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Subject: Re: [RFC] Adding Python as a possible language and it's usage
To: Jeff Law <law@redhat.com>, Segher Boessenkool <segher@kernel.crashing.org>, Richard Biener <richard.guenther@gmail.com>
Cc: GCC Development <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>
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From: =?UTF-8?Q?Martin_Li=c5=a1ka?= <mliska@suse.cz>
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Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2018 10:05:00 -0000
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On 07/19/2018 04:47 PM, Jeff Law wrote:
> On 07/18/2018 03:28 PM, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 11:51:36AM +0200, Richard Biener wrote:
>>> We already conditionally require Perl for building for some targets so I wonder
>>> if using perl would be better ...
>>
>> At least perl is GPL (Python is not).
>>
>>
>> What would the advantage of using Python be?  I haven't heard any yet.
>> Awk may be a bit clunky but at least it is easily readable for anyone.
> I've found python *far* easier to read than awk.  And you can actually
> run a debugger on your python code to see what it's doing.
> Jeff
> 

Yes, using Python is mainly because of object-oriented programming paradigm.
It's handy to have encapsulation of functionality in methods, one can do
unit-testing of parts of the script. Currently AWK scripts are mix of input/output
transformation and various emission of printf('#error..') sanity checks.
In general the script is not easily readable and contains multiple global arrays
that simulate encapsulation in classes.

Martin