Article Archive
A listing of all Perl.com articles grouped by topic. Also, see the listing of all Perl.com articles sorted by date.Advocacy
Memories of 20 Years of Perl
The Perl community just celebrated the 20th anniversary of Perl. Here are some stories from Perl hackers around the world about problems they've solved and memories they've made with the venerable, powerful, and still vital language. [Dec 21, 2007]
The State of the Onion 10
In Larry Wall's tenth annual State of the Onion address, he talks about raising children and programming languages and balancing competing tensions and irreconcilable desires. [Sep 21, 2006]
The State of the Onion 9
In Larry Wall's ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6's Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community. [Sep 22, 2005]
People Behind Perl: brian d foy
brian d foy is a long-time Perl hacker and leader, having founded the Perl Mongers, written and helped to write many useful CPAN modules, and recently founding, publishing, and editing The Perl Review. Perl.com recently interviewed brian about his work, history, and future plans. [Apr 28, 2005]
The Evolution of ePayment Services at UB
Perl is often a workhorse behind the scenes, content to do its job quietly and without fuss. When the University of New York at Buffalo needed to offer electronic payment services to students, the Department of Computing Services reached for Perl. Jim Brandt describes how Perl (and a little Inline::Java) helped them build just enough code to allow students to pay their bills online. [Dec 9, 2004]
Giving Lightning Talks
It's conference season, and there's still a chance to sign up for lightning talks. Until now, there were no written rules for giving lighting talks. Mark Fowler explains. [Jul 30, 2004]
How Perl Powers Christmas
We've had some fantastic Perl Success Stories in the past, but this one tops them all: How Perl is used in the distribution of millions of Christmas presents every year. [Dec 18, 2002]
Why I Hate Advocacy
Are you an effective Perl advocate? Mark Dominus explains why you might be advocating Perl the wrong way. [Dec 12, 2000]
Ten Perl Myths
Ten things that people like to say about Perl that aren't true. [Feb 23, 2000]
Sins of Perl Revisited
Tom Christiansen published the original seven sins in 1996. Where are we now? [Nov 30, 1999]
White Camel Awards to be Presented at O'Reilly's Perl Conference 3.0
The White Camel awards will be presented to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to Perl Advocacy, Perl User Groups, and the Perl Community at O'Reilly's Perl onference 3.0 on August 24, 1999. [Jun 28, 1999]
Binaries
Perl Success Story: Client-Side Collection and Reporting
Perl's a great server-side programming language. It's also good for developers and administrators. Where are the client-side uses? Recently, Jiann Wang and Hitachi GST had to solve a thorny software licensing reporting problem. They used Perl--distributing a small client program to each desktop--and solved their problem quickly, effectively, and elegantly. Here's how. [Dec 1, 2005]
Biology
Data Munging for Non-Programming Biologists
Scientists often have plenty of data to munge. Non-programmer scientists often have to beg their coders for help or get by doing it themselves. Amir Karger and his colleagues had a different idea. Why not provide them with short, interchangeable Perl recipes to solve small pieces of larger problems? Here's how they built the Scriptome. [Oct 20, 2005]
A Chromosome at a Time with Perl, Part 1
If you're a Perl programmer working in the field of bioinformatics, James Tisdall offers a handful of tricks that will enable you to write code for dealing with large amounts of biological sequence data--in this case, very long strings--while still getting satisfactory speed from the program. James is the author of O'Reilly's upcoming Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics. [Sep 11, 2003]
Beginning Bioinformatics
James Tisdall's new book is great for biochemists eager to get into the bioinformatics world, but what about us Perl programmers? In this article, we turn the tables, and ask what your average Perl programmer needs to know to get into this exciting new growth area. [Jan 2, 2002]
Books and Magazines
Genomic Perl
After James Tisdall's "Beginning Perl for Bioinformaticists", has Rex Dwyer come up with a "Beginning Bioinformatics for Perl Programmers"? Simon Cozens reviews "Genomic Perl", with some anticipation... [Feb 27, 2003]
Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason
HTML::Mason is my favourite toolkit for building pages out of Perl-based components: can Dave Rolsky and Ken Williams do it justice in their new book? I take a look at "Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason" and find it a mixed bag... [Jan 30, 2003]
Writing Perl Modules for CPAN
For many years, the Perl community has extolled the virtues of CPAN and re-usable, modular code. But why hasn't there been anything substantial written on how to achieve it? Sam Tregar redresses the balance, and this month's book review looks at how he got on. [Nov 6, 2002]
Writing CGI Applications with Perl
There are roughly four bazillion books on Perl and CGI available at the moment; one of the most recent is Brent Michalski and Kevin Meltzer's Writing CGI Applications with Perl. Kevin and Brent are long-standing members of the Perl community - can they do justice to this troublesome topic? Find out in this month's book review! [Sep 10, 2002]
Graphics Programming with Perl
Martien Verbuggen has produced a fine book on all elements of handling and creating graphics with Perl - we cast a critical eye over it. [Jul 23, 2002]
mod_perl Developer's Cookbook
Geoffrey Young, Paul Lindner and Randy Kobes have produced a new book on mod_perl which claims to teach "tricks, solutions and mod_perl idioms" - how well does it live up to this promise? [Apr 25, 2002]
Choosing a Perl Book
What to look for when choosing from the many Perl books on the market. [Jul 11, 2000]
Bug Tracking/Reporting
An Introduction to Quality Assurance
The libraries and syntax for automated testing are easy to find. The mindset of quality and testability is harder to adopt. Tom McTighe reviews the basic principles of quality assurance that can make the difference between a "working" application and a high-quality application. [Jan 13, 2005]
Business
Perl Success Story: Client-Side Collection and Reporting
Perl's a great server-side programming language. It's also good for developers and administrators. Where are the client-side uses? Recently, Jiann Wang and Hitachi GST had to solve a thorny software licensing reporting problem. They used Perl--distributing a small client program to each desktop--and solved their problem quickly, effectively, and elegantly. Here's how. [Dec 1, 2005]
How Perl Powers the Squeezebox
The Squeezebox is a hardware-based ethernet and wireless MP3 player from Slim Devices; its server is completely written in Perl, and is open and hackable. We talked to the Squeezebox developers about Perl, open source, and third-party Squeezebox hacking. [Dec 5, 2003]
Radiator
Are you fed up with those who think that commercial applications need to be written in an "enterprise" language like Java or C++? So are we, so we spoke to Mike McCauley at Open System Consultants. [Oct 15, 2002]
The e-smith Server and Gateway: a Perl Case Study
Kirrily "Skud" Robert explains the Perl behind the web-based administrator for the e-smith server. [Feb 20, 2001]
Perl Rescues a Major Corporation
How the author used Perl to create a document management system for a major aerospace corporation and saved the day. [Oct 21, 1998]
How Perl Creates Orders For The Air Force
Brent Michalski, while in the Air Force, created a Web-based system written in Perl to simplify the process of ordering new hardware and software. [Jul 22, 1998]
C and Perl
Lightning Strikes Four Times
Perl lightning articles offer short takes on important subjects. See how Perl can outperform C for 3D programming, how (and why) to express cross-cutting concerns in your programs, and one way of keeping your test counts up-to-date. [Apr 12, 2007]
Why Not Translate Perl to C?
