Pm's #parrotsketch report for 2006-11-21

* Helped chromatic and mdiep debug grammar issues in pheme and Tcl
* Lots of improvements to PAST-pm
* PAST-pm now has
  + variable support (package/namespace, lexical, hash, array, vivification)
  + conditionals (if, unless, else)
  + loops (while, until)
  + inlined PIR nodes
  + method call nodes
  + nested lexical blocks
  + some documentation and an example
* I have a good feeling about past-pm, things seem to "just work" and fit nicely
  + now being used for perl6, abc, apl, and (reportedly) plumhead
* Lots of improvements to languages/abc (loops, variables, operators, tests)
  + smash++ for tests and harness
* Rebuilt APL to use PAST-pm and HLLCompiler
  + old: 943 lines, new: 466 lines
* Added a "--trace" option to HLLCompiler
* Updates to perl6:
  + Now uses PAST-pm and HLL Compiler
  + initial support for arrays and hashes
  + cleaner handling of symbol table and lexicals
  + improved(?) postfix ops in grammar
  + perl6 now supports method calls [ $a.foo and $a.foo() ]
  + working but not committed: subs w/o parameters
  + working on subs with parameters now
* I'm continually running into various roadblocks with subclasses of PMC classes
* There's also a bizarre (and annoying) interaction between Test::Harness and
  perl6, it seems to generate extra calls to :main (with bogus arguments).
  (Different versions of T::H cause different reactions.)

* I have three questions today

Waiting for resolutions/fixes for:
  - ability to reliably subclass PMCs
  - RT #40806: [BUG] IMCC - embedded source locations (#line nnn "file.pir")
  - RT #40626: [BUG] :vtable fails for subclasses of core classes
  - working subclasses of capture.pmc

Questions:
* Do we have a standard prototype format for documenting pir subs in POD?
* What's the implementation status on exception handling?
* Should I convert punie to past-pm, or come up with a converted version?

Problems observed with subclassing PMCs:
* can't iterate over subclass of .ResizablePMCArray
* "clone" op doesn't work for subclasses of .ResizablePMCArray, .Hash
* sub-subclass of .Capture doesn't properly delegate vtable methods