This Week in Perl 6, July 20-26, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists, with p6i discussing garbage collection schemes, p6l rethinking object attribute access and plotting GC APIs and access, and p6c reporting problems, documenting PIL, and discussing the grammar.
[Perl.com]
Using Perl to Manage Plist Files
A common question is how to manage complex Plist files with scripts. The defaults command, which is often used to manage simple values in Plist files, does not easily manage the nested arrays or dictionaries that are present in most Plist files. In this first article of a two-part series, James Reynolds pulls together a little Perl and Cocoa to solve this problem.
[MacDevCenter.com]
An Introduction to Test::MockDBI
It is a sweet and fitting thing to test your code, but if you're working with non-Perl, you'll likely run into difficult situations. For example, how do you force a database connection failure to test that you can recover? Mark Leighton Fisher has an answer: mock up the database. He explains the design, goals, and use of Test::MockDBI.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, July 13-19, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Pugs running on a JavaScript engine, GMC plans for Parrot, and typechecking and metamodel discussions about Perl 6.
[Perl.com]
Ten Essential Development Practices
Perl lets you be productive in everything from quick and dirty throwaway programs to big, business-critical applications. Building the latter requires some discipline, though. Damian Conway shares ten essential development practices to make your Perl programming easier, more reliable, and even more enjoyable.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, July 5-12, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists, with p6l discussing metamodels, MMD, and invocants; p6i handling Leo's new calling conventions; and p6c plotting on retargeting Pugs to different back ends.
[Perl.com]
Building Navigation Menus
Well-designed websites are easy to navigate, with sensible menus, breadcrumb trails, and the information you need within three clicks of where you are. Rather than tediously coding navigation structures by hand, why not consider using a Perl module to generate them for you? Shlomi Fish shows how to use his HTML::Widgets::NavMenu module.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, June 29-July 5, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with YAPC::NA hackathons, a request for better archives, DBI v2 plans from Tim Bunce, and PGE interoperability questions.
[Perl.com]
Annotating CPAN
Perl has voluminous documentation, both in the core distribution and in thousands of CPAN modules. That doesn't make it all perfect, though, and the amount of documentation can make it daunting to find and recommend changes or clarifications. The Perl Foundation recently sponsored Ivan Tubert-Brohman to fix this; here's how he built AnnoCPAN, an annotation service for module documentation.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, June 21-28, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with p6c discussing self-hosting options for Perl 6, Parrot segfaults and changes; and AUTOLOAD and self method invocation discussions continuing on p6l.
[Perl.com]
Data Munging with Sprog
Sprog is a graphical programming environment written in Perl, programmable by connecting components visually and setting their properties. Sure, you've heard that promise before--but Grant McLean demonstrates how to retrieve and munge tabular data from a web page into LDIF files without writing a lick of code.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, June 8-21, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with the Austrian Perl Hackathon, rejiggered registers, frames, and calling conventions in Parrot, and lots of bikeshed painting in Perl 6 language.
[Perl.com]
Understanding and Using Iterators
Unlike some other programming languages, Perl makes it easy to process lists of items. Lists and arrays aren't always suitable for every task, though; sometimes you need something more powerful. Sometimes you need an iterator. Joshua Gatcomb explains where iterators are useful and how to use them.
[Perl.com]
Independently Parsing Perl
Stodgy, boring languages have great editors. What's keeping Perl from refactoring support, perfect syntax highlighting, and other advanced transformation techniques? It's really difficult to parse Perl. Fortunately, Adam Kennedy's PPI project provides a standalone Perl parser that operates correctly on all but 28 of the 38,000 CPAN modules. Here's how it works and what you can do with it.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, June 1-7, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Parrot 0.2.1 released, mod_parrot bundled with mod_pugs (or vice versa), an end to the reduce operator debate, and a paean to Parrot lead architect Dan Sugalski.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, May 25, 2005-May 31, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Parrot keys, MMD, Tcl, Python discussion, Pugs' continued evolution, introspection, generation, and more Perl 6 meta-programming goodness.
