Announce: Niecza Perl 6 v6
My summer has started. That is to say, hacking season. Many new and
exciting things are in this release, and I want to see many more.
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
[Breaking changes]
The backend now sometimes reorders function argument evaluation.
"is rw" parameter bindings now carp if the argument is readonly, at
binding time.
"@var" no longer interpolates. You need a postcircumfix.
[Major features]
Numeric types have been expanded and are not just Num but now also
include Int, Rat, FatRat, and Complex. Int is, of course, a bignum
type. Most numeric operations have been modified to treat the full
spectrum of types appropriately. Conversion operators have also
been added.
$_ semantics are now much closer to the spec. In particular, blocks
that declare a $_ now inherit a value from parent blocks, so doing
"if $_ { say $_ }" will work sensibly now. $_ is dynamic and can be
accessed from callees, so ".say if /x/" works now.
.perl is now aware of flattening rules and can, for instance, tell the
difference between [1] and (my @x = 1). New .flattens method provides
the same information programmatically. (Patrick Michaud)
A prototype (slow) implementation of hyperoperators is now available.
[Minor new features]
Attributes with @ and % sigils are now supported.
"for" loop blocks can now have multiple parameters.
Multimethods now tiebreak by nesting depth or inheritance position, so
a multi in a subclass takes precedence over an otherwise tied multi in
a superclass. Strictly speaking this should only happen for multis
with exactly the same signature, but it's an improvement over the old
state.
proto subs in a subscope now hide multi subs in outer scopes.
Imported parser improvements from the reference grammar include being
able to generate better errors for "has" outside classes and "self"
outside methods. (Larry Wall the legendary punster says, "STD is now
self-aware.")
Empty signatures on proto regexes are now ignored and no longer cause
the parse to fail.
default { } blocks are now supported, to complement when { }.
.split will use a given split point only once; no longer will a regex
that can match the empty string result in an infinite number of empty
tokens at that point.
The "rand" term is now functional.
Many more setting functions will accept Mu.
"is rw" and "of TYPE" traits on subs are now parsed and ignored.
"self" can now be used even if an explicit invocant is used in the
signature.
Positional parameters can now be passed by name. (This went in a
few hours before the spec change.)
The second argument to Cool.substr is now optional.
The first argument to Cool.subst is now allowed to be Str.
Hashes can now be assigned to like "a", 1; not merely a => 1.
repeat, unless, until, and while now take pointy blocks.
"is copy" parameters are now supported.
Hash now supports the nonstandard exists and delete methods, because
so much Rakudo-specific code uses them.
$obj.?method() is now supported.
New functions and methods: chomp, chop, Cool.chomp, Cool.chop,
infix:<=:=>, Match.keys, List.kv, hash, index, Cool.abs, Cool.sqrt,
sqrt, postfix:<i>, infix:<div>, infix:<mod>, Hash.Numeric.
[Selected bug fixes]
<<+>> no longer fails to parse. (This was my fault.)
Type constraints are respected even in inline blocks.
List.pop now returns undef instead of dieing when empty.
my A::B $x now works properly. (Was being parsed as my MY::B $x).
Fixed foo <a b c> being treated as 3 arguments.
[Very internal changes]
The backend has been reworked to be considerably more data-driven.
Much less of the startup is done by generated code; instead, small
pre-written loops load a description. This reduces work on the
Mono JIT and is much faster. Other improvements include rearranging
NAM files so that ABI info is concentrated in the first 25% and
generating a coalesced constant pool. Various aspects of code
generated for Perl 6 constructs have been simplified.
[Other]
Not strictly a change here, but worth mentioning: Carl Masak's yapsi
now can be run on Niecza with minimal changes. Check out the "niecza"
branch in git://github.com/masak/niecza
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
Ideas welcome! Focus on more applications? Focus on speed? Focus
on some major cool feature of your choice? Ideas I've had or seen
so far include full eval support, NativeCall/improved CLR interop,
a JVM backend, a Parrot backend, grapheme strings, and junctions.
[1] https://github.com/downloads/sorear/niecza/niecza-6.zip
[2] https://github.com/sorear/niecza
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