Perl 6 Essentials

JayBonci writes "It may come as a surprise that within the pages of 'Perl 6 Essentials' lies what could be two books, despite its length. If not for lack of cover space, it could easily bear the names "Perl6 for Perl5 programmers" and "Parrot in a Nutshell". Both topics are concise and clearly covered, despite their relatively different audience." Read on for the rest of Jay's review. Perl 6 Essentials author Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski, and Leopold Totsch pages 208 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer Jay Bonci ISBN 0596004990 summary A solid look ahead at Perl 6, and a reference for Parrot developers

Make no mistake, Perl 6 isn't here yet, but it's coming. The book starts with a good explanation of "the plan"; chapters 1-3 deal with the history, goals, and design considerations of the project. It's a good conceptual overview of the process about how it has been run so far, and how it seems to be continuing. Chapter 3 is of special interest, as it showcases some of the in-depth thought that has been poured into the project. Though we all aren't language theorists, it helps allay some of the fears that change brings while being completely fascinating reading.

This first part of the book isn't very useful without a fairly solid Perl 5 background. It wastes no time in chapter 4 discussing syntactical differences in the v5 to v6 transition. Programmers should be pleased with the practicality of the approach to the new language, as it refers to the new structures and features, and how they solve simple workarounds that Perl veterans are used to in Perl 5. Currying, multimethods, class definitions and structures, new operator syntax, and the dynamics of the new regular expression engine (now called rules) are all touched on, and their values made obvious to the reader.

The last three chapters are for those interested in Parrot development and those who wish to port languages to Parrot. (There are active projects to port Python, Ruby, and even .NET to Parrot.) The section has a slight perl slant to it, but is really about the interpreter and compiling / running Parrot code. It is a fairly complete reference to the different parts of PASM (Parrot Assembly Language), and its role in porting languages to use Parrot. A comfort with assembly language basics is assumed in these sections, as the syntax and concepts of registers and machine code are made easier with general assembler familiarity. This part was somewhat dry for me, as it reads more like a reference than anything else, but it covers the topic fully without droning or leaving anything out. Examples are abundant and range from the simple, to the integrated, and are enough to get people started programming and writing tests with Parrot bytecode.

It should be noted that this book is valid and accurate now, but any development project can make changes quickly. There are places where the authors have admitted that a feature isn't in stone, and is possible to change. According to chromatic, an editor for O'Reilly, the plan is to update the book once a year until Perl 6 is released. Until then, a great place to keep up to date for the casual observer is at the p6p digest. This book goes down a lot easier than the Apocalypses, RFCs, and Exegeses, and I'd heavily suggest it to anyone who is serious about being ready for 6 or joining in on development . I preordered it from Amazon when I saw it was coming out, and am quite happy with my investment.

Table of Contents

1. Project Overview
   • The Birth of Perl 6
   • In the Beginning . . .
   • The Continuing Mission
2. Project Development
   • Language Development
   • Parrot Development
3. Design Philosophy
   • Linguistic and Cognitive Considerations
   • Architectural Considerations
4. Syntax
   • Variables
   • Operators
   • Control Structures
   • Subroutines
   • Classes and Objects
   • Grammars and Rules
5. Parrot Internals
   • Core Design Principles
   • Parrot's Architecture
   • The Interpreter
   • I/O, Events, Signals, and Threads
   • Objects
   • Advanced Features
   • Conclusion
6. Parrot Assembly Language
   • Getting Started
   • Basics
   • Working with PMCs
   • Flow Control
   • Stacks and Register Frames
   • Lexicals and Globals
   • Subroutines
   • Writing Tests
   • PASM Quick Reference
7. The Intermediate Code Compiler
   • Getting Started
   • Basics
   • Flow Control
   • Subroutines
   • IMCC Command-Line Options
   • IMCC Quick Reference

You can purchase Perl 6 Essentials from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

slashbot book review

[rkz]

This one is a great addition to the book shelf, you all know how to do certain things in Perl 6 but this book clarifies nicely why you are actually doing it. Also, it introduces nice new perl concepts which hardcore perl 5 scripters might not have come across before.

Re:slashbot book review

[Anonymous Coward]

heh .. i'm a perl programmer by profession, but
i think i'll still wait 'til v6 is released before
i go plunking money down, unless i do it just to
support the perl effort - that would be worth it ..
but i'd expect to replace / supplement this tome
with others after the release

The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[egg troll]

Hello Slashdot,

Recently I've had a chance to do some web design with PHP. Previously
I'd used Perl because I'd heard from many people that Perl was the end
all and be all of scripting languages for the web. Imagine my suprise
to discover that PHP was vastly superior! I know this is a bold
statement, but I have solid arguements to support it.

Before I begin, let me just clarify something. I'm not arguing that
PHP is better than Perl in all cases. There is certainly still a use
for Perl. Also, PHP isn't perfect but it does manage to fix many of
the shortcomings I've had with Perl. Here are a few of the things I've
noticed about PHP. Finally, I'm not the most talented Perl programmer
out there. I generally prefer to use the vastly superior Python, but
can use Perl if I have to.

* Ease of use. After about a day I had an excellent understanding of
both PHP and SQL. I was able to get a stable, useable and presentable
website up within 24 hours of reading the basics of PHP. Learning Perl
took me weeks and I'm still not even as good with it as I am with PHP.
I would definitely not recommend anyone new to programming begin with
Perl.

* The OO of PHP is excellent. In my experience, it rivals Smalltalk.
We all know that Perl's OO still needs work (whether or not OO is all
that great is another discussion.) Hopefully Perl will be patched up
so it supports such must-have OO features like introspection,
reflection, self-replication and ontological data-points.

* Outstanding database support. PHP supports virtually every DB under
the sun (although Berkeley DB is missing, oddly enough.) Perl seems
limited to MySQL and PostgreSQL, and its really a kludge for the
later. I've heard that this will be fixed in upcoming versions of Perl
though.

* Speed. PHP is one of the fastest languages I've ever used. While it
won't be replacing assembly or C, its definitely faster than Perl in
almost every case, particularly in regex which has long been Perl's
strongest point. I'm sure there are cases where Perl is equal to PHP,
but I can't think of any at the moment.

* Portability. I can take PHP code off my Linux box and plop it onto
an IIS server, or even one of those new Macintosh servers and have it
run without having to change a single line of code. Try doing this
with Perl! Its as though it was written in assembly, Perl requires
that much rewriting.

* Graphics. PHP comes with a nice little graphics library. While I
wouldn't use its to code the new Doom (VB would be a better choice)
its adequate for most web pages, and should be considered as a
substitute for Flash for certain things. Perl lacks a graphics library
of any kind.

* Data Structures. Under PHP you can create any type of datastructure
you need: Linked lists, binary trees, hash tables, queues, inverse
Reiser-biased recursion trees, etc. Under Perl you're extremely
limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you
can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and
because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks
pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user
pointers are used. Because of this, PHP can support complex data
structures.

Again this is just my experience. I don't mean to offend any Perl
coders because Perl was an excellent language. However, in certain
cases it may behoove one to write the back end in PHP instead of Perl.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[lukasz]

>limited in what you can do. This is because Perl isn't OO (so you
>can't create Node classes, for example, usefull in a linked list) and
>because it lacks pointers. Some of you may notice that PHP lacks
>pointers, but look deeper! Behind the scenes, hidden from the user

uh.. some might even notice that Perl does NOT 'lack ponters' -
what do you think all those \$a, \@b, \%c are ????

sigh...

