I took a look at perl5...

and found Modern::Perl. I always put use strict; use warnings; and such things in my code. use Modern::Perl; does more and is succinct. Apparently use 5.10; turns on say and the given ... when switch extension. There is a book about modern styled perl that is worthwhile for even experienced Perl programmers. It is the impetus of the Modern::Perl module. You can by the book or download an electronic version here.

I've always liked Perl. I found the blather about "line noise" and classes not compelling. Given the number of newbies using all this perl code, it can't be that impossible to read and write (though newbie code usually blows in any language). Classes are hard/complicated? The quantity and quality of CPAN code begs to differ.

I always thought that a switch was one of the features perl needed. An automatic line separator after each print statement is good. That it is short is even better. Two things come to to mind. One, Perl5 is alive and well. Second, what is left for Perl6?

To the second point, I answer, Grammers. I have looked at Grammers with wonder. Grammers provide a method to parse a full (programming) language. The key element that is hinted at is that each level of parsing provides a hook to attach code. So if people, say cpan authors, write a grammer for parsing C code and publishes it; then you can write code to use those hooks. The code is something like C::Grammar.parse($str, :$actions);.

If someone implemented Grammers in Perl5 there maybe no need for perl6.

'Nuff said.