Suppose that you host a table tennis tournament. The referees tell you the results of each game in the format Player1 Player2 | 3:2, which means that Player1 won against Player2 by 3 to 2 sets. You need a script that sums up how many matches and sets each player has won to determine the overall winner.

The input data (stored in a file called scores.txt) looks like this:

Beth Ana Charlie Dave
Ana Dave | 3:0
Charlie Beth | 3:1
Ana Beth | 2:3
Dave Charlie | 3:0
Ana Charlie | 3:1
Beth Dave | 0:3

The first line is the list of players. Every subsequent line records a result of a match.

Here's one way to solve that problem in Perl 6:

use v6;
 
# Single line comments like this one start with '#'. 
my $file  = open 'scores.txt'; # Comments can also follow code on a line. 
my @names = $file.get.words;
 
my %matches;
my %sets;
 
#`(  Multiple line comments
     are denoted by a #, then `, then one of {,[, or (
     and closed by the corresponding },], and ).
     Nested pairs of square brackets, curly braces and
     parentheses are matched, so
     something like this () will not end the comment.
     In this case, closed by: )
for $file.lines -> $line {
    next unless $line; # ignore any empty lines 
 
    my ($pairing, $result) = $line.split(' | ');
    my ($p1, $p2)          = $pairing.words;
    my ($r1, $r2)          = $result.split(':');
 
    %sets{$p1} += $r1;
    %sets{$p2} += $r2;
 
    if $r1 > $r2 {
        %matches{$p1}++;
    } else {
        %matches{$p2}++;
    }
}
 
#`[
  This is another multi-line comment. ]
#`{ So is this, though it's not actually multi-line. }
my @sorted = @names.sort({ %sets{$_} }).sort({ %matches{$_} }).reverse;
 
for @sorted -> $n {
    my $match-noun = %matches{$n} == 1 ?? 'match' !! 'matches';
    my $set-noun   = %sets{$n} == 1 ?? 'set' !! 'sets';
    say "$n has won %matches{$n} $match-noun and %sets{$n} $set-noun";
}

This produces the output:

Ana has won 2 matches and 8 sets
Dave has won 2 matches and 6 sets
Charlie has won 1 match and 4 sets
Beth has won 1 match and 4 sets

v6

Every Perl 6 program should begin with a line similar to use v6;. This line tells the compiler which version of Perl 6 the program expects. For instance, 6.c is an example of a Perl 6 version. Should you accidentally run the file with Perl 5, you'll get a helpful error message.

statement

A Perl 6 program consists of zero or more statements. A statement ends with a semicolon or a curly brace at the end of a line:

my $file = open 'scores.txt';

lexical and block

my declares a lexical variable, which are visible only in the current block from the point of declaration to the end of the block. If there's no enclosing block, it's visible throughout the remainder of the file (which would effectively be the enclosing block). A block is any part of the code enclosed between curly braces { }.

sigil and identifier

A variable name begins with a sigil, which is a non-alpha-numeric symbol such as $, @, %, or & — or occasionally the double colon ::. Sigils indicate the structural interface for the variable, such as whether it should be treated as a single value, a compound value, a subroutine, etc. After the sigil comes an identifier, which may consist of letters, digits and the underscore. Between letters you can also use a dash - or an apostrophe ', so isn't and double-click are valid identifiers.

scalar

Sigils indicate the default access method for a variable. Variables with the @ sigil are accessed positionally; variables with the % sigil are accessed by string key. The $ sigil, however, indicates a general scalar container that can hold any single value and be accessed in any manner. A scalar can even contain a compound object like an Array or a Hash; the $ sigil signifies that it should be treated as a single value, even in a context that expects multiple values (as with an Array or Hash).

filehandle and assignment

The built-in function open opens a file, here named scores.txt, and returns a filehandle — an object representing that file. The equality sign = assigns that filehandle to the variable on the left, which means that $file now stores the filehandle.

string literal

'scores.txt' is a string literal. A string is a piece of text, and a string literal is a string which appears directly in the program. In this line, it's the argument provided to open.

my @names = $file.get.words;

array, method and invocant

The right-hand side calls a method — a named group of behavior — named get on the filehandle stored in $file. The get method reads and returns one line from the file, removing the line ending. If you print the contents of $file after calling get, you will see that the first line is no longer in there. words is also a method, called on the string returned from get. words decomposes its invocant — the string on which it operates — into a list of words, which here means strings separated by whitespace. It turns the single string 'Beth Ana Charlie Dave' into the list of strings 'Beth', 'Ana', 'Charlie', 'Dave'.

