6 ms·

Operators and Meta-operators in Perl 6

44 points by lelf 13y ago

lelf 13y ago
You can check the whole series: https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/category/table-of-contents/ https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/category/table-of-contents...
tokenrove 13y ago
The meta-operators remind me of adverbs in J
jdlshore 13y ago
Perl 6 is really an interesting language. There are a lot of tools like this that give you the power to say a lot with a very small number of characters. (The flip side, of course, is that you can easily make incomprehensible code—I wouldn't want to read code using any but the most natural user-defined operators—but if you set that aside, Perl 6 has a ton of cool ideas.)
houshuang 13y ago
So what's the situation of Perl 6? Is it production ready? Any demonstration code?
- Solarsail 13y ago
  (Assuming you're asking from a really long distance out) Well, there's two current implementations of it (with Rakudo being actively developed): http://www.perl6.org/compilers/features http://www.perl6.org/compilers/features As for example code, there's some on http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Perl_6 http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Perl_6 in the bottom section. With all that said, is it production ready? I don't know. I've heard people joke that Rakudo crashes every couple hundred lines of code it executes. Though the parrot developers have said that parrot itself is extremely stable, and they've had decently sized programs running for some time on it. That, and Rakudo is currently working on two new backends besides parrot: JVM and a new vm called MoarVM.
  - colomon 13y ago
    While Rakudo certainly crashes more than anyone wants, it doesn't crash anywhere near as often as you suggest. It's a good thing, as it is implemented in itself; you couldn't get to line one of your script without crashing if it crashed every couple of hundred lines. Actually, I don't know when the last time I got a random crash in Rakudo was; it may have been years ago. Getting a crash because you ran out of memory, on the other hand, definitely can happen in bigger programs.
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  No. There have been various test and development implementations over the years but regardless of bugs they're all so slow as to be of questionable utility for any real work. It remains safe to ignore Perl 6 for the time being.
asdfologist 13y ago
I'm genuinely curious - why are programmers still using Perl instead of Python?
- ugexe 13y ago
  Why would I use python if I'm well versed in perl?
- perigrin 13y ago
  Some people actually find Perl fits the way they think better than Python does. They may find the culture a better fit, or they're better able to find existing solutions, or they simply prefer the concept of "There's more than one way to do it" over "There should be one – and preferably only one – obvious way to do it." Finally some are better paid to write Perl than they are to write Python. The reality is any/some/all of the reasons above apply to any combination languages in your question. Might as well ask "Why are programmers still using COBOL rather than Erlang?" Because.
- Ricapar 13y ago
  I work in a group that manages a large amount of Solaris, AIX, and Linux servers, of varying versions. When I'm writing scripts that can be run on any given system, there are very few things I can use that I know will work. One of those is Perl (5.8.8) and the other is Korn Shell (ksh).
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  Why not? I can't think of a serious reason to favor one over the other between any of Ruby, Perl, and Python. A lot of people find Python's scope rules annoying. I've heard Perl has the best unicode support.
- bonemachine 13y ago
  Feeling of being "in the moment" & having maximal individual control (Perl 5) versus long-haul maintainability + potential to be widely collaborative, if perhaps at a slight loss in expressiveness (Python). Perl 6 being an entirely different beast from either of these two languages, of course.
- 13y ago

44 points by lelf 13y ago

lelf 13y ago

You can check the whole series: https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/category/table-of-contents/ https://perl6advent.wordpress.com/category/table-of-contents...

tokenrove 13y ago

The meta-operators remind me of adverbs in J

jdlshore 13y ago

Perl 6 is really an interesting language. There are a lot of tools like this that give you the power to say a lot with a very small number of characters. (The flip side, of course, is that you can easily make incomprehensible code—I wouldn't want to read code using any but the most natural user-defined operators—but if you set that aside, Perl 6 has a ton of cool ideas.)

houshuang 13y ago

So what's the situation of Perl 6? Is it production ready? Any demonstration code?

Solarsail 13y ago
(Assuming you're asking from a really long distance out) Well, there's two current implementations of it (with Rakudo being actively developed): http://www.perl6.org/compilers/features http://www.perl6.org/compilers/features As for example code, there's some on http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Perl_6 http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Perl_6 in the bottom section. With all that said, is it production ready? I don't know. I've heard people joke that Rakudo crashes every couple hundred lines of code it executes. Though the parrot developers have said that parrot itself is extremely stable, and they've had decently sized programs running for some time on it. That, and Rakudo is currently working on two new backends besides parrot: JVM and a new vm called MoarVM.
- colomon 13y ago
  While Rakudo certainly crashes more than anyone wants, it doesn't crash anywhere near as often as you suggest. It's a good thing, as it is implemented in itself; you couldn't get to line one of your script without crashing if it crashed every couple of hundred lines. Actually, I don't know when the last time I got a random crash in Rakudo was; it may have been years ago. Getting a crash because you ran out of memory, on the other hand, definitely can happen in bigger programs.
a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
No. There have been various test and development implementations over the years but regardless of bugs they're all so slow as to be of questionable utility for any real work. It remains safe to ignore Perl 6 for the time being.

asdfologist 13y ago

I'm genuinely curious - why are programmers still using Perl instead of Python?

ugexe 13y ago
Why would I use python if I'm well versed in perl?
perigrin 13y ago
Some people actually find Perl fits the way they think better than Python does. They may find the culture a better fit, or they're better able to find existing solutions, or they simply prefer the concept of "There's more than one way to do it" over "There should be one – and preferably only one – obvious way to do it." Finally some are better paid to write Perl than they are to write Python. The reality is any/some/all of the reasons above apply to any combination languages in your question. Might as well ask "Why are programmers still using COBOL rather than Erlang?" Because.
Ricapar 13y ago
I work in a group that manages a large amount of Solaris, AIX, and Linux servers, of varying versions. When I'm writing scripts that can be run on any given system, there are very few things I can use that I know will work. One of those is Perl (5.8.8) and the other is Korn Shell (ksh).
a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
Why not? I can't think of a serious reason to favor one over the other between any of Ruby, Perl, and Python. A lot of people find Python's scope rules annoying. I've heard Perl has the best unicode support.
bonemachine 13y ago
Feeling of being "in the moment" & having maximal individual control (Perl 5) versus long-haul maintainability + potential to be widely collaborative, if perhaps at a slight loss in expressiveness (Python). Perl 6 being an entirely different beast from either of these two languages, of course.
13y ago