Perl 6 Fundamentals: A Primer with Examples, Projects, and Case Studies

by Moritz Lenz

Overview

Gain the skills to begin developing Perl 6 applications from the ground up in this hands-on compact book, which includes a foreword from Larry Wall, creator of Perl. You’ll learn enough to get started building with Perl 6, using Perl 6’s gradual typing, handy object orientation features, powerful parsing capabilities, and human-usable concurrency. After a short introduction, each chapter develops a small example project, explaining the Perl 6 features used. When the example is done, you’ll explore another aspect, such as optimizing further for readability or testing the code. 
Along the way you’ll see Perl 6 basics, such as variables and scoping; subroutines; classes and objects; regexes; and code testing. When you’ve mastered the basics, Perl 6 Fundamentals moves onto more advanced topics to give you a deeper understanding of the language. You’ll learn, amongst other things, how to work with persistent storage, how to generate good error messages, and how to write tricky applications such as a file and directory usage graph and a Unicode search tool.

What You'll Learn

• Get coding with Perl 6
  
• Work on several hands-on examples and projects
  
• Integrate Python libraries into your Perl 6 programs
  
• Parse INI files using regexes and grammars
  
• Build a date time converter 
  
• Carry out refactoring and other automated tests
  

Who This Book Is For

If you already know one or more programming languages, and want to learn about Perl 6, this book is for you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781484228999
Publisher:	Apress
Publication date:	07/19/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	142
File size:	675 KB

About the Author

Moritz Lenz is a Perl 6 core developer. He has contributed significantly to the official test suite, the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler, and is the initiator of the official Perl 6 documentation project. He has also authored several modules, and runs infrastructure for the Perl 6 community. In his day job, he develops Perl 5 and Python code, and maintains a Continuous Delivery system for his employer.

Table of Contents

1. What is Perl 6?1.1 Perl 5, the Older Sister1.2 Library Availability1.3 Why Should I Use Perl 6?2. Running Rakudo Perl 62.1 Installers2.2 Docker2.3 Building from Source2.4 Testing your Rakudo Star Installation3. Formatting a Sudoku Puzzle3.1 Making the Sudoku Playable3.2 Shortcuts, Constants, and more Shortcuts3.3 IO and other Tragedies3.4 Get Creative!4. Datetime Conversion for the Command Line4.1 Libraries To The Rescue4.2 DateTime Formatting4.3 Looking the Other Way4.4 Dealing With Time4.5 Tighten Your Seat Belt4.6 MAIN magic4.7 Automatic Tests4.8 Summary5. Testing say()5.1 Summary6. Silent Cron, a Cron Wrapper6.1 Running Commands Asynchronously6.2 Implementing Timeouts6.3 More on Promises6.4 Possible Extensions6.5 Refactoring and Automated TestsRefactoringMocking and TestingImproving Reliability and TimingInstalling a Module6.6 Summary7. Stateful Silent Cron7.1 Persistent Storage7.2 Developing the Storage Backend7.3 Using the Storage Backend7.4 Room for Expansion7.5 Summary8. Review of the Perl 6 Basics8.1 Variables and Scoping8.2 Subroutines8.3 Classes and Objects8.4 Concurrency8.5 Outlook9. Parsing INI files using Regexes and Grammars9.1 Regex BasicsCharacter ClassesQuantifiersAlternatives9.2 Parsing the INI primitives9.3 Putting Things Together9.4 Backtracking9.5 Grammars9.6 Extracting Data from the Match9.7 Generating Good Error MessagesFailure is NormalDetecting Harmful FailureProviding ContextShortcuts for Parsing Matching Pairs9.8 Write Your Own Grammars9.9 Summary10. A File and Directory Usage Graph10.1 Reading File Sizes10.2 Generating a Tree Map10.3 Flame Graphs10.4 Functional Refactorings10.5 More Language Support for Functional Programming10.6 More Improvements10.7 Explore!10.8 Summary11. A Unicode Search Tool11.1 Code Points, Grapheme Clusters and Bytes11.2 Numbers11.3 Other Unicode Properties11.4 Collation11.5 Summary12. Plotting Using Inline::Python and Matplotlib13. What's Next?