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[notbob]

You sir, are a f'in nutcase, that or I hope this was meant to be parody.

Perl is vastly superior to PHP for these core reasons:
*Perl is more standardized, due to it's greater history.
*Perl is installed on a larger variety of systems and comes in some version on almost all unix systems
*Perl has better DB support, DBI & it's associated DBD modules, it doesn't rely on DB-specific commands, it uses a standardized Database Interface module thus making porting between DB servers exceptionally easy.
*Perl has structures, objects, plenty of OO support, it's not wonderful but I can accomplish anything I need. Nested Hash Tables are a true god send. Complex data structures are easy in Perl, not so in other languages.
*Perl has better string manipulation
*PHP used Perl as part of it's basis
*PHP embeds itself into HTML which violates the OSI model for programming, by not abstraction the presentation layer.

And so on...
I'm too tired.. someone else finish this punk off.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought those were syntax errors caused by somebody with fat fingers...

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, this is a parody .. someone posts it every
time anyone mentions perl or php ;) .. no sane
person claims the travesty that is php is superior
in any way to perl (except for one sane person i
met, but they were just insanely ignorant)

the more i deal with php, the more i believe it is
teh sukc

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much anything in perl looks like a syntax error.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do perl zealots always have to resort to personal attacks when faced with the facts? It's like the people that thing Windows is the best thing out there and should be used for every job. Perl really isn't all the great compared to other options.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[TomatoMan]

Excellent points, thanks. I'll just add a few notes:

- Don't forget that Perl is bright blue, while PHP is dark green. If you have an aversion to bright blue, you should definitely code in PHP.

- Three out of four gnomes script their underwear-cart code in PHP; Perl gets sticky on hot days.

- Perl behaves badly under zero-gravity conditions; PHP will actually make your computer lighter. The benefits of this should be obvious to everyone.

Really, there's no competition. PHP is the obvious choice - and its emissions are less fattening, too.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

> what do you think all those \$a, \@b, \%c are ????

Random selections of characters aren't they ? Oh shit, we're talking Perl arent we :-O so that means they "mean something".

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[el-spectre]

No, only the really clever stuff does...

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Bakaneko]

While I tend to prefer Perl as well, many of your reasons for prefering it are not entirely informed...

"* Perl is more standardized, due to it's greater history."

Not really sure of the point you're trying to make here. Niether project really has a standards body behind it. Perhaps you mean Perl is more accepted.
"* Perl has better DB support..."

Granted, although PHP provides a DB abstraction layer in Pear now, which all good PHP coders should be using...
"* Perl has structures..."

Some would say this is a bit ad-hominem, with the "not so in other (which?) languages part, but others would say the OO part is Perl's weakness. Either way, both languages (Perl in 5, PHP in 5) are working to improve their OO models.
"* Perl has better string manipulation"

True. Probably why PHP apes it in some respects.
"* PHP used Perl as part of it's basis"

This isn't really a good reason, since the obvious rejoinder is "ah, so PHP is an improvement on Perl then?". At any rate, its a bit silly to pick on another language for appropriating the good parts of other languages when you like Perl. Pot, this is Kettle, over, you are BLACK!

"PHP embeds..."

You mean, kind of like Mason with Perl? Really "violations of the OSI model" aside, this tends to be WHY PHP is so popular, because its very easy to use to do the odd simple thing because of this. Yes, you run into the problems with it when you start to do a larger project (which is why there are all those PHP template systems, I suppose.) but why deride something that works very well for the 80% of cases that are out there. It's also entirely possible to use PHP as a non-HTML-embedded language, of course.

That being said, I'd choose Perl in a heartbeat over PHP for a large project, particular one not Web related, for a number of reasons.

* Far better support for modules, and a much larger library of solutions already available.
* Some speed related issues out of the box.
* The afore mentioned string manipulation issues.
* Better ability to do things like signal handlers, and other "Unixy" things.
* What IMHO, I consider better language/character set support.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[multi io]

Pretty much anything in perl looks like a syntax error.

Well, this seems to be the main reason behind all those "Perl is unreadable" complaints:

People who don't know Perl have more trouble reading Perl code than people who don't know, say, Python, have trouble reading Python code...

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly, my response is coming from the perspective of someone who is very happy with Perl, despite it's shortcomings. I've been programming in Perl for almost 4 years, and have only dabbled in PHP (though my brother has used both extensively and prefers Perl greatly). However, some points of your argument are flawed, so I hope to clarify a few things. I'll just address each point:

* Ease of use. I knew Perl before I tried PHP, so I can't really say which is easier. Both were very easy because I knew C and C++ before either one.

* The OO of PHP is excellent. If this is true, then PHP must've vastly improved since I used it. When I did, it had very weak OO support. Despite the odd syntax of OO in Perl, it is a very excellent OO language. I wish it did have a few more features, but they are to come in Perl 6.

* Outstanding database support. This is just patently wrong. Perl has vastly better DB support through DBI. PHP has modules specific to different DBs, but DBI is an excellent abstraction layer that has an implementation in every DB I've ever heard of (Postgresql, mysql, msql, oracle, etc).

* Speed. PHP is faster than CGI perl in a web environment, but in my experience perl is faster in server scripting. Mod-perl is equally fast to PHP in a web environment, so the whole point is moot.

* Portability. You must not know how to program if you can't port your perl code across operating systems. The only thing you might have to change is the location of the perl interpreter (the #!/usr/bin/perl line). Unless you're using system calls (like `ls /home/` or something, which is stupid to do because system calls are extremely slow and can usually be handled with perl commands that aren't platform specific), you shouldn't have to change anything else.

* Graphics. There are many graphics modules available on CPAN for perl. I honestly don't know how the implementations compare, but they both have them.

* Data Structures. Perl supports complex data structures also. I'm not familiar with all of those structures you mention, but I'm fairly sure (if memory serves me on all of the definitions) that Perl does linked lists, hash tables, and queues at the minimum. Also, Perl has pointers, though I believe they refer to them as "references" (not to be confused with references in C++). The syntax is a bit different, like if you create a hash (aka associate array) %hash and then pass \%hash into a function, on the other side you'd have $hash (a reference to %hash, references are written as scalars). Then if you want the "stuff" key, you can do $hash->{stuff} or $$hash{stuff} (antiquated syntax) to retrieve it. Same goes for arrays. It also has a fairly robust OO implementation, once you get past the obvious hack syntax utilized for it (since it was added after the language was written, Perl 6 will correct this).

It seems obvious to me that you didn't spend much time trying Perl before you gave up and moved on. Maybe that's an unfair assessment, but most of the limitations you perceive in Perl just aren't there.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[anti-pirate]

PHP is such a kludge that it makes Perl seem like a good design.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[screenrc]

These are references, not pointer.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[screenrc]

I don't know Chinese, and yet, I don't
complain that the language is "strange". If
I know Chinese, I would insist that the language
is just natural.

