Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-15 through 2005-08-22

Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-15 through 2005-08-22
    All~

    Welcome to another monday summary, which hopefully provides some
    evidence that mondays can get better. It always feels like writing
    summaries is an uphill battle, perhaps I should switch to writing about
    Perl 6 Language first and Perl 6 Compilers last. Then it will be
    downhill... Maybe next time.

  Perl 6 Compilers
   More Random Pictures
    Autrijus posted links to two more images he had created. This time the
    images were not about pugs, but were just kind of cute. He also provided
    an explanation of one when prompted.

    <http://xrl.us/g8bw>

   Methods as Functions
    Yiyi Hu noticed that a method of one argument could not be used as
    function. Autrijus offered Yiyi a commit bit, but also kindly posted the
    resolution to Perl 6 Language. Thanks Autrijus!

    <http://xrl.us/g8bx>

   Methods on Code Blocks
    Yiyi Hu discovered that " { a b c }.paris " would cause pugs to spin out
    of control. Luke Palmer fixed it. Hopefully one of the two of them added
    a test...

    <http://xrl.us/g8by>

   Autrijus's Secret Sauce
    Kris Bosland asked a few question I have been wondering about Autrijus
    new graphics. Autrijus kindly provided the answers.

    <http://xrl.us/g8bz>

   Documentation Attack
    Kevin Tew has decided the best way for him to delurk is to update
    documentation for Pugs. chromatic and Dudley Flanders both provided
    support, information, and suggestions for him.

    <http://xrl.us/g8b2>

   Neko VM
    Nicolas Cannasse announed his release of a high level multi language VM
    and wondered what others thought of creating a Perl 6 to to Neko
    compiler. Autrijus and Leo provided a few corrections and comments.

    <http://xrl.us/g8b3>

  Parrot
   The FAQ, She is GONE!
    Amias Channer noticed that the faq on parrotcode.org was gone. While he
    was warnocked, the faq appears to be back.

    <http://xrl.us/g8b4>

   Platform Specific C Files
    Stephen Hill wanted to know where to put a platform specific C file to
    provide missing functionality. Leo provided a few friendly pointers.

    <http://xrl.us/g8b5>

   TclArray.get
    Amos Robinson provided an implementation of "get" for TclArray. Will
    greatfully applied the patch.

    <http://xrl.us/g8b6>

   ICU Being Passed Up
    Adrian Lambeck wondered if icu was being passed up by Configure.pl.
    Warnock applied. So Adrian took matter into his own hands by providing a
    possible solution. Jerry Gay offered to take ownership of the problem if
    no ICU enabled soul picked it up. No progress reports since then
    though...

    <http://xrl.us/g8b7>

    <http://xrl.us/g8b8>

   Java on Parrot
    Tim Bunce asked some preliminary questions about Java on Parrot. I
    provide preliminary answers, and Nattfodd and Autrijus posted links to
    related work. The important question of what it should be called
    remained unraised. I vote for "Jot".

    <http://xrl.us/g8b9>

   gdbmhash.t Failures
    Tim Bunce noticed that gdbmhash.t was failing with an unhelpful error
    message. Andy Dougherty provided a patch that made the error message
    slightly more helpful. Jerry Gay applied it.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ca>

   BEGIN Blocks
    Leo posted some thoughts and information about BEGIN blocks in Perl 6
    and the @IMMEDIATE pragma in PIR, it involved creating constant PMCs and
    freezing them into the bytecode. Then he made it work.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cb> -- thoughts

    <http://xrl.us/g8cc> -- actions

   Amber for Parrot
    Citing chatter overheard on its intelligence networks Parrot raised the
    terror alert to Amber, or maybe Roger Browne released version 0.2.3 of
    his "Eiffel-like" scripting language, Amber. I can never keep track of
    these things.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cd>

   Tcl parray
    Amos Robinson offered to provide an implementation of Tcl's parray
    inluding tests. Will wanted to apply it, but the attachment did not come
    through.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ce>

   Parrot vs Neko
    Nicolas Cannasse wondered why Parrot performed so poorly on the fib
    benchmark. Leo explained that this benchmark stressed a currently
    unoptimized portion of parrot (function calls). He also provided a few
    pointers on which benchmarks parrot did well on.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cf>

