bart

• About: I've been making noise about Perl on the internet since 1997.

Recent Actions

• Commented on Three-value logic in Perl
  'Sorting unknown values should leave their position in the list unchanged' That looks very dangerous to me. It implies that sorting [5, unknown, 1, unknown, 7] would not sort anything. To be safe, it should sort the same the same...
• Commented on Same feeds, less spam
  I just noticed that your feed inludes posts that are 5 years old. For example: "XML::Tiny released", which links to a post from 26 Jan 2007...
• Commented on Same feeds, less spam
  The "problem" is it now gives me lots of posts in what I presume to be Japanese, which are just as bad....
• Commented on Same feeds, less spam
  Yes! The JT Smith posts annoy me to no end, and most of all because of the broken default title because he didn't enter one: "I'm happy to announce that...". They're far less annoying (though I still wouldn't call them...
• Commented on A localizable interface to `select`
  I prefer Local::Select. There’s not confusion with timezones and/or language because that is “Locale”, with a trailing “e”....
• Commented on Is there in truth no Perl?
  Javascript! There's (still) a lot of contempt for it, and attempts to turn it into something more like Java (Coffeescript, and Google's various projects), but I really love how regular expressions are first class objects, i.e. part of the language,...
• Commented on How to Parse HTML
  If that corrected html output is copy/pasted, you have a bug to hunt down. Because the next fragment most definitely isn't correct. <tr> <!-- Next line is cruft --> </td>...
• Commented on The UTF8 flag and you
  The following will produce a perfect copy of lolcat.jpg in lolol.jpg: Except on Windows. Because you didn't binmode the file handles....
• Commented on iCPAN is (almost) on the iPad
  Well somehow I have a hard time imagining a program that depends on web services ,as "offline"....
• Commented on $perl6 = 'Duke Nukem Forever';
  The comparison of Perl 6 to Duke Nukem Forever is even more poignant when you consider the fact that that software, when it finally came out, was widely considered a letdown....
• Commented on Does do-given work right?
  I have no experience with the new syntax, but I'm wondering: does it work if you do anything to $baz, for example quoting it or otherwise use it in an expression? I suppose it might be using an alias, and...
• Commented on edit_file and edit_file_lines
  perl -pi -e '$_ = '' if /foo/' filename That line just doesn't look right....
• Commented on Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
  • $this or $self on method calls, instead of first parameter or a reliable way to detect whether a sub is called as a method or as a function • Nested subs ought to work as in Javascript (local visibility,...
• Commented on And the fastest OO accessor is...
  I don't see where you get the idea that Mouse with XS is faster than a "raw hash", whatever that means (hash ref? inside out objects?). With no check on assignments, raw hash appears to be twice as fast as...
• Commented on Currying
  (-1..-10) will not buy you much good....
• Commented on The CPAN client version-less dependency problem
  "Are you sure you want to install this shiny new version of Web::Some::Thingy but still use your 4 year old copy of DBD::SQLite? Install the new DBD::SQLite? [Y/n]" You could present this info as a possible remedy in case some...
• Commented on Tiny vim convenience hack
  It looks like logging in transferred me to a different blog than I was at before... Sorry about that. Now it looks like I can't delete it......
• Commented on Padre 0.70 has been released.
  I've upgraded my Padre on Strawberry from 0.56 to 0.70. The upgrade went smoothly, and took about 15 minutes via CPAN.pm. I think the previous time it took an hour, so that's cool. Also, memory consumption has dropped, as previously...
• Commented on Tiny vim convenience hack
  I've upgraded my Padre on Strawberry from 0.56 to 0.70. The upgrade went smoothly, and took about 15 minutes via CPAN.pm. I think the previous time it took an hour, so that's cool. Also, memory consumption has dropped, as previously...
• Commented on Threaded Forum SQL
  I gather you've seen Joe Celko's (of "SQL for Smarties" fame) article about his method to represent hierarchies in SQL? He even made a book out of it. It's an interesting approach, though I would never go as far as...
• Commented on The Second Age of Perl
  There is a new name for it. It's called "Perl 5.12". *grin*...
• Commented on Threads in Perl, Erlang style
  Cool. I've got nothing else to say right now, but I'm just commenting to let you know I've read your post with much interest. So you know you are not alone in a Perl desert... :)...
• Commented on Keeping updated with the community
  Is there a reason why http://search.cpan.org/uploads.rdf won't do?...
• Commented on Migrating from use.perl.org to blogs.perl.org?
  You may be able to extract all the blogs from use.perl.org via webscraping. However, a problem when posting them again here, is that most likely you'll lose their original posting date. Unless the admins of this site here provide a...
• Commented on Starting...
  Argh! Sorry. Due to problems logging in I posted this comment as a reply to the wrong blog post. And apparently I can't delete it....
• Commented on Starting...
  You may be able to extract all the blogs from use.perl.org via webscraping. However, a problem when posting them again here, is that most likely you'll lose their original posting date. Unless the admins of this site here provide a...
• Commented on What Can We Improve?
  (HTML tags for style?? WTF...) When I tried to register from a user blog, it kept complaining about "text is wrong". After several futile attempts I tried again from the front page, and this time it showed a captcha. Aha!...

Comment Threads

• Hercynium commented on Three-value logic in Perl

  This is a neat little concept, and I'll have to play with it a little to see if I can put it to good use for clearer code. I especially appreciate the name, "unknown", as it pretty much matches the semantics I would expect to be attached to that name. "The variable is defined, but there may or may not be a value - it could be anything or nothing, we just don't know - so it doesn't match or compare to anything, including another variable set to unknown"

  The NULL != NULL semantics in SQL make sense to me, except for the name, "null". From a general "meaning of words" standpoint, I thin…

• Ovid commented on Three-value logic in Perl

  Hercynium, thanks for the kind words.

  While adding a null or nil value would be interesting, I'd need the following:

  • Some clear use cases
  • Explicitly defined semantics

  And I'm glad you like the concept. You might find this blog post interesting.

• David Cantrell commented on Three-value logic in Perl

  anyone who puts interns and volunteers into the list of empoyees should be fired too! if they're employees they get minimum wage and can't be got rid of on a whim.

• Buddy Burden commented on Three-value logic in Perl

  I'm not sure I agree that "NULL" is a terrible name for unknown data. After all, as Hercynium writes:

  Generally, when I read the word "null" I think of it as referring to something specific, representing the absence of a value.

  Which is exactly right. We have a database full of data. How did the data get there? Someone entered it. If there is an absence of data, it's because no one entered it. If no one entered it, it's because no one knew what it was, or they haven't gotten around to entering it yet--either way, it's unknown.

  Furtherm…

• MeirG commented on Three-value logic in Perl

  NULL might also mean "Not Applicable" such as the "State" address field for Israel. (Hardly big enough to place the country's name...)

  In fact, in my old Ordain Inc. days (a database machine start-up that never took-off) we listed up to SEVEN totally different meanings that were all have to share the poor SQL NULL concept! Forgot most of them.