PLNews: Programming Language News

Pugs 6.2.11 has been released. Pugs is a Perl 6 implementation written in Haskell.

This release includes: a new backend which shows a pretty parse tree, fixed Cygwin support, a PIL^N backend prototype, improved embedding and PIR generation for Parrot 0.4.1+, plus other changes and fixes. The Pugs project has also celebrated its first anniversary.

It has been announced that registration is now open for Yet Another Perl Conference::Asia 2006. The conference will be held on March 29 and 30, 2006, in Tokyo, Japan.

Perl 5.9.3 has been released.

This development release includes: the removal of $#, support for the feature pragma, a switch statement and smart match operator, improvements to the support for assertions, new core modules, cheaper weak references, plus numerous other changes and fixes.

A summary of Perl 6 developments between January 10 and January 24, 2006, is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: ranges and iteration, pattern matching for loops, array holes, class methods versus instance methods, and much more.

Perl 5.8.8 RC1 has been released.

It is a maintenance release, including bugfixes and integrating updated modules from CPAN. The final release is expected in about ten days, if no issues arise.

perl.com is running an article entitled "What is Perl 6?", by chromatic.

It outlines the need for Perl 6, as well as how Perl 6 will help deal with the problems of Perl 5. Also covered are some of the new language features that Perl 5 does not offer, including multimethods, coroutines, continuations, hyperoperators, macros, module aliasing and versioning, plus more. The article also discusses the role of Parrot, as well as the object-oriented and regular expression-related improvements of Perl 6. Finally, there is some discussion of why the development of Perl 6 is taking so long, in addition to some useful links and resources.

A summary of Perl 6 developments between January 2 and January 9, 2006 is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: the release of Parrot 0.4.1, making $/ and $! into environmental variables, junctions, and more.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of January 1, 2006 is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: using Pugs and Parrot on Cygwin, iterating over complex structures, match objects, and more.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of December 18, 2005 is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: the Pugs JavaScript backend support for Perl 5, relational data models, handling "undef" better, transliteration, and more.

It has been announced that YAPC::Asia 2006 will be held in Tokyo, Japan. It will be held on March 29 and March 30, 2006.

They are also looking for 20 and 45 minute presentations, in addition to five minute lightning talks.

The 2006 Nordic Perl Workshop has put out a call for papers. The topic is "Managing Complexity", with the workshop being held on June 15 and June 16, 2006, in Oslo, Norway.

A summary of Perl 6 developments between December 5 and December 12, 2005 is now available.

This summary focuses on: the release of Parrot 0.4.0, the status of Larry Wall's Perl 5 to Perl 6 translator, working with the $!= operator, and more.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of Decemeber 4, 2005 is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: the release of Parrot 0.4.0, adding support for capabilities to Perl 6, and more.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of November 27, 2005 is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: multidimensional argument list binding, the 'till' operator, and more.

Ben Laurie has described the work he has done on CaPerl, which adds support for capabilities to Perl. This is done by introducing "a few extra language constructs, and by restricting what untrusted code is allowed to do." CaPerl converts the modified form of Perl into standard Perl code.

Slides (~2 MB .pdf) of a talk given at USENIX Security describing the system, including the language modifications and CaPerl implementation, are also available.

A summary of Perl 6 developments between November 14 and November 21, 2005 is now available.

This summary covers: the release of Amber for Parrot 0.3.1, the signature of the => operator, using hyphens in identifiers, multidimensional argument lists, plus other topics.

It has been announced that the 2006 Yet Another Perl Conference North America will be held in Chicago, from June 26 to June 28, 2006.

A summary of Perl 6 developments as of November 13, 2005, is now available.

This summary covers topics such as: recent Parrot Grammar Engine improvements, the release of Parrot 0.3.1, mutating operators defaulting to mutating $_, handling conflicting role methods, default values for instance variables, and more.

It has been announced that the next meeting of the Phoenix Perl Mongers will be held on November 16, 2005. There will be an introduction to object-oriented programming.

It has been announced that the Kansas City Perl Mongers will be holding meetings on November 8 and November 12, 2005.

Garrett Goebel plans to discuss his work on creating a new CPAN module based on Data::Table and Data::Tabular.