[Python-Dev] Free threading (and tcl upvar) (original) (raw)

Ken Manheimer klm@zope.com
Thu, 9 Aug 2001 11:15:03 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Tim Peters wrote:

2. Tcl's more robust (than Python's) x-platform exec implementation (similar to Python os.system(), but with a platform-independent notation for pipes and redirection and envar substitution, and returning the exit status correctly even under command.com-based Windows flavors (where os.system() always returns 0)). I looked at this once -- there are several thousand lines of exec support code in Tcl (which shouldn't be surprising, since they're basically supplying one of the hardest parts of a x-platform shell!).

I recall you reporting that. It would be nice to have cross-platform pipes and exec, though i understand maintaining such non-portable code is too high a price to pay. I bet we went over this then, but i can't help but wonder whether an approach like tkinter, stealing the tcl code, would be a manageable approach? Mostly idle speculation, since i wouldn't have the time nor expertise to implement such a thing myself.

3. Variants of Tcl's uplevel, i.e. gimmicks for fiddling locals "up the stack". Maybe it's not called exactly "uplevel" in Tcl, but it's plain sick however it's spelled .

I think it's 'upvar'. I probably remember because it had something to do with my python roots. Pardon me while i geeze a bit...

Back at nist i was looking for a scripting language for systems support type stuff, bounced off perl, and tried using tcl for a trial task, to see if i could use it. I made a dns nested-domain traverser, so i could automate a table-driven network service for all of nist's subdomains (producing an exports file for a nist-wide NFS service).

I did it, but was not a happy camper - it was seriously painful to have to manage recursion by, essentially, managing the stack with upvar, &c.
Mike mclay happened to drop by around then, and i whined to him about my tcl abomination um script - and he said, "have you looked at python?" I did, and, to make a long story short, lived happily ever after.-)

'upvar' is sick.

Thanks, mike.

Ken klm@zope.com

[In a usenet news group, long long ago:]

[Someone]:

>Programming language preferences are largely a matter of taste, an area >where reasonable people will forever disagree. I would like to think >that such disagreements could be predicated upon an understanding that >most of the issues involved are not decidable by logical proofs. This is the 101 philosophy-student phenomena: "I can't explain it with words". - marcus@ee.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels)