Perl 6 Summary for 2005-05-24 through 2005-05-31

Perl 6 Summary for  2005-05-24 through  2005-05-31
    All~

    Welcome to another Perl 6 summary, brought to you by Aliya's new
    friends, Masha Nannifer and Philippe, and my own secret running joke.
    Without further ado, I bring you Perl 6 Compiler.

  Perl 6 Compiler
   method chaining
    Alex Gutteridge discovered that he couldn't chain attribute access like
    " $bowl.fish.eyes.say; " in Pugs. Later he provided his example in test
    form (in case anyone wanted to add it). Maybe they were added to the
    test suite, maybe not: Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/f95k>

   Pugs link issues on Debian Sid
    BÁRTHÁZI András was having trouble making Pugs work on Debian Sid with
    perl 5 support. Autrijus provided helpful pointers. I assume from his
    final silence that the final pointer worked.

    <http://xrl.us/f95m>

   Pugs.AST.* compilation
    Samuel Bronson wanted to speed up the compilation of Pugs.AST.* modules
    by turning off optimizations. Autrijus told him that this was a core
    module that needed it speed, and optimizations would stay.

    <http://xrl.us/f95n>

   Pugs.Types export list
    Samuel Bronson added an export list to Pugs.Types. Autrijus happily
    applied it and send him a commit bit.

    <http://xrl.us/f95o>

   export withArgs from Main
    Samuel Bronson added an export to Main. Samuel Bronson happily applied
    it himself this time.

    <http://xrl.us/f95p>

   out-of-date hs-plugins
    Vadim was having trouble compiling Pugs with Parrot support. Autrijus
    helped him fix his problem, and there was much rejoicing.

    <http://xrl.us/f95q>

   chomp problem
    Jens Rieks found a problem with chomp and submitted a test. Warnock
    applies.

    <http://xrl.us/f95s>

   Pugs makefile issue
    Grégoire Péan noticed that pugs was creating a useless Pugs.exe.bat.
    Autrijus asked if he would be willing to investigate a patch. He
    responded that he would put it in his queue.

    <http://xrl.us/f95t>

   loop or do
    Gerd Pokorra wondered why " do { ... } " was in Pugs reasoning that "
    loop { ... } while " was the correct thing. Luke Palmer explained that "
    do { ... } " was part of the with or without a postfix " while ".

    <http://xrl.us/f95u>

   PxPerl 5.8.6.2 with Pugs 6.2.5 and Parrot 0.2.0
    Grégoire Péan announced that the release of PxPerl 5.8.6.2 which
    includes Pugs 6.2.5 and Parrot 0.2.0. This means that windows folk can
    test Pugs and Parrot without having to fight with compilers.

    <http://xrl.us/f95v>

   BUILD errors
    Carl Franks was confused by that handling of a named argument to a
    constructor. He asked for confirmation but none was provided. Perhaps
    this poor summary save him.

    <http://xrl.us/f95w>

   whitespace and function calls
    David D Zuhn didn't know that whitespace between and function call and
    its parentheses was forbidden. Carl told him that and about the " .() "
    variant which allows whitespace.

    <http://xrl.us/f95x>

   Pug's make cean issues LONG commands
    Carl Franks noticed that make clean issued a command so long that it
    broke his nmake. Fortunately he had a really old nmake and updating
    fixed the problem.

    <http://xrl.us/f95y>

  Parrot
   thr_windows.h with MinGW
    François Perrad provided a patch fixing two compilation problems in
    thr_windows.h. Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/f95z>

   Parrot Slides?
    Adam Preble posted a request for slides and notes on Parrot and Perl 6
    for a presentation he was working on. Many people provided links in
    various languages. I usually steal from Dan's presentations when I need
    something like this...

    <http://xrl.us/f952>

   Problems with Perl 5.6.1
    François Perrad had a problem building Parrot with MinGW and Perl 5.6.1.
    The problem was related to windows and its binary vs text distinction.
    This problem will also crop up if you ever try to seek on files in
    windows. Not that I have ever lost several days debugging that problem.

