Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06

Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06
    All~

    Last week I asked for help identifying the source of a quotation. One
    friendly soul suggested Alan J. Perlis, but could not find an actual
    attribution. It did lead me to find a very applicable (and in my mind
    funny) quote from Perlis, which I will now inflict upon you all, before
    your regularly scheduled summary:

    When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
    say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. -Alan J. Perlis

  Perl 6 Language
   qq:i
    Jim Cromie wondered if there could be a qq:i which sometimes
    interpolates and sometimes doesn't depending on whether the variable had
    been previously defined. There was some discussion which led to the
    conclusion that this was just asking for strange bugs.

    <http://xrl.us/d95h>

   getters and setters
    John Siracusa wanted to know if Perl 6 would allow one to expose a
    member variable to the outside world, but then later intercept
    assignments to it without actually having to switch to using getters and
    setters in all of the code that uses the variable. The answer: yes, yes
    you can.

    <http://xrl.us/d95i>

   « foo >>
    Richard Proctor asked if he could do <<list of words». Juerd pointed out
    that this had already been asked. Which brings us to the fine point, ask
    not Larry for he will tell you both yes and no. Although in this case I
    think he said, probably...

    <http://xrl.us/d95j>

   flipflop operator
    Juerd wondered about the fate of the flipflop. Larry explained that
    while it had lost the election it was still going to work hard for you
    in the Senate. Err, that's not quite right, he said that "It's leaving
    syntactically but not semantically.", but the new syntax has not been
    specified...

    <http://xrl.us/d95k>

   temp $var
    Alexey Trofimenko wanted to know whether " temp " would preserve or
    destroy its old value. Larry is leaning towards the Perl 5 semantics of
    destroying, I think.

    <http://xrl.us/d95m>

   state vs my
    Alexey Trofimenko wondered how much advice about optimizing Ruby also
    applied to perl. Unfortunately, he also misunderstood the " state "
    specifier. The topic then quickly veered into what exactly " state "
    does.

    <http://xrl.us/d95n>

   specifying a hash's key type
    Abhijit Mahabal wanted to know if he could specify a hash's key type.
    The answer is yes, but the exact syntax seems to be worth a discussion.
    Luke Palmer, in his Mathematician's rage, attempted to shoot down any
    usage of Domain and Range, as they really should be Domain and Codomain.

    <http://xrl.us/d95o>

    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_%28mathematics%29> -- wikipedia:
    range Range (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

   container methods
    Ashley Winters wants to have syntax for calling a method on the
    container object rather than the containee. Luke Palmer agreed that this
    was problematic. Larry appears to be in no hurry to add more operators
    for this one, yet.

    <http://xrl.us/d95p>

   slight discrepancy between synopses
    Stéphane Payrard pointed out a small issue in some synopses. Larry
    replied oops.

    <http://xrl.us/d95q>

   arrays, lists, iterators, functions, coroutines, syntax
    Many people suggested many things about the best thing to replace the
    now missing " <" > op. I think Larry is leaning towards adding a undare
    " = " op, which would do cool things. I don't thing anything is final
    yet.

    <http://xrl.us/d95r> -- iterators as functions

    <http://xrl.us/d95s> -- unary " = " talk

   Push/Pop/Pull/Monkey
    Many folk voiced their dislike of shift and unshift. I must agree with
    them, but they also suggested a great many alternatives, including
    pull/put, get/unget, and even getting rid of Push/Pop. I must say that I
    really dislike that last idea, fortunately I am no alone. Currently we
    are waiting for inspiration to strike.

    <http://xrl.us/d95t>

   Topicalization
    It was noticed that " for " might override one's topic at undesired
    times. Larry rumminated about ways to solve this.

    <http://xrl.us/d95u>

   Required Whitespace
    Rod Adams does not like inconsistent whitespace rules. Larry explained
    why the existing rules really were consistent.

    <http://xrl.us/d95v>

  Perl 6 Compilers
    The lack of traffic on p6c has given me another space to abuse. You
    should listen to "Soul Coughing". If you would like to join in the fun
    of abusing p6c, you should submit tests. Nothing is more abusive then
    stress testing ;-)

  Parrot
   Tuning and Monitoring
    Matt S asked how much support for tuning and monitoring. This week I
    exercise the awesome powers of the summarizer and invoke the mighty
    Warnock's Dilemnia.

    <http://xrl.us/d95w>

   imcc.globals--
    Leo removed some imcc globals. Nice work.

