On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 04:03:29PM +1000, Damian Conway wrote: > My understanding was that perl6 would default to Perl 6 (*not* Perl 5), unless > the first thing it encountered was a: > > package Whatever; > > statement. If so, that's a change, at least from what I gleaned by following this list and reading the Apocalypses/Exegeses.
My understanding was that Perl6 is supposed to run Perl5 scripts with no change in the way they're invoked (that is, still #!/usr/bin/perl, not #!/usr/bin/perl5compat or #!/usr/bin/perl -5 or anything like that). Under that requirement, the compatibility can't be switched on by the 'package' declaration, because the 'package' declaration is optional in Perl5. So instead Perl5 was going to be the default until a Perl6 keyword - such as 'module' or 'class' - indicates that the program being parsed is Perl6. On the other hand, I can see why there might have been a change of heart about this, since while the logic works fine for modules, it means that quick one-off scripts, including one-liners, have to include something like 'module main;' or some new command-line switch to turn on Perl6 mode. Darn that backwards compatibility, anyway . . . -- Mark J. REED <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
