Announce: Niecza Perl 6 v5
This release of Niecza is delayed slightly because of my personal
business. For the same reason there isn't as much cool new stuff as
I'd like. Sorry.
You can obtain a build of Niecza from [1]. This build contains a
working compiler as a set of .exe and .dll files suitable for use with
Mono or Microsoft .NET. If you wish to follow latest developments,
you can obtain the source from [2]; however, you will still need a
binary for bootstrapping, so you gain nothing from a "source is
better" perspective.
Niecza is a Perl 6 compiler project studying questions about the
efficient implementability of Perl 6 features. It currently targets
the Common Language Runtime; both Mono and Microsoft .NET are known to
work. On Windows, Cygwin is required for source builds only; see the
README for details.
List of changes
Real multiple dispatch is now supported! Subs or methods, longest
token or type based, it's all unified. For instance, you can use
"my multi regex" now, which would never have worked with Rakudo. I'm
rather proud of that.
New functions and methods: prompt, getc, lines, get, first*,
Match.CURSOR, Match.reduced, Cool.subst, ClassHOW.can, Label.next,
Label.last, Label.redo, Label.goto
New functions and methods (Martin Berends): Str.flip, flip,
List.reverse
Unsupported regex adverbs now give an error.
if(1) now gives a better error.
Grammar.parse now sets $/.
substr (all forms) now returns an lvalue.
::> is now supported in grammars.
User-defined circumfix and postcircumfix operators are now supported.
* first was previously available but it was a Niecza extension
unrelated to the spec's first. It has been renamed head.
An "extra strength" optimizer is in development. (Paweł Murias)
Handling of undefined values in Hash.Bool et al is fixed.
JSON/JSYNC parsing and output are no longer locale sensitive.
(Tadeusz Sośnierz found this stupid bug)
Many more spec-test files are now tested. (Moritz Lenz)
The build has been redone to use less memory and support -jN.
Internal changes:
- Some progress has been made in splitting out P6how from STable.
- Parsing of operator definitions in CORE has been tweaked for a
large speedup
- There's a Makefile rule to automate building release tarballs.
Getting involved
Contact sorear in irc.freenode.net #perl6 or via the sender address of
this mailing. Also check out the TODO file; whether you want to work
on stuff on it, or have cool ideas to add to it, both are good.
Future directions
The current general focus is on applications. I hope to have yapsi
running on Niecza soon. This will require better multiple dispatch
and some small object model improvements. Improved designs from
6model will be gradually incorporated.
A JVM backend is in the design stages.
[1] https://github.com/downloads/sorear/niecza/niecza-5.zip
[2] https://github.com/sorear/niecza
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