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)

What is reactive programming?

In procedural programming, the program lists instructions of which and when the variable gets a particular value, or when a block of code is executed. For example, a variable gets its value as a sum of two other integer variables:

$z = $x + $y;

If either $x or $y has been changed after that assignment, nothing changes with the value of $z. Another example—a value returned by a function is assigned to a variable:

$area = area-of-circle($r);

Although it is clearly seen from the code that it calculates the area of a circle with the given radius, if the $r variable is changed, you have to manually update the value of $area.

Reactive programming aims to change that "static" behavior of dependent values. Interactive interfaces of many computer programs and web pages are good examples of a reactive approach. Imagine an online calculator...