    <http://xrl.us/f953>

   ordered hash thoughts
    Leo posted his thoughts on a modification to ordered hash as adding a
    new element by index breaks the string hashing part of it. Dan suggested
    that the ordered hash just pitch exceptions in the bad cases as it was
    designed to be lightweight and fast.

    <http://xrl.us/f954>

   subrules tests
    Dino Morelli provided a patch adding tests for subrules to PGE. Warnock
    applies.

    <http://xrl.us/f955>

   python on parrot
    Bloves inquired as to the state of python on parrot. The phrasing of the
    question itself provided some confusion. Michal Wallace provided a link
    to pirate, hoping it would help.

    <http://xrl.us/f956>

   Resizable*Array defeats list.c
    Slowly but steadily my {Fixed,Resizable}<type>Array PMCs are defeating
    the less consistent array implementations. Leo offered the job of
    slaying list.c to any interested partied. Jerry Gay expressed interest.

    <http://xrl.us/f957>

   encodings on 'char constants'
    Bob Rogers wants to be able to supply an ecoding for his character
    constants that use " ' ". He also wanted to find the integer that
    corresponds to a character. Leo explained how he could do the former and
    that " ord " was is used for the latter.

    <http://xrl.us/f958>

   Broken Links
    Fayland Lam pointed out that the links from the last summary were a
    little broken. Hopefully this summary will be better.

    <http://xrl.us/f959>

   refcounts and DOD
    Michal Wallace wondered how best to make python's refcounts work for
    embeding it in Parrot. Nicholas Clark pointed out that
    Parrot_[un]register_pmc would work. Dan noted that if the python library
    was going to be made a parrot extension they could be noops as Parrot's
    DOD would do necessary work.

    <http://xrl.us/f96a>

   BigInt fixes
    Kevin Tew added somes tests and fixes to BigInt.pmc. Leo applied the
    patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96b>

   MinGW and GMP
    François Perrad provided a patch fixing GMP for MinGW. Leo provided a
    slight correction which François incorporated. Leo then applied the
    patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96c>

   index failures
    Roger Browne found a failure in the index opcode. Leo fixed it.

    <http://xrl.us/f96d>

   MinGW and GDBM
    François Perrad provided a patch fixing GDBMfor MinGW. Leo applied the
    patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96e>

   mod operation fails with negative integers
    Roger Browne noticed that moding with or by negative integers could
    produce negative such as " 3 mod -3 = -3 ". Leo fixed them to provide 0.
    I have that fact about C. Not that I have ever lost several days
    debugging that problem either.

    <http://xrl.us/f96f>

   tracing and debuging
    Leo noted that debuging parrot has gotten more difficult as the number
    of abstractions has increased. Is your compiler, imcc, your PMC, or
    parrot broken? Maybe two or three of them? To facilitate debugging leo
    suggested a debug_break opcode and a Debugger PMC. It sounds nifty. He
    also added support for lexically scoped trace and debug flags.

    <http://xrl.us/f96g>

    <http://xrl.us/f96h>

   adding Unicode, Hex, and Octal escapes
    Will Coleda added more complete escape sequence support to Tcl. Matt
    Diephouse integrated the patch into his latest version.

    <http://xrl.us/f96i>

   State of ParTcl
    Will Coleda proudly noted that as of r8193 ParTcl was passing all tests
    even with gc-debug. Much praise goes to Matt Diephouse for his cleanup
    of the tclparser.

    <http://xrl.us/f96j>

   strength reduction optimization
    Curtis Rawls provided a flurry of patches improving parrot's strength
    reduction optimization. Leo applied the patches.

    <http://xrl.us/f96k>

    <http://xrl.us/f96m>

    <http://xrl.us/f96n>

   TODO: readline support
    Leo put out a request for adding readline support to parrot.

    <http://xrl.us/f96o>

   get_mmd_dispatch_type fix
    Vladimir Lipsky provided a patch which fixes a bug in mmd.c. Leo applied
    it.

