Chip submitted a minor performance patch to Method::Signatures today. That drove me to push out a new release making it friendly to 5.12 and adding func() for non methods!
func hello(:$greeting = "Hello", :$place = "World") {
print "$greeting, $place!\n";
}
hello( place => "Earth" );
For those who don't know, one of the neato features of Method::Signatures is that it can alias references to make working with references less of a trial:
func popn(\@array, $howmany) {
return splice @array, -$howmany;
}
my @stuff = (1,2,3,4,5);
my @last_three = popn(\@stuff, 3); # 3,4,5
print @last_three;
It does this with the amazing Data::Alias module. Unfortunately, 5.12 broke its black magic and its non-trivial to fix. Method::Signatures now makes Devel::Alias an optional dependency. If its available, it'll use it. Otherwise, no aliasing for you.
But that's ok, because perl5i makes working with references enjoyable. And while perl5i is adding its own simple signatures, they're forward compatible with Method::Signatures! They play together, so if you want perl5i and the full power of Method::Signatures you can have them.
use perl5i::2;
use Method::Signatures;
func echo($message is ro) {
say $message;
}
Just make sure you load MS after perl5i. The last one loaded wins.
Finally, I was comparing Method::Signatures with MooseX::Method::Signatures and made a disturbing discovery. I always new MooseX::Method::Signatures would have a performance penalty, it does more checks than Method::Signatures, I just didn't realize how bad it was.
Here's comparing an empty signature: method foo() {}.
Rate MMS MS Std
MMS 3207/s -- -100% -100%
MS 1498875/s 46644% -- -1%
Std 1508351/s 46940% 1% --
method foo($arg!) { return $arg + 1 } That's a required positional argument.
Rate MMS MS Std
MMS 2928/s -- -100% -100%
MS 983127/s 33481% -- -2%
Std 1005357/s 34240% 2% --