[Purdue-pm] Rakudo Perl 6 #31 released

[Mark Senn]

Perl 6 is a specification.  Perl 6 is a complete redesign of Perl 5
language but still "feels like" Perl.  Regular expressions (now called
rules), object-oriented programming, parsing grammars, and many other
things have been improved.  I've been trying to use Perl 6 at home for
years but the implementations or documentation have been lacking.
Rakudo Perl 6 is an in-progress Perl 6 implementation that's improving
_rapidly_.

Rakudo Star will be (from http://use.perl.org/~pmichaud/journal/39411):
an "official", intermediate, useful and usable release of Perl 6 (an
appropriate subset).  According to Rakudo's home page at
http://www.rakudo.org Rakudo Star will be released by July 29.

>From http://www.parrot.org/:
    Parrot is a virtual machine designed to efficiently compile and
    execute bytecode for dynamic languages. Parrot currently hosts a
    variety of language implementations in various stages of completion,
    including Tcl, Javascript, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, PHP, Python, Perl 6,
    APL, and a .NET bytecode translator. Parrot is not about parrots,
    though we are rather fond of them for obvious reasons.

From
http://docs.parrot.org    (cont. on next line)
/parrot/latest/html/docs/book/pct/ch03_compiler_tools.pod.html:
    Parrot has a robust system for interfacing with external native code
    libraries, such as those commonly written in C, C++, Fortran and
    other compiled languages. Where previously every interpreter would
    need to maintain its own bindings and interfaces to libraries,
    Parrot enables developers to write library bindings once and use
    them seamlessly from any language executing on Parrot. Want to use
    Tcl's Tk libraries, along with Python's image manipulation libraries
    in a program you are writing in Perl?  Parrot supports that.

>Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:21:13 -0400
>Subject: Announce: Rakudo Perl 6 compiler development release #31 ("Atlanta")
>From: Will Coleda <will at coleda.com>
>To: Perl6 <perl6-language at perl.org>, perl6-announce at perl.org,
>        perl6-users at perl.org
>Cc: parrot-dev at lists.parrot.org
>
>On behalf of the Rakudo development team, I'm happy to announce the
>July 2010 development release of Rakudo Perl #31 "Atlanta".
>Rakudo is an implementation of Perl 6 on the Parrot Virtual Machine
>(see <http://www.parrot.org>). The tarball for the July 2010 release
>is available from <http://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/downloads>.
>
>Please note: This is not the Rakudo Star release, which is scheduled
>for July 29, 2010 [1]. The Star release will include the compiler, an
>installer, modules, a book (PDF), and more.
>
>The Rakudo Perl compiler follows a monthly release cycle, with each
>release named after a Perl Mongers group. The July 2010 release is code
>named "Atlanta" in recognition of Atlanta.pm and their Perl 5 Phalanx
>project [2], which they selected for its benefits to Perl 6.
>
>Some of the specific changes and improvements occurring with this
>release include:
>
>* Rakudo now properly constructs closures in most instances.
>
>* Undefined objects can now autovivify into arrays or hashes when
>  subscripted with .[ ] or .{ } .
>
>* Arrays can now handle infinite ranges.
>
>* Generic, multi-level Whatever-currying now works, e.g. (1, 1, *+* ... *).
>
>* The REPL shell now remembers lexical declarations in susbsequent lines.
>
>* The open() subroutine now returns a Failure instead of throwing
>  a fatal exception.
>
>* Rakudo now provides $*ARGFILES for reading from files specified
>  on the command line.
>
>* Added $*PERL, moved %*VM to $*VM.
>
>* Simple binding operators := and ::= now work.
>
>* Simple feed operators <== and ==> now work.
>
>For a more detailed list of changes see "docs/ChangeLog".
>
>The development team thanks all of our contributors and sponsors for
>making Rakudo Perl possible, as well as those people who worked on
>parrot, the Perl 6 test suite and the specification.
>
>The following people contributed to this release: Patrick R. Michaud,
>Jonathan Worthington, Moritz Lenz, Solomon Foster, Carl Masak, Bruce
>Gray, Martin Berends, chromatic, Will "Coke" Coleda, Matthew (lue),
>Timothy Totten, maard, Kodi Arfer, TimToady, Stephen Weeks, Patrick Abi
>Salloum, snarkyboojum, Radu Stoica, Vyacheslav Matjukhin, Andrew
>Whitworth, cognominal, Tyler Curtis, Alex Kapranoff, Ingy döt Net, Lars
>Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ 迪拉斯, mathw, lue, Вячеслав Матюхин
>
>If you would like to contribute, see <http://rakudo.org/how-to-help>,
>ask on the perl6-compiler at perl.org mailing list, or ask on IRC #perl6
>on freenode.
>
>The next release of Rakudo (#32) is scheduled for August 19, 2010.  A
>list of the other planned release dates and codeo names for 2010 is
>available in the "docs/release_guide.pod" file.  In general, Rakudo
>development releases are scheduled to occur two days after each Parrot
>monthly release.  Parrot releases the third Tuesday of each month.
>
>Have fun!
>
>[1] http://rakudo.org/node/73
>[2] http://code.google.com/p/atlanta-pm-code/
>
>-- 
>Will "Coke" Coleda

-mark