The Perl 6 summary for the month of April 2006

  Perl 6 Compiler

   synopses <http://xrl.us/pb64>

     Sean Sieger asked if synopses were publically available. Jonathan Scott
     Duff and Will Coleda responded with information on read-only access to the
     archives.

   first barest-bones Relation implementation committed <http://xrl.us/pb65>

     Darren Duncan announced that he has begun to implement a Perl 6 Relations
     class, and described some of the features of the class.

   [svn:parrot] r12294 - trunk/languages/perl6/lib <http://xrl.us/pb66>

     Nick Clark commented on this revision, which was not the final form of the
     patch. He also had a question on POD and whitespace, which Patrick R.
     Michaud answered.

   Infix macro := reparsing the LHS? <http://xrl.us/pb67>

     Audrey Tang asked for details on the infix macro where she felt that
     specifications did not clear up how it would be used in practice. Larry
     Wall obliged with a clarification, and, following a conversation on IRC,
     posted more information.

   Pugs build error OS X <http://xrl.us/pb68>

     Will Coleda reported a problem with building r10048. Darren Duncan
     suggested trying r10054, which did not have the same problem for him.

   error building pugs: "Could not find module `Data.ByteString'"
   <http://xrl.us/pb69>

     Dave Whipp reported a problem with installing pugs r10142, but then updated
     to r10166, which solved the issue..

  Perl 6 Language

   'temp $x;' with no assignment <http://xrl.us/pb7a>

     Yuval Kogman offered his opinion on how temp should react with an earlier
     my declaration in an outside scope. Several people responded.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8504 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7b>

     Audrey Tang submitted a patch relating to the S06 document. Nick Clark
     asked why unint autoboxes when int does not. Amos Robinson suggested an
     alternate interpretation of the text, which turned out to be correct.

   replacement of $ <http://xrl.us/pb7c>

     In early April, "Larry" suggested replacing $ with the Euro symbol. Darren
     Duncan pointed out that $ is used in several countries, and not just in the
     US and proposed using the gold standard of 'Au' to prefix variable names.
     The thread continued with further April Fool's day silliness, ending with
     Yuval Kogman noting that if Larry had participated in the keysigning party
     at OSDC this joke wouldn't have been possible.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8532 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7d>

     Audrey Tang submitted a patch to fix capitalization. Uri Guttman picked an
     even smaller nit, and then they discussed having a docathon at
     YAPC::NA::Chicago.

   curly-quotes <http://xrl.us/pb7e>

     Jonathan Lang wrote to propose having ` quotes in both single and double
     variations to be used with ' and ", which would allow them to match the way
     parentheses and brackets do. Larry Wall pointed out some of the
     difficulties in using characters outside of Latin-1 Unicode.

   Context and coercion <http://xrl.us/pb7f>

     Joshua Choi asked what the conceptual difference is between context and
     type coercion. According to Larry Wall, there's no difference. Larry then
     helped defined coercion.

   Do junctions support determining interesections of lists <http://xrl.us/pb7g>

     Joshua Gatcomb wrote to the list with additional questions on junctions,
     following up from his post of the previous year. Larry Wall answered that
     Sets have replaced Junctions for the use described.

   Set Theory (Was: Do junctions support determining interesections of lists)
   <http://xrl.us/pb7h>

     Jonathan Lang asked if Perl6 Sets will include set negation or a universal
     set. Larry Wall noted that some existing functions sort of consider this
     question, although not for Sets defined by rule. Discussion continued, with
     others joining in.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8569 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7i>

     Following another patch post, Rutger Vos asked if the purpose of the list
     was to receive subversion logging messages. Jonathan Scott Duff added his
     opinion that patches were a part of the language design.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8573 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7j>

     Revision r8573 introduced some changes that TSa questioned and Juerd
     disliked. Damian Conway explained the reason the changes were needed, and
     several people offered alternatives.

   $a.foo() moved? <http://xrl.us/pb7k>

     Matt Fowles noted that there had been a change and asked when it happened,
     noting that he preferred the previous style. Larry Wall replied that it had
     changed at the last hackathon but was still being debated. Some of the
     debate spilled in to the thread.

   On signatured code attributes of a class <http://xrl.us/pb7m>

     Joshua Choi asked if it was possible to use a particular syntax, and noted
     that #perl6 is quite active. He requested that someone summarize the
     channel.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8609 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7n>

     Larry Wall submitted a patch and then commented on the patch. Nick Clark
     had a question on the long dot form and Larry Wall and Ruud H.G. van Tol
     offered perspectives.

