The Perl 6 Summary for the week ending 20040222
Welcome to the latest belated Perl 6 Summary. I'm running late, so we'll
just dive straight into perl6-internals
Loading bytecode at runtime
Last week Dan had specced out the rules for runtime loading of bytecode.
This week, Leo Tötsch started implementing it. There was a certain
amount of quibbling about syntax, but that was quickly sorted out.
http://tinyurl.com/27kp6
Objects
Dan continued his work on objects and on sorting out method resolution
niggles. Getting ahead of myself slightly, he finished it this week.
http://tinyurl.com/33ql7
Obfuscated Parrot
I reproduce this product of Leo Tötsch's warped brane without comment:
bounds 1
trace 0
split P0, '', "\nrekcaH torraP rehtona tsuJ"
add I1, 3
add I2, 4
branch I2
pack S23, 793, I1, I0
branch I2
add I2, 382, I1
branch I2
new S23, 911, I0, I0
branch I1
transcode S23, S0, -19
end
And, to compound things:
bounds 1
trace 0
newclass P0, "Just another Parrot Hacker\n"
shift S0, P5
does I0, P0, S0
add I0, 4
bsr I0
pack S0, 381, I0, I0
invoke
ret
Look, OO badness
http://tinyurl.com/2xbye
http://tinyurl.com/2eufv
IO fixes for Win32
I must confess I didn't understand the details of the discussion, but
Goplat, Vladimir Lipsky and Melvin Smith spent some time working on IO
issues under Win32.
http://tinyurl.com/3b3bw
Parrot Dumper updated
Jens Rieks continued his sterling work on a Parrot Data::Dumper
equivalent, posting a new version that does bounds checking and PMC
property dumping. A later refinement added support for self referential
data structures and other edge cases.
http://tinyurl.com/ytmmz
ConfigScript3
TOGoS announced a new language targetting Parrot.
http://tinyurl.com/2pszj
http://tinyurl.com/2b942
Symbol naming and IMCC2
Dan ruled on the symbol naming issue discussion. Essentially, if your
symbol includes a sigil, you're not going to be able to use it directly.
Learn to love symbol tables and ".alias".
http://tinyurl.com/37fx3
TODO: "parrotbug"
Dan asked for someone to implement a "parrotbug" script to handle
building and possibly sending the bug reports into RT. The script should
work in a similar way to perlbug, appending configuration information
etc to any bug report.
http://tinyurl.com/3x59b
TODO: Forth as a compiler
Dan asked for a volunteer to fix forth.pasm so that it can be loaded in
as a compiler module, allowing one to do:
compile P5, ForthCompiler, "1 2 + ."
and have it print out 3.
http://tinyurl.com/2zzrr
Documentation tasks
Taking time out to heap praise on the deserving Michael Scott, Dan
outlined a few documentation jobs that need to be done (hopefully)
before the next Parrot release.
http://tinyurl.com/3eons
SDL goodness
The work on SDL support continued apace, with chromatic checking in
several SDL related fixes and enhancements.
http://tinyurl.com/yrsgk
http://tinyurl.com/2oycl
Parrot Day at the Austrian Perl Workshop
Thomas Klausner announced that this year's Austrian Perl Workshop would
have a Parrot Day, with a tutorial from Leo Tötsch and hopefully some
other good stuff from Parrot luminaries. Thomas also asked for people to
submit talk ideas.
http://tinyurl.com/29ev4
http://tinyurl.com/2257c
SDL + Parrot = Tetris
Jens Rieks announced the alpha of an implementation of tetris in Parrot
using SDL for the display. Yay Jens! Mmm... a time sink... just what the
Parrot developers need.
http://tinyurl.com/2vb3d
The First International Workshop on Interpreted Languages
Dan pointed us all at the First International Workshop on Interpreted
Languages' Call for Papers.
http://tinyurl.com/2golt
http://tinyurl.com/3cuhu
Meanwhile, in perl6-languages
Traits/Roles
I know I've had this feeling of déjŕ vu before, but I've spelt it right
this time. Discussion of Roles continued this week. If I never read
another discussion of the difference between "Dog::bark" and
"Tree::bark" again, it'll be too soon.
The Sort Problem
The other topic of discussion this week covered sorting. It looks as
though Perl 6's "sort" function is going to be rather more powerful than
the Perl 5 equivalent; hopefully this means Perl 6 will finally see the
back of code like:
map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] <=> $a->[1] }
map { [$_, extract_key_from($_) } @array
Damian's post on the subject, referenced below, looks like the front
runner. It's worth reading if you're interested in sort itself or if
you're interested in how Perl 6's multi dispatch will work.
http://tinyurl.com/yvgsg
Allison Randal is the new Project Manager
Nat Torkington announced that he's managed to pass the Perl 6 Project
Manager hat on to Allison Randal's increasingly be-hatted head.
Congratulations and commiserations to Nat and Allison. I'll leave it up
to you to decide who gets which.
http://tinyurl.com/2rmoh
Announcements, Apologies, Acknowledgements
Um... I'm late. Sorry.
If you find these summaries useful or enjoyable, please consider
contributing to the Perl Foundation to help support the development of
Perl. You might also like to send me feedback at
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], or drop by my website.
http://donate.perl-foundation.org/ -- The Perl Foundation
http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ -- Perl 6 Development site
http://www.bofh.org.uk/ -- My website, "Just a Summary"
