perlmeditation
educated_foo
Do you ever lay awake at night, wondering what it would be like to
program in Perl 6? Has your "_" key (Our New Operator of
Concatenation) been feeling unloved? Do you want to be an "opinion
leader" in the adoption of a new programming language? If you
answered "yes" to one or more of the above questions, you may be just
the kind of person we're looking for. While it is still a long ways
from being useful for real programming tasks, Parrot's prototype Perl
6 compiler now supports a decent enough subset of the language that
it's now possible to write interesting, non-trivial programs. We need
both testers and users, and this is where you come in.
<READMORE>
<p>Currently supported:
<ul>
<li>Most control structures (if, while, for, foreach, etc).
<li>Hyper-operators.
<li>Some of the new semantics of <code>=~</code>, the "smart match"
operator.
<li>Basic patterns (in progress).
<li>named and anonymous subroutines.
<li>etc.
</ul>
<p>You <b>will</b> find compiler bugs. In some cases, we'll do our
best to fix them; in others, we'll just document their existence --
this is a prototype, and is not intended to be complete. However, the
features it <b>does</b> implement should be consistent with the
Apocalypses and Exegeses. If you are feeling ambitious, you might
even want to chase the bug into the compiler, which is written in Perl
5. While documentation is sparse, there should be enough to get you
started in <code>languages/perl6/overview.pod</code>, and if there is
not -- that's a bug, too. Let us know what is unclear and we'll do
our best to clarify.
<p>You <b>may</b> find Parrot bugs. Parrot is, after all, alpha
software. If you are feeling adventurous, you may wish to look into
the virtual machine, which is written in C.
<p>You may also find ambiguities, surprises, or irritations in the
language itself, which might not have surfaced from reading Damian's
and Larry's code. While there's a lot of history behind Perl 6 (see
the mailing list archives at <a href="http://archive.develooper.com/">
http://archive.develooper.com/</a>), the language has had relatively
few actual users. Finally, you may find idioms for common tasks in
Perl 6 which can be shared with potential Perl 6 speakers. For
example, this in Perl 5:
<code>
print map { "$_\n" } @xs;
</code>
may be written more naturally in Perl 6 as
<code>
print @xs ^_ "\n";
</code>
<p>If this sounds interesting to you, we'd love to have you aboard.
The latest release (0.0.8.1) is available on <a
href="http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/J/JG/JGOFF/parrot-0.0.8.1.tgz">CPAN</a>.
The latest code is available via anonymous CVS at
<code>:pserver:anonymous@cvs.perl.org:/cvs/public</code> in the
<code>parrot</code> directory. Once you have the source, the compiler
prototype can be found in <code>languages/perl6</code>.
<p>/s
<p>Contacts:
<ul>
<li>Parrot bugs: <address>bugs-parrot at bugs6 dot perl dot org</address>
<li>Language Discussion: <address>perl6-language at perl dot
org</address>
<li>Parrot Discussion: <address> perl6-internals at perl dot
org</address>
<li>Compiler bugs and/or development: <address> seano at cpan dot
org </address>
</ul>
<p>More information:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.parrotcode.org/">http://www.parrotcode.org</a>
<li><a
href="http://dev.perl.org/perl6/">http://dev.perl.org/perl6/</a>
<li>IRC: irc.rhizomatic.net/#parrot
</ul>