You can actually use Perl 5 and even Python modules from Perl 6: https://github.com/niner
At best, it's a hack. Impressive, sure, but not something that you could rely upon. There's still no sane upgrade path here.
The same could be said for XS. And I do think that all of Perl 5 is relying upon that.
> There's still no sane upgrade path here.
FWIW, my blog post https://www.perl.com/article/an-open-letter-to-the-perl-comm... touches on that subject.
That said, why is it impossible to call a Perl 5 function in scalar context? Shouldn't the equivalent of Perl 5's "scalar" be fairly easy to implement? It may stink to have to manually use it, but it wouldn't be very often, and it's easy enough to use any of half-a-dozen Perl 6 features to minimize the syntactic hit.
Has Stefan (who wrote IP5) said or written that it's impossible?
18 months ago he wrote "So far I've found 3 different ways to implement scalar/list context for method/function calls".[1]
He has left issue #31 open.[2]
Where did you read that it's impossible?
Grandparent of my post, no further research.
Bear in mind that as I posted doubt, that I am indeed doubting it, so don't expect me to be too surprised if you confirm that it is worth doubting. :)