Friday, 4 September 2015 14:30
20 minutes
Beginner
English
The * operator is not only a multi-faceted magic spell that (for the uninitiated at least) lends confusion to any example utilizing it ... it is also a clearly delineated compiler transform! This talk cannot promise to make you fall in love with the expression ‘my $biggener = * * * * *’, but it may just convince you that such an expression is something of a modern marvel of programming.
Our exploration of what — exactly — the term "Whatever" means in Perl 6 will lead us into the raging depths of implementation details and then back up to the relative calm and safety of surface syntax. Along the way we will explore other seemingly inscrutable "meta-operators of considerable power", such as: the hyper-operator (‘»’), and the reduction meta op (’[+]’).
Furthermore, this talk is brought to you by the operators ‘X’ and ‘Z’.