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Perl 6 Deep Dive
Perl 6 Deep Dive

Perl 6 Deep Dive: Data manipulation, concurrency, functional programming, and more

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Perl 6 Deep Dive

Writing Code

This chapter will prepare you to write Perl 6 code. Before we examine variables, data types, object orientation, and other important topics, let's learn more about how the source code is organized in Perl 6. There are many elements that differ from other programming languages, and it is worth spending time getting used to it.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Using Unicode
  • Whitespaces and unspaces
  • Comments
  • Creating Pod documentation
  • Phasers
  • Simple input and output

Using Unicode

The default assumption is that the source of a Perl 6 program uses UTF-8. It gives you the power of the whole spectrum of characters without worrying if it will work. In Perl 5, for example, you had to add special instructions in order to inform the interpreter that you are using non-ASCII characters in the source code. In Perl 6, this is much easier.

First, Unicode characters may be freely used in strings. For example, let's try some Greek and Chinese graphemes, as shown in the following lines of code:

say 'C = 2πr';       # Circumference of a circle
say         # 'Sun' and 'Moon' give 'bright'

The preceding two lines of code will print the corresponding strings as expected:

C = 2πr 

Alternatively, it is possible to refer to the Unicode codepoints by their names. For example, consider the following line of...

Whitespaces and unspaces

As we just saw, a Perl 6 program can intensively use the Unicode characters outside of the conventional ASCII set. This also applies to the whitespaces. Whitespaces are those gaps between the elements of the program, that are traditionally represented by spaces (ASCII code 0x20), tabs (0x09), and newlines (a single line feed character 0x0A in Unix and a series of two characters, carriage return 0x0D, and line feed 0x0A in Windows). Perl 6 extends the concept of whitespaces and accepts Unicode whitespace in every place of the code where a regular space is allowed. Be careful when you work with an existing code that, for some reason, is filled with Unicode characters.

A whitespace character set in Perl 6 includes characters that have one of the following Unicode properties:

  • Zs: Separator, Space
  • Zl: Separator, Line
  • Zp: Separator, Paragraph

You can find...

Comments

In Chapter 1, What is Perl 6?, we've seen two ways of writing programs—by passing it in the -e command-line option or by saving it in a file. Of course, all big programs are stored in files. In this section, we will see how Perl 6 helps the programmer to organize the code better by adding comments.

Comments are parts of the source code, which are ignored by the compiler. Comments are intended to give additional information about the program itself. Good examples of comments are explanations of the algorithms used, or the purpose of variables, or a description of the input arguments of a function.

Perl 6 offers two ways of saving additional human-oriented information in the source code by using comments and the so-called Pod. First, we will examine the comments.

Comments are fragments of source code that a compiler does not consider as direct instructions for...

Creating Pod documentation

Pod is a sublanguage inside Perl 6 used to write documentation. It can be considered as an extended version of comments, which allows more functionality in expressing the content. Pod in Perl 6 is the evolution of the POD (Plain Old Documentation) in Perl 5. In Perl 6, the name is not an abbreviation and thus is not capitalized. In this section, we will examine the syntax of the Pod markup language.

Pod content is placed in the same source file as the Perl 6 program itself. A Pod section is a series of lines containing some textual information. The compiler is switching between parsing Pod and Perl 6 when it sees the beginning and ending marks of the Pod section. Pod syntax is designed to express the semantics of the documentation and to help organize it in a more structured way.

Let's see how you create a Pod block. There are a few types of Pod...

Phasers

When creating a program in Perl 6, it is important to understand that controlling the program flow is a little trickier than simply following the instructions of the code. There are special types of code blocks that are automatically called by the compiler at different phases of the compilation and the execution processes. Those blocks are called phasers.

We mentioned two of them, BEGIN and CHECK, in Chapter 1, What is Perl 6?, when we talked about the -c command-line option of the compiler. Now, let's take a look at the rest.

Syntactically, phasers are blocks of code in curly braces preceded by a phaser name. The following table summarizes the different phasers that exist in Perl 6. Some of the phasers are executed at compile-time before the rest of the program is compiled and executed. Some are called at runtime.

Phaser name Execution stage Actions
BEGIN compile...

Simple input and output

In the previous examples, we used the built-in print and say functions to print something to the console (speaking more strictly, to the standard output attached to the program). In this section, you will learn how to perform basic reading from the standard input. This is basically how the program gets what you type onto the console.

To read the input, there are a few functions that you may use directly without loading any modules. They are listed in the following table:

Function What it does
get This reads one line from the input and returns it
lines This returns the list of lines containing the data lines that came from the standard input
slurp This returns a string that contains the whole input

The get and line functions may be used when you need to parse the input data line by line. For example, call get as many times as you need if you...

