use Perl

1. Searched google for "feather perl 6" I had heard feather on the mailing list and in a few blogs, and figured that it would make a good spam filter came across http://perl.net.au/wiki/Perl_6_Users_FAQ
2. Had a quick read of synopsis one http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/synopsis.html
3. Followed the FAQ down till it got to some usefull links including http://jnthn.net/perl6/
4. Downloaded win32 binaries of pugs and perl 6
5. Now I'm looking for hello world
   • looking for sommat in parrot I check in japh in the examples dir "a lot of the JAPHs are currently broken due to recent core changes" This may not bode well...
   • Just been reading around and there is a docs folder - maybe a better place to start ( DOH! )
   • right - parrot.pod, contains the following:

     intro.pod

     An introductory article on what Parrot is and how to do some interesting things with it. (Note that this was originally written around the time of Parrot v0.0.2, and is in need of some updating).

     I suppose at this stage there are going to be a few broken bits.. Not to worry... There must be a win32 pod viewer out there without too much overhead - maybe that would be a good starting point...
     
     Right hello world in pir -

     Hello world!

     Create a file called F that contains the following code.

       .sub _main
           print "Hello world!\n"
           end
       .end

     Then run it by typing:

       parrot hello.pir

     Cool - that seems to work... ( still not perl 6, but getting executable parrot code is a good first step )

6. Right, onto pugs...
   
   Thats suprising - the pugs directory contains parrot.exe - i wonder if it'll run the same pir file?
   
   Looking back at Jonathan Worthingtons page he says "Pugs can currently compile to Parrot, though at the time of writing that isn't as stable as the Pugs evaluator"
   
   I need to read up a little more on this...
7. Attempting to run the compiled code on the parrot in the pugs directory gives an alert:

   parrot.exe - unable to find component
   This application has failed to start because libparrot.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

I get the feeling I've annotated more than I've played. oh well.