Discussed tracking perl authorized releasers updates and storing historical data
Dual-Life modules need some cleanup to get a more normal release process that can be done more regularly. Cleanup has been done on Storable.
Time::HiRes by default doesn’t seem terrible, if possible
X509 in core could make sense as part of a more complete interface to OpenSSL
Discussion about how it would be possible to have support for Markdown or other new Pod extensions in a more backwards compatible way. Possibly a way to define alternate formats for =begin/=end sections.
Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on August 11, 2024, at 23:59). This blog post provides some solutions to this challenge. Please don’t read on if you intend to complete the challenge on your own.
Task 2: Knight’s Move
A Knight in chess can move from its current position to any square two rows or columns plus one column or row away. So in the diagram below, if it starts a S, it can move to any of the squares marked E.
Write a script which takes a starting position and an ending position and calculates the least number of moves required.
Yep, that's right - the first dozen talks have been accepted for this year's London Perl and Raku Workshop. This puts our schedule at approximately 50% full, so if you are thinking about talking at the workshop then submit your proposal now!
If you aren't thinking about talking then have a think about what you've been doing in the Perl and/or Raku space the last five years, or even just the general IT and development space. Perhaps there's something interesting you can talk about? If you don't feel it's a full fat talk then submit a lightning talk instead.
The London Perl and Raku Workshop will take place on 26th Oct 2024. Thanks to this year's sponsors, without whom LPW would not happen:
I created a function in Perl called pg_dt, that will convert PostgreSQL’s datetime values into Perl’s DateTime values and vice versa. This is useful both when you want to store DateTime values into the database, or want to convert the pg datetime/timestamp value from the database into a DateTime object value that Perl can use.
I really can’t seem to include code blocks in my posts on this platform (tried Preview with Markdown and Markdown With SmartyPants without success), so you can read the rest of this article on my blog.
Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on August 11, 2024, at 23:59). This blog post provides some solutions to this challenge. Please don’t read on if you intend to complete the challenge on your own.
Task 1: Check Color
You are given coordinates, a string that represents the coordinates of a square of the chessboard as shown below:
Write a script to return true if the square is light, and false if the square is dark.
We merged HTTP-Tiny#6, and then discussed a number of topics:
some improvements on the process for releasing blead-upstream dual-life modules are needed
the instructions for releasing a new Perl are difficult to follow and partly redundant, the process takes longer than it should, and more of it could be automated
the pumpkin permission list has grown over time, and probably needs to be trimmed
more talk about Markdown documentation
thoughts on how to strike a better balance with the verbosity/brevity of meeting minutes
The Dancer Core Team is happy to announce that Dancer2 1.1.1 is on its way to CPAN. This is a maintenance release that deals with the following issues:
[ BUG FIXES ]
* GH #1712: Fix use of send_as in templates (Andy Beverley)
[ DOCUMENTATION ]
* PR #1706: Document missing logging hooks and log format option;
fix typo in logging test (Jason A. Crome)
Perl v5.40 introduced native true and false keywords. Unfortunately not all CPAN modules are ready to use them. One of those not yet ready is Mojo::Pg.
Normally you'd want to pass booleans to your queries as just 1's and 0's. However, since Mojo::JSON's true & false stringify to 1 and 0, my 5.38-using codebase is full of Mojo::Pg queries with Mojo::JSON's true and false as arguments.
This is a problem if I want to upgrade the perl interpreter of that project to Perl v5.40, because if I write "use v5.40;" in the file that contains those boolean keywords, Perl's builtin booleans will be used instead, which don't stringify to 1 and 0, but to 1 and the empty string, which can't be used by DBD::Pg in boolean fields and makes DBD::Pg throw an exception.
The solution I found was to subclass Mojo::Pg::Database, and wrap the query method, so that if Perl's builtin booleans are found, they are replaced in the query with native Pg booleans.
The source of the module and a lot more information can be found in my blogpost, here.
I have not been able to figure out how to run an async thread in the background while using a REPL like reply. The moment I run the main loop, it takes over the input from the REPL. Here's what a typical failed REPL session might look like.
Well, after taking a very long break inspired (to understate it a bit) by the pandemic, I’m back to attending in-person Perl events with my seventh YAPC. Or, The Perl Conference, I suppose, but it still feels like YAPC to me. As per usual, here are some reflections.
This year I was able to dedicate some time to the Linux::Info distribution of mine.
After a long time without any maintenance, I was able to tackle some bugs there were hanging around for a long time.
One of those bugs were related to retrieve information regarding the running Linux kernel which the box was booted with.
The internal files under /proc changed a bit, and boxes with newer kernels were not behaving properly and additional information just being ignored.
In order to properly fix that, I decided to refactor not only how the information was being retrieved, but also how to manipulate it. My chose was to go with OOP to handle the various corner cases and reuse code.
Now it is possible to fetch a instance of those classes automatically and even compare two kernels to see which is older/newer.
I remember when one one of my grandchildren helpfully decided reorganise a bookshelf whilst by himself. Upon being discovered, sitting in front of an empty shelf with books strewn all around him, his instinctive reaction made me feel proud to be his grandpa. He looked up and said, “Oh dear! Oh dear! what happened?”, as if this calamity had occurred spontaneously, astonishing him as much as the angry parent who was going to have to tidy it all up. It is hard to hide amusement when you watch your kids have to deal with their kids.
Advanced Disaster Management Strategy for Grandchildren and Programmers
Chapter 3 of Higher Order Perl describes various approaches to memoization of an expensive function: private cache and the Memoize module. The book was written in 2005 (Perl was at version 5.8 back then) , so it does not include another way for function caching that is now available : caching through state variables (introduced in Perl 5.10). The Fibonacci example considered in HOP also requires the ability to initialize state hash variables (available since Perl 5.28). The code below contrasts the implementation with a state variable v.s. the memoize module:
Wir freuen uns, die Veröffentlichung von OTOBO 11 bekannt zu geben! Die neueste Version der beliebten Open-Source-Ticketsystem-Software bringt zahlreiche Verbesserungen und neue Funktionen mit sich. Erfahren Sie mehr über die neuen Features und Änderungen auf OTOBO
Over the years that I have existed in four dimensions, I have come to accept that time is not a linear concept heading inexorably in one direction at a uniform rate. It didn't take an Einstein or Hawking to convince me either. Time is as malleable as the distortions applied by our consciousness, or imposed by those around us. Consider my youngest daughter's
essay due to be handed in on Tuesday, a task assigned 4 months earlier. At 4,000 words, it represented roughly 6 words an hour allowing for eating, sleeping, work, weekend fun, and other essential time-devouring activities. Yet the "I have got plennnnty of time, chill, dad!" of a few months ago, has now turned into cries of despair, as she has to do an all nighter at her desk instead of being at some selfie-rich event critical to her mental well-being and social standing.
In the week 270, the second task was really interesting and difficult. Here’s a slightly reformulated version:
We’re given an array of positive integers @ints and two additional integers, $x and $y. We can apply any sequence of the following two operations: 1. Increment one element of @ints. 2. Increment two elements of @ints. The cost of each application of operation 1 is $x, the cost of operation 2 is $y. What’s the minimal cost of a sequence of operations that makes all the elements of @ints equal?
Why do I say it was difficult? I compared all the Perl and Raku solutions I could find in the GitHub repository and none of them gave the same results as mine. It took me several days to find an algorithm that would answer the tricky inputs I generated with a pen and paper, and one more day to optimise it to find the solutions in a reasonable time.
