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Postings from April 2005
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-22 through 2005-04-05
From:
Matt Fowles
Date:
April 5, 2005 20:47
Subject:
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-22 through 2005-04-05
Message ID:
f2601a7f0504052047744f7f12@mail.gmail.com
Perl 6 Language
ceil and floor
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered if ceil and floor would be in the core.
Warnock applies... Although Unicode operators would let me define
circumfix \lfloor \rfloor (although I only know how to make those
symbols in tex...). Hmmm... using tex to right Perl 6 code...
interesting idea... at least then I could figure out how to make all the
special symbols. Maybe someone should make a package for that.
<http://xrl.us/foe7>
s/// object?
Stevan Little wanted to know if s/// could return some sort of magic
object that could be poked or prodded. Larry explain, "no".
<http://xrl.us/foe8>
markup like features
Michele Dondi asked if perl 6 would have markup like features in it.
Luke Palmer asked for a more full explanation of what was meant. Warnock
applies.
<http://xrl.us/foe9>
the many moods of " does "
Thomas Sandlaß wondered if S14 would actually be written or if tie/bless
were eaten by does, enumerating the many powers of does. Larry explained
that does will probably have mutated bless and then explained the
contexts under which does does each of its powers.
<http://xrl.us/fofa>
the many moods of " does "
To follow up his question about does, Thomas Sandlaß wondered about is
(specifically whether it stubbed or initialized its variable). Larry
explained that is would probably initiliaze its variable and explained
how one could use " is Ref " to stub but not initiliaze something.
<http://xrl.us/fofb>
perl5 -> perl6 converter
Adam Kennedy dropped a line to the list about PPI 0.903, which could
form a good base for a Perl 5 to Perl 6 convert. Larry explained that he
was actually using PPD (the actual Perl parser) to construct such a
tool. He also explained his approach on how he was going to do it.
Actually it is a really cool approach for those of you who like elegant
design approaches, you should check it out. I'll give you a hint, it
starts by writing a glorified version of cat.
<http://xrl.us/fofc>
p5 library compatibility?
Andrew Savige wondered if p6 would maintain the interface for most p5
libraries. chromatic almost died of fright from the suggestion. Juerd
suggested a deprecated namespace for such things. Larry gave him a ponie
instead. Later Larry thought that perhaps a special namespace for those
libraries that could be automatically converted might be appropriate.
<http://xrl.us/fofd>
<http://xrl.us/foff> -- later
importing constants and header files
Song10 wondered if there was an easy way to import constants from a
module and not have to specify their full scope in the includers file.
Larry explained that p6 would have "policy" modules which would allow
this. He then began to let his mind explore the possibility of allowing
these modules to return a string to evaluate in the user's scope. Then
he realized how nasty textual inclusion was in C and C++, and figured
that a hygenic policy would be better.
<http://xrl.us/fofg>
giving lists more operators
Juerd constructed a table of string, integer, and list operators. He
noticed that list had blank spots where string and integer both had
things. He then suggested quite a few more operators to fill these
blanks... This morphed into a discussion of code complexity and reading
code.
<http://xrl.us/fofh> -- operators
<http://xrl.us/fofi> -- complexity
string pain
Chip wondered what exactly set " str " apart from "Str" and the impact
this had on Unicode support. Larry and Rod Adams explained that " str "
specified a raw bytes view of strings and required explicit casts
between different Unicode levels.
<http://xrl.us/fofj>
xx on CodeRefs
Luke Palmer wondered if the xx operator could be overloaded to
repeatedly run a coderef and slap the results together. Other liked it,
but no word from on high.
<http://xrl.us/fofk>
running pugs
Adam Preble had some strange problems with Pugs's make install target.
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fofm>
maniplulation many dimensional hashes
Zhuang Li wanted to know how to manipulated hashes of unkown dimension.
Luke Palmer provided the answer.
<http://xrl.us/fofn>
Semantics of Currying
Yuval Kogman has been implementing currying in PUGS. As such, he has
found some of the corner cases that have not been well specified. Thus
he, Larry, Luke Palmer, and Thomas Sandlaß delve into these mysteries.