   Another dotty idea <http://xrl.us/pb7o>

     Larry Wall returned to the subject of the long dot, which he felt was too
     specific. He made a new proposal involving the delayed postfix problem.
     There was a long discussion on this suggestion.

   slurp, quine and context sensitivity <http://xrl.us/pb7p>

     Dan Kogai requested a version of C<slurp()> which would unconditionally
     return a scalar, and proposed C<swallow()>. Damian Conway offered some
     suggestions within the current framework.

   The "whatever" context <http://xrl.us/pb7q>

     Yuval Kogman proposed 'whatever' to return the natural context of an
     operation regardless of the actual context. Larry Wall noted that the
     example, which involved grep, already had this functionality, and Yuval
     asked if this was also true for other functions.

   int context ? <http://xrl.us/pb7r>

     Herbert Breunung wrote that in the Perl 6 book there was 'Integer context'
     and 'Numeric context' but that he had not noted 'Integer context' in the
     synopses. He wondered if the concept had been discarded. Larry Wall
     clarified that it still exists.

   foo..bar or long dot and the range operator <http://xrl.us/pb7s>

     TSa was unclear on what the numerous long dot discussions had accomplished
     and asked about a few cases. Larry Wall attempted to clarify, and TSa had
     some further questions. chromatic was also uncertain of the purpose of the
     long dot, and Daniel Hulme saw his point. Damian Conway tried to further
     define the problem.

   placeholder vs. lexical variables <http://xrl.us/pb7t>

     Dan Kogai ran in to a failure with Pugs while trying something defined in
     s06. Audrey Tang noted that the compiler list would have been more
     appropriate, but that r9913 fixed the issue.

   Capture Object: why no verb? <http://xrl.us/pb7u>

     Dave Whipp felt that it was an omission that capture objects do not
     consider the verb. Audrey Tang responded with an ans

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8883 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7v>

     A submitted patch sparked a discussion on the verb 'parse' on #perl6, which
     Audrey Tang summarized. 'token:w' was seen as a better form of removing the
     ambiguity. Others also posted comments on the synopsis.

   [svn:perl6-synopsis] r8899 - doc/trunk/design/syn <http://xrl.us/pb7w>

     Uri Guttman replied to a patch by saying that he was confused by many of
     the recent changes. He requested additional examples. A few people also
     addressed the documentation changes in that patch.

   =$fh vs *$fh <http://xrl.us/pb7x>

     Audrey Tang merged some ideas after seeing similarities between them, and
     wondered if it could be seen as a general case for = to return the next
     thing. Larry Wall expressed some concerns, to which Audrey responded.

   svn links for the Architecture section on the website? <http://xrl.us/pb7y>

     Elyse M. Grasso suggested that the synopses could link to the svn site
     because the versions are lagging on dev.perl.org. Robert Spier responded
     that he had modified the dev site for more regular updates.

   S05: Interpolated hashes? <http://xrl.us/pb7z>

     Markus Laire asked for an example of how two sections of s05 relate to one
     another. A couple of people attempted to answer the question.

   Adverbs <http://xrl.us/pb72>

     Jonathan Lang asked how adverbs were defined and accessed within a
     subroutine. Larry Wall and Damian Conway answered.

   S5 - Question about repetition qualifier <http://xrl.us/pb73>

     Joe Gottman noted that the repetition qualifier described in s05 seems
     restrictive. Several people responded on whether the additional suggestions
     would be used.

   Perl 6 built-in types <http://xrl.us/pb74>

     Darren Duncan had a few comments after reading s06. He discussed this with
     Larry Wall, and others added their two cents.

   values of undef and JavaScript <http://xrl.us/pb75>

     Stéphane Payrard wondered about the nature of 'undef' as a value vs.
     'undef' as the uninitialized variable state, especially in the context of
     interoperability with JavaScript.

   S02 - s/environmental variables/environment variables/g please
   <http://xrl.us/pb76>

     Randal Schwartz issued a plea for consistent use of 'environment variables'
     over 'environmental variables'. There was a brief discussion on whether
     these described two different concepts.

   german perl6 tutorial <http://xrl.us/pb77>

     Herbert Breunung announced that he is at work on a German-language version
     of the Perl6 tutorial and requested help from anyone fluent in German.

