Ron Savage

• Website: savage.net.au/
• About: I try to write all code in Perl, but find I end up writing in bash, CSS, HTML, JS, and SQL, and doing database design, just to get anything done...

Recent Actions

• Commented on Tut # 7: jQuery, Ajax, xml, Perl, databases and utf8
  A reply to C Hansen (This is the 5th time I've posted this. Gotta hate Movable Type for being so time-out happy these days. Seems to be a bug with Preview, so I won't do that). 1) I don't have...
• Commented on Tut # 7: jQuery, Ajax, xml, Perl, databases and utf8
  4 attempts to post a reply to C Hansen have timed out. I give up....
• Commented on Tut # 7: jQuery, Ajax, xml, Perl, databases and utf8
  A reply to J Berger Thanx for the info re Mojolicious. I have actually looked into using it a number of times. Indeed, I've even released a little module, MojoX::ValidateHeadLinks, which hopefully is of use to more people than just...
• Posted Tut # 7: jQuery, Ajax, xml, Perl, databases and utf8 to Ron Savage

  I've tried to cover significant interactions between the topics mentioned in the Title above:

  Tutorial # 7

  The tutorial includes references to various now more-or-less standard documents, or collections thereof, per…

• Commented on Improved autobox-ing. I'm loving it :o)
  I'm with educated_foo. There may be times when autobox is useful, but this sure doesn't look like one of them :-(....
• Commented on Reviewing web frameworks
  I forked CGI::Application after my large set of patches was not integrated for over a year, so the new kid on the block is CGI::Snapp. It effectively makes CGI::App obsolete, and is almost-but-not-quite backward-compatible. Unlike CGI::App my module has built...
• Commented on [FAILED] 10x faster than LibXML
  Hi Sure, put it on CPAN. When you write the docs, please include a 'See Also' section, mentioning the other modules (and programs) you've looked at. Be sure to mention Marpa::R2, which has its own HTML parser: Marpa::R2...
• Posted Perl && jQuery && XML && ! taconite to Ron Savage

  Hi All

  If you're in a hurry, jump to my latest (6th) Perl + jQuery tutorial.

  In short: I don't use the clever jQuery add-on taconite because it supports only commands (verbs) and I needed conditional execution (an 'if').

  …
• Commented on Site Front Page
  Hi I have another suggestion. Pre-fill the 'body' with a short(!) reminder to authors to limit the content there, and to put the bulk in 'extended'....
• Commented on New, experimental screencasts
  I could not see anything. Top line grey-on-black is Perl Maven. Next line black-on-white is OOP with Moo. Rest of page is blank, except for some clickboxes on far right (Fb, Twit, Like etc). Weird....
• Posted Visualising SQL joins to Ron Savage

  Hi All

  Here's an image displaying various options re SQL joins.

  Wish I'd see this years, nay, decades, ago.
  

• Posted 5 jQuery tutorials for budding Perlmeisters to Ron Savage

  Click keep reading to, errr, keep reading.

  This is because I put the text of the entry in MT's 'Extended', and now I've just added this stuff to 'Body'.

  Also, the 5th tut is on Autocomplete.
  

• Commented on GraphViz2 and the dread MusicBrainz db
  Hi All Damn. Forgot to mention. The script examples/table.info.pl shipped with DBIx::Admin::TableInfo needs to be updated liekwise, but differently from dbi.schema.pl. So, I'll release a new version of the module too....
• Posted GraphViz2 and the dread MusicBrainz db to Ron Savage

  Hi All

  OK. After a bit of pain I've set up an empty database for the
  MusicBrainz database.

  In particular, where they say 'sudo cpan Carton' you probably want 'cpanm Carton'.

  This exercise was because, asto…

• Commented on Docs for SQLite's foreign_key_list($table)
  Hi $many x $thanx;...
• Commented on A couple of ideas for improving commenting/reviewing CPAN modules
  Hi As you know I'm keeping track of many review articles, but yes, it'd be great if the modules' metacpan entries linked to reviews thereof....
• Posted Docs for SQLite's foreign_key_list($table) to Ron Savage

  AFAICT SQLite's foreign_key_list($table_name) pragma returns a list of 8 elements in this order (i.e. with these interpretations):

  1: COUNT
  2: KEY_SEQ
  3: FKTABLE_NAME
  4: PKCOLUMN_NAME
  5: FKCOLUMN_NAME
  6: UPDATE_RULE
  7: DELETE_RULE
  8: UNKNOWN

  …
• Posted GraphViz2 V 2.07 and the Chinook test database to Ron Savage

  Tong Sun, a user of GraphViz2, has drawn my attention to the test database Chinook, downloadable here.

