Re: Python for MS-DOS?

Guido van Rossum (guido@cwi.nl)
Wed, 11 Dec 91 23:46:48 +0100

>I will probably try porting python to MS-DOS ( unless someone else
>does it first - I won't try to predict when I will be able to get
>around to it. )

Thanks, I haven't found any other volunteers except a guy in South
Africa who seems to have no porting experience at all.

>Any offhand guesses as to the memory requirements ?
>Will it be usable in >640K or will I need a memory extender ?

On the Mac the interpreter is about 200 kBytes and runs in 1 Meg,
although it runs out of memory parsing long modules such as testall.py
(which really should be split anyway). This includes the STDWIN
module which doesn't apply on the PC. I expect it will be at least
somewhat functional on the PC in 640 k. I don't know anything about
memory expanders; they will have to be integrated with malloc (so the
program can allocate expanded memory using malloc) or you'd be in deep
trouble using one.

>I have ported a few things to DOS, but I'm not that adept in
>portability requirements - I would think the goal for dos would
>be to have an executable that could be shipped instead of the
>sources.

That's my idea as well.

>( And some of the dos memory extenders will not allow
>this without royalty agreements ! )

That would be out of the question :-(

--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@cwi.nl>
"It's funny, isn't it? How your best friend can just blow up like that?
I mean, you wouldn't think it was medically possible, would you?"