Note: The article's title is "A Request to Larry Wall to Create a Language Name Alias for Perl 6", and the first paragraph says:

This name is not a rename of the language, but is simply an alternative name, an alias. Similar to how TimToady is an alias for Larry Wall.

And it includes a link to what Larry Wall had to say about a similar question, which is that an alias is a possibility - that video appears to be the motivation for the article in the first place. The way I read the article, it's just asking Larry to pick a name.

I know this may seem nitpicky, but note this quote from the video:

... whether it's Perl 5 or Perl 6, that is really the name of the whole culture, and it's why we're all here together.

Yes, that's why I said "de facto" rename ... since it's clear that Zoffix' goal is to end use of the name "Perl 6" in order to disambiguate between what he states clearly are two different languages.

I'm glad that "Perl6" boosters are finally acknowledging that fact in public, up to and including Larry Wall. But Larry's contention that there's a single culture incorporating Perl and "Perl6" is just clinging to a long-discredited fantasy.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

Larry's contention that there's a single culture incorporating Perl and "Perl6" is just clinging to a long-discredited fantasy.

I'm not sure why you make that assertion? Anyway, it seems to me like your feelings on this topic might be a lot stronger than mine.

By the way, in case you haven't been to a Perl Conference yet or recently, I can very much recommend it - I went to my second one this year and it was great!

This alias does *not* (and indeed cannot) free up the version number 6 for the Perl 5 language. If you think about it carefully, you will understand why that is the case. "Perl 6" (P6, etc) is already in use and essentially remains that way.

It is my considered opinion that Perl 6 will never supplant Perl 5, and vice versa. I'm hardly the only person who has come to that conclusion. Therefore, the alias idea makes sense. It's time to work on getting the version number out of the everyday names of the languages. The ideas I keep seeing floated that the new Perl 6 alias means Perl 5 now gets to "move up" to Perl 6 or revert to being "the only Perl" are not helpful. Personally, I'd like to see Mr Wall give Perl 5 its own alias. Two Perls, جمل * and Raku. :-)

* That's camel in Arabic and I'm kidding about that one

So, as you probably know, Larry Wall announced the alias 'Raku' for Perl 6.

Sorry for waking up an old thread, but I can't find another place it gets mentioned here on PM. So from the #perl6 IRC Logs:

2018-10-25 18:26
<TimToady> Zoffix: just a heads up wrt the alias, which I'm thinking of as "It's the stage name (but Perl 6 still cashes the checks)"; at the moment I'm liking Raku the best for a short name (it's 4 letters like Enya or Pink or Gaga), with long names of either Raku-go or Go-raku (where "go" is Japanese 語 for "language") because I'm not terribly fond of the "-lang" neologism
<TimToady> Ofun is a close second, but unfortunately "fun" is Japanese for excrement :)
<TimToady> also Raku pottery is "imperfect but sophisticated", so that's a fit :)
<TimToady> most of the existing uses of "raku" in trademarks appears to be for medical supplies or food processing
<TimToady> and there doesn't seem to be an existing "raku" command, at least that Linux Mint knows about
...

(And BTW, <update> although I admit I don't mind the "Raku" name, </update> I'm not endorsing anything here or stating an opinion, just saving this for the public record :-) )

How about frtn? That represents the number of years since announce to the first release becoming available. That said, perhaps the Fortran folk might get a bit pissed :)

Meh, just making fun of a convoluted situation. Personally, I have no investment either way. I've dabbled with perl6 here and there a bit, but not to the point I've created anything of value with it. In other words, I don't mind observing questions on the topic, but at this time, I'm too busy to delve any further into it.

I did notice when I have played with it that the start up time was abysmal (relative to perl5). I write a lot of software that is very long running, which makes startup time irrelevant. However, most Perl users/writers I know are wanting/writing scripts that don't loop forever and simply perform a few tasks which demand quick start up time. Has the VM layer startup time been improved?

I was thinking it might make sense to abbreviate Perl 5, as in Perl '26 for 5.26, Perl '28, Perl '30, etc... Perl 6 will AFAIK be using 6.letters for its version numbers, so no confusion is possible there.

"Perl 6" (P6, etc) is already in use and essentially remains that way.

But the same is not true for "Perl 7".
Is it therefore allowable for perl (version 5) to be updated to version 7 at some future time ?

Cheers,
Rob

Ask TimToady - it's his language. :-)

Perl 4 still exists, as do all previous major versions (3, 2, 1). Let Perl 5 remain Perl 5 forever. Problem solved.

(Reply to 1226012)

An alias is nonsense, just rename the thing! For all the reasons explained in the article. Just rename the thing and release the next version of THE ACTUAL Perl as 7.0.0.

I wish the name had been different. I’m not invested in Perl6 though I think it’s quite interesting. But I’m curious because this dead horse is just bones and hair now and no one currently regular on PM has any authority in the matter and you cannot petition the Lord with prayer…

So, what does Perl7 look like to you and who makes it? Because to me, the anti-Perl6 stuff rambles somewhere between absolute fantasy and psychopathy. Give a real world, actionable plan for how to transition Perl5 to Perl7, please. And explain exactly who is going to do it. What it looks like. Exact feature sets. How it fixes the numerous issues holding back the P5 codebase. When it will be delivered. Et cetera.

How it fixes the numerous issues holding back the P5 codebase.

For that we'd have to know what are the numerous issues holding back the P5 codebase. Some in the Monastery seem very keen for a built-in, performant, consistent approach to function signatures so that might be one such issue. Other than that I can't immediately think of any.

As Jenda hinted, the main reason for p5p (who else?) to release version 7 of Perl is to end the impression that "Perl6" is a newer version of Perl than the current 5.x one.

They wouldn't have to add a single feature or solve a single issue for that to be a win.

They could do it in place of 5.30 and that would be that.

And it's hardly a dead horse when the leading "Perl6" promoter begs Larry Wall to endorse it.)



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

I fully support that "Perl 6" should be renamed and the next Perl 5 version released as Perl 7.0 shortly thereafter.

This way, both (separate) languages will profit. If that fails, we can always release Perl 5 as "Perl++". Or call it "PTP 7.0" ('better than Python') ;-)

• Perl#History
• Perl_6#History

• C_(programming_language)#History
• C++#History

I guess you didn't read the blog before commenting :-/ That's not an option, per the proponent, and contrary to the whole point. (And this isn't a poll, just a news item.) Original node updated.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

Please excuse my stupidity. After enjoying some sleep and lots of coffee I can see that Perl++ is a bad idea and contrary to the blog. Let's hope something good comes from this because, among other things, the need to disambiguate search engine results for the two languages seems important.