Perl 5.14, this year's stable release of the Perl 5 language, is the first in the planned series of annual time-based releases announced last year. From the Perl developer's point of view it has several important features. This article takes a look at what's new and valuable.
At last, a guide that makes creating a language with its associated
baggage of lexers, parsers and compilers, accessible to mere mortals,
rather to a group of a few hardcore eclectics as it stood until now.
The first thing that catches the eye, is the subtitle:
The unix philosophy applied to language design, for GPLs and DSLs"
What is meant by "unix philosophy" ?. It's taking simple, high quality components and combining them together in smart ways to obtain a complex result; the exact approach the book adopts.
I'm getting ahead here, but a first sample of this philosophy becomes apparent at the beginnings of Chapter 5 where the Parser treats and calls the Lexer like unix's pipes as in lexer|parser. Until the end of the book, this pipeline is going to become larger, like a chain, due to the amount of components that end up interacting together.
The book opens by putting things into perspective in Chapter 1: Motivation: why do you want to build lan…
The first thing that catches the eye, is the subtitle:
The unix philosophy applied to language design, for GPLs and DSLs"
What is meant by "unix philosophy" ?. It's taking simple, high quality components and combining them together in smart ways to obtain a complex result; the exact approach the book adopts.
I'm getting ahead here, but a first sample of this philosophy becomes apparent at the beginnings of Chapter 5 where the Parser treats and calls the Lexer like unix's pipes as in lexer|parser. Until the end of the book, this pipeline is going to become larger, like a chain, due to the amount of components that end up interacting together.
The book opens by putting things into perspective in Chapter 1: Motivation: why do you want to build lan…
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