=begin pod

=TITLE 5to6-perlsyn

=SUBTITLE Perl 5 to Perl 6 guide - syntax

perlsyn - Perl syntax

=head1 DESCRIPTION

A (hopefully) comprehensive description of the differences between Perl
5 and Perl 6 with regards to the syntax elements described in the
perlsyn document.

=head1 NOTE

I will I<not> be explaining Perl 6 syntax in detail. This document is an
attempt to guide you from how things work in Perl 5 to the equivalents
in Perl 6. For full documentation on the Perl 6 syntax, please see the
Perl 6 documentation.

=head1 SOURCES

I'm taking my information from L<http://doc.perl6.org> (in particular,
L<http://doc.perl6.org/language/syntax> and
L<http://doc.perl6.org/language/control>), supplemented by the design
documents at L<http://design.perl6.org/> and input from the denizens of
#perl6 on irc.freenode.org

=head1 Free Form

Perl 6 is still I<largely> free form. However, there are a few instances
where the presence or lack of whitespace is now significant. For
instance, in Perl 5, you can omit a space following a keyword (e. g.
C<while($x < 5)> or C<my($x, $y)>). In Perl 6, that space is required,
thus C<while ($x < 5)> or C<my ($x, $y)>. In Perl 6, however, you can
omit the parentheses altogether: C<< while $x < 5 >>. This holds for
C<if>, C<for>, etc.

Oddly, in Perl 5, you can leave spaces between an array or hash and its
subscript, and before a postfix operator. So C<$seen {$_} ++> is valid.
No more. That would now have to be C<%seen{$_}++>.

If it makes you feel better, you can use backslashes to "unspace" whitespace,
so you can use whitespace where it would otherwise be forbidden.

You can find the details on this at
L<http://doc.perl6.org/language/5to6#Whitespace>.

=head2 Declarations

As noted in L<5to6-perlfunc.pod>, there is no C<undef> in Perl 6. A declared, but
uninitialized scalar variable will evaluate to its type. In other words, C<my
$x;say $x;> will give you "(Any)". C<my Int $y;say $y;> will give you "(Int)".

=head2 Comments

C<#> starts a comment that runs to the end of the line as in Perl 5.

Embedded comments start with a hash character and a backtick (C<#`>), followed by an
opening bracketing character, and continue to the matching closing bracketing
character. Like so:

=begin code

if #`( why would I ever write an inline comment here? ) True {
    say "something stupid";
}

=end code

As in Perl 5, you can use pod directives to create multiline comments, with
C<=begin comment> before and C<=end comment> after the comment.

=head2 Truth and Falsehood

The one difference between Perl 5 truth and Perl 6 truth is that, unlike Perl
5, Perl 6 treats the string C<"0"> as true. Numeric C<0> is still false, and
you can use prefix C<+> to coerce string C<"0"> to numeric to get it to be
false. Perl 6, additionally has an actual Boolean type, so, in many cases,
True and False may be available to you without having to worry about what
values count as true and false.

=head2 Statement Modifiers

Mostly, statement modifiers still work, with a few exceptions.

First, C<for> loops are exclusively what were known in Perl 5 as
C<foreach> loops and C<for> is not used for C-style C<for> loops in Perl
6. To get that behavior, you want C<loop>. C<loop> cannot be used as a
statement modifier.

In Perl 6, you cannot use the form C<do {...} while $x>. You will want
to replace C<do> in that form with C<repeat>. Similarly for C<do {...}
until $x>.

=head2 Compound Statements

The big change from Perl 5 is that C<given> is not experimental or disabled by
default in Perl 6. For the details on C<given> see
L<http://doc.perl6.org/language/control#given>.

=head2 Loop Control

C<next>, C<last>, and C<redo> have not changed from Perl 5 to Perl 6.

C<continue>, however, does not exist in Perl 6. You would use a C<NEXT>
block in the body of the loop.

=begin code

# Perl 5
my $str = '';
for (1..5) {
    next if $_ % 2 == 1;
    $str .= $_;
}
continue {
    $str .= ':'
}

# Perl 6
my $str = '';
for 1..5 {
    next if $_ % 2 == 1;
    $str ~= $_;
    NEXT {
        $str ~= ':'
    }
}

=end code

=head2 For Loops

As noted above, C-style C<for> loops are not called C<for> loops in Perl
6. They are just C<loop> loops. To write an infinite loop, you do not
need to use the C idiom of C<loop (;;) {...}>, but may just omit the
spec completely: C<loop {...}>

=head2 Foreach Loops

In Perl 5, C<for>, in addition to being used for C-style C<for> loops, is a
synonym for C<foreach>. In Perl 6, C<for> is just used for C<foreach> style
loops.

=head2 Switch Statements

Perl 6 has actual switch statements, provided by C<given> with the individual
cases handled by C<when> and C<default>. The basic syntax is:

=begin code

given EXPR {
    when EXPR { ... }
    when EXPR { ... }
    default { ... }
}

=end code

The full details can be found at
L<http://doc.perl6.org/language/control#given>.

=head2 Goto

C<goto> I<probably> works similarly in Perl 6 to the way it does in Perl 5.
However, as of this writing, it does not seem to be functional. For what is
planned for C<goto>, see
L<http://design.perl6.org/S04.html#The_goto_statement>.

=head2 The Ellipsis Statement

C<...> (along with C<!!!> and C<???>) are used to create stub
declarations. This is a bit more complicated than the use of C<...> in
Perl 5, so you'll probably want to look at
L<http://design.perl6.org/S06.html#Stub_declarations> for the gory
details. That said, there doesn't seem to be an I<obvious> reason why it
shouldn't still fulfill the role it did in Perl 5, despite its role
being expanded in Perl 6.

=head2 PODs: Embedded Documentation

Pod has changed between Perl 5 and Perl 6. Probably the biggest
difference is that you need to enclose your pod between C<=begin pod>
and C<=end pod> directives. There are a few tweaks here and there as
well. For instance, as I have discovered while writing these documents,
the vertical bar ("|") is significant in C<< X<> >> codes, and it's not
clear how to get a literal "|" into them. Your best bet may be to use
the Perl 6 interpreter to check your pod. You can do this by using the
C<--doc> switch. E. g. C<perl6 --doc Whatever.pod>. This will output any
problems to standard error. (Depending on how/where you've installed
perl6, you may need to specify the location of C<Pod::To::Text>.)
Details on Perl 6 style pod is at L<http://design.perl6.org/S26.html>.

=end pod
