Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-15 through 2005-08-22
All~
Welcome to another monday summary, which hopefully provides some
evidence that mondays can get better. It always feels like writing
summaries is an uphill battle, perhaps I should switch to writing about
Perl 6 Language first and Perl 6 Compilers last. Then it will be
downhill... Maybe next time.
Perl 6 Compilers
More Random Pictures
Autrijus posted links to two more images he had created. This time the
images were not about pugs, but were just kind of cute. He also provided
an explanation of one when prompted.
<http://xrl.us/g8bw>
Methods as Functions
Yiyi Hu noticed that a method of one argument could not be used as
function. Autrijus offered Yiyi a commit bit, but also kindly posted the
resolution to Perl 6 Language. Thanks Autrijus!
<http://xrl.us/g8bx>
Methods on Code Blocks
Yiyi Hu discovered that " { a b c }.paris " would cause pugs to spin out
of control. Luke Palmer fixed it. Hopefully one of the two of them added
a test...
<http://xrl.us/g8by>
Autrijus's Secret Sauce
Kris Bosland asked a few question I have been wondering about Autrijus
new graphics. Autrijus kindly provided the answers.
<http://xrl.us/g8bz>
Documentation Attack
Kevin Tew has decided the best way for him to delurk is to update
documentation for Pugs. chromatic and Dudley Flanders both provided
support, information, and suggestions for him.
<http://xrl.us/g8b2>
Neko VM
Nicolas Cannasse announed his release of a high level multi language VM
and wondered what others thought of creating a Perl 6 to to Neko
compiler. Autrijus and Leo provided a few corrections and comments.
<http://xrl.us/g8b3>
Parrot
The FAQ, She is GONE!
Amias Channer noticed that the faq on parrotcode.org was gone. While he
was warnocked, the faq appears to be back.
<http://xrl.us/g8b4>
Platform Specific C Files
Stephen Hill wanted to know where to put a platform specific C file to
provide missing functionality. Leo provided a few friendly pointers.
<http://xrl.us/g8b5>
TclArray.get
Amos Robinson provided an implementation of "get" for TclArray. Will
greatfully applied the patch.
<http://xrl.us/g8b6>
ICU Being Passed Up
Adrian Lambeck wondered if icu was being passed up by Configure.pl.
Warnock applied. So Adrian took matter into his own hands by providing a
possible solution. Jerry Gay offered to take ownership of the problem if
no ICU enabled soul picked it up. No progress reports since then
though...
<http://xrl.us/g8b7>
<http://xrl.us/g8b8>
Java on Parrot
Tim Bunce asked some preliminary questions about Java on Parrot. I
provide preliminary answers, and Nattfodd and Autrijus posted links to
related work. The important question of what it should be called
remained unraised. I vote for "Jot".
<http://xrl.us/g8b9>
gdbmhash.t Failures
Tim Bunce noticed that gdbmhash.t was failing with an unhelpful error
message. Andy Dougherty provided a patch that made the error message
slightly more helpful. Jerry Gay applied it.
<http://xrl.us/g8ca>
BEGIN Blocks
Leo posted some thoughts and information about BEGIN blocks in Perl 6
and the @IMMEDIATE pragma in PIR, it involved creating constant PMCs and
freezing them into the bytecode. Then he made it work.
<http://xrl.us/g8cb> -- thoughts
<http://xrl.us/g8cc> -- actions
Amber for Parrot
Citing chatter overheard on its intelligence networks Parrot raised the
terror alert to Amber, or maybe Roger Browne released version 0.2.3 of
his "Eiffel-like" scripting language, Amber. I can never keep track of
these things.
<http://xrl.us/g8cd>
Tcl parray
Amos Robinson offered to provide an implementation of Tcl's parray
inluding tests. Will wanted to apply it, but the attachment did not come
through.
<http://xrl.us/g8ce>
Parrot vs Neko
Nicolas Cannasse wondered why Parrot performed so poorly on the fib
benchmark. Leo explained that this benchmark stressed a currently
unoptimized portion of parrot (function calls). He also provided a few
pointers on which benchmarks parrot did well on.
<http://xrl.us/g8cf>
Using PMCs from C
Klaas-Jan Stol's Lua compiler uses only PMCs. Thus he wanted to know how
to access these PMCs from NCI functions. Leo provided an answer, but
also suggest he looked at the new calling conventions which would do
auto-conversion in both directions.
<http://xrl.us/g8cg>
PMC for Reference Counting
Nicholas Clark posted a relatively full analysis of how the DODs
registration system could be generalized 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.
<http://xrl.us/g8ch>
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.
<http://xrl.us/g8ci>
" +"hello" "
Daniel Brockman wondered if " +"hello" " still evalutated 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.
<http://xrl.us/g8cj>
Generic Classes
Autrijus was confused by the frequent use of generic classes 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.
<http://xrl.us/g8ck>
GC API
David Formosa posted a revised GC API after the previous discussion.
More discussion ensued.
<http://xrl.us/g8cm>
Name Conflicts
Yiyi Hu wondered what would happen if two lexicals were declared with
different declarators. Larry answered that it would be a compile time
error.
<http://xrl.us/g8cn>
Parsing Numbers
Ingo Blechschmidt posted a list of different possible ways to write
numbers, asking which were valid and which not. Many weighed including
Larry.
<http://xrl.us/g8co>
Bindings and Routine Signatures
Luke Palmer noticed that if one implemented binding as anonymous
subroutines, then binding existing variables created delimited
continuations and binding globals full continuations. While intersting,
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/g8cp>
visibilty of $?SELF and $?CLASS
Stevan Little wondered what scopes would have $?SELF and $?CLASS
available to them. Larry provided answers.
<http://xrl.us/g8cq>
"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.
<http://xrl.us/g8cr>
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.
<http://xrl.us/g8cs>
Constants are Dead; Long Live Read-only!
Apparently " is constant " has been replaced by " is readonly ". The
discussion contains mores than that, but that is my take away point.
<http://xrl.us/g8ct>
Multidimensional Hyper Ops
Luke Palmer wondered how hyper ops would work on multi dimensional
inputs. The short answer is recurse then possible, apply when not.
<http://xrl.us/g8cu>
Serializing Code
Yuval Kogman posted an analysis of a new HTML::Prototype module that
hings on serializing code between the various layers of implementation.
Many folks thought this was cool and discussion ensued.
<http://xrl.us/g8cv>
Slurpy Hash
Luke Palmer wondered if one could bind a slurpy hash by name. The answer
is no.
<http://xrl.us/g8cw> -- question
<http://xrl.us/g8cx> -- answer
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.
<http://xrl.us/g8cy>
Lazy Scalars?
Yiyi Hu wants scalars that are evaluated lazily. Ingo Blechschmidt, Luke
Palmer, and Larry all provided ways to achieve that ends. The simplest
solution is to create an anonymous closure it seems.
<http://xrl.us/g8cz>
Using Foreign Languages
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how to use identifiers from other languages
which do not have compatible identifiers. Yuval reasoned that it would
be dangerous to try and accomodate them to closely. Perhaps something
like the Sinhala "karenawa" which marks the preceding word as being
foreign (english specifically).
<http://xrl.us/g8c2>
Symbolic References
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how symbolic references of magic variables
like $?SELF would be done. Larry provided a few answers.
<http://xrl.us/g8c3>
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