Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-07 through 2005-03-22
All~
Welcome to yet another fortnights summary. I believe this is the highest
volume I have ever seen the three lists at simultaneously. Hopefully
they will keep it up, because good work is being done. To aid in the
epic endeavour of summarizing all this, I have had to add some new Jazz
to my playlist. We will see how it works out. If it doesn't work well,
blame Seton.
Perl 6 Language
the actual name of &?SUB
David Storrs wanted to know how he could get the name of &?SUB. Larry
told him that $?SUBNAME would be the most reliable way to get the short
name.
<http://xrl.us/fiip>
Unlimited Argument Patterns
Luke Palmer has tasted the forbidden fruit of Haskell and now he wants
more of it in Perl 6. In particular he wants even more powerful pattern
matching of arguments for MMD. Rod Adams speculated that Larry had
decided Perl 6 would not be ML... In the end no real consensus, but
don't hold your breath seems to be the feeling.
<http://xrl.us/fiiq>
Limited Argument Patterns
Wolverian was a little unsure of what exactly " sub foo(0) {...} "
meant. Larry explained that it was just sugar for " sub foo ( $bar of
Int where { $_ == 0 } $bar ) { ... } ".
<http://xrl.us/fiir>
List Constructors
Wolverian made a list of list constructors, asking what each did. Larry
explained: For the most part, the same thing as perl 5, a few would
produce a warning.
<http://xrl.us/fiis>
Decorating Primitives
The question arose of how decorating objects with roles interacted with
low level types. Larry came to the conclusion that it was OK, unless you
wanted to decorate a single element in a primitive array.
<http://xrl.us/fiit>
splat operator in assignment
Juerd was unsure how splats and list assignment interacted. The answer
is that list assignment is exactly the same as Perl 5 to allow for
extending return list.
<http://xrl.us/fiiu>
Logic Programming
Rod Adams pointed out that much of logic programming could be
implemented using the rules engine. Unfortunately, the syntax gets a
little hairy and cumbersome. Larry said that this particular goal might
be something that is not addressed immediately in 6.0, but possibly
differed instead. Ovid rumbled about porting a Warren Abstract Machine
to Parrot... I would like it.
<http://xrl.us/fiiv>
Locale-KeyedText
Darren Duncan finished up the first non-core Perl 6 module. Being
properly hubristic, he asked for a critique. His questions touched on
subjects including subtypes, module loading, and strictness...
<http://xrl.us/fiiw> -- critique request
<http://xrl.us/fiiy> -- misc questions
bar $f =?= $f.bar
Rod Adams wondered what would happen if he had both a sub and a method
name bar. What would " $f.bar " and " bar $f " do? Jonathan Scott Duff
explained that " $f.bar " would call the method while " bar $f " would
call the sub.
<http://xrl.us/fiiz>
MMD object
Rod Adams wants a single object to represent all of the possible multi
methods associated with a particular short name. It seems that Rod
dranks some of the lisp cool-aid (although in this case, I agree). He
explained how this allowed the dispatch scheme to be changed on a multi
by multi basis and also allowed for nice introspection. This led to a
discussion of how this would work with lexically installed multi
methods, and if this would trip people up. No real consensus seemed to
appear...
<http://xrl.us/fii2>
:foo<o> != :foo('o'); :foo<o> == :foo{'o'}
Juerd wondered what the implications of <a> mapping to ('a') were. Larry
replied that it did not map in that manner.
<http://xrl.us/fii3>
lazy loading of object
Yuval Kogman wondered how he could get his objects to load lazily. Larry
told him that delegation would probably be the best bet.
<http://xrl.us/fii4>
throwing from higher up the call stack
Thomas Yandell wants a way to throw from further down the call stack.
Sadly he was warnocked.
<http://xrl.us/fii5>
sprintf
Juerd wants an sprintf like function " f/FORMAT/EXPR/ ". Larry seems to
think that " EXPR.as(FORMAT) will suffice, especially if as is a list
op. "
<http://xrl.us/fii6>
S29, builtin function
Rod Adams has been hard at work creating a list of build in functions.
