DEV Community: Gábor Szabó

Perl 🐪 Weekly #796 - Perl and PHP

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:24:09 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 796

Hi there,

While PHP developments are rushing to resolve "php2shell" RCE vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) caused by memory corruption and stale worker states, professionals that have worked with Perl approach the event with mixed feelings. For years, both languages used a very similar approach towards utilising scripts, however, owing to PHP's implementation of multi-request process worker model, which can be found in both PHP-FPM and mod_php by Apache, PHP was constantly vulnerable to a number of state leak defects in the way that traditional CGI or PSGI/Plack architectures would have never experienced.

Now turning our attention from engineering defense to celebrating the community, a gentle reminder that registration and talk proposals are open for the London Perl & Raku Workshop (LPW) 2026. The event is scheduled to take place on Saturday, November 21st, 2026, at The Cafe at Zoopla in Central London. If you want to either submit a talk for the general program or present your ideas in a separate breakout hackathon session, make sure to register well in advance.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

The Perl and Raku Foundation by the Numbersby Olaf Alders

Olaf analyses 25 years of financial data regarding The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF) from the public records of IRS filings. According to Olaf's report, TPRF suffered a significant downturn after 2020 due to the pandemic and conference declines, but recovered strongly in 2024-2025.

Articles

Ex::Op: A drop-in replacement for Exporterby Robert Acock

Ex::Op is the swift, XS alternative to Perl’s classic Exporter, and uses a new op keyword. It speeds up module imports and loop executions considerably by removing call frames, as well as the costs of passing @_.

Why the PAGI spec is moving to Perl 5.24by John Napiorkowski

The PAGI specification and the tools related to it are increasing the minimum Perl version to 5.24. This change is largely due to updates from its major dependencies (Future) and needs to fix problematic features such as the cancellation of asynchronous methods, leading to this clean break and avoiding using shadow methods that were reliant on the previous versions. Thus, anyone with an older version of Perl is invited to prepare for an upgrade.

Apache2::Request: Fixing the buildby Rob Lauer

Rob has made available version 2.18 of libapreq2 (via a new fork of Apache2::Request), thus rescuing the now-defunct library from the incompatible builds of the latest CPAN installers (cpm / cpanm). The update resolves issues with the MakeMaker arguments, creates metadata, and fixes the test suite, thus making old installations of mod_perl work successfully again.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge by Mohammad Sajid Anwar will help you step out of your comfort-zone. You can even win prize money of $50 by participating in the weekly challenge. We pick one champion at the end of the month from among all of the contributors during the month, thanks to the sponsor Marc Perry.

The Weekly Challenge - 397by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Absent Smallest Positive" and "Binary Reflection". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 396by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Finishing Order" and "Trionic Array" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC396by Ali Moradi

This article provides a succinct yet idiomatic answer to a Perl problem, with effective use of in-built functions such as grep, as well as uncomplicated pointer-based scan loops. It tackles the problem head-on with an easy, compact code and thorough test cases.

Trionic Finishby Arne Sommer

In this article, we can clearly see how expressive Raku is due to the amazing functionality of such features as the zip comparison operator (Z<=>), regex captures, and antipairs. The solutions are very brief, thoroughly checked, and show how to program using idiomatic Raku language.

Finishing Order, Trionic Arrayby Bob Lied

The article presents a sensible and engaging analysis on solving problems through algorithms with the help of Perl, simplifying complicated concepts such as filtering lists and keeping an account of circumstances. The systematic style of modifying the information and checking for the occasional slippage makes it a good example of a resource that can be used by programmers on a weekly basis.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 396by Jaldhar H. Vyas

The tutorial demonstrates various features of a cross-language implementation of Raku and Perl for programming tasks that involve manual design of algorithms and maintaining proper tracking of states.

Shaped Finishingby Jorg Sommrey

The article is a brilliant thinker and, mathematically sophisticated, about the weekly challenges by applying PDL slices in Perl as well as tacit verbs with run-length equivalence in J which simplifies the sequence validation to elementary array manipulations in form of matching shapes.

