Acme::Comment
/* This is a Perl comment */ Commenting in Perl “But what?”, I hear you think, “Perl doesn’t have multi-line comments!” That’s true. Perl doesn’t have multiline comments. But why is that? What is wrong with them? Mostly, it…
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Proxy Objects
In your time as a Perl programmer, it becomes almost inevitable that at some point you will have to manage in-memory tree structures of some sort. When you do this, it becomes important to be aware of how Perl…
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Where Wizards Fear To Tread
One of the big new features in perl 5.8 is that we now have real working threads available to us through the threads pragma. However, for us module authors who already have to support our modules on different versions…
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Achieving Closure
Maybe you’ve heard about closures; they’re one of those aspects of Perl - like object-oriented programming - that everyone raves about and you can’t really see the big deal until you play around with them and then they just click….
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Optimizing Your Perl
Is your Perl program taking too long to run? This might be because you’ve chosen a data structure or algorithm that takes a long time to run. By rethinking how you’ve implemented a function, you might be able to…
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Visual Perl
Jumbo shrimp, military intelligence - Visual Perl? ActiveState built its reputation by bringing Perl to the Windows platform, thereby extending the reach of Perl and the size and nature of the Perl community. However, regardless of the Windows port,…
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Creating Custom Widgets
In this Perl/Tk article, I’ll discuss balloon help, photos and widget subclassing. Help balloons can be attached to widgets, menu items, and, as we’ll see here, individual canvas items. Subclassing a Perl/Tk widget is also known as creating a…
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Object-Oriented Perl
I’ve recently started learning to play the game of Go. Go and Perl have many things in common - the basic stuff of which they are made, the rules of the game, are relatively simple, and hide an amazing…
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wxPerl: Another GUI for Perl
wxPerl? If you don’t just use Perl for creating CGI scripts, you’ll probably have to create some kind of front-end for your applications sooner or later. You might use the Curses library, but if you want a nice GUI, you…
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Choosing a Templating System
Introduction Go on, admit it: You’ve written a templating system. It’s OK, nearly everyone has at some point. You start with something beautifully simple like $HTML =~ s/$(\w+)/${$1}/g and end up adding conditionals, loops and includes until you’ve created…
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Reversing Regular Expressions
Regular Expressions are arguably one of Perl’s most useful and powerful tools. The ability to match complex strings is one of the things that makes Perl the effective “Practical Extraction and Reporting Language” that it is. The regular expression…
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A Beginner's Introduction to POE
A Beginner’s Introduction to POE -> By Dennis Taylor, with Jeff Goff What Is POE, And Why Should I Use It? Table of Contents POE Design A Simple Example That’s All For Today Related Links Most of the programs we…
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Beginners Intro to Perl - Part 6
Editor’s note: this venerable series is undergoing updates. You might be interested in the newer versions, available at: A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Regular Expressions…
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Beginners Intro to Perl - Part 5
Objects and Modules -> Editor’s note: this venerable series is undergoing updates. You might be interested in the newer versions, available at: A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s…
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Beginners Intro to Perl - Part 4
Editor’s note: this venerable series is undergoing updates. You might be interested in the newer versions, available at: A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Regular…
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Red Flags Return
What’s Wrong With This Picture? -> Astute readers had a number of comments about last week’s Program Repair Shop and Red Flags article. Control Flow Puzzle In the article, I had a section of code that looked like this: $_…
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Beginner's Introduction to Perl - Part 3
s/// and m// -> Editor’s note: this venerable series is undergoing updates. You might be interested in the newer versions, available at: A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s…
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Program Repair Shop and Red Flags
What’s wrong with this picture? The Interface The Code open_info_file start_info_file start_next_part read_next_node Looking for the menu Putting It All Together Red Flags Don’t Repeat Code eof() return 0 and return undef Brief Confession What’s wrong with this picture?…
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Beginner's Introduction to Perl - Part 2
Editor’s note: this venerable series is undergoing updates. You might be interested in the newer versions, available at: A Beginner’s Introduction to Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Files and Strings with Perl 5.10 A Beginner’s Introduction to Regular…
