Perl in 2022 - A Yearly Update

At the end of 2020, I wrote a series of articles on the subject of recent CPAN modules that provide useful syntax, or recent core features added to perl. The series ended with a bonus post looking forward to imagine what new additions might one day appear. I followed this up with a video-based talk at FOSDEM, titled "Perl in 2025", with yet more ideas considering how a Perl might look in a few more years' time.

Over the past twelve months, I have made progress on several of these ideas. Four of them have already become CPAN modules and thus are available for writing in Perl in 2022:

• match/case - Now available as Syntax::Keyword::Match.

  match($n : ==) {
     case(1) { say "It's one" }
     case(2) { say "It's two" }
     case(3) { say "It's three" }
  }

• any, all - Now available as syntax-level keywords from List::Keywords.

  if( any { $_->size > 100 } @boxes ) {
     say "There are some large boxes here";
  }

• multi sub - An early experiment in Syntax::Keyword::MultiSub.

  multi sub max()          { return undef; }
  multi sub max($x)        { return $x; }
  multi sub max($x, @more) { my $y = max(@more);
                             return $x > $y ? $x : $y; }

• equ, === - Available from Syntax::Operator::Equ, though at present is only usable via Syntax::Keyword::Match or a specially-patched version of perl.

  if($x equ $y) {
     say "Both are undef, or defined and equal strings";
  }
   
  if($i === $j) {
     say "Both are undef, or defined and equal numbers";
  }

Of the rest:

• in - I have the beginnings of some code but it's not yet on CPAN as it again requires a patched version of perl for pluggable infix operators.
• let and is - not started yet.

In addition, not mentioned in the original article, the latest development version of perl has gained:

• defer blocks.

  {
      say "This happens first";
      defer { say "This happens last"; }
   
      say "And this happens inbetween";
  }

• finally as part of try/catch.

  try {
      say "This happens first";
  }
  catch ($e) {
      say "Oops, it failed";
  }
  finally {
      say "This happens last in either case";
  }

• The builtin:: namespace, providing many new utility functions that ought to have been considered part of the core language - copying utilities from places like Scalar::Util and POSIX, as well as providing some new ones.

  say "The refaddr of my object is ", builtin::refaddr($obj);
  
  use builtin 'ceil';
  say "The next integer above the value is ", ceil($value);

• Real boolean values. These will be useful in many places, such as data serialisation and cross-language conversion modules.

  use builtin qw(true false isbool);
  
  sub serialise($v) {
    return $v ? 'true' : 'false' if isbool $v;
    return qq("$v");
  }
  
  say join ",", map { serialise($_) }
      0, 1, false, true, 'true';

Overall I'm happy with progress so far. A lot of things have been started, laying much of the groundwork for more work that can follow. Behind the scenes all of these syntax modules are now using the XS::Parse::Keyword module to do the bulk of their parsing. This is great for getting something powerful written quickly, and has good properties in terms of interoperability between modules - for example, the way the new infix operators already work with the match/case syntax.

Core perl is on-track for a summer release as usual; hopefully that will provide the new defer and finally syntax, builtin functions and boolean values. I hope to have as much success in 2022 as I did in 2021 at writing more of these things, and with any luck I'll be able to write another article like this next year explaining what new progress has been achieved towards the Perl in 2025 goal.