<http://xrl.us/fofo>
multi paradigmatic perl 6
Someone named Eddie posted a fairly long message to p6l on the google
groups interface suggesting that Perl 6 support delegation and other
programming paradigms. Sadly, no one told him that it already does both
of those things, because nobody got his email. Google groups does not
send messages back to the list.
<http://xrl.us/fofp>
NB for PUGS on low memory machines
Adam Preble posted a helpful warning about installing PUGS on machines
with less than 200 MB of memory. Unfortunately he also posted it to
google groups. People should stop doing that. Is there some way to tell
google to not let them do that?
<http://xrl.us/fofq>
PLEAC
Tim Bunce suggested that people could add programming examples to PLEAC
for Perl 6, of course they should run in PUGS if they are being released
to the world at large...
<http://xrl.us/fofr>
annotating code with documentation
Chip wants to be able to document his code by attaching documentation
directly to it. This would allow for nifty introspective features. Larry
pointed out that the surrounding POD would actually be made available to
the code.
<http://xrl.us/fofs>
typo in S03
Aaron Sherman pointed out a typo in S03. Luke Palmer explained that
dev.perl.org did not mirror the svn tree just yet. Juerd found one too,
but got the same answer. But this time Robert Spier put in the necessary
magic so that dev.perl.org would update from svn.perl.org.
<http://xrl.us/foft> -- Aaron's
<http://xrl.us/fofu> -- Juerd
optimization hints
Yuval Kogman noted that Perl 6 has some ability to provide lexically
scoped hints and suggested a few more thinkgs that might be hintable.
Larry opened the door for him to try and design such features.
<http://xrl.us/fofv>
S29 update
Rod Adams efforts to update S29 continue to push a very large thread
about things including numification of strings and various core
operators.
<http://xrl.us/fofw>
string positions
Aaron Sherman wanted a more OO way to look at the OS. Larry did not
really agree but felt that one could create a proxy object which would
reference all of those globals. Also, a conversation about having units
attached to numbers sprang up. Sounds like a good module to me.
<http://xrl.us/fofx>
modify and assign operators
Andrew Savige wondered if there was a complete list of operators
anywhere, because he could not find ~^= (string xor) documented
anywhere. Larry explained that the assign should probably be a meta
operator to allow for better extensibility
<http://xrl.us/fofy>
p5 -> p6 guide
Adam Preble wondered if there was a basic p5 -> p6 guide. Unfortunately
he posted to google groups.
<http://xrl.us/fofz>
$_.method vs $self.method
The debate about whether .method should mean $self.method or $_.method
continued. $self is still winning.
<http://xrl.us/fof2>
typo problems
It seems that Juerd has typing problems. He wanted to know if he could
form a support group. Apparently only if he uses vim.
<http://xrl.us/fof3>
renaming flattening and slurp
Terrence Brannon wants to change the name of flatten and slurp to
something else. Larry told him that this usage was unlikely to change.
<http://xrl.us/fof4> -- flatten
<http://xrl.us/fof5> -- slurp
how read-only is read-only
Chip wondered how deep read-only-ness or is copy-itude went on
arguments. The answer appears to be shallow. This led to a very long
discussion of how much type checking would actually occur.
<http://xrl.us/fof6>
pick on non-junctions
Ingo Blechschmidt wondered what pick would do on an array or a hash.
Many folk explained that it would remove and return an item or pair from
the container respectively. Larry comented that pick on a hash could be
harder then it looks...
<http://xrl.us/fof7>
built in multi methods
Wolverian wondered if some of the common functions called on strings
would actually be methods. Larry answered that they would more likely be
multi's to allow for easier extension.
<http://xrl.us/fof8>
comparing to references
Darren Duncan wanted to know if " =:= " was the correct operator for
comparing if two variables refer to the same object. Larry explained
that it was. This led to a debate about how easily one could deal with
chains of references in Perl 6.
<http://xrl.us/fof9>
Perl 6 Compiler
Pugs test failures
Will Coleda worriedly reported 115 failing subtests in Pugs. Stevan
Little explained that this was normal for between releases and was
really more of a todo list than a problem.