Mark-Jason Dominus explains why it might not be any faster to convert your code to a C program rather than let the Perl interpreter execute it. [Jun 27, 2001]
Pathologically Polluting Perl
Brian Ingerson introduces Inline.pm and CPR; with them you can embed C inside Perl and turn C into a scripting language. [Feb 6, 2001]
Success in Migrating from C to Perl
How one company migrated from using C to Perl -- and in doing so was able to improve their approach to code design, maintenance and documentation. [Jan 19, 1999]
CGI
CGI::Kwiki
Brian Ingerson's latest Perl module is a new modular implementation of the wiki, a world-editable web site. [May 13, 2003]
Finding CGI Scripts
Dave Cross explains what to watch out for when choosing CGI scripts to run on your server, and announces a new best-of-breed project for CGI scripting. [Jan 23, 2002]
Using CGI::Application
The Common Gateway Interface may well be the backbone of many web applications, but sometimes it can feel dry and monotonous to work with. If you're fed up with"my $query = CGI->new()", Jesse Erlbaum presents a kinder, gentler alternative. [Jun 5, 2001]
Perl and CGI FAQ
This FAQ answers questions for Web developers. [Apr 14, 1999]
Communications
Throwing Shapes
Sometimes data processing works best when you separate the application into multiple parts; this is the well-loved client-server model. What goes on between the parts, though? Vladi Belperchinov-Shabanski walks through the design and implementation of a Remote Procedure Call system in Perl. [Feb 3, 2005]
Using Perl to Enable the Disabled
Some people use Perl to help with data munging, database hacking, and scripting menial tasks. Jouke Visser uses Perl to communicate with his disabled daughter. Here he explains what his pVoice software is and how it works. [Aug 23, 2003]
Community
Inside YAPC::NA 2005
One of the success stories of the Perl community is the series of self-organized Yet Another Perl Conferences. This year's North American YAPC is in Toronto in late June. chromatic recently interviewed Richard Dice, the man behind YAPC::NA 2005 to discuss how to put together a conference and what to expect from the conference and its attendant extracurricular activities in lovely Toronto. [May 12, 2005]
A Plan for Pugs
Want to write actual working Perl 6 code? A month ago, it would have been difficult. What a difference February made. Autrijus Tang and a loyal cadre of Perl and Haskell people have developed an amazingly complete Perl 6 implementation in a few short weeks. chromatic recently caught up with Autrijus on #perl6 to learn more about the project. [Mar 3, 2005]
The Phalanx Project
One ancient Greek military invention was the phalanx, a group of soldiers with overlapping shields each protecting each other. In the Perl world, the Phalanx project intends to improve the quality of Perl 5, Ponie, and the top CPAN modules. Project founder Andy Lester describes the goals and ambitions. [Jan 20, 2005]
The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]
Giving Lightning Talks
It's conference season, and there's still a chance to sign up for lightning talks. Until now, there were no written rules for giving lighting talks. Mark Fowler explains. [Jul 30, 2004]
Return of Quiz of the Week
Mark-Jason Dominus's quiz of the week mailing list is back, and we bring you the questions and solutions for the past week's quizzes. [May 28, 2004]
An Interview with Allison Randal
Allison is President of the Perl Foundation, and project manager for Perl 6. What does that actually mean? We caught up with her to talk about the Foundation, YAPC, and the Perl 6 effort. [May 21, 2004]
The State of Perl
A new year is a good time to take a look at the state Perl's in: its weaknesses, strengths, and future directions. Adam Turoff takes a long look at where Perl's going and why, and finds that Perl 6 doesn't have to be the last, great hope. [Jan 9, 2004]
Open Guides
Kake Pugh describes how Perl can help you find good beer in London, and many other places, with the OpenGuides collaborative city guides. [Oct 31, 2003]
2003 Perl Conferences
There are a plethora of Perl conferences on this year; which of them should you go to? I survey the conference scene and make a few recommendations about talks you might want to try and get to see. [May 6, 2003]
This Week on p5p 2001/10/21
What's left before 5.8.0, the POD specification, test-fu and more. [Oct 21, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/10/07
Code cleanups, attributes, tests from chromatic, and more... [Oct 10, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/09/03
Michael Schwern, Coderefs in @INC (again), localising things, and more... [Sep 3, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/08/27
vstrings, callbacks, coderefs in @INC, and more... [Aug 27, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/08/15
POD specification, Unicode work, threading and more! [Aug 15, 2001]
Yet Another Perl Conference Europe 2001
A review of this year's YAPC::Europe in Amsterdam. [Aug 13, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/08/07
Subroutine Prototypes, the Great SDK Debate, and much more! [Aug 8, 2001]
People Behind Perl : Artur Bergman
We continue our series on the People Behind Perl with an interview with Artur Bergman, the driving force behind much of the work on Perl's new threading model. While the model was created by Gurusamy Sarathy, Artur's really spent a lot of good time and effort making iThreads usable to the ordinary Perl programmer. Artur tells us about what got him into Perl development, and what he's doing with threads right now. [Aug 1, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/07/30
Hash "clamping", a meeting of the perl-5 porters at TPC, and more! [Aug 1, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/07/16
5.7.2 is out, some threading fixes, and much more. [Jul 16, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/07/09
No 5.8.0 yet, numeric hackery, worries about PerlIO and much more. [Jul 9, 2001]
People Behind Perl: Nathan Torkington
So you use Perl, and you probably know that it was brought to you by "Larry Wall and a cast of thousands". But do you know these people that make up the Perl development team? Simon Cozens talks to Nathan Torkington, a long-time Perl developer and a mainstay of the Perl community. [Jul 3, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/07/02
Module versioning and testing, regex capture-to-variable, and much more. [Jul 2, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/06/25
5.7.2 in sight, some threads on regular expression, and much more. [Jun 25, 2001]
Yet Another YAPC Report: Montreal
Schuyler Erle gives a detailed report of all the exciting events at this year's Yet Another Perl Conference in Montreal. By his account, it appears to be an exciting time to be involved with the development of Perl. [Jun 21, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/06/17
Miscellaneous Darwin Updates, hash accessor macros, and much more. [Jun 19, 2001]
Privacy Policy
The O'Reilly and Perl.com privacy policy [Jun 15, 2001]
The Beginner's Attitude of Perl: What Attitude?
Robert Kiesling says that the Perl Community's attitude towards new users is common fare for Internet development and compared to other lists Perl is downright civil. [Jun 12, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/06/09
Removing dependence on strtol, regex negation, and much more. [Jun 12, 2001]
About perl.com
[Jun 7, 2001]
Turning the Tides on Perl's Attitude Toward Beginners
Casey West is taking a stand against elitism in the Perl community and seems to be making progress. He has launched several new services for the Perl beginner that are being enthusiastically received. [May 28, 2001]
Hold the Sackcloth and Ashes
Jarkko Hietaniemi, the Perl release manager, responds to the critique of the Perl 6 RFC process. [Nov 3, 2000]
Critique of the Perl 6 RFC Process
Many of the suggestions put forward during the Perl 6 request-for-comment period revealed a lack of understanding of the internals and limitations of the language. Mark-Jason Dominus offers these criticisms in hopes that future RFCs may avoid the same mistakes -- and the wasted effort. [Oct 31, 2000]
Last Chance to Support Damian Conway
As reported earlier, the Yet Another Society (YAS) is putting together a grant to Monash University, Australia. The grant will fund Damian Conway's full-time work on Perl for a year. But the deadline for pledges is the end of the week, and the fund is still short. [Oct 26, 2000]
Report from YAPC::Europe
Mark Summerfield tells us what he saw at YAPC::Europe in London last weekend. [Oct 2, 2000]
Ilya Regularly Expresses
Ilya Zakharevich, a major contributor to Perl 5, talks about Perl 6 effort, why he thinks that Perl is not well-suited for text manipulation, and what changes would make it better; whether the Russian education system is effective; and whether Perl 6 is a good idea. [Sep 20, 2000]
Damian Conway Talks Shop
The author of Object-Oriented Perl talks about the Dark Art of programming, motivations for taking on projects, and the "deification" of technology. [Aug 21, 2000]
Report from the Perl Conference
One conference-goer shares with us his thoughts, experiences and impressions of TPC4. [Aug 21, 2000]
Reports from YAPC 19100
Eleven attendees of Yet Another Perl Conference write in about their experiences in Pittsburgh last month. [Jul 11, 2000]
Adventures on Perl Whirl 2000
Adam Turoff's report on last week's Perl Whirl cruise to Alaska [Jun 13, 2000]
ANSI Standard Perl?
Standardized Perl? Larry Rosler, who put the ANSI in ANSI C, shares his thoughts on how Perl could benefit from standards in this interview with Joe Johnston. [Jun 6, 2000]
Virtual Presentations with Perl
This year, the Philadelphia Perl Mongers had joint remote meetings with Boston.pm and St. Louis.pm using teleconferencing equipment to bring a guest speaker to many places at once. Adam Turoff describes what worked and what didn't, and how you can use this in your own PM groups. [Dec 20, 1999]
Happy Birthday Perl!
According to the perlhist man page, Perl was first released twelve years ago, on December 18, 1987. Congratulations to Larry Wall on the occasion of Perl's twelfth birthday! [Dec 18, 1999]
Perl as a First Language
Simon Cozens, author of the upcoming Beginning Perl talks about Perl as a language for beginning programmers. [Nov 16, 1999]
White Camel Awards
An interview with White Camel Award winners Kevin Lenzo and Adam Turoff. [Sep 16, 1999]
A New Edition of www.perl.com
Welcome to the new edition of www.perl.com! We've redesigned the site to make it easier for you to find the information you're looking for. [Jul 15, 1999]
Dispatch from YAPC
Brent was at YAPC -- were you? He reports from this "alternative" Perl conference. [Jun 30, 1999]
What the Heck is a Perl Monger?!
