Perl 6 Summary for 2004-12-06 through 2004-12-20

Perl 6 Summary for 2004-12-06 through 2004-12-20
    All~

    The observant among you might notice that I missed last week's summary.
    With the hubbub and confusion of the holidays, I blame ninjas, in
    particular Ryu Hyabusa. Given that Christmas is next weekend and New
    Years is the weekend after that, what you are like to see in the future
    are a pair of 10 day summaries are some other equally irregular pattern.
    If you are thinking of using the dates of my summaries to seed a random
    number generator, I would advise against it as I can be really easily
    bought ;-) Without more ado, I give you this fortnight's summary
    starting with

  Perl 6 Language
   Lexical scope of parametric declaration blocks
    Ashley Winters wanted to know what the differences between type
    parameter lists and sub parameter lists. Luke Palmer could not think of
    any.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7f>

   object representation
    Abhijit Mahabal noticed that S12 allowed one to supply an object layout
    to " bless() " and wondered if one could really have two instances of
    the same class with different layouts. Larry admitted that he had
    probably not intended for that to be the case.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7g>

   capturing into a hash, hypothetically
    Patrick R. Michaud wondered about capturing things into a hash in S05,
    as "<ident>" now captures. Larry admitted that it was probably supposed
    to be " («ident»)", but also noticed that this exposed a blind spot in
    the design. He went on to ruminate about this blind spot and ways to
    solve it. Much churning went on and it seems that multiple different
    (but identically named) rule captures can now be performed by adding
    information after a dash ala "<ws-1> <ws-2> <ws-3>".

    <http://xrl.us/ef7h>

   custom subscripting
    When talking about key Type for a hash, Larry offhandedly commented
    about attaching a block to a hash or array to provided custom
    subscripting. Many people drooled over the awesome syntactic sugar this
    could provide them.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7i>

   undeclared attributes
    Dave Whipp hoped that he need not predeclare his attributes as they
    necessarily start with $. the fact that a new variable is an attribute
    is easy to determine. Abhijit Mahabal thought that it would not be a
    good idea, but then asked if classes could be declared as not strict.
    Still waiting for more official word...

    <http://xrl.us/ef7j>

   classes which autovivify attributes
    Abhijit Mahabal wondered about creating a class that populates it
    attributes on demand, as some of them might be rarely used. Larry
    suggested that it would be something that one should not undertake
    lightly and a simple hash attribute would provide most of what is
    wanted. This also morphed into the eternal debate about strictures and
    one liners. There has to be a joke in there somewhere.... A stricture, a
    one-liner, and Larry Wall walk into a bar...

    <http://xrl.us/ef7k>

   auto my
    Rod Adams wondered if having my occur automatically for new variables
    might be worthwhile. Several people commented that some languages
    already do this and it is simply an aesthetic choice. The concensus
    seems to be that Perl has already made this choice and is sticking with
    its answer.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7m>

  Perl 6 Compiler
    At long last google has picked up P6C, I guess I have slightly mixed
    emotions about this as it takes a running gag from me. Alas, I will have
    to find another.

   PGE tests
    Markus Laire began working on a formerly small script to convert perl
    5's regex tests to PGE. He produced a modest 700 tests a few of which
    pass. Nice work. Patrick suggested only running the script once and
    thereafter maintaining the tests external to perl5.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7n> -- initial post

    <http://xrl.us/ef7o> -- Patrick's suggestion

    <http://xrl.us/ef7p> -- how to deal with abiguity converting

   On your marks, get set, HACK!
    Luke Palmer opened the door to hacking and has requested rules for parts
    of the Perl 6 Grammar. Patrick posted a link to the SVN repository for
    it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7q>

    <https://svn.perl.org/perl6>

  Parrot
   "\0namespace"
    Leo commited a fix to support namespace mangling.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7r>

   store global => invalidate method cache
    Leo commited a fix to invalidate the method cache when a global is
    stored.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7s>

   pow, hash, batman sound effect!
    Leo added pow and hash as vtables and opcodes. He also renamed
    "new_extended" to "instantiate".

    <http://xrl.us/ef7t>

   base scalar semantics
    Leo asked for comments about base PMC semantics and receive none.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7u>

   split now independant of Perl
    James deBoer provided a patch removing the dependancy on Perl Array in
    split. Will applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7v>

   SVN
    Periodically every project project has a thread about switching some
    basic tool to some other basic tool. This time the thread is in P6I and
    the tools in questions are CVS and SVN. Many voiced support, nothing was
    addressed with any permanence.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7w>

   continuations
    At long last the long running continuation thread has died down. Unless
    I am mistaken, the status quo remains and return continuations should
    restore register contents even when promoted and repeatedly invoked.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7x>

   correctly dispatching opcodes and functions
    Sam Ruby had some concern about dynamically overloading "__add__" in
    python. Leo and Sam had quite a bit of back and forth about the proper
    way to handle it. I am not sure what resolution was reached other than
    that it should work.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7y>

   dynamic libs and TCL issues
    Klaas-Jan Stol had some problems with tcl and dynamic libs. Sam Ruby
    provided the necessary fix for him.

    <http://xrl.us/ef7z>

   class refactoring
    Leo began refactorying base PMCs like Integer. He also started a TODO of
    what remains. This somehow morphed into discussion of logical xor...

    <http://xrl.us/ef72>

   register coloring issues
    Dan posted a failing test case for the register coloring. Leo fixed it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef73>

   split on string vs regex
    James deBoer wondered about the split opcodes current insistence on a
    string. Some advocated making it a method on a class, others wanted to
    change the opcode to take a PMC instead of a string.

