The Future of Perl

Perl 6has been under development since the year 2000 and may be near release when you read this. It is a nearly complete rewrite of the interpreter's code, with numerous changes. The biggest change is the new Parrot interpreter, through which all Perl 6 code will pass. This virtual machine is designed to support not just Perl 6, but Perl 5, Python, and several other scripting languages as well.

Following are a few highlights of the effects on the core Perl language itself:

• Perl 6 will be more strongly typed, allowing you to specify both the storage type and implementation type of a variable.

• Sigils will be simplified. In the new version of Perl, sigils will cease to be adjectives and become an indivisible part of the nouns themselves.

• Case statements are simpler, too. How does one single control statement sound? It's called given, and it is used like this:

  $val = 'G4'; given $val {  when 'A4' { print "paper" }  when 'B4' { print "prior" }  when 'C4' {  die "BOOM!" }  default  { print "huh??" } } 

  
  

Many Perl 6 features can already be accessed using various Perl 5 modules available from CPAN.