Skip to Main Content
Programming Perl, 3rd Edition
book

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

by Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, Jon Orwant
July 2000
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
1104 pages
35h 1m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

External Subroutines (XS)

XS code can usually be made to work with any platform, but libraries and header files might not be readily available, or the XS code itself might be platform specific. If the libraries and headers are portable, then it's a reasonable guess that the XS code can be made portable as well.

A different type of portability issue arises when writing XS code: the availability of a C compiler on the end user's platform. C brings with it its own portability issues, and writing XS code will expose you to some of those. Writing in pure Perl is an easier way to achieve portability because Perl's configuration process goes through extreme agonies to hide C's portability blemishes from you.[2]

[2] Some people on the margins of society run Perl's Configure script as a cheap form of entertainment. People have even been known to stage "Configure races", between competing systems and wager large sums on them. This practice is now outlawed in most of the civilized world.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Mastering Perl, 2nd Edition

Mastering Perl, 2nd Edition

brian d foy
Programming the Perl DBI

Programming the Perl DBI

Tim Bunce, Alligator Descartes
Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596000278Supplemental ContentErrata