Summary updates
Starting with this update, Ann Barcomb will be writing the Perl 6 summaries. Her plan is to release new issues on Sundays, initially dealing with the backlog at a rate of one month per week, and eventually returning to posting a summary of the previous week on a weekly basis.
The proposed schedule is:
Compiler (perl6-compiler)
Making Pugs aware of Parrot
Peter Schwenn requested a concrete example settings to make Pugs aware of Parrot. Beau Cox replied with step-by-step instructions.
Difficulty installing Pugs on Cygwin
Syed Uzair Aqeel reported a Cygwin problem with finding package plugins when creating a makefile. Audrey made a suggestion.
Installation failure of Pugs revisions 9188 and 9204
Beau Cox reported that the 9188 revision of Pugs failed to pass smoke tests and install, and that the problem persisted with Pugs 9204 even after a reinstall of ghc and Haskell. Beau wrote a makefile patch, which also worked for chromatic, who had experienced the same problem.
Internals (parrot-porters)
Ed.: It turns out that the summaries in this section were mistakenly from 2003. This space will be filled with corrected summaries as they become available. Sorrie!
Language (perl6-language)
Typo Alert: Synopsis 5
Amos Robinson found a typo and Luke Palmer promptly corrected it.
Implementation of :w in regexes and other regex questions
David Romano asked some questions on extending the Rules domain specific language, the semantics of whitespace skipping, and negated matching semantics. Luke Palmer replied and explained that the extensions were not yet specified, and recommend possible solutions to the other two questions. Discussion ensued.
Overloading the variable declaration process
Darren Duncan wondered if he could get default values in variables instead of undef, in order to avoid calling the constructor, by simply annotating the type of the variable. Audrey Tang explained that a similar construct is available. This was followed by a discussion on the subject of class prototypes as default values for typed variables, as well as philosophical issues.
Instance attributes collision
Yiyi Hu asked what happens when different sigil attributes with the same name are declared in a single class. Various participants debated the merits of errors versus warnings.
CODE {...} mentioning variables without interpolation
Brad Bowman asked about the semantics of quasiquoting and variable interpolation for Perl 6's Macro language.
Larry Wall explained the semantics of AST binding,
the caller's scope,
interpolating ASTs into the macro,
and the COMPILING:: variable prefix.
This was followed by a comment on Brad's signature about intelligence and good sense.
Selective String Interpolation
Brad Bowman wanted to know if string interpolation and escaping could be optimized for creating strings of Perl code that selectively interpolate. Ideally he would be able to declare which variables are interpolated. He also mentioned closure interpolation and how it does not work well when quoting strings of code. Many people provided ideas, covering Lisp and Ruby, backslashes, and custom quote operators.
Some newbie questions about Synopsis 5
H. Stelling asked about Rule capture numbering, aliasing semantics, and nested subpattern details. Patrick R. Michaud clarified and the capture numbering scheme was discussed.
Named Subroutine return values
Joe Gottman wanted to know if subroutine declarations without an explicit declaration type (my,
our) can be annotated with a return value type.
Damian Conway replied that the returns trait can used regardless of the declaration syntax.
Luke Palmer and Larry Wall discussed the exact semantics of our Type sub foo,
--> and returns style return type declarations.
S02: Reserved namespace ops
TSa asked what reservations the design team had about the various uses of the reserved syntax for type subscripting.
Larry Wall reserved his right to silence,
adding that he thought that is reserved means "we don't have the foggiest idea what we'll do with this,
but we have a suspicion that if we let people use this particular thing right now,
we'll regret it someday." The official status of the various items in the notes/ directory was clarified -- they are considered to be unofficial.
Synopsis 29 patch
Larry Wall posted a patch for Synopsis 29, recognizing it as official. Ruud H.G. van Tol followed up with questions about a round function, and pi/atan/atan2.
Synopsis 29 and Complex numbers
Jonathan Lang noted that Synopsis 29 deals with complex numbers when describing the sqrt function, but omitted others. He proceeded to list the functions which require special handling of complex numbers. Several people commented.
Acknowledgments
chromatic recruited me at YAPC::NA 2006, and Jesse Vincent proposed this task. Audrey Tang helped me to get started and reviewed this summary, and Yuval Kogman assisted with the Language section.
If you appreciate Perl, consider contributing to the Perl Foundation to help support the development of Perl.
http://donate.perlfoundation.org/
Comments on the summary can be sent to kudra@domaintje.com.
See also
http://blog.perlfoundation.org/