    <http://xrl.us/d95x>

   ensure directories exist first
    Andy Dougherty fixed a problem with writing a file in a non-existant
    directory. Leo applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/d95y>

   Namespace-sub invocation
    Last week Luke Palmer wanted to know about calling subs in namespaces. I
    posted Leo's answer, but Dan does not like it. It should be a two step
    process. First fetch, then invoke.

    <http://xrl.us/d95z>

   What is an opcode?
    Thomas Seiler attempted to clear up some perceived confusion about what
    exactly an "opcode" is. No responses...

    <http://xrl.us/d952>

   Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
    Dan voiced a final word in this long lived and lively thread, which
    kicked off several children. Return Continuations (even once promoted)
    restore their registers.

    <http://xrl.us/d953> -- Dan's ruling

    <http://xrl.us/d954> -- the long and lively thread

   keyword arguments
    Sam Ruby wondered how he out to handle keyword arguments to functions.
    Dan admitted that this is complex and outlined the cheat he has been
    contemplating. No one has either commented on or implemented it yet.

    <http://xrl.us/d955>

   What is and isn't up for grabs
    Dan attempted to layout clear rules as to what things he would entertain
    until parrot was functionally complete. Lets hope it sticks.

    <http://xrl.us/d956>

   AST + COMPILE_IMMEDIATE == :-(
    Bernhard Schmalhofer provided a patch to fix some of the :-(. Leo
    applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/d957>

   t/dynclass/pybuiltin.t fails
    Will added a BUG to RT for this.

    <http://xrl.us/d958>

   benchmark tests
    Justin DeVuyst submitted a patch, which fell through the cracks, to make
    the benchmarks also be tests. Fortunately Matt Diephouse rescued it from
    the cracks, and Leo applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/d959>

   too many opcodes
    Leo voiced his opinion that there were too many opcodes and suggested a
    scheme for cutting down on them. Dan corrected him that there were not
    too many. Despite this surface disagreement, however, the spirit of
    Leo's complaint was addressed by Dan. Thus, they can both be happy.

    <http://xrl.us/d96a>

   C89 issues
    There was a little confusion about whether or not variable declarations
    could follow code or not in C89. The answer is not.

    <http://xrl.us/d96b>

   perlhash iter busted
    Sam Ruby noticed that the perlhash iter did not work. So he submitted a
    test case for it. Leo fixed it (and presumably applied the test).

    <http://xrl.us/d96c>

   warnings cleanup
    Garrett Rooney submitted a patch to fix some warnings. Leo applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/d96d>

   Objects, classes, metaclasses, and MMD dispatch
    Dan's attempt to spec out objects from last week led to some discussion
    of MMD. Leo suggested an implementation, and silence reigned.

    <http://xrl.us/d96e>

    <http://xrl.us/d96f> -- more MMD stuff

   more Tcl stuff
    Will added more new stuff to Tcl. Yay, Will!

    <http://xrl.us/d96g>

   internal exception clean up
    James deBoer submitted a patch that cleans up internal exception output.
    Then later he submitted a second better version of the patch. Warnock
    applies.

    <http://xrl.us/d96h>

   dynamic evaluation of PAST
    Bernhard Schmalhofer submitted a patch to add support for PAST dynamic
    evaluation. Leo applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/d96i>

   Inline Caching
    Leo explained inline caches and why 19 out of 20 calls like them. This
    led to his suggesting that some of the opcodes we have which get offsets
    from strings are a premature optimization. This led to some discussion
    about whether or not what he suggested was in the Dan's earlier mandate.

    <http://xrl.us/d96j> -- inline caching

    <http://xrl.us/d96k> -- Leo's suggestion

   help target in make
    Bernhard Schmalhofer (whose name makes me very thankful for copy and
    paste) submitted a patch anding new help target to parrot/docs/Makefile.
    Will appied it.

    <http://xrl.us/d96m>

   Parrot and Strong Types
    Cameron Zemek asked about supporting strongly typed languages on Parrot.
    I got strong typing and static typing confused, fortunately Dan came to
    the rescue with a good explanation. During the course of this thread,
    both Haskell on Parrot and Prolog on Parrot got suggested. I like them
    both, a lot.

    <http://xrl.us/d96n> -- original message

    <http://xrl.us/d96o> -- Dan to the rescue

   move libnci.def out of root dir
    Mitchell ::mumble:: provided a patch to do the above some time ago. Will
    rescued it and asked for a ruling. The ruling is that it should be done.
    I don't know if it WAS done, but it should be.

    <http://xrl.us/d96p>

   Tru64 cc/ld issues
    Jarkko Hietaniemi posted a problem with building on Tru64. Sam Ruby
    committed it.

    <http://xrl.us/d96q>

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• Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06 by Matt Fowles