blogs.perl.org

Here is the final post about AWS S3 Server Side Encryption where I demo encryption using Customer Key.Please check out the link for more information: https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-customer-key-encryption

Hi, you my have noticed our "ad" showing up on on metacpan.org - many thanks to David Cross for helping us out there! You may have to hit "refresh" a few times to see it (but not too many, please! xD)

Now, as much as we'd love to see everyone in Austin, TX on July 3-4, and it's sure to be a lot of fun, the PCC is a hybrid event, meaning we do permit remote attendees and worthy talks.

We already have many exciting and highly technical Perl talks. But we are selfish and we want more. It is okay if you even repeat a talk you've given elsewhere. We offer several levels of talks, including lightning talks, which we all know is how most of us got started. Do not be afraid! :-)

• https://www.meetup.com/austin-perl-mongers/events/305855419/
• https://www.papercall.io/perlcommunity
• https://www.papercall.io/cfps/6270/submissions/new

Just Aristotle and Graham this week.

• This week CVE-2025-40909 was assigned, for an issue we were already tracking (GH #23010). We coordinated during the week to get a fix merged (GH #23019) before 5.41.13. Thanks to Vincent Lefèvre for the report and Leon Timmermans for the fix. During the meeting we discussed getting out security releases for this soon.
• We caught up on release blocker triage. We are tentatively all clear: all previously identified release blockers are now resolved, and there were no new blockers in recent issues and pull requests – except possibly a 32-bit Windows build issue we are not yet certain about. We are keeping an eye on that.

[P5P posting of this summary]

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.

Playing with AWS S3 using LocalStack platform.
Please check out the link below for more information.
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/localstack-aws-s3

This post is adapted from my notes and recollection of the welcome speech I gave on the morning of Thursday May 1st, 2025, just before the initial stand-up.

This post is brought to you by Booking.com, the Diamond sponsor for the Perl Toolchain Summit 2025.

Booking.com is proud to sponsor the 2025 Perl Toolchain Summit as Perl continues to be a vital piece of our technology stack. We continue to rely on the Perl platform and tooling to serve millions of customers every day, helping them experience the world. Other than our interest in the evolution and modernization of the platform and tooling, the PTS is also a great opportunity to connect with the larger community and share learnings about how other companies and projects are tackling the challenges of working with Perl at scale (talking about both in systems and teams scalability), and how Perl fits an ever-changing and diverse technological landscape in other organizations.

You can learn more about Booking.com at the end of this article.

We were all present.

• The status of smartmatch came up. It is in a weird position where it used to be part of the language, then was retroactively declared an experiment, then deprecated and slated for removal, and now it’s no longer being removed – in fact we’ve added a feature for it, and not an experimental one either. The bottom line is that it’s not deprecated any more and not experimental either, but is now just a negative feature like indirect and multidimensional: it’s a mistake we made that will remain part of older language versions but will not be included in future feature bundles.
• Release blocker triage continues as ever. Quite a few new issues came in recently, of which we identified two issues and one pull request as blockers. One of the issues and the PR pertain to the documentation of the status of smartmatch; we expect that there may be more inconsistencies in the documentation which will need to be ironed out.

[P5P posting of this summary]

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:

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

Re-creating CVE-2024-56406 using docker container with affected Perl versions.
Please check out the link below for more information.
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/cve-2024-56406

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. :)

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.

Happy Friday, this is my first hand experience with AWS Bedrock.
Please check out the link for more information:
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-bedrock