Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-22 through 2004-11-29
All~
Rather than try to do something witty about the strange music I am
listening to, or the stuffed animals who are assisting me. I will start
this summary off with an entirely self-serving request. <abuse>A while
ago I saw the quote "Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline
of Formal Systems Theory." without an attribution. I have tried to find
an attribution for it, but have been unable to find one. If any of you
know it, that information would be appreciated.</abuse> With that out of
the way, I bring you
Perl 6 Language
Deep Operators
Last week, Matthew Walton wondered about Deep Operators and if they
would work as he expected. As I tentatively predicted, the answer came
back and was "yes". Then the thread got side tracked with context and
Perl vs perl vs PERL concerns.
<http://xrl.us/d6wj>
gather to separate bins
Dave Whipp wanted to know if he could use gather/take with multiple
bins. Michele Dondi suggested using adverbs for it. Rod Adams pointed
out that as gather is inherently lazy the two binned approach could
cause strange results (like churning for a while filling one bin trying
to get an element for the other). Of course, not being able to do it
would mean possibly having to compute an expensive generate function
more than necessary, unless it is memoized...
<http://xrl.us/d6wk>
« in here-docs
Thomas Seiler has decided to test my copy-paste-fu by starting a discuss
on characters that don't appear on my keyboard. His question was if «END
could start a here-doc. The answer appears to be no.
<http://xrl.us/d6wm> -- here-doc
« != <<
The above thread led to a discussion of the various quoting operators,
and the differences between «» and <<>>. This led to much discussion on
the finer points of qw, qx, and qq (among others). Juerd suggested
scrapping qx and qw in favor of qq:x and qq:w, which Larry liked. Rod
Adams suggested scrapping <<END in favor of qq:h/END/, which I like.
<http://xrl.us/d6wn>
unifying namespaces
Alexey Trofimenko wondered about unifying the $, @, and % namespaces.
Larry told him that this ship sailed long ago and that it was not
changing.
<http://xrl.us/d6wo>
Lexing/Parsing Perl6 without executing code
Adam Kennedy wants to be able to syntax color (and possible perform
basic programatic manipulations of perl6 code). Anyone who has used a
good IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse, or IntelliJ probably understands
where he is coming from. He does not, however, want to execute arbitrary
code in the process of doing this. Much discussion ensued, but it does
not look like he will be able to do this. Quite the tragedy, but perl is
simply too dynamic to be docilly lexed like static languages.
<http://xrl.us/d6wp>
Perl6 Compiler
Nice Work
Nick Glencross has the honor of the only message on p6c this week. But
his sentiment is shared by all. Nice work, Patrick.
<http://xrl.us/d6wq>
Parrot Internals
Parrot_compreg.sig
Bernhard Schmalhofer noticed that Parrot_compreg had a different
signature then documented, so he submitted a patch to fix it. Leo
applied it.
<http://xrl.us/d6wr>
opcode numbering
Leo added a TODO ticker for opcode numbering.
<http://xrl.us/d6ws>
tests pass, but create core files
I reported that on my machine all of the tests claim to pass, but core
files appear in the parrot directory. Dan confirmed my suspicion that
this was a real problem. I tried to supply helpful information like
backtrace, but Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/d6wt> -- initial message
<http://xrl.us/d6wu> -- squeeky wheel gets the kick?
pcc cleanup
Leo removed the recently deprecated P0, P1, P2 usage. Relatively few
tests break as a result.
<http://xrl.us/d6wv>
Namespace-sub invocation
Luke Palmer wanted to know if there was syntax for calling subs from a
particular namespace. Leo provided the answer, call it as a method on
the namespace PMC.
<http://xrl.us/d6ww>
Reserved Words Annoy
Luke Palmer wondered if he could define a .sub "new" to get around
reserved word problems. Leo added the support, but warned him not to use
"spaces or such".
<http://xrl.us/d6wx>
Lexicals, Continuations, Register Allocation, and ascii art
This thread (and the ones that preceded it) have made me wish that gmail
and google groups had a fixed width font option. Sadly, this summary
will probably not get me it, as it did not get me p6c either :-( Ah
well. The problems associated with lexicals and continuations churned.
There was a plea for guidance from Dan. Hopefully he will guide us
shortly.
<http://xrl.us/d6wy> -- one thread about it
<http://xrl.us/d6wz> - and another (with plea)
old Parrot question
Bloves had a question about assemble.pl in the parrot 0.0.1 source.
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/d6w2>
Parrot on Linux PPC build
chromatic managed to track down some of the PPC build issues for linux.
Leo wondered where all of the config hackers went, I think he wants
someone to fix it.
<http://xrl.us/d6w3>
preprocessor problems
Flavio S. Glock noted that the preprocessor did undesirable things. Leo
suddenly realized that it was woefully out of date and need major
fixing/disabling. Flavio submitted a small patch for it, but Leo pointed
out that this was not enough to actually fix the preprocessor.
