blogs.perl.org

The original article

The paper referred to by that article


I've uploaded to my web site chapters 1 .. 5 of:

The Drone Papers

Chapter 1: Drone + Virus = Shock + Awe
Chapter 2: Using Drones to Hijack Government Policy
Chapter 3: Using Drones for Arson, Sabotage and Quarantine-busting
Chapter 4: A Child is Frightened of Drones
Chapter 5: The Drone Papers FAQ

-------
A note re Movable Type: Make sure you preview your articles 1 or 3 times. The 2nd time the display is blank, except for 2 buttons in the middle of the screen. Save and Re-edit entry.

Weird man, as we used to say back in the '60s.

I have said it in many other posts over the years perl just never ceases to surprise me.

Well I was down and dirty with some code today doing an ongoing migration from Informix to Prostgres of a very very large perl code-base.

Needless to say one of the most important tools in this migration is the good old 'inline if' or ' ternary if' or just plain old '? :'

The code base has a largely hash based so it is a simple matter to find the offending lines of Informix SQL and using the '? :' to add in the Postgres SQL. Of course only part of the client base is migrating so it is mandated that both DB must work with the same code hence the need for all the inline ifs.

So there are allot of lines like this

$self->filter({
field_name=>'xxxx'
field_value=>$self->isInformix ? 'TODAY' : 'CURRENT_DATE',
...

Indispensable really and I think the proper use for this IMHO.

Now the fun part.

Well I have a good deal of post on my AD&D and Moose and looking at the time line below

I could be at this for a 'very, ' x 5; long time.

So I think a little post to review what I have done so far is in order,

The smartmatch operator (~~) introduced in Perl 5.10 (and borrowed from Perl 6) has been the subject of much criticism. Its behaviour changes based on the types of its arguments (arrays vs hashes vs numbers vs strings vs ...). perlop lists over twenty different behaviours based on different combinations of arguments. Although the operator normally does what you want, what people would want from certain combinations (%hash ~~ @arr anybody?) is nor always clear.

(Aside: in Perl 6 which has a stronger type system, the behaviour of smartmatch is more predictable.)

For this reason, it has been proposed that the smartmatch operator be simplified, or perhaps even removed in a future version of Perl 5. To this end, Perl 5.18 has introduced some warnings about its experimental nature.

Dear Perl'ers

I need your help to choose a new name for the official Perl client for Elasticsearch.

Read more here: http://www.elasticsearch.org/blog/renaming-perl-client/

This is part 12 of an ongoing series where I explore my relationship with Perl.  You may wish to begin at the beginning.

This week we look at how to start putting it all together.

Last week I talked about the trade-offs of DWIM, and wondered if it might be time to try to make sense of all the various parts and perspectives.  Thus, this is the end of the beginning.¹  This is the convergence of all my reminiscences.