Perl 6 Archives

Perl 6 Advent Calendar 2018 Call for Authors

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Every year since 2009, the Perl 6 community publishes a Perl 6 advent calendar, in the form of blog posts on perl6advent.wordpress.com.

To keep up this great tradition, we need 24 blog posts, and volunteers who write them. If you want to contribute a blog post about anything related to Perl 6, please add your name (and potentially also a topic already) to the schedule, and if you don't yet have a login on the advent blog, please tell Zoffix or someone on #perl6 IRC chat your email address so that they can send you an invitation to Wordpress for the site.

Perl 6 advent blog posts should be finished the day before they are due, and published on midnight (UTC) of the due date as publishing date.

If you have any questions, or want to discuss blog post ideas, please join on the #perl6 IRC channel on irc.freenode.org.

A Request to Larry Wall to Create a Language Name Alias for Perl 6

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I (Zoffix Znet) am writing this document to Larry Wall to request the creation of a second name for the "Perl 6" language. This name is not a rename of the language, but is simply an alternative name, an alias. Similar to how TimToady is an alias for Larry Wall.

It's been a year and a half since the time when I first re-opened this issue with a blog post, and in this document, I compiled the argumentation for creation of the alias, the community suggestions for what that alias might look like, along with the observations of discussions on the topic that occured during that time period.

I ask that Larry Wall renders his decision on the alias by November 1, 2018, so we would have the time to create proper informational materials for the 6.d language release, during which time, the name alias would be officially announced, if one is chosen.

Community Alias

The original idea for the alias came in the form of creating a "marketing alias", for markets where Perl "is a swear word." However, I believe such an alias has a more immediate application closer to home, by improving the wellbeing of the existing community and the interactions of its members with other programming communities, including the Perl 5 community.

The idea of Perl 6 was birthed in the form of the community rewrite of the Perl language. This name alias, then, is the Community Alias for that language.

Reasoning for Alias

The current language name "Perl 6" comes with a set of built-in assumptions that do not apply either to the language or to currently-available compilers for it. The assumptions encoded in the name are:

  • It is similar to earlier Perl language (and thus comes with all the negative connotations attributed to it)
  • It is the next version of Perl language
  • It is faster, more stable, and "better" than earlier Perl language

In reality, what we have is an entirely brand new language. Different, and with all the caveats typical of brand new software.

Similarity

Other than the "spirit" some claim the Perl 5 and Perl 6 languages share, they're dissimilar in many ways.

$ perl  -e 'print "I am a Perl ", "0" && 6||5, " program\n"'
I am a Perl 5 program
$ perl6 -e 'print "I am a Perl ", "0" && 6||5, " program\n"'
I am a Perl 6 program

In Perl 5 you choose your own OO system, concurrency/parallelism system, your list processing utilities, etc; in Perl 6, many of these features are a large part of the standard language itself. In Perl 5, you're told to never use threads; in Perl 6, even an empty program is multi-threaded (JIT runs on a separate thread). In Perl 5, lists autoflatten; In Perl 6, they don't and you have a choice of multiple core list types.

Thus, we lose on two fronts: those who love Perl 5 and come to Perl 6 get disappointed because they get a different language; and those who hate Perl 5 never bother trying out Perl 6, assuming it's the same language they hate.

Next Version

The naming of "Perl 6" has a strong suggestion that "6" is the version number rather than a part of the name. Some suggested it's easy to explain this caveat of naming, but my personal experience was quite the opposite of that. First, it's hard to wedge this information during a real-time meatspace conversation:

— What are you working on?
— Writing an AI for a game in Python.
— You?
— Hacking on Rasperry Pi with C.
— You?
— Making a media center for my car in Perl 6. YES. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF PERL, BUT PERL 6 IS NOT PERL BUT A RELATED LANGUAGE.
— ...

Second, even after you make that clarification, people still continue to shorten the name to just Perl ("You're the Perl guy, right?"). Moreover, some media, such as banners and posters, often do not allow for adding a suitable clarification.

Lastly, similar shortening of the name occurs with some software, such as DuckDuckGo search engine producing results for Perl 5 instead of Perl 6 when searching for "perl6 argv".

The biggest issue here, however, is the relationship with the Perl 5 community. The mere existence of a "Perl 6" language paints Perl 5 as obsolete. While the Perl 6 community has to make clarifications to distance itself from Perl 5's negatives that don't apply to Perl 6, the Perl 5 community must make the same clarifications just to convince people they're not dead. This brews understandable animosity towards Perl 6.

The Perl 5 language is effectively blocked from releasing the next "major version", because Perl 6 is squatting on it. And were Perl 5 to release a "Perl 7", that would immediatelly paint Perl 6 as obsolete. The lack of any established alternate names leaves Perl 6 vulnerable to such a scenario.

Thus, we have three community issues: difficulty for community to explain what language they're using; difficulty for community to find information about the language; and difficulty of amicable existence beside the Perl 5 community.

Speed and Stability

The Christmas release of Perl 6 came with a caveat that it's the language spec that's stable now, and the compiler itself needed more work. That is exactly the sort of a caveat you'd expect to come with a brand new language.

However, our brand new language is not named that way. The current name suggests it's the next version of Perl and thus it should be slightly different, and faster and more stable. None of which is currently true. By using the name to associate ourselves so closely with Perl 5, we effectively set a performance target to surpass. Yet, due to how new our language is, there is still a lot of work needed to reach that target, and due to significant differences between the languages, some of these targets might not be met when comparing exactly the same constructs (e.g. Perl 6 regexes produce a much more complex data structure—a tree of Match objects).

Thus, by mislabeling our brand new language with a next-version language, we suffer disproportionally when our compiler does not perform as well or is not as stable as a well-established language.

Summary

In summation, the name "Perl 6" is a misrepresentation. It's a wrong label on a can. It causes friction within the broad Perl community and confusion or difficulty when communicating with those outside the Perl community.

It sets incorrect expectations of performance, stability, and features of the language.

It is detrimental to our future.

No Full Rename

While numerous members of the community would have liked to see a full language rename, there are also those who believe a full rename would be detrimental. The full rename at this point in time is also a lot more challenging due to the existence of books, websites, documentation, environmental variables, and dynamic variables in the language—all with the name "Perl" in them.