  He and I have both had great difficulty getting GraphViz2 to properly display the schema of this database. He's using ="http://s…

• Commented on CPAN modules that (can) load other modules
  Hi As for showing the space, I was thinking that given a spreadsheet, I (or other) could write code to generate a Graphviz image with edges linking module names to concepts or ideas. This would a different way of visualizing...
• Commented on CPAN modules that (can) load other modules
  Hi blogs.perl.org just ignores any attempt to click the Reply button, so I'm replying at the end.... Good for security because restricting the # of places a modules is looked for limits the possible places where a hacker could install...
• Commented on CPAN modules that (can) load other modules
  Hi Neil Marvellous, as always. Some comments: 1) Where you say Mojo::Loader "will only find modules where the .pm file is immediately within the namespace specified", you could add that that is good from a security point of view. 2)...
• Commented on Pumpkin Perl Breakdown
  Hi Matt OK, I read your extremely-well-argued what, why, how - and I agree: Pumpkin Perl it is....
• Commented on Names And All That
  Hi Thanx for both perspectives. One thing to note is that there is so much promotion these days, people simply expect it. It can be content-free (as with 'celebrities'), or meaningful. So, if we - as a Perl community -...
• Commented on Names and Numbers, Brand and Identity
  >I like the idea of having several distributions, which are basically Perl + some set of modules or other. But this is just what Linux is! See the dread DistroWatch 'Page Hit Rankings' down the right-hand-side for a plethora of...
• Commented on My First Post.
  Hi I was in my 30s I guess when I started with Perl, and now have a few modules on CPAN, so there's plenty of time for you. Getting started: I suggest downloading a few modules and looking at the...
• Commented on On Perl Names And Numbers
  Hi Glad to read some new opinions. As for the version #, can those proposing a change for marketing reasons, please explain what happens if there is no resultant buzz. Just saying "Oops" is not enough. My position is that...
• Commented on Introducing Sah, another data validation framework
  Hi You have 'int*' as a shorcut for ['int', req => 1]. I use ' rather than " because the latter is optically dense. I would argue that's a mistake, since you use of '*' clashes with '*' used in...
• Commented on $3M says Perl5 needs a new major version number
  Hi Write an article comparing your plotting package with the others. A bit of work? Undoubtedly. And yours does not have to surpass the others in all ways. The point is to give you something to brag about....
• Commented on On the version number succeeding Perl 5
  Hi To Olof@here.and.now: A version number like ‘Perl5 v20.2014.0’ is a bureaucrat’s dream. Many Perlers (not me, tho) love abbreviation. So, no thanx. To Joel@here.and.now: I omitted a couple of huge points in my last post. Sorry: (1) Perl 5.,...
• Commented on On the version number succeeding Perl 5
  Hi I fear there is no easy answer to these questions. But first a warning: I believe that preserving back-compat is not /always/ the highest goal. Fixing design faults (more above and below) can justify a new version which breaks...

Comment Threads

• Nick Patch commented on Improved autobox-ing. I'm loving it :o)

  I hadn't criticized the syntax, but I do have an example of something I'm not fond of and a reason why. I find the use of chained method calls without parens to be jarring.

  (0..9)->grep { $_ > 5 } ->map { $_ * 2 } ->join(' - ')

  This is, of course, all a matter of personal taste and I could get used to it, but it's not the way that Perl or most languages work. I can think of an exception: LiveScript; although I'm sure there are more.

  $ 'h1' .on 'click'
    alert 'boom!'

  Which compiles to JavaScript:

  …
• Nick Patch commented on Improved autobox-ing. I'm loving it :o)

  You said that “(^10) is not as self-explanatory”.

  It’s not without understanding the fundamentals of Perl 6, like the operators, which are needed in order to program in the language or understand the code. Just like Perl 5 or Ruby has their own prerequisite fundamentals.

  $a  ..  $b  # $a (inclusive) through $b (inclusive)
  $a  ..^ $b  # $a (inclusive) through $b (exclusive)
  $a ^..  $b  # $a (exclusive) through $b (inclusive)
  $a ^..^ $b  # $a (exclusive) through $b (exclusive)
         ^$b  # 0  (inclusive) through $b (exclusive)

  Which makes th…

• mascip commented on Improved autobox-ing. I'm loving it :o)

  Thanks for your comments Nick :-)

  Indeed, these bare blocks after a method call are disconcerting. I didn't even notice that. I guess that's why I compensated by putting them on distinct line: it's the only way i could make it look ok. I'm almost happy enough with the result.

  I think it's not only a subjective matter. The fact that it's not seen anywhere else means that our eyes are not used to it, they don't immediately know how to interpret it. The fact that there is a given programming culture is not subjective. It is an objective fact that we have to take into account. Al…

• Joel Berger commented on Tut # 7: jQuery, Ajax, xml, Perl, databases and utf8

  I believe that it is correct to say that a program without utf8 strings in the source will behave correctly without `use utf8;`. That said, as chansen has mentioned himself, since UTF-8 is a superset of ASCII, why not? That way when you do add a UTF-8 character somewhere, you don't have to remember to go import the `utf8` pragma. Seems pragmatic to me :-)

• mascip commented on Improved autobox-ing. I'm loving it :o)

  Hey Nick. Ruby has methods who take a block as an argument. An example here with the Tree class (search for "Tree" in the page):
  

  The result is :

  a_tree.visit_all { |node| do_something_with(node) }

  which will perform an operation on all nodes of the tree. I like it.
  I still don't love how it looks. But i prefer writing the list name first, and then the maps and greps in the order in which they are execut…