<http://xrl.us/foga>
Pugs darcs repo
Greg Buchholz noticed that the darcs repo for pugs has trouble staying
up to date. Tupshin Harper suggested using `darcs whatsnew
--look-for-adds --summary` to find the offending files.
<http://xrl.us/fogb>
BEGIN {} time
Autrijus wondered when BEGIN was supposed to run. Markus Laire posted a
useful summary of when the various CAPITAL things were run. Larry
confirmed Autrijus suspicion.
<http://xrl.us/fogc>
YAML test output
Nathan Gray wondered if he should change his tests log to YAML output.
Stevan Little pointed him to Test::Harness::Straps which could collect
test output and transform it.
<http://xrl.us/fogd>
semicolons in p6
Andrew Savige found some strange behavior with respect to statement
seperation in pugs. He thought that perhaps semicolons had changed their
status. They haven't.
<http://xrl.us/foge>
ugly dog meets ugly bird
Pugs r2^10 can compile p6 to imc which can be run by Parrot. I think I
speak for everyone when I say "Wow. Nice work Autrijus.".
<http://xrl.us/fogf>
string interpolation and various special variables
Andrew Savige noticed a could of odd corner cases for string
interpolation in pugs. This led to a discussion of which special
variables (like $!, $/, and $") would continue to exist.
<http://xrl.us/fogg>
code coverage metadata
Paul Johnson posted a list of requirements he would like to see
satisfied so that one can easily generate perl 6 coverage reports.
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fogh>
Pugs Release
As is the fashion, Pugs went through to minor releases during this two
week period: 6.0.13 and 6.0.14.
<http://xrl.us/fogi> -- 6.0.13
<http://xrl.us/fogj> -- 6.0.14
text editor support for Perl 6
Darren Duncan suggested that it migth be a good idea for people to begin
prepping their favorite text editors to handle Perl 6 syntax correctly.
Why stop at syntax? I know I want to be able to type :perl6do in vim...
<http://xrl.us/fogk>
Makefile.pl
Darren Duncan noticed that while most things in pugs were written in
Perl 5, while Makefile.PL was still in Perl 5. He suggested that the
Makefile.PLs in various modules be written in perl 6 also. He then began
work on a pugs::Makemaker module.
<http://xrl.us/fogm>
<http://xrl.us/fogn> -- work begins
Pugs to become a Perl6 -> Parrot AST compiler
Autrijus explained that he was planning on steering pugs toward becoming
a perl 6 -> parrot compiler which would interpret code (when parrot is
not available) by mapping imc to haskel.
<http://xrl.us/fogo>
pugs re-org
Stevan Little suggested rearranging the pugs repository a bit. The end
result is that modules which aren't runnable in pugs (yet) should go in
modules/ while those which are should go in ext/
<http://xrl.us/fogp>
YAPC::NA pugs hack-a-thon
John Macdonald posted his plan for the YAPC::NA pugs hack-a-thon. His
description of the location makes me want to take time off work to go to
it....
<http://xrl.us/fogq>
split semantics
Stevan Little found a bug in pugs's split. Autrijus fixed it, but noted
that he had not replicated the full, bizarre semantics of perl 5 (which
come from awk). Larry told him not to work too hard on it, as it would
probably be provided through a separate function.
<http://xrl.us/fogr>
statement modifiers
A bug in Pugs's parsing led Autrijus to seek information from a higher
authority. Larry explained the power of statement modifiers.
<http://xrl.us/fogs>
Parrot
move perl tests out of pmc/pmc.t
Steven Schubiger volunteered to reogranize pmc/*.t last time. He did it,
and leo applied the patches.
<http://xrl.us/fogt>
areas of focus
Chip, in a circumloquacious attempt to come up to speed, indirectly
asked what design issues needed attention. Leo explained the CPS issues
that have been bogging down parrot of late.
<http://xrl.us/fogu>
improving mingw docs
François Perrad provided a patch improving the documentation for
building with MinGW. Leo applied part of it.
<http://xrl.us/fogv>
moving pmc2c2.pl or pmc2c.pl
Matt Diephouse opened an RT ticket for cleaning up the file system
(specifically pmc2c2?.pl).