Perl takes years to learn. That is why it is
so powerfull. Can you imagine how usufull
French would be if you could learn French withing
days? Simple languages are practically useless.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[unshaven23]

You're full of it it! \$a isn't a pointer, it's a reference... Oh wait, nevermind. :-)

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[kinsoa]

most of your comment show your lack of knowledge for both PHP and Perl, and You should not post if you don't know anything about what you speak. Sorry for trolling, but there is a lot of errors in your post. Please learn more about web programming before posting such messages. I'm shoked to read such messages on Slashdot.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[multi io]

I don't know Chinese, and yet, I don't complain that the language is "strange". If I know Chinese, I would insist that the language is just natural.

Perl takes years to learn. That is why it is so powerfull. Can you imagine how usufull French would be if you could learn French withing days? Simple languages are practically useless.

I was trying to say just that. I was criticising people who don't know Perl yet depreciate it because it looks "stranger" to them than e.g. Python looks to people who don't know Python.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[ta bu shi da yu]

Sir, I appreciate the time you took to write this article and I wish to address some of your concerns:

• Pearl is programming language that has many advantages over PHP. Even it's own supporters think that it looks like a cross between line noise and comic book character swearing! This will clearly keep those elite hackers in a job. PHP is not able to compete with this. Without these hackers, organisations will quickly fall into a mire of badly programmed, poorly implemented projects.
  
  
• PHP, which stands for Personal Hackers Programming-language is part of the global conspiracy of open-source zealots. It's an insidious attempt to crack in to major security systems and this will be exposed in the long-run.
  
  
• Try to bear in mind that PHP, which in essense is just a cut down clone of Microsoft's ASP, Just Doesn't Scale. I have no figures at hand to back this up, and this is in fact based on the way my colleague farted the other day, but I'm sure that no-one will disagree with me on this fact. The evidence is indisputable!

There are many, many other points that I could take up, but as I am very busy working with Lunix I'm not able to comment further on this subject.

Yours humbly,
Ta bù shì dà yú

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks TomatoMan! I've never laughed so much!!! To see these ever so serious people pontificating about "mine's BEST, your's CR*P" is ever so tedious and pointless. You add a breath of fresh air to all this!

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey this guy is only expressing his experience of using these two languages and his preference. If your experience differs, well... is a red shoe better than a black one?

If you really want to see a definitive and unbiased analysis of Perl vs. PHP, look at an earlier post by TomatoMan.

Re:The Superiority of PHP over Perl

[molochajs]

most of your comment show your lack of knowledge for both PHP and Perl, and You should not post if you don't know anything about what you speak.

So barring expertise in the subject, people are not allowed to post their experiences of a given language? Interesting. Let's discuss your knowledge of the following language: English.

Sorry for trolling,

By all means, fish where you like.

but there is a lot of errors in your post.

Don't you hate condemming posts full of asinine errors?

Please learn more about web programming before posting such messages.

Be sure to remind him that once the recommended knowledge has been mastered, it is customary to post peremptory, erroneous messages, belittling any and all posts that he does not agree with, citing as little evidence and as few examples as possible.

I'm shoked to read such messages on Slashdot.

Maybe this will help.

cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has for $2.50 less than bn (almost 15% less!)

Perl 6 plan over three chapters?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's what... like 100 pages of the string "Smoke crack" repeating?

print "Smoke crack" x 1000000 .. hey, that was pretty easy.

Re:Perl 6 plan over three chapters?

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't that be ruby?

In perl it should be:

my $i = 0;
while($i =100000){
print "smoke crack";
$i++;
}

I think in ruby you can do

print "smoke crack" * 1000000;

Why don't you save your wise-ass comments for the Ruby 6 Internals book review.

AC

Re:Perl 6 plan over three chapters?

[Anonymous Coward]

mt

$post =~ s/=/=/g;

Re:Perl 6 plan over three chapters?

[Anonymous Coward]

$post =~ s/=/\/2;

Re:Perl 6 plan over three chapters?

[Anonymous Coward]

# Argh >:)

$post =~ s/=/\/2;

Cheaper at Bookpool

[bigdavex]

It's $4.50 cheaper at bookpool.

They're also doing a free shipping deal.

Re:Cheaper at Bookpool

[wscott]

Use use the AddAll book search engine and you won't have to search.

Besides it shows that there is a "used" copy on amazon for $12.99.

Is there anyone out there

[nixer]

who like me, absolutely hates Perl?

I really detest it - for some reason it brings the worst in people - it encourages them to be "clever", writing obscure unmaintainable garbage. I have seen readable Perl - but it seems a rare thing.

Any idea why this is the case?

Re:Is there anyone out there

[eddy]

I don't absolutely hate it, but I think that it is pretty bad. I wrote pretty readable perl when I was active (I like to think), but you could do some really horrible stuff.

I particularly don't like the automagic variables springing up all over the place and don't get me started on "bless" and the class system.. gha... I've even had it commented to me that I could use $_ where in fact I had opted to be explicit, which really irked me. "You want me to make the code less readable?"

And all that bullshit justification about "less to type" you'll hear.. I've never been bound by the speed of my fingers seen over the duration of a project. Sheesh.

(and no, I don't care what issues has been solved in Perl 6 -- I hope I'll never have to use it again)

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

okay, first off: Perl owns you.

now that that's out of the way, I like Perl because it gets the fuck out of my way. once you've got a grip on the syntax (which, despite the whines of those whose brains have been dulled by Python syntax, is uncomplicated and consistent), programming in Perl becomes like writing pseudocode. easy. it reminds me of programming in BASIC back in the day -- carefree.

not like Java, where you're plowing through Java In A Nutshell to find the right class method to do what you need every other line. not like C, where you're walking a tightrope between null pointers and memory leaks the whole frickin time. in Perl you write what you want the program to do, and it does it.

in other words, it's a high level language, as opposed to being one or two steps above asm.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

"$_" is a perl pronoun. Anyone that actually KNOWS any perl, doesn't find the use of implicit pronouns at all confusing, or unreadable, the same way that anyone who knows the english language doesn't find pronouns at all confusing.

If, in response to your message, I say "You obviously never knew perl very well to begin with", it is very easy to use the context of this post to know that "You" refers to the author of the post that I'm replying too.

In the same way, in a statement such as

foreach ( @array ) { print }

It is extremely obvious, to anyone who actually knows perl, what "print" is refering to.

Saying "you can do some really horrible stuff" in Perl in fact tells me that you probably don't know much about programming, at all. You can "do horrible stuff" in *any* programming language. Over the years I've seen more than my fair share of horrible C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, Smalltalk, PHP, and yes, even Perl.

I currently am working on a Perl project that is up over 250,000 lines of code, and has been in development for two years. The code is all maintainable, and easy to understand, even for new people starting on the team with no prior knowledge of the code.

Maybe you just suck.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically, you know it so you like it better. Sounds like brain dead Windows weeny type thinking to me. Expand your horizons. There's a lot of better stuff out there.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby owns your lame ass.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the background of the programmers who wrote the Perl code you're criticizing? Sysadmins with 5 minutes to get something done or professional programmers who negotiated time for proper design to be included in the development time?

And what are the goals of the Perl coders who wrote that garbage? To combat reverse-engineering and theft of code by unskilled script kiddies, some use obfuscators for deployed code while keeping easier-to-maintain versions private. Almost but not quite like keeping C/C++ source private while distributing binaries.

In general, I can point to C, C++, and even Visual BASIC code and make strong statements about them being obscure unmaintainable garbage. Lets face it, most programmers (even the ones with computer science degrees from respected universities) truly suck and have no business coding for a living.

