Zoidberg - a modular perl shell, version 0.41
===============================================

** Laziness, Impatience, Hubris ! **

 http://zoidberg.sourceforge.net
 
  Zoidberg provides a modular Perl shell written, configured, and operated 
  entirely in Perl. It aspires to be a fully operational login shell with all 
  the features one normally expects. But it also gives direct access to Perl 
  objects and data structures from the command line, and allows you to run Perl 
  code within the scope of your commandline.

 Features include:
    - runs perl code from shell prompt (duh!)
    - sh like evaluation of system executables
    - extendible and configable syntax
    - comes with a SQL syntax plugin (DBI) ( temporarily broken )
    - perl codable config
    - runtime (re-)loadable modules
    - tab expansion through your perl data structure and objects
    - event based plugin engine
    - support for pipelines
    - support for job control
    - advanced commandline editor
    - vi-style escape modus for commandline editing

 planned:
    - screen like functionality
    - glue for other (non-perl) languages

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

  Since we are still in alpha/development fase there will be a lot of bugs.

  Visit the web page to submit bug reports.

  The Zoidberg shell is being developed for GNU/Linux. It will be tested for
  other UNIX variants - but we garuantee nothing. It is not (yet) (really)
  POSIX compliant.

  Unlike all sh clones Zoidberg is _not_ a command language interpreter, it 
  provides a minimal syntax layer but leaves the real parsing to real 
  interpreters like perl. Zoidberg is a interface to language interpreters.
  Allthough in some cases native interpreters could be added as an
  compatibility layer.

  Since Zoidberg completely relies on perl, it has both the advantages and
  disadvantages of this language, one of the last kind for example is having a
  rather large footprint. We wouldn't like zoidberg to get really slow,
  but speed isn't our first priority - hardware is cheap. Make sure you have
  enough swap.

AUTHORS

  Jaap Karssenberg || Pardus [Larus] <pardus@cpan.org>
  R.L. Zwart, <rlzwart@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

  Copyright (c) 2002 Jaap G Karssenberg. All rights reserved.
  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the same terms as Perl.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
  the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for
  more details.

  http://www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html
  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html