As such, we are creating an alias only. One that does not have any reference to Perl in it (i.e. no "Perl++"). If another name is truly as superior as the full-rename proponents claim it would be, I believe the alias can become a defacto name through its sheer amount of use. Thus, the creation of the alias can be seen as a means for the full-rename proponents to prove their claims.

References

What follows are references to real-world examples of confusion and problems due to the current name, additional community discussions on the naming along with suggestions for what that name can be, and other resources relevant to the topic.

Naming Confusion

The (parentheticals) indicate what issue was encountered in an item. The issues refer to issues examined in Reasoning for Alias section above.

Naming Suggestions

Other

Conclusion

With the 6.d release around the corner, we have approached the point where a direct request to Larry Wall is made with the matter of assuaging the problem of the naming of the language.

Through a year and a half worth of discussions, we came to a conclusion that a second name to the language should be created, as opposed to a full rename. This will let the proponents of a rename to prove their claims, without severely upsetting those who believe the current name is beneficial.

This document presented argumentation for why a second name is beneficial, as well as compiled the discussions and suggestions that occured during that year and a half.

It is now up to TimToady to reach the final decision on whether the official alias is to be created during the 6.d language release and what that alias is to be.

See you at the 6.d release party! Bring your own virtual beer.

The 100 Day Plan: The Update on Perl 6.d Preparations

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Today's is a milestone of sorts: it's 100 days before the first scheduled Rakudo Perl 6 compiler release that will occur after this year's festival of Diwali. As some know, Diwali is also the code name for the next major release of the Perl 6 language, version 6.d, which means there's a high chance that in about 100 days you'll be able to install and use that.

I figured, I'd write a update on the subject.

When?

The oft-asked questions is when is 6.d going to be released. The plan is to have the 6.d specification good and ready to release on this year's Diwali, which is November 6–7.

About 10 days later the Rakudo compiler will be released (compiler-only, not the Rakudo Star), with 6.d language enabled by default. That is, you'll no longer need to use use v6.d.PREVIEW pragma to get 6.d features, and if you wish to get old, 6.c behaviour you'll need to use an explicit use v6.c pragma.

However, there's a ton of work to do and the work is largely done by volunteers, so we have no compunction about delaying the release of any of the deliverables indefinitely, if the need arises.

What?

The 6.d major version of the Perl 6 programming language includes over 3,400 new commits in its specification. The vast majority of these are clarifications to 6.c spec. In other words, most of these define previously undefined behaviour, rather than specify entirely new features.

Many of the clarifications and new features do not conflict with the 6.c specification. If you're using the Rakudo compiler, you are likely already reaping some of the benefits of the 6.d language, as such things do not require explicit use v6.d.PREVIEW pragma.

Those who've seen the 6.d Teasers frequently ask for the full list of 6.d changes. That list does not yet exist, as the spec is still in the process of being reviewed. The changelog will be available some time in October. You may have seen the 6.d prep repo, but that just contains guiding info for coredevs and isn't descriptive of the actual 6.d content.

The aforementioned ton of work includes:

  • Still have to review about 2,100 spec commits
  • Still have ~95% of ChangeLog to write
  • Still have to implement, 7 TODO features, costing 110 hours
  • Still have 0.3 policies to write (a draft already exists, but needs polishing)
  • Review and spec of any new features that were implemented in Rakudo but were not specced in the language
  • Marketing stuff regarding creation of marketing name alias for the language

The Future

Going forward for future language releases, I foresee us doing a point release every 6 months, and 6.e being released 2 or 3 years after 6.d. The previously 6.d-blocking Issue R#1289 still blocks a number of language changes, and all the 6.d changes blocked by that Issue were pushed to later language versions. So, if that Issue is resolved, that will likely be a reason to cut a language release soon thereafter.

Conclusion

The prep work for next major release of the Perl 6 Programming Language version 6.d (Diwali) is in a high gear. There's lots of work to do. Will likely release spec on November 7th, with compiler release following step and being released about 2 weeks after that. The list of changes will be ready in October and does not currently exist in any user-consumable form.

Let the hype begin \o/

-Ofun

Introducing: Perl 6 Marketing Assets Web App

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As some of you already may have known from occasional tweets and mentions in the Weekly, we have a perl6/marketing repo that contains some flyers and brochures for Perl 6.

With one of the Perl 6 coredevs making a living as a Multi-Media Designer, the repo has seen a steady stream of new pieces designed, when inspiration strikes, or when someone makes a request. There are now several pieces available, but GitHub isn't the greatest interface for this sort of stuff.

Introducing marketing.perl6.org

To make it easier to see what we have available, we made a front-end for our marketing repo, that lets you browse all of the assets. It's hosted at marketing.perl6.org

The Assets

Under the thumbnail of each asset, there are a few buttons that show you which formats are available for download. The last two buttons are the GitHub button and the pencil button. The former will lead you to GitHub to the folder that particular asset is at, where you can download any files that aren't shown on the front end (e.g. the source files). The latter will lead you to the New Issue page on the marketing repo, with title/ID of the piece pre-filled. This is in case you'd like to request different format, size, or some other changes for that piece.

Each piece has an ID number (a Unix timestamp, e.g 1516098660). If you want to refer to some piece, try to include its ID, as that's the easiest way for the designer to know what piece you're talking about.

INB4, the Camelia logo variants are so numerous because the rules allow for her colours to be changed. Personally, I prefer transparent wings, as they're easier on my retinas than the default logo.

Keep in mind, you can request new pieces as well. Just file a new Issue in the marketing repo, describing the content that you want, including the sizes/colour restrictions, and our volunteers will hook you up.

The Prints

While files themselves are easy to make for free, the same isn't the case for hard copies. We (the volunteers handling the marketing repo) can't print any hardcopies for you. Unless you are able to use a local printing company and pay out of your own pocket, your best bet would be to contact The Perl Foundation and ask them if they can sponsor the prints. I know they made prints of the Introducing Perl 6 brochure for a conference in the past.

Licenses

The assets shown in the marketing web app are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The Camelia logo is copyright by Larry Wall. Some of the pieces use purchased stock, which may have licenses that limit super-large print runs (50,000+ copies). Check the files in the repo or contact Zoffix if you have an unusual usecase for the materials and wish to clarify the licensing.

The source files (InDesign/PhotoShop/Adobe Illustrator) themselves can be modified freely, under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Any images/fonts/other assets used by those source files might have additional licensing restrictions, which will usually be noted in the directory for that asset.

