Ben Morrow

• Website: morrow.me.uk/
• About: I blog about Perl.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Perl 7
  Personally I don't much care for stupid version number games, but then I don't much care about the details of the version numbers at all, so Ovid can count me as a 'yes, if you must'. My point really was...
• Commented on Perl 7
  I suspect Larry would be against the idea. One of the Perl 6 RFCs said something like 'Perl 6 will be the last version of Perl' and Larry's response was along the lines of 'Perl 7 will be the last...
• Commented on The Price of Cleverness (YAML is not Safe)
  @asukrieh: If you want robust and fast YAML processing using the normal Dump/Load API, please consider switching to YAML::XS. It is by far the best Perl module for YAML at this time. It requires that you have a C compiler,...
• Commented on The Price of Cleverness (YAML is not Safe)
  I thought YAML.pm basically was a proof-of-concept, and the production implementation was YAML::XS. Certainly I've had problems in the past which were fixed by switching; I would never choose to use YAML in production code....
• Commented on Skipping Test::Class tests in abstract base classes
  Would it be possible/worth it to simplify the interface further to a :Concrete attribute, so you could just write sub duration : Tests(2) Concrete { my $test = shift; my $instance = $test->get_instance; can_ok $instance, 'get_duration'; my $duration = $instance->get_duration;...
• Commented on Test::Most and timeit()
  use Benchmark ":hireswallclock"; But it probably ought to be the default, rather than hidden behind an obscure option. (Not to mention the implementation, which is… interesting.)...
• Commented on Moose and Fatal Type Constraints
  To my mind this is an obvious case where you need Perl 6-ish exceptions which are handled before unwinding the stack, and can thus 'un-throw' themselves (that is, resume execution from the point where the exception was thrown, rather than...
• Commented on Convert FLAC to MP3 on OS X for iTunes
  I would use AAC rather than MP3, nowadays; and you can do without the uncompressed temporaries: flac -dc $flac | faac -wo ${flac%.flac}.mp4 - (iTunes/OSX may or may not prefer .m4a to .mp4). If you've got the information available some...
• Commented on Role::Basic tweaks and the future
  This makes me suspicious that I shouldn't trust B modules prior to 5.8.x? Can anyone confirm this? B works fine on 5.6, or, at least, your use of it is fine. The problem is here: sub _load_role { my...
• Commented on Why Does Apple Use launchd?
  What I want to know is why on Earth Apple abandoned the old NeXTStep JSON-like plist format in favour of XML. The old format was just as well-documented as XML (hah!), and a good deal easier for both humans and...
• Commented on Pre-Commit Hooks and Breaking the Build
  [ $lines > 0 ] does a string compare. You probably want -gt instead. Also, I would always use $() rather than backticks, and you don't need to quote the "-u" under 'diff' (though you would if you had more...
• Commented on One Thing I Love About Git
  @Aristotle: Oh, I agree. I'm talking more about the small changes needed to make something compile, or about splitting a file in two without losing history for either copy....
• Commented on Custom Hacks and Comfort Levels
  Don't try to parse the SQL in Perl, just feed it to psql. IIRC DBD::Pg will let you feed lots of ;-separated statements to $dbh->do, too, so there's really no need to mess around splitting them up (wrong)....
• Commented on One Thing I Love About Git
  It's important to realise that, unlike svn, git doesn't even store renames in the repository. It doesn't version files, it versions whole trees, and any 'find me the last revision to change this file' logic is heuristic, based on similarity....
• Commented on Miscellaneous Thoughts
  This is just the same as { my $x; sub foo { $x } } where &foo has a ref to $x even after its name has gone out of scope. (How do I post code snippets without double-spacing like...

Comment Threads

• Chankey Pathak commented on Perl 7

  Nice idea. In this way we can convey the message to the world that Perl is not dead. Either we can go for Perl 7 or can agree on yearly releases (as suggested by Toby).

• arrestee commented on Perl 7

  There's a problem here that I don't see being discussed. "Perl7" or "Perl2013" or "Perl Foo" is a fork, plain and simple. The 5.xx line will not end just because somebody decides to evolve Perl5 into something not quite compatible with what it was. There will still have to bug fixes, which means maintainers, which means itches to scratch and ideas to try. In short order, we will have Perl v5.2x, and Perl6, AND Perl 20xx.

  Stevan Little already explained that one of the reasons he decided to build from scratch with Moe is that there's a serious shortage or surgeons qualified to o…

• Wendy commented on Perl 7

  Perl 6 already has Rakudo with a monthly release cycle with year and month in the name. At the moment we can all work with Rakudo Star 2013.01 and work is being done on 2013.02.

  Renaming Perl 5.20 to Perl 7 and skipping Perl 6 is throwing away man-years of work, energy, inspiration. Just talking about it might demotivate everybody in the community of Perl 6 developers.

  Many people are not interested at all in Perl 6, even not knowing that enormous efforts are made to make Perl 6 more and more backwards compatible with Perl 5, and giving Perl 6 more features that people are w…

• CosmicNet commented on Perl 7

  I believe that such action would be a real nail in the coffin. After all the talk of Perl 6 being the language of the future, people see a Perl 7 release, think "Wow lets take a look" and Perl becomes a laughing stock when they all see it's just a patched Perl 5. What's worse this would jeopardise Perl 6, and all that's gone into it. I think a better title would have been "How to wipe Perl out for good with a simple version number change" or more simple "The Perl 7 one liner of death".

  Perl 6 is the future, an I firmly believe it'll fix everything. If people are impatient then the so…

• Matt S Trout (mst) commented on Perl 7

  As an alternative idea - how about we pick a name rather than getting even further into the numbers game?

  See my blog post on the subject for my suggestion as to what to pick.

  -- mst, out