Raku

Raku is a member of the Perl family of programming languages. It was originally conceived as Perl 6, a major redesign of Perl 5 intended to provide a modern, multi-paradigm language with a rich feature set while remaining true to Perl’s heritage. Development began in the early 2000s through the Perl Foundation and a community of contributors. In 2019 the language was formally renamed Raku to emphasize its independence from Perl 5 and to reduce confusion around Perl 6.

Rakudo is the primary implementation of Raku, compiling to MoarVM bytecode and running on MoarVM at its core. There is also a JVM backend for Raku, enabling execution on the Java platform. The language is built with the Not Quite Perl (NQP) subset used to bootstrap compilers and to support alternative runtimes. The standard distribution historically centered on Rakudo, with a broad ecosystem of modules and tools.

Raku emphasizes multi-paradigm programming. It supports imperative, object-oriented, and functional styles, with features such as optional static typing, signatures for subroutines, and a rich object system based on roles. It has powerful grammar and regex facilities, including user defined grammars for parsing. The language includes gradual typing, enabling both dynamic and static typing disciplines. Concurrency is supported through constructs such as promises and supplies, enabling asynchronous and data-flow programming. Unicode is well supported, and the language places emphasis on expressiveness and readability.

Governance is maintained by the Raku Steering Committee (RSC), which coordinates language design and direction, with ongoing stewardship by the community and The Perl Foundation. Raku is used for scripting, data processing, text processing, automation, and various domain tasks where a flexible, high-level language is beneficial.