• 2011.08.14 in #4 Use a Task distribution to specify groups of modules
  brian d foy writes: A Task distribution is like a normal Perl distribution in structure, but it doesn't actually provide any code. It lists as pre-requisites all of the modules or distributions that you want to install...
• 2011.09.01 in #6 Logging wide characters with Log4perl
  The wide characters warning is a very annoying thing. Especially when it comes from a third party module. In many cases you don't have control over how that module handles and prints data. In this article brian d foy shows how you can tell Log4perl to use utf8 when printing to the screen or to some other channel.
• 2011.09.18 in #9 Enchant closures for better debugging output
  On the Effective Perl Programming site, brian d foy develops the MagicalCodeRef module to allow you to see, well, more or less, what is in a code-ref without execution the code.
• 2011.11.11 in #16 What I learned from YAPC::Brasil
  brian d foy describes his experience at a conference where most of the talks are in a language he does not understand and also finds time to introduce Data::Printer. Nice pictures too.
• 2011.11.27 in #18 Know split's special cases
  brian d foy explains 3 special cases of split: the empty pattern, the single space and splitting lines. You can always learn new things and become a more effective Perl programmer.
• 2011.12.08 in #20 YAPC::NA has a suggestion box that you can vote on
  Usually I don't link to the small blog entries regarding next years YAPC::NA but this one I liked very much. 'Mob Rater' lets you suggest ideas for YAPC::NA and vote on the other ideas already listed. I think this is a nice idea and the results could be used by any YAPC or Perl workshop. So go ahead, put in your suggestions and vote on the other ones.
• 2011.12.11 in #20 Create your own dualvars
  In Perl, every scalar variable has both a string value and a numerical value. Usually they are related. brian d foy shows how to create such variables using Scalar::Util.
• 2011.12.18 in #21 Define grammars in regular expressions
  brian d foy uses named subpatterns introduced in perl 5.10 to build a grammar.
• 2012.01.09 in #24 Submit your OSCON proposals this week
  brian d foy gave a list of ideas what to talk about at OSCON.
• 2012.02.18 in #30 The Perl Learning Environment
  brian d foy is thinking on some new tools to teach Perl to beginners and he is asking your opinion. Having a Virtual-Box image of Linux already filled with all the necessary tools is a good idea, I have been doing that with my test automation classes. I hope, for people who prefer Windows he will pick DWIM Perl for Windows and Padre. They were built with the idea that they can be a smoother entry for people in the Windows world.
• 2012.02.20 in #31 Learning Perl Challenge: rhich
  brian d foy started a new series of Newbie Perl Challenges that publishes on Monday. Unfortunately a few hours after I send out the Perl Weekly. So I am a week late announcing it.
• 2012.02.29 in #32 Fold cases properly
  brian d foy explains way more than I ever wanted to know about lower and upper case. OTOH if you deal a lot with many different languages you might need to understand this.
• 2012.03.10 in #34 Get one of my 8 free copies of Programming Perl
  brian d foy wants you to tell him why should *you* be the one? Out of the 8 lucky ones to get a FREE copy of the 4th edition of the Programming Perl book. As for me? I had the 3rd edition but a camel ate it. I should find a picture of that to prove it.
• 2012.03.12 in #34 Look up Unicode properties with an inversion map
  Perl v5.15.7 adds a way to create an inverted map based on the Unicode property that you want to access. Using the prop_invmap function of Unicode::UCD. See the detailed example by brian d foy on The Effective Perler.
• 2012.03.17 in #36 Can you learn Perl from an old Learning Perl?
  brian d foy is wondering why people would want to use and old and outdated version of this book and analyzes which edition is still useful today.
• 2012.03.19 in #35 Should I buy that Perl book?
  Another well written article by brian d foy, this time helping to figure out how to spend your limited resources on any of the alternatives to reach your goal?
• 2012.03.20 in #35 Learning Perl Challenge: Find duplicates
  This time, brian d foy asks you to find duplicate files. Spoiler alert: there are several solutions in the comments.
• 2012.04.15 in #38 Learning Perl Challenge: tripwire
  This week brian d foy asks you to monitor a directory to find any file changes.
• 2012.05.21 in #44 Start Planning Your YAPC Strategy
  Though brian d foy wrote this for YAPC::NA, I think this is relevant for ever Perl event and even for every non-Perl event. It can be fun to just show up at the conference and go with the flow, but it might be a lot better to plan ahead. Not only picking the talks you'd like to hear but trying to figure out what other social events would you like to attend and who you would like to talk to. You can even send e-mail or contact using other means people you would like to meet.
• 2012.06.17 in #47 Lunch++
  Originally suggested by brian d foy, MDK wants to take the idea of 'Lunch with a celebrity' one step further and get it more organized. I personally had ambivalent feelings about the Lunch project when brian asked if I'd like to participate. I don't think I am a 'celebrity' though I certainly make a lot of noise so relatively many people heard my name. OTOH, I like to have lunch with and talk to new people. OT3H I am so bad at names and faces, I'd be embarrassed the next day when I don't recognize the same person.
• 2012.06.20 in #48 Learning Perl Challenge: finding duplicates (Answer)
  brian d foy shows and explains his solution, and then goes over the solutions people sent to him. He takes the task apart and analyzes how each part was solved in different ways by different people.
• 2012.06.21 in #48 More Programming Perls to give away
  brian d foy got a few more copies of the Programming Perl book he wants to give away. This time, instead of asking for a post-card he asks for a donation to a charity of his choice.
• 2012.06.27 in #49 Learning Perl Challenge: popular history
  A new challenge by brian d foy. There are already 5 responses, but it is a simple task. Go try it.
• 2012.07.07 in #50 Finding Unused Subroutines, but with PPI
  In response to the shell script Ovid posted a few days earlier, brian d foy implemented a longer, but more robust way locating all the sub that are never called.
• 2012.07.12 in #51 Most popular shell commands using Perl 6
  A few weeks ago brian d foy posted a challenge to create a list of most popular shell commands. This is my solution in Perl 6.
• 2012.08.09 in #55 Should my Perl release process be yours?
  brian d foy goes philosophical on why you should use the exact same process as he does. Or why should you not do that. In any case, it is up to you to decide.
• 2012.08.16 in #56 Ricardo is pushing for smart match changes
  The smart match ~~ opeartor has been changed already once, but it is still broken. What should happen? This is a discussion that started in the Perl 5 Porters list and spilled over to blogs.perl.org. It is certainly important that people who don't follow the development of perl itself, but are using the smart match operator would read this and voice their opinion.
• 2012.10.04 in #63 Endorsing Perl skills
  I think LinkedIN provides a great platform to find potential employees, employers, clients or service providers. For a long time it had a feature where you could recommend people by writing a few lines of, well, recommendation. Now they have a new feature that makes it much easier to endorese people. It is only a click away. brian d foy explains the new feature and recommends that you use it. I am not sure how to really encourage people to do that, but I do think it can be an important factor in finding good Perl developers. I'd also recommend to watch the linked presentation of Rachel Botsman.
• 2012.12.27 in #75 The indirection benefits for Perl on LinkedIN
  People who read my stuff know that I think having a profile on LinkedIN (and building up your connections, and joining relevant groups), is a very good way to prepare for the day when - maybe a year or two from now - you will look for a new job. Or, just sit back and wait for a recruiter to find you.
• 2013-04-22 in #93 Diagnosing module installation problems in Heroku
  brian d foy has been playing with Heroku and Mojolicious. When things go well,they go very well. But what about when they go not as well? brian offers some tricks to debug things effectively.
• 2013.02.09 in #81 Learning Perl Challenge: directory with the most files
  After a long break a new challenge from brian d foy!
• 2013.02.10 in #82 Mark your modules as adoptable if you don't want them
  If you love something, set it free. That also applies to modules, brian d foy reminds us, and shows us how to put your old modules to adoption.
• 2013.02.11 in #82 Benchmarking HTML entity encoding
  brian d foy is on a benchmarking mission. Showcasing his new Surveyor::App, he confirms that for the task of html encoding, HTML::Escape really lets HTML::Entities eat its dust.
• 2013.02.24 in #83 Learning Perl Challenge: popular history (Answer)
  A while ago brian d foy posted the challenge. This time it is the answer.
• 2013.03.15 in #86 Deprecated modules warn when they are used
  How do you know when a CORE module is deprecated? brian d foy tells you where to look to figure it out.
• 2013.03.23 in #87 My Catincan funded cpan(1) fastest mirror enhancement
  A few weeks ago brian d foy posted about the new crowd-founding site Catincan and how he wanted to try. This is the result. I hope more people will jump on the idea and start experimenting to getting funded for projects. At first I can imagine you'd try with relatively small projects, and if those are successful, then you can try with bigger ones.
• 2013.03.25 in #87 Mobrater and White Camel Nominations
  brian d foy is looking for your recommendations for the three White Camel awardees for outstanding (non-code) contribution to the Perl community.
• 2013.03.27 in #88 Why Perl's conditional operator is right associative
  Don't know? Dont' worry: brian d foy explains.
• 2013.04.03 in #89 Another strike against AUTOLOAD
  Curtis 'Ovid' Poe got tripped by the use of AUTOLOAD in the Redis module, but brian d foy think you should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Is this a question of power vs. learnability of Perl?
• 2013.04.10 in #90 Crowd-funding Pinto
  brian d foy launched a Crowdtilt campaign to fund the development of Pinto (and by ricochet Stratopan). We could probably wax poetically about the usefulness of Pinto, the shininess of Stratopan and the awesomeness of Jeff Thalhammer but, really, I think it could all be summarized by "shut up and take my money!".
• 2013.04.10 in #91 Crowd funding Pinto
  Pinto makes it easy for you to manage your own private CPAN frozen to specific versions of modules that you have tested you application with. brian d foy is running the campaign on behalf of Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer, the author of Pinto and Perl::Critic. Your contribution counts. Literally.
• 2013.04.18 in #91 Learning Perl Challenge: Remove intermediate directories
  brian d foy published a new challenge. Nice screenshot.
• 2013.05.19 in #95 Advice to a new Perl user
  Perl and Windows? Is it long-term skills? How to carve a niche for yourself? A new Perl user has questions, brian d foy answers them, Dear Abby-style.
• 2013.05.26 in #96 Reverse installing CPAN, at the Polish Perl Workshop
  brian d foy was at the Polish Perl Workshop and gave a presentation on how to find out which CPAN packages (name and version number) were installed in a certain environment.
• 2013.06.07 in #98 The vertical tab is part of \s in Perl 5.18
  Did you know that, up to perl v5.18, the vertical tab wasn't part of the \s character class. Or, let's be honest: did you even remember that there is such a thing as a vertical tab? brian d foy reviews for us how the space classes changed between perl v5.10 and v5.18.
• 2013.06.07 in #98 Perl 5.18 new features
  Want to know, bullet-point-style, what's new in perl v5.18. brian d foy gives it to you, unadorned.
• 2013.06.08 in #98 Experimental features now warn (reaching back to v5.10)
  Perl v5.18 has this new experimental feature that warns if your code use things that are not totally set in stone yet. brian d foy goes over the features that trigger experimental warnings and, just as important, shows us how to hush those warnings.
• 2013.10.23 in #118 Parsing JSON with a single Regex
  brian d foy explains the crazy regex written by Randal Schwartz to the Houston Perl Mongers and to all of us.
• 2013.10.24 in #118 Ruling the world with Perl and Excel
  brian d foy shows how to create manager and executive friendly reports. (aka. Excel files with colors.)
• 2013.12.07 in #124 Programming Perl in popular culture
  Most people are looking for Waldo. brian d foy, however, prefers to be on the look-out for appearances of those books with the funny animals on the covers...
• 2013.12.07 in #124 Visualizing a CPAN install plan
  Aaah, those devious webs of dependencies we spin... Well, now we can have a visual idea of how tangled they are, thanks to brian d foy'd work at the patch -p1 Perl hackaton.
• 2013.12.14 in #125 More WordPress grepping
  This is the second post by brian d foy about WordPress::Grep, his new module and command line tool.
• 2013.12.18 in #126 The 2013 White Camels
  The White Camel Awards recognize outstanding, non-technical achievement in Perl. Every year it is awarded to 3 individuals or teams. This year the recipients are Thiago "maluco" Rondon, Fred Moyer, and the Dijkmat team: Wendy and Liz. Reading the 'reasoning' behind the awards is always very inspirational.
• 2014.01.25 in #131 Learning Perl Challenge: March Madness
  If you want to get people to notice Perl, or if you want to become a millionaire (or both), brian d foy has a challenge for you.
• 2014.02.21 in #135 CPAN's social continuity of code
  brian d foy describes the background, how modules on CPAN that have lost their original author can live on, and gain a new maintainer. brian also mentioned the available RSS feeds on Perl authors on O'Reilly Programming blog.
• 2014.04.15 in #144 CPAN {Spring|Autumn} cleaning time again
  It's Spring! Which means it's cleaning season. So, as brian d foy proposes, why not take the opportunity to remove some of the cruft accumulated in your PAUSE directory?
• 2014.07.03 in #154 Perl 5.20 introduces 'Key/Value Slices'
  ... and brian d foy shows examples.
• 2014.07.22 in #157 Formats
  I remember when I first started to teach Perl using a slide-deck provided by the training company. It taught all kinds of thing people hardly used. Including format. It is probably not very useful today, but if you are interested, brian d foy has just published the part of the 'Learning Perl' book that covered this feature of perl.
• 2014.07.31 in #158 pack's C0 and U0
  brian d foy shares way to much knowledge about the pack()/unpack() function pair of Perl.
• 2014.08.04 in #159 How should conference speakers be compensated?
  brian d foy explains how the Master Classes he started to run at YAPC::Chicago in 2006 helped financing some of the speakers. IMHO, as I also wrote already this is a win-win and such training classes can even help sponsoring other parts of the conference.
• 2014.08.07 in #159 Rescue legacy code with modulinos
  Modulino is a Perl module that can be also used as a script. brian d foy explains how this feature can be used to convert scripts into modules and make it easier to start testing them.
• 2014.08.11 in #159 Kickstarting Mastering Perl Course at the Swiss Perl Workshop
  brian d foy offers various options from getting an e-book version of the book 'Mastering Perl' through participating in his training class in Zürich till having him consult for your for a full day.
• 2014.08.16 in #160 Uploading Your First Module to CPAN
  The slides of brian d foy's talk at the August meeting of Chicago.pm.
• 2014.08.29 in #162 I learn something about tell(), then abuse it.
  brian d foy answer the question "How do I add the elements of a file to a second one as columns using Perl?"
• 2014.08.29 in #162 Facing the music with Perl
  Collecting meta-data from music files after making sure they are unique. Code with explanation by brian d foy.
• 2014.09 in #163 The Whitespace in the Perl Community
  As I understand from other sources, the 'whitespaces' meant by brian d foy in his talk are the places where the Perl community has some kind of a hole to be filled. For example a module implementing the API of a public service. Though I am not sure. I wish I also heard the talk, not just seen the slides.
• 2014.09.12 in #164 2014 Swiss Perl Workshop redux
  brian d foy writes about his experience, and the human aspect that needs to go into any project if we want it to be successful.
• 2014.09.15 in #165 Revitalizing the Perl Power Tools
  The Perl Power Tools that is also known as the Unix Reconstruction Project has not been maintained for quite some time. Now brian d foy takes it into his hands.
• 2014.09.22 in #166 Test::More has lots of crazy new development that's breaking my modules
  The new maintainers of Test::More have released some new trial version of the ubiquitous testing module. brian d foy asks: should cpan testers be testing, and reporting failures, of modules using these versions? A fair question, and it turns out that there are pretty good arguments for and against reporting against the bleeding edge.
• 2014.09.26 in #166 CPAN Testers & pre-requisite reporting
  "Reporting test failures of alpha releases: good or bad?" The discussion sparked by brian d foy continues here.
• 2014.09.29 in #167 Use postfix dereferencing
  Perl 5.20 introduced a new, experimental syntax to dereference, well, references. brian d foy shows how to use those. What do you thin about the feature? Do you like it or think it creates further confusion? See also this reddit discussion.
• 2014.10.10 in #177 Controlling Firefox from Perl
  It's possible, with the help of a Perl module and a Firefox add-on, to have those two pieces of software talk to each other like best buddies. Web testing, browsing automation, javascript shenanigans, think of the possibilities...
• 2014.10.23 in #170 White camel awards 2014
  brian d foy has called for nominations for this year's White Camel Awards, which are given for non-technical achievement in Perl and the Perl community. Add comments to the blog post, email brian, or tweet under #whitecamelaward.
• 2014.10.25 in #170 Computed labels with next, last and redo
  brian d foy shows how you can use computed labels with Perl 5.18+, letting you write next $label;.
• 2014.12.15 in #178 My Perl recruitment thoughts
  brian posted his thoughts on perl and recruitment, in response to Dave's post last week. Hard to distil down to a pithy one-liner, but here's one good soundbite: "Pay doesn't matter if you suck".
• 2014.12.17 in #178 The 2014 White Camel Awards
  The Perl Foundation has announced the recipients for the 15th year of the White Camel Awards: Amalia Pomian for Perl community, VM Brasseur for Perl user groups, and Neil Bowers for Perl advocacy. Congratulations to Amalia and VM!
• 2014.12.19 in #178 CPAN Testers from Github?
  brian would like to see the love child of Travis and CPAN Testers: getting CPAN Testers results when you push a new version of your distribution to github.
• 2014.12.20 in #178 Saint Perl 6 Hack Day wrap-up
  brian's notes from the hack day before Saint Perl. Note: brian's post isn't in Russian, but that other page is.
• 2015.01.01 in #180 A use for the scalar reverse (maybe)
  The 'reverse' function of perl can easily trick people as it behaves differently in scalar and list context. In this article brian discusses some use cases when the scalar version of this function might be useful.
• 2015.01.01 in #180 My CPAN Cleaning, Day 2457023.500000
  As you upload newer and newer versions of your module to PAUSE and thus to CPAN, the old onese linger around taking up space and possibly confusing people. brian has this annual (or is that bi-annual?) ritual cleaning up his directory, removing the old versions. This time he goes further and makes sure modules he has on CPAN have their proper GitHub repository and other useful features.
• 2015.01.03 in #180 Makefile.PL as a modulino
  A modulino is a program that can act like a module, or a module that can be directly executed. While doing his CPAN Archeology brian turned his Makefile.PL into a modulino and shows how you could do that too.
• 2015.01.07 in #181 Extracting from HTML with Mojo::DOM
  Mojolicious comes with a lot of snazzy tools to retrieve and manipulate web content. brian demonstrates.
• 2015.01.12 in #182 What should be in a CPAN distro README?
  brian wonders whether README files are still needed these days, and if so, what should be in them? There are several conventions on CPAN, some dists just have a copy of the main module's doc, others have a summary, and yet others have installation instructions. Add your thoughts in the comments (if you can!).
• 2015.01.15 in #182 Don't use named lexical subroutines
  brian walks through the concepts of lexical and package variables, and then for subs. All this is a lead-in to him presenting a number of problems with named lexical subs (aka 'my subs').
• 2015.01.25 in #183 CPAN Cleaning Day 2457044: Compiler::Lexer
  Using the postfix deferences that came with Perl 5.20? If you do, you might notice that Perl::MinimumVersion and Perl::MinimumVersion::Fast are a bit sloppy and think your code is respectively vintage 5.004 or 5.008. This irks brian, so he rolled up his sleeves and dove into the C++-fueled heart of darkness.
• 2015.02.02 in #185 Time::Moment can save time
  DateTime is perfect, but huge and slow. Time::Moment has certain limitations, but it small and blazing fast.
• 2015.03.27 in #192 Gzipping data directly from Perl
  brian shares some of the ways you can work with gzip'd data in Perl, for example via the recently updated PerlIO::gzip, or using pipes.
• 2015.04.10 in #194 A preview of Perl 5.22
  Perl 5.22 is coming. What to know what the future has in reserves? brian offers us a sneak peek.
• 2015.04.16 in #195 Use v5.20 subroutine signatures
  
• 2015.04.16 in #195 Huh. Multiple beginning-of-line anchors work
  Using ^ more than once in a regex. Strange. Very strange.
• 2015.04.16 in #195 I broke plenv and cpanm, and the systems they run on
  
• 2015.05.10 in #198 "Become a CPAN Author" at MiniConf in NYC, June 6
  After the cancellation of MojoConf brian d foy set out to organize "something". The result is this 3-hour workshop.
• 2015.05.19 in #200 Defend your code with Guard
  A whole new meaning of defensive programming? The example is how to localize system-wide changes. If you put 'local $_ = undef;' in a block that will ensure '$_' gets its original value back when the block ends. Could you write 'local unlink $file;' and have the file delete for the duration of the function call? Could you do this with something less destructive like 'local chdir $other_dir;'? (Reddit)
• 2015.05.20 in #200 Computing excellent numbers
  Brian shows his actual path through a problem rather than hiding all his failed experiments. The negative results are just as valuable. - Agreed!
• 2015.05.20 in #200 Perl 5.22 new features
  The first Perl 5.22 release candidate is out and there are some new operators and many enhancements to regular expressions that look interesting.
• 2015.05.25 in #200 Use Perl 5.22's <<>> operator for safe command line handling
  The 3-argument form of 'open' was added to Perl 5.6 to protect our code from attacks. This is quite well known. The question remained though: How does Perl open filenames when we use the diamond operator in a while loop? That was still vulnerable to the same kind of attacks. Using the new operator you can make your code safer.
• 2015.05.31 in #201 Perl's special not a numbers
  Some rally crazy stuff probably you have not heard about Perl either. Introducing NaN and Infinity, two 'numerical' values in Perl that probably no one uses.
• 2015.06.04 in #202 Learning Perl Challenge: Be better than Quorum
  brian sets a simple challenge, which you have to write a Perl solution for in 5 minutes. Then a day later, write another solution from scratch, and see how your two solutions differ.
• 2015.06.17 in #204 Separate data and behavior with table-driven testing
  brian shows the benefits of creating data-driven tests, and talks through some of the ways you might do this.
• 2015.06.17 in #204 Perl v5.22 adds hexadecimal floating point literals
  An overview of hexadecimal floating point literals, which were introduced in 5.22, and some of the gotchas you need to be aware of.
• 2015.08.19 in #213 Turn capture groups into cluster groups
  Instead of using (?:...) many times, you can just use the /n flag and turn every capture group into a cluster group. Or, you can use (?n...) to turn off capturing in part of the regex. Of course there are a lot more details in the article.
• 2015.09.09 in #216 Creating a registry of environment variables
  Collection which environment variables are being in use in CPAN modules. At least the ones that are used by brian d foy.
• 2015.10.06 in #220 Display real-time data with Curses
  brian shows how you can use the Curses module to interactively display information to the terminal, for example as some process is running.
• 2015.10.06 in #220 Use subroutine signatures with anonymous subroutines
  brian noticed that you can use subroutine signatures with anonymous subs, and that it makes life easier. He also noted that it's undocumented, but hoped they'd not go away. Given Rik's response it seems not.
• 2015.10.27 in #223 Tim O’Reilly, Programming Perl, and EconTalk
  brian draws a line between the rise of Perl 5, the early days of the web, and the open source movement.
• 2015.11.12 in #225 Nominate Perl heroes for the 2015 White Camel Awards
  The White Camel award recognizes and celebrates the non-technical achievements of a member of the Perl community. Know somebody who's deserving of that monochromatic humped Thank You this year? Submit their name to brian d foy!
• 2015.11.18 in #226 Should we call it "Learning Perl 5"
  Now that Perl 6 is going to be release within a few weeks brian d foy is wondering if the next edition of the "Learning Perl" book that deals with the Perl 5 syntax should say so in the title. Not surprisingly the Reddit discussion got quite long. People have strong opinions.
• 2015.11.24 in #227 Larry Wall, Hero of the Revolution, the T-Shirt
  David Farrell and brian have created a t-shirt of Larry Wall styled after the iconic picture of Che Guavara. You can order yours on kickstarter, if you want one.
• 2015.12.19 in #230 The White Camel Awards, 2015 Edition
  Congratulations to Chris Prather, Sawyer X, and Steffen Müller for taming the snowcamel.
• 2015.12.27 in #231 We’re starting Learning Perl, 7th edition
  Work is starting on the next edition of Learning Perl. If there are changes you'd like to see, this is the time to let brian know.
• 2016.02.22 in #240 DOS pattern matching, in Perl
  A fun exercise, if you wish.
• 2016.02.27 in #240 The Lyon Compromise on Perl version formats
  brian tries his hand at convincing Google to point to this page and this explanation when someone looks for the Lyon Compromise of Perl version formats. Can you help giving that page some relevant Google juice by sharing it, tweeting it, linking to it?
• 2016.03.31 in #245 The locale's thousands separator
  
