Perl 6 FAQ - Getting Started

This FAQ is part of the Programmer's Heaven Perl 6 FAQ. It answers questions about what you need to get started with Perl 6.

Can I write and run Perl 6 programs now?

Yes! There are a number of implementations of the Perl 6 compiler being developed right now. The most complete at the time of writing is Pugs, written in Haskell. Binary builds are available for Windows. See the download page at http://www.pugscode.org/.

Can I use Perl 6 in production now?

You could, but since Perl 6 is currently incomplete and the interpreters that exist probably still contain quite a few bugs and are not optimized yet, it's probably not a good idea at this point. Starting to learn and play with the language now will put you a step ahead when it does reach that point, though!

What do I need to write and run Perl 6 programs?

You can write Perl 6 programs in your favorite text editor. Since the language is still under development there are no IDEs for it yet, and at the time of writing there are no syntax highlighting plug-ins that I'm aware of either.

To run Perl 6 programs, you will need a Perl 6 interpreter. The most complete one at the moment is Pugs, available from:

http://www.pugscode.org/

How can I contribute to Perl 6 development?

There are a number of projects that you can get involved with depending on your interests and expertise. If you want to be involved with compiler or virtual machine implementation to build the tool chain that will run Perl 6, see the Pugs and Parrot projects:

http://www.pugscode.org/

http://www.parrotcode.org/

Another way to contribute is just to try writing some programs in Perl 6, finding and reporting bugs. You can step up from this to writing tests for the Perl 6 test suite that show an example of the bug, to help ensure that it does not re-appear in the future. This way you can get involved with Perl 6 development without having to know any language besides Perl! The test suite is part of the Pugs project.

Where can I get Perl6 help?

The Perl 6 specification is the first port of call if you are unsure of syntax or what a certain piece of syntax does or how things should work in Perl 6.

http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/synopsis.html

The Pugs project hosts a set of examples:

http://svn.perl.org/perl6/pugs/trunk/examples/

As well as a few other bits of documentation (which are under development):

http://svn.perl.org/perl6/pugs/trunk/docs/Perl6/

If you have questions that are not answered by these documents, post on the Perl 6 forum here at Programmer's Heaven. There is also a perl6-users mailing list; you can subscribe by sending an email to:

perl6-users-subscribe@perl.org

If these do not help you, the Perl 6 users mailing list is a good place to ask questions. Subscribe by sending an email to:

perl6-users-subscribe@perl.org

Are any books available about Perl 6?

O'Reilly published Perl 6 Essentials, which although now somewhat out of date due to the fast pace of development still provides a good overview of the key ideas in Perl 6. Just don't expect all of the code examples to work! More information is available here:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/059600737X/

How can I make suggestions for additions to this FAQ?

Ideas for additional questions to add to the FAQ are always very welcome, as are requests for clarifications or fixes to existing answers. Please email your ideas and comments to the author.

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riya From India (Report as abusive)	"Very Useful" this faqs made to know about many things unknown and it helped me a lot
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