Want to start or find a Perl user group in your area? Brent interviews brian d foy, the creator of Perl Mongers to find out just what the Mongers are all about. [Jan 13, 1999]
A Photographic Journal
Photographs taken at the Perl Conference by Joseph F. Ryan: Perl Programmer at the National Human Genome Research Institute. [Aug 27, 1998]
The Final Day at The Perl Conference
Brent Michalski winds down his coverage of the Perl Conference. Highlights include: Tom Paquin's Keynote: "Free Software Goes Mainstream" and Tom Christiansen's "Perl Style". [Aug 21, 1998]
Day 3: Core Perl Developers at Work and Play
Recapping Larry Wall's Keynote, The OO Debate, The Internet Quiz Show, The Perl Institue and The Perl Night Life. [Aug 20, 1998]
Day 2: Perl Mongers at The Conference
Another exciting day! Brent talks about the Advanced Perl Fundamentals tutorial, the concept behind the Perl Mongers and the Fireside Chat with Jon Orwant. [Aug 19, 1998]
Day 1 Highlights: Lincoln's Cool Tricks and Regexp
Brent Michalski reports on the highlights of the first day of The Perl Conference. [Aug 18, 1998]
Perl Conference 3.0 -- The Call for Participation
This is a call for papers that demonstrate the incredible diversity of Perl. Selected papers will be presented at the third annual O'Reilly Perl Conference on August 21-24, 1999 at the Doubletree Hotel and Monterey Conference Center in Monterey California. [Aug 17, 1998]
Compiler
A Plan for Pugs
Want to write actual working Perl 6 code? A month ago, it would have been difficult. What a difference February made. Autrijus Tang and a loyal cadre of Perl and Haskell people have developed an amazingly complete Perl 6 implementation in a few short weeks. chromatic recently caught up with Autrijus on #perl6 to learn more about the project. [Mar 3, 2005]
Core Documentation
The Artistic License
This document states the conditions under which a Package may be copied, such that the Copyright Holder maintains some semblance of artistic control over the development of the package [Aug 15, 1997]
Courses and Training
How to Tell Your Perl Story (at OSCON)
Have you done something stunningly cool or staggeringly useful with Perl in the past year? Conference season will be here soon; it's time to consider giving a talk to your local monger group, a regional conference, or even OSCON. Perl track committee member brian d foy gives several guidelines to help you decide what to talk about and how to present it. [Jan 18, 2008]
CPAN
PDF Processing with Perl
Adobe's PDF is a well-established format for transferring pixel-perfect documents. It's not nearly as malleable as plain text, but several CPAN modules make creating, manipulating, and reusing PDFs much easier. Detlef Groth demonstrates how to use PDF::Reuse. [Sep 21, 2007]
Making Perl Reusable with Modules
Perl programs are easy to write, especially if they solve simple problems. If you find yourself re-using the same programs (or worse, the same code), it's time to bundle your code into pieces easier to reuse. It's time to turn programs into modules. Andy Sylvester walks through the three steps of making a simple, standalone Perl program into a robust, tested, distributable, and reusable piece of code. [Aug 7, 2007]
Option and Configuration Processing Made Easy
Many useful programs take arguments and configuration options. It's easy to add one or two, but as your program grows, the difficulty of allowing configuration concisely and intelligently also grows. Jon Allen demonstrates how to unify argument and configuration processing in a way that lets you write good code and your users get on with their work. [Jul 12, 2007]
Better Code Through Destruction
Perl 5's reference counting scheme almost always keeps memory usage predictable...except for one corner case. The Resource Acquisition Is Initialization strategy helps avoid memory leaks--and can improve your use of exceptions, alarms, other resources, and even transactional systems. Igor Gariev demonstrates. [Jun 7, 2007]
Lightning Strikes Four Times
Perl lightning articles offer short takes on important subjects. See how Perl can outperform C for 3D programming, how (and why) to express cross-cutting concerns in your programs, and one way of keeping your test counts up-to-date. [Apr 12, 2007]
Still More Perl Lightning Articles
Perl lightning articles are short, direct, and full of electrifying practical information. This time, Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how to convert crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl installers, Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI toolkit from Perl, Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a script, and chromatic removes duplication from test suites. [Jul 13, 2006]
Managing Rich Data Structures
Perl is so good at handling plain text files that it's seductively easy to use them when you need something better. Yet sometimes using a full-fledged database is just Too Much Work. If only Dave Baker had written an article on using complex, persistent data structures with MLDBM. [Feb 16, 2006]
Annotating CPAN
Perl has voluminous documentation, both in the core distribution and in thousands of CPAN modules. That doesn't make it all perfect, though, and the amount of documentation can make it daunting to find and recommend changes or clarifications. The Perl Foundation recently sponsored Ivan Tubert-Brohman to fix this; here's how he built AnnoCPAN, an annotation service for module documentation. [Jun 30, 2005]
Building Good CPAN Modules
Your code is amazing. It works exactly as you intended. You've decided to give back, to share it with the world by uploading it to the CPAN. Before you do, though, there are a few fiddly details about cross-platform and cross-version compatibility to keep in mind. Rob Kinyon gives several guidelines about writing CPAN modules that will work everywhere they will be useful. [Apr 14, 2005]
The Phalanx Project
One ancient Greek military invention was the phalanx, a group of soldiers with overlapping shields each protecting each other. In the Perl world, the Phalanx project intends to improve the quality of Perl 5, Ponie, and the top CPAN modules. Project founder Andy Lester describes the goals and ambitions. [Jan 20, 2005]
Building a Finite State Machine Using DFA::Simple
A finite state machine (FSM) is a general-purpose mechanism for solving common programming problems that involve performing actions based on previous and current input. (They're good for parsers and the like.) William Ruppert demonstrates how to build and use FSMs in Perl. [Sep 23, 2004]
The Many Dates and Times of Perl
There are a huge number of date and time handling modules on the CPAN; how do you know which ones are any good? Dave Rolsky, one of the men behind the datetime mailing list takes you on a tour. [Mar 13, 2003]
Becoming a CPAN Tester with CPANPLUS
A few weeks ago, Jos Broumans introduced CPANPLUS, his replacement for the CPAN module. In the time since then, development has continued apace, and today's release includes support for automatically testing and reporting bugs in CPAN modules. Autrijus Tang explains how it all works. [Apr 30, 2002]
CPAN PLUS
For many years the CPAN.pm module has helped people install Perl modules. But it's also been clunky, fragile and amazingly difficult to use programmatically. Jos Boumans introduces CPANPLUS, his project to change all that. [Mar 26, 2002]
The Lighter Side of CPAN
Alex Gough takes us on a whirlwind tour around the more esoteric and entertaining areas of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, and makes some serious points about Perl programming at the same time. [Oct 31, 2001]
Common Questions About CPAN
Answers to the most common questions asked from cpan@perl.org [Jul 29, 1999]
Data Structures
Managing Rich Data Structures
Perl is so good at handling plain text files that it's seductively easy to use them when you need something better. Yet sometimes using a full-fledged database is just Too Much Work. If only Dave Baker had written an article on using complex, persistent data structures with MLDBM. [Feb 16, 2006]
Understanding and Using Iterators
Unlike some other programming languages, Perl makes it easy to process lists of items. Lists and arrays aren't always suitable for every task, though; sometimes you need something more powerful. Sometimes you need an iterator. Joshua Gatcomb explains where iterators are useful and how to use them. [Jun 16, 2005]
Symbol Table Manipulation
One of the most dramatic advantages of dynamic languages is that they provide access to the symbol table at run-time, allowing new functions and variables to spring into existence as you need them. Though they're not always the right solution to common problems, they're very powerful and useful in certain circumstances. Phil Crow demonstrates how and when and why to manipulate Perl's symbol table. [Mar 17, 2005]
Using Bloom Filters
Perl hashes make set membership easy at the cost of memory usage. A lesser-known technique, Bloom filters, trades a tunable false-positive rate for compactness -- and has interesting applications for privacy concerns. Maciej Ceglowski explains the theory and practice of Bloom filters. [Apr 8, 2004]
Changing Hash Behaviour withtie
Hashes are one of the most useful data structures Perl provides, but did you know you can make them even more useful by changing the way they work? Dave Cross shows us how it's done [Sep 4, 2001]
Databases
An Introduction to Test::MockDBI
It is a sweet and fitting thing to test your code, but if you're working with non-Perl, you'll likely run into difficult situations. For example, how do you force a database connection failure to test that you can recover? Mark Leighton Fisher has an answer: mock up the database. He explains the design, goals, and use of Test::MockDBI. [Jul 21, 2005]
Massive Data Aggregation with Perl
What do you do if you have a huge array of disparate data sources from which to collect and present data in multiple formats? First, reach for Perl. Then...good question. Fred Moyer explains how his team designed and built a system to aggregate and present huge amounts of data with Perl. [May 5, 2005]
More Lightning Articles
Yes, it's the return of Perl Lightning Articles -- short discussions of Perl and programming. This time, learn about Emacs customization with Perl, debugging without adding print statements, testing database-heavy code, and why unbuffering may be a mistake. [Mar 31, 2005]
Perl Code Kata: Testing Databases
Testing simple code is all well and good, but what happens when your real code has to work with external programs, such as databases? How do you test your code adequately without going crazy writing scaffolding that has no chance of working anywhere but your test box? Stevan Little suggests that DBD::Mock can round out your test toolbox nicely in this Perl Test Kata. [Feb 10, 2005]
Embedded Databases
Every serious program needs data, but not every serious program needs a full-blown relational database server backend. You're not stuck to reading, parsing, and writing flat-files forever, though. Phillip Janert explores three types of embedded databases that are easy to install, use, and distribute. [Sep 16, 2004]
Database Programming with Perl
Simon Cozens introduces the DBI module, the standard way for Perl to talk to relational databases. [Oct 23, 2003]
Adding Search Functionality to Perl Applications
Do you write applications that deal with large quantities of data -- and then find you don't know the best way to bring back the information you want? Aaron Trevena describes some simple, but powerful, ways to search your data with reverse indexes. [Sep 25, 2003]
Class::DBI
Tony Bowden introduces a brilliantly simple way to interface to a relational database using Perl classes and the Class::DBI module [Nov 27, 2002]
DBI is OK
chromatic makes a case for using DBI and shows how it works well in the same situations as DBIx::Recordset. [Mar 20, 2001]
DBIx::Recordset VS DBI
Terrance Brannon explains why DBI is the standard database interface for Perl but should not be the interface for most Perl applications requiring database functionality. [Feb 27, 2001]
A Short Guide to DBI
Here's how to get started using SQL and SQL-driven databases from Perl. [Oct 22, 1999]
Debugging
Unraveling Code with the Debugger
Reading other people's code can be difficult, especially if you have no idea what happens when and where. Understanding code flow is vital to maintenance and bug fixes, but littering code with print and debugging statements is tedious and prone to error. There's another way: use the debugger! Daniel Allen demonstrates how to pinpoint a problem with Perl's debugger. [Apr 6, 2006]
More Lightning Articles
Yes, it's the return of Perl Lightning Articles -- short discussions of Perl and programming. This time, learn about Emacs customization with Perl, debugging without adding print statements, testing database-heavy code, and why unbuffering may be a mistake. [Mar 31, 2005]
An Introduction to Quality Assurance
The libraries and syntax for automated testing are easy to find. The mindset of quality and testability is harder to adopt. Tom McTighe reviews the basic principles of quality assurance that can make the difference between a "working" application and a high-quality application. [Jan 13, 2005]
Perl Debugger Quick Reference
Perl's debugger is both powerful and somewhat esoteric. This printable excerpt from Richard Foley's Perl Debugger Pocket Reference can help take some of the mystery out of the common commands and put more advanced features within your reach. [Nov 24, 2004]
Retire your debugger, log smartly with Log::Log4perl!