He has a version up at "/www.rodadams.net/Perl/S29.html" in http:. This
led to good discussions about what things had alternate forms and what
did not.
<http://xrl.us/fii7> -- discussion
<http://xrl.us/fii8> -- more discussion
python to eliminate reduce()
Aristotle Pagaltzis posted a link explaining why reduce will be
eliminated in Python 3000. This led to a brief discussion of various
design philosophies.
<http://xrl.us/fii9>
SEND + MORE = JUNCTIONS
Sam Vilain fixed up the SEND + MORE example to work correctly with
junctions. Unfortunately, the hoop through which he had to jump are
pretty horrendous. Larry mumbled that the option of autothreading all
conditionals might work, but would send to many lynch mobs after him. I
for one like both Twin Peaks and that idea...
<http://xrl.us/fija>
for with a function reference
Rod Adams wanted to know how for would behave with various types of
functions or codeblocks. Luke Palmer provided answers.
<http://xrl.us/fijb>
adding interfaces to arguments
Thomas Sandlaß wondered when arguments to function would be decorated
with roles from the function signature if they didn't exist. Larry
conjectured about allowing different views on objects versus mixing in
various roles. This led people to talk about covariant typing. An array
of ints will always return you a number and an array of numbers will
always accept an int. But an array of ints will not necessarily accept a
number and an array of numbers will not necessarily return an int. Thus
changing your view can be valid when writing and not when reading or
vice versa.
<http://xrl.us/fijc>
pugs too lazy
Miroslav Silovic noticed that closing a file handle in pugs did not
force all the thunks associated with the file. While this was a bug in
pugs, it led to conversation about whether = should be lazy or eager.
Larry thinks that it will be safer to start eager and become lazy then
vice versa.
<http://xrl.us/fijd>
Exists and Delete as functions
Rod Adams wondered how he would define the signatur of Exists and Delete
as they do not evaluate the subscripted variables in their arguments.
Larry explained that they are now methods on the hash and you would have
to do a little macro magic to get it to work the old way.
<http://xrl.us/fije>
remove(reset())
Steve Peters pointed out that reset() was not almost useless and has
been "vaguely deprecated" for a while. Larry declared it dead.
<http://xrl.us/fijf>
lists in string context
Juerd put out a plea for list in string context not to automatically
provide spaces between elements. Larry pointed out various ways to join
on the empty string, which I think is his way of saying too bad...
<http://xrl.us/fijg>
popping a multidimensional array
Rod Adams wondered what it meant to pop a multidimensional array. Larry
aggreed that it should pop off entire dimensions. Does this mean that
popping such an array in a loop will pop dimensions until there is only
one left, at which point it will switch to popping elements?
<http://xrl.us/fijh>
index out of bounds
Markus Laire wondered what " index("Hello", "", 999) " would return.
Larry explained that it is not as simple as he thinks cause strings use
magic indices that do unicode stuff, but it would probably throw an
exception.
<http://xrl.us/fiji>
GUI paradigm
Michele Dondi wants Perl 6 to support a GUI paradigm better then most
languages currently do. He is not quite sure how, but he is sure that it
would be cool. I agree that it would be cool.
<http://xrl.us/fijj>
hiding from ones callee
Autrijus wants to call a function but make it appear as if his caller
did it. Larry suggested that wrap/call would be appropriate.
<http://xrl.us/fijk>
quotemeta
Rod Adams voted for axing quotemeta. People seemed to agree that it
should go, but what should be left in its place? Larry suggested an
argument to "as".
<http://xrl.us/fijm>
zip function signature
Rod Adams was having difficulty determining the function signature for
&zip. This led to a discussion of when " is rw" was implied, but not an
answer to his question.
<http://xrl.us/fijn>
Symbol table interactions
Gall Yahas wondered how ::() would react to undefined variables. Larry
explained that it might be either lega or illegal as an lvalue depending
on whether or not the scope had finished being compiled and that it
would be undefined as an rvalue.
