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This year's London Perl and Raku Workshop will take place on 26th Oct 2024. Without our sponsors this event would not happen and we would like to thank them, starting with our diamond sponsor:

Deriv, a leading online broker with 25 years in the industry, is proud to sponsor the London Perl & Raku Workshop 2024.

As a company with strong ties to the Open Source community, our connection to Perl is more than just practical—it's a passion. Over the years, we have actively used Modern Perl and contributed to shaping its future, including beta testing key developments like Object::Pad, which are crucial for advancing the language's capabilities.

Perl is the backbone of our back-end operations, proving to be a robust, reliable, and versatile language that meets our needs. Its community-driven growth, notably through CPAN, continually boosts its capabilities and reflects our values of collaboration and innovation.

Everyone was present this week.

• We devised a strategy to deal with smartmatch, starting with reverting its removal. A separate email with details will follow.
• We spent too much time talking about putting the apostrophe package separator behind a feature. That too will be outlined in a separate email. A github issue will follow.
• We want to revert the open undef patch, for a variety of reasons, such as breaking autodie. We decided the steps to handle this.

[P5P posting of this summary]

These are some answers to the Week 289, Task 2, of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on October 6, 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: Jumbled Letters

An Internet legend dating back to at least 2001 goes something like this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This article on the Python Software Foundation inspired me to write this. Serving on the board of a foundation isn't all about glamorous meetings and fancy titles. Still, I'd like to share how I ended up here and what I've learned along the way. Opinions are my own.

What Exactly is TPF?

TPF stands for The Perl Foundation, a U.S.-based non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the Perl language through open discussion, collaboration, and, of course, code.

TPF got its start around 2001 when Perl was super popular. The organization was originally needed to run a conference; because apparently, you need an official entity to book conference venues. The foundation was also actively raising funds and spending money on Perl development grants at that time, and they've been doing it ever since.

Hi All

Why aren't my links appearing....

Note: The first 3 links point to my personal page: http://savage.net.au

The Perl wiki has been renamed from Perl.html - which was too generic - to Perl.Wiki.html:
https://savage.net.au/misc/Perl.Wiki.html

The Mojolicious wiki is at:
https://savage.net.au/misc/Mojolicious.Wiki.html

The Debian wiki is at:
https://savage.net.au/misc/Debian.Wiki.html

Note: The next 2 links point to my new website: https://symboliciq.au

This will accompany my upcoming Youtube channel

The Symbolic Language wiki is at:
https://symboliciq.au/misc/Symbolic.Language.Wiki.html

The Personal Security wiki is at:
https://symboliciq.au/misc/Personal.Security.Wiki.html

The schedule for this year's London Perl & Raku Workshop is now visible: https://act.yapc.eu/lpw2024/schedule. Please please please (please please) make a point to mark those talks that you plan to attend as this will allow us to tweak the schedule a bit if some talks are more heavily favourited than others.

The venue opens for attendees at 9am and we plan to start talks at 9:30am. Drinks will be available throughout the day, hence no need to have dedicated breaks there. Lunch will be at midday for an hour, there are plenty of options close to the venue to grab something to eat. If we receive a couple more sponsors we can have lunch at the venue, but currently that won't be possible.

There are a couple of spots left for talks, otherwise the schedule is full. Please don't let this put you off submitting a talk as it's possible some speakers may have to change their plan.

These are some answers to the Week 289, Task 1, of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on October 6, 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: Third Maximum

You are given an array of integers, @ints.

Write a script to find the third distinct maximum in the given array. If third maximum doesn’t exist then return the maximum number.

Example 1

Input: @ints = (5, 6, 4, 1)
Output: 4

The first distinct maximum is 6.
The second distinct maximum is 5.
The third distinct maximum is 4.

Example 2

Back from holidays all three of us were in.

• We discussed the recently reported closure memory leak in 5.40, which existed in older perls and was fixed in a way that caused other breakage instead, and we agreed that if it isn’t fixable we need to address it by at least providing guidance on how to code around it
• We discussed the removal of apostrophe as a package separator, and agreed that it should likely be feature-guarded, but the verdict on the fallout is not yet in
• We continued the discussion on how to simultaneously encourage low ecosystem churn while helping users enjoy all the latest goodies
• We agreed on writing a few position paper articles to explain our thinking and the attitude we think a PSC should take

[P5P posting of this summary]

The following script leaks memory in perl v5.40, and it did not in v5.38:

use Scalar::Util 'weaken';
my $z;
{
    my $x;
    my $y;
    my sub my_sub {
        $x = shift;
        return sub { $y };
    };
    my $subscriber = {};
    $subscriber->{foo} = my_sub($subscriber);
    weaken($z = $subscriber);
}
say 'leak = ', int defined $z;

This year's London Perl and Raku Workshop is just 4 weeks away. We now have a pretty full schedule, so the call for presentations is now closed, however we might have room for one or two more talks depending circumstances on the day. If you really think you have talk you want to give then get in touch.

