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A short and accurate title

Preamble

Author:  A. U. Thor <[email protected]>
Sponsor:
ID:      ADOPTME-2038
Status:  Draft

The preamble should be RFC-822 like headers. Author, Sponsor and similar should be valid e-mail addresses, or CPAN IDs.

Abstract

  • 100 to 200 words summarising the entire PPC.
  • The most important section is Motivation.

Motivation

  • What problem are we trying to solve?
  • Why doesn't the existing syntax/functionality cover it?

Rationale

  • Why does the new syntax/functionality solve the problem described above?
  • Why choose this solution, and reject others?

Specification

Perl doesn't have a formal specification. Effectively it's defined by the documentation and the regression tests. Likely the best way to specify a new feature is to write the documentation for it.

You don't need to know the internals to do this - hence the Author can contribute directly by working on these, with the Sponsor acting as a mentor and guide as needed.

Backwards Compatibility

If proposing syntax changes, think in terms of "can this be detected by"/"misunderstood by":

  • Static tooling inspecting source code
  • The Perl interpreter at compile time
  • Only as a runtime error
  • Subtle runtime behaviour changes that can't be warned about and break things

and how does this affect things like

Also, is it possible to emulate this for earlier Perl versions (or at least, a useful and correct subset), even if slow? And if not, what sort of API or functionality is missing that if added would make similar future "polyfill"s possible?

Security Implications

CVEs are not fun. Try to foresee problems.

Examples

PEPs have this as "How to Teach This". That's a valid goal, but there are different audiences (from newcomers, to experienced Perl programmers unfamiliar with your plan).

Most of us are not experienced teachers, but many folks reading your PPC are experienced programmers. So probably the best way to demonstrate the benefits of your proposal is to take some existing code in the core or on CPAN (and not your own code) and show how using your new feature can improve it (easier to read, less buggy, etc)

Prototype Implementation

Is there something that shows the idea is feasible, and lets other people play with it? Such as

  • A module on CPAN
  • A source filter
  • Hack the core C code - fails tests, but lets folks play

Future Scope

Were there any ideas or variations considered that seemed reasonable follow-ons from the initial suggestions, that we don't need to do now, but want to revisit in the future? If there are parts of the design marked as "intended for future expansion", then give an idea here of what direction is planned.

If that future expansion relies on extending the syntax, then ensure that the first implementation has tests to assert that the extended syntax remains a syntax error.

Rejected Ideas

Why this solution/this syntax was better than the obvious alternatives.

We've seen before that there will be Frequently Asked Questions. eg Why not have different behaviour in void context?

Likely the answer is in the previous discussion somewhere, but most people won't stop to read all the comments. It needs to be easy to find, and updated as it becomes clear which questions are common.

Hence it needs to be in the PPC itself. Without this, the PPC process as a whole won't scale.

Open Issues

Use this to summarise any points that are still to be resolved.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2038, A.U. Thor.

This document and code and documentation within it may be used, redistributed and/or modified under the same terms as Perl itself.