Tom Wyant

• About: Fine Perl code for over 0.005 centuries.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN
  Thank you for the clarification. I have no particular confidence that I could apply your distinction between an experimental module and an experimental implementation to an arbitrary module -- which is not to find fault with you. The fault (if...
• Commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN
  Why not simply ask people to submit experimental modules under development version numbers? This seems to me (after a grand total of maybe five minutes' thought) to have two advantages over the original proposal: The modules get tested by CPANTESTERS...
• Commented on Astro::SpaceTrack upgrade
  The Heavens Above web site has a plot of the altitude of the International Space Station over time that you could duplicate. One of my first correspondents was plotting some orbital parameter (ascending node?) of a cluster of Russian navigation...
• Commented on Astro::SpaceTrack upgrade
  Correction In preparing the threatened release, I discovered that I had pending changes. So: 0.071 will come out today with these changes. 0.072 will come out tomorrow (February 17). It is 0.072 whose only change will be the default value...
• Posted Astro::SpaceTrack upgrade to Tom Wyant

  For some time now, the Space Track web site, which is the official source for satellite orbital elements, has been working on an upgrade to a REST interface. This interface is scheduled to go live on February 20.

  My module Astro::SpaceTrack retrieves orbital data from the Space Track web s…

• Commented on A Question of Location
  Wonderful! A piece of deduction worthy of the character in whose mouth you have placed it. I await the next with bated breath....
• Commented on The Case of the Unexpected Pax
  Have at it. I look forward to your entry. These "cases" were originally going to use a certain late-Victorian London detective, but I was wondering about ownership of the name. But maybe I didn't need to worry. It seems he's...
• Posted The Case of the Unexpected Pax to Tom Wyant

  It was late afternoon of a chill November in Paris. I was walking along the quai, lost in a brown study. Looking up, I saw my friend C. Auguste Dupin approaching me.

  "Ah, bon soir, mon ami," said Dupin, "and what brings you beside the Seine on this crisp evening?"

  "S…

• Commented on Writing version of dependencies
  I've been back and forth on this. Currently I specify whatever I use. That is to say if I use Foo; I specify dependency Foo => 0. If I use Foo 1.2; I specify Foo => 1.2. The use of...
• Commented on RFC Module::Build::CleanInstall
  Module::Build::Cookbook documents command option --uninst 1. It also appears that Module::Build->new( uninst => 1, ... ) has the effect of defaulting the command option to 1, though I can’t find where this is documented. However, I can’t make it actually...
• Commented on Proc::ProcessTable needs a C lover
  The Linux patch I apply is https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=41397 -- there are others, but I seem to get along without them. Under OpenBSD, I apply https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=77094 Perhaps more interestingly, a respondent to that ticket expressed the intent to refactor the module. And...
• Commented on How many ways can I use thee, module?
  use Module::Load; load MODULE; use if CONDITION, MODULE => ARGUMENTS...
• Commented on Finding Unused Subroutines, but with PPI
  There's always perlcritic --single UnusedPrivateSubroutines, if its assumptions are what you want. If not, this policy might be a good starting point to roll your own. The policy uses a Perl::Critic::Document rather than a PPI::Document, but the former is easily...
• Commented on The Case of the Incompatible Safe -- Epilog
  Well, then thanks to Paul Johnson and thanks to Rafaël for pointing out where the credit was due. Who gets credit for what is not always obvious to outsiders -- or at least, not to me. I noticed a note...
• Posted The Case of the Incompatible Safe -- Epilog to Tom Wyant

  "You know," I said to my friend C. Auguste Dupin, "I can not help feeling that there must be a simpler solution for M. Tueur's problem of the Incompatible Safe".

  "But there is, mon ami…

• Commented on On defined(@array) and defined(%hash)
  If the test suite does anything at all, it will let both authors and users know when there is a problem. This is, by the way, an argument for running tests. When I find such problems I file a bug...
• Posted Stupid <code>ack</code> trick to Tom Wyant

  My source directories tend to collect cruft, and it can be a pain to separate the real ack hits from the crufty ones. I am ashamed to say how long it took me to think of the following:

  function ackx {
  
    …

• Commented on More module versioning pain
  My first thought is that there ought to be a test for this. My second thought was that if the version module was involved, they are actually the same version number, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. And sure enough, Mail::SPF...
• Commented on The Case of the Incompatible Safe
  Thank you for the suggestion. The internals seem to be fairly heavy wizardry, but the public interface seems to call for something like opmask_add( invert_opset( opset( @ops ) ) ); eval $code Doing this, I find: For normal use, @ops...
• Commented on Call of the callback: Inversion of Control or just coolness?
  Hey - you had me at the Jack London title. "Perl of the Frozen North?" "Sergeant Perlston of the Yukon and his Wonder Dog Yukon King (arf! arf!)"? The mind boggles....
• Commented on The Case of the Incompatible Safe
  Thanks. I'm not sure how long I can keep it up, though. What has happened for the last couple is that I have run into a problem, solved it (sort of) and written it up. But not everything I run...
• Posted The Case of the Incompatible Safe to Tom Wyant

  When I entered our rooms, I found C. Auguste Dupin lounging in his fauteuil by the window. His eyes were on the paper in his hand, but he seemed to be gazing beyond it in abstracted thought.

