On the Blue Monday of 2018, it is my solemn duty to inform you that things are not blue in the world of Rakudo Perl 6 at all. The only thing missing is a good main article for the Perl 6 Weekly. So that gives it a bit of a blue note. Plenty of good stuff going on otherwise. So read on!

Core Developments

Zoffix Znet was very busy again: Several inappropriate useless use warnings were fixed Sped up several parts of Perl 6 Actions Fixed a problem with incrementing/decrementing RatStr allomorphs Meta-operators (such as =~ ) got some improvements, with the R meta-operator (such as [R~]= for prepending a string) gaining the most: 160x faster! Fixed issues with regards to the (incorrect) specification of trait s Made dd more resilient to handling low-level ( NQP ) values.

was very busy again: Jonathan Worthington added a lot of optimizations, specifically making :U in signatures faster. He also made several core methods smaller so that they would fall within the inline limit: so when used a lot, they will now be inlined, resulting in much better performance in some situations. Finally, he reworked a lot of the Supply , react and whenever internals: this made a Cro benchmark handle 12% more requests/second.

added a lot of optimizations, specifically making in signatures faster. He also made several core methods smaller so that they would fall within the inline limit: so when used a lot, they will now be inlined, resulting in much better performance in some situations. Finally, he reworked a lot of the , and internals: this made a benchmark handle 12% more requests/second. Jeremy Studer fixed an issue with .rotor pulling one too many times after the underlying iterator was exhausted.

fixed an issue with pulling one too many times after the underlying iterator was exhausted. Itsuki Toyota added better error messages for Perl 5-style pragmas and issues with versioning of use and need .

added better error messages for Perl 5-style pragmas and issues with versioning of and . Ben Davies made sure that MoarVM can compile on OpenBSD .

made sure that can compile on . Elizabeth Mattijsen added Bool candidates for x and xx operators, making x 2x faster, and xx 16x faster when given False , and made |(1,2,3) xx 42 about 3x as fast. She also made having a single LEAVE in a block about 5% faster, which will improve performance of Supply and whenever .

added candidates for and operators, making 2x faster, and 16x faster when given , and made about 3x as fast. She also made having a single in a block about 5% faster, which will improve performance of and . And many other smaller fixes and improvements.

Blog posts

Perl 6 in comments

Sometimes Rakudo Perl 6 is mentioned in comments on blog posts that do not directly relate to Perl 6 necessarily. Yours truly will attempt to collect these and present them here for your perusal. In this first edition, Perl 6 comments from Hacker News of the past month.

Meanwhile on Twitter

Meanwhile on StackOverflow

Meanwhile on perl6-users

ListUtil.c: loadable library and perl binaries are mismatched by ToddAndMargo.

Winding Down

Pseudoscientifically speaking it was the most depressing day of the year. So from now on, things can only get less depressing. And that’s a positive thought that yours truly would like to give you this week. See you next week for more news about Rakudo Perl 6!