Michael Schilli describes a new way of adding logging facilities to your code, with the help of the log4perl module - a port of Java's log4j. [Sep 11, 2002]
Documentation
POD is not Literate Programming
[Mar 20, 2000]
Dynamic Content
Document Modeling with Bricolage
Any document-processing application needs to make a model of the documents it expects to process. This can be a time-consuming and error-prone task, especially if you've never done it before. David Wheeler of the Bricolage project shows how to analyze and model documents for his publishing system. Perhaps it can help you. [Nov 23, 2005]
Building Navigation Menus
Well-designed websites are easy to navigate, with sensible menus, breadcrumb trails, and the information you need within three clicks of where you are. Rather than tediously coding navigation structures by hand, why not consider using a Perl module to generate them for you? Shlomi Fish shows how to use his HTML::Widgets::NavMenu module. [Jul 7, 2005]
Catalyst
MVC frameworks are hot again in the web development world. Perl has a rich array of choices. One new contender is Catalyst, an elegant platform for database-backed applications. Developers Jesse Sheidlower and Sebastian Riedel explain the design goals and build an Ajax-powered wiki in 30 lines of code. [Jun 2, 2005]
Editors
Perl Needs Better Tools
Perl is a fantastic language for getting your work done. It's flexible, forgiving, malleable, and dynamic. Why shouldn't it have good, powerful tools? Are Perl development tools behind those of other, perhaps less-capable languages? J. Matisse Enzer argues that Perl needs better tools, and explains what those tools should do. [Aug 25, 2005]
Independently Parsing Perl
Stodgy, boring languages have great editors. What's keeping Perl from refactoring support, perfect syntax highlighting, and other advanced transformation techniques? It's really difficult to parse Perl. Fortunately, Adam Kennedy's PPI project provides a standalone Perl parser that operates correctly on all but 28 of the 38,000 CPAN modules. Here's how it works and what you can do with it. [Jun 9, 2005]
More Lightning Articles
Yes, it's the return of Perl Lightning Articles -- short discussions of Perl and programming. This time, learn about Emacs customization with Perl, debugging without adding print statements, testing database-heavy code, and why unbuffering may be a mistake. [Mar 31, 2005]
Komodo 3.0 Review
ActiveState has recently released version 3.0 of its Komodo IDE, supporting agile languages. Jason Purdy reviews the progress made since the 2.0 release. [Nov 4, 2004]
A Review of Komodo
Simon Cozens takes a look at ActiveState's latest Komodo release, Komodo 2.0. Will this version of the Perl IDE finally convince the hardened emacs and vi users to switch over? [Oct 9, 2002]
Perl Builder IDE Debuts
A review of Perl Builder, the first integrated development environment (IDE)for Perl. [Jul 22, 1998]
The Evolution of Perl Email Handling
There are many modules on the CPAN for slicing and dicing email, and we're going to take a whistlestop tour of the major ones. We'll also concentrate on an effort started by myself, Richard Clamp, Simon Wistow, and others, called the Perl Email Project, to produce simple, efficient and accurate mail handling modules. [Jun 10, 2004]
Siesta Mailing List Manager
Majordomo is past its best, and many Perl Mongers groups rely on ezmlm or Mailman. Why isn't there a decent Perl-based mailing list manager? Simon Wistow and others from London.pm decided to do something about it ... and came up with Siesta. [Feb 5, 2004]
Files
Testing Files and Test Modules
Perl hackers work with files all day long, creating, renaming, updating, editing, and munging them. Do you know your file-manipulation code works, though? That's why Phil Crow wrote Test::Files--to gain confidence and practice good coding. Here's how it works and how he tested a test module. [Dec 8, 2005]
FMTYEWTK About Mass Edits In Perl
Though it's a full-fledged programming language now, Perl still has roots in Unix file editing. A hearty set of command-line switches, options, and shortcuts make it possible to process files quickly, easily, and powerfully. Geoff Broadwell explains far more than you ever wanted to know about it. [Oct 14, 2004]
Perl's Special Variables
Dave Cross goes back to basics to show how using Perl's special variables can tidy up file-handling code. [Jun 18, 2004]
Simple IO Handling with IO::All
Perl module author extraordinaire Brian Ingerson demonstrates his latest creation. IO::All ties together almost all of Perl's IO handling libraries in one neat, cohesive package. [Mar 11, 2004]
Perl Slurp-Eaze
Uri Guttman demonstrates several different ways to read and write a file in a single operation, a common idiom that's sometimes misused. [Nov 21, 2003]
Finance
The Evolution of ePayment Services at UB
Perl is often a workhorse behind the scenes, content to do its job quietly and without fuss. When the University of New York at Buffalo needed to offer electronic payment services to students, the Department of Computing Services reached for Perl. Jim Brandt describes how Perl (and a little Inline::Java) helped them build just enough code to allow students to pay their bills online. [Dec 9, 2004]
Games
Lightning Strikes Four Times
Perl lightning articles offer short takes on important subjects. See how Perl can outperform C for 3D programming, how (and why) to express cross-cutting concerns in your programs, and one way of keeping your test counts up-to-date. [Apr 12, 2007]
Building a 3D Engine in Perl, Part 4
The ultimate goal of all programming is to be as unproductive as possible--to write games. In part four of a series on building a 3D engine with Perl, Geoff Broadwell explains how to profile your engine, how to improve performance and code with display lists, and how to render text. [Aug 4, 2005]
Building a 3D Engine in Perl, Part 3
The ultimate goal of all programming is to be as unproductive as possible--to write games. In part three of a series on building a 3D engine with Perl, Geoff Broadwell explains how to manage the viewpoint and how to achieve impressive lighting effects with OpenGL. [Feb 17, 2005]
Building a 3D Engine in Perl, Part 2
The ultimate goal of all programming is to be as unproductive as possible--to write games. In part two of a series on building a 3D engine with Perl, Geoff Broadwell demonstrates animations and event handling. [Dec 29, 2004]
Building a 3D Engine in Perl
The ultimate goal of all programming is to be as unproductive as possible -- to write games. Why hurt yourself to write in low-level languages, though, when Perl provides all of the tools you need to do it well? Geoff Broadwell demonstrates how to use OpenGL from Perl. [Dec 1, 2004]
Autopilots in Perl
Jeffrey Goff explains how to connect the X-Plane flight simulator with a Perl console to build new instrument panels, traffic simulators, and even an autopilot in Perl. [Jul 12, 2004]
Solving Puzzles with LM-Solve
A great many puzzles and games, such as Solitaire or Sokoban, are of the form of a "logic maze" -- you move a board or tableau from state to state until you reach the appropriate goal state. Shlomi Fish presents his Games::LMSolve module, which provides a general representation of such games and an algorithm to solve them. [Nov 17, 2003]
Graphics
Lightning Strikes Four Times
Perl lightning articles offer short takes on important subjects. See how Perl can outperform C for 3D programming, how (and why) to express cross-cutting concerns in your programs, and one way of keeping your test counts up-to-date. [Apr 12, 2007]
Charting Data at the Bottom of the World
Alex Gough has a curious job. He's the only programmer for 500 miles at a remote Antarctic research station. His problems are like your problems too, though--gathering, manipulating, recording, and displaying data. Here's how he uses several CPAN modules to make pretty charts and graphs with almost no work. [May 4, 2006]
Making Menus with wxPerl
Perl's a great general-purpose programming language. wxWidgets is a powerful GUI toolkit that manages attractive, native widgets on multiple platforms. wxPerl is the combination, and it's easy to use, once you understand a few idioms. Roberto Alamos shows off everything you need to know to manage menus with wxPerl. [Oct 6, 2005]
Data Munging with Sprog
Sprog is a graphical programming environment written in Perl, programmable by connecting components visually and setting their properties. Sure, you've heard that promise before--but Grant McLean demonstrates how to retrieve and munge tabular data from a web page into LDIF files without writing a lick of code. [Jun 23, 2005]
The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]
Photo Galleries with Mason and Imager
One of the major problems with the plethora of photo gallery software available is that very few of them integrate well with existing sites. Casey West comes up with a new approach using Imager and Mason to fit in with Mason sites. [Apr 1, 2004]
Creating Custom Widgets