    <http://xrl.us/ef74>

   self vs P2
    Sam Ruby discovered that usages of P2 had broken as it was no longer the
    object of a method. Fortunately, Leo provided the helpful "self".

    <http://xrl.us/ef75>

   Linux PPC
    Long ago there were troubles with Linux on PPC. Recently, chromatic
    submitted a patch. More recently, Warnock applied.

    <http://xrl.us/ef76>

   whether vs weather
    This morning it was cold and snowy. Sadly, instead of fixing my dreary
    weather, chromatic fixed a mistyped "whether".

    <http://xrl.us/ef77>

   benchmarks as test
    Justin DeVuyst supplied a patch to use the benchmarks as tests. Leo
    applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef78>

   make [install|docs|monkeys]
    Adrian Lambeck suggested a few improvements to the current make set up,
    including a cool sounding "make doc-install". Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/ef79>

   Dan still alive
    Dan sent an apology about the egregious amount of work he had and
    assured everyone that he was actively trying to get caught up. In the
    mean time, cc him on things that need his personal attention like you
    Christmas list.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8b>

   IMCC parser no longer chokes on empty sub
    Will noted that gremlins had fixed a problem in IMCC with empty subs.
    Yay, gremlins!

    <http://xrl.us/ef8c>

   current object invocation
    Dan discovered that Parrot was putting the current object into its place
    after caliing invoke. This was of course bad, so Leo fixed it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8d>

   configure help
    Somebody had trouble with Configure.pl. Leo pointed out the usefulness
    of "--verbose=2".

    <http://xrl.us/ef8e>

   ./parrot nonexistant.pbc => core dump
    Dan noticed that parrot would core dump when given a nonexistance
    bytecode file. Matthew Zimmerman and chromatic fought to get a patch in
    first. One was applied.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8f>

   python dynclasses build issues
    Will notice a multiple definition problem in the py* dynclasses, Sam
    fixed it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8g>

   MMD dispatch problem
    Jens Rieks reported a problem with mmd_dispatch_v_pnp. Leo could not
    reproduce it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8h>

   mod_parrot with Mandelbrot
    Jeff Horwitz posted a link to a webpage using mod_parrot to generate
    ascii Mandelbrot sets. Really cool, but I prefer Julia sets.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8i> -- the post

    <http://www.smashing.org/mod_parrot> -- the page

   Documentation shortcomings
    Dave Brondsema pointed out that the main FAQ should include info on the
    IRC channels/hosts that Parroters use. He also noted that some PDDs were
    not available on the website. Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8j> -- irc

    <http://xrl.us/ef8k> -- pdd

   scope cleanup issues
    Leo and Dan hashed out some of the issues with scope clean up and stale
    registers keeping things alive.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8m>

   win-xp build issues
    Nicu Ionita reported a problem with the build on WinXP. Leo fixed it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8n>

   runops_fromc
    Sam Ruby provided a patch allowing runops_fromc access to registers. Leo
    applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8o>

   Parameter fillin problem
    Dan posted about a problem he was having. Unforunately, he cannot get a
    simple test case against CVS head, and Leo can't reproduce it.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8p>

   class autoload
    Leo added support for autoloading dynamic classes for Python and Tcl.
    Sam Ruby suggested ways to extend it further.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8q>

   P5 is the new P2
    Sam and Leo came to the conclusion that the current object should be
    passed in P5 as well as P2. Currently they are waiting for Dan... Nudge,
    Nudge...

    <http://xrl.us/ef8r>

   get_anonymous_subclass
    Leo wondered what get_anonymous_subclass was for. Dan explained.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8s>

   Context, Wrappers, rules, NCI
    Sam and Leo had a discussion about what exactly VTABLE functions, MMD
    functions, and ops were allowed to do. I think they spent much of the
    time talking past eachother and all of it talking past me.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8t>

    <http://xrl.us/ef8u>

   namespaces as objects
    Sam Ruby wants to use namespaces as object. Leo is not so sure that this
    is the right way to go about life. This turning tinto a dialog about
    find_method.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8v>

   POD cleanup
    chromatic provided and threatened to apply a patch fixing up some of the
    POD knits.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8w>

   Plain ole Hash
    Bernhard Schmalhofer provided a patch cleaning up Hash. Sam wondered if
    the NCI calls in Hash::fromkeys could be removed along with a few
    others. Leo said that iterators in general needed some another round of
    thought.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8x>

   opcode/sub conflict
    Dave Brondsema notice that there was a problem with subs whose name
    conflicts with opcodes. Luke Palmer provided a workaround.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8y>

   duplicate subclass naming errors
    Simon Glover noticed some problems with duplicate subclass names.
    Noteably that one could not create two nameless classes.

    <http://xrl.us/ef8z>

   MMD and VTABLE_find
    Leo suggested a mechanism for MMD and VTABLE_find. Sam Ruby provided
    some input.

    <http://xrl.us/ef82>

   auxiliary variables
    Tomas Necas wondered about the necessity of auxiliary variables in
    Perl6. Luke Palmer and Dan provided some answers.

    <http://xrl.us/ef83>

   N register stomping
    Dan noticed that his N register were getting stomped occassionally.

    <http://xrl.us/ef84>

  The usual footer
    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 feedback to ubermatt@gmail.com

    <http://donate.perl-foundation.org/> -- The Perl Foundation
    <http://dev.perl.org/perl6/> -- Perl 6 Development site
    <http://planet.parrotcode.org/> -- Parrot Blog aggregator

• Perl 6 Summary for 2004-12-06 through 2004-12-20 by Matt Fowles