smls

## Storing three integers in a variable in Perl 5 ##

my $a = [2, 4, 6];   # a scalar variable aliased to a reference to an ARRAY object containing three SCALAR objects
my @a = (2, 4, 6);   # an array variable aliased to an ARRAY object containing three SCALAR objects


## Storing three integers in a variable in Perl 6 ##

my $a = (2, 4, 6);           # an item variable bound to a Scalar object containing one Parcel object containing three Int objects
my $a = list 2, 4, 6;        # an item variable bound to a Scalar object containing one List object containing three Int objects

smls

Binary Parsing in Perl 6

When parsing things like binary file format headers, you generally need to know three things for each data field:

• how many, and what kind of, bytes to gobble
  (e.g. input stream --> Buf:0x<0b 00>)
• how to unpack those bytes into a number, or other low-level type
  (e.g. Buf:0x<0b 00> --> 11)
• how to transform that number into meaningful data

smls

multi conjunct ($,     *[])     { '' }
multi conjunct ($,     $word)   { $word }
multi conjunct ($conj, *@words) { "{@words[0..*-2].join: ', '} $conj @words[*-1]" }

say conjunct "and";
say conjunct "and", "one apple";
say conjunct "and", "one apple", "two oranges";
say conjunct "and", "one apple", "two oranges", "three pears";

smls

Finding FF(2)...

step 2: 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/9 + 2/15 + 1/25 + 1/-30 + 1/-45 + 1/-75 + 1/900
step 5: 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/9 + 1/15 + 1/25 + 1/30 + 1/-30 + 1/-45 + 1/45 + 1/75 + 1/-75 + 1/-450 + 1/900
step 4: 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/9 + 1/15 + 1/25 + 1/-450 + 1/900

FF(2) = [3 4 5 9 15 25 -450 900]