=pod
=head1 NAME
Magazine_Article_04 - Everyday Perl 6
=head1 AUTHOR
Jonathan Scott Duff L<duff@pobox.com>
=head1 VERSION
Its published May 10, 2007 on perl.com and not changed since.
Find the original under:
L<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2007/05/10/everyday-perl-6.html>
=head1 ARTICLE
Perl 6 will soon be here. How will programming in Perl 6 be different from
programming in Perl 5 for your average Perl programmer? The answer is:
very different yet very much the same. A Perl 6 program viewed at arm's length
will look much like a Perl 5 program viewed at arm's length. Programming in
Perl 6 will still feel like programming in Perl. What will change however,
is that Perl 6 will enable programmers to be more expressive by giving them
more tools to work with (making easy things easy) and allowing them to be more
precise in their expressions.
While many of the changes in Perl 6 make it easier for people new to
programming or coming from other programming languages to understand the
language, none of the changes were made solely on those grounds. If your
favorite part of Perl 5 syntax is that it uses an arrow for method dispatch on
objects, don't be dismayed that Perl 6 uses a dot instead. The designers
carefully considered each syntactic change to ensure that Perl 6 still has the
Perlish nature I<and> that the change was an overall improvement. Some Perl
programmers delight in the syntactic differences of the language, but some of
those differences aren't that important when compared to the big picture of
Perl's culture (which includes the language, CPAN, and the community of
programmers).
=head2 Sigil Invariance
One of the fundamental changes is that whenever you refer to individual
elements of an aggregate (an array or hash), rather than changing the sigil
to denote the type of thing you get back, the sigil remains the same.
For example, in both Perl 5 and Perl 6 you can create and initialize
aggregates:
my @array = (1,3,5,12,37,42);
my %hash = ( alpha => 4, beta => 6 );
How you access the individual elements of those aggregates looks just a
little different:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
my $third = @array[2]; my $third = $array[2];
my $beta = %hash{'beta'}; my $beta = $hash{'beta'};
Long-time Perl 5 programmers might wonder how slices work in Perl 6.
The answer is: the same way as in Perl 5.
my @odds = @array[1,3,5]; # array slice
my @bets = %hash{'alpha','beta'}; # hash slice
The only difference is that in Perl 5 the hash slice would have started
with a C<@> sigil.
=head2 New Brackets
In these hash examples, it's awkward quoting the indexes into the hash.
Perl 5 allows a syntactic shortcut where C<$hash{word}> works as if you
had written C<$hash{'word'}>. A problem with that is that it can cause
confusion when your C<word> happens to be the name of a subroutine
and you really want Perl to execute that subroutine.
In Perl 6, a syntactic shortcut for accessing hash elements takes advantage
of a name change of the "quote word" operator:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
my @array = <foo bar baz>; my @array = qw(foo bar baz);
my %hash = <a b c d e f g h>; my %hash = qw(a b c d e f g h);
my $queue = %hash<q>; my $queue = $hash{'q'};
my @vows = %hash<c a g e>; my @vows = @hash{qw(c a g e)};
Also, just as double-quoted strings interpolate while single-quoted
strings do not, double-bracketed "quote word" constructs also
interpolate:
my $foo = "This is";
my $bar = "the end";
my @blah = << $foo $bar >>; # ('This','is','the','end');
Note that the interpolation happens I<before> the "quote word" aspect of
this operator.
Speaking of interpolation, interpolating into double-quoted strings
has changed slightly. Now to interpolate an array into a string, you
must provide a set of empty brackets at the end of the array name. This
has the side benefit of eliminating the ambiguity of whether you meant
interpolation if you happen to include (for instance) an email address
in your double-quoted string.
my @items = <names addresses email>;
say "Send @items[] to test@foo.com";
# Send names addresses email to test@foo.com
You can also interpolate more things into your double-quoted strings:
say "Send me $person.name()"; # results of a method call
say "2 + 2 = { 2+2 }"; # any bit of perl code
That second one means that you'll have to be careful about inserting
curly braces in your double-quoted strings, but that's a small price to
pay for the ability to interpolate the results of arbitrary Perl code.
