Suggestion for PM Re: Exegesis 2 - Perl 6

[Masem]

While I'm looking forward to some of the features that 6 will make available to us without moving too far away from core perl functionality, the last statement on that page worries me alot (I know, he meant it in tongue-in-cheek:)

Ninety-eight percent backward compatibility even without an automatic p52p6 translator ... pretty slick!

While 98% might be a good number to brag about, we all know that it only takes one character out of thousands to cause an error (say, a mispelled variable name). Sure, from Larry's docs, it says that you'll need a special line near the top of any perl 6 or 5 program to trigger the appropriate action so that perl5 code will not try to be directly run under perl 6 without problems. But unless we see that special line of the code, it can be hard to tell what an inexperienced PM user will mean, whethey they meant %hash->{key} as a typo or a perl6-ism. When perl 6 is no longer just going to be out RSN but is actually avaialable and people developing for it, we here at PM are going to have a dickens of a time trying to help support it particularly if the user does not say up front which they are using.

So a possible suggestion (does not need to be added now), is for any section on PM where code is typically posted (SOPW, Q&A, Code, Craft, etc), add a radio group of buttons which reads "Perl 5", "Perl 6", and "Perl 5 and 6", and require the user to specify this before posting. The posted node can then put this info near the top or some other means to allow the reader to know what version of perl they're working with. This might even extend well into the Super Search features so that help only for perl 6 can be gotten or the like.

Update It might also be good to add "Perl 4 or lower" to that list, since as another monk has told me, that is still supported at some places and discussed here.

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Dr. Michael K. Neylon - [e-mail] || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

[John M. Dlugosz]

I noticed something similar on a page that compared Perl 5 and Perl 6 code. The surrounding text indicated which block was which, as well as pseudocode and expo-only stuff. I thought it could be color coded.

How about adding an optional property to the CODE tag? E.g. <CODE class=perl6> will show some styleistic change such as color or margin stripe. The actual meaning can be per-user, expanded in a style sheet.

In any case, I think a global 5/6 switch is not enough, since code can be mixed in one node.

—John