Re: htags improvements.

[Shigio Yamaguchi]

Hi,
> I can see not changing htags because you view it as a dead-end written
> in perl. However, perl4 is a dead language. As you pointed out, it was
> last used in freebsd in 1998 - 5 years ago. This is practically
> "forever" in terms of perl, or any open-source language. I program perl
> professionally and have never used perl4 syntax.

I understand. I know that the author of perl is calling the replacement
of older perl with a new one, and in fact, I also use perl5 syntax in
other program.

But I think that perl4 is the one like the shell of V7 UNIX in 1978.
Almost people are still writing shell script using just the function
in V7 shell because they know that they are safe as long as they are
using just V7 shell function.

Various perls are different from each other.
For example, your patch works well with perl-5.6.1 but it doesn't work
well with perl-5.005_03. (I don't know the reason. It may be a bug.)

% perl --version

This is perl, version 5.005_03 built for i386-freebsd

Copyright 1987-1999, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5.0 source kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using `man perl' or `perldoc perl'.  If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.

% htags -v
...
 [1363/1365] adding yytext_ptr
 [1364/1365] adding yyunput
 [1365/1365] adding yywrap
Total 1365 functions.
[Sat Jan 24 09:28:59 JST 2004] (6) making file index ...
 [1] adding config.h
 [2] adding gctags/C.c
Can't use an undefined value as a symbol reference at /usr/local/bin/htags line 
1949, <FIND> chunk 2.
% _ 

> I will keep my patch and apply it when I upgrade global and htags. I am
> also going to work on htags for further speed improvements, because I
> see many areas in which it can be sped up. Perhaps this will change your
> mind about moving to C - has anyone started that project yet?

Would you please do it using perl4 facilities?
Otherwise, could you cooperate in rewriting using C language?

Both gtags(1) and global(1) were also written in perl in a early version.
I rewrited them in C later. I also started rewriting of htags(1) for about
a half a year but there is not so much progress...
--
Shigio Yamaguchi <address@hidden> - Tama Communications Corporation
PGP fingerprint: D1CB 0B89 B346 4AB6 5663  C4B6 3CA5 BBB3 57BE DDA3