When I saw Perl code, it made me stay away for years because it wasn't "obvious" compared to other high level languages. Out of curiosity, I read the first few chapters of Programming Perl and came to realize that I've been missing out--the same Perl code that initially looked like garbage actually made sense and looked very elegant because it didn't force the programmer to jump through hoops to "get stuff done".

If you've read & understood that book and still see unmaintainable Perl code at your company, maybe it is time to push for some coding standards.

Given Perl's extensibility, you can even have exception handling similar to Java's throw/catch/finally.

Again, nothing stops Perl programmers from using coding standards that enforce naming conventions, use of the same exception handling library, etc. The fact that they don't choose to doesn't reflect on the language but on the coders and the circumstances (having only 15 minutes to write a quick utility to fix a problem) which led them to write unmaintainable code.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[crucini]

I particularly don't like the automagic variables springing up all over the place...

Have you tried 'use strict'?

and don't get me started on "bless" and the class system..

What's wrong with bless? It's just a way of telling Perl what class an object belongs to. Any OO framework needs something equivalent. C++ does it at compile time, but I think the Perl approach is cleaner because a distinct keyword (bless) performs a distinct operation (marking the class of the object.)

Re:Is there anyone out there

[ichimunki]

In the same way, in a statement such as// foreach ( @array ) { print }// It is extremely obvious,

The only thing that's obvious to me is that the code example you gave is a poor way to write "print @array;" The urge to be clever is way too prevalent in Perl.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that those do different things unless you flog the field seperator to "" first.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Frothy Walrus]

not "poor", just different. TMTOWTDI.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[axxackall]

n other words, it's a high level language, as opposed to being one or two steps above asm.

In other words it's still way too low level language, just two (only two!!!) steps above asm, while most of programming languages I know and use are thee or more steps above asm.

First of all you admit about Perl's bad syntax by yourself. From this prospective, Python is one step above Perl (means 3 steps above asm), as its syntax lets a Python programmer to complete the target program much faster then Perl to Perl programmer. No need to mention that most of Perl code is done as "do it, run it, wast it" - the poor syntax of perl doesn't let to maintain the code of other programmers (or own old code). I used Perl a lot and I know what I am talking about.

Next, both Perl and Python (and Java) are imperative languages. Destructive assignment is the same bad thing for program verification as unfamous GOTO operator or memory-leaking pointers that you hate so much. That's why functional and logical programming languages make at least one step above Python (that makes them at least 4 steps above asm!).

I am not sure if I should continue "steps above asm" with type inference and generic programming. You cannot understand it anyway, as you are still at "Perl level".

The pyramid of programming languages is like a real mountain. When you go to summit it you see maximum one level above you (often you don't see even it all, or you don't recognize it as a higher level) and all (or most of) levels bellow you. Therefore, you can never appriciate higher levels until you hike up to them. That's why your favorite programming language is always (if it is not asm) a high level language.

My advise: keep hiking.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[tshak]

There are things I like about Perl, and on rare occasion I still like kicking out Perl scripts for text processing and the like. Heck, even Microsoft used Perl extensively for all of it's Build and Unit Testing for their shared source implementation of .NET.

However, for a software application (and this includes web applications) I've contended that scripts suck. This definitely includes Perl. I don't care what Yahoo or Google is doing with Python or PHP, and I don't want to get into those particular case studies as it will open up a can of worms and it deviates from my argument. When you say that you spend a lot of time messing with Java class libraries trying to lookup which API to use for a certain function, I have to ask, "what IDE doesn't practically type that for you?". Okay, so you're using emacs. Well, than go back to Perl, and try to remember which of the 1,000's of Perl modules you need to load, or worse, just reinvent the wheel.

The benefit of Java, C#, etc. is that you are almost as high a level as a scripting language, but you have most all the power and structure to allow you to write scaleable software applications. Compilation is trivial and can be JIT'd like Perl, and strong typing is actually a good thing that speeds up development, contrary to popular belief.

I mean really, have you _SEEN_ slashcode? Perl and other scripting languages have their place, but not for applications.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Kashif Shaikh]

in other words, it's a high level language, as opposed to being one or two steps above asm.


But as a functional language, Perl lacks structure, but makes up for it's very free form nature. Just today I was converting a query from Perl to C. Perl's version of the query was approx 150 lines. C was close to 1000.

I'm learning Python now, so I can get a high level language with a bit more structure(i.e. datatypes are much more explicit). I'm aware that Perl has objects too, but it seems to me it was never an integral part of the language.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[ichimunki]

Sometimes one of the ways to do it really is better.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[ichimunki]

Except that those do different things unless you flog the field seperator to "" first.

OK then: print for @array; #the idea here is that we're printing something, not that we're doing something with each element of an array, so let's get the print at the front if we can.

To my way of thinking, changing default values of those kinds of global values (like $,) is a bad idea and should be confined to very specific blocks as needed by using local. That way people can use built-in functions in other pieces of the code without worrying what you've done to the defaults somewhere else.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Frothy Walrus]

but not in this case.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[ichimunki]

No. This is exactly one of those cases. The benchmark clearly favors using print LIST over a for loop.

Rate foreach print list
foreach 107043/s -- -82%
print list 592417/s 453% --

It's 5x faster AND more readable to use print LIST. If you want to persist in the delusional use of overly clever constructs without a good reason, be my guest, but you are just making your life more difficult along with the lives of anyone who has to use or maintain your code. BTW, none of this should be construed as blanket condemnation of $_ or any other clever Perl construct. In many cases the implied or context sensitive constructs in Perl are a major win in terms of writability and readability. Had the ACs example contained a map or done something more interesting with each element of the array than just print it out, he/she would just as likely have been right on the money.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. thats just scary
a perl programmar with brains
don't trip me out dude
i thought you guys didn't really exist!!! :)

Alex

Re:Is there anyone out there

[Faggot]

...but then, if you were worried about speed, you wouldn't be using perl.

come on. get a hold of yourself.

Re:Is there anyone out there

[ichimunki]

It's not the raw speed that's at issue here, it's the relative speed. And I don't know that I believe that Perl is all that much slower than any other language once a script is loaded into the interpreter and set in motion. It's that startup time that makes us think it's so slow, mostly.

Even cheaper than that!

[kevin_conaway]

Bookpool.com rocks:
http://www.bookpool.com/.x/t2y2rmrlx8/ss/1?qs=perl +6&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go
$15.50USD

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[yorkrj]

There is no real way for you to figure out how many websites use Perl but you could figure out how many are hosted on Apache. Then you can assume that if they are running Apache then their server probably has Perl installed. ...so you can get a count of sites that might possibly be using perl! Oh, and I use perl in my sites so there you go, add one to your count of sites that use perl.

Re:The Right Tool For The Job

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. This is especially important in the free software world, where every advantage we can get we need. With all these languages abounding, there is a divide in our community.

Do any books get bad reviews?

[Mayak]

Or are they all Barnes & Noble affiliate-sales links? Who gets the money from the books you sell for Barnes & Noble? The reviewer? Slashdot? Or is there a Slashdot beer fund we can all dip into?

Re:Do any books get bad reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot book reviews are like stock ratings from 2-3 years ago...