The Weekly Challenge #396by Luboš Kolouch

This article presents an accurate, algorithmically efficient resolution to Weekly Challenge #396. There is a combination of effective O(N) single-pass pointer tracking in the case of the problem related to the Trionic Array, and at the same time simple hash-based lookup technique used for Finishing Order, both described in idiomatic ways for Perl and Python.

Perl Weekly Challenge 396by W Luis Mochan

This article features a sophisticated and efficient solution for Weekly Challenge #396 with the help of concise Perl scripts. The solution tackles Task 1 through the use of a lookup hash used for indexing, as well as Sort::ListUtil for sorting processes. In terms of Task 2, a clear state-machine loop is constructed to track monotonic transitions among neighboring values.

What do I get out of this?by Packy Anderson

This article provides a light-hearted multi-lingual take on Weekly Challenge #396 and explains how once we notice the fundamental sequence properties, we can convert a complicated sorting problem into a simple filtering one in Raku, Perl, Python and Elixir languages.

A race and some hillsby Peter Campbell Smith

This blog post shows a very clear and beautiful method in Perl for solving Task 1: Finishing Order. The approach makes the solution for the challenge simple: since the order array has been transformed into a lookup array and the friends array can be sorted based on their finishing positions in a single sentence. The use of array indexing demonstrates how easy array indexing makes mapping problems.

The Weekly Challenge - 396: Finishing Orderby Reinier Maliepaard

The article presented by Reinier offers a simple introduction to solve the array indexing and sorting problem.

The Weekly Challenge #396by Robbie Hatley

This article discusses Robbie's clear and practical Perl solutions for Weekly Challenge #396. It describes a hash-based index lookup technique for sorting finished orders and a simple directional-state list management technique (UDU) for checking trionic arrays.

Trionic Finishingby Roger Bell West

The post presents practical ideas derived from a multi-lingual view on Weekly Challenge #396, illustrating how various programming approaches (like functional filtering in Crystal and straightforward state machine iteration in Raku) can work with sequence filtering and monotonic validation.

Rakudo

2026.41 Riscy Businessby Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

Everyday date and time handling in Perl with TNovember 29, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #795 - What is Randal Schwartz up to now?

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 02:41:22 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 795

Hi there!

I'd like to welcome myself back home in Israel after a long vacation in Korea and Japan. It was awesome, but we reached the conclusiong that next time we should do it when we are younger... One of the highlights of the trip was the talking to people. It is of course mostly service providers and fellow travelers, but in Seoul we managed to meet some local tech people. Unfortunately I could not manage to arrange a meeting with any of the Perl people there. I felt that as a missed opportunity.

Anyway, we have the online events where we do have some time to chat which I find extremely satisfying. You can also join the Perl-related events or for that matter any event. I'd also like to encourage you to offer a presentation on some topic that is dear to you. It can be Perl. It can be AI. It can be any of other other topics we already cover. We can even discuss topics we don't yet cover. Talk to me!

One particular event that was just announced is the one by Randal Schwartz, you know, the guy from the books 'Learning Perl', 'Programming Perl', and a few others. The title is Synthetic Scars: Giving Autonomous AI Agents the Battle-Tested Memory of a Senior Engineer.

We also have a new episode of Underbar.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Announcements

Modern Perl Tips by Dave Cross

Dave wrote: "Talking to Perl programmers, I’ve noticed how easy it is to miss new additions to the language. We learn Perl, get comfortable with it, and get on with writing code. Meanwhile, Perl keeps moving
Modern Perl Tips is a chance to catch up a little at a time. Each tip takes a useful feature you might not have come across, shows how it helps with an everyday problem, and points you towards the documentation. You might discover a clearer way to write something you’ve been doing for years."

Articles

Adventures in Real-Time MIDI by Gene Boggs

Gene writes: "Since discovering Perl real-time MIDI and writing about creating async drums with it, I’ve dug deeper into what’s possible. I have a few music and MIDI modules on CPAN and like to put them to use in real time, now that I have been enlightened by zen master John Barrett. Ha :D"

URI::PackageURL 2.26 released: PURL and VERS for Perlby Giuseppe Di Terlizzi

URI-PackageURL implements two specifications that are becoming central to software supply-chain security: PURL (Package URL, a uniform way to identify a software package across ecosystems ) and VERS ((Version Range, a universal notation for version ranges)

NetAddr::IP 4.080_05: Please Smoke Testby Dean Hamstead

Dean writes: "NetAddr::IP 4.079 was released in 2016 and has sat there since. I have started working on it recently, and 4.080_05 is the fifth trial release since. It is on CPAN now, and the tarball is ready for you to install!"

pperl 0.6.23 - RANT, REPL and SPEEDby Richard C. Jelinek

pperl aka. perl implemented in Rust.

Context::Vars: Perl variables with context scopeby Robert Acock

Context::Vars gives you a variable that holds a value per context, and the context follows the work: into every sub called, into callbacks, and across await.

CGI From 1993 Still Powers Your AI Agents Today. by Gal Ratner

Some history and why Perl won and then lost the battle.

HAMT: persistent maps, sets and vectors for Perlby Robert Acock

HAMT is a new CPAN distribution that gives Perl three persistent containers: HAMT::Map, HAMT::Set and HAMT::Vector. "Persistent" here means an update never changes the container you call it on. It returns a new one, and the old one stays exactly as it was.

Time::Keeper: Time goes by so slowlyby Robert Acock

Time::Keeper is a new CPAN distribution for dates and times. A value is an instant and the zone it is read in, and that is the whole of it: no state to mutate, no locale object, no copy of the zone rules. It covers the ground Time::Piece and DateTime cover between them, and a method that would change a value hands back a new one and leaves the old one as it was.

Discussion

Doom in Perl 100%DOOM, written in Perl 5.44. The engine stays in Perl. SDL2 is only the window, the sound, and the keyboard.

Perl-Magpie.org (CPAN Tester site that works)

Perl and CVEs - another source to scan

Rust is the Perl of the 21st century

Podcast

Configure - The Underbar, episode 11"During the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026 in Vienna, we interviewed Merijn Brand, the Configure maintainer, about this indispensable piece of the Perl build setup."

Grants

PEVANS Core Perl 5: Grant Report for September 2026by Paul Evans

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): September 2026by Dave Mitchell

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) September 2026by Tony Cook

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 396by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Finishing Order" and "Trionic Array". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 395by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Complex Number" and "Word Squares" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC395by Ali Moradi

Ali shares pragmatic and comprehensive solutions in Perl for the two tasks, where complex number arithmetic and backtracking algorithms for word squares are efficiently implemented. The code is written in an organised manner by the proper use of strict pragmas and well structured modular subroutines.

Complex Squaresby Arne Sommer

This approach to the Raku language shows how expressive it can be by using built-in Complex data type to implement calculations while simultaneously employing user-defined subset to adequately validate the unique string formats required by this challenge. In the case of the word squares task, this program uses backtrack recursive algorithm together with command line verification and clear formatting of its output.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 395by Jaldhar H. Vyas

Here, Jaldhar offers a dual-language simple rundown in Raku and Perl. In Raku, the Complex data type has an input normalisation and denormalisation part with respect to negative imaginary inputs, while Perl uses direct formula based parsing. In addition to that, a strong recursive depth-first search algorithm with prefix tracking is provided for solving the word squares problem in both programming languages.

Complex Squaresby Jorg Sommrey

This article illustrates stylish and solid implementations in Perl and J for multiplying complex numbers and creating word squares. The approaches make use of Regexp::Common for parsing and Math::Complex for calculations and regular recursive backtracking algorithm. The technical description of the methods is extensive and includes quite special formatting of input.

The Weekly Challenge #395by Luboš Kolouch

This entry presents an efficient dual language solution in Perl and Python, which comes with advanced regex parsing capability for the recognition of unusual complex number representations. In particular, the implementation of word squares is well optimised, thanks to the utilisation of a previously computed map of prefixes for smooth backtracking.