Steve Lidie, coauthor of Mastering Perl/Tk, brings us more wisdom from his Tk experience--this time, explaining how to create your own simple widget classes. [Jan 9, 2002]
A Drag-and-Drop Primer for Perl/Tk
This article, by Steve Lidie, coauthor of Mastering Perl/Tk, describes the Perl/Tk drag-and-drop mechanism, often referred to as DND. Steve illustrates DND operations local to a single application, where you can drag items from one Canvas to another. [Dec 11, 2001]
wxPerl: Another GUI for Perl
Jouke Visse brings us a new tutorial on how to use wxPerl to create good-looking GUIs for Perl programs. [Sep 12, 2001]
Perl Helps The Disabled
As part of Mark-Jason Dominus's Lightning Talks at the 2001 O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Jon Bjornstad gave a talk about a Perl/Tk program he wrote to help a mute quadriplegic friend, Sue Simpson, to speak and to better use her computer. Jon's talk received a grand reception, not only for his clever use of Perl, but for a remarkably unselfish application of his skills. [Aug 27, 2001]
HTTP
Don't Be Afraid to Drop the SOAP
Web services may be unfortunately trendy, but having a simple API for other people to use your application is very powerful and useful. Is SOAP the right way to go? Sam Tregar describes an alternate approach he's pulled from working the Bricolage and Krang APIs. [Sep 30, 2004]
Installation
Still More Perl Lightning Articles
Perl lightning articles are short, direct, and full of electrifying practical information. This time, Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how to convert crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl installers, Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI toolkit from Perl, Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a script, and chromatic removes duplication from test suites. [Jul 13, 2006]
Java
Using Java Classes in Perl
Java has a huge amount of standard libraries and APIs. Some of them don't have Perl equivalents yet. Fortunately, using Java classes from Perl is easy--with Inline::Java. Andrew Hanenkamp shows you how. [Dec 21, 2006]
Generating UML and Sequence Diagrams
Sometimes a picture can save you thousands of words of description--and debugging. A sequence diagram shows the flow of methods and function calls between modules. Perl lets you generate these almost automatically for Perl code--or even Java. Phil Crow shows how to use UML::Sequence. [Aug 3, 2006]
Still More Perl Lightning Articles
Perl lightning articles are short, direct, and full of electrifying practical information. This time, Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how to convert crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl installers, Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI toolkit from Perl, Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a script, and chromatic removes duplication from test suites. [Jul 13, 2006]
The Evolution of ePayment Services at UB
Perl is often a workhorse behind the scenes, content to do its job quietly and without fuss. When the University of New York at Buffalo needed to offer electronic payment services to students, the Department of Computing Services reached for Perl. Jim Brandt describes how Perl (and a little Inline::Java) helped them build just enough code to allow students to pay their bills online. [Dec 9, 2004]
Bringing Java into Perl
Phil Crow explains how to use Java code from inside of Perl, using the Inline::Java module. [Nov 7, 2003]
Language Development
The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]
Lightweight Languages
Simon Cozens reports from this weekend's Lightweight Languages workshop at the MIT AI labs, where leading language researchers and implementors got together to chat about what they're up to. [Nov 21, 2001]
This Week in Perl 6 (5 - 11 August 2001)
Damian's slides, more on properties and more [Aug 11, 2001]
This Fortnight In Perl 6 (July 22 - Aug. 4, 2001)
The Perl Conference 5.0 synopsis, ideas from the mailing lists, and more. [Aug 9, 2001]
This Fortnight in Perl 6 (17 - 30 June 2001)
A detailed summary of a recent Perl vs. Java battle, a discussion on the internal API for strings, and much more. [Jul 3, 2001]
This Week in Perl 6 (10 - 16 June 2001)
Even More on Unicode and Regexes, Multi-Dimensional Arrays and Relational Databases, and much more. [Jun 19, 2001]
This Week in Perl 6 (3 - 9 June 2001)
A discussion on the interaction of properties with use strict, continuing arguements surrounding regular expressions, and much more. [Jun 12, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/06/03
Improving the Perl test suite, Warnings crusade, libnet in the core, and much more. [Jun 4, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/05/27
Attribute tieing, Test::Harness cleanup, and much more. [May 27, 2001]
Taking Lessons From Traffic Lights
Michael Schwern examines traffic lights and shows what lessons applied to the development of Perl 6 [May 22, 2001]
This Month on Perl6 (1 May - 20 May 2001)
Perl 6 Internals, Meta, Language, Docs Released, and much more. [May 21, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/05/13
The to-do list, safe signals, release numbering and much more. [May 13, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/05/20
Internationalisation, Legal FAQ, and much more. [May 6, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/05/06
iThreads, Relocatable Perl, Module License Registration, and much more. [May 6, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/29
MacPerl 5.6.1, Licensing Perl modules, and much more. [Apr 29, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/22
Modules in the core, Kwalitee control, and much more. [Apr 22, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/15
perlbug Administration, problems with tar, and much more. [Apr 15, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/08
Perl 5.6.1 and Perl 5.7.1 Released(!), and much more. [Apr 8, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/02
Perl and HTML::Parser, Autoloading Errno, Taint testing, and much more. [Apr 2, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/04/01
Perl and HTML::Parser, Autoloading Errno, Taint testing, and much more. [Apr 1, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/03/26
use Errno is broken, Lexical Warnings, Scalar repeat bug, and much more. [Mar 26, 2001]
This Month on Perl6 (25 Feb--20 Mar 2001)
Internal Data Types, API Conventions, and GC once again. [Mar 21, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/03/19
Robin Houston vs. goto, more POD nits, and much more. [Mar 19, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/03/12
Pod questions, patching perly.y, EBCDIC and Unicode, plus more. [Mar 12, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/03/05
Coderef @INC, More Memory Leak Hunting, and more. [Mar 5, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/02/26
Overriding +=, More Big Unicode Wars, and more. [Feb 28, 2001]
This Week on p6p 2001/02/18
A revisit to RFC 88, quality assurance, plus more. [Feb 18, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/02/12
Perl FAQ updates, memory leak plumbing, and more. [Feb 14, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/02/06
Perl 5.6.1 not delayed after all, MacPerl, select() on Win32, and more. [Feb 6, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/01/28
5.6.x delayed, the hashing function, PerlIO programming documentation, and more. [Jan 30, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/01/21
Safe signals; large file support; pretty-printing and token reporting. [Jan 24, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2001/01/14
Unicode is stable! Big performance improvements! Better lvalue subroutine support! [Jan 15, 2001]
This Fortnight on p5p 2000/12/31
Unicode miscellany; lvalue functions. [Jan 9, 2001]
This Week on p5p 2000/12/24
5.6.1 trial release; new repository browser; use constant [Dec 27, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/12/17
More Unicode goodies; better arithmetic; faster object destruction. [Dec 17, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/12/10
Unicode support almost complete! Long standing destruction order bug fixed! Rejoice! [Dec 11, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/12/03
Automatic transliteration of Russian; syntactic oddities; lvalue subs. [Dec 4, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/11/27
Enhancements to for, map, and grep; Unicode on Big Iron; Low-Hanging Fruit. [Nov 27, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/11/20
Major regex engine enhancements; more aboutperlio; improvedsubs.pm. [Nov 20, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/11/14
lstat _; more aboutperlio; integer arithmetic. [Nov 14, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/11/07
Errno.pm error numbers; more self-tying; stack exhaustion in the regex engine. [Nov 7, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/10/30
More Unicode; self-tying; Perl's new built-in standard I/O library. [Oct 30, 2000]
These Weeks on p5p 2000/10/23
Perl's Unicode model; sfio; regex segfaults; naughty
[Oct 23, 2000]use varscalls.