Finally, this list gets stored in the Array @names. The @ sigil marks the declared variable as an Array. Arrays store ordered lists.

my %matches;
my %sets;

hash

These two lines of code declare two hashes. The % sigil marks each variable as a Hash. A Hash is an unordered collection of key-value pairs. Other programming languages call that a hash table, dictionary, or map. You can query a hash table for the value that corresponds to a certain $key with %hash{$key}.

In the score counting program, %matches stores the number of matches each player has won. %sets stores the number of sets each player has won. Both of these hashes are indexed by the player's name.

for $file.lines -> $line {
    ...
}

for and block

for produces a loop that runs the block delimited by curly braces once for each item of the list, setting the variable $line to the current value of each iteration. $file.lines produces a list of the lines read from the file scores.txt, starting with the second line of the file since we already called $file.get once, and going all the way to the end of the file.

During the first iteration, $line will contain the string Ana Dave | 3:0; during the second, Charlie Beth | 3:1, and so on.

my ($pairing, $result) = $line.split(' | ');

my can declare multiple variables simultaneously. The right-hand side of the assignment is a call to a method named split, passing along the string ' | ' as an argument.

split decomposes its invocant into a list of strings, so that joining the list items with the separator ' | ' produces the original string.

$pairing gets the first item of the returned list, and $result the second.

After processing the first line, $pairing will hold the string Ana Dave and $result will hold 3:0.

The next two lines follow the same pattern:

my ($p1, $p2) = $pairing.words;
my ($r1, $r2) = $result.split(':');

The first extracts and stores the names of the two players in the variables $p1 and $p2. The second extracts the results for each player and stores them in $r1 and $r2.

After processing the first line of the file, the variables contain the values:

Variable	Contents
$line	'Ana Dave | 3:0'
$pairing	'Ana Dave'
$result	'3:0'
$p1	'Ana'
$p2	'Dave'
$r1	'3'
$r2	'0'

The program then counts the number of sets each player has won:

%sets{$p1} += $r1;
%sets{$p2} += $r2;

The += assignment operator is a shortcut for:

%sets{$p1} = %sets{$p1} + $r1;
%sets{$p2} = %sets{$p2} + $r2;

Any and +=

+= $r1 means increase the value in the variable on the left by $r1. In the first iteration %sets{$p1} is not yet set, so it defaults to a special value called Any. The addition and incrementing operators treat Any as a number with the value of zero; the strings get automatically converted to numbers, as addition is a numeric operation.

fat arrow, pair and autovivification

Before these two lines execute, %sets is empty. Adding to an entry that is not in the hash yet will cause that entry to spring into existence just-in-time, with a value starting at zero. (This is autovivification). After these two lines have run for the first time, %sets contains 'Ana' => 3, 'Dave' => 0 . (The fat arrow => separates the key and the value in a Pair.)

if $r1 > $r2 {
    %matches{$p1}++;
} else {
    %matches{$p2}++;
}

If $r1 is numerically larger than $r2, %matches{$p1} increments by one. If $r1 is not larger than $r2, %matches{$p2} increments. Just as in the case of +=, if either hash value did not exist previously, it is autovivified by the increment operation.

postincrement and preincrement

$thing++ is short for $thing += 1 or $thing = $thing + 1, with the small exception that the return value of the expression is $thing before the increment, not the incremented value. As in many other programming languages, you can use ++ as a prefix. Then it returns the incremented value; my $x = 1; say ++$x prints 2.

my @sorted = @names.sort({ %sets{$_} }).sort({ %matches{$_} }).reverse;

variables, $_

This line consists of three individually simple steps. An array's sort method returns a sorted version of the array's contents. However, the default sort on an array sorts by its contents. To print player names in winner-first order, the code must sort the array by the scores of the players, not their names. The sort method's argument is a block used to transform the array elements (the names of players) to the data by which to sort. The array items are passed in through the topic variable $_.

block

You have seen blocks before: both the for loop -> $line { ... } and the if statement worked on blocks. A block is a self-contained piece of Perl 6 code with an optional signature (the -> $line part).

The simplest way to sort the players by score would be @names.sort({ %matches{$_} }), which sorts by number of matches won. However Ana and Dave have both won two matches. That simple sort doesn't account for the number of sets won, which is the secondary criterion to decide who has won the tournament.

stable sort

When two array items have the same value, sort leaves them in the same order as it found them. Computer scientists call this a stable sort. The program takes advantage of this property of Perl 6's sort to achieve the goal by sorting twice: first by the number of sets won (the secondary criterion), then by the number of matches won.

