Status

Rakudo is under constant development. This page tries to give you an overview of the current status.

Passing tests

Rakudo uses the official Perl 6 test suite to make sure that it doesn't deviate from the specification, to catch regressions and to measure progress.

spectest progress

Green indicates passing tests, red failed tests, blue expected failures (marked as TODO), yellow tests that are skipped because they would make the test die prematurely, and gray are tests that are not run yet, because the features tested are not yet implemented.

Things that work in Rakudo

See also the twitter feed at http://twitter.com/rakudoperl.

  • $scalar, @array, %hash variables, my and our declaration
  • sub, multi sub, sub and methods signatures with types and defaults
  • OO stuff mostly works: classes, methods, submethod, roles; has, self, is, of, does, handles etc.
  • for, loop, repeat, while
  • if, elsif, else, unless, given, when
  • junctions (auto-threading mostly works )
  • selected infix hyperoperators, reduction operators, cross (X) and zip (Z) operators
  • slicing syntax
  • chained comparison operators ( if 1 < $a < 100 { ... } )
  • whatever star in slices
  • closures
  • currying (i.e., .assuming)
  • .arity, .count, signature introspection
  • operator overloading, defining new operators
  • simple next/last/redo
  • take/gather
  • pointy blocks ( -> $foo { ... } )
  • open (:w or :r) and slurpy files (and that is all, IO stuff mostly not implemented yet)
  • exceptions and try/CATCH
  • Ranges
  • max, min built-ins (but minmax not implemented yet)
  • m// .trans and .subst (s// not implemented yet)
  • grammar and .parse method to match it
  • pick() and .pick
  • rand()
  • set context: list and .list, item and .item, ~, hash and .hash (but @ and $ not implemented )
  • ^ twigil, you can do { say $^a }('Yay');
  • eval
  • short-circuiting //=, &&=, ||=
  • state variables
  • typed arrays and hashes (my Int @a)
  • embedded comments #`[...]
  • contextual variables my $*thing = ...

Common things that are known to have problems or not work in Rakudo

(As of 2009-02-28.)
Where appropriate, provide a reference to the corresponding RT ticket. Note that we aren't trying to make a list of all known bugs -- that's what RT is for. This should just be for the common issues that people will want to be aware of or work around when playing with Rakudo.

  • reading array/hash elements causes them to autovivify RT #61882
  • lazy lists
  • lazy ranges
  • prefix and postfix hyperoperators
  • nested package/grammar/class declarations
  • autothreading over array/hash indexes
  • methods on Match cannot be used as rule names RT #57864
  • autovivification of undefs to arrays/hashes
  • variables in regexes RT #61960
  • Perl 6 closures in regexes (although it is possible to execute some PIR, on the form {{{{ PIR HERE }}}})
  • code assertions in regexes -- i.e., <?{...}> and <!{...}> (but PIR forms are available, as <? {{{{ PIR HERE }}}}>)
  • interpolations of arrays, hashes, and method calls in strings RT #62198 (Note that the { ... } form is a usable workaround)