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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2013.02.09 in #81
Learning Perl Challenge: directory with the most files
After a long break a new challenge from brian d foy!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2013.03.27 in #88
Why Perl's conditional operator is right associative
Don't know? Dont' worry: brian d foy explains.
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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?
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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!".
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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.
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2013.04.18 in #91
Learning Perl Challenge: Remove intermediate directories
brian d foy published a new challenge. Nice screenshot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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2014.07.03 in #154
Perl 5.20 introduces 'Key/Value Slices'
... and brian d foy shows examples.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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;.
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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".
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!).
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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').
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2015.04.16 in #195
Use v5.20 subroutine signatures
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2015.04.16 in #195
Huh. Multiple beginning-of-line anchors work
Using ^ more than once in a regex. Strange. Very strange.
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2015.04.16 in #195
I broke plenv and cpanm, and the systems they run on
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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.
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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)
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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2015.12.19 in #230
The White Camel Awards, 2015 Edition
Congratulations to Chris Prather, Sawyer X, and Steffen Müller for taming the snowcamel.
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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.
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2016.02.22 in #240
DOS pattern matching, in Perl
A fun exercise, if you wish.
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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?
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2016.03.31 in #245
The locale's thousands separator
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2016.04.14 in #247
Lexical $_ and autoderef are gone in v5.24
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2016.04.14 in #247
Postfix dereferencing is stable is v5.24
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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}.
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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.
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2016.08.01 in #263
Comparison of Programming Language Package Managers
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2016.08.13 in #264
Pre-order Learning Perl, 7th Edition
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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.
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2016.09.05 in #268
Perl 6 at the Alpine Perl 6
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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.
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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!
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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.
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2016.12.18 in #282
White Camels 2016
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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2017.02.24 in #292
Testing JSON grammars
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2017.03.23 in #296
Close enough
Explaining =~=, the approximately-equal operator of Perl 6.
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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.
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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.
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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 "{".
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2017.06.09 in #309
Dumping Perl 6
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2017.06.17 in #308
20 Years of Perl Mongers
brian d foy realizes an anniversary is coming up--a big one!
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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.
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2017.07.25 in #320
PrettyDump for Perl 6
brian d foy presented at London.PM on his new PrettyDump module for Perl 6.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2017.12.18 in #335
White Camels 2017
The White Camels are out. Congratulations to this year's winners!
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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!
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2017.12.30 in #336
In-place editing gets safer in v5.28
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2017.12.31 in #336
Playing with Heap's Algorithm
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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.
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2018.01.16 in #339
Test a module version
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2018.01.16 in #339
De-duping iTunes
How to eliminate duplicates from iTunes using Perl 6.
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2018.02.16 in #343
The Universal Set
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2018.03.02 in #345
Infinite, cycling sequences
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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.
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2018.08.25 in #370
Find the new emojis in Perl’s Unicode support
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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.
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2018.08.31 in #371
Powerful command-line options
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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?
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2018.09.07 in #372
Nordic Perl Workshop 2018 Highlights
Detailed highlights of Nordic Perl Workshop 2018 by brain d foy.
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2018.09.11 in #373
Mix assignment and reference aliasing with declared_refs
New experimental features in Perl 5.26.
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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.
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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.
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2018.12.04 in #385
Perl v5.30 new features
5 items in the list
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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2020.01 in #445
Starting to think about an 8th Edition
...of the Learning Perl book.
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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?
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2020.01.15 in #443
Mojolicious Web Clients
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2020.01.23 in #444
Perl v5.32 New Features
Perl v5.32 is around the corner and it has some interesting new features.
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2020.01.23 in #444
Use the infix class instance operator
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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.
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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.'
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2020.03.17 in #452
Bonus @INC directories
brian shared some fun tips with @INC. Highly Recommended.
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2020.03.26 in #453
Use a variable-width lookbehind if it won’t match more than 255 characters
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2020.03.27 in #453
Chain comparisons to avoid excessive typing
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2020.05.28 in #462
Perl Hacks, Perl School, and the future of Perl publishing
brian d foy interviewed Dave Cross with regard to his Perl School books. Highly Recommended.
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2020.06.17 in #465
Turn off indirect object notation
new Feature; vs. Feature->new; that is the question.
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2020.06.24 in #466
Announcing Perl 7
brain d foy announced his new shiny book Preparing for Perl 7.
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2020.06.24 in #466
The Perl 7 tl;dr
brian d foy shared the overview of Perl 7.
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2020.09 in #479
Become a sponsor to briandfoy
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2020.09.25 in #479
Migrate the perldoc.perl.org domain to perldoc.pl
http://perldoc.perl.org has many broken parts, but there is already an alternative. brian d foy wants us to migrate to the new site. Go, express your opinion on the GitHub issue or on reddit.
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2020.10.05 in #481
Stupid DATA Tricks
Do you know about __DATA__ and __END__ ? Well, you should.
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2021.01.11 in #495
Extracting the list of O'Reilly Animals
Using Mojolicios
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