By the way, get used to the C<say> subroutine. It's the same as C<print>,
but it appends a newline to the end. Quite useful, that.
=head2 Fewer Parentheses
The usual places in Perl 5 that require parentheses no longer do in Perl 6:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
if $cond { ... } if ($cond) { ... }
unless $cond { ... } unless ($cond) { ... }
while $cond { ... } while ($cond) { ... }
for @array { ... } for (@array) { ... }
In Perl 6, parentheses are now only necessary for grouping.
=head2 Idioms
Another big change is that some of the standard Perl 5 idioms look
different in Perl 6. In particular, the standard idiom for reading
lines from a file involves a C<for> loop rather than a C<while> loop:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
for =$fh { ... } while (<$fh>) { ... }
for =<> { ... } while (<>) { ... }
The Perl 5 programmers are probably thinking, "but doesn't that put
the part that reads the filehandle in list context, causing the entire
file to be slurped into memory?" The answer is both yes and no. Yes,
it's in list context, but in Perl 6, by default all lists are lazy so
they aren't read until necessary.
In this example, unary C<=> is the operator that causes an iterator to,
well...iterate. If C<$fh> is a filehandle, C<=$fh> iterates over that file
by reading one line at a time. In scalar context C<=$fh> will read one line,
and in list context it will read one line at a time as many times as necessary
to get to the end of the file. Iterating over the empty string (remember the
new role of the angle brackets) is equivalent to Perl 5's reading files from
the command line.
=head2 Operator Rename
Several common operators have new symbols in Perl 6. These symbol
changes make the overall language more regular so that it's easier to
parse, but most importantly so that it's easier for humans to remember:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
$object.method(@args); $obj->method(@args);
$x = $cond ?? $true !! $false; $x = $cond ? $true : $false;
$s = "con" ~ "cat" ~ "enate"; $s = "con" . "cat" . "enate";
$str ~~ /$pattern/; $str =~ /$pattern/;
Any time you see a C<~> in Perl 6, it has something to do with strings.
A unary C<~> puts its rvalue in a string context, binary C<~> is string
concatenation, and a doubled C<~> lets you match a regular expression
against a string (actually, it does more than that, but from a perspective
of not knowing the language at all or from knowing Perl 5, it's enough to
know initially that C<~~> will pattern match on strings).
=head2 New Perl 6 Syntax
Perl 6 also has some brand-new syntax.
=head3 Long Comments
Many people always gripe about the fact that Perl 5 lacks a lightweight
multi-line comment mechanism (POD is apparently too verbose). Perl 6 solves
this one quite nicely. If a bracketing character immediately follows the
comment character (C<#>), the comment extends to the corresponding closing
bracket.
#[ This is a
multi-line comment
that ends here ----> ]
See "Whitespace and Comments" in Synopsis 02 for more information.
=head3 switch Statement
For those of you who have forever wished for a switch statement in Perl,
Perl 6 will have it (only by another name):
given $thing {
when 3 { say "three"; }
when 5 { say "five"; }
when 9 { say "nine"; }
when "a" { say "what?"; }
default { say "none"; }
}
This construct is much more powerful than I've outlined here, however,
as it takes advantage of the smart match operator to do the right thing when
the given C<$thing> (or the thing it's being "compared" against in the C<when>
clause) is an object or an array or hash, or code, etc.
=head3 New Loops
The C-style C<for> loop operator has become C<loop>. But you can omit the
parenthetical portion to write an infinite loop:
loop { ... }
Another new looping construct is the C<repeat> loop, which occupies the same
niche as Perl 5's C<do>-C<while> pseudoloop. The big difference is that
unlike C<do>-C<while>, C<repeat> is a real loop and as such, you are free
to use C<next>, C<last>, C<redo> and it does the right thing.
For more information see Synopsis 04.