Conclusion

Going out for some tech meetup? Print out a few pieces from our marketing web app, hand them out, share the Perl 6 love!

-Ofun

Talk Slides and Recording: "Intro Into Perl 6 Regexes and Grammars"

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Last week I gave a "Intro Into Perl 6 Regexes and Grammars" talk at the Toronto Perl Mongers, whom I thank for letting me speak.

For google hangout that is usually set up, we got to use the fancy equipment provided by the company that was letting us use their space. Unfortunately, it's currently unclear if the hangout was recorded and if there would be a video of the talk.

So, I figured I'd make a screencast of the talk. You won't get some of the discussions that occurred during the meeting, but the content of the talk itself is pretty much identical.

You can view the slides at https://tpm-regex.perl6.party/ and the screencast of the talk is on YouTube:

Talk Slides and Recording: "Faster Perl 6 Programs"

Read this article on Rakudo.Party

Last week I gave a "Faster Perl 6 Programs" talk at the Toronto Perl Mongers, whom I thank for letting me speak.

For google hangout that is usually set up, we got to use the fancy equipment provided by the company that was letting us use their space. Unfortunately, it's currently unclear if the hangout was recorded and if there would be a video of the talk.

So, I figured I'd make a screencast of the talk. You won't get some of the discussions that occurred during the meeting, but the content of the talk itself is pretty much identical.

You can view the slides at https://tpm-perf.perl6.party/ and the screencast of the talk is on YouTube:

Cancellation of Perl 6 Constants and Rationals Grant

I've requested The Perl Foundation to cancel my currently running grant "Perl 6 Bugfixing and Performance of Rationals / Fixing Constraints on Constants" on the grounds that a more detailed investigation into proposed features that occurred during the course of the grant showed many of them to be unwanted or unimplementable.

Since any further grant's work now differs significantly from what the TPF and community voted on, I prefer to cancel the grant and perform any of the remaining work on a volunteer basis, whenever I get a chance.

No payments will be made for any of the completed work to date and it is to be deemed to have been performed on a volunteer basis.

Summary of Changes from Original Proposal and Reasons for Cancellation

  1. The originally promised MidRat type is not going to be implemented. It was deemed to be likely a bad idea, as was described in my May Grant Report

  2. The original proposal claimed Rats with larger-than-64-bit denominators resulted in precision loss in certain operations. Further investigation revealed that the actual cause of apparent precision loss were were bugs in Num stringification precision (now-fixed by my Grisu3 algo work) and the implementation of Rational.Str method (now largely fixed by another person).

  3. Some of the originally hoped-for performance improvements due to nativization of denominator of Rat might not be achieved. In MidRat-less paradigm, the Rat type can have a denominator larger than 64-bits under some conditions, making native types unsuitable to hold it. In addition, Rakudo currently boxes native types returned from methods, and until that is avoided, switching to native types would likely be detrimental to performance.

  4. ZeroDenominatorRational role was unimplementable. While the original grant proposal speculated that might be the case, it took me almost no time to hit a roadblock with this approach, making it a largely irrelevant item on the original proposal.

  5. Normalization of Zero Denominator Rationals was promised on the proposal, but is blocked by 6.c language specification. Additionally, it's blocked from being changed in 6.d specification due to a rule that requires at least one working implementation of a feature, and it cannot be implemented in Rakudo yet, as we currently lack a mechanism to discern caller's language version.

  6. Lastly, the bonus work that was promised would require me learning a bunch of new things about MoarVM. While that's doable, there are much more pressing matters that I could tend to instead—such as Rakudo's stability and spec compliance on Windows and preparation for 6.d language release.

In conclusion, I believe were this grant to be completed, the result would differ significantly from what was voted on during grant's proposal. For that reason, I wish to cancel it. The remaining work on the grant that is still doable will be performed by me on a volunteer basis, when the time allows.

The Missing Contributors of Perl 6

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Today, I came across a reddit post from a couple months back, from a rather irate person claiming themselves to be possibly the only person to never receive any credit for their work on Perl 6.

I was aware that person committed at least one commit and knowing the contributors list is generated automagically with a script, I thought to myself "Well, that's clear and provable bullshit." And I went to prove it.

Moar No More

I looked up the commit I knew about, looked at the release announcement for the release it went into and… that person was indeed missing! It was the 2017.02 release, which I released. So what was going on? Did I have an alter-ego that shamelessly erased random people from the contrib list without my having any memory of it?!

First, a brief intro on how the contrib script works: it uses git to look up commits in checkouts of 5 repos: Rakudo, NQP, MoarVM, Docs, and Roast. Until December 2016 the script just used the day of the release as last release, which was later switched to using the timestamp on the Rakudo's tag. The script gathers all the contributors from commits, crunches the names through the names map in CREDITS files in the repos, and it spits out the names ordered by the number of commits made, largest first.

I set out to figure out why a person was missing from the release announcement. After digging through commits, CREDITS files, and tracing the code in the contributor generating script, I found out that in September 2016, I introduced a bug into the contributors script. After some refactoring I accidentally left out MoarVM repository from the list of repos the script searches, so all the contributors to the MoarVM since September 2016 were missing! Since many of them also contribute to the other 4 repos, it was harder to spot that something was wrong.

I filed the problem as R#2024 and left it at that for the time being.

Missing More

I started working on the problem and implemented a new feature in the contributors script that lets you look up contributors for past releases. Neat! So let's try it out for some release before my bug was made, shall we?

I ran the contrib script for 2016.08 relase and then ran another script that diffed the names from that output against what is on the release announcement. The output was:

Announcement has these extra names: David Warring
Contrib script has these extra names: Arne Skjærholt, Bart Wiegmans

The announcement had an extra name and was missing two. The way the contrib script figures out when one release ends and another starts is iffy, especially so in the past. There's a gap of about a day where contributors can slip through: e.g. release manager runs the release at 2PM, someone commits at 3PM, and that commit didn't make it into this release and will be included in the next, or might even be missed entirely.

