Essentials.pod

=begin pod

=head1 NAME

Essentials - The important stuff in Perl 6

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The (arguably) most important things to know about Perl 6 if you're a Perl 5
programmer. For instance, you probably need to know that method calls are now
done with C<.> rather than C<< -> >>. On the other hand, that you need to know
that the left bit shift operator has changed from C<< << >> to C<< +< >> is
less likely. The changes from Perl 5 to Perl 6 are covered much more
exhaustively in the other documents in this set, such as L<Operators.pod> and
C<Functions.pod>.

=head1 SOURCES

I'm taking my information from L<http://doc.perl6.org>, supplemented by the
design documents at L<http://design.perl6.org/> and input from the denizens
of #perl6 on irc.freenode.org

=head2 Sigils

The sigils we know and love are all still there, but they are now
invariant.In other words, while in Perl 5 arrays began with a "@" but
array I<elements> began with a "$", In Perl 6, arrays begin with "@" and
array elements also start with "@". Similarly with hashes and "%". The
first element of C<@a> is C<@a[0]>. The value of a hash element with the
key "foo" is C<%hash{foo}>. Scalars, obviously, retain the "$" sigil.

=head2 Methods and Concatenation

As noted in the L<#DESCRIPTION> section, methods are now called with the dot,
rather than the arrow. So, where in Perl 5 you might have used C<<
$object->method >> in Perl 6 you would use C<$object.method>.

With the dot now being used for method calls, the concatenation operator is
now the tilde. So, C<$thing = "beep" . "boop"> is now C<$thing = "beep" ~
"boop">.

And, further on the subject of methods, many things that were only available
as traditional function calls can now be used as methods. Obvious examples are
functions that operate on arrays. C<pop(@a)> can now be done as C<@a.pop>,
although the former still works.

=end pod