This directory contains the outcome of the (failed) attempt to
implement - within five weeks - enough of Python, to run the Pie-thon
benchmark for OSCON:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-December/040977.html

The bytecode translator pie-thon.pl was just intended as a quick hack,
to see, what parts of parrot are missing and to get the project
running. The implementation is a mess and partially wrong, OTOH it's
enough to get four and half tests running. F<t/pie/b*.t> shows
implemented features.

IMHO its not a good idea to translate a language at the bytecode
level: too much information is hidden in the linearized opcode stream,
the opcodes are already specialized for the target VM. The
translator has more or less to guess, what's really intended.

A real implementation of a compiler should use the AST to produce
Parrot bytecode.

leo
