Has anyone developed (or is developing) a Perl to Ruby translator? (to facilitate the transference of Perl5 masterpieces like Template toolkit, Mason etc)

Not AFAIK. Perl and Ruby are different enough to make this non-trivial. Ruby is also busy making its own masterpieces.

There's also the fact that that good Ruby style is sufficiently different from good Perl style that moving between the two would probably jar stylistically.

I get the impression that Perl6 is at least 5 years away (or am I too optimistic).

Personally I'm a bit more optimistic than that. I wouldn't be surprised to see something vaguely usable in a couple of years (but I am an eternal optimist ;-)

... other random thoughts : 1) In Ruby, we have a language out there now that is very Perlish but supports the notion of 'Programming as a craft' much better than Perl5 does. Why not invest our energies in Ruby instead of Perl6

Because Perl 6 is a very different language from Ruby. There is stuff that you'll see in Perl 6 that you're unlikely to see in Ruby because Larry et al have different design philosophies than Matz (BTW there is a brief interview with Matz over on artima.com). For example I don't think you'll ever see something like Perl 6 macros or full multiple-inheritance in Ruby.

A more interesting question is whether Ruby is a good alternative to Perl 5. I'm seriously considering doing commercial work in Ruby in situations where CPAN won't give me a major advantage.

2)Is there a danger Perl6 could end up a bloated monster raher like C++ (Exegesis 6 reminded me somewhat of the effective C++ books by Scott Meyers)

I don't think so. The Exegesis are not intended to be easy to understand - they're very concise summaries of language features. More design documents than anything else.

I actually think you'll find Perl 6 will be easier to learn than Perl 5 :-)

In reply to Re: Perl to Ruby translator? by adrianh
in thread Perl to Ruby translator? by Anonymous Monk

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