<http://xrl.us/fijo>
propogating called context
Yuval Kogman wants to call a sub with the same context he was called in
so that he can munge the result(s). Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fijp>
true(0)
Juerd suggested that "true" ought to be renamed as it was really
counterintuitive. Much discussion ensued about alternatives. Larry
hemmed for a bit, but decided to stick with true in the end
<http://xrl.us/fijq>
Junction Questoins
Stevan Little wondered if the junctions in pugs were behaving correctly.
Luke Palmer assured him that they were for the examples he posted.
<http://xrl.us/fijr>
POD vs kwid : round 1. FIGHT!
Aaron Sherman posted a rought draft of a better POD. This led to many
people passionately discussing the merits and demerits of POD and kwid.
Fortunately as the summarizer endowed with the power of double speaking,
I can definitively say that the conclusion was that everybody prefers
both kwid over pod and vim over emacs.
<http://xrl.us/fijs>
importing constants from another module
Song10 wanted to know how to import constants from anothermodule into
his without having to specify scope everywhere. Warnock applied.
<http://xrl.us/fijt>
returning references vs copies
Darren Duncan wants to protect his classes from their malicious enemies
who would use his references against him. Thus he wants to know if his
accessor methods return references or copies. Larry explained that they
would probably return lazy copies, to provide the requist protection,
except when used inside that class.
<http://xrl.us/fiju>
precedence of where
Chip Salzenberg wondered if "where" or " | " had higher precedence.
Larry replied that where was part of a magic group of declarational
keywords that did some weird stuff.
<http://xrl.us/fijv>
strings and pain
Rod Adams wants to change strings to deal with unicode differently.
Larry thinks his idea forces the programmer into the machines mindset
too much.
<http://xrl.us/fijw>
caller's slurpy array
Rod Adams wants access to his caller's slurpy array and suggests that it
be @_. Larry agreed.
<http://xrl.us/fijx>
lvalue slices
Matt Diephouse wants to assign to an array slice but doesn't know if he
can. He can.
<http://xrl.us/fijy>
.method; $self.method; $_.method
As originally specified " .method " means " $_.method ". This sets is
appart from " $.foo, @.foo, %.foo " which all refer to $self . Much
discussion ensued. I think the pendulum is slowly swinging toward switch
the meanting of " .method " to refer to " $self.method ".
<http://xrl.us/fijz>
Duff's Device
Gaal Yahas lamented his lack of ability to use Duff's Device in Perl 6.
Larry made noises that it might not be impossible, but would still not
be a good idea.
<http://xrl.us/fij2>
the fate of study
Rod Adams wondered what would happen to study. Since I never did it in
high school or college, I doubt I will begin now. Other seems to think
it would be easier to leave it as a no op in case we want to do it
eventually.
<http://xrl.us/fij3>
some ado about nothing
Rod Adams wants a no-op function and suggested nothing. There was some
discussion about whether 1 should work. I am surprised that no one
suggested study....
<http://xrl.us/fij4>
chr and ord
Rod Adams thought that perhaps chr and ord should be restricted to
operating at the code point level. Larry was less sure.
<http://xrl.us/fij5>
Perl 6 Compilers
Last week I tried to link many of the patches to pugs. I now think that
was a mistake for two reasons. (1) there are a great many and (2) many
more occur off list and are thus missed. Therefore, I will not go
provide links for specific patches unless they pass my arbitrary test of
as important as my pizza.
Pugs 6.0.12
Autrijus release pugs 6.0.11 and 6.0.12. The features are plentiful and
awesome. For a more complete list (which is long) as well as daily
blow-by-blow of the PUGS development (which is fast) check out
Autrijus's journal "/use.perl.org/~autrijus/journal/" in http:.
<http://xrl.us/fij6> - 6.0.11
<http://xrl.us/fij7> -- 6.0.12
helping PUGS
Matthew Campbell wondered how best to help pugs. Autrijus Tang gave him
a helpful knudge.
