SPUG: Self-generating code: yea or nay? (was: Dijsktra is Dead)

[dancerboy]

It sounds like all of the examples of "good" uses of self-generating 
code are essentially *compilers* of some sort or other.  Obviously a 
compiler is going to generate code:  that's what a compiler does. 
That one may write a compiler *in* Perl that compiles *to* Perl may 
seem a little twisted and confusing, but really it's no more twisted 
than, say, all those C++ compilers out there which were mostly 
written in C++.

Are there any examples of good uses of self-generating code *other* 
than in compilers or interpreters?

-jason


At 1:15 PM -0700 8/12/02, Richard Anderson wrote:
>Hi Colin.  Your example of Hook::LexWrap, Marc M. Adkins example and
>Geoffrey & Kristin Grosenbach's example of generating Java
>database-layer code are reasonable counter-examples, and and illustrate how
>easy Perl makes to do things that would be difficult in other languages.  I
>think I'll tone down the tutorial's condemnation of self-generating code.
>However, Colin's comment about
>>  ...see Lex::HookWrap. This code may take some studying (or a lecture from
>Damian ;-) to understand. Lex::HookWrap
>>  autogenerates a class to unhook the hooks, when a scope is left (causing
>>  an object to go out of scope, and its DESTROY method to be called).
>>  What's the alternative to autogenerated code here? ;-) It's doable, but
>>  with a DESTROY method that is much thicker and less intuitive.
>
>is indicative that self-generating code can be kind of dodgy.
>
>Cheers,
>Richard
>richard at richard-anderson.org
>www.richard-anderson.org
>www.raycosoft.com
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Colin Meyer" <cmeyer at helvella.org>
>To: "Richard Anderson" <richard at richard-anderson.org>
>Cc: "spug" <spug-list at pm.org>
>Sent: Friday, August 09, 2002 10:12 AM
>Subject: Re: SPUG: Self-generating code: yea or nay? (was: Dijsktra is Dead)
>
>
>>  On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 10:25:35PM -0700, Richard Anderson wrote:
>>  > Speaking of unstructured coding, I recently updated the online
>>  > grep/map/sort tutorial and added the example below. This got me
>>  > thinking: are there any cases where self-generating code is "better"
>>  > (in some sense) than the alternatives? I feel the answer is no - can
>  > > anyone provide a counter-example?

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