  Parot Porters (formerly perl6-internals)

     The parrot-porters list was called perl6-internals during the period
     covered by this summary.

   Value PMCs in Parrot? <http://xrl.us/pb78>

     Audrey Tang is in the process of porting Pugs's native PIL VM to Parrot,
     which gave her the idea of translating the concept of 'value objects' to
     Parrot. Joshua Isom, Leopold Toetsch and Chip Salzenberg responded to the
     suggestion.

   MSWin32 (Visual C++ 8.0) Test Results (r12017) <http://xrl.us/pb79>

     Ron Blaschke reported failing tests in r12017. chromatic replied that it
     was fixed in r16032.

   [perl #38823] [BUG] solaris 10 w gcc <http://xrl.us/pb8a>

     Leopold Toetsch noted a bug ([perl #38823] <http://xrl.us/pb8b>) caused by
     the configuration system ignoring commandline options.

   [PATCH] My first patch, for builtins.* <http://xrl.us/pb8c>

     Andy Lester supplied a patch and said he hopes to do the same sort of
     source code cleanup in Parrot that he's been doing in Perl 5. It was
     applied as r12096. There was a brief discussion on how to coordinate
     cleanup.

   [perl #38840] Use File::Spec instead of /dev/null <http://xrl.us/pb8d>

     In [perl #38840] <http://xrl.us/pb8e>, Will Coleda noted that direct
     references to `/dev/null/` should be updated to use File::Spec.

   [perl #38841] [TODO] Split exec run core into two distinct run cores
   <http://xrl.us/pb8f>

     Bernhard Schmalhofer created ticket [perl #38841] <http://xrl.us/pb8g> to
     address some improvements for JIT.

   [perl #38844] [TODO] Make lint, splint and tags targets <http://xrl.us/pb8h>

     Andy Lester requested a few changes, such as renaming the lint target to
     splint.

   [perl #38849] Move internal header files out of 'include/parrot'
   <http://xrl.us/pb8i>

     In [perl #38849] <http://xrl.us/pb8j>, Bernhard Schmalhofer proposed that
     some header files which are only included by C source files be moved to
     another location.

   [perl #38850] [BUG] Getopt/Obj.pir dies on non-existent options
   <http://xrl.us/pb8m>

     Allison Randal reported bug [perl #38850] <http://xrl.us/pb8n>, which Bob
     Rogers felt could be attributed to r11444. The problem involves how
     `get_options` reacts to a non-existent option.

   early draft of exceptions PDD <http://xrl.us/pb8o>

     Allison Randal posted an early draft for exceptions and requested feedback.
     Bob Rogers posted a contribution to the document. This led to a discussion
     on HLL exception handlers.

   [perl #32642] [TODO] Remove Perl* PMCs from parrot's basic PMCs, src and
   languages <http://xrl.us/pb8p>

     In [perl #32642] <http://xrl.us/pb8q>, Bernhard Schmalhofer noted that
     Perl* PMCs are no longer used in the Parrot core. He asked if it was
     possible to rename or move the PMCs. Several people agreed, but it was
     pointed out by Patrick R. Michaud that Chip Salzenberg did not want Parrot
     to change significantly until 1.0.

   Re: [perl #32507] [TODO] ResizableIntegerArray missing vtables (e.g., pop)
   <http://xrl.us/pb8r>

     In April, [perl #32507] <http://xrl.us/pb8s>, which turned out to not be
     related to PGE, was marked as resolved.

   installing svn parrot <http://xrl.us/pb8t>

     Sean Sieger asked if there was a problem with Parrot, and Nick Glencross
     offered an installation suggestion.

   Re: [svn:parrot] r12129 - trunk/src <http://xrl.us/pb8u>

     Nicholas Clark was afraid r12129 was masking the real bug, but Leopold
     Toetsch explained the reasons behind the patch.

   t/examples/streams.t issue on Windows <http://xrl.us/pb8v>

     Ron Blaschke reported a failing test on Windows and suggested changing
     `svn:eol-style` to "LE" or to have tests normalize CRLF to LF.

   [perl #38888] PGE::P5Regexp failures. <http://xrl.us/pb8w>

     In ticket [perl #38888] <http://xrl.us/pb8x>, Will Coleda noted that the
     Tcl test suite has failures. There was some discussion on the location of
     the problem, and a patch was created and applied as r12181.

