OK, I confess: PerlIO::via is not a module that I use every day. It allows you, easily, and with minimal code, to modify an I/O stream before it gets to the reader of the stream. or after the writer has written it. All you do is write (say) My::Module conforming to the parts of the PerlIO::via interface you need, and provide it to the second argument of open() or binmode() as…

Perl lets you use almost anything as a regular expression delimiter. It is usual to use punctuation of some sort, but characters that match /\w/ can be used provided there is white space between the operator and the delimiter: m X foo Xsmx compiles and matches 'foobar'. In the presence of use utf8; you can go wild.

A query on the Perl 5 Porters Mailing List (a.k.a. 'p5p') a few days ago asked for opinions about ="https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/per…