As part of the workshop we would like to ask attendees if any are willing to volunteer for helping out on the day. This will likely include:

• Room monitoring and video equipment operation
• Registration of attendees
• General assistance of organisers and attendees

We are probably looking for three people to help out on the day. Please contact the organisers if you would like to help out.

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:

• Deriv
• CV-Library
• Geekuni
• Geizhals Preisvergleich
• Datensegler e.U.
• SpareRoom
• Oleeo

These are some answers to the Week 284, Task 2, of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on September 1, 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: Relative Sort

You are given two list of integers, @list1 and @list2. The elements in the @list2 are distinct and also in the @list1.

Write a script to sort the elements in the @list1 such that the relative order of items in @list1 is same as in the @list2. Elements that is missing in @list2 should be placed at the end of @list1 in ascending order.

Example 1

Input: @list1 = (2, 3, 9, 3, 1, 4, 6, 7, 2, 8, 5)
       @list2 = (2, 1, 4, 3, 5, 6)
Ouput: (2, 2, 1, 4, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Example 2

We were all present this week:

• We rehashed the Perl version number discussion from last meeting now that we are all present. We will put together a document with our thoughts on this.
• We will create a GitHub issue to make apostrophe removal feature-guarded.
• Smartmatch (not so surprisingly) turns out to be too big to fail. Given its unique history, we are considering options for how to proceed with it in a more gradual way without giving up on the deprecation.
• Regarding open undef (GH #22490), we agreed that Perl should support undef as a value and not just as a literal for the filename (and warn for the useless modes)

[P5P posting of this summary]

Earlier today I read a post from Neil Bowers inviting CPAN authors to consider being involved in CPAN day, which is coincidentally today.

It prompted me to take a serious look at the modules I have uploaded to CPAN and acknowledge that some of them are no longer valuable. Indeed as I reviewed one of them I was none too kind in my judgements against the author.

That made it quite easy for me to see how I can easily participate in CPAN day. I'm removing a couple of modules:

1. Business::Worldpay::Junior - I don't think this integration option even exists any more and I certainly haven't actively maintained this for years.
2. Net::UKDomain::Nominet::Automaton - Nominet withdrew the Automaton in 2015

Those are now scheduled for deletion on Monday next week.

I'll need to review some of the others and consider whether to open them up for anyone who is interested to take over as maintainer.

For now I've done my bit.

Sometimes the unexpected happens and must be shared with the world … this one is such a case.

Recently, I’ve started experimenting with Perl for workflow management and high-level supervision of low level code for data science applications. A role I’d reserve for Perl in this context is that of lifecycle management of memory buffers, using the Perl application to “allocate” memory buffers and shuttle it between computing components written in C, Assembly, Fortran and the best hidden gem of the Perl world, the Perl Data Language. There at least 3 ways that Perl can be used to allocate memory buffers:

xe.com is a well known site for calculating the exchange value between the currencies of the world. However, there are times I’d prefer to query it from the command line. They have an API, but it’s not free, so I ended up writing a quick and dirty script that scrapes the web page and uses regexps to extract the data.

I know you’re not supposed to parse HTML with regexps, but sometimes, you can get away with it for a while. Also, this script is not that serious, so it can fail without hurting anything.

Just Aristotle and Graham.

The notes from this meeting were lost, but have been reconstructed from memory.

• We had a discussion about what future versioning (Perl 7) should look like.
• Discussed if we will need to make changes to apostrophe as package separator, and smartmatch removal, given the fallout they have had.

[P5P posting of this summary]

These are some answers to the Week 287, Task 2, of the Perl Weekly Challenge organized by Mohammad S. Anwar.

Spoiler Alert: This weekly challenge deadline is due in a few days from now (on September 22, 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: Valid Number

You are given a string, $str.

Write a script to find if it is a valid number.

Conditions for a valid number:

- An integer number followed by an optional exponent.
- A decimal number followed by an optional exponent.
- An integer number is defined with an optional sign '-' or '+' followed by digits.

Decimal Number:

A decimal number is defined with an optional sign '-' or '+' followed by one of the following definitions: - Digits followed by a dot '.'. - Digits followed by a dot '.' followed by digits. - A dot '.' followed by digits.

Exponent:

Why does this not give flinstone and rubble?

$fn{"fred"} = "flintstone";
$fn{"barney"} = "rubble";
foreach $per (qw< barney fred >) {
print " he's $per $fn($per).\n";
}

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:

• Deriv
• CV-Library
• Geekuni
• Geizhals Preisvergleich
• Datensegler e.U.

If you would like to sponsor LPW then please have a look at the options here: https://act.yapc.eu/lpw2024/sponsoring.html

After over a month without a PSC meeting, this was the first meeting of the new, shiny PSC. Today, we:

• welcomed Aristotle, and said goodbye to Paul
• discussed the current projects in flight, the PPC process and the onboarding tasks (preparing for next year already!)
• talked about POD, docstrings, and the Perl release process