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Exegesis 2 (May 15, 2001)
This is the first of a series of articles paralleling Larry's ``Apocalypse'' encyclicals (it's numbered 2 to keep it in sync with those Revelations). These articles will take each unveiled piece of the design for Perl 6 and demonstrate the new syntax and semantics in an annotated program.
Exegesis 3 (October 3, 2001)
In Apocalypse 3, Larry describes the changes that Perl 6 will make to
operators and their operations. As with all the Apocalypses, only the
new and different are presented -- just remember that the vast
majority of operator-related syntax and semantics will stay precisely
as they are in Perl 5.
Exegesis 4 (April 02, 2002)
In Apocalypse 4, Larry explains the fundamental changes to flow and
block control in Perl 6. The changes bring fully integrated
exceptions; a powerful new switch statement; a coherent mechanism for
polymorphic matching; a greatly enhanced for loop; and unification of
blocks, subroutines and closures.
Exegesis 5 (August 22, 2002)
Previous Apocalypses took an evolutionary approach to changing Perl's
general syntax, data structures, control mechanisms, and
operators. New features were added, old features removed, existing
features were enhanced, extended, and simplified. But the changes
described were remedial, not radical. Larry could have taken the same
approach with regular expressions. Fortunately, however, he's taking
a much broader view of Perl's future than that.
Exegesis 6 (August 4, 2003)
This Exegesis explores the new subroutine semantics described in
Apocalypse 6. Those new semantics greatly increase the power and
flexibility of subroutine definitions, providing required and optional
formal parameters, named and positional arguments, a new and extended
operator overloading syntax, a far more sophisticated type system,
multiple dispatch, compile-time macros, currying, and subroutine
wrappers.
Exegesis 7 (February 26, 2004)
Formats are Perl 5's mechanism for creating text templates with
fixed-width fields. Those fields are then filled in using values from
prespecified package variables. Unlike Perl 5, Perl 6 doesn't have a
format keyword. Or the associated built-in formatting
mechanism. Instead it has a Form.pm module. And a form function. Like
a Perl 5 format statement, the form function takes a series of format
(or "picture") strings, each of which is immediately followed by a
suitable set of replacement values. It interpolates those values into
the placeholders specified within each picture string, and returns the
result.