Book Image

Perl 6 Deep Dive

By : Andrew Shitov
Book Image

Perl 6 Deep Dive

By: Andrew Shitov

Overview of this book

Perl is a family of high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages consisting of Perl 5 and Perl 6. Perl 6 helps developers write concise and declarative code that is easy to maintain. This book is an end-to-end guide that will help non-Perl developers get to grips with the language and use it to solve real-world problems. Beginning with a brief introduction to Perl 6, the first module in the book will teach you how to write and execute basic programs. The second module delves into language constructs, where you will learn about the built-in data types, variables, operators, modules, subroutines, and so on available in Perl 6. Here the book also delves deeply into data manipulation (for example, strings and text files) and you will learn how to create safe and correct Perl 6 modules. You will learn to create software in Perl by following the Object Oriented Paradigm. The final module explains in detail the incredible concurrency support provided by Perl 6. Here you will also learn about regexes, functional programming, and reactive programming in Perl 6. By the end of the book, with the help of a number of examples that you can follow and immediately run, modify, and use in practice, you will be fully conversant with the benefits of Perl 6.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Using abstract syntax tree attributes

Currently, the G grammar only parses the constructions when an integer value is assigned to a variable:

$x = 100;

Let us see how to add support for the following assignments:

$x = $y;

The rule for parsing constructions like $x = 100 used the following rule:

rule assignment {
<variable> '=' <value> { . . . }
}

On the right-hand side of the equals sign, we see a value, which we can replace with a more general item, expression. In the end, the expression may be any expression that a language understands, such as 10, $x, 10 + 3, or $x + $y, and more. Let us approach that point step by step. First, introduce the expression rule. The problem is that we have to return the value of the expression to the action that makes an assignment.

To keep temporary values, Perl 6 grammars offer the attributes of the abstract syntax tree...