=head3 Parameterized Blocks
Essentially, every block in a Perl 6 program is a subroutine. Some blocks,
like those used in an C<if> statement, have no parameters; but others do,
such as the body of a C<for> loop. But any block may be parameterized. This
is especially useful for doing things that aren't easy in Perl 5 but should
be -- like examining values three at a time with C<map>:
my @trimults = map -> $a,$b,$c { $a * $b * $c }, @numbers;
Here is an example where Perl 6 co-opts the arrow notation for a
higher purpose. The arrow now introduces parameters to a block. You are
most likely to see this in C<for> loops:
# Perl 6 # Perl 5
for @array -> $a { ... } for my $a (@array) { ... }
for @array -> $a, $b { ... } # too complex :)
The second C<for> loop will take items from C<@array> two at a time and
lexically assign them to C<$a> and C<$b> for the duration of the block.
The same behavior is not so easy to accomplish in Perl 5.
Another way to write the C<@trimults> example, but slightly less verbose, is:
my @trimults = map { $^a * $^b * $^c }, @numbers;
Variables with a caret (C<^>) immediately after the sigil are implicit
parameters to the block, and Perl 6 assigns them in Unicode-order. That is,
C<$^a> is the first parameter, C<$^b> the second, and C<$^c> the third.
There is yet a third way to write a parameterized block that's more
verbose but more also powerful. It allows the programmer to take full
advantage of subroutine signatures. Yes, TMTOWTDI, is still alive and
well :-)
=head3 Subroutine Signatures
You can still write subroutines the way you always have in Perl 5,
but Perl 6 allows you to specify a "signature" that describes how many
parameters to pass to the subroutine, which parameters are optional,
which parameters are positional, which are named, what the default
values are for unpassed parameters, which parameters copy the value
that is passed, which parameters alias the variable, etc.
For more information on subroutines in Perl 6, see Synopsis 06 and
Phil Crow's recent article "The Beauty of Perl 6 Parameter Passing".
=head3 Variable Typing
In the interest of allowing programmers to be precise in their
expressions, Perl 6 allows for optional variable typing. That is, the
programmer can not only say, "this variable is a scalar" but can also
say "this scalar conforms to the expectation of items in this
particular class." In other words, you can say things such as:
my Dog $spot;
my Fish $wanda;
...and it means something useful to Perl as well as the programmer.
The variable C<$spot> is only usable in a place where Perl expects a
C<Dog>, and the variable C<$wanda> only works in places where Perl expects
a C<Fish>. However, the Perl 5-ish code will work perfectly fine, too:
my Dog $spot;
my Fish $wanda;
my $x;
$x = $spot;
$x = $wanda;
...because C<$x> is sufficiently "untyped" that it can accept a C<Dog>
or a C<Fish>, or any scalar thing.
=head3 Multiple Dispatch
Variable typing coupled with subroutine signatures gives the benefit
of multiple dispatch. What that means is that you can declare two
subroutines with the same name but different signatures, and Perl will
select which subroutine to invoke at runtime based on the parameters
sent to the subroutine. For example:
multi sub feed(Dog $spot) { say "dog food!"; }
multi sub feed(Fish $wanda) { say "fish food!"; }
my Fish $nemo;
my Dog $rover;
feed($nemo); # fish food!
feed($rover); # dog food!
The C<multi> keyword tells Perl that you intend to declare multiple
subroutines with the same name, and it should use the name and the
parameters and whatever other distinguishing characteristics it can
to decide which one to actually invoke.
=head2 The End
I hope this introduction gives you a feel for some of the changes in Perl 6
and shows how these changes are good and useful.
A prototype implementation of Perl 6 called pugs (L<http://www.pugscode.org/>)
should be able to execute all of the examples I've given in this article.
If not, get on the freenode IRC network, join #perl6, ask for a commit bit,
and submit a test to the Pugs repository, and one of the pugs Developers will
probably update Pugs to run it soon enough :-)
=head2 Thanks
Special thanks to all of the people on IRC (#perl and #perl6) who looked
over this article and gave their input and commentary.
=cut