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Perl 6: Rakudo, Niecza pass 20k spectests. Best of all? Audrey's back!
6 points by raiph on Feb 18, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
PUGS (Perl 6 on Haskell) stopped developing several years ago, when Audrey took a break. But Audrey++ has been keeping the PUGS build process fresh. Interest in getting PUGS back on the road (catching up with spec changes, passing spec tests) was already high last year. Then Audrey began dropping in again at #perl6, and yesterday Coke++ started the ball rolling on having PUGS pass spec tests.

In the meantime, Niecza (Perl 6 on Mono/.NET) and Rakudo (Perl 6 on Parrot) both passed 20k spectests (of 23k) for the first time a few days ago.

I don't see any of these Perl 6 compilers going "gold" this year, but thanks to Larry Wall's steady focus, Perl 6 is shaping up nicely.

If you like powerful languages and language concepts (lisp, haskell, J, smalltalk, etc.; functional programming, peg parsers, etc.), but wish the power was available in a simpler form, you should find much to admire and enjoy in Perl 6. Visit the #perl6 IRC channel on freenode for more info.



Even if you won't use Perl6 (which you probably won't, in the near future), you will find the developments in notation quite stimulating. Hyper-operators and the incredibly detailed attention to array references blew my mind away. Especially see Synopsis 3.

In the long run, Perl6 could be as influential as Perl Regular Expressions have been. Definitely something to watch.




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