This Week on p5p 2000/10/08
Self-tying is broken; integer and floating-point handling; whyunshiftis slow. [Oct 8, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/07/09
The Perl bug database;buildtoc; proposeduse namespacepragma; a very clever Unicode hack. [Jul 9, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/07/02
Lots of Unicode; method lookup optimizations;my __PACKAGE__ $foo. [Jul 2, 2000]
Notes on Doug's Method Lookup Patch
Simon Cozens explains the technical details of a patch that was sent to p5p this month. [Jun 27, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/06/25
More method call optimization; tr///CU is dead; Lexical variables and eval; perlhacktut. [Jun 25, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/06/18
Method call optimizations; more bytecode; more unicode source files; EPOC port. [Jun 17, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/06/11
Unicode byte-order marks in Perl source code; many not-too-difficult bugs for entry-level Perl core hackers. [Jun 13, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/06/04
Farewell to Ilya Zakharevich; bytecode compilation; optimizations tomap. [Jun 4, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/05/28
Regex engine alternatives and optimizations;eqand UTF8; Caching ofget*by*functions; Array interpolation semantics. [May 28, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/05/21
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 15 and 21 May, 2000 [May 21, 2000]
Perl Meets COBOL
I taught a Perl class to some IBM mainframe programmers whose only experience was in COBOL, and got some surprises. [May 15, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/05/14
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 8 and 14 May, 2000 [May 14, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/05/07
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 1 and 7 May, 2000 [May 7, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/04/30
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 24 and 30 April, 2000 [Apr 30, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/04/23
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 17 and 23 April, 2000 [Apr 23, 2000]
This Week on p5p 2000/03/05
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 28 February and 5 March, 2000 [Mar 5, 2000]
This Week on p5p 1999/12/26
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 20 and 26 December, 1999 [Dec 26, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/12/19
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 13 and 19 December, 1999 [Dec 19, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/12/12
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 6 and 12 December, 1999 [Dec 12, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/12/05
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 29 November and 5 December, 1999 [Dec 5, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/11/28
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 22 and 28 November, 1999 [Nov 28, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/11/21
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 15 and 21 November, 1999 [Nov 21, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/11/14
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 8 and 14 November, 1999 [Nov 14, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/11/07
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 1 and 7 November, 1999 [Nov 7, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/10/31
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 25 and 31 October, 1999 [Nov 3, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/10/17
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 11 and 17 October, 1999 [Oct 17, 1999]
This Week on p5p 1999/10/24
What happened on the perl5-porters mailing list between 18 and 24 October, 1999 [Oct 17, 1999]
Topaz: Perl for the 22nd Century
Chip Salzenberg, one of the core developers of Perl, talks about Topaz, a new effort to completely rewrite the internals of Perl in C++. The complete version of his talk (given at the 1999 O'Reilly Open Source Conference) is also available in Real Audio. [Sep 28, 1999]
Larry Wall
Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...
Larry Wall's annual State of the Onion describes the state of Perl, the language and the community. In his 11th address, he discussed the past, present, and future of scripting languages, including the several dimensions of design decisions important to the development of Perl 6. [Dec 6, 2007]
The State of the Onion 10
In Larry Wall's tenth annual State of the Onion address, he talks about raising children and programming languages and balancing competing tensions and irreconcilable desires. [Sep 21, 2006]
The State of the Onion 9
In Larry Wall's ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6's Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community. [Sep 22, 2005]
The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]
State of the Onion 2003
Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, from OSCON 2003 (the seventh annual Perl conference) in Portland, Oregon in July 2003. In this full length transcript, Larry talks about being unreasonable, unwilling, and impossible. [Jul 16, 2003]
The State of the Onion 5
Larry Wall gives his annual summary of the state of the Perl world. This year, as one might expect, the major focus was on Perl 6. Larry gave 33 lightning talks, of 55 seconds each, outlining elements of Perl 6's design. Here's a rundown on what Perl 6 is going to be. [Jul 25, 2001]
State of the Onion 2000
Larry Wall's annual report on the state of Perl, from TPC 4.0 (the fourth annual Perl conference) in Monterey in July 2000. In this full length transcript, Larry talks about the need for changes, which has led to the effort to rewrite the language in Perl 6. [Oct 24, 2000]
3rd State of the Onion
Larry explains the "good chemistry" of the Perl community in his third State of the Onion speech. [Aug 30, 1999]
Perl, the first postmodern computer language
Larry Wall's talk at Linux World justifies Perl's place in postmodern culture. He says that he included in Perl all the features that were cool and left out all those that sucked. [Mar 9, 1999]
2nd State of the Onion
Larry Wall's keynote address from 1998 Perl Conference. There is also a RealAudio version. [Aug 25, 1998]
The Culture of Perl
In this keynote address for the first Perl Conference, Larry Wall talks about the key ideas that influence him and by extension the Perl culture. [Aug 20, 1997]
Lingua
Making Dictionaries with Perl
Sean Burke is a linguist who helps save dying languages by creating dictionaries for them. He shows us how he uses Perl to layout and print these dictionaries. [Mar 25, 2004]
Linux
Perl and Mandrakelinux
Perl is a fantastic tool for system administrators. Why not use it for building administrative applications? That's just what Mandrakelinux does! Mark Stosberg recently interviewed Perl 5.10 pumpking and Mandrake employee Rafael Garcia-Suarez about the use of Perl for graphical applications. [Feb 24, 2005]
Lists
Guide to the Perl 6 Working Groups
Perl 6 discussion and planning are continuing at a furious rate and will probably continue to do so, at least until next month when Larry announces the shape of Perl 6 at the Linux Expo. In the meantime, here's a summary of the main Perl 6 working groups and discussion lists, along with an explanation of what the groups are about. [Sep 5, 2000]
Macintosh
Introducing Mac::Glue
Now that Apple computers are all the rage again, we describe how the technically inclined can use Perl to script Mac applications. [Jan 23, 2004]
Mail and USENET News
Mail to WAP Gateways
Ever needed to quickly check your email while you're away from your computer? Pete Sergeant devises a way to convert a mailbox into a WAP page for you to easily check over the phone. [Feb 13, 2004]
Mail Filtering
Michael Stevens compares two popular mail filtering tools, both written in Perl: ActiveState's PerlMX, and the open source Mail::Audit. How do they stack up? [Aug 27, 2002]
Stopping Spam with SpamAssassin
SpamAssassin and Vipul's Razor are two Perl-based tools that can be used to dramatically reduce the number of junk emails you need to see. [Mar 6, 2002]
Filtering Mail with PerlMx
PerlMx is ActiveState's Perl plug-in for Sendmail; in the first article in a new series, Mike DeGraw-Bertsch shows us how to begin building a mail filter to trap spam. [Oct 10, 2001]
Modules
Making Perl Reusable with Modules
Perl programs are easy to write, especially if they solve simple problems. If you find yourself re-using the same programs (or worse, the same code), it's time to bundle your code into pieces easier to reuse. It's time to turn programs into modules. Andy Sylvester walks through the three steps of making a simple, standalone Perl program into a robust, tested, distributable, and reusable piece of code. [Aug 7, 2007]
Option and Configuration Processing Made Easy
Many useful programs take arguments and configuration options. It's easy to add one or two, but as your program grows, the difficulty of allowing configuration concisely and intelligently also grows. Jon Allen demonstrates how to unify argument and configuration processing in a way that lets you write good code and your users get on with their work. [Jul 12, 2007]
Better Code Through Destruction
Perl 5's reference counting scheme almost always keeps memory usage predictable...except for one corner case. The Resource Acquisition Is Initialization strategy helps avoid memory leaks--and can improve your use of exceptions, alarms, other resources, and even transactional systems. Igor Gariev demonstrates. [Jun 7, 2007]
Lightning Strikes Four Times
Perl lightning articles offer short takes on important subjects. See how Perl can outperform C for 3D programming, how (and why) to express cross-cutting concerns in your programs, and one way of keeping your test counts up-to-date. [Apr 12, 2007]
More Advancements in Perl Programming
What's advanced Perl programming? The definition has changed over the years. For a while it was XS and GUIs and typeglobs and OO. Now a lot of it is using CPAN effectively. Since completing Advanced Perl Programming, Second Edition, Simon Cozens has discovered even more ways to work more smartly and effectively. Here's what he's learned. [Jan 26, 2006]
A Timely Start
A well-written Perl program should, in theory, beat a shell script, right? In theory. In practice, sometimes the details of your Perl installation have more to do with why your program is slow than you might believe. Jean-Louis Leroy recently tracked down a bottleneck and wrote up his experiences with making Perl programs start faster. [Dec 21, 2005]
Catalyst
MVC frameworks are hot again in the web development world. Perl has a rich array of choices. One new contender is Catalyst, an elegant platform for database-backed applications. Developers Jesse Sheidlower and Sebastian Riedel explain the design goals and build an Ajax-powered wiki in 30 lines of code. [Jun 2, 2005]
Building Good CPAN Modules
Your code is amazing. It works exactly as you intended. You've decided to give back, to share it with the world by uploading it to the CPAN. Before you do, though, there are a few fiddly details about cross-platform and cross-version compatibility to keep in mind. Rob Kinyon gives several guidelines about writing CPAN modules that will work everywhere they will be useful. [Apr 14, 2005]
Implementing Flood Control
If the load of application relies on incoming events, you may eventually face the happy curse of popularity: too much work to do with your available resources. If you set a limit on how many events you can process within a time period, you can avoid the flood. Vladi Belperchinov-Shabanski explains the algorithm and demonstrates working code. [Nov 11, 2004]
Why Review Code?