<http://xrl.us/d6w4> -- initial message
new push_eh opcode
Leo added a new push_eh opcode and derprecated the old set_eh.
<http://xrl.us/d6w5>
TODO and RT wrangling
Will Coleda continued his stellar work managing the RT queues. Brent
'Dax' Royal-Gordon patched the first one.
<http://xrl.us/d6w6> -- remove Perl* PMCs (done)
<http://xrl.us/d6w7> -- the patch
<http://xrl.us/d6w8> -- make Perl* PMCs dynamic
<http://xrl.us/d6w9> -- IMCC Documentation needed
PMC does "hash|array|monkey"
Will Coleda added a ticket for the does functionality. He promptly
closed it when Leo pointed out that it already existed in the form of
the "does" op. So Will up and started using it.
<http://xrl.us/d6xa> -- initial request
<http://xrl.us/d6xb> -- Tcl takes advantage
Strings are in
Dan announced that the last of his string stuff was checked in and he
would like brave souls to help him merge it back into the tree.
<http://xrl.us/d6xc>
Language TODO tests
Will Coleda thanked Josh Wilmes for fixing the Language TODO tests. And
apparently one of Tcl's has mysteriously started working.
<http://xrl.us/d6xd>
minesweeper broke
Jens Rieks noticed that somewhere in the shuffle minesweeper got broken.
As a professional minesweeper-er, this shocks and offends me. Leo
offered a pointer as to where to start looking to fix it.
<http://xrl.us/d6xe>
@ANON subs
Leo added some support for anonymous subroutines. People liked them and
began. Luke Palmer prompty tried combining it with @IMMEDIATE and began
to wonder if it was immediate enough.
<http://xrl.us/d6xf>
Parrot Grammar Engine issues
I think that I shall continue to spell out PGE for a little while, but I
may decide to use only the acronym in some later summary without
warning, be prepared. Oh right, the whole reason I mentioned it in the
first place... Will Coleda pointed out a few issues including (1)
doesn't compile by default and (2) doesn't compile at all. Nicholas
Clark fixed (2), and Patrick figured that (1) could wait until it was a
little more mature. Personally, I feel that maturity is over rated,
poo-poo head.
<http://xrl.us/d6xg>
(Java|ECMA)Script on Parrot
David "liorean" Andersson wondered if there were any projects to run
JavaScript on Parrot. While there does not appear to be, many people
thing it would be a good idea and offered useful pointers.
<http://xrl.us/d6xh>
Rules Engines
Cindi Jenkins posted a link to an interesting blog entry on Rules
engines. Unfortunately, I think she posted it to google groups as it did
not find its way onto the list. Also, unfortunately, it is a post about
logic rules engines a la prolog and not grammar rules. although who
knows, there might be some overlap...
<http://xrl.us/d6xi>
PIR examples on the website
Herbert Snorrason noted that there were no PIR examples on the website
and opened a ticket for it. Will took a first pass at it.
<http://xrl.us/d6xj> -- original message
<http://www.parrotcode.org/examples/>
testj string_102 issues
Luke Palmer found a subte looking problem in string_102.pasm. Leo
couldn't reproduce it and suggested that it might be a redhat thing.
Peter Sinnott chimed in with a possibly unrelated failure also on
redhat.
<http://xrl.us/d6xk>
Tuning and Monitoring
Matt S posted a question about how much internal tuning and monitoring
Parrot would allow. Unfortunately, I think he posted it to google
groups, as it didn't show up in my inbox. I am honestly not sure how
much is available/in the works.
<http://xrl.us/d6xm>
missing directory in MANIFEST
Andy Dougherty submitted a patch fixing a missing directory in the
manifest by allowing ops2pm.pl add it.
<http://xrl.us/d6xn>
Objects, Classes, Metaclasses, and tall people's heads
Dan posted a refresher on the current state of the object system. He
then went on to explain where it was headed and conjectured that this
would be enough. Just reading his description of it hurts my head enough
that I do not wish to guess if he is right or not.
<http://xrl.us/d6xo>
eof opcodes
Brian Wheeler wondered why there was no "eof" opcode. Leo told him that
it was a method on a PIO object. Apparently most of the IO opcodes
should actually be PIO methods, go figure.
<http://xrl.us/d6xp>
ops to deprecate or not
Leo attempted to trim down the core by removing some opcode variants.
Dan did not appreciate the change and told Leo to roll it back.
Fortunately, Dan went on to explain the longer term goal (which should
satisfy Leo).
<http://xrl.us/d6xq> -- initial posting
<http://xrl.us/d6xr> -- CVS commit message
<http://xrl.us/d6xs> -- the goals
The usual footer
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<http://donate.perl-foundation.org/> -- The Perl Foundation
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<http://planet.parrotcode.org/> -- Parrot Blog aggregator
