Periodic Table of the Operators

Being a comprehensive and complete enumeration of the Operatic Elements of the Perl 6 Language, assembled and drawn with dedication and diligence by M. Lentczner as a service to both the Community and the Republic.

May this simple presentation with various illustrative devices increase Knowledge & Understanding amongst practitioners in the art of Software.

Third Edition, February 14th, Two Thousand Nine

Periodic Table of the Operators

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Several years ago, I saw Larry Wall give a short talk about the design of Perl 6. At some point he put up a slide with a list of all the operators - well over a hundred of them! Sitting in the audience, I had a sudden inspiration, but it took a few months to get around to drawing it.

In 2004 I put the first version of this chart up on my web site and fired an e-mail off to the perl6 mailing list. It got slash-dotted. While I was on vacation. At least the server didn't crash.

Several years have passed, and the Perl 6 design has evolved quite a bit. This past Fall several people contacted me about updating the chart. I took up the challenge.

I used both Synopsis 3: Perl 6 Operators, and the de facto parser for Perl 6, STD.pm, as sources for the operator information.

Thanks to: Carl Mäsak for encouraging me to update the chart; Patrick Michaud for reviewing it; Larry Wall for being willing to discuss the minutiae of meta-operator parsing with me; and all the members of #perl6 for helping me explore the language.

Mark Lentczner
markl at glyphic dot-com
February 13th, 2009

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