<http://xrl.us/fogw>
The Learned Parrot
Christian Aperghis-Tramoni reported that he has had success using parrot
assembly as a teaching tool.
<http://xrl.us/fogx>
performance and parrot
Falcon posted a series of questions about Parrot in a fairly general
sense. Unfortunately, since he posted it to google groups, Warnock
applies.
<http://xrl.us/fogy>
first MMD call
Leo posted a first MMD call which uses an MMD PMC and a fair amount of
hand done calling conventions set up.
<http://xrl.us/fogz>
OpenBSD atan2 trouble
Steve Peters noticed that atan2 on OpenBSD is not quite right.
<http://xrl.us/fog2>
API change
Leo changed various packfile functions to take an Interp* argument. This
does change the embedding API, but it had to be done.
<http://xrl.us/fog3>
pmc2c2.pl cleanup
Leo pointed out that pmc2c2.pl was not functioning correctly on all
platforms. He put out a call for interested parties. Matt Diephouse
provided a patch to clean up the internals of pmc2c2.pl a bit. Leo
applied it. Peter Sinnott returned a $ that got lost in the shuffle,
chromatic applied it. Matt went on to add better comments.
<http://xrl.us/fog4> -- call
<http://xrl.us/fog5> -- refactor
<http://xrl.us/fog6> -- $ found
<http://xrl.us/fog7> -- comments
README.win32 update
Klaas-Jan Stol provided an update to the README.win32 directions.
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fog8>
SET_NON_ZERO_NULL
Chip wondered why parrot had a SET_NON_ZERO_NULL macro and suggested
removing it. The answer was of course speed. On architectures with a
zero null, this can be a no-op and memory can be calloced. Otherwise it
has to do something.
<http://xrl.us/fog9>
PMC constants
Leo added support for .const things to imc. Unfortunately, the GC eats
them so you can't use it.
<http://xrl.us/foha>
Garbage Collection and Hash creation
Cory Spencer's LISP implementation revealed a bug in the hash creation
sequence. Leo fixed it.
<http://xrl.us/fohb>
MD5 update
Nick Glencross provided an update to the md5 library. Leo applied it.
<http://xrl.us/fohc>
tcl updates
Will Coleda has been updating tcl. He moved the parser into a PMC. Then
he tried to add octal and hex escapes only to discover missing
transcodings. He also found missing hash functions, but Leo fixed that.
<http://xrl.us/fohd> -- parser
<http://xrl.us/fohe> -- transcodings
<http://xrl.us/fohf> -- hash
Logging IRC
It has been suggested that we start to log IRC. Chip suggested that this
might not be cost effective as such logs are 99% dross and 1% value. He
suggests instead that people paste this good part into emails for the
list. I know that I for one, would not volunteer to summarize IRC...
<http://xrl.us/fohg>
segfault generating config.fpmc
chromatic (as his Linux PPC is want to do) found a bug in the build. He
fixed it, and Leo applied the patch.
<http://xrl.us/fohh>
Lazy, Lazy Steve
Leo added a first implementation of a Lazy PMC for Autrijus to play
with.
<http://xrl.us/fohi>
Win32 make install
François Perrad provided a patch fixing MANIFEST.generated for Win32.
Warnock applies.
<http://xrl.us/fohj>
Parrot on Win32
Ron Blaschke spent some time fixing Parrot on Win32, extending it to
provide a shared library.
<http://xrl.us/fohk>
mod_parrot
Jeff Horwitz released mod_parrot 0.2. It includes nifty features
including the begining of an interpreter pool.
<http://xrl.us/fohm>
C90 cleanup
Peter Sinnott moved a few declarations further up. Leo applied the
patch.
<http://xrl.us/fohn>
MMD on argument count
Leo added the ability to MMD on argument count and PMC types.
<http://xrl.us/foho> -- count
<http://xrl.us/fohp> -- types
documentation typos
Offer Kaye fixed a few typos. chromatic applied the patch.
<http://xrl.us/fohq>
pmc freeze.t
Leo admired the tricksiness of Bernhard Schmalhofer in his freeze
implementation.
<http://xrl.us/fohr>
sys.t failure on MinGW
François Perrad fixed a test failure on MinGW. Leo applied it.
