Mark Stosberg

• Website: mark.stosberg.com/
• About: I help maintain CGI::Application, CGI.pm, CGI::Session and Data::FormValidator. I'm interested in balancing technology with simplicity and sustainability.

Recent Actions

• Posted Speeding up Test::WWW::Mechanize tests with clone() to Mark Stosberg

  Today I was looking at old automated Perl test based on Test::WWW::Mechanize. It was it testing a complex form. For each of about 10 tests, it loaded the form (with a get_ok() call), and then submitted the form with a variety of input.

  Now that we run about 25,000 tests in total in the te…

• Commented on Perl 7 - Final Thoughts
  In this era, naming something Perl# would make it appear that we are unaware of hash tags or don't know how to use them. Did you mean #Perl? No, I meant #Perl#....
• Commented on How to write a test description
  Here's one case I've found where no test description is better than having one. With Test::WWW::Mechanize, get_ok() has a default test message that prints the URL that is being fetched. These can often be constructed using query strings which were...
• Commented on Categorizing CPAN modules
  I like the idea of adding tags, but would like the public to be able to tag modules, not just module authors. For example, I have some friends on Flickr who take great photos, but don't tag them. I follow...
• Commented on A concise forking idiom in pure Perl
  That's a creative use of "given". Looks reasonable to me. Thanks for sharing it....
• Commented on Find my signature in Google NY
  It's in a signed copy of Learning Perl....
• Commented on Perl testing with Jenkins/Hudson: avoiding some pitfalls
  I also tried the TAP plugin for Jenkins/Hudson and couldn't get it to work. We are doing parallel testing with -j4, so the hack of manually running each script with "perl" won't work. and I couldn't get --archive to produce...
• Posted Thanks to Olaf Alders for HTTP::CookieMonster to Mark Stosberg

  The old, horrible way, to get a cookie by name with LWP::UserAgent or WWW::Mechanize:

  my $cookie = $a->cookie_jar->{COOKIES}->{".$SITE_DOMAIN"}->{'/'}->{$COOKIE_NAME};
  

  …
• Commented on Ricardo is pushing for smart match changes.
  Richardo, thanks for the proposal, and Brian, thanks for highlighting an important issue for broader community input. Ricardo's proposal looked like a reasonable simplification to me. For some perspective, I was only able to recently get our production system upgraded...
• Commented on Goodbye // I'll miss you
  I'm one of those people stuck on Perl 5.8.x who uses your modules, and I think you. We are working on getting upgraded to Perl 5.14, but there are a number of related projects involved that will take time to...
• Commented on The End Of 5.6 Is Nigh!
  We still have some 5.8.2 machines in production, but we are actively working on getting everything upgraded to 5.14.x, which should hopefully be completed in a few months, all factors considered....
• Commented on What should be core in Perl 5.16?
  One quality of modules that makes them useful to be in the core is if they have an XS component. For me, I use modules that depend on HTML::Parser frequently. For example, cPanel has a nice tool that allows shared-hosting...
• Commented on Syntax police?
  I've submitted patches to multiple projects to update their POD to eliminate indirect object notation. The patches have always been well received. There is a reasonable chance that the module author would accept the patch, even if they haven't gotten...
• Commented on Rakudo is ...
  I think the Perl 6 spec should be smaller. Save some details for 6.1. If the spec was smaller, the correctness work could be done sooner, and the performance work could begin sooner....
• Commented on Promoting Perl is fun
  I generally think Gabor has good ideas about promoting Perl. I appreciate his energy and efforts, and am sorry they are met with such negativity and unconstructive feedback in some cases....
• Commented on How Not To Write A Subroutine
  This post relates the code snippet with CGI and CGI.pm. To be clear, this code is not in CGI.pm. While CGI.pm may be old, and there are other good options, CGI.pm generally works securely, correctly and with good performance and...
• Commented on The Problems With CGI
  Hello Mike, I take issue with some aspects of your premise: modern web applications typically run in persistent environments. They do? Based on what metrics? I don't consider PHP applications to be persistent, and they are quite popular. For anything...

Comment Threads

• Bill Ruppert commented on Perl 7 - Final Thoughts

  I liked the Perl 7 idea, but it seems clear that Perl 5 is the end of the line (major number wise) for the Perl we use now. The future of Perl is Perl 6 and its successors, Perl 7, etc. It's Larry's call as it should be. Don't like it, fork it.

  For those of us who like the language we are currently programming, the Perl5 2013 concept makes a lot of sense. It conveys a sense of at least being currently maintained, even if not a sense of big, new changes. Beats the heck out of 5.18. Not the whole loaf, but a few nice slices.

  "Oh look, those funny folks are still using that…

• Olof Stockhaus commented on Perl 7 - Final Thoughts

  Ooops, I didn't intend to open that can of worms again.

  At least it haven't made it's way into the perl porters mailing list thread (yet!).

  I guess that the only way the language would possibly be renamed is if someone forks the current implementation and is successful enough to bring the community with it. The biggest problem I see with that is that there are only a handful of people that knows the perl core source code well enough to successfully fork it and they have their hands full with the core as it is. And in all likelihood they are not interested in forking the core …

• Salvador Fandiño commented on Perl 7 - Final Thoughts

  Pe(a)rl++ == Rhodochrosite

  Though, I would be more worried about who is going to make the successor of Perl 5 a reality than about its name!

• CosmicNet commented on Perl 7 - Final Thoughts

  Lets just rename it to Peril, then go on rapid release cycle like FireFox. Then we can have a new major release every couple of months, and all the huge benefits that have come with that: https://wiki.mozilla.org/RapidRelease/Calendar

  Of course, I'm joking.

  I can't help the feeling that if the effort from all these years of Perl 5/Perl 6 attrition, had been directed into Perl 6 as they naturally should have been, it would have been ready some time ago. Instead the dog chooses to keep chewing on it's own leg.

• adamlounds commented on How to write a test description

  Loving this test style.

  We're trying to follow a strict two-line format in the perl code, which makes the tests really easy to skim through.

  ok my $thing = Classname->new( %args ),
    "Can create a Classname";
  
  is $thing->accessor, $expected_value,
    "... and attribute was set ok";
  
  ok my $result = $thing->method_call,
    "... and can method_call";
  
  is $result, $expected_value,
    "... and method_call returned thing_we_wanted";
  

  /me is enjoying not creating tmpvars on their own lines all the time and having oodles of space to write test descriptions :-)