Complex Squaresby Matthias Muth

In his blog post, Matthias presents an incredibly neat and idiomatic Perl program. His solution for Task 1 uses Perl's map /-?\d+/g function to get all the numbers directly without any hassle, while Task 2 embodies an ingenious recursive backtracking strategy that follows up both rows and column prefixes at the same time.

There was magic abroad in the air…by Packy Anderson

This post will explore Challenge 395 in Raku, Perl, Python, and Elixir. It offers the reader a humorous reference to the song "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" in addition to clever parsing using regular expressions for working with complex numbers and a nice solution to the word squares problem.

Complex wordsby Peter Campbell Smith

In this article, an interesting exploration of how complex numbers are formatted mathematically is provided along with a smart and elegant Perl code which is used to process coefficients flexibly and multiply them.

Words are Complexby Roger Bell West

In this article, multiple languages provide an interesting perspective on how to solve the word squares problem. Roger describes how to implement a Perl string parser and construct the problem in a variety of languages, including Typst, where multiple solutions can be found by means of breadth-first search (BFS).

The complex squareby Simon Green

The article gives a clear and realistic description of the problem in both Python and Perl, using the built-in feature of complex numbers in Python and performing the arithmetic manually in Perl using regular expressions.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

Everyday date and time handling in Perl with TNovember 29, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #794 - Perl and AI

Gábor Szabó — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 21:40:13 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 794

Hi there,

The combination of artificial intelligence and automatic tooling in open source software maintenance has emerged as a common trend throughout modern development ecosystems, including CPAN. Writers and maintainers are experimenting with various ways of work, ranging from the use of generative AI for quick patch creation and refactoring to the creation of development tools that interact with external language models. These innovations point out to a wider trend in the industry aimed at incorporating AI features into typical software life cycles and source code maintenance processes.

Advocates of AI based development stress major benefits associated with maintainability, speed of work, and solving problems, particularly in the context of outdated programs. Thanks to automation of repetitive processes handled by AI or code-generating programs, the developer team would be able to fix errors, create documentation easier, and minimise routine labour costs.

Unsupervised machine-generated codes bring along the chances of bug occurrences, the chances of APIs not existing and the issues related to licensing laws. With AI tools incorporated in the software distribution processes, open source communities are obliged to deal with serious issues of code quality, sustainability and the important line of distinction between machine generated and human generated codes.

With the growth in the use of AI assisted contributions, open source communities are facing the challenge of review fatigue and diminishing basic trust. In the absence of established rules on disclosure and human verification, maintainers have to devote more time to scrutinise incoming code to detect any secret problems.

In spite of the changes in debates, the ongoing runs of new distributions in CPAN are evidence of the incredible allegiance of the Perl community. Every contribution, ranging from tools upgrades to improving basic utilities, is contributing to strengthening the environment used by developers from all over the globe.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Perl IDE Developer Survey 2026 The Perl IDE Survey provides community driven insights into tools, editors, and workflows. It shows the preferred main choices such as Vim and VS Code and metrics on LSP, testing practices, and other main programming tools.

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.56, CPAN::MetaCurator V 1.33by Ron Savage

Ron Savage has announced the availability of Perl.Wiki (version 1.56), as well as CPAN::MetaCurator (version 1.33). This new version integrates ChangeLog features into the JSTree menu and also improves the overall appearance of the program's interface.

Articles

It's Time to Retire Your @cpan.org Email Addressby Olaf Alders

CPAN authors are reminded by Olaf Alders to stop using their @cpan.org email accounts permanently after the Perl NOC closed the forwarding service earlier this year. The maintenance of correct MetaCPAN profiles and contact information enables the CPAN Security Group to get in touch with maintainers regarding urgent security notifications.

Perl documentation (including POD) with Markdown and Docbookby Andrew Speer

Andrew has presented a novel set of CPAN modules made to connect the latest Markdown and DocBook process with traditional Perl POD. The article underscores the sidecar markdown documentation files that get automatically integrated with source files thanks to MakeMaker's goals together with the software for making rich and static sites.

