Perl 6 Synopsis 5

XaXXon writes: "perl.com has Synopsis 5 for Perl 6 up. It's a brief overview of all the changes made in Larry Wall's Apocalypse 5. Lots of stuff about the new regex syntax. I must admit, however, that I'm getting tired of reading about perl 6 -- I want to start using it." We posted Larry Wall's 5th Apocalypse in May.

PHP better than Perl

[totallygeek]

php is better.

Perl is not just for web programming! I doubt that web programming is mostly what people use perl for. Even the name perl suggests its strength is a report-generator or text parser (practical extraction and reporting language).

I use perl for web and for just general-purpose Unix programming. I still use c for some larger coding projects, but am more and more finding myself coding with perl. And, I never use shell scripts anymore -- well, unless I am on an older Unix box.

Perl rocks. PHP rocks. C rocks. Pascal rocks. Bash rocks. One just isn't any better than any other, if the one you are using gets you the desired results (speed, speed of coding, ease of use, correct answers to problems, etc.).

Good stuff

[Starky]

I've been reading the Apocalypses with interest as well as the comments from the peanut gallery.

For all of the hub bub and brouhahah, I think after it is released and people start to explore all the new (and old) features, folks are going to find Perl 6 an amazing tool that improves on an already amazing tool set.

With all of the flame wars regarding Perl/Python/Ruby (like triplets calling each other ugly), it's good to see Perl continuing to innovate, improve and set a brisk pace for others to follow.

Call me ignorant if you like...

[Ignorant Cocksucker]

But if Perl 6 is not backward compatible with perl 5, it should not really be called perl, should it ? And while we are on the subject, if Perl6 has all these features that python and tcl have had for years, why did Larry think it worth duplicating all that effort ? Why did he not simply e-mail Guido van Rossum and ask if he could contribute ?

It seems to me like egos are getting in the way of efficiency here. After all, why re-invent the wheel when we already have python ? Why break all those working perl scripts ?

Ego is the enemy of open source, and here we see why.

Perl Rocks

[Tsugumi]

There seem to be a lot of anti-perl flames, so until someone more intelligent, charismatic and pretty deigns to post, I may as well try to defend it...

First - the myths, untruths etc that have sprung up so far.

Perl6 is not backwards-compatible with Perl5 - uhm, yes it is. All your perl5 scripts will compile.

Why not contribute to phython or [insert other language here] well, python will compile through Parrot too, so who cares? If you like Python, write in Python. I prefer $%&? syntax to whitespace-as-syntax, but each to their own, but that is the joy of Parrot. Think .Net CLR without the so-far unfounded feeling that M$ are doing something underhand and nasty that you can't put your finger on. Before someone replies with "Why not just use the CLR instead of Parrot"? bear in mind this has been done to death already. It's in the FAQ, read first, flame later.

But why Perl? Okay, so it can be write-only. But this is only because of the flexibility, There Is More Than One Way To Do It. This includes obfuscated code, and plain unreadable alien transmissions. However - if you're writing code only you will ever see, then use the short-cuts. If you are writing code that needs to be maintained, then YOU the developer have the responsibility to ensure it is readable.

Heck, you could always use english; - but this is perl, you can also code in Latin, or, uhm, Klingon.

Perl is simply the most flexible language out there IMHO. If you're a sysadmin, you will have the Camel and the cookbook on your desk. Our entire environment is held together with Perl. Half the Internet is running on Perl. A dead language? Sheesh, Perl is dead, long live Perl.

If there is anything that does worry me about perl6, it is that it is becomiung too powerful, and too encompassing - it is important that the balance is maintained whereby it remains the Swiss Army Knife of languages, that it remains as easy for the casual Perl programmer to keep getting their job done with simple scripts as it is to create large projects.

Careful, Parrot != CLR

[Ars-Fartsica]

PArrot will juice performance boosts at the sacrifice of built-in safety. This is by design. Dan Sugalski claimed as much in a Perl Review article - to paraphrase - "Parrot will execute the bytes sent to it by the native language compiler. IF the compiler writes improper Parrot, your app will crash.".

He also goes on to note that the CLR could be a pluggable backend for Parrot to export to.

Re:Perl Rocks

[Koschei]

I'm not sure when it was introduced (I suspect it's new to 5.8), but the English module lets you do this these days:

use English qw( -no_match_vars );

Which will import everything, except the saw-ampersand and the other problematic variables ($PREMATCH, $MATCH, $POSTMATCH. So you can have the English, and not at the expense of speed.