• 2016.04.14 in #247 Lexical $_ and autoderef are gone in v5.24
  
• 2016.04.14 in #247 Postfix dereferencing is stable is v5.24
  
• 2016.06.11 in #255 Perl v5.24 adds a line break word boundary
  Perl v5.22 added a few new word boundary anchors such as \b{sb}, \b{wb}, and \b{gcb}. Perl v5.24 trumped that with \b{lb}.
• 2016.06.15 in #256 Watch regexes with Regexp::Debugger
  A short post from brian about Regexp::Debugger, which can animate a regular expression matching string, to help you understand how it works.
• 2016.08.01 in #263 Comparison of Programming Language Package Managers
  
• 2016.08.13 in #264 Pre-order Learning Perl, 7th Edition
  
• 2016.08.19 in #265 Randal Schwartz is in the hospital and could use some help.
  If you want to help Randal Schwartz, then please get in touch with Brian D Foy.
• 2016.09.05 in #268 Perl 6 at the Alpine Perl 6
  
• 2016.10.02 in #271 Hacktoberfest is here
  What is it and how to label all of your GitHub projects for Hacktoberfest? It is easy. brian provides the Perl script for it.
• 2016.11.24 in #279 Nominate Perl heroes for the 2016 White Camel Awards
  The gates are open for nominations for the White Camel Awards. Know somebody who made the Perl Community a better place and deserves props for it? Then go forth, go forth and nominate!
• 2016.12.04 in #280 Tips for Perl 6
  While the kickstarter for the Learning Perl 6 book is going on, brian is posting daily short tips about Perl 6.
• 2016.12.18 in #282 White Camels 2016
  
• 2016.12.25 in #283 Strip leading spaces from here-docs with v5.26
  Perl v5.26 will allow us to use indented here-docs, Brian explains it with some examples.
• 2017.01.03 in #301 perl.jobs summary for 2016
  Something I've missed earlier, but still very interesting. Showing the number of jobs posted on jobs.perl.org
• 2017.01.09 in #287 v5.26 removes dot from @INC
  Up till 5.26 perl used to find modules in the current working directory of the user, that could have been anything. Starting from 5.26 that won't be the case.
• 2017.01.24 in #288 /xx means more meaningless whitespace (and that’s good)
  Brian explains the /xx regex flag, which is being added in 5.26.
• 2017.02.24 in #292 Testing JSON grammars
  
• 2017.03.23 in #296 Close enough
  Explaining =~=, the approximately-equal operator of Perl 6.
• 2017.04.07 in #299 All things being equal, not all things are eqv
  Perl 6 has a wealth of comparison operators! brian d foy gives us a rundown, and an admonishment about making rash assumptions.
• 2017.04.25 in #301 Thinking about Perl 6
  brian d foy interviews Laurent Rosenfeld, whose new book Think Perl 6 from O'Reilly Media, comes out this summer.
• 2017.04.26 in #301 You must escape the left brace in a regex
  I used to fight against escaping special characters that are not (yet) special in Perl 5 regexes. I might need to revisit my position. At least for "{".
• 2017.06.09 in #309 Dumping Perl 6
  
• 2017.06.17 in #308 20 Years of Perl Mongers
  brian d foy realizes an anniversary is coming up--a big one!
• 2017.07.06 in #311 PrettyDump's European Tour
  brian d foy reports on his recent travel grant, and the presentation he gave (repeatedly) while he was in Europe.
• 2017.07.25 in #320 PrettyDump for Perl 6
  brian d foy presented at London.PM on his new PrettyDump module for Perl 6.
• 2017.08.11 in #316 Deprecation warnings now tell you when the features will disappear
  Apparently Abigail shared this tidbit in a lightning talk, and brian is sharing it a bit more widely: Perl 5 deprecations will start saying when the feature will become fatal, as of Perl 5.28.
• 2017.08.16 in #317 Beginners and Conferences
  brian d foy shares some ideas from a 2011 presentation on making Perl conferences more beginner-friendly.
• 2017.12.06 in #333 Nominate Perl heroes for the 2017 White Camel Awards
  If you know someone in the Perl community who has done significant non-technical work for Perl, then please let brian d foy know about it.
• 2017.12.18 in #335 White Camels 2017
  The White Camels are out. Congratulations to this year's winners!
• 2017.12.24 in #335 Beware the removal of when in Perl 5.28
  brian d foy has a blog post up about his own thoughts on recent changes. Definitely worth a read!
• 2017.12.30 in #336 In-place editing gets safer in v5.28
  
• 2017.12.31 in #336 Playing with Heap's Algorithm
  
• 2018.01.10 in #338 List comprehensions in Perl (almost)
  List comprehension in Python is similar to grep and map in Perl. brian d foy takes a stab at the idea.
• 2018.01.16 in #339 Test a module version
  
• 2018.01.16 in #339 De-duping iTunes
  How to eliminate duplicates from iTunes using Perl 6.
• 2018.02.16 in #343 The Universal Set
  
• 2018.03.02 in #345 Infinite, cycling sequences
  
• 2018.08.14 in #369 Perl v5.28 can delete key-value slices
  Perl v5.20 introduced key-value slices that worked on hashes and arrays. You could extract values by their keys or indices as well as assigning to those. The key-value slice delete is a way to extract the keys and values you want and delete them at the same time.
• 2018.08.25 in #370 Find the new emojis in Perl’s Unicode support
  