This week in PSC (238) | 2026-10-05In the most recent update from the Perl Steering Council (Issue #238), discussions regarding the improvement of @INC handling continue. They also provide an update on the results of monitoring the effects of changes made to the way anonymous subroutines generate line numbers.

Minion: The Silent Engine That Turns Perl Into a Modern Architecture Platformby Dani Otelch

Dani describes how the Minion framework, which is part of Mojolicious, supports background job processing and SQL data storage in Perl applications. This article presents a detailed explanation and proposes Minion as a simpler and better option than heavy queue-based systems using Redis or kinds of enterprise-level job queues.

Peta::NN - Surface Detailby Richard C. Jelinek

PetaMem showcases Peta::NN, a zero-dependency neural networking library created from Perl, which can build and train micro-models such as inflection and word category. The post also describes things like modular pipelines, GPU acceleration (using Peta::WebGPU), and tested apps (like accurate German noun pluralisation).

Game::Terminal: Perl game implementations in a terminalby Robert Acock

Robert presents Game::Terminal, a single consolidated CPAN distribution of over twenty terminal-based classic board, card, and arcade games. The post explains how a clean and modular engine design powers both this new CLI menu launcher and an upcoming browser-based gaming platform.

The Long Life of WWW::Shortenby Dave Cross

Dave makes observations regarding the history of Perl for 24 years and looks at the history and origins of the URL shortening module suite WWW::Shorten after making corrections since some of the email addresses from that period are now retired.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 395by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Complex Number" and "Word Squares". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 394by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Alternate Case" and "Alternating Vowels Consonants" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

Regular Alternationsby Jorg Sommrey

The article provides a neat solution to the problems of case-alternation and vowel-consonant sequencers through the use of two languages (Perl and J) represented in one beautiful algorithm. Jorg successfully illustrates the advanced features for controlling the pattern-matching process such as (*MARK) and (*SKIP), which lead to the elimination of unnecessary backtracking.

The Weekly Challenge #394by Luboš Kolouch

This multilingual blog post (in Perl and Python) presents solutions that are simple and well-documented and efficiently mix the techniques of ingenious index matching for the first task with the techniques of effective substring reduction for the second task. The code is simple, easy to read, and demonstrates good algorithms at every step.

Perl Weekly Challenge 394by W Luis Mochan

The blog entry written by Luis Mochan contains useful and very clear Perl-centric coverage of Challenge 394. In tackling Task 1, he makes use of creative combination of character and bit swapping (transforming the cases into binary digits), while for Task 2, he employs an aesthetically pleasing method of filtering fragments / finding the longest string.

Alternate Tune, Alternate Viewby Packy Anderson

Packy's article offers an interesting and informative piece in multiple languages, including Raku, Perl, Python, and Elixir. The article is based on Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans and discusses some innovative methods of how one can solve problems of case-changing and finding subsequences with the use of regex.

Alternation weekby Peter Campbell Smith

The Perl approach employs a straightforward greedy scan-and-shift method along with a two-pass check (the original string and with the first two characters interchanged) to arrive at the minimum number of adjacent swaps. The approach is compact and well-documented and provides a thorough overview of the heuristics employed in the process.

The Weekly Challenge #394by Robbie Hatley

Robbie's Perl solutions demonstrate clever structural reasoning with the help of simple positional cost calculation for switching cases along with structured bitmask/sorting hash for discovering longest alternating vowel-consonants substrings.

Alternating Everythingby Roger Bell West

In his blog, Roger presents a sophisticated technical explanation of the solution to The Weekly Challenge 394 in Perl and Crystal. Task 1 utilises an ingenious breadth-first search on case-state configuration, while Task 2 creates a modular solution through separating the substring extraction and the logic of alternation in a vowel-consonant manner.

The one about alternatingby Simon Green

Simon's blog has come up with a cleanly written solution to the Weekly Challenge 394 problem in Python. In addition, the blog post illustrates Simon's input validation techniques followed by some easy to understand helper functions.

Rakudo

2026.40 Pythonesqueby Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Boston Perl Mongers virtual monthlyOctober 12 2026

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

Want to see more? See the archives of all the issues.

Not yet subscribed to the newsletter? Join us free of charge!