  "A death?" I asked, smiling, remembering the events of a few days previous.

  "Non,…

• Commented on The Case of the Overloaded Curlys
  I confess to being with RJBS on this one. I have yet to take my disambiguation to the extent he has, but when it's needed I tend to prefer the documented way to disambiguate. That said, TMTOWTDI. Not one but...
• Commented on The Case of the Overloaded Curlys
  Joel - You are quite right. When preparing my post, I should have been a better detective, because I omitted from my toy example a character other than the one M. Dupin pointed out. A better representation of the real-life...
• Commented on CPAN and undef versions (again)
  Well, the JSON modules do the same thing for me, and I'm running Leopard. And a custom-built Perl. That seems (to me at least) to exonerate Apple. There have been incidents that make me shy away from using a system...
• Posted The Case of the Overloaded Curlys to Tom Wyant

  When I entered our rooms in Paris after a day on the boulevards, I found C. Auguste Dupin at his desk contemplating a scrap of paper. "A problem?" I asked.

  "A death. And a rather gruesome one, n'est-ce pas?" he replied, handing me the paper. On it I saw:

  ="prettyp…

• Commented on CPAN and undef versions (again)
  Yes, I have seen this before, and it can be a real problem, since it can cause you to overwrite a newer version of the distribution with an older version. If you blindly use 'upgrade', you can end up flip-flopping...
• Commented on exec's portability
  It seems to me that under Mac OS Classic (meaning Mac OS 9 and below) exec gave you an error like "We're not that kind of system"...
• Posted Perl droplets for Mac OS X to Tom Wyant

  The editor that came with MacOS Perl (for Mac OS 9 and below) was able to save your script as a droplet -- that is, an application that you could run by dropping files onto it. When your script got control, the paths to the dropped files were in @ARGV

  Under Mac OS X you can get this functi…

• Commented on Perl regex escapes by version
  Wonderful! Thank you. I take it \F is a preview of coming attractions, since it appears not to be in 5.15.4. It appears to me that \N{U+XXXX} goes back to 5.8. At least, my copy of 5.8.8 prints 'yes' when...

Comment Threads

• Neil Bowers commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN

  Matt: I wouldn't want to discourage that either. That sounds like my difference between experimental implementation and experimental module?

  I agree that the EXPERIMENTAL in the abstract is useful.

• Neil Bowers commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN

  Toby: I agree, something like the DSLIP codes would be good. But given (a) all the existing stuff on CPAN, and (b) that many authors wouldn't specify it, we'd need a mechanism that could be inferred where possible, crowd-sourced, and over-ridden by the owner.

  For those who, like me, were wondering what DSLIP is: DSLIP stands for Development Stage, Support Level, Language Used, Interface Style, Public License. DSLIP codes is what'd you'd see in CPAN module list.

• Neil Bowers commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN

  Tom: see my differentiation between experimental implementation versus experimental module. Personally, when I'm working on an experiment, I'm not bothered about CPAN Testers, and don't want to take up their cycles. And I'm not bothered about it being easy to find and install, in fact I like there being a small barrier.

  You may want to be aware: if you release a module initially as a developer release, the namespace isn't assigned to you, so someone could theoretically nab 'your' namespace. You only get the namespace on the first successful non-developer upload.
• dagolden.com commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN

  Neil, thanks for clarifying.

  Personally, I think either dev versions or Acme are good places to put experimental code that one isn't sure has a long-term future, but that one wants to get exposed to the community.

  For example, when I wrote Acme::Module::Build::Tiny, I put it in Acme because while it worked, it was a crazy-ass experiment to do most of Module::Build in 3% of the lines of code. Later, Leon took the idea and turned into something actually useful with Module::Bui…

• Buddy Burden commented on Don't release experiments to CPAN

  Guys, I think what Neil is talking about here is the modules we've all run across before: modules that don't even have any code in them, or only pseudo-code, or some quickly hacked code with no tests--this sort of thing. The modules that are really nothing more than placeholders for nifty ideas that may or may not ever go anywhere. But, in the meantime, they use up names and confuse n00bs.

  mst says:

  > ... because CPAN is how we share our work.

  This is the heart of the matter right here. Some people want to CPAN to be a place where we're all slinging code aro…