2020 – Page 5 – Raku Advent Calendar

RFC 168, by Johan Vromans: Built-in functions should be functions

Proposed on 27 August 2000, frozen on 20 September 2000, which was a generalization of RFC 26: Named operators versus functions proposed on 4 August 2000, frozen on 28 August 2000, also by Johan Vromans. Johan’s proposal was to completely obliterate the difference between built-in functions, such as abs, and functions defined by the user. In Perl, abs can beContinue reading “RFC 168, by Johan Vromans: Built-in functions should be functions”

RFC 145, by Eric J. Roode: Brace-matching for Perl Regular Expressions

Problem and proposal The RFC 145 calls for a new regex mechanism to assist in matching paired characters like parentheses, ensuring that they are balanced. There are many “paired characters” in more or less daily use: (), [], {}, <>, «», “”, ”, depending on your local even »«, or in the fancy world ofContinue reading “RFC 145, by Eric J. Roode: Brace-matching for Perl Regular Expressions”

RFC 137: Perl OO should not be fundamentally changed.

Now, as you have read the title and already stopped laughing… Er, not all of you yet? Ok, I’ll give you another minute… Good, let’s be serious now. RFC 137 was written by Damian Conway. Yes, the title too. No, I’m serious! Check it yourself! And then also read other RFCs from language-objects category. TurnsContinue reading “RFC 137: Perl OO should not be fundamentally changed.”

Sixy POD

Like Perl, the original POD had flaws, but Raku’s POD6 is much more flexible, while looking similar.

RFC 25, 76, 193: Worthy picks by Damian Conway

RFC 25, by Damian Conway: Operators: Multiway comparisons This RFC was originally proposed on August 4th and frozen in a month. It describes a simple and intuitive feature, making the code obey the Do What I Mean rule:

RFC 112 by Richard Proctor: Assignment within a regex

Richard wanted to… Provide a simple way of naming and picking out information from a regex without having to count the brackets. I can say without hesitation that Raku (and before its rename, Perl 6) has achieved this goal — but all the details are different than proposed. The reason is two-fold. For one, RichardContinue reading “RFC 112 by Richard Proctor: Assignment within a regex”

RFC1: Threads

RFC 1, by Bryan C. Warnock: Threads It might or might not be the case that the need for a real multithreaded architecture in Perl was the real motive behind the creation of what was initially called simply Perl, then Perl 6, and eventually Raku. It was probably late 90s or early 10s, when weContinue reading “RFC1: Threads”

20 years ago tomorrow

20 years ago, on the first of August, the inception of a language started to, well, incept. Actually, it started a bit earlier than that. Perl was in need of change, so it was decided that the community itself should propose what the language needed to do to go forward one step, from Perl 5Continue reading “20 years ago tomorrow”