Re: VMS vs Win32 and Compat.pm is EOL

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Eric Wilhelm
<[email protected]> wrote:
>  1.  The failing tests on win32 have to do with _quote_args().
>
>  2.  _quote_args() is only ever used internally by:
>
>    a.  _backticks() and oneliner() -- neither of which actually exist

Say what?  I see them in Base.pm.

>
>    b.  by do_system() on VMS -- please enlighten me.
>
>  3.  I do not see a good reason why anything should ever be quoted,
>      backticked, or split_like_shell.

splitting_like_shell: because there are various places where someone -
who may be Config.pm - has specified an important snippet of a system
command as a string, not as an array.  For example, my
$Config{ccflags} has the following value:

  '-g -pipe -fno-common -DPERL_DARWIN -no-cpp-precomp
-fno-strict-aliasing -Wdeclaration-after-statement
-I/usr/local/include'

My $Config{malloc_cflags} is even worse, it has the value:

  'ccflags="-DUSE_PERL_SBRK -DPERL_SBRK_VIA_MALLOC $ccflags"'

It would be nice to make all these strings go away, but that's even
harder than splitting them.


For the other two, it's been a my intention to limit their use as much
as possible.  Every time I backtick or do quoting, a little piece of
me dies.

>
> Re: 2b.  VMS has no system($command, @and_args) ?

I have no idea.  The VMS people keep sending patches, and as long as
they don't touch the rest of the code [much], I apply them.  I don't
really want to learn about VMS.

> Re: 2a.  oneliner() returns a string to run 'perl -e ...' and only gets
> used in the Compat.pm code where...  It gets pasted into the Makefile.

Yeah, if we could rip the Compat.pm stuff out into another
distribution I would be happy.  Let's remember to be gentle to users
who'll expect that if M::B is installed they have Compat
functionality, though.

 -Ken