Perl 6 at EuroOSCON

This is a brief summary of my notes from the Perl 6 and pugs sessions. I have only included the stuff that was new compared to the Perl 6 Appendix in the 'Perl Programming' course. I might have repeated myself.

use strict and use warnings are on by default;

Quotes are only required around a hash key when {} are used.

$hash{'key'} becomes %hash

Barewords are not allowed. Ever. Even for file handles.

fail{…} warn{…} die{…} throw a 'not yet implemented' type warning – the Perl 6 developers must be using that a lot ;-)

Many improvements to interpolation:

"{ executable code like a do block} "

Subroutine calls are allowed: "&mysub(args)"

Interpolate an array: "@array[]"

Interpolate a hash: "%hash{}"

sprintf is probably obsolete, printf definitely is:

print $var.as('%6.2f');

print $hash.as("%-20s: %2.6f", "\n");

Control can be made over exactly what is interpolated:

qq:c(0)/ / # don't interpolate

qq:s(1)/ / # only interpolate scalars

qq:s(1):a(1)/ / # interpolate scalars and arrays

hummmmmmm

Here document syntax is changed:

my $var = q:to /END/ # s(1):a(1):h(1) can be added

…

END

Not sure where the semi-colon goes

Ranges have a new feature:

x..^y means from x up to y-1

x^..^y means from x+1 to y-1

To open a file with an automatic chomp::

my $fh = open $filename

This can be overridden.

while (<$fh>) {…}

becomes:

while = $fh {…}

while (<>){…}

becomes

while = $ARGS{…} or while =<> {…}

=<> is known as the 'fish' operator

There is now a 'prompt' verb

Most built-ins that operator on scalars and arrays are now methods:

$var.substr(…) # returns the substring

$var .= $var.substr(…) # changes the substring

No need for Data::Dumper, instead:

$var.perl()

And there is much more, Damian could not complete his talk because of time, and it is not downloadable. I'll keep you posted as I play with pugs.