   [perl #38896] [TODO] Integer PMC missing math methods. <http://xrl.us/pb8y>

     Will Coleda reported in [perl #38896] <http://xrl.us/pb8z> that there are
     many math ops that work on Float PMCs but not Integer PMCs. Nicholas Clark
     and Patrick R. Michaud expressed some concern over the behavior. More
     discussion followed.

   [perl #38897] [TODO] fail during makefile generation if line ends in '/'
   <http://xrl.us/pb82>

     Jerry Gay made a request in ticket [perl #38897] <http://xrl.us/pb83> for
     slash replacement during makefile creation.

   [perl #38903] Tcl - namespace borkage <http://xrl.us/pb84>

     In [perl #38903] <http://xrl.us/pb85>, Will Coleda reported that Tcl's use
     of globals in the `_Tcl` namespace was causing issues.

   Parrot_init shouldn't be described in doc/embed.pod <http://xrl.us/pb86>

     Pawel Murias submitted a patch which removes Parrot_init. It was applied as
     r12200.

   [perl #38907] namespace-related bus error <http://xrl.us/pb87>

     Will Coleda reported a Parrot bus error in ticket [perl #38907]
     <http://xrl.us/pb88>, which was resolved with r12201.

   [perl #38914] perl Configure.pl fails on Mac OS X 10.4.6 on Intel iMac
   <http://xrl.us/pb89>

     Gregor N . Purdy created a ticket ([perl #38914] <http://xrl.us/pb9a>)
     which turned out to be a false alarm.

   @slash@ in Makefile.in Files <http://xrl.us/pb9b>

     chromatic noted that a patch replaced `@slash@` with `/` in the Makefile
     and wondered if the former was still required or even desired. Both Jerry
     Gay and Will Coleda recommended using `/`.

   [perl #38929] [TODO] Get executable code out of .h files <http://xrl.us/pb9c>

     Andy Lester proposed, in ticket [perl #38929] <http://xrl.us/pb9d>, that
     functions in `include/parrot/jit_emit.h` be removed and up in a .c file.

   Re: [perl #38931] [RFE] Double-quoted strings automatically determine string
   type <http://xrl.us/pb9e>

     In [perl #38931] <http://xrl.us/pb9f>, Patrick R. Michaud noted that
     double-quoted strings are assumed to be ASCII unless prefixed by a charset
     identifier such as 'unicode:'. He felt it would be useful if PIR emitters
     in Parrot automatically used \u or \x in double-quotes to generate an
     identifier. Nick Clark said that he felt the reason for the ASCII
     assumption was to avoid the ambiguity that comes from assuming the
     identifier. There was further discussion, and in the end Patrick withdrew
     his request.

   Namespaces TODO list, April 16 '06 <http://xrl.us/pb9g>

     Chip Salzenberg posted a list of things to do to bring Parrot in line with
     the namespace revisions in pdd21. chromatic asked for clarification, which
     was provided.

   namespace bug 2? <http://xrl.us/pb9i>

     Will Coleda reported a possible namespace bug. Leopold posted a workaround,
     and Chip Salzenberg fixed it in r12310.

   tcl lexical failures, PDD20, PDD21 <http://xrl.us/pb9j>

     Will Coleda had some thoughts on why Tcl was having failures, and answered
     his own post due to an off-list contribution from Matt.

   [perl #38957] hash test failures <http://xrl.us/pb9k>

     In [perl #38957] <http://xrl.us/pb9m>, Will Coleda reported a persistent
     failure. There were other reports of failures, and some of successes.

   [perl #38958] hash/iterator failures <http://xrl.us/pb9n>

     In [perl #38958] <http://xrl.us/pb9o>, Will Coleda reported some
     long-running bugs. Matt Diephouse reported that he did not see the problem.

   RFC: Possible SoC Proposal <http://xrl.us/pb9p>

     Alberto Simões reported that there was a proposal to create a compiler for
     LISS. chromatic thought it sounded like a good idea, and Ruben Fonseca
     expressed interest. The discussion continued in
     <http://xrl.us/pcam>.

   What version of perl is required? <http://xrl.us/pb9q>

     Andy Dougherty reported a mismatch between documentation and configuration
     as to which version of Perl 5 was required. This was resolved.

