What is the limitation of PerlNet?

Question

Hi everyone,

I've used PerlNet for a data extraction project. Perl is a powerful language for extracting data and text manipulation with a huge CPAN module. However, my program need some kind of UI, thread... which I decided to use .NET C#. With Perl Dev Kit, we have an option to wrap an Perl module to a .NET DLL and use this DLL directly from C#.

Everything was ok but I have one question about PerlNet architecture. As far as I know, PerlNet was a research project between ActiveState and Microsoft for running Perl code in .NET but I did not find any document for this.

What is limitation of PerlNet? How was PerlNet constructed?

Thanks, Minh.

Answer 1

There's a book "Programming Perl in the .NET Environment" that may help you.

ActiveState doesn't seem to have any publicly accessible documentation online that gives any kind of details about PerlNET. But I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some doc included with the Perl Dev Kit, even though it sounds like they aren't providing any support for it anymore.

You may find answers to your questions on the [email protected] mailing list or in its archives.

Answer 2

While I can't really say more about the way PerlNet is built than is readily available, I will say that from my experience, it is fairly clunky and not very reliable.

If it's a "real" project, i.e. money is involved, I would steer away from using PerlNet.

Specifically, it seemed to trash shared memory in .NET, and would cause crashes erratically.

That said, I haven't used PerlNet for some time so it could be a much better product now.