Hi monks,

Recently I've been messing around with Pugs and Perl 6. AFAIK, Perl6 is not only an upgrade of Perl5, but a new language that starts from Perl 5 but that has a (notably) modified syntax and a bunch of new features. Like Corion said recently: The main thing wrong with Perl 6 is the name. It poses as a version upgrade like from Perl 4 to Perl 5, but it's a completely different language with largely incompatible syntax.

(For those that are not familiar with Perl 6 syntax, here is a small example of code extracted from Perl 6 documentation:)

#Example1
use v6-alpha;
method render ($x=1,$y=1,$z=0){
       for @.filter (@.items){
       say .draw (:$x, :$y, :$z);
    }
}

#Example2
class Dog is Mammal does Pet {
      my $.count where 0..*;
      has $!brain;
      has &.vocalize = &say;
      has $.name is rw = "fido";
      has $.fur handles Groomable;
      has $.tail handles <wag hang>;
      method owner () handles s/^owner_// {...}
[download]

I noticed in the documentation that one can mix Perl 5 and Perl 6 code in the same script, for example:

use v6-alpha;
    # ...some Perl 6 code...
    {
        use v5;
        # ...some Perl 5 code...
        {
            use v6-alpha;
            # ...more Perl 6 code...
        }
    }
[download]

Or even use Perl 5 modules in Perl 6 scripts, like:

use v6-alpha;
use perl5:DBI;
use perl5:Template

... ## Rest of Perl6 code
[download]

Does this mean that all the modules available from CPAN for Perl 5 will be available for Perl 6 too without modification? This seems great for those of us that already know Perl 5, but if this is the case, when Perl 6 becomes available, those who are new to Perl and want to learn it, will have to learn 2 different languages instead of only 1 (Perl 5 + Perl 6), or they won't be able to understand all the Perl 5 stuff that is already done (and still in use in Perl 6 scripts). Am I completely wrong?

Surely, mixing Perl 5 and Perl 6 code will be a nice thing for those who already use Perl 5. But won't be a mess for those learning the basics of Perl? (I'm afraid we will have to explain many (more) times the difference between $var[0] and @var[0])

citromatik