Perl 🐪 Weekly #791 - The Dark Side is here!

Gábor Szabó — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 22:44:02 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 791

Hi there!

MetaCPAN has a night mode.

Underbar has a new episode.

The Lacuana Expanse is back.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Announcements

The Lacuna Expanse: Updates Since We Last Saw Each Other by Natalie Rose

A new community-run reboot of The Lacuna Expanse. TLE Community

Dancer2 2.2.1 released (security)by Jason A. Crome

Dancer2 2.2.0 released; security updates PLEASE READby Jason A. Crome

Podcast

Olaf Kolkman (part 2)by Philippe Bruhat

The Underbar, episode 10. Olaf Kolkman has had a long career in networking and Open Source that led him to be working on Internet Technology, Policy and Advocacy at the Internet Society. In September 2025, we had a long conversation with him. In this second part of our discussion, we discussed the Internet Society (ISOC) and managing volunteer organisations.

Articles

DARK MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODEby Olaf Alders

MetaCPAN Dark mode

NWC2MusicXMLby Nigel Horne

That is NoteWorthy Composer 2 to MusicXML converter Music::NWC2MusicXML

Reflecting on Mirrors — Part IIby Rob Lauer

How to compile WWW::Curl on AIX 7.2 and 7.3 with IBM xlC

WFC in Perl: A Server-Driven UI Approach for PerlBut when I visit WebForms on MetaCPAN it say 'Error rendering POD for WebForms.pm - Requested resource is a binary file'. What does this mean?

Reflecting on Mirrors — Part Iby Rob Lauer

Amazon::S3 v2.1.0 - On Being an S3 Clientby Rob Lauer

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.54, etcby Ron Savage

Zero is a measurement: reading JSON latency events in Perl

Discussion

How to report bugs on cpan.org?

Perl

This week in PSC (235) | 2026-09-14

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 392by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Convert Palindrome" and "Words Length Product". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 391by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Array Median" and "Arrange Box" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC391by Ali Moradi

Ali has mentioned in post the perfectly clean, practical, and well-structured solutions implemented in Perl coding for both tasks worth noting. The post rates excellently when it comes to its ability to handle edge cases related to the median of an array. The 2D box-stacking task is efficiently solved by the implementation of the dynamic programming approach to Longest Increasing Subsequence problem in this post.

Median Boxesby Bob Lied

The blog post by Bob, is a great and user-friendly demonstration of solving problems using modern Perl programming language. It combines the intuitive comparisons of algorithms supported with some presented empirical data for median problems and modern object-oriented practices such as utilisation of class syntax of Perl 5.44 and object overloading.

Two Optimisation Tasks in the Weekly Challenge 391by E. Choroba

E. Choroba has offered a detailed analysis of Perl Weekly Challenge 391, focusing on various algorithms used in this challenge. This analysis is not limited to basic algorithms. With the help of extensive benchmarking, he has shown the effectiveness of using list slices for calculating median values and has provided detailed analysis of using trim operation in path state processing, which makes it possible to change a complex algorithm into an efficient and scalable one.

The Weekly Challenge 391by Luboš Kolouch

This post by Lubos provides clean, easily readable multi-lingual solutions for both problems described in the challenge. The solutions in this post are characterised by the simple logic of the implementation, efficiently implementing the array median calculation along with boxes stacking through structured iterative checks, which makes the post a valuable one for both Perl and Python developers.

Perl Weekly Challenge 391by W Luis Mochan

W. Luis Mochán contributes a smart, very concise Perl example to Weekly Challenge 391 indicating that complicated algorithmic problems can be simplified down to expressive and concise solutions. He shows a good understanding of Perl's functional abilities through one-liners and takes them further in building an understandable production-type script ready for calculating arrays medians and working out box-nesting relationships.

Arrays of Numbers, Arrays of Boxesby Matthias Muth

Matthias gives an exemplary explanation of the two components of Challenge 391. He provides a thorough explanation of the mathematical and algorithmic aspects through neat array merging in the median calculation and a smart way of solving the box-nesting challenge, which is a valuable resource for all Perl practitioners.