So that was one problem I noticed. Is that where the difference for 2016.08 release names list comes from? Let's try the earliest post-The-Christmas release: 2016.01-RC1

Announcement has these extra names: Andy Weidenbaum, Lloyd Fournier, skids
Contrib script has these extra names: A. Sinan Unur, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev,
Brad Gilbert, Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Bruce Gray, Carl Masak,
Christian Bartolomäus, Christopher Bottoms, Claudio Ramirez, Dale Evans,
Dave Olszewski, David Brunton, Fritz Zaucker, Jake Russo, James ( Jeremy )
Carman, Jeffrey Goff, Jim Davis, John Gabriele, LLFourn, Marcel Timmerman,
Martin Dørum Nygaard, Neil Shadrach, Salvador Ortiz, Shlomi Fish, Siavash
Askari Nasr, Stéphane Payrard, Sylvain Colinet, Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer,
Zoffix Znet, fireartist, sylvarant, vinc17fr

That's huge! One name stood out to me in that list—and it isn't my own—it was that same person from reddit who was complaining that they don't get credit. They got left out twice: in 2016.01 and again in 2017.02. No wonder they're pissed off, but I wish they would've said something in 2016.01, so we'd've fixed the Missing Persons issues back then instead of now.

The 2016.02 release has a bunch of missing names as well. I can surmise the cause of the issue is a previously fixed mis-implementation of the contributors script where it'd be quiet if some of the repo checkouts were missing. Neither I (until that point), nor earlier release managers had all of at the right locations the script was expecting, so it's possible that's how some repos were missed.

At the time, I assumed only the docs repo was missing and we credited missing Docs contributors in the 2016.08 announcement. However, now I realize that other release managers likely had different directory setups and thus missed different sets of people.

The Future

Thus, we have identified four issues with the way contributor's script is or has been generating the list of contributors:

  • Relying on the time when the release manager runs the contributor script, potentially creating a gap of unrecorded contributions between the time the script is run and the time the next run of contrib script considers as "last release"
  • Relying on release manager's setup of directories/repos. Even after a previous fix in this area, we're still relying on the release manager to have up-to-date checkouts of repos
  • Missing contributors from entire repositories due to unnoticed bug in the code
  • What happens with commits made at the time of past release in a branch that is merged at the time of the next release? Do they get lost?

I'm taking the lazy way out and leaving it to the current release managers to resolve these problems. I filed R#2028 with the list of issues and have full trust the solution that will be implemented will be suitable :)

The Found

And now, of course, the list of previously unsung heros who made Perl 6 better in the past two and a half years, in alphabetical order. I've also added them to our past release announcements.

It's possible this list includes the missing-found from 2016.08 announcement as well as people who were not logged in the CREDITS file in the past but are now, but I figure it's better to list them twice than none at all.

If you still believe we're missing someone, let us know so the problem can be fixed.

2016.01/2016.01-RC1

A. Sinan Unur, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev, Brad Gilbert, Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Bruce Gray, Carl Masak, Christian Bartolomäus, Christopher Bottoms, Claudio Ramirez, Dale Evans, Daniel Perrett, Dave Olszewski, David Brunton, Fritz Zaucker, Jake Russo, James ( Jeremy ) Carman, Jeffrey Goff, Jim Davis, John Gabriele, LLFourn, Marcel Timmerman, Martin Dørum Nygaard, Neil Shadrach, Salvador Ortiz, Shlomi Fish, Siavash Askari Nasr, Stéphane Payrard, Sylvain Colinet, Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer, Zoffix Znet, fireartist, raiph, sylvarant, vinc17fr

2016.02

Bart Wiegmans, Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Daniel Perrett, David Brunton, Eric de Hont, Fritz Zaucker, Marcel Timmerman, Nat, Pepe Schwarz, Robert Newbould, Shlomi Fish, Simon Ruderich, Steve Mynott, Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer, gotoexit, raiph, sylvarant

2016.03

Ahmad M. Zawawi, Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev, Bahtiar kalkin- Gadimov, Bart Wiegmans, Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Claudio Ramirez, Emeric54, Eric de Hont, Jake Russo, John Gabriele, LLFourn, Mathieu Gagnon, Paul Cochrane, Siavash Askari Nasr, Zoffix Znet, jjatria, okaoka, sylvarant

2016.04

Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Christopher Bottoms, David H. Adler, Donald Hunter, Emeric54, Itsuki Toyota, Jan-Olof Hendig, John Gabriele, Mathieu Gagnon, Nick Logan, Simon Ruderich, Tom Browder, Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer, Zoffix Znet

2016.05

Aleks-Daniel Jakimenko-Aleksejev, Brian Duggan, Brian S. Julin, Brock Wilcox, Christopher Bottoms, Clifton Wood, Coleoid, Dabrien 'Dabe' Murphy, Itsuki Toyota, Jan-Olof Hendig, Jason Cole, John Gabriele, Mathieu Gagnon, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Siavash Askari Nasr, Sterling Hanenkamp, Steve Mynott, Tadeusz “tadzik” Sośnierz, VZ, Wenzel P. P. Peppmeyer, Will Coleda

2016.06

(contrib script missing repos issue is fixed around this point, so the number of missing persons drops. Remaining ones are likely the ones that fell into the gap between releases; particularly MoarVM and docs contributors)

Itsuki Toyota, Matthew Wilson, Will Coleda, parabolize

2016.07

Bart Wiegmans, Brian S. Julin, Daniel Perrett, David Warring, Dominique Dumont, Itsuki Toyota, thundergnat

2016.08

Arne Skjærholt, Bart Wiegmans

2016.09

(missing MoarVM bug is introed at this point; we start to see the missing MoarVM devs who mostly work on MoarVM and not other repos. Also a bunch of docs people who likely fell into the gap between releases)

Alexey Melezhik, Bart Wiegmans, Paul Cochrane

2016.10

Brent Laabs, Jimmy Zhuo, Steve Mynott

2016.11

Bart Wiegmans, Itsuki Toyota, Jimmy Zhuo, Mark Rushing

2016.12

Bart Wiegmans, Jimmy Zhuo, LemonBoy, Nic Q, Reini Urban, Tobias Leich, ab5tract

2017.01

Antonio Quinonez, Jimmy Zhuo, M. Faiz Zakwan Zamzuri

2017.02

A. Sinan Unur, Bart Wiegmans, Benny Siegert, Jeff Linahan, Jimmy Zhuo, Lucas Buchala, M. Faiz Zakwan Zamzuri

2017.03

Jonathan Scott Duff, Lucas Buchala, Moritz Lenz

2017.04

Bart Wiegmans, eater

2017.05

Bart Wiegmans, Paweł Murias

2017.06

Bart Wiegmans, Jimmy Zhuo, Oleksii Varianyk, Paweł Murias, Robert Lemmen, gerd

2017.07

Bart Wiegmans, Douglas Schrag, Gerd Pokorra, Lucas Buchala, Paweł Murias, gerd

2017.08

Bart Wiegmans, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Douglas L. Schrag, Jimmy Zhuo, Mario, Mark Montague, Nadim Khemir, Paul Smith, Paweł Murias, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Ronald Schmidt, Steve Mynott, Sylvain Colinet, rafaelschipiura, ven

