This Week in Perl 6, August 17-23, 2005
by Matt Fowles
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Pages: 1, 2
PMC for Reference Counting
Nicholas Clark posted a relatively full analysis of how to generalize the DOD's registration system for further reuse. He also asked for ideas about names. I think the whole thing looks good and that "AddrRegistry" is a good name. Perhaps that has too many vowels--"AddrRgstry" and sometimes "AddrRgstr" might work.
Perl 6 Language
Type Inferencing in Perl 5
Autrijus (while discussing type inference in Perl 6) recalled that there was a Google Summer of Code project on type inferencing in Perl 5. Gary Jackson, the summer coder, provide a more detailed description of his work.
+"hello"
Daniel Brockman wondered if +"hello" still evaluated to a NaN.
Larry reasoned that it might, and then went on to speculate about the what the
extra exception information would do when a Num gets jammed into a num.
Generic Classes
Autrijus found the frequent use of generic classes confusing, as he thought that only roles were type parameterizable. Larry explained that roles could be promoted to classes pretty easily, but that the distinction between them was still useful and meaningful.
GC API
David Formosa posted a revised GC API after the previous discussion. More discussion ensued.
Name Conflicts
Yiyi Hu wondered what would happen if he declared two lexicals with different declarators. Larry answered that it would be a compile-time error.
Parsing Numbers
Ingo Blechschmidt posted a list of different possible ways to write numbers, asking which were valid and which not. Many weighed in, including Larry.
Bindings and Routine Signatures
Luke Palmer noticed that implementing binding as anonymous subroutines and then binding existing variables created delimited continuations, and binding globals, full continuations. While interesting, Warnock applies.
Visibilty
of $?SELF and $?CLASS
Stevan Little wondered what scopes will have $?SELF and
$?CLASS available to them. Larry provided answers.
"Time to Take Her Home Her Dizzy Head is Conscience-Laden"
Amusingly enough, the thread about time has a big gap between July 5 and August 15. The thread also reminded me why I have an analog watch.
Is Params::Validate Necessary?
Dave Rolsky hoped that Params::Validate would no longer be necessary in Perl 6. This led to much discussion of the parameter declaration syntax in Perl 6 and a few suggested changes.
Constants are Dead; Long Live Read-Only!
Apparently is constant is gone and is readonly is
here. The discussion contains mores than that, but that is my take-away
point.
Multidimensional Hyper Ops
Luke Palmer wondered how hyper ops would work on multi-dimensional inputs. The short answer is "recurse when possible, apply when not."
Serializing Code
Yuval Kogman posted an analysis of a new HTML::Prototype module that hinges on serializing code between the various layers of implementation. Many folks thought this was cool and discussion ensued.
Slurpy Hash
Luke Palmer wondered if one could bind a slurpy hash by name. The answer is no.
Making Pairs Less Magical
Luke Palmer wants pairs to be less magical, as their special treatment has caused much confusion of late. Much discussion continues.
Lazy Scalars?
Yiyi Hu wants lazily evaluated scalars. Ingo Blechschmidt, Luke Palmer, and Larry all provided ways to achieve that end. The simplest solution is to create an anonymous closure, it seems.
Using Foreign Languages
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how to use identifiers from other languages that do not have compatible identifiers. Yuval reasoned that it would be dangerous to try to accommodate them too closely. Perhaps something like the Sinhala "karenawa," which marks the preceding word as being foreign (English specifically), will work?
Symbolic References
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered to use symbolic references of magic variables
such as $?SELF. Larry provided a few answers.
The Usual Footer
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