• 2018.08.27 in #371 Use Unicode 10 in Perl v5.28
  Perl has been on the forefront of Unicode adoption for a very long time. See how to use the newly added characters in the recently released version of Perl.
• 2018.08.31 in #371 Powerful command-line options
  
• 2018.09.06 in #372 Which edges cases could perl shed to make it easier to parse?
  brian d foy discussing if we could make a grammar that other things that aren't perl could statically parse?
• 2018.09.07 in #372 Nordic Perl Workshop 2018 Highlights
  Detailed highlights of Nordic Perl Workshop 2018 by brain d foy.
• 2018.09.11 in #373 Mix assignment and reference aliasing with declared_refs
  New experimental features in Perl 5.26.
• 2018.10.23 in #379 Use terminal colors to distinguish information
  A real-world example of using Term::ANSIColor to make it easy to notice the really important information printed on the terminal.
• 2018.12.03 in #385 Perl v5.30 lets you match more with the general quantifier
  I never thought about this but apparently you cannot write a regex with {N,} where N is larger than 32,766. Try it! This will throw en exception 'x' =~ /b{32767,}/ but don't worry Perl 5.30 will double the limit. I don't think I ever needed such regex with N greater than 17 and even that was just to show an example to my students. If you ever needed more, I'd love to hear your story! If you needed more than 32,766 brian d foy also wants to hear your story! I don't know what brian writes in the article is fun or scary. Or both.
• 2018.12.04 in #385 Perl v5.30 new features
  5 items in the list
• 2018.12.15 in #386 Nominate Perl heroes for the 2018 White Camel Awards
  It's the 20th anniversary of the White Camel Awards!, Please do share your views.
• 2019.01.27 in #393 Surprising output for the descending range '01'..'-1'
  Because of the flexibility of Perl and the automatic type conversion the range operator has some edge-cases that are probabaly unintended and might go away. brian d foy shows them to us.
• 2019.04.22 in #405 We don't need no stinkin' hosting
  Andrew Shitov asked for 10,000 USD to 'Create a complete course of the Perl 6 programming language.' In a close vote it was rejected, partially due to the lack of specifics about deployment and hosting options. brian d foy that the hosting question should not be important as the expense is negliable. I tend to agee. One could run a decent system on a 5-10 USD/month box on Digital Ocean that would probably server the Perl 6 users if their number 10 and probably even 100 times more than the current number. If that happens I am sure there will be individuals or companies who will be happy to pay the bill. On the other hand I think the plan for deployment should be part of the grant and the system needs to be deployed from day 1.
• 2019.06.17 in #413 Quoting the Shell
  It isn't easy. First you encounter spaces. Then other special characters. Then quotes. Is there an end to this?
• 2019.07.16 in #417 No more false postfix lexical declarations in v5.30
  One less way for Perl programmers to shoot themselves in the leg.
• 2019.09.26 in #427 Hacktoberfest 2019
  Hacktoberfest starts tomorrow. brian d foy gives you some directions what to hack on if you'd like to participate. It is fun even if you don't want the T-shirt.
• 2020.01 in #445 Starting to think about an 8th Edition
  ...of the Learning Perl book.
• 2020.01.01 in #445 Copy instead of renaming to preserve hard links
  Do you know what are are those hard links? What is an inode?
• 2020.01.15 in #443 Mojolicious Web Clients
  
• 2020.01.23 in #444 Perl v5.32 New Features
  Perl v5.32 is around the corner and it has some interesting new features.
• 2020.01.23 in #444 Use the infix class instance operator
  
• 2020.01.31 in #445 Use a temporary file instead of clobbering data
  What happens if there is an error mid-way while you are updating a file. Oups. You don't have the new data yet, but you have already lost the old data. Here is how brian solves this.
• 2020.03.11 in #451 Who makes it into @INC first?
  To quote brian: 'Perl finds modules by looking through the list of directories in @INC. There are many ways to add paths to that array, and although I’ve used all of them at some point, I’ve never quite thought about what happens when I use all of them together.'
• 2020.03.17 in #452 Bonus @INC directories
  brian shared some fun tips with @INC. Highly Recommended.

If you are not yet subscribed, you can do it now. Free of charge:

This newsletter is about the Perl Programming languages.