2017.09

Bart Wiegmans, Dan Zwell, Itsuki Toyota, Jan-Olof Hendig, Jimmy Zhuo, Mario, Paweł Murias, Rafael Schipiura, Skarsnik, Will Coleda, smls

2017.10

Bart Wiegmans, Jimmy Zhuo, Joel, Julien Simonet, Justin DeVuyst, M, Mario, Martin Ryan, Moritz Lenz, Patrick Sebastian Zimmermann, Paweł Murias, bitrauser, coypoop, eater, mryan, smls

2017.11

Bart Wiegmans, Jimmy Zhuo, Martin Barth, Patrick Zimmermann, Paweł Murias

2017.12

Bart Wiegmans, Paweł Murias, Stefan Seifert, brian d foy

2018.01

Bart Wiegmans, Daniel Dehennin, Paweł Murias, Stefan Seifert, Will Coleda

2018.02

Bart Wiegmans, Daniel Green, Paweł Murias, cygx, wukgdu

2018.03

Bart Wiegmans

2018.04

Bart Wiegmans, Paweł Murias, cc, gerd

2018.05

Antonio, Bart Wiegmans, elenamerelo

2018.06

Bart Wiegmans, JJ Merelo

Conclusion

So this was quite a fun investigation and hopefully all the missing people have been found and this is the last missing-found persons list we compile.

The most important lesson, however, is: report problems as soon as you find them. We could've fixed this at the start of 2016, and those who knew they were left out could've saved two years of being upset about it.

-Ofun

Perl 6 Colonpairoscopy

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If I were to pick the most ubiquitous construct in the Perl 6 programming language, it'd most definitely be the colonpair. Hash constructors, named arguments and parameters, adverbs, and regex modifiers—all involve the colonpair. It's not surprising that with such breadth there would be many shortcuts when it comes to constructing colonpairs.

Today, we'll learn about all of those! Doing so will have us looking at the simplest as well as some of the more advanced language constructs, so if parts of this article make you scratch your head, don't worry—you don't have to learn all of it at once!

PART I: Creation

Colonwhaaaa?

The colonpair gets its name from (usually) being a Pair object constructor and (usually) having a colon in it. Here are some examples of colonpairs:

:foo,
:$bar,
:meow<moo>,
heh => hah

The last one doesn't have a colon in it, but since it's basically the same thing as other colonpairs, I personally consider it a colonpair as well.

We can see the colonpairs make Pair objects by dumping their .^namemethodname):

say :foo.^name; # OUTPUT: «Pair␤»

However, when used in argument lists, the colonpairs are specially handled to represent named arguments. We'll get to that part later in the article.

The Shortcuts

Here's a mostly-complete list of available ways to write a colonpair you can glance over before we dive in. I know, it looks like a huge list, but that's why we're reading this article—to learn the general patterns that make up all of these permutations.

# Standard, take-any-type, non-shortcut form
:nd(2).say;             # OUTPUT: «nd => 2␤»
:foo('foo', 'bar').say; # OUTPUT: «foo => (foo bar)␤»
:foo( %(:42a, :foo<a b c>) ).say;
# OUTPUT: «foo => {a => 42, foo => (a b c)}␤»

# Can use fat-arrow notation too:
# (parentheses around them are here just for the .say call)
(nd => 2).say; # OUTPUT: «nd => 2␤»
(foo => ('foo', 'bar') ).say; # OUTPUT: «foo => (foo bar)␤»
(foo => %(:42a, :foo<a b c>) ).say;
# OUTPUT: «foo => {a => 42, foo => (a b c)}␤»

# Booleans
:foo .say; # OUTPUT: «foo => True␤»
:!foo.say; # OUTPUT: «foo => False␤»

# Unsigned integers:
:2nd   .say; # OUTPUT: «nd => 2␤»
:1000th.say; # OUTPUT: «th => 1000␤»

# Strings and Allomorphs (stings that look like numbers are Str + numeric type)
:foo<bar>      .say; # OUTPUT: «foo => bar␤»
:bar<42.5>     .say; # OUTPUT: «bar => 42.5␤»
:bar<42.5>.perl.say; # OUTPUT: «:bar(RatStr.new(42.5, "42.5"))␤»

# Positionals
:foo['foo', 42.5] .say; # A mutable Array:   OUTPUT: «foo => [foo 42.5]␤»
:foo<foo bar 42.5>.say; # An immutable List: OUTPUT: «foo => (foo bar 42.5)␤»
# angled brackets give you allomorphs!

# Callables
:foo{ say "Hello, World!" }.say;
# OUTPUT: «foo => -> ;; $_? is raw { #`(Block|82978224) ... }␤»

# Hashes; keep 'em simple so it doesn't get parsed as a Callable
:foo{ :42a, :foo<a b c> }.say; # OUTPUT: «foo => {a => 42, foo => (a b c)}␤»

# Name and value from variable
:$foo;  # same as :foo($foo)
:$*foo; # same as :foo($*foo)
:$?foo; # same as :foo($?foo)
:$.foo; # same as :foo($.foo)
:$!foo; # same as :foo($!foo)
:@foo;  # same as :foo(@foo)
:@*foo; # same as :foo(@*foo)
:@?foo; # same as :foo(@?foo)
:@.foo; # same as :foo(@.foo)
:@!foo; # same as :foo(@!foo)
:%foo;  # same as :foo(%foo)
:%*foo; # same as :foo(%*foo)
:%?foo; # same as :foo(%?foo)
:%.foo; # same as :foo(%.foo)
:%!foo; # same as :foo(%!foo)
:&foo;  # same as :foo(&foo)
:&*foo; # same as :foo(&*foo)
:&?foo; # same as :foo(&?foo)
:&.foo; # same as :foo(&.foo)
:&!foo; # same as :foo(&!foo)

Let's break these up and take a closer look!