<http://xrl.us/fohs>
builtin namesspaces issue
Peter Sinnott pointed out some failing tests. Leo fixed them.
<http://xrl.us/foht>
locate_runtime_file error
Bob Rogers provide a patch to switch PARROT_TEST to 1 by default. Leo
applied it.
<http://xrl.us/fohu>
bytecode reentrancy
Nigel Sandever had some questions about how parrot and threading worked.
Melvin Smith provided the answers.
<http://xrl.us/fohv>
Pugs Questions for Parrot FAQ
Nicholas Clark noted that the question of why bother with Parrot when
one has Pugs has come up recently. The answer was put into the Parrot
FAQ: speed.
<http://xrl.us/fohw>
Pascal for Perl
Sven Schubert wondered if people had any suggestions for how to get
PAPAgei (his Pacal for Parrot compiler) up and running quickly. Leo told
him to stick with the tools he knows rather than going to far afield.
<http://xrl.us/fohx>
infix op proposal
Leo posted his proposal for how to revamp infix ops. Nicholas Clark and
Luke Palmer asked a few questions.
<http://xrl.us/fohy> -- discussion
<http://xrl.us/fohz> -- more discussion
lexical pad depth
Cory Spencer wondered how to find the depth of the lexical pad stack.
Leo told him how.
<http://xrl.us/foh2>
win32 exit codes
Ron Blaschke noticed that there were tests failing on Win32 because the
exit code was not in the high 8 bits, but was stored directly. Leo
suggested we look to perl 5 for prior art on what to do.
<http://xrl.us/foh3>
other languages on parrot
Bloves wondered if any other compilers were currently working towards
targetting parrot. I pointed him to cardinal, a ruby compiler for parrot
that appears dead.
<http://xrl.us/foh4>
Parrot64
Adam Preble wondered if there has been any work on Parrot for AMD64. The
answer is some, but nobody told him cause he posted to google groups.
<http://xrl.us/foh5>
Parrot win32-setup
François Perrad provided a patch that creates a standard binary
distribution for Win32. There was some debate over the name of the make
target, but François is ready to send an updated version at Leo's
command.
<http://xrl.us/foh6>
calling convention abstraction
Leopold Toetsch proposed a calling convention abstraction that would
allow Parrot to change its ABI a little more freely in the future. Roget
Hale asked a few questions which Leo answered.
<http://xrl.us/foh7>
no 0 size arrays
Ron Blaschke noticed a broken windows build, because of a 0 sized array.
Leo fixed it.
<http://xrl.us/foh8>
unicode string literal assertion failed
Will Coleda discovered a failing assertion in utf8.c Leo fixed it.
<http://xrl.us/foh9>
NCI call signature change
Leo changed the call signature for NCI to make 'I' mean INTVAL, and 'J'
mean Parrot Interpreter.
<http://xrl.us/foia>
builtin infix multis
Leo added support for MMD on infix multis.
<http://xrl.us/foib>
touch vs utime
Chip asked if there was a reason that the TOUCH variable doesn't use
utime. Michael G Schwern suggested ExtUtils::Command. Steve Peters
points out that utime will only work on existant files.
<http://xrl.us/foic>
make imcc.l for modern flex
Chip opened a TODO for updating imcc.l to modern flex.
<http://xrl.us/foid>
OS X build broken
Will Coleda reports that the build is broken on OS X with undefined
symbols. Leo found the cause and reverted it.
<http://xrl.us/foie> -- problem
<http://xrl.us/foif> -- solution
SVN switch
After much debate, the decision to switch from CVS to SVN has been made.
The move will be accompanied by a removal of ICU as a dependency. Good
progress has been made on that front.
<http://xrl.us/foig>
<http://xrl.us/foih> -- progress
MD5 on 64 bits
Nick Glencross has been hard at work trying to fix the MD5 library for
64 bits systems. It would be easier if he had access to one.
<http://xrl.us/foii>
Python Version Guesswork
Ron Blaschke noticed that activestate python reports its build as 2.4
instead of 2.4.0. He provided a patch to account for this.
<http://xrl.us/foij>
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-
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-22 through 2005-04-05
by Matt Fowles