This week in PSC (194) | 2025-06-06

All three of us attended.

  • Release blocker triage continues. Several more blockers have been resolved. We identified no blockers among new tickets but did consider #23346 and may ship it even if we do not consider it a blocker.
  • We discussed some feedback regarding the fix for CVE-2025-40909 and requested that the patch be amended. A perldelta entry is also missing before we can ship the security releases.
  • We discussed who will do then stable release and when. RC1 will be published by Philippe Bruhat on June 20th.
  • We went over the scalar-context pair constructor proposal. Changing the fat arrow in general is out of the question and we don’t think any other proposal is likely to work.
  • We went over the 2-arg open proposal. It seems mostly trivial to do and worthwhile as well, but the real complexity is in the implicit open done by readline. We will outline our thoughts on the thread.

[P5P posting of this summary]

AWS KMS Encryption


Continue with the blog series, in this post, I am talking about AWS KMS Encryption.
Please check out the link for more information:
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-kms-encryption

Learning XS - C data types

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This ninth post introduces you to C data types and how to expose them in perl.

Testing distributions for potentially malicious Unicode

I was inspired by Daniel Stenberg's recent article Detecting malicious Unicode to write Test::MixedScripts, which tests Perl source code and other text files for unexpected Unicode scripts.

Why should you care about this?

There are Unicode characters in different scripts (alphabets) that look similar and are easily confused.

A malicious person could replace a domain name or other important token with one that looks correct, for is associated with a host or other resource that they control.

Consider the two domain names, "оnе.example.com" and "one.example.com". They look indistinguishable in many fonts, but the first one has Cyrillic letters.

Confusing Unicode might be added to your codebase through a malicious patch submission or pull request. Or it could be added as text from an email or web page that you copied and pasted into your code.

The module is easy to use, and defaults to testing for Latin and Common characters:

This week in PSC (189) | 2025-05-01

This extended meeting took place between the three of us in person over several days at the PTS 2025 in the beautiful city of Leipzig.

AWS S3 Encryption


AWS S3 Encryption isn't as complex as I thought initially. I had fun playing with it. You can give it a try too. Please check out the link below for more information.
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-s3-encryption

Learning XS - Regular Expressions

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This eighth post introduces you to Perl regular expressions in XS.

Sustainability, Resilience and Fun: Impressions from the German Perl/Raku Workshop 2025

Returning from the 27th installment of the German Perl or Perl/Raku Workshop, this time in Munich, I'd like to share some impressions.

A different Perl Toolchain Summit

A week ago I attended the 2025 PTS. For me it was a different PTS than the previous ones.

Firstly because it was my first PTS without Abe Timmerman. He was a regular in both the PTS (as maintainer of Test::Smoke), and of the Amsterdam Perl Mongers. In fact the last time I saw him was on our flight back to Amsterdam after the PTS in Lisbon last year. He was greatly missed.

Secondly, because of a question that Book asked at the very beginning of the PTS: how often we had been to the PTS before. I was one of the few who had attended more than 10 of them. Combined with the fact that several other regular attendees couldn't make it that meant that this PTS I spent more time than ever on helping others with various issues.

Call for Papers! - Perl Community Conference, Summer 2025

This is a hybrid (in-person and virtual) conference being held in Austin, TX on July 3rd-4th.

Did you miss your chance to speak or have wish to speak at the only available Perl Science Track (and get published in the Science Perl Journal)? Or maybe you just can't get enough Perl this summer??? Submit here ... or get more information on the PCC, including registration, special event registration, and donation links click here. For questions you may email us at science@perlcommunity.org or find us in the Perl Applications & Algorithms discord server.

The following lengths will be accepted for publication and presentation:

  • Science Perl Track: Full length paper (10-36 pages, 50 minute speaker slot)
  • Science Perl Track: Short paper (2-9 pages, 20 minute speaker slot)
  • Science Perl Track: Extended Abstract (1 page, 5 minute lightning talk slot)
  • Normal Perl Track (45 minute speaker slot, no paper required)

You may ask, where is the Winter SPJ or videos? We are working on them, promise! (it's a lot of work as some of you know. See also on Perlmonks and r/perlcommunity.

Learning XS - Exporting

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This seventh post introduces you to exporting XSUBS.

Perl Toolchain Summit 2025


Perl Toolchain Summit 2025, my first time, thanks to the organisers.
Here is my event report: https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/pts-2025

Perl makes it to Futility Closet as a poem...

A Futility Closet post references a Perl "poem" over two decades old. I remember chuckling at it when it first appeared. Although it was published "anonymously", I'm pretty sure I know who wrote it. :)

The Perl Toolchain Summit 2025

This weekend I was once again privileged to attend the Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS). This year it was held in the lovely city of Leipzig.

The PTS continues to be my favourite technical event of the year. In part this is because I get to meet old friends and make new ones, but it's also because the summit really serves its purpose and I am able to make so much progress on the projects I have which belong in Perl's toolchain ecosystem.

PTS isn't a conference - it's a four-day working meeting. It brings together people working on toolchain projects to solve common problems and push the work forward. I did get a lot of work done, but that's not the main focus, for me anyway. I see it as a time to solve problems and plan the way forward, and for me PTS facilitates that in the most wonderful fashion.

Learning XS - Invocation

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This sixth post introduces you to subroutine invocation in XS.

The sculpture shapes the sculptor.

Parenting aint easy. Certainly it is often something your kids teach you. Even worse, it often starts with ”<INSERT_KIDS_FRIENDS_NAME>’s dad lets him do <INSERT_CURRENTLY_PROHIBITED_ACTIVITY>”. In this constant battle to shape your offspring into a model citizen, with the values you value, and turning him/her into a self-sustaining organism, one applies tools that enhance particular features, remove the superfluous or the undesirable.

Announce: Perl Wiki V 1.26

Here we go: Download me

This week in PSC (188) | 2025-04-24

All of us showed up for a long meeting of identifying release blockers. First we went over the issues and PRs submitted since last week, none of which turned out to be new potential blockers. Then we examined all of the issues and PRs of interest we had previously identified. We applied the “Release Blocker” label where necessary, left comments, and merged a few of the PRs. Out of 20 issues and 11 PRs on our list, we identified 5 issues and 1 PR as blockers, of which the PR and several of the issues all pertain to the same problem with retention of errors on filehandles across I/O operations. This issue needs an informed decision, which we did not have the time for in this meeting, but will pursue next.

Our next meeting will be in person at the PTS.

[P5P posting of this summary]

Learning XS - Prototyping

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This fifth post introduces you to subroutine(method/function) prototypes in XS.

Map::Tube Unicode


Map::Tube now supports Unicode character in station names.
Please check out the link below for more information.
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/map-tube-unicode

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