Relaunching Perl.com
Welcome to the new Perl.com! It’s a great time to program Perl, and our intent is that Perl.com can show off our language, libraries, and community.
Inside Perl 5.12
Perl 5.12 has just come out. A rejuvenated development process helps ensure a bright future for Perl as it enters its third decade of making easy things easy and hard things possible. Here’s what you can expect when you upgrade…
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A Website in a Minute Using Dancer, the Effortless Web Framework
While Perl has a few heavy hitters in the web framework world (Catalyst, Jifty, CGI::App), sometimes they can seem like overkill. When writing a light web service or a high-end but not-as-complex website, you might want something smaller and simpler….
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Testing Perl 5.12.0 RC 1 with App::perlbrew
I’m working on a project with Curtis “Ovid” Poe and Adrian Howard. We use Perl 5.10.1, but because we control which version of Perl 5 we use, there’s no reason not to test with Perl 5.12.0 - and if we…
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perl5i Makes More Simple Things Simple
Suppose that you want to load a module dynamically (you have the name in a scalar), then alias a function from that module to a new name in another class. In other words, you want a renaming import. How do…
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Idioms, or How to Write Perlish Perl
Any language—programming or natural—develops idioms, or common patterns of expression. The earth revolves, but we speak of the sun rising or setting. We talk of clever hacks and nasty hacks and slinging code. We ping each other on IRC to…
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More Code, Less Cruft: Managing Distributions with Dist::Zilla
Every software distribution is a bunch of files written and maintained by programmers. The files are of three types: code, documentation, and crap—though this distinction is too subtle. Much of the documentation and code is crap, too. It’s pointless. It’s…
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Beginner's Introduction to Perl 5.10, Part 2
A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 talked about the core elements of Perl: variables (scalars, arrays, and hashes), math operators and some basic flow control (the for statement). Now it’s time to interact with the world. (A Beginner’s Introduction…
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A Beginner's Introduction to Perl 5.10
First, a Little Sales Pitch Editor’s note: this series is based on Doug Sheppard’s Beginner’s Introduction to Perl. A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 explains how to use files and strings, and A Beginner’s Introduction to…
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Using Amazon S3 from Perl
Data management is a critical and challenging aspect for any online resource. With exponentially growing data sizes and popularity of rich media, even small online resources must effectively manage and distribute a significant amount of data. Moreover, the peace…
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Reverse Callback Templating
Programmers have long recognized that separating code logic from presentation is good. The Perl community has produced many fine systems for doing just this. While there are many systems, they largely fall within two execution models, pipeline and callback…
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Elements of Access Control
Why Gates? In a perfect world we wouldn’t do things we should not. However the world is not like this; people do forbidden things sometimes. This also applies to computer systems used by more than one person. Almost everyone…
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How to Tell Your Perl Story (at OSCON)
brian d foy is the author of Mastering Perl, now available in its second edition, as well as several other Perl books. As the founder of Perl mongers, he’s been active in the Perl community for almost 20 years. Ever…
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Memories of 20 Years of Perl
For Perl’s 20th anniversary, several Perl programmers reflect on their experiences with the language.
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Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...
I think, to most people, scripting is a lot like obscenity. I can’t define it, but I’ll know it when I see it. Here are some common memes floating around: Simple language “Everything is a string” Rapid prototyping Glue…
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PDF Processing with Perl
Adobe’s PDF has become a standard for text documents. Most office products can export their content into PDF. However, this software reaches its limits if you want advanced tasks such as combining different PDF documents into one single document…
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Making Perl Reusable with Modules
Perl software development can occur at several levels. When first developing the idea for an application, a Perl developer may start with a short program to flesh out the necessary algorithms. After that, the next step might be to…
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Option and Configuration Processing Made Easy
When you first fire up your editor and start writing a program, it’s tempting to hardcode any settings or configuration so you can focus on the real task of getting the thing working. But as soon as you have…
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Better Code Through Destruction
Larry Wall said that Perl makes easy things easy and hard things possible. Perl is good both for writing a two-line script that saves the world at the last minute (well, at least it saves you and your project)…
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Everyday Perl 6
Perl 6 will soon be here. How will programming in Perl 6 be different from programming in Perl 5 for your average Perl programmer? The answer is: very different yet very much the same. A Perl 6 program viewed…