Old King Cole Was A Merry Old Soulby Packy Anderson

Packy's blog post, provides an easy to understand, multilingual summary of both challenge tasks in Perl, Raku, Python, and Elixir. His methodology is different in that he is able to use pre-sorted inputs when merging arrays, which makes the explanation of algorithms entertaining and it even includes some musical aspects.

Medians and stacksby Peter Campbell Smith

In his post, Peter takes an impressively straightforward approach that prioritises the clarity of coding instead of extreme conciseness of the code. His approach uses simple array concatenation and arithmetic checking of the index for median computation as well as there is a thorough input/output reporting that facilitates understanding of the logic.

The Weekly Challenge - 391 TASK #1: Array Medianby Reinier Maliepaard

Reinier's work on Perl Weekly Challenge 391 showcases a great, nicely formatted technique in Task 1 called "Array Median". His work hard on clarity and correctness throughout the post, attempting simple merging of sorted collections and finding medians all the while upholding the cleanliness of the code.

The Weekly Challenge #391by Robbie Hatley

Robbie has done an excellent job with his report for Weekly Challenge #391, pointing to practicality in Task 1 as he restores order in merged arrays so that they will be accurate even if taken in any order. For Task 2, he impressively simplifies the nesting of boxes in 2D to a problem of finding the Longest Increasing Subsequence in 1D, which becomes O(n log n) using patience sorting and binary search.

Arrange the Median Boxby Roger Bell West

Roger gives a straight to the point contribution for Weekly Challenge #391 that includes effective reasoning for array median and good Depth-First Search method for box nesting. The input dimensions pre-sorting ensures the correctness of the order in which it is traversed. The solutions in various programming languages including Raku and Rust and PostScript show exceptional level of polyglotism.

Arranging thingsby Simon Green

Simon has written an interesting and easy to follow post solving the problem in the Weekly Challenge, explaining how to go about performing the task in both Python and Perl. His write-up is remarkable in its ability to provide clear explanations of the algorithm, achieving a nice balance between the practical need for readability and the desire for over-optimisation.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstOctober 06, 2026

Boston Perl Mongers virtual monthlyOctober 12 2026

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #790 - Perl and CPANSec

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:18:33 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 790

Hi there,

An effort is made by people who either maintain the security of software languages behind the scenes and whose work is not visible to the general public. In the case of Perl and the CPAN, the organisation to watch over the matter is known as CPANSec, a group created to oversee the activities connected with the detection and remediation of risks in a large number of different open-source software components. Instead of isolating from other professionals in this area, the CPANSec acts as a channel of communication between the software developers carrying out their activities and the representatives of the open-source community at large.

As far as it concerns the importance of the CPANSec group today, it should be mentioned that it adopts a proactive position in relation to solving safety issues connected with software supply chains. When there is a demand for investigating open-source libraries, this organisation comes up with strategies, releases informative materials, and assumes the function of a reference point in case of the mentioned issues.

In the end, CPANSec serves as a valuable reminder that in technology resilience, as important as the code is the people. A culture where safety is default is established by creating transparent reporting rules, reducing the time for disclosure, and raising consultants' awareness about safe coding. Organisations using Perl technology can be assured that CPANSec is vigilant in its role as a guardian.

I met the real people behind the CPANSec when I attended the Perl Toolchain Summit 2025 in Germany. They are doing incredible job. Olaf Alders, recently shared the inside story in this very detailed log post. On a similar note, I came across a tech paper titled: Testing as a Certification Approach shared by Alberto Simões. If you are a CPAN contributor, it is recommended to include SECURITY.md in the distribution. Here is one such, I shipped with PAGI::FastAPI . I noticed others have also started adding this document.

Let's end this on happy note, it is nice to see so many active CPAN contributors. I find it hard to catch up with latest creations. At times, it goes above my head, still high regard to each contributors. You don't need to use it to appreciate the contribution. I love reading others creation, it gives me new ideas and satisfaction. Naming one contributor would be unfair, you already know them. We as a community, should encourage and promote each contributions. There