[Perl.com]
Catalyst
MVC frameworks are hot again in the web development world. Perl has a rich array of choices. One new contender is Catalyst, an elegant platform for database-backed applications. Developers Jesse Sheidlower and Sebastian Riedel explain the design goals and build an Ajax-powered wiki in 30 lines of code.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, May 18 - 24, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Inline::Pugs bridging the gap, ParTcl coming into existence, and many questions about multimethod dispatch in Perl 6.
[Perl.com]
Manipulating Word Documents with Perl
Unix hackers love their text editors for plain-text manipulatey goodness--especially Emacs and Vim with their wonderful extension languages (and sometimes Perl bindings). Don't fret, defenestrators-to-be. Andrew Savikas demonstrates how to use Perl for your string-wrangling when you have to suffer through using Word.
[Perl.com]
Build a Wireless Gateway with Perl
Tired of programming and want to tackle some system administration? How about using Perl to manage the wireless gateway you've always meant to set up? Alptekin Cakircali shows off his AWLP project, which combines Linux and Perl to make a customizable wireless gateway out of an old PC.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, May 3, 2005 - May 17, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Pugs gaining object support, Parrot 0.2.0 released, and Perl 6 going through a reduction (though not in volume).
[Perl.com]
Inside YAPC::NA 2005
One of the success stories of the Perl community is the series of self-organized Yet Another Perl Conferences. This year's North American YAPC is in Toronto in late June. chromatic recently interviewed Richard Dice, the man behind YAPC::NA 2005 to discuss how to put together a conference and what to expect from the conference and its attendant extracurricular activities in lovely Toronto.
[Perl.com]
Massive Data Aggregation with Perl
What do you do if you have a huge array of disparate data sources from which to collect and present data in multiple formats? First, reach for Perl. Then...good question. Fred Moyer explains how his team designed and built a system to aggregate and present huge amounts of data with Perl.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, April 26 - May 3, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Pugs 6.2.2 released, Parrot freezing for a release, and the great debate over invocant naming continuing.
[Perl.com]
People Behind Perl: brian d foy
brian d foy is a long-time Perl hacker and leader, having founded the Perl Mongers, written and helped to write many useful CPAN modules, and recently founding, publishing, and editing The Perl Review. Perl.com recently interviewed brian about his work, history, and future plans.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, April 20 - 26, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Pugs 6.2.1 released, more MMD schemes, and big discussions of blocks, invocants, and parameters.
[Perl.com]
Automating Windows Applications with Win32::OLE
Many Windows applications are surprisingly automable through OLE, COM, DCOM, et cetera. Even better, this automation works through Perl as well. Henry Wasserman walks through the process of discovering how to automate Internet Explorer components to automate web testing from Perl.
[Perl.com]
This Week in Perl 6, April 12 - 19, 2005
Matt Fowles summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with Pugs 6.2.0 released, documentation patches, a switch to Subversion, and scope, whitespace, and character class questions.
[Perl.com]
Building Good CPAN Modules
Your code is amazing. It works exactly as you intended. You've decided to give back, to share it with the world by uploading it to the CPAN. Before you do, though, there are a few fiddly details about cross-platform and cross-version compatibility to keep in mind. Rob Kinyon gives several guidelines about writing CPAN modules that will work everywhere they will be useful.
[Perl.com]
This Fortnight in Perl 6, April 4-11, 2005
Piers Cawley summarizes the Perl 6 mailing lists with a new plan for Ponie, a Parrot/Pugs hackathon announcement, and identity tests.
[Perl.com]
Perl Code Kata: Mocking Objects
One problem with many examples of writing test code is that they fake up a nice, perfect, self-contained world and proceed to test it as if real programs weren't occasionally messy. Real programs have to deal with external dependencies and work around odd failures, for example. How do you test that? In this Perl Code Kata, Stevan Little presents exercises in using Test::MockObject to make the messy real world more testable.
[Perl.com]
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