<http://xrl.us/fij8>
p6ify Algorithm::Dependency
Adam Kennedy asked for a volunteer to translate Algorithm::Dependency to
perl 6. Darren Duncan did it and fast too.
<http://xrl.us/fij9>
help PUGS
Anthony Kilna knew that one of the best ways to help PUGS was to write
tests but didn't know if there was a database of tests that needed to be
written or were written. Stevan Little pointed him to the in progress
attempt to build just such a database and said that would be a good
place to help.
<http://xrl.us/fika>
sand traps abound when golfing in p6
Andrew Savige (aka mad golfer) has been working at porting a "small"
program to perl 6. He wrote up his experiences at
"/www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=440685" in http:.
<http://xrl.us/fikb>
numification of strings
There was some discussion of how to numify a string. Some wanted smart
parsing, others wanted simple parsing. For a while simple was winning. I
am not sure if it one in the end though...
<http://xrl.us/fikc>
SQL::Routine
Darren Duncan announced his intent to port SQL::Routine to Perl 6
shortly. You might be able to hold your breath.
<http://xrl.us/fikd>
Pug's Bugs vs Blue's Clues
Stevan Little compiled a list of bugs for pugs. By the time you read
this, many will probably have been fixed.
<http://xrl.us/fike>
Parrot
I will start this part with a very large anouncement. Dan has decided to
step down as Parrot's Chief Architect. Chip Salzenberg (who just earned
first name only status) has taken up the burning parrot, err torch. To
forestall questions/outrage/grumbling, Dan explained that Leo did not
get the position because he did not want it. I know that I personally
have learned a lot from Dan and Squaks of the Parrot (including how to
turn crystal sugar into bakers sugar), and want to think him a great
deal for the work he put into Parrot. This means the responsibility of
returning the pie to Guido now falls on Chip's shoulders.
make install parrot headers
Lambeck noticed that make install does not install parrot's header
files. It probably should; so he filed a bug.
<http://xrl.us/fikf>
atan2 needs -xlibmieee on Sun
Andy Dougherty provided a patch adding appropriate hints to the solaris
build. Leo applied it.
<http://xrl.us/fikg>
Burning Parrot
Leo put out a request to have the parrot tinderboxen revived. Steve
Peters suggested that it could be integrated with the current perl smoke
reporting process. Peter Sinnot put up a server on a spare machine in
the mean time.
<http://xrl.us/fikh>
ncurses_life
Uwe Voelker reported a bug in ncurses_life. Leo fixed it and put out a
plea for someone to update it. Matt Diephouse updated it.
<http://xrl.us/fiki>
refactor of t/pmc/pmc.t needed
Leo suggested that an interested party would be able to factor the Perl*
tests out of pmc.t and into perl.t. Steven Schubiger offered to try.
<http://xrl.us/fikj>
<http://xrl.us/fikk>
string tasks
Leo posted a set of tasks looking for takers with respect to string
stuff. Steven Schubiger stepped up to some and Aldo Calpini another.
<http://xrl.us/fikm> -- initial request
<http://xrl.us/fikn> -- Aldo's Offer
thr-primes.imc
Bernhard Schmalhofer updated thr-primes.imc to not use Perl* pmcs, which
uncovered a bug in Undef.pmc. Leo fixed it.
<http://xrl.us/fiko>
aggregate clone vtable
Leo noticed that some aggregates do deep copies while others do shallow.
All should do shallow. Takers welcome.
<http://xrl.us/fikp>
**Arrays TODO
Fixed*Arrays should have a limited form of splice available to them.
Also, the Resizable*Arrays should have their allocation schemes adapted
to that of the ResizeablePMCArray and *BooleanArray should store just
bits. Bernhard Schmalhofer offered to take on the *BooleanArrays.
<http://xrl.us/fikq> -- the request
<http://xrl.us/fikr> -- the offer
anonymous subclasses
Simon Glober discovered that anonymous subclasses were not working in
December. Now Leo fixed it.