    <http://xrl.us/f96p>

   unitialized variable
    Vladimir Lipsky fixed an unitialized variable. Leo applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96q>

   improved loadlib handling
    Bob Rogers improved the handling of absolute paths by loadlib. Leo
    applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96r>

   dod sweep fix
    Vladimir Lipsky prevented the NULL PMC_EXT from being added to the pmc
    ext pool during a dod sweep. Leo applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96s>

   packfile double destroy
    Vladimir Lipsky fixed a problem with double destruction of nested
    packfiles. Leo applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/f96t>

   Tcl autoconverts List <-> String
    Tcl can autoconvert between lists and strings. Will Coleda wondered how
    to implement this behavior to best support language interoperability.
    Suggestions were offered, no real agreement on the best solution though.

    <http://xrl.us/f96u>

   TODO classification
    chromatic, inspired by Pugs, added TODO classification to Parrot::Test.
    He threatened to apply the patch if there were no objections... none
    yet.

    <http://xrl.us/f96v>

   HLL group support
    Leo added support for loading high level language PMC groups dynamically
    using the " .HLL " directive. This will load the lib dynamically and
    change the return type of some ops to reflect the HLL's preferences. It
    is nifty.

    <http://xrl.us/f96w>

    <http://xrl.us/f96x>

   Pistol Wielding Parrot
    Leo put out a request for PIR versions of the Computer Language Shootout
    tests <http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/>. This will provide a means of
    gauging Parrot's performance against other languages. Kinda nifty.

    <http://xrl.us/f96y>

   nmake v1.5 issues
    Nigel Sandever was also having trouble with overly long lines and nmake.
    Upgrading nmake fixed his problem too.

    <http://xrl.us/f96z>

   optimizer producing bad code
    Nick Glencross noticed that the optimizer was producing some bad code.
    Leo fixed one of the problems, but missed the other.

    <http://xrl.us/f962>

   Keys design
    Dan posted an explanation of his original design for keys.

    <http://xrl.us/f963>

   Loop improvements
    Curtis Rawls provided a patch to improve the loop struct in imcc
    optimizer. Leo applied it and asked if he would take a whack at reducing
    the resource consumption of Bill Coffman's register allocation patch.
    Dan and Bob Rogers both expressed interested in speeding up the
    compiler.

    <http://xrl.us/f964>

  Perl 6 Language
   hash slices
    Carl Franks thought he was having trouble with hash slices. Actually he
    was having trouble with the s/->/./ in his perl5 conversion.
    http://groups-beta.google.com/group/perl.perl6.language/browse_frm/threa
    d/fe42b63a7e74721b/04e18f0b56fb64b3#04e18f0b56fb64b3

   Perl6 and refactoring support
    Piers Cawley resurected Matisse Enzer's thread about IDE's and tools for
    Perl 6. He observed that Perl 6 might provide a great deal of support
    for such things. Deborah Pickett noted that it might not be
    theoretically possible to parse Perl 6 safely. Luke Palmer felt that it
    would not be possible given BEGIN blocks and the like.

    <http://xrl.us/f965>

   $*OS but OS::unix
    Rob Kinyon suggested that $*OS be a class which mixes in the correct
    OS::class. Then MMD could be force to do the heavy lifting. I like this
    idea.

    <http://xrl.us/f966>

   reduction junctions and cribbage scoring
    Rob Kinyon wanted to uses junctions and reductions to score cribbage
    hands. Unfortunately, He was using junctions as a set. This led to
    discussions of the correct implementation and of a Set module that
    should be included in Perl 6. I want such a set module to have a
    powerset function which returns the powerset of a particular set
    (preferably lazily instantiated). Also, my cribbage scoring algorithm is
    better: (1) lay down hand (2) announce score (3) peg.

    <http://xrl.us/f967>

   syntax for using perl5
    Autrijus added support to Pugs for using Perl 5 modules. This led him to
    wonder what the correct syntax for this actually was. Many suggestions,
    but no decisions, arrived.

    <http://xrl.us/f968>

   MMD and SMD interaction
    Yuval Kogman wondered how MMD and SMD would interact. Warnock applies.

   making perl 6 grammars generative
    aufrank wondered if perl 6 grammars could be made generative. I would
    say that this does not belong in the core simply because of its niche
    application; however, if I were to do this I would start by using the
    Perl6 grammar grammar and modify the way the parse tree is used. Sadly,
    aufrank posted to google groups so nobody else expressed opinions.