You know, the kind where an analyst rated some stock a buy, while emailing his boss that the stock was garbage. But the company CEO opened a brokerage account, so it all evened out in the end.

10 stars = buy

9 stars = keep if you get it as a gift

8 or less = only useful if you run out of toliet paper.

Parrot started out as a joke

[Jon Abbott]

Those of you unfamiliar with Perl history may find it interesting that the "Parrot" started out as an elaborate April Fool's day joke two years ago. Here is the book that was announced. Strangely enough, people found the idea useful and are now actively developing it!

Big surprise, another postive book review

[tmark]

It may come as a surprise that within the pages of 'Perl 6 Essentials'lies what could be two books

Not really, but what does NOT come as a surprise to me is that we have yet another glowing book review with a bn.com affiliate link. I've seen far too many glowing reviews on this site, about books that I know to suck donkey balls, to trust the reviews here anymore, especially knowing that readers are more likely to follow affiliate links when the review is positive than when it is not (And this from the same site where people so often rip stock analysts for writing glowing reviews of companies that garner their firms big i-banking fees). I wouldn't trust a movie review if I knew the reviewer was getting paid every time people went to saw the movie, and this is almost the same thing. Maybe Slashdot should put up a disclaimer...

If I see a book whose title sounds remotely interesting reviewed here, the first thing I do is go directly to amazon, and check out their user reviews. At least there you'll potentially see a bunch of negative reviews, instead of a chapter summary and a "this belongs on every Perl/PHP/Mysql/Linux geek's bookshelf".

Re:Big surprise, another postive book review

[jbottero]

I predict that the parent will be modded "troll", as in: How dare you slight the wise editors of Slashdot...

Re:Big surprise, another postive book review

[Speare]

About positive reviews,

(1) 90% of everything is crap, so why publish that many negative reviews? Publish the "wow, this was surprisingly helpful." Unless it's a hyped bestseller that failed to deliver the promised quality, don't publish the whining diatribes (see below). Infer that if you haven't seen a review, it's probably Sturgeon-bait.

(2) This site allows replies with almost the same prominence as the original. If you think it doesn't live up to the review, then post your specific opinion to its contrary. If you already didn't think it lived up to its bestseller status, why didn't you submit the bad review before this person gave it a glowing review?

About affiliate links,

If it's not affecting your price or obligating you to purchase, why bother complaining about affiliate kickbacks? Slashdot or the reviewer get an incentive to publish more content. If you don't like the model, don't give your patronage by eyeball or wallet.

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, some programmers write things other than web pages.

I have reviewed this book for my site in the past.

[bethane]

Perl 6 Essentials is a sneak-preview of Perl 6, the widely-anticipated rewrite of the Perl programming language. Still in development, the Perl 6 project is a community-based effort to keep Perl vibrant well into the 21st century. This book covers the development not only of Perl 6 syntax but also Parrot, the language-independent interpreter developed as part of the Perl 6 design strategy. Although Perl remains a vibrant language with a fiercely loyal following, it has undergone many changes to keep up with new technologies and applications that were not anticipated when Perl was first introduced in 1987. Through its community-based development model, Perl has kept up with changing times and remained fresh when other languages might have stagnated. Internally, however, there have remained kinks and stumbling blocks that developers have needed to sidestep, long-abandoned features that have been maintained only for backwards compatibility, misdirected phrasings that have hindered more intuitive syntax structures, and a cacophony of modules that sometimes work well together, but occasionally don't. Perl continues to have a strong following devoted to its development, but in the meantime, a group of core Perl developers have begun working on Perl 6, a complete rewrite of the Perl language. While Perl's creative philosophy and common-sense syntax are sure to remain in Perl 6, everything else in the language is being re-examined and recreated. Perl 6 Essentials provides an overview of the current state of Perl 6 for those who await its release. Written by members of the Perl 6 core development team, the book offers an explanation of the various stages of the project, with reference material for programmers who are interested in what changes are planned or who may want to contribute to the project. The book will satisfy their curiosity and show how changes in the language will make it more powerful and easier to use. Perl 6 Essentials is the first book that offers a peek into the next major version of the Perl language. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of Perl.

Where's the BitTorrent Link?

[TrollBridge]

Surely somebody's scanned this book into a .pdf and redistributed it to the masses by now!

Re:Where's the BitTorrent Link?

[rkz]

you are correct, it most certainly has been.
here is the edonkey link, remove spaces

ed2k://|file|oreilly.-.perl.6.essentials.-.html. rar|197009|eef12159e2a3d29abc5809bcc5ea815c|/

have fun kiddies.

Perl 6 release date?

[dpuu]

According to chromatic, an editor for O'Reilly, the plan is to update the book once a year until Perl 6 is released

So, how many editions should we expect?

Re:Perl 6 release date?

[chromatic]

My guess is two more, though the more people who contribute, the sooner Programming Perl 6 will be released.

Re:Perl 6 release date?

[Anonymous Coward]

though the more people who contribute, the sooner Programming Perl 6 will be released.

I think Fred Brooks might disagree with that statement.

Re:Perl 6 release date?

[chromatic]

I'm willing to try parallelizing development a little more. If Mr. Brooks wants to send in good patches, I'll apply them whatever his philosophy.

Re:Perl 6 release date?

[Kirby]

I think I'd agree, given that the endpoint is probably not another edition of Perl 6 Essentials, but Programming Perl 4th Edition.

Reasons I think this:
* Parrot Progress. The Parrot team clearly believes Parrot will be in good shape by next summer, to the sum that they've wagered that Python will run faster on Parrot than it does under it's current implementation by next OSCon, or the Python team gets to hit them with cream pies. I'm willing to accept that level of confidence to imply that Parrot will be up to the task of being usable to develop things onto by next year, and quite polished by 2005.

* Ponie (ie, Perl On New Interpreter Engine, ie perl5 on parrot): Someone (and my brain is fuzzy from being sick recently, sorry) is paying two competent developers to work half-time on Ponie for the next two years. Now, timeframes are often very hard to predict going into a project, but the goal is clear: Ponie for OSCon 2005.

So, with those critical building blocks in place, and judging by the fact that most of the hard design work is done (and looks very nice), it's just a simple matter of programming. (That's a joke.) I don't expect Perl6 to beat Ponie out the gate, but there's so much potential synergy between the projects, I boldly predict Larry Wall announcing Perl6 available in a stable version for OSCon 2006.

There's clearly a lot of speculation in this line of thought, and it's not like anyone really knows the answers. I like to think it's at least informed speculation, though. And I'd like nothing better than for it to be done sooner. I'd almost recommend people to _not_ check out this book - the design is so good, I've already come up with at least a dozen places in my code where I've wanted to use a perl6 feature that doesn't exist in perl5.

There's lots of ways to help - coding, design, doc writing, testing - as well as the more indirect method of donations to The Perl Foundation. Which ends up helping some of the key developers (like Larry Wall) work on Perl and still pay his bills and keep his health up.

We're attempting to convince our company to make a donation to the Perl Foundation, given how much we use it for our business. I heartily encourage similar efforts - $500 isn't much for a company, but it can add up quickly.

Re:Perl 6 release date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we vote people off the Perl6 design team? I would love to contribute to the Perl Foundation, but I would prefer my money not be pissed away. Others I've talked to share this view. Who exactly decides where the money goes?

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[Anonymous Coward]

My website (hosted by windows 2k/IIS) uses perl.

You really need to find a better count than assuming any apache server might use perl.

Ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, if you just go read the Apocalypses and Exegeses on perl.com and the FAQ on parrotcode.org, you get all of this for free.

Re:Ripoff

[melonman]

Yes, but apparently it is dangerous to prop my PC and 19" monitor on my knees in the bath, and the salt water on the beach is bad for the bearings in my mouse. Personally, I'm willing to pay for a book-shaped "distro". If other people aren't, that's fine, but they won't learn anything about the life cycle of some endangered species in sub-saharan Africa, which is surely the main reason that people buy O Reilly books...

Back to the Future

[mbrod]

When I started using Perl 5 I figured it to be about 10 years ahead of its time. Being about 5 years since then I think I was pretty close to right.

Development of it is taking a long time but it has been worth it.

Some peoples minds don't seem to fit Perl 5 quite right and complain about it. Should have a lot more options of languages and style in P6.

Its a blazingly fast byte code interpreter. Having this Open Source is a very powerful thing and something many projects will find useful.

Re:Back to the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahead of it's time? In anything, it's an element of the past trying to stay useful as technology moves forward. The language itself doesn't have the modularity to move into modern distributed application environments. The only way to fix it is to make it incompatible with everything written to date.

Re:Back to the Future

[pHDNgell]

Some peoples minds don't seem to fit Perl 5 quite right and complain about it. Should have a lot more options of languages and style in P6.

Is that supposed to satisfy any complaints?

Re:Back to the Future

[mbrod]

Is that supposed to satisfy any complaints?

To clarify that: I believe it will be better style, more modern and more of what many other languages use.

Obfuscating it up more wouldn't do anyone any good. Although it certainly looks like there will be a fair amount of obfuscation in P6 (it is Perl after all), Parrot is squeaky clean.

Re:Back to the Future

[screenrc]

Bull.

Perl has lots of weak points, especially when
compared to real languages like Lisp. But modularity
is not a weak point of Perl; if anything, there is
too much modularity. Even OO is modular, exceptions,
IO, overloading, etc,.

Now that I have postted with specifics, do you
mind telling us what is not modular in Perl?

I'll really start to like /. when...

[Anonymous Coward]

...instead of book reviews it starts putting full books e-texts. :)

Re:I'll really start to like /. when...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's what gnutella, kazaa, eDonkey, and DirectConnect are for.

And project gutenburg.

Re:I'll really start to like /. when...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you check the comments properly someone has already posted an edonkey link! --Apple Mac. Homersexual Computer of Choice.

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of god, don't use PERL. We are thirty years out of the seventies....

exactly. thirty years and we still can't fucking get past C. isn't it time we start using languages designed for humans and not machines?

Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've been keeping track of the Parrot project's progress for the past 2+ years you'd see that they're going nowhere fast. No language implemented other than a toy Basic language, no thread support, no object support, no exception support, no stable standard calling convention, no code module support (like Java .jar files), a proliferation of stupid one-off opcodes that should be method calls - and worse of all - no working Perl support. As for Ponie/Perl5 on Parrot - I'll believe it when I see it - this Parrot project blows more hot air than a thousands hair dryers. Tell you what - give me the $200,000 that they've been given and I will write the Perl6 interpreter for them. A lot of better open source projects have been written with little or no funding at all. There's no excuse for the pace of this project - it's directionless and leaderless.

O'Reilly naming conventions

[josephgrossberg]

(FYI, I posted this on the thread for this book's announcement.)

Understanding O'Reilly titles can help you decide which blue book(s) to purchase. Just as they have conventions for the books' color (e.g. Perl blue, Java purple, security yellow), O'Reilly and Associates has conventions for the titles.

* "... Essentials" means an overview of what's new.
* "Learning ..." is a discussion and tutorial on a topic, intended for beginners
* "Programming ..." is the same, but for intermediate and advanced users
* "... Cookbook" is a series of problems and their solutions
* "... in a Nutshell" is like a language reference
* "... Pocket Reference" is a shorter version of the above

Barely about Perl. Certainly not essential.

[Junks Jerzey]

This book isn't about Perl 6 at all, and there's nothing about it that's "essential." Part of the book is about the *plan* for Perl 6, but that's just plain silly. Who wants to read about the plan for some that's in the middle of development? Odds are that much of this part of the book will be completely invalidated long before Perl 6 is actually released.

The rest of the book--most of the book, actually--is about the Parrot virtual machine. Now, really, does this matter to Perl programmers at all? Is there a book about the innards of the interpreter used for Perl 5? Or a book about Python bytecode? It only matters if you're going to write a compiler that targets Parrot. And, again, note that Parrot is also a work in progress and will likely change dramatically before Perl 6 is actually released.

In short:
1. This is a book about vaporware.
2. Most of the book is not about Perl 6.3.
3. Why did O'Reilly even bother with this?

/. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a f'in nutcase, that or I hope this was meant to be parody.
so the guy doesn't like the same scripting language as you do. big deal! he made his points the same as you did, but (probably because /. is such a perl-centric place) he get's modded troll while you're "informative". what gives??

I Too Have Switched

[Not The Real Me]

I was writing in a combination of Java and Perl on a Linux system. PHP is a wonderful scripting language to work with. While Java forced me to write clean code, the clean Java code sucked up memory and was slower than molasses on my Apache 1.3.26 server running Resin. I had to dumb down my Java code to speed it up. When I did that, the cleanness of Java went away.

What I miss about Perl is being able to write obfuscated spagetti code so unreadable that I had no idea how the code functioned 3 months later.
I also miss all of the broken and largely alpha and pre-beta modules on CPAN.

Re:I Too Have Switched

[Anonymous Coward]

If you find yourself unable to write spaghetti code in PHP then you aren't trying hard enough.

Re:I Too Have Switched

[Abcd1234]

Ahh... another coder that needs the language to hold their hand because they're unable to write clean code without the language forcing them to.

Sounds like you should try out Python.

Re:I Too Have Switched

[Anonymous Coward]

nah - I think he should have stuck playing with his Logo turtle ;-)

Off Topic but figure I would ask your perl guys...

[DigitalCH]

Can someone tell me if there is a perl to java code converter out there? Open source or proprietary is fine....

If not can someone tell me what the difficulty in writing one would be?

Perl 6 is coming

[imnoteddy]

Make no mistake, Perl 6 isn't here yet, but it's coming.

Will it be released at the same time as HURD?

Re:Perl 6 is coming

[Jon Abbott]

Will it be released at the same time as HURD?

Yes, I've heard that some retailers will eventually start offering a software variety CD that has a copy of Perl 6, HURD, and Duke Nukem Forever on it! But, due to a strange contract mishap, each developer group is waiting for the other two to publish their software first, so it's just all waiting from here... But, that's just what I've heard.

Re:Perl 6 is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope so -- I need to get some mileage out of these Perl 5 books I still haven't read.

Re:Perl 6 is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

hyah! hyah! DragonFlyBSD will probably be version 6 and FreeBSD at version 10 when HURD ships!

Re:Perl 6 is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that HURD was being written in Perl 6.

Re:Perl 6 is coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've heard that some retailers will eventually start offering a software variety CD that has a copy of Perl 6, HURD, and Duke Nukem Forever on it!

And a copy of SCO's evidence.
Just had to get that in.

Mod parent up!

[quasi_steller]

Saying "you can do some really horrible stuff" in Perl in fact tells me that you probably don't know much about programming, at all. You can "do horrible stuff" in *any* programming language. Over the years I've seen more than my fair share of horrible C, C++, Java, Ruby, Python, Smalltalk, PHP, and yes, even Perl.

Absolutely true. People are always complaining that Perl alows a person to write obfucated code. What about C? The C programming language allows a person to write obfucated code as well. In fact it is so easy to write obfucated code in C that there is even a contest. But very few programmers would conclude that this makes C a bad language (although programmers might point to other aspects of C that might make it a bad language in their opinion). The C language is very powerfull, and part of this power is what allows a programmer to write obfucated code.

Re:Mod parent up!

[nixer]

Since I started this I think I'd better reply. The issue I find is that expressive nature of the language encourages people to do things in the most concise way possible - you can write some true horrors with an approach like this (check out the (in?)famous DeCSS implementation in Perl whose implementation fitted on a business card).

'C' (and to some extent C++) is just as bad - if not worse. I spent 10 years working in 'C'/C++ and when I was working with it I thought it was the best thing ever. It's only when you quit you realize just how bad it is - you end up using heavy software management process to get around all the shortcomings in the language. The same is true of Perl - it is possible to do some amazing things with it, and make the code maintainable - but only with a lot of work.

I wish Perl had more of the Java mindset - strip out all the fuzzy, poorly defined stuff and leave the minimum to do the job.

As for the chap working on 250,000 lines of Perl - well, congratulations - you must have a good development process in place and good common practice amongst your programmers.

Languages impact the way you think - whether they are the spoken type, or the digital type. My argument is that Perl tends to encourage your thinking to be a little fuzzy.

Re:Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, the word is obfuscated, not obfucated.

Re:Mod parent up!

[nixer]

Trie, bit Slshdt dsnyt hive e speeling chckr

Re:Mod parent up!

[Abcd1234]

you must have a good development process in place and good common practice amongst your programmers.

Umm... if you're in a project that has 250,000 lines of code, and you *don't* have a "good development process in place and good common practice amongst your programmers", you're already a lost cause. The language the program is written in probably won't make much of a difference...

Re:Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate these people who have nothing better to do than be a spell checker for other people. Get a life!

Re:Barely about Perl. Certainly not essential.

[shotgunefx]

I think the plan is important in the sense that the it gives members of the community an idea of what's going to happen who haven't been following it that close.

As far as delving into the guts, yes there is a book about the innards of perl5 Extending and Embedding Perl. A good read actually. I myself am looking forward to a refactored implementation. perl5 isn't too pretty inside the bowels.

Re:The Right Tool For The Job

[Abcd1234]

Yeah! 'cuz if we don't write all our software in the same language, the OSS movement is doomed!

WTF are you talking about? Divide the community... it's about the software, not the language. Who gives a damn if the code is written in Perl, Python, Ruby, or, heck, shell script, as long as it does something useful?

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

My website (hosted by windows 2k/IIS) uses perl.

That's really sick. :-)
That's like using IE on *nix/Wine.

Bookpool.com has the best prices on tech books

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given Bookpool.com thousands of dollars worth of business over the years, and never once had a problem with an order.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl 6 is a Second System.

Nothing is as it appears...

[sharlskdy]

I am surprised, actually. I shouldn't be, I guess. I didn't notice that the links to the books were to affiliate programs! I'm sure I'm not the first, nor will I be the last.

Write a glowing review, and post a link and watch the balance in your affiliate account grow! What's wrong with making some spare change on the side? Except, the original review is tainted - it can't be objective because the author has something to gain.

Did you know that many retail stores make more income off the interest on their credit cards than they do off of what people buy directly out of the store? There are whole industries built on deception - and what they appear to do and what they actually do are two different things. Follow the money and you'll see what they actually do.

Re:Off Topic but figure I would ask your perl guys

[Dog and Pony]

Ask at PerlMonks instead. I don't think so, but there have been a few projects for integrating the two languages, such as JPL, perljvm and Inline::Java. Not sure how succesful any of them were, if they ever worked or what the status is today.

If you are looking to convert perl source into java source, then you are probably totally out of luck though.

Re:Off Topic but figure I would ask your perl guys

[DigitalCH]

Yeah... I came to the same conclusion... I would have though someone would have tackled the problem before now though...

Re:Barely about Perl. Certainly not essential.

[refactored]

perl5 isn't too pretty inside the bowels.

Neither are you mate, no, not pretty at all, at all.

Ya boink my regex then want me to buy yer book!?!

[mnemotronic]

Turn my world upside down, hurt my brain, then expect me to shell out .... Oh. Only 18 bucks? Ok then. Never mind.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

Where should I send you the 200.000 usd? ooouh great master of the universe, gimme a break.

Re:Off Topic but figure I would ask your perl guys

[Synic]

Just rewrite the code, you lazy ass. ;)

You wouldn't want non-OO Perl being directly converted into Java equivalence anyway-- the whole point of OO design is to abstract things and make it easier to maintain and modify the source code after it has been created (software engineering practices). A sloppy program-ported version of your Perl code into JSP or whatever would probably be a NIGHTMARE to support.

so I suck with things.. (ACs don't need Preview:P)

[Anonymous Coward]

$post =~ s/=/\</2;

Sorry, wrong.

[Dog and Pony]

No, that is print "@array"

Re:Barely about Perl. Certainly not essential.

[shotgunefx]

I'll thank you for not pondering about the
attractiveness of my internals. :P

Re:I want to know how many websites use PERL .

[Dog and Pony]

Probably noone. Though, Perl is very common.

The distinction is that it isn't called PERL, it is Perl. There once (a short while) was a Perl ripoff called PERL that was a bit similar, but without all the features that makes a maintainable and secure application possible. If anyone is curious, you could have a look at Acme::Inline::PERL at CPAN, which brings the power of PERL to Perl. Yes, the ACME:: namespace is for sillyness and joke modules. :)

Even cheaper than amazon

[msoori]

I buy my books on Book Pool and they always has it for less than Amazon. http://www.bookpool.com/.x/r45rkojm50/ss/1?qs=Perl +6+Essentials+&Go.x=13&Go.y=4&Go=Go

'slashbot book review' is dying...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72174&cid=6512 597
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=678 12&ci d=6213534

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=69864&cid=64 18 187 (read the reply)

get a life, troll.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[smallpaul]

Tell you what - give me the $200,000 that they've been given and I will write the Perl6 interpreter for them.

How will you write the interpreter for a language that is still being designed? This may be part of why Parrot is going nowhere...there is nowhere well-defined to go!

Anti-Perl Sentiment

[sbszine]

What's with all the anti-Perl flamebait? It's fine to prefer PHP or Python or whatever, but at least give Perl the credit that it's due. It's fast, really truly cross platform, widely distributed, open source, munges text like nothing else, was the first decent backend to websites, and has a bunch of useful design patterns built into the language.

And regular expressions, too! Like Perl, you may hate the syntax but but you've got to love the power. Ah yes, it's like one of those fire-breathing car-crushing truckosauruses... ugly but mighty. I heart Perl.

(Before you hit reply, yes, I am aware of the bad aspects of Perl. But most of them are optional, and I can live with the ones that aren't.)

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[szap]

If you've been keeping track of the Parrot project's progress for the past 2+ years you'd see that they're going nowhere fast.

Remember Mozilla? Started out slow as well. Rewrite(s). Gnashing of teeth. Strong words spoken. Resignations.

But it's here, now. Arguably one of the most cross-platform, complex Open Source application. Just have a little faith with Perl 6. You might not like it, but many will, just like mozilla.

Haha

[Arbogast_II]

Excellent responce

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[screenrc]

Is it not true that most Free Software projects
start small and then pickup exponentially? Debian
had less than 70 develpers for several years,
today there might be 1000 developers. Or, how
about testing the the 2.6 kernel? Most people
do not test the kernel until the release date
gets closer, at which point traffic and bugfixes
also increase exponenttially.

PONIE supporters

[cwinters]

That's Fotango, who deserve a huge thanks from everyone who cares about Perl 6.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a bit confused. Mozilla is not vaporware and never has been. Mozilla actually has a well-defined goal and good leadership. But Parrot/Perl6 is a different story altogether.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

Where should I send you the 200.000 usd? ooouh great master of the universe, gimme a break.

Easy - send it here or here. At least they know what they are doing and have concrete results. Their VMs can run any interpreted language you can shake a stick at. No need for Parrot at all.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it not true that most Free Software projects
start small and then pickup exponentially?

No, only good free software projects pick up exponential support - most just wither and die. People know a dead horse when they see one. Just check out 99% of the ill-conceived and poorly designed projects on Sourceforge for an example. The previous attempt at Perl6, Topaz, was also a failure. It's on Sourceforge as well, if you care.

Re:Barely about Perl. Certainly not essential.

[screenrc]

This book is about (the upcoming) Perl6 and Parrot. If you want to
a Perl5 book, buy something else.

So what if Perl6 is not ready. If I was interested
in the Unified Theory, I would buy an appropiate book for
the topic; or do I first have to wait until physists
finaly decide whether the theory is valid or
invalid?

It takes all kinds

[ynotds]

A sadly overrated post asked:

Who wants to read about the plan for some that's in the middle of development?

When I can escape the clutches of IT I enjoy looking through housing estates that are under construction while the water supply, drains, sewers, electric supply, gas, telecommunications, roads, footpaths, etc. are being installed. Likewise for friends' new houses and renovations and public buildings when I can wangle access.

Following the Perl 6 development process is a lot like that. You gain some appreciation of how all those indispensible but ultimately hidden services were actually put into place. Then maybe you will be able to use them with a bit more insight and respect.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[screenrc]

Strange, as I recall Topaz was a C++ of Perl5 by a tiny group of developers.
(Please correct me if wrong). As for Perl6,
it is impossible to judge ahead of time, unless
of course, you are too eager to spread FUD, much like Caldera,
and you keep your reasons a secret.

I have taken the trouble to study the Perl6
features, and I even know Parrot Assembly, not
to mention that many Perl6 features have
been available as Perl5 for years! I am still
waiting to hear why the project is ill conceived,
which unlike Topaz, it enjoys the support of
most p5p (perl porters), they are the very
same people who wrote perl5. If anything, the
past history is a one of atchivement and success,
not (as you claim) one of failure.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[screenrc]

One more thing: sometime around Linux-kernel 1.4,
there was an attempt to rewrite the kernel
in C++. Although that attempt was a failure, did Linux
turned out to be a failure?

We will judge when it arrives. I am just suspisious
of people who arrive to speak ill about other
people's projects before completion, especially,
when these people have a prior record
of achivement.

Re:Ruby

[togofspookware]

> Perl is old news.
>
> Ruby.

Personally I love Ruby. It's great fun to program in. There's one thing I don't like about it, though: anytime you want to do ANYTHING, you have to do a method call. That means you have to take some object, and look through one or more hash tables of method names => methods. You can't evel 'call' a piece of code without looking up its 'call' method. I'm sure that hurts efficiency quite a bit. What would be nice would be to use Parrot-style vtables for common operations like get-subelement, get-attribute, call, etc. (however I think Parrot's gone a little overboard with the huge Vtables... Maybe there should be a 'mini' version of the Vtables or something...) So instead of saying

object.call('param1','param2',etc)

you could say (assuming 'CALL' is some kind of keyword)

CALL(object,'param1','param2')

or maybe even

object.CALL('param1','param2')

'CALL' would be recognised by the compiler as a lower-level method call. No method names to deal with, so it's much faster :-D. Yeah. Well with Parrot, you'll be able to write your super-high-level code that doesn't need to worry about such things in Ruby, but then write your lower-level code in a language which gives you more control, and compile it all down to Parrot byte code. I expect that Perl 6 will allow a bit more optimisation that Ruby does.

Sorry. That was incoherent (ant? whatever) and vaguely off-topic. Mmeh.

Re:Ruby

[patch-rustem]

If Perl is old then Ruby's just a baby.
Ruby says "bwarghhhhh!"

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

The ideas in Perl6 (the language) are quite interesting and many people within the Perl community are looking forward to it. I also look forward to it. It is important to distinguish Perl6 from Parrot. Strictly speaking, Perl6 (the language) does not need Parrot at all. It is simply one possible way to create Perl6. I believe Parrot is needlessly delaying the progress of Perl6.

Perl6 should be written first in Perl5 as a proof of concept - eating their own dogfood and all that. They could then run actual Perl6 code, find problems, sort out issues and even bootstrap Perl6 within Perl6 itself. Most high level languages are developed in this fashion. They should only consider rewriting Perl6 in C for speed reasons once the design of the language is sound. How can anyone expect a reasonable design for an interpreter when the language is not finished? Having a high-level Perl6 interpreter available written in Perl5 (or Perl6) could help facilitate the targetting of Perl6 towards any number of interpreter VMs including the JVM and the CLR (Mono and DotGNU). Let the best VM win. Heck, having multiple back-ends for Perl6 would be a good thing as well.

I question the process and priorities of the Perl6 project, that's all. Surely such issues should be discussed after two years of effort without significant milestones being achieved.

By the way, Topaz was originally going to be named Perl 6.0. Perl6's name was rebranded to be the next generation Perl after Topaz's failure.

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing: sometime around Linux-kernel 1.4,
there was an attempt to rewrite the kernel
in C++. Although that attempt was a failure, did Linux
turned out to be a failure?

I could not agree with you more.
That is exactly why Perl 6 should abandon Parrot in favor of a better design strategy (as outlined in a previous post in this discussion thread).

Re:What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hybrid solutions always the best

Re:but what's better?

[Anonymous Coward]

mount /dev/mare

Re:But which is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the mare trolls aren't your design! (but feel free to use them, you see, mare sex is such a wonderful activity that it definitely needs some promotion in popular places like this... :)

Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, as author of the original post I wish to thank you for correcting me. However, you state that Perl looks like a combination of "line noise and comic book swearing." The correct description of Perl is "an explosion in an ASCII factory."

Good day.

No, thank YOU

[ta bu shi da yu]

It is I who stand corrected!

Yours humbly,
Ta bù shì dà yú

Re:Parrot started out as a joke, and is still a jo

[Anonymous Coward]

> Debian had less than 70 develpers for several years

Debbie and Ian had a working distro in less than one year. What has parrot begotten?