Life + Perl = Golly

[Andrew Trevorrow]

Golly is an open source, cross-platform Life app which uses
Gosper's hashlife algorithm to allow the exploration of patterns
at unprecedented scales and speeds. More details are available
at Golly's web site:

http://golly.sourceforge.net/

Golly has been using Python as its scripting language, but the
following 1.3 beta versions now support Perl as well:

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-win.zip (Windows 2K+)
ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-gtk.tar.gz (Linux i386)
ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-mac.zip (Mac OS 10.4.x)
ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-mac1039.zip (Mac OS 10.3.9)

See Help > Perl Scripting for all the details.

A number of example .pl scripts are included in Scripts/Perl/.
I don't have a lot of experience with Perl so it would be nice
if a Perl expert could run their eye over my code and check
for any bloopers or inefficiencies. Other Perl scripts would
be most welcome.

Golly uses an embedded Perl interpreter to run .pl scripts
and should work happily with any Perl 5.8.x installation.
Please let me know if you have any problems.

Andrew

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Golly is an open source, cross-platform Life app
which uses Gosper's hashlife algorithm to allow
the exploration of patterns at unprecedented
scales and speeds. More details are available at
Golly's web site:

Golly has been using Python as its scripting
language, but the following 1.3 beta versions now
support Perl as well:

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-win.zip (Windows 2K+)

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-gtk.tar.gz (Linux i386)

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-mac.zip (Mac OS 10.4.x)

ftp://ftp.trevorrow.com/beta/golly-1.3-mac1039.zip (Mac OS 10.3.9)

See Help > Perl Scripting for all the details.

A number of example .pl scripts are included in
Scripts/Perl/. I don't have a lot of experience
with Perl so it would be nice if a Perl expert
could run their eye over my code and check for any
bloopers or inefficiencies. Other Perl scripts
would be most welcome.

Golly uses an embedded Perl interpreter to run .pl
scripts and should work happily with any Perl
5.8.x installation. Please let me know if you
have any problems.

Thanks for that, Andrew. I just downloaded it. Now,
without looking to see if this is there yet, one
thing I wanted in the previous release was more
complex selection mechanisms, so that I could
select, say, a box and then select out the middle,
or otherwise decorate the Golly universe with a lot
of disconnected selected areas, before turning on
"random fill" and going away for the many minutes
such a fill typically would require. A look at the
GIMP selection capabilities will give you an idea
what a rich set of such tools could look like.

I didn't understand from your writeup: if Golly has
a "built in" Perl interpreter, why is some external
Perl environment needed?

Quantum valeat.

xanthian.

By the way, Golly has some utility as a source of
input for abstract art, perhaps not its design use.

 

[Andrew Trevorrow]

Thanks for that, Andrew. I just downloaded it. Now,
without looking to see if this is there yet, one
thing I wanted in the previous release was more
complex selection mechanisms, so that I could
select, say, a box and then select out the middle,
or otherwise decorate the Golly universe with a lot
of disconnected selected areas...

It's in our TODO file so it should happen one day.

I didn't understand from your writeup: if Golly has
a "built in" Perl interpreter, why is some external
Perl environment needed?

Yeh, the term "embedded interpreter" is a bit misleading.
It's the terminology used in "perldoc perlembed" so I just
assumed it would be familiar to Perl users. On Windows
the Perl library -- which implements the interpreter -- is
loaded dynamically (the first time you run a .pl script).
On the Mac and Linux the Perl library is loaded at start
up time. The reasons for the difference are somewhat messy
but hopefully it just works for most people.

Andrew