Pugs

Pugs was the first usable Perl_6 interpreter, because the GHC and the parsec libs already were already able to do some of its advanced features. Pugs stands for "Perl 6 Users Golfing System" even if some similiarities to the Haskell (the language Pugs is written in) compiler Hugs may not be a coincidence.

It was introduced february 2005 by the lovely Audrey_Tang and had a time of rapid growth until about 2007. During those times it helped greatly to write the language spec (Synopses), to develop software tests and to write example programs in Perl 6.

It also started a rich and joyous culture, from which many other Perl 6 related projects sprang off like Elf, kp6 (kinda perl), mini perl (mp6) and others. It got multiple frontends and backends (it became a compiler from Perl 6 into many languages) and also a dual core to run Perl 5 modules. Pugs is still functional, but not much developed these days and a bit out of date compared with Rakudo.

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