<http://xrl.us/fiks>
Perl 6 compiler in Perl 6
Millsa Erlas hoped that writing a Perl 6 compiler in Perl 6 was still a
priority. Markus Laire pointerd her to pugs. She seemed happy.
<http://xrl.us/fikt>
object internals
Leo has been steadily hacking away at the object internals. There is now
a get_mro opcode.
<http://xrl.us/fiku>
dynclasses failure in gcc 3.3.3
Leo commited a work around to a gc problem with dynamic library loading.
Eventually the real solution will need to be implemented.
<http://xrl.us/fikv>
The many faces of Win32
It turns out that one can have several different flavors of windows
builds with MinGW (not to mention cygwin or msvc). This causes pain.
<http://xrl.us/fikw> -- mingw
<http://xrl.us/fikx> -- pain
<http://xrl.us/fiky> -- the many moods of MinGW
TODO: clean parrot's A*I
Jarkko Hietaniemi posted a TODO for cleaning up both Parrot's API and
ABI. Leo agreed that it would be very nice.
<http://xrl.us/fikz>
calling PIR from a PMC
William Coleda wanted to know how to call PIR code from a PMC. Jeff
Horwitz pointed him to the Parrot_call_sub_* API.
<http://xrl.us/fik2>
PAST compiler problems
Bernhard Schmalhofer has a program that he can make work in imc, but not
from PAST. It turns out that we don't yet have a way to pass options to
the compile opcode. We need that.
<http://xrl.us/fik3>
makefile cleanup
Bernhard Schmalhofer offered to clean some old imcc targets out of the
makefile. Leo told him to go for it.
<http://xrl.us/fik4>
MRO broke TCL
Will Coleda was sad that Leo kept breaking TCL. Leo suggested that he
add the tcl tests to the base make test. Also, there is some funniness
going on since test fail for Leo and not Will.
<http://xrl.us/fik5>
TODO add multiple return values to Parrot_call_sub
Matt Diephouse posted a todo for adding the ability to access multiple
return values from C.
<http://xrl.us/fik6>
MANIFEST failures
Bob Rogers was getting MANIFEST failures. It turns out that he forgot to
use the "-dP" switch with CVS. We have all done it.
<http://xrl.us/fik7>
pasm -> imc
Bernhard Schmalhofer commited a few TODO tests for generating and
running PASM from pir. Jens Rieks pointed out that this does not work
and is only a debugging aid. Although I don't see anything wrong with
wanting to get it working...
<http://xrl.us/fik8>
segfault on splice
Nick Glencross found a segfault when splicing an IntList. Jens Rieks
provided a patch that allowed parrot to die earlier and cleaner. Leo
fixed the problem.
<http://xrl.us/fik9>
Documenting the MinGW build
François Perrad provided a patch updating documentation for building
with MinGW. Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fima>
segfaulting md5sums
Nick Glencross decided to check up on his md5sum library. It still
compiles, but it segfaults. Leo found and fixed the GC bug.
<http://xrl.us/fimb>
Parrot_Exec_OS_Command
François Perrad noticed that MinGW was very particular about how one
execs OS commands. He wondered if this should be fixed at the configure
layer or the Parrot_Exec_OS_Command layer. Dan explained that it was not
intended to be language independant, and that a language independent
version should go in a library.
<http://xrl.us/fimc>
Namespaces in PIR
Leo posted a call for comments on PIR namespaces. Dan suggested a small
addition.
<http://xrl.us/fimd>
builtins
Leo committed a change moving builtins to a class namespace and provided
convenient access to them from PIR.
<http://xrl.us/fime>
MMD: multi sub syntax
Leo put out a call to develope a syntax for multi subs in PIR. Many
options were suggested.
<http://xrl.us/fimf>
returning a variable number of arguments
Bob Rogers updated PIR code to allow a variable number of arguments to
be returned. Leo applied it.
<http://xrl.us/fimg>
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