From: Chris <chris@...>
Date: 2002-04-06T12:15:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Seeking to understand : Exegesis 4

In article <023601c1dcec$d03cc280$0e01a8c0@DynRom.local>,
 "Philip Mateescu" <philip@dynasty.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> First of all I don't wanna start a flame war, I'm just seeking knowledge.
> Thanks for your kind thoughts.
> 
> I don't know much Ruby neither do I know much Perl (except for a few
> scripts). However, the new features outlined in Damian Conway's Exegesis 4
> seem to be interesting additions to Perl 6.
> 
> Could you please guys comment about the new stuff in E4 from a Ruby
> developer point of view ?
> 
> Hey, even "I'm glad Perl finally catches up with Ruby on feature X...", or
> "I can't think of a reason you need feature Y, when in Ruby you can easily
> do..." comments would be fine for a newbie... :))

Well, there's a lot o absorb in this Exegesis, but to me, a few things 
that stand out are...

sub (*@first : *@second) {
      ...
}

Which unless I'm horribly misinterpreting things gives us the incredibly 
powerful tool of being able to have two distinct variable argument lists 
in the same subroutine call.  The only thing it leaves me wondering is 
if the lists can be typed, to force every item in the list to be of a 
certain type.

for @foo ; @bar -> $f ; $b {
   ...
}

To the best of my knowledge, Ruby doesn't have anything nearly this 
slick.  Of course, Ruby code can actually be executed, so that counts 
for something.  :-)