    <http://xrl.us/f969>

   Links and References
    Thomas Sandlaß suggested a Link class to fill the role of
    auto-dereferencing variables that Luke was calling "transparent"
    references.

    <http://xrl.us/f97a>

   use syntax
    Rob Kinyon wondered how exactly ranges of versions and multi language
    interoperability would work in Perl 6. Rod Adams provided a few answers.

    <http://xrl.us/f97b>

   Anonymous classes
    Simon Cozens announced that he was having a lot of fun converting
    Maypole to Perl 6, then he asked how make anonymous subclasses which
    inherit from other classes and add new methods. Ingo Blechschmidt
    provided the answers.

    <http://xrl.us/f97c>

   introspectable code objects
    Ingo Blechschmidt thought it would be nifty if code objects were fully
    introspectable. Luke thought that it would too, but felt that being able
    to access them at the statement level might be problematic. I think most
    of what Ingo would want this for can be accomplished by macros which
    parse normally (or modify a block), but then munge the resulting match
    object approriately.

    <http://xrl.us/f97d>

   signatures as first class types
    Yuval Kogman hoped that signatures would be available as first class
    types in Perl 6. Ingo Blechschmidt agreed, and Sam Vilain pointed to the
    start of a such a translation.

    <http://xrl.us/f97e>

   new and MMD
    Carl Franks wanted to create a specialized on argument new using MMD.
    Damian told him that his technique was a way to do it, and that BUILDALL
    would still be called by bless.

    <http://xrl.us/f97f>

   code ownership and debugability
    Yuval Kogman posted his thoughts on code owner ship and debugability in
    the age of frameworks and generated code.

    <http://xrl.us/f97g>

   strongly typed containers
    Yuval Kogman was wondering how to make a container class which can be
    strongly typed (similar to C++ templates). Sam Villain provided a
    pointer to earlier threads and mentionded Haskell's Generic Algebraic
    Data Types.

    <http://xrl.us/f97h>

   constants and optimizations
    Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how to create constants so that the optimizer
    would be able to do as much as possible. Damian suggested that macros
    would be one solution. This makes me wondered if there is a way to
    declare a function so that a macro version for constants is also created
    automatically. That would be nifty.

    <http://xrl.us/f97i>

   Date Time formatting
    Nathan Gray wondered what sort of Date/Time Formating Perl 6 would
    support. Rob Kinyon suggested porting DateTime. This certainly sounds
    like something that belongs in a module.

    <http://xrl.us/f97j>

   and pow, I got illuminated
    After much discussion, the thread I started about reductions on empty
    lists has been weighed in on by @Larry. Damian feels that it should fail
    as finding an approrpriate identity operator is no simple task. Some how
    a discussion of modulus and division slipped in too.

    <http://xrl.us/f97k>

   sub call vs MMD
    Luke Palmer wanted a sanity check on sub calls vs MMD. Larry provided an
    answer but did not weigh in on his sanity.

    <http://xrl.us/f97m>

   (1,(2,3),4)[2]
    People continue to be very devided about " (1,(2,3),4)[2] " and "@x =
    [1,2,3] ". There are strong opinions on both sides about arrayrefs in
    array and scalar context. I appear to be allied with the losing side.
    Hopefully things will change.

    <http://xrl.us/f97n>

   unicode cheat sheet
    Rob Kinyon posted a request for a unicode cheet sheet so he could make
    his own nifty symbols. Gaal Yahas and Sam Vilain provided pointers.

    <http://xrl.us/f97o>

   comprehensive list of rules tokens
    Jeff Pinyan wants a comprehensive list of perl 6 rule tokens so he can
    create a Perl 5 module to parse them. Much discussion ensued.

    <http://xrl.us/f97p>

   Default invocant of methods
    Ingo Blechschmidt wondered if a methods Class would be allowed as a
    default invocant or only instances of it. Somehow this led Larry to
    musing about Class a a role than people can mixin instead of inherit
    from. He confuses me.

    <http://xrl.us/f97q>

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