Standard, Take-any-Type, Non-Shortcut Form

The "standard" form of the colonpair consists of a colon (:), a valid term that functions as the .key of the created Pair object, and then a set of parentheses inside of which is the expression with the .value for the Pair:

:nd(2).say;                       # OUTPUT: «nd => 2␤»
:foo('foo', 'bar').say;           # OUTPUT: «foo => (foo bar)␤»
:foo( %(:42a, :foo<a b c>) ).say;
# OUTPUT: «foo => {a => 42, foo => (a b c)}␤»

As long as the key is a valid identifier, all other forms of colonpairs can be written using this way. And for non-valid identifiers, you can simply use the .new method—Pair.new('the key','value')—or the "fat arrow" syntax.

Fat Arrow Syntax

If you ever used Perl 5, you need no introductions to this syntax: you write the key—which will get auto-quoted if it's a valid identifier, so in those cases you can omit the quotes—then you write => and then you write the value. The quotes around the key are required if the key is not a valid identifier and the fat arrow is the only operator-involved syntax that will let you construct Pairs with such keys:

# (outer parentheses are here just for the .say call)
(nd => 2).say; # OUTPUT: «nd => 2␤»
(foo => ('foo', 'bar') ).say; # OUTPUT: «foo => (foo bar)␤»
(foo => %(:42a, :foo<a b c>) ).say;
# OUTPUT: «foo => {a => 42, foo => (a b c)}␤»
("the key" => "the value").say; # OUTPUT: «the key => the value␤»

There are some extra rules with how this form behaves in argument lists as well as sigilless variables and constants, which we'll see later in the article.

Boolean Shortcut

Now we start getting into shortcuts! What would the most common use of named parameters be? Probably, to specify boolean flags.

It'd be pretty annoying to always have to write those as :foo(True), so there's a shortcut: simply omit the value entirely, and if you want :foo(False), omit the value and put the negation operator) right after the colon:

# Booleans
:foo .say; # OUTPUT: «foo => True␤»
:!foo.say; # OUTPUT: «foo => False␤»

# Equivalent calls:
some-sub :foo :!bar :ber;
some-sub foo => True, bar => False, ber => True;

The shortcut form is a lot shorter. This is also the form you may see in adverbs and regex syntax, such as the :g adverb on the m// quoter and :s/:!s significant whitespace modifier inside the regex:

say "a b c def g h i" ~~ m:g/:s \S \S [:!s \S \s+ \S]/;
# OUTPUT: «(「a b c d」 「f g h i」)␤»

Here's also another trick from my personal bag: since Bool type is an Int, you can use boolean shortcuts to specify Int values 1 and 0:

# set `batch` to `1`:
^4 .race(:batch).map: { sleep 1 };
say now - ENTER now; # OUTPUT: «1.144883␤»

However, for clarity you may wish to use unsigned integer colonpair shortcut instead, which isn't much longer.

Unsigned Integer Shortcut

The Perl 6 programming language lets you grab an nth match when you're matching stuff with a regex:

say "first second third" ~~ m:3rd/\S+/;
# OUTPUT: «「third」␤»

As you can probably surmise by now, the :3rd after the m in m// quoter is the adverb, written as a colonpair in unsigned integer shortcut. This form consist of a colon and the name of the key with unquoted unsigned integer value placed between them. No signs, no decimal dots, and not even underscore separators between digits are permitted.

The primary use of this shortcut is for things with ordinal suffixes like :1st, :2nd, :9th, etc. It offers great readability there, but personally I have no reservations about using this syntax for all unsigned integer values, regardless of what the name of the key is. It feels slightly offcolour when you first encounter such syntax, but it quickly grows on you:

some-sub :1st :2nd :3rd :42foo :100bar;
^4 .race(:1batch).map: { sleep 1 };

Hash/Array/Callable Shortcuts

Using standard colonpair format you may notice some forms are too parentheses-heavy:

:foo(<42>)                 # value is an IntStr allomorph
:foo(<a b c>)              # value is a List
:foo([<a b c>])            # value is an Array
:foo({:42foo, :100bar})    # value is a Hash
:foo({.contains: 'meows'}) # the value is a Callable

In these form, you can simply omit the outer parentheses and let the inner brackets and curlies do their job:

:foo<42>                   # value is an IntStr allomorph
:foo<a b c>                # value is a List
:foo[<a b c>]              # value is an Array
:foo{:42foo, :100bar}      # value is a Hash
:foo{.contains: 'meows'}   # the value is a Callable

It looks a lot cleaner and is simpler to write. Both the Hash and Callable use the same set of curlies and the same simple rules as used by the {…} construct elsewhere in the language: if the content is empty, or contains a single list that starts with a Pair literal or %-sigiled variable, and the $_ variable or placeholder parameters are not used, a Hash is created; otherwise a Block (Callable) is created.

The angle bracket form (:foo<…>) follows the same rules as the angle bracket quoter used elsewhere in the language:

:foo< 42  >.value.^name.say; # OUTPUT: «IntStr␤»
:foo<meows>.value.^name.say; # OUTPUT: «Str␤»
:foo<a b c>.value.^name.say; # OUTPUT: «List␤»

And keep in mind that these two forms are not equivalent:

:42foo
:foo<42>

The first creates an Int object, while the second one creates an IntStr object, which is an allomorph. This difference is important for things that care about object identity, such as set operators

Sigiled Shortcut

The one thing I find a pain in the bit to write in other languages is constructs like this:

my $the-thing-with-a-thing = …
…
some-sub the-thing-with-a-thing => $the-thing-with-a-thing;

It's fairly common to name your variables the same as some named argument to which you wish to pass that variable as a value. The Perl 6 programming language offers a colonpair shortcut precisely for that case. Simply prepend a colon to the variable name to construct a colonpair with the key named the same as the variable (without including the sigil) and the value being the value of that variable. The only catch is the variable must have a sigil, so you can't use this shortcut with sigilless variables or constants.

my $the-thing-with-a-thing = …
…
some-sub :$the-thing-with-a-thing;

You'll notice that the syntax above looks exactly like how you'd declare a parameter that takes such a named argument—consistency is a good thing. All available sigils and twigils are supported, which makes the full list of variants for this shortcut look something like this:

# Name and value from variable
:$foo;  # same as :foo($foo)
:$*foo; # same as :foo($*foo)
:$?foo; # same as :foo($?foo)
:$.foo; # same as :foo($.foo)
:$!foo; # same as :foo($!foo)
:@foo;  # same as :foo(@foo)
:@*foo; # same as :foo(@*foo)
:@?foo; # same as :foo(@?foo)
:@.foo; # same as :foo(@.foo)
:@!foo; # same as :foo(@!foo)
:%foo;  # same as :foo(%foo)
:%*foo; # same as :foo(%*foo)
:%?foo; # same as :foo(%?foo)
:%.foo; # same as :foo(%.foo)
:%!foo; # same as :foo(%!foo)
:&foo;  # same as :foo(&foo)
:&*foo; # same as :foo(&*foo)
:&?foo; # same as :foo(&?foo)
:&.foo; # same as :foo(&.foo)
:&!foo; # same as :foo(&!foo)

This about wraps up the list of currently available colonpair shortcuts. As you can see, the huge list of shortcuts was reduced to a few simple patterns to follow. However, this might not be all the shortcuts that will exist for all the time…

The Future!

While currently aren't available, the following two shortcuts might become part of the language in future language versions.

The first one is the indirect lookup shortcut. If you have a named variable and the name of that variable in another variable, you can access the value of the first variable using the indirect lookup construct:

my $foo = "bar";
my %bar = :42foo, :70bar;
say %::($foo); # OUTPUT: «{bar => 70, foo => 42}␤»

If you squint, the indirect lookup is sort'f like a sigilled variable and colonpair shortcuts for sigilled variables exist, so it makes sense for the language to be consistent and support indirect lookup colonpair shortcut, which would look something like this, where the value of $foo contains the name of the key for the colonpair.

:%::($foo)

This form is currently listed as simply unimplemented feature in R#1532, so it'll likely see life some day.

The second possible future construct is the :.foo form, which was proposed in RFC R#1462. This form calls method .foo on the $_ topical variable and uses the return value as the value for the created Pair, with the name of the method being the name of the key.

This form comes up semi-frequently when you're passing values of attributes of one object to another with similarly-named attributes, so something like this:

Some::Other.new: :foo(.foo) :bar(.bar) :ber(.ber) with $obj

Would in shortcut form be written like this:

Some::Other.new: :.foo :.bar :.ber with $obj

At the time of this writing, this RFC has been self-rejected, but you never know if there'd be more calls for introduction of this syntax.

PART II: Use

Now that we're familiar with how to write all the forms of colonpairs, let's take a look at some of their available uses, especially those with special rules.

Parameters

To specify that a parameter should be a named rather than a positional parameter, simply use the sigilled variable colonpair shortcut:

sub meow($foo, :$bar) {
    say "$foo is positional and $bar is named";
}
meow 42, :100bar; # 42 is positional and 100 is named
meow :100bar, 42; # 42 is positional and 100 is named

Since parameters need some sort of a variable to bind their stuff to, pretty much all other forms of colonpairs are not available for use in parameters. This means that you can't, for example, declare sigilless named parameters and must instead explicitly use the is raw trait to get the rawness:

sub meow (\foo, :$bar is raw) {
    (foo, $bar) = ($bar, foo)
}
my $foo = 42;
my $bar = 100;
meow $foo, :$bar;
say [$foo, $bar]; # OUTPUT: «[100 42]»

The one other colonpair form available in parameters is the standard form that is used for aliasing multiple named params to the same name and parameter descructuring:

sub meow (:st(:nd(:rd(:$nth))), Positional :list(($, $second, |))) {
    say [$nth, $second];
}
meow :3rd, :list<a b c>; # OUTPUT: «[3 b]»

Pro-tip: if you're using the Rakudo compiler you may wish to take it easy with aliasing. Using aliases more than 1 level deep will cause the compiler to switch to the slow-path binder, which, as the name suggests, is about 10x slower.

A trick you can use is to use more than one parameter, each with aliases at most 1 level deep, and then merge them in the body:

sub meow (:st(:$nd is copy), :rd(:$nth)) {
    $nd //= $nth;
}

Argument Lists

Use of colonpairs in argument lists deserves a separate section due to a rule that's subtle enough to earn a spot in language's traps section. The rule involves the problem that a programmer may wish to pass Pair objects in argument lists as either a named or a positional argument.

In majority of cases, the colonpairs will be passed as named arguments:

sub args {
    say "Positional args are: @_.perl()";
    say "Named      args are: %_.perl()";
}

args :foo, :50bar, e => 42;
# OUTPUT:
# Positional args are: []
# Named      args are: {:bar(50), :e(42), :foo}

To pass a Pair object as a positional argument, you can do any of the following:

  1. Wrap the entire colonpair in parentheses
  2. Call some method on the colonpair, such as .self or .Pair; weird stuff like using R meta op on the => operator applies as well
  3. Quote the key in foo => bar syntax
  4. In foo => bar syntax, use a key that is not a valid identifier
  5. Put your Pairs in a list and slip it in with the | "operator"

Here's that list of options in code form:

my @pairs := :42foo, :70meow;
args :foo.Pair, (:50bar), "baz" => "ber", e R=> 42, 42 => 42, |@pairs;

# OUTPUT:
# Positional args are: [:foo, :bar(50), :baz("ber"),
#   42 => 2.718281828459045e0, 42 => 42, :foo(42), :meow(70)]
# Named      args are: {}

Number (3) is especially worth keeping in mind if you're coming from other languages, like Perl 5, that use the fat arrow (=>) for key/value separation. This construct gets passed as a named argument only if the key is unquoted and only if it's a valid identifier.

Should it happen that you have to use one of these constructs, yet wish to pass them as named arguments instead of positionals, simply wrap them in parentheses and use the | prefix to "slip" them in. For the list of Pairs we were already slipping in in previous example, you'll need to coerce it into a Capture object first, as Pairs stuffed into a Capture—unlike a list—end up being named parameters, when the Capture is slipped into the argument list:

my @pairs := :42foo, :70meow;
args |(:foo.Pair), |(:50bar),   |("baz" => "ber"),
     |(e R=> 42),  |(42 => 42), |@pairs.Capture;

# OUTPUT:
# Positional args are: []
# Named      args are: {"42" => 42, :bar(50),
#                      :baz("ber"), :foo(42), :meow(70)}

The same slipping trick can be used to provide named arguments conditionally:

sub foo (:$bar = 'the default') { say $bar }

my $bar;
foo |(:bar($_) with $bar);  # OUTPUT: «the default␤»
$bar = 42;
foo |(:bar($_) with $bar);  # OUTPUT: «42␤»

If $bar is not defined, the with statement modifier will return Empty, which when slipped with | will end up being empty, allowing the parameter to attain its default value. Since |(:) looks like a sideways ninja, I call this technique "ninja-ing the arg".