Want to become a better programmer? Read good code! How do you know what's good code and where to start? Luke Schubert demonstrates how to pull ideas out of code by exploring Math::Complex. [Oct 7, 2004]
Building a Finite State Machine Using DFA::Simple
A finite state machine (FSM) is a general-purpose mechanism for solving common programming problems that involve performing actions based on previous and current input. (They're good for parsers and the like.) William Ruppert demonstrates how to build and use FSMs in Perl. [Sep 23, 2004]
Building Applications with POE
In Matt Cashner's second article on POE, he describes how to fit together POE's components into event-driven applications. [Jul 23, 2004]
Application Design with POE
Matt Cashner provides a high-level introduction to POE, the Perl Object Environment, examining the concepts that POE brings to bear when designing long-running Perl applications. [Jul 2, 2004]
Building Testing Libraries
Save time, test more, and use what the CPAN has made available to enhance your development. Casey West demonstrates examples of good techniques when testing Perl-based software. [May 7, 2004]
Hidden Treasures of the Perl Core, part II
Casey continues to look at some lesser-known modules in the Perl core. [Jun 19, 2003]
Hidden Treasures of the Perl Core
The Perl Core comes with a lot of little modules to help you get your job done. Many of these modules are not well known. Even some of the well known modules have some nice features that are often overlooked. In this article, we'll dive into many of these hidden treasures of the Perl Core. [May 29, 2003]
For Perl Programmers : only
Brian Ingerson's curious new module allows you to specify which version of a module you want Perl to load - and even to install multiple versions at the same time. Let's hear about it from the man himself! [Mar 18, 2003]
Module::Build
Traditionally, modules have been put together withExtUtils::MakeMaker. Dave Rolsky describes a more modern solution, and in the first of a two-part series, tells us more about it. [Feb 12, 2003]
The Phrasebook Design Pattern
Have you ever written code that uses two languages in the same program? Whether they be human languages or computer languages, the phrasebook design pattern helps you separate them for more maintainable code. [Oct 22, 2002]
Web Basics with LWP
LWP is a group of Perl modules that lets you access data on the Web. Because there are so many LWP modules, it's hard to know where to look for information on doing even the simplest things. This article offers sample recipes for performing common tasks with LWP, by the author of Perl & LWP. [Aug 20, 2002]
Acme::Comment
One of the most requested features for Perl 6 has been multiline comments; Jos Boumans goes one step ahead, and provides the feature for Perl 5. He describes the current hacks people use to get multiline comments, and explains his Acme::Comment module which now supports 44 different commenting styles. [Aug 13, 2002]
Asymmetric Cryptography in Perl
Last month, we had an article from Abhijit Menon-Sen about symmetric cryptography; this month, Vipul and Benjamin take us on a tour of its more advanced cousin, asymmetric cryptography. This introductory article is the first in a three-part series. [Sep 26, 2001]
Quantum::Entanglement
Quantum::Superpositions rocked the Perl world, as it provided a way to get more than one thing done at once. (in constant time.) Quantum::Entanglement goes yet further, using solid quantum physics theory to get an infinite number of things done at once. To tell you more would be to spoil the surprise, but the module's author, Alex Gough, tells us what it is and how it works... [Aug 8, 2001]
Pod::Parser Notes
Brad Appleton, author of thePod::Parsermodule suite, responds to some of the remarks in an earlier perl5-porters mailing list summary. [May 20, 2000]
mod_perl
Debugging and Profiling mod_perl Applications
How do you use the debugger on amod_perlapplication? How do you profile an application embedded in a web server, with multiple child processes? Don't worry. Where there's Perl, there's a way. Frank Wiles demonstrates how to debug and profilemod_perlapplications. [Feb 9, 2006]
Integrating mod_perl with Apache 2.1 Authentication
It's a good time to be a programmer. Apache 2.1 and mod_perl 2 make it tremendously easy to customize any part of the Apache request cycle. The more secure but still easy-to-use Digest authentication is now widely supported in web browsers. Geoffrey Young demonstrates how to write a custom handler that handles Basic and Digest authentication with ease. [Jul 8, 2003]
Testing mod_perl 2.0
Geoffrey Young examines another area of programming in mod_perl 2.0, testing your mod_perl scripts. [May 22, 2003]
Filters in Apache 2.0
Geoffrey Young, co-author of the renowned mod_perl Cookbook, brings us an introduction to Apache mod_perl 2.0, starting with Apache filters. [Apr 17, 2003]
Apache::VMonitor - The Visual System and Apache Server Monitor
In Stas' final article in his mod_perl series, we investigate how to monitor the performance and stability of our now fully-tuned mod_perl server using Apache::VMonitor. [Apr 2, 2003]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 8
In the penultimate of Stas Bekman's mod_perl articles, more of those obscure Apache settings which can really speed up your web server. [Mar 4, 2003]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 7
In this month's episode of Stas Bekman's mod_perl series, more on how settings in your Apache configuration can make or break performance. [Feb 5, 2003]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 6
In this month's episode of Stas Bekman's mod_perl series, how to correctly fork new processes under mod_perl. [Jan 7, 2003]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 5
Stas Bekman continues his series on optimizing mod_perl by examining more ways of saving on shared memory usage. [Dec 4, 2002]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 4
Your web server may have plenty of memory, but are you making the best use of it? Stas Bekman explains how to optimize Apache and mod_perl for the most efficient memory use. [Jul 30, 2002]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 3
This week, Stas Bekman explains how to use the Perl and mod_perl benchmarking and memory measurement tools to perform worthwhile optimizations on mod_perl programs. [Jul 16, 2002]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 2
Before making any optimizations to mod_perl applications, it's important to know what you need to be optimizing. Benchmarks are key to this, and Stas Beckman introduces the important tools for mod_perl benchmarking. [Jun 19, 2002]
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 1
What do we need to think about when optimizing mod_perl applications? Stas Bekman explains how hardware, software and good programming come into play. [May 29, 2002]
Finding a mod_perl ISP... or Becoming One
You're ready to use mod_perl -- but do you have a server to run it on? Stas Bekman explains what an ISP needs to do to run mod_perl programs, and how to find an ISP that lets you do so. [May 22, 2002]
The Perl You Need To Know - Part 3
Stas Bekman finishes his introduction to the basic Perl skills you need to use mod_perl; this week, globals versus lexicals, modules and packages. [May 15, 2002]
The Perl You Need To Know - Part 2
Stas Bekman continues his mod_perl series by looking at the basic Perl skills you need to use mod_perl; this week, subroutines inside subroutines. [May 7, 2002]
The Perl You Need To Know
This week, Stas Bekman goes back to basics to explain some Perl topics of interest to his continuing mod_perl series. [Apr 23, 2002]
Installing mod_perl without superuser privileges
In his continuing series on mod_perl, Stas Bekman explains how to install a mod_perl-ized Apache on a server even if you don't have root privileges. [Apr 10, 2002]
mod_perl in 30 minutes
This week, Stas Bekman shows us how to install and configure mod_perl, and how to start accelerating CGI scripts with Apache::Registry. [Mar 22, 2002]
Why mod_perl?
In the first of a series of articles from mod_perl guru, Stas Bekman, we begin by taking a look at what mod_perl is and what it can do for us. [Feb 26, 2002]
Creating Modular Web Pages With EmbPerl
If you have ever wished for an "include" HTML tag to reuse large chunks of HTML, you are in luck. Neil Gunton explains how Embperl solves the problem. [Mar 13, 2001]
Music
Identifying Audio Files with MusicBrainz
Paul Mison describes one way to use the MusicBrainz database to find missing information about audio tracks. [Oct 3, 2003]
Net
A Perl Hacker's Foray into .NET
We've all heard about Microsoft's .NET project. What is it, and what does it mean for Perl? [Mar 19, 2002]
Networking Applications
Build a Wireless Gateway with Perl
Tired of programming and want to tackle some system administration? How about using Perl to manage the wireless gateway you've always meant to set up? Alptekin Cakircali shows off his AWLP project, which combines Linux and Perl to make a customizable wireless gateway out of an old PC. [May 19, 2005]
Cross-Language Remoting with mod_perlservice
Remoting -- sharing data between server and client processes -- is powerful, but writing your own protocols is tedious and difficult. XML-RPC is too simple and SOAP and CORBA are too complex. Isn't there something in the middle, something easier to set up and use? Michael W. Collins introducesmod_perlservice, an Apache httpd module that provides remote services to C, Perl, or Flash clients. [Nov 18, 2004]
Implementing Flood Control
If the load of application relies on incoming events, you may eventually face the happy curse of popularity: too much work to do with your available resources. If you set a limit on how many events you can process within a time period, you can avoid the flood. Vladi Belperchinov-Shabanski explains the algorithm and demonstrates working code. [Nov 11, 2004]
Don't Be Afraid to Drop the SOAP
Web services may be unfortunately trendy, but having a simple API for other people to use your application is very powerful and useful. Is SOAP the right way to go? Sam Tregar describes an alternate approach he's pulled from working the Bricolage and Krang APIs. [Sep 30, 2004]
Objects
Generating UML and Sequence Diagrams
Sometimes a picture can save you thousands of words of description--and debugging. A sequence diagram shows the flow of methods and function calls between modules. Perl lets you generate these almost automatically for Perl code--or even Java. Phil Crow shows how to use UML::Sequence. [Aug 3, 2006]
Overloading
C++ and Haskell do it, Java and Lisp don't; Python does it, and Ruby is almost built on it. What is the allure of operator overloading, and how does it affect Perl programmers? Dave Cross brings us an introduction to overload.pm and the Perl overloading mechanism. [Jul 22, 2003]
POOL
What do templating, object oriented modules, computational linguistics, Ruby, profiling and oil paintings have in common? They're all part of this introduction to POOL, a tool to make it easier to write Perl modules. [Apr 22, 2003]
Object Oriented Exception Handling in Perl
Arun Udaya Shankar discusses implementing object-oriented exception handling in Perl, using Error.pm. Also covered are the advantages of using exceptions over traditional error handling mechanisms, basic exception handling with eval {}, and the use of Fatal.pm. [Nov 14, 2002]
Proxy Objects
How do you manage to have circular references without leaking memory? Matt Sergeant shows how it's done, with the Proxy Object pattern. [Aug 7, 2002]
Object-Oriented Perl
How do you move from an intermediate Perl programmer to an expert? Understanding object-oriented Perl is one key step along the way. [Nov 7, 2001]
Bless My Referents
Damian Conway explains how references and referents relate to Perl objects, along with examples of how to use them when building objects. [Sep 16, 1999]
Oddities
How Perl Helped Me Win the Office Football Pool
Walt Mankowski shows us how he used Perl to make a few extra bucks at the office. [Oct 2, 2000]
Office/Business
Massive Data Aggregation with Perl
What do you do if you have a huge array of disparate data sources from which to collect and present data in multiple formats? First, reach for Perl. Then...good question. Fred Moyer explains how his team designed and built a system to aggregate and present huge amounts of data with Perl. [May 5, 2005]
Open Source
The State of the Onion 10
In Larry Wall's tenth annual State of the Onion address, he talks about raising children and programming languages and balancing competing tensions and irreconcilable desires. [Sep 21, 2006]
The State of the Onion 9
In Larry Wall's ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6's Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community. [Sep 22, 2005]
Why Review Code?
