On 11/11/25 5:55 AM, Peter Pentchev wrote:
On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 04:44:42AM -0800, ToddAndMargo via perl6-users wrote:
On 11/6/25 3:58 PM, Peter Pentchev wrote:
exitcode
should have been included in the examples in run's documentation.
And exit code should have been included in the definition of
Proc, not buried at the end of the document,
It is in the definition. It is listed as one of the methods, because
that is what it is. "The end of the document" is the section that
lists all of the methods that you can call.
.exitcode in not a method. The value is an integer.
No, "$.exitcode" is an internal field that you do not have
direct access to. The only reason you know about that field right now is
that you looked at the source code of the class; programs that use
objects of the Proc class cannot access it directly.
The "exitcode" method, on the other hand, is what Raku creates
automatically when the source code says "has $.exitcode". It will
read the value of the internal "$.exitcode" field and it will return
that value to you. If you have a variable called $proc and it is
a Proc object, then you can call that method in two main ways:
say $proc.exitcode() # see, it's a method with no arguments
say $proc.exitcode # Raku allows you to omit the parentheses
That second way is the standard Raku way to let programs access
the fields of an object that they are allowed to: the class
says "has $.field" and Raku automatically generates a method
called "field" that you can call with or without the parentheses.
The internal variable that is called $.exitcode is not really
visible to your program; the only way for you to get that exit code
is to invoke the method that is called "exitcode"...
...and that is described in "Methods" section of the Proc documentation.
So what your are saying, correct me if I misinterpret you,
is that
.exitcode,
.signal
.pid
@.command
Should all go at the end becasue somewhere in the run command,
methods are used to populate them?
Not exactly. The $.exitcode, $.signal, $.pid, and @.command
INTERNAL variables are not documented on purpose - your program
does not have any way to access them directly.
However, the way they are defined in the source code means that
Raku has automatically generated the "exitcode", "signal", "pid",
and "command" methods for you to call to get those values...
...and those methods are all described in the "Methods" section
of the https://docs.raku.org/type/Proc page :)
And they are described in the "Methods" section of the "Proc" page
because that's where they belong - because they are methods of
the "Proc" class. A function that returns an object of the type
"Proc" does not need to document anything you can do with that
object, just as a function that returns an object of the type "Int"
does not need to document anything you can do with that object.
I mean, the Str class has a method called "chars" that you call to
figure out how many characters there are in a string. Now do you
think that the documentation of the string class should tell you
stuff like "oh, and once you call chars, you can then do several
things with that value, like you can call is-prime to figure out
whether that is a prime number, or you can call sign to figure out
whether this is a positive or a negative number, or you can
call sqrt to get the square root of that number"? No, none of
that belongs in the Str class, because it has nothing to do
with strings; however, it is documented in the Int class, the Real
class, the Numeric class and so on.
So just as the documentation of Str does not tell you that you can
do $name.chars.sqrt, so the documentation of run() does not tell you
that you can do run().exitcode. The documentation of Str says
that "chars" returns an Int; the documentation of "run" says
that it returns a Proc.
G'luck,
Peter
Hi Peter,
No objection here.
I am also marveling at your technical writing. You stated
the information very clearly. I have a hard time with
technical writing and you really impressed me with yours.
-T
Now I will go wash my mouth out with soap! :-)
