Latest Evil Idea

cwest on 2001-06-07T17:26:37

Get this: use VBScript;

That's right, a VBScript Compiler in Perl. With Parse::RecDescent, parsing and processing a language like VBScript should be easy, in comparison to other languages.

There are obvious benifits to this, at least:

• GPL and AL, cross platform VBScript/ASP server.
• VBScript to Perl conversion.
• With Apache/mod_perl you don't have to pay the Microsoft Tax if you're familiar with VBScript but want to ease your way out.

In any case, there are a few problems, but I have solutions. An extensible design would allow for people who want to port existing COM object to Perl, keeping the same interface they have for VBScript. Things like CDONTS, the standard mailer, would be trivial. And anyone could supply libraries to mimic the behavoir of the original COM objects. The ASP objects could also be re-writen for folks who want to set up Apache to run an ASP with VBScript environment.

This is all brought about by the fact that I'm being somewhat forced to write VBScript for a project at work and, well, the language sucks. The cross platform and vbs2perl converter are what lure me in. At least I coult fake myself into believing I'm using a cool language. :-)

Closing thoughts:

perl -MO=Deparse default.asp

vbs2perl default.asp | tee default.cgi

perl -MVBScript -e 'Dim who
who = "Casey"
Response.Write("Hello, " _
& who)'

SetHandler perl-script
AddHandler VBScript