Want to become a better programmer? Read good code! How do you know what's good code and where to start? Luke Schubert demonstrates how to pull ideas out of code by exploring Math::Complex. [Oct 7, 2004]
Open Source Highlights
An open source champion inside Chevron writes about his visit to the Open Source Conference. [Sep 28, 1999]
Perl 6
Everyday Perl 6
Perl 6 will soon be here, and to Perl 5 programmers it will feel very different yet very much the same. Perl 6 will enable programmers to be more expressive by giving them more tools to work with (making easy things easy) and allowing them to be more precise in their expressions. Jonathan Scott Duff demonstrates how everyday Perl tasks remain easy but become clearer and more powerful in Perl 6 code that you can run today. [May 10, 2007]
The Beauty of Perl 6 Parameter Passing
Perl 6 isn't quite out yet, but you can learn and play with it today in various incarnations. One of the most compelling new features is a revamped and revised mechanism of parameter passing. Phil Crow demonstrates how powerful it is, and how you can gradually adopt more and more powerful constructs. [Mar 1, 2007]
The State of the Onion 10
In Larry Wall's tenth annual State of the Onion address, he talks about raising children and programming languages and balancing competing tensions and irreconcilable desires. [Sep 21, 2006]
What Is Perl 6
Perl 6 is the long-awaited rewrite of the venerable Perl programming language. What's the status? What's changing? What's staying the same? Why does Perl need a rewrite anyway? chromatic attempts to answer all of these questions. [Jan 12, 2006]
The State of the Onion 9
In Larry Wall's ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6's Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community. [Sep 22, 2005]
Porting Test::Builder to Perl 6
With Pugs and Parrot playing nicely and bringing Perl 6 to the rest of us, enterprising early adopters are experimenting with porting their popular Perl 5 modules to Perl 6. O'Reilly editor chromatic recently pushed the limits of Pugs by porting Test::Builder to Perl 6. Here's what he learned about Perl 6, Pugs, and his design along the way. [Jul 28, 2005]
A Plan for Pugs
Want to write actual working Perl 6 code? A month ago, it would have been difficult. What a difference February made. Autrijus Tang and a loyal cadre of Perl and Haskell people have developed an amazingly complete Perl 6 implementation in a few short weeks. chromatic recently caught up with Autrijus on #perl6 to learn more about the project. [Mar 3, 2005]
The Phalanx Project
One ancient Greek military invention was the phalanx, a group of soldiers with overlapping shields each protecting each other. In the Perl world, the Phalanx project intends to improve the quality of Perl 5, Ponie, and the top CPAN modules. Project founder Andy Lester describes the goals and ambitions. [Jan 20, 2005]
Introducing mod_parrot
mod_perl marries Perl 5 with the Apache web server. What's the plan for Perl 6? mod_parrot--and it may also be base for any language hosted on the Parrot virtual machine. After a brief hiatus, Jeff Horwitz recently resurrected the mod_parrot progress. Here's the current state, what works, and how to play with it on your own. [Dec 22, 2004]
The State of the Onion
Larry Wall's eighth annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2004 related screensavers to surgery to Perl and the community. [Aug 19, 2004]
Apocalypse 12
Larry Wall explains how objects and classes are to work in Perl 6. [Apr 16, 2004]
Synopsis 3
In this synopsis, Luke Palmer provides us with an updated view of Perl 6's operators. [Mar 18, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-03-14
Benchmarks, Ponie and even Ruby drive on Parrot development this week, while the language team discuss methods that mutate their objects and properties that call actions on variables. [Mar 14, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-02-29
More on Parrot's objects, plus some discussion of the Perl 6 release timescale. Will we see Perl 6 this century? [Feb 29, 2004]
Exegesis 7
Damian Conway explains how formatting will work in Perl 6 -- with a twist... [Feb 27, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-02-22
It had to happen some day - someone wrote obfuscated Parrot assembler. Objects are nearly there, and the fight over "sort" cotinues. [Feb 22, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-02-15
Parrot gains Data::Dumper, sort and nearly system(), while the language list struggles to agree on the best way to represent multi-level and multi-key sorting. [Feb 15, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-02-08
This week, the internals team attack the challenges posed by garbage collection and threading, while the Unicode operators debate rages on over at the language list. Piers Cawley has the details. [Feb 8, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-02-01
Lots of little clean-ups done to Parrot this week, while the Perl 6 language design focuses on vector operations and Unicode operators. [Feb 1, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-01-25
The internals list is concerned with threading a smattering of other things; the language list debates vector operators and syntax mangling. Piers, as ever, fills us in. [Jan 25, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-01-11
Parrot fixes to threading, continuations, the JIT and the garbage collector; the Perl 6 language list discusses traits, roles, and, for some reason, the EU Constitution... [Jan 11, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2004-01-04
Dan calls for detailed suggestions for the Parrot threading model, and Piers makes up for the lack of activity in the language list by asking a few key players about their New Year hopes for Perl 6. [Jan 4, 2004]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-12-07
Objects all round - Parrot gets objects, and there was much rejoicing. Meanwhile, Larry lifts parts of the veil on the Perl 6 object model. Piers Cawley has the details. [Dec 7, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-11-30
The IMCC has a FAQ, the Perl 6 compiler gets updated to this month's reality, and Larry explains some more about the properties system. Piers Cawley, as ever, summarizes. [Nov 30, 2003]
This fortnight on Perl 6, week ending 2003-11-23
Dan returns from LL3 with new ideas, what "multi" really means, and more on the Perl 6 design philosophy - Piers Cawley sums up two weeks on the Perl 6 and Parrot mailing lists. [Nov 23, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-11-09
People try to get PHP working on Parrot, while the perl6-language list thinks about nesting modules inside of modules. And Piers, dilligent as ever, summarizes all the action for your benefit. [Nov 9, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-11-02
A Hallowe'en release, catering for method calls on empty registers, and Parrot gets a HTTP library. (No, really.) Perl 6 and Parrot news from Piers Cawley. [Nov 2, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-10-26
IMCC becomes more important, how objects can get serialized, and the all-important Infocom interpreter: all the latest Parrot news from Piers. [Oct 26, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-10-19
A new Parrot pumpking, Larry returns, and the Perl 6 compiler actually starts gathering steam... All this and more in this week's Perl 6 summary. [Oct 19, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-10-12
The perl6-language list remains eerily silent, and Leo Tö [Oct 12, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-09-21
The low-down on the 0.0.11 Parrot release, and some blue thinking about clever optimizations - the latest from the Perl 6 world, thanks to our trusty summarizer. [Sep 21, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-09-07
This week in Perl 6, the keyed ops question raises its head again, how to dynamically add singleton methods, and why serialisation of objects is hard. [Sep 7, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-08-31
Continuation passing style, active data, dump PMCs and absolutely nothing at all on the language list. [Aug 31, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-08-17
Python on Parrot is nearly done, what's to do before Parrot 0.1.0, and when should we start writing about Perl 6? Piers Cawley reports on the perl6 mailing lists. [Aug 17, 2003]
This week on Perl 6, week ending 2003-08-03
Piers Cawley brings us news of PHP, Java, and Python ports to the Parrot VM, and more Exegesis 6 fall-out. [Aug 3, 2003]
Exegesis 6
Apocalypse 6 described the changes to subroutines in Perl 6. Exegesis 6 demonstrates what this will mean to you, the average Perl programmer. Damian Conway explains how the new syntax and semantics make for cleaner, simpler, and more powerful code.&n