   [perl #38960] [BUG] test troubles <http://xrl.us/pb9r>

     In In [perl #38958] <http://xrl.us/pb9s>, Leopold Toetsch reported some
     failures. Some additional questions were asked, and Megavlad expressed
     interest in Parrot bytecode.

   Working on languages/python <http://xrl.us/pb9t>

     Tyler Coumbes posted to inform that he is working on getting the Python
     PMCs to compile with the current Parrot release (0.4.3).

   [perl #38964] .sub names can't be Unicode. <http://xrl.us/pb9u>

     In [perl #38964] <http://xrl.us/pb9v>, Will Coleda reported a bug. It was
     addressed with r12863.

   [perl #38969] parrot source does not conform to standards
   <http://xrl.us/pb9w>

     In [perl #38969] <http://xrl.us/pb9x>, Jerry Gay reported that there are
     many exceptions when running `per tools/dev/check_source_standards.pl`.

   [perl #38975] [PATCH] Update PLATFORMS <http://xrl.us/pb9y>

     Several failing tests were reported in [perl #38975] <http://xrl.us/pb9z>.
     Andy Dougherty offered a patch, which was applied as r12427.

   [perl #38976] ResizablePMCArray uses too much memory <http://xrl.us/pb92>

     Andy Dougherty created ticket [perl #38976] <http://xrl.us/pb93> to report
     a massive increase in memory requirements.

   [perl #38978] [PATCH] Fix unitialized register error in t/pmc/file.t
   <http://xrl.us/pb94>

     Andy Dougherty supplied a patch with [perl #38978] <http://xrl.us/pb95>,
     which was applied as r16031.

   [perl #38979] [PATCH] Explictly close file in t/pmc/mmd.t
   <http://xrl.us/pb96>

     Andy Dougherty supplied a patch with [perl #38979] <http://xrl.us/pb97>,
     which was applied as r12424.

   [perl #38982] [TODO] refactor long test files <http://xrl.us/pb98>

     Jerry Gay proposed that some test files be refactored, as they were too
     long. This was in ticket [perl #38982] <http://xrl.us/pb99>.

   is_deeply() is painful <http://xrl.us/pcaa>

     chromatic asked for some suggestions on handling nested data structures for
     his work on `is_deeply()` in Test::More in PIR. Leopold Toetsch and Audrey
     Tang offered suggestions.

   Updated PGE <http://xrl.us/pcab>

     Patrick R. Michaud reported that he had checked in r12442, which contains a
     large set of updates to PGE.

   MSWin32 (Visual C++ 8.0) Test Results (r12442) <http://xrl.us/pcac>

     Ron Blaschke reported a series of failing tests, some of which were already
     reported. Others were fixed, and others were known TODO items.

   [perl #39013] [PATCH] Two more uninitialized registers <http://xrl.us/pcad>

     Andy Dougherty supplied a patch in [perl #39013] <http://xrl.us/pcae>,
     which was applied as r12503.

   [perl #39018] t/pmc/complex failures on Solaris 8/SPARC <http://xrl.us/pcaf>

     Andy Dougherty created [perl #39018] <http://xrl.us/pcag> to document some
     non-urgent failures.

   Hundreds of errors? <http://xrl.us/pcah>

     Andy Dougherty reported many failing tests, and Patrick R. Michaud asked
     for clarification.

   [perl #39035] [BUG] r12465: dynpmc build fails on win32 <http://xrl.us/pcai>

     Jerry Gay reported this problem in [perl #39035] <http://xrl.us/pcaj>. It
     was quickly resolved. However, there was another error, which was then put
     in ticket [perl #39038] <http://xrl.us/pcak> (see thread
     <http://xrl.us/pcan>).

    Acknowlegements

     Yuval Kogman created Mail::Summary::Tools (coming soon to a CPAN mirror
     near you), which made it much easier to write summaries.

     If you appreciate Perl, consider contributing to the Perl Foundation
     <http://donate.perlfoundation.org> to help support the development of Perl.

     Thank you to everyone who has pointed out mistakes and offered suggestions
     for improving this series. Comments on this summary can be sent to Ann
     Barcomb, <[email protected]>.

  See Also

   * Perl Foundation activities <http://blog.perlfoundation.org>

   * Perl 6 Development <http://dev.perl.org/perl6>

   * Planet Perl Six <http://planetsix.perl.org/perl6>