Perl 6 Glossary Tablet

Herbert Breunung — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:07:07 -0000

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A

ALAP - as late as possible, within a given execution phase (compile time or run time)
ASAP - as soon as possible, within a given execution phase (compile time or run time)
AST - (abstract syntax tree), tree like data structure, in which source code is transformed, before running the programm

backtracking - after a part of a pattern didn't match, this last operation might not be counted (undone) and the pointer for the position in the string where actual matching is taking place is going a few steps to the left (it goes back)
binding - making two variables share the same content by pointing to same memory location
block - syntactically just a piece of code inside curly brackets ({}), when evaluated it becomes an object of the type Block

closure - routines whose state (content of all local variables) is completely preserved until the next execution, mostly used as a fancy alias for a block
coderef - reference (pointer) to an executable block of code (routine)
compilation - reading the human written source code and make it an executable (piece of) program
compile time - time when Perl converts source code to executable form (bytecode), is always before runtime even if code can be compiled via eval and evalfile when the program is already runnung, to run code at the begin of compile time use BEGIN and CHECK to run at the end of compile time for that unit (mostly the file or the to be evaled string)
context - when executing a function or operator Perl considers the expression from which the call was to return a scalar or other kind of result
context variable - name for $_, which is used by built in Perl functions as an implicit parameter and as memory of the last result
currying - creating a subroutine that calls another with certain parameter to be predefined

declarative programming - programming paradigm that expresses the logic of a computation without describing its control flow
design by contract - programming style in which parameters and return values from routines must meet conditions; A signature is considered contract in Perl 6

evaluation - executing a piece of program, before that all variables will be replaced with their content

functional programming - exclusively function based programming style, strongly supported by Perl 6, considered as a branch of declarative Programming

junction - a type of value that holds a logical combination of several values, example: (A and B) or C

list context -
longest token matching - (short LTM) when searching a pattern with alternatives (sub|substr) the search will continue after finding the pattern 'sub' because of looking for the longest alternative

object oriented programming - (short oop) programming paradigm (style), that arranges data and functions that belong together into so called objects

parameter - value passed to a method or subroutine, mostly as part of the signature
parsetree - hierarchical data representing the logical structure of a program, also called AST
pipe - connection between 2 processes, move data (mostly only in one direction) without buffering
POD - Plain Old Documentation, a markup language to be embeded into Perl source code, has in Perl 6 ability to store data to be retrieved later
pointy block - a block that is given parameters with ->
property - metadata of a variable set at runtime

reference - address of data in memory, often termed a Capture in Perl 6
regular expression - in Perl5: pattern matching notation, either regex, token or rule in Perl6
runtime - time when execution hits a certain part of the program, after compile time

scope - the block of code within which an identifier is usable
sigil - character that serves as a prefix to categorize the following name, most prominent in Perl are the variable sigils: $, @ and %
signature - function parameters (left-hand side of a binding), surrounded by round parentheses
slice - part of an array or list
slurpy array - array parameter that receives all (slurps) all optional subroutine arguments

topicalizer - every keyword that sets the $_ variable, eg given, for
trait - additional property of a variable, defined at compile time, see but, what other languages call trait Perl calls role
twigil - second(ary) sigil indicating a special property of a variable

yadda operator - placeholder for later to be written code, because in empty routines are forbidden, comes in 3 flavours: ..., ??? and !!!

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