After the first sorting step, the names are in the order Beth Charlie Dave Ana. After the second sorting step, it's still the same, because no one has won fewer matches but more sets than someone else. Such a situation is entirely possible, especially at larger tournaments.

sort sorts in ascending order, from smallest to largest. This is the opposite of the desired order. Therefore, the code calls the .reverse method on the result of the second sort, and stores the final list in @sorted.

for @sorted -> $n {
    my $match-noun = %matches{$n} == 1 ?? 'match' !! 'matches';
    my $set-noun   = %sets{$n} == 1 ?? 'set' !! 'sets';
    say "$n has won %matches{$n} $match-noun and %sets{$n} $set-noun";
}

say, print and put

To print out the players and their scores, the code loops over @sorted, setting $n to the name of each player in turn. Read this code as "For each element of sorted, set $n to the element, then execute the contents of the following block." The variable $match-noun will store either the string match if the player has won a single match or matches if the player has won zero or more matches. In order to do this, the ternary operator (?? !!) is used. If %matches{$n} == 1 evaluates to True, then match is returned. Otherwise, matches is returned. Either way, the returned value is stored in $match-noun. The same approach applies to <$set-noun>.

The statement say prints its arguments to the standard output (the screen, normally), followed by a newline. (Use print if you don't want the newline at the end.)

Note that say will truncate certain data structures by calling the .gist method so put is safer if you want exact output.

interpolation

When you run the program, you'll see that say doesn't print the contents of that string verbatim. In place of $n it prints the contents of the variable $n — the names of players stored in $n. This automatic substitution of code with its contents is interpolation. This interpolation happens only in strings delimited by double quotes "...". Single quoted strings '...' do not interpolate:

double-quoted strings and single-quoted strings

my $names = 'things';
say 'Do not call me $names'; # OUTPUT: «Do not call me $names␤» 
say "Do not call me $names"; # OUTPUT: «Do not call me things␤» 

Double quoted strings in Perl 6 can interpolate variables with the $ sigil as well as blocks of code in curly braces. Since any arbitrary Perl code can appear within curly braces, Arrays and Hashes may be interpolated by placing them within curly braces.

Arrays within curly braces are interpolated with a single space character between each item. Hashes within curly braces are interpolated as a series of lines. Each line will contain a key, followed by a tab character, then the value associated with that key, and finally a newline.

Let's see an example of this now.

In this example, you will see some special syntax that makes it easier to make a list of strings. This is the <...> quote-words construct. When you put words in between the < and > they are all assumed to be strings, so you do not need to wrap them each in double quotes "...".

say "Math: { 1 + 2 }";
# OUTPUT: «Math: 3␤» 
 
my @people = <Luke Matthew Mark>;
say "The synoptics are: {@people}";
# OUTPUT: «The synoptics are: Luke Matthew Mark␤» 
 
say "{%sets}␤";
# OUTPUT (From the table tennis tournament): 
 
# Charlie 4 
# Dave    6 
# Ana     8 
# Beth    4 

When array and hash variables appear directly in a double-quoted string (and not inside curly braces), they are only interpolated if their name is followed by a postcircumfix — a bracketing pair that follows a statement. It's also ok to have a method call between the variable name and the postcircumfix.

Zen slice

my @flavors = <vanilla peach>;
 
say "we have @flavors";           # OUTPUT: «we have @flavors␤» 
say "we have @flavors[0]";        # OUTPUT: «we have vanilla␤» 
# so-called "Zen slice" 
say "we have @flavors[]";         # OUTPUT: «we have vanilla peach␤» 
 
# method calls ending in postcircumfix 
say "we have @flavors.sort()";    # OUTPUT: «we have peach vanilla␤» 
 
# chained method calls: 
say "we have @flavors.sort.join(', ')";
                                  # OUTPUT: «we have peach, vanilla␤» 

Exercises

1. The input format of the example program is redundant: the first line containing the name of all players is not necessary, because you can find out which players participated in the tournament by looking at their names in the subsequent rows.

How can you make the program run if you do not use the @names variable? Hint: %hash.keys returns a list of all keys stored in %hash.

Answer: Remove the line my @names = $file.get.words;, and change:

my @sorted = @names.sort({ %sets{$_} }).sort({ %matches{$_} }).reverse;

... into:

my @sorted = %sets.keys.sort({ %sets{$_} }).sort({ %matches{$_} }).reverse;

2. Instead of deleting the redundant @names variable, you can also use it to warn if a player appears that wasn't mentioned in the first line, for example due to a typo. How would you modify your program to achieve that?

Hint: Try using membership operators.

Answer: Change @names to @valid-players. When looping through the lines of the file, check to see that $p1 and $p2 are in @valid-players. Note that for membership operators you can also use (elem) and !(elem).

...;
my @valid-players = $file.get.words;
...;
 
for $file.lines -> $line {
    my ($pairing, $result) = $line.split(' | ');
    my ($p1, $p2)          = $pairing.split(' ');
    if $p1 ∉ @valid-players {
        say "Warning: '$p1' is not on our list!";
    }
    if $p2 ∉ @valid-players {
        say "Warning: '$p2' is not on our list!";
    }
    ...
}