Auto-Quoting in => Form

The sharp-eyed in the audience might have noticed the e => 42 colonpair in the previous section used letter e as a key, yet in reversed form e R=> 42, the e became 2.718281828459045e0, because the core language has e defined as Euler's number.

The reason it remained a plain string e in the e => 42 form is because this construct auto-quotes keys that are valid identifiers and so they will always end up as strings, even if a constant, a sigilless variable, or a routine with the same name exists:

my \meows = '🐱';
sub ehh { rand }
say %(
    meows => 'moo',
    ehh   => 42,
    τ     => 'meow',
); # OUTPUT: «{ehh => 42, meows => moo, τ => meow}␤»

A multitude of ways exist to avoid this autoquoting behaviour, but I'll show you just one that's good enough: slap a pair of parentheses around the key:

my \meows = '🐱';
sub ehh { rand }
say %(
    (meows) => 'moo',
    (ehh)   => 42,
    (τ)     => 'meow',
);
# OUTPUT: «{0.58437052771857 => 42, 6.283185307179586 => meow,
#           🐱 => moo}␤»

Simple!

Conclusion

That's pretty much all there is to know about colonpairs. We learned they can be used to construct Pair objects, used as adverbs, and used to specify named arguments and parameters.

We learned about various shortcuts, such as using key only for boolean True, sticking the negation operator or an unsigned integer between the colon and the key to specify boolean False or an Int value. We also learned that parentheses can be omited on colonpair values if there's already a set of curly, square, or angle brackets around the value and that prepending a colon to a sigilled variable name will create a colonpair that will use the name of that variable as the key.

In the second half of the article, we went over available colonpair syntaxes when specifying named paramaters, the pecularities in passing colonpairs as either named or positional arguments, as well as how to avoid auto-quoting of the key by wrapping it in parentheses.

I hope you found this informative.

-Ofun

Perl 6 CaR TPF Grant: Monthly Report (June, 2018)

This document is the June, 2018 progress report for The Perl Foundation's Perl 6 Constant and Rationals Grant.


Tangibles

The bonus deliverable "Perl 6 Numerics" Language documentation page was merged to master. It describes all of the available Perl 6 numerics, their interactions, suitability, and hierarchy.

The bulk of work on constants also has been merged to post-release-2018.06 branch, which will be merged to master after this month's release. I wrote 200 spec tests, available in S04-declarations/constant-6.d.t spec file, and about 500 words of documentation to cover this work.

Rationals

Since my last report, I first continued working on Rationals, focusing on three pieces of work that currently reside in car-grant-unreduce branch

  1. Fixing the rare data race and doing some optimizations
  2. Fixing bad math in some ops with Zero-Denominator Rationals (ZDRs)
  3. Attempting a trial implementation where ZDRs are marked with a role, allowing us to improve performance of some operators.

The (1) was successful and I already was able to optimized some ops due to Rationals being always reduced now: == was made 28% faster and === was made 52% faster. I also made creation of Rationals 19% faster and argless Rational.round 4.7x faster (used by .Str and .base).

The plan for (2) was to try normalization to <1/0>, <0/0>, <-1/0> and the hope was that alone would fix all math problems. However, after that change some issues still remained. Also, doing this normalization created a new problem where code like say 42 / 0 would throw an Exception with message "division of 1 by 0 attempted" which is quite confusing for users who did not internalize that / op with Int objects is really just a Rat constructor. The 6.c spec actually covers this exact scenario and expects the thrown Exception to report value 42 for numerator, thus blocking this change.

The first attempt at (3) ended with a dead-end. Marking ZDRs with a role created an extra dispatch ambiguity with some operators like cmp. We already had to disambiguate that op with is default marker to disambiguate between Rational and Real candidates, so now we'd need an is default of defaults trait :). I gave up on this for now, but will likely revisit and try again.

As you can see, the Rationals work was a mixed bag, so to experiment with the problem space a bit I decided to implement my own rationals outside of core from scratch. The work is available in zoffixznet/perl6-Rashnl repo, which might become an ecosystem module if it offers significantly better rationals.

I doubt the entirety of Rashnl could be made core, as my current approach does not involve separate roles at all and just has a single class with a flag for fattiness that marks what in core is a FatRat type. The primary purpose of that work is to experiment with code and learn some lessons that could be applicable for core Rationals and achieve the goals of this Grant.

Due to that detour for the Rationals work and more time to think required, I switched to the work on constants for the time being…

Constants

The bulk of the work on constants is now completed and has been merged to post-release-2018.06 branch, which will be merged to master after this month's release.

I wrote 200 spec tests, available in S04-declarations/constant-6.d.t spec file, about 500 words of documentation, and 8 commits of the implementation.

Except for native types, the type constraints are now enforced on constants. The auto-coercive behaviour for %- sigilled constants was blocked by one test in 6.c specification and so that behavior has been added to 6.d language and currently requires the use of use v6.d.PREVIEW pragma to enable (6.c behavior is to simply throw without any attempts to coerce, making constant %foo = :42foo, :70bar fail, because it's a List).

One of the remaining things for constants is improving error reporting for unsupported constructs. Most likely I will implement support for coercers—even though they're currently not available on variables, there should be no problem with executing them during constant creation.

The other remaining item is natively-typed constants. Currently, my int const foo = 42 actually does not create a natively-typed constant at all. I hope the knowledge I'll gain while implementing the Grant's bonus work for support of native-typed unsigned attributes will help me in implementing the natively-typed constants as well.

No Report for July / Further Work

As has been discussed with and approved by my grant manager, I plan to now take a month off working on this grant, so there will be no report in mid-July, and the next report will be in mid-August. I plan to take this time to work on resolving Rakudo's outstanding spectest issues on Windows and possibly resolving some of the open Issues with our community websites.

After that period, I will resume working on the grant, finishing the remaining work on constants, and then going back to Rationals, and finally finishing the bonus work with the natively-typed entities.

About Zoffix Znet

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