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at the way a Perl 6 program is organized. The source code is written in Unicode, and there are many Unicode elements in the syntax of the language that may be used to make the program more expressive. We also examined how to create and use comments that vary from one-line notes to bigger Pod blocks that may contain documentation about the program. We looked at that ways the parts of the source code may be placed in different phasers to change the flow of the program. And finally, you learned a method for getting input from the users.

Now, we are ready to create real Perl 6 programs. In the next chapter, we will talk about the data types in Perl 6 and how to use variables.

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Key benefits

  • • Filled with practical examples, this comprehensive guide explores all aspects of Perl 6.
  • • Leverage the power of Perl 6 concurrency to develop responsive and high-performant software.
  • • Delves into various programming paradigms (such as Object Oriented, functional, and reactive) that can be adopted by Perl 6 developers to write effective code.

Description

Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages consisting of Perl 5 and Perl 6. Perl 6 helps developers write concise and declarative code that is easy to maintain. This book is an end-to-end guide that will help non-Perl developers get to grips with the language and use it to solve real-world problems. Beginning with a brief introduction to Perl 6, the first module in the book will teach you how to write and execute basic programs. The second module delves into language constructs, where you will learn about the built-in data types, variables, operators, modules, subroutines, and so on available in Perl 6. Here the book also delves deeply into data manipulation (for example, strings and text files) and you will learn how to create safe and correct Perl 6 modules. You will learn to create software in Perl by following the Object Oriented Paradigm. The final module explains in detail the incredible concurrency support provided by Perl 6. Here you will also learn about regexes, functional programming, and reactive programming in Perl 6. By the end of the book, with the help of a number of examples that you can follow and immediately run, modify, and use in practice, you will be fully conversant with the benefits of Perl 6.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who would like to learn the Perl programming language. A basic knowledge of programming is assumed.

What you will learn

  • • Learn the background from which Perl 6 appeared and how it developed.
  • • How to use Rakudo to run your programs.
  • • Various Perl 6 built-in types and details about their behavior
  • • Understand how scalar variables, hash variables, and arrays work
  • • Create meta operators and hyper operators
  • • How classes work and how to build software based on the Object Oriented Paradigm
  • • How Perl 6 provides support for concurrency, functional programming, and reactive programming.
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Table of Contents

15 Chapters
What is Perl 6? Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Writing Code Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working with Variables and Built-in Data Types Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working with Operators Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Control Flow Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Subroutines Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Modules Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Object-Oriented Programming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Input and Output Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working with Exceptions Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Regexes Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Grammars Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Concurrent Programming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Functional Programming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Reactive Programming Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
(4 Ratings)
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4 star 25%
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2 star 25%
1 star 25%
Amazon Customer Nov 26, 2018
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Excellent product
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Christian BELOSCAR Jan 24, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
Cet ouvrage est assez complet sans être bien sûr exhaustif,il permettra à ceux qui programment dans un autre langage ou en Perl 5d'apprendre rapidement les nouveaux atouts de ce langage.Il est constellé d'exemples très simples pour illustrer le propos.Pas recommandé pour les débutants en programmation;pour ceux-ci je recommande vivement "ThinkPerl6" de Laurent Rosenfelddont il existe peut-être déjà une version en français ou qui ne saurait trop tarder.
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Anon Oct 24, 2017
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I bought this book on Packt.com so that I could get the ebook and paper copy, but I cannot recommend it in it’s current state. There are many errors in the text and I feel I can no longer effectively learn from it. I believe the book may have been translated from a different language as there are many grammatical errors (which I was willing to overlook), but there are also many code errors. I have done my best to submit errata for the errors that I could not overlook, but this was an expensive book and I do not believe it should be sold it in its current state. With some more review and editing I believe this can become an excellent book. I like the organization and feature-based approach.Update: I just want to mention how pleasant dealing with Packt customer service was. I contacted them with my comments on the book and they gave me a full refund. They said that they were a print on demand business and I did not even have to return the book. Really great company.
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Gregory C. Donald Nov 01, 2019
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This book is not a "deep dive". I found more in-depth coverage in Brian D Foy's "Learning Perl 6" book. There was nothing in there for meta-programming for example, and topics were not covered in much detail. Feels like it was written in a hurry.The book is in English but does not appear to have been written by a native English speaker, or perhaps it was poorly translated? I found many times thinking "that's an odd choice of words".I did not care for the many Perl 5 comparisons. They were a complete waste of time and space for me personally.Not a lot of value for the price I paid.
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