By Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski, Leopold Tötsch
June 2004
Pages: 294
ISBN 10: 0-596-00737-X |
ISBN 13: 9780596007379
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(Average of 1 Customer Reviews)
This book is an unparalleled sneak-peek of what's coming in the widely-anticipated Perl 6. It uncovers groundbreaking new developments in Parrot--the interpreter engine that will execute code written in the new Perl 6 language and the most revolutionary change in the language itself--Apocalypse 12 on objects. It also includes expanded coverage of Apocalypse 5 (regular expressions) and Apocalypse 6 (subroutines).
Full Description
Cover | Table of Contents | Colophon
Perl 6 is not here yet.
Even the definition of the language is still in flux.
But many things are reasonably clear,
and certainly much clearer than a little over a year ago
when the first edition of this book came out.
From my perspective, the highlights of Perl 6 are:
(1) Perl 6 is the Perl community's rewrite of Perl.
(2) In Perl 6 there are rules which are way clearer
and more powerful than regular expressions.
(3) In Perl 6 object orientation
is pervasive but not intrusive.
(4) Perl 6 depends on the Parrot engine
for both compiling and running.
(5) Other languages will also run on the Parrot engine,
e.g. Perl 5, Ruby, Python.
And there's much more.
I've only included what seems
most important from my limited perspective.
This book:
(a) describes the structure and functioning
of the projects to develop Perl 6 and Parrot
(b) gives the design philosophy underlying the Perl 6 language
and briefly describes the syntax and semantics
of some key features of the language.
(c) gives an overview of the Parrot engine
and provides Parrot language information
including reference material for assembler codes, etc.
If you are big into Perl
or for some other reason wish
to explore this developing technology,
this is the book for you.
It's an exciting, well conceived book.
You'll be exposed to the major aspects of Perl 6
and the Parrot engine that underlies it;
and you'll also learn what you need to know
to follow the on-going development and
to get involved (if you want to).
If you wish, see my somewhat longer review.