don't know
> how hard it'd be to translate XS to SWIG, but my experience is that XS is
> quite complicated.

Well, I'd settle for a very crude tool.

I once translated a small Perl program
(200 lines or so) with the help of some
others.

You'd be surprised how much progress I
made just by saying :%s/my $//g in vi.

I'm joking less than you think. Eight or
nine such commands, and the Perl was
starting to look a lot like Ruby.

As for XS: I don't know what it is.

Anyway, it's just a thought.

I do have two or three things I want
to translate. If I had a tool, I would
use it, and others might also.

Hal