Hi Radhakrishnan, I think the question you are asking directly relates to your experience as a programmer. If you have a lot of experience and a "systems programming toolkit" under your belt (classic bash shell scripting, sed, awk, and perl_5 ), what does Raku/Perl6 add? The short answer is: quite a lot. I think the three main reasons are 1). Unicode/Regexes/Grammars, 2). Rational numbers, and 3). Flexible--but potentially very stringent--Data Typing (including 'Gradual Typing').
1. Others have chimed in extolling Raku/Perl6's excellent Unicode support. Also, Raku/Perl6 has completely revamped Regexes making them much more readable, with whitespace insignificance as default, etc. (see https://docs.raku.org/language/regexes ). So improved Unicode / Regex in combination means that you can write the test below against Bengali digits right out of the box, without having to set an encoding and/or language (REPL code/results below): > say $/ if '০১২৩৪৫৬৭৮৯' ~~ / \d+ /; ｢০১২৩৪৫৬৭৮৯｣ > 2. Others have also mentioned Raku/Perl6's support for rational numbers--both via numeric entry, and as a storage mechanism (see: https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/why-perl-6-game-thrones-programming-languages). That means you can read/write the numbers below, with expected results (REPL code/results below): > 1/3 + 2/3 1 > 1/3 + 1/6 0.5 > (2/3).numerator 2 > (1/6).denominator 6 > (2/7).nude (2 7) > (0.375).nude (3 8) > 3. Another attraction is Raku/Perl6's 'Typing' implementation (see: http://blogs.perl.org/users/zoffix_znet/2016/04/perl-6-types-made-for-humans.html ). You can 1). leave variables untyped and rely on Raku/Perl6's dynamic typing, you can 2). encode variables such that they are restricted to a static (built-in) type, or you can 3). use 'gradual typing' (see https://www.learningraku.com/2016/11/24/quick-tip-8-user-defined-data-types/ ). [Also here: https://docs.raku.org/language/typesystem#index-entry-subset-subset ]. This isn't something I've played with extensively, but I imagine Raku/Perl6's extremely flexible typing system means you can get code up and running quickly with toy data, then refine the code to exclude real-world (forbidden) data types. So I think even if you are an experienced programmer with a solid "systems programming toolkit", the three points above are all good reasons to learn Raku/Perl6. You can look up a recent thread on this mailing-list to see some code solutions to a real-world programming problem (see: https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl6.users/2020/05/msg8423.html ). OTOH, if you DON'T already have a "systems programming toolkit" under your belt, wouldn't it make more sense just to learn Raku/Perl6, and not the combination of bash shell scripting, sed, awk, and perl_5 ? And once mastered, use Raku/Perl6 as a 'glue language' for database, website/web_services, text_processing/text_mining, and Machine Learning applications? https://youtu.be/q8stPrG1rDo Best, Bill. W. Michels, Ph.D. On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 8:04 AM Radhakrishnan Venkataraman <weor...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > I had been a perl 5.0 user in the past. Ever since perl 6.0 was announced, I > waited, like many, indefinitely. At last perl 6.0 has just started from its > starting block and is also in the race. I am happy about that. > > Perl 5.0 was generally termed to be good at CGI scripting, system > administration, web scraping, strong regex, processing text files etc., > > I want to know what perl 6 is so special in. When perl 5.0 was there, there > did not exist any other language to do the same things easily as perl 5.0 > did. Similarly, in which areas perl 6 is special? I am unable to know it > from google search, as much information is not available. > > Further, if concurrency and parallelism are the special things in perl 6, > then Rust and Go (so special in both concurrency and parallelism) are already > spreading its wings over the information technology field. Both are > statically typed and compiled languages and there would be more "welcome > gesture" for these languages in the field. > > To put my question simply, where is the space for perl 6 in today's > technology? > Please enlighten me (any body from user group) on this. > > Thank you, > > Regards, > Radhakrishnan
