It's funny that you compare it to the ugly new Mustangs. You're right that it looks Perlish, but looking at this example from this article, my first guess would probably be Ruby or maybe Java

That is an example that exhibits explicit features related to Perl 6's OO system. The code is not all that different from Perl 5 (roughly) equivalent one except for some syntactical bits, and the fact that in the latter you should build yourself some stuff that in this case is instead part of the language.

For "normal" usage, whatever that is, I can't see e.g.

.say for =$fh;
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as being significantly less perlish than

print while <$fh>;  # assuming $\="\n"
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I would rather say: differently so.

OTOH I'm glad to be able to do e.g.:

pugs> sub postfix:<!> (Int $n) { [*] 1..$n }
undef
pugs> say $_! for ^6
1
1
2
6
24
120
undef
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(As you can see this has the advantage of being able to be already run under pugs - it is also quite about the only thing I can do! :-)

Even in the example code you presented, though, there are many bits that IMNSHO are very perlish, although also very different from current Perl look and feel:

• Perl's typical way to do things implicitly on the $_ pronoun, in this case by means of "unary" dot;
• Perl's dwimmery fashion with 0 < $rank < 10 which is more clear and concise than the full expression comprising a logical operator.

Also see the following portion of a recent clpmisc thread (link @ GG):

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Well, I guess we have different definitions of "Perlish". I was thinking "similar to past versions of Perl" and you seem to be thinking "conforms to the Perl philosophy". With your example of .say for =$fh;, once again the only thing that I would call Perlish about that is the dollar sign, and if you changed the variable name I'd have no clue what it does.

An almost complete aside from the purpose of this thread, but it comes as a direct result of seeing a little real-world(ish) Perl 6 code posted here.

I can see that pieces of code like this from above are likely to be quite common in Perl 6 class implementations:

      ($.name, $.rank, $.pref) = ($name, $rank, $cereal_pref);
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Ie. The assignment of batches of named formal parameters to instance variables with the same (similar, the $.pref/$cereal_pref disparity not withstanding) names. And vice versa.

Is there any shorthand available for this kind of 'batch assignment' from method parameters to instance variables?

I was thinking along the lines of $.= ( $name, $rank, $pref );

and say $= ( $.name, $.rank, $.pref );

Is there any mileasge in that?

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

IIRC, naming your method parameters as if they were instance variables accomplishes that trick:

method foo($.name,$.rank,$.pref) { ... }

# and then later ...

$obj.foo('Scott', 'Vicar', '???');  # sets the instance vars
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Though pulling out the auto-magic into something you can do directly is interesting.

Check S12 in any case for the definitive answer.

duff

Though I still agree with you.

Michael