   Using PMCs from C
    Klaas-Jan Stol's Lua compiler uses only PMCs. Thus he wanted to know how
    to access these PMCs from NCI functions. Leo provided an answer, but
    also suggest he looked at the new calling conventions which would do
    auto-conversion in both directions.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cg>

   PMC for Reference Counting
    Nicholas Clark posted a relatively full analysis of how the DODs
    registration system could be generalized for further reuse. He also
    asked for ideas about names. I think the whole thing looks good and that
    AddrRegistry is a good name. Perhaps that has too many vowels...
    AddrRgstry and sometimes AddrRgstr might work.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ch>

  Perl 6 Language
   Type Inferencing in Perl 5
    Autrijus (while discussing type inference in Perl 6) recalled that there
    was a google summer of code project on Type Inferencing in Perl 5. Gary
    Jackson, the summer coder, provide a more detailed description of his
    work.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ci>

   " +"hello" "
    Daniel Brockman wondered if " +"hello" " still evalutated to a NaN.
    Larry reasoned that it might and then went on to speculate about the
    what the extra exception information would do when a Num gets jammed
    into a num.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cj>

   Generic Classes
    Autrijus was confused by the frequent use of generic classes as he
    thought that only roles were type parameterizable. Larry explained that
    roles could be promoted to classes pretty easily but that the
    distinction between them was still useful and meaningful.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ck>

   GC API
    David Formosa posted a revised GC API after the previous discussion.
    More discussion ensued.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cm>

   Name Conflicts
    Yiyi Hu wondered what would happen if two lexicals were declared with
    different declarators. Larry answered that it would be a compile time
    error.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cn>

   Parsing Numbers
    Ingo Blechschmidt posted a list of different possible ways to write
    numbers, asking which were valid and which not. Many weighed including
    Larry.

    <http://xrl.us/g8co>

   Bindings and Routine Signatures
    Luke Palmer noticed that if one implemented binding as anonymous
    subroutines, then binding existing variables created delimited
    continuations and binding globals full continuations. While intersting,
    Warnock applies.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cp>

   visibilty of $?SELF and $?CLASS
    Stevan Little wondered what scopes would have $?SELF and $?CLASS
    available to them. Larry provided answers.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cq>

   "Time to take her home her dizzy head is conscience laden"
    Amusingly enough the thread about time has a big gap between July 5 and
    August 15... The thread also reminded me why I have an analog watch.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cr>

   Is Params::Validate Necessary?
    Dave Rolsky hoped that Params::Validate would no longer be necessary in
    Perl 6. This led to much discussion of the parameter declaration syntax
    in Perl 6 and a few suggested changes.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cs>

   Constants are Dead; Long Live Read-only!
    Apparently " is constant " has been replaced by " is readonly ". The
    discussion contains mores than that, but that is my take away point.

    <http://xrl.us/g8ct>

   Multidimensional Hyper Ops
    Luke Palmer wondered how hyper ops would work on multi dimensional
    inputs. The short answer is recurse then possible, apply when not.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cu>

   Serializing Code
    Yuval Kogman posted an analysis of a new HTML::Prototype module that
    hings on serializing code between the various layers of implementation.
    Many folks thought this was cool and discussion ensued.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cv>

   Slurpy Hash
    Luke Palmer wondered if one could bind a slurpy hash by name. The answer
    is no.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cw> -- question

    <http://xrl.us/g8cx> -- answer

   Making Pairs Less Magical
    Luke Palmer wants pairs to be less magical, as their special treatment
    has caused much confusion of late. Much discussion continues.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cy>

   Lazy Scalars?
    Yiyi Hu wants scalars that are evaluated lazily. Ingo Blechschmidt, Luke
    Palmer, and Larry all provided ways to achieve that ends. The simplest
    solution is to create an anonymous closure it seems.

    <http://xrl.us/g8cz>

   Using Foreign Languages
    Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how to use identifiers from other languages
    which do not have compatible identifiers. Yuval reasoned that it would
    be dangerous to try and accomodate them to closely. Perhaps something
    like the Sinhala "karenawa" which marks the preceding word as being
    foreign (english specifically).

    <http://xrl.us/g8c2>

   Symbolic References
    Ingo Blechschmidt wondered how symbolic references of magic variables
    like $?SELF would be done. Larry provided a few answers.

    <http://xrl.us/g8c3>

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