Perl 6
Perl 6: Revision 32

Welcome to the Perl 6 Workspace

  • This is the home page for Perl 6.
  • There is a Parrot workspace as well.
  • Please feel free to add or modify pages — even this one — as you see fit. That's the idea of a Workspace. So please contribute links and information! (See Wiki 101 at bottom of page to get started.)

What is Perl 6?

What is Perl 6? Perl 6 is an extensively refactored, super-modernized, and ultra-supercharged derivative of Perl 5. Simple things will still be simple to do, but you'll have enormously more "programming leverage" available for tackling challenging tasks. Chromatic has written a good introductory article on why Perl 6 is needed, and what it is. Also see Juerd's Refuting Perl6 Myths. (A slight correction to Juerd's slides: it is Perl 5.10 that will have many Perl 6 features you can start using. These will be in feature.pm which is currently part of the Perl 5.9 developer branch.)

See The Long Perl 6 Super-Feature List.

Other answers:

  • Larry Wall (2006): Perhaps the Perl 6 slogan should be "All Your Paradigms Are Belong To Us". We'll get to that.
  • Damian Conway (2003): The Perl 6 design process is about keeping what works in Perl 5, fixing what doesn't, and adding what's missing. That means there will be a few fundamental changes to the language, a large number of extensions to existing features, and a handful of completely new ideas. These modifications, enhancements, and innovations will work together to make the future Perl even more insanely great -- without, we hope, making it even more greatly insane.
  • Perl 6 is still under construction. So don't make critical plans that depend on it just yet. However, please see other sections below about intermediate Perl 6-related solutions you can use now (or soon, as in Perl 5.10, which will feature several Perl 6 features).
  • Crazy (in a good way)
  • Perl 5 : Swiss Army Chain Saw == Perl 6 : Swiss Army T-X Terminator (on the side of humans in this case)
  • ....

Latest Perl 6 Information

General Perl 6 News

Perl 6 Mailing Lists

The currently active Perl 6 mailing lists are at (http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/) and Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/):

You can also get these by email; see (http://lists.cpan.org/showlist.cgi?name=perl6-users for details (and make appropriate substitutions on "-users" for other groups).

You can access the mailing lists in several ways (we use perl.perl6.users as an example below, make appropriate substitutions for other cases) :

Perl 6 IRC

IRC channels (and their archives) are a major source of useful information. NOTE: Please don't unthinkingly interrupt and pester the developers of Perl 6 with questions that you can just as well ask on perl.perl6.users, which they and others can then later answer at their convenience. (As always, it's good manners to search Google Groups and to check archival logs before posting questions.)

  • Some handy "#perl6"-isms:
    • ?eval <Perl 6 expression> # Replays with evaluated expression.
    • perlbot nopaste # Use to paste blocks of text offline; it replies to IRC with URL to it.

General Perl 6 Information

Where to get Perl 6

Perl 6 Documentation

  • Official Perl 6 Documentation Page (Which means, documentation that is officially bundled with Perl 6 builds.) (on feather, a Perl 6 development server)
  • Perl6 Community Development Server (on feather, a Perl 6 development server)
  • Perl's Official Home Page (at perl.org)
  • Perl 6 Synopses (This is the official Perl 6 specification, which supersedes the apocalypses and exegeses, and which is bundled with Perl 6 builds. The rapidly growing Perl 6 test base is another {very important, complementary, and emerging} part of the Perl 6 specification as well.)
  • Perl 6 Development Info (at perl.org)
  • Another Perl 6 Wiki (For a long time, the Perl 6 Wiki at perl.net.au was the best general introduction to Perl 6, and a great point of departure to other Perl 6 resources around the web.)
  • Perl 6 Users FAQ (The initial large batch of text and links on this Wiki originally came from this FAQ on the perl.net.au Perl 6 Wiki. The folks there deserve much thanks for "Wikifying" my original ugly ASCII Perl 6 Users FAQ, which was developed at the inaguration of perl.perl6.users.)
  • Perl 6 Tutorial (at perl.net.au)
  • Most of the information on getting started can be found on this getting started page. You may also find the following links useful:
  • Russian language Perl 6 sitenbsp
  • General background articles on Perl 6:
  • Some design influences on Perl 6:
    • "Perl Best Practices" by Damian Conway. Even though this currently applies to Perl 5, most of the principles also apply to Perl 6. This book is a semi-officially recommended guideline for people doing develop core Perl 6 modules and tests.
    • ""Confessions of a Used Programming Language Salesman; Getting the Masses Hooked on Haskell by Erik Meijer.
    • Traits are one of the "Big Ideas" that have had some influence on #perl6 design discussions.
    • ""The 100 Year Language Useful information on how we should view Perl 6 (although its not about Perl 6).
  • Glossary of Perl 6 terms and jargon.

What are people doing with Perl 6?

  • PITA - The Perl Image Testing Architecture (http://ali.as/pita/).
  • Darren Duncan's work on a Perl 6 Relation type (as in relational algebra and data structures).
  • ....

Wiki 101

  • If you'd like an introductory tour of the Socialtext Workspace, start here.
  • Visit Recent Changes every once in a while to see what's new, and see Socialtext Documentation for tips to use this Workspace.
  • Make links by putting words or phrases in square brackets. Click on Edit This Page to see some examples.

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