Actually, Perl does this without a problem. It's just a matter of using references to your advantage. As an example, here is a three dimensional array: $array[0]->[0]->[0]. Any structure you make in C, I can make in Perl. For a lot more details, I would suggest reading the perlstruct pod page that comes with Perl, or take a look at a few of the examples in the Perl Cookbook. You just have to think in a Perlish sort of way.
Actually, during the Q and A session with Larry after his announcement, someone asked if Perl would ever have any strong typing. Larry's response was that the hooks for that already exist, and having a pragma that turned on type could be something that would be considered for Perl6. The suggestion that he made for the new pragma name (obviously in jest) was 'use bondage and discipline'
My understanding of what Larry was saying during the keynote was that the way that he plans on maintaining compatibility with Perl5 is by building an internal representation of the script, converting that to the new syntax, and dumping it back out to disk. Apparently there is a module currently on the CPAN that does something similar to this already: building the symbol table, and dumping it out to disk. Having this capability seems to be how he feels he can make (relatively) large changes to the syntax of the language without breaking all of the existing code. He also mentioned that this would almost certainly not work for 100% of the existing code, but if they could get it to 85% or so, that would be an acceptable solution.
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Actually, Perl does this without a problem. It's just a matter of using references to your advantage. As an example, here is a three dimensional array: $array[0]->[0]->[0]. Any structure you make in C, I can make in Perl. For a lot more details, I would suggest reading the perlstruct pod page that comes with Perl, or take a look at a few of the examples in the Perl Cookbook. You just have to think in a Perlish sort of way.
Actually, during the Q and A session with Larry after his announcement, someone asked if Perl would ever have any strong typing. Larry's response was that the hooks for that already exist, and having a pragma that turned on type could be something that would be considered for Perl6. The suggestion that he made for the new pragma name (obviously in jest) was 'use bondage and discipline'
My understanding of what Larry was saying during the keynote was that the way that he plans on maintaining compatibility with Perl5 is by building an internal representation of the script, converting that to the new syntax, and dumping it back out to disk. Apparently there is a module currently on the CPAN that does something similar to this already: building the symbol table, and dumping it out to disk. Having this capability seems to be how he feels he can make (relatively) large changes to the syntax of the language without breaking all of the existing code. He also mentioned that this would almost certainly not work for 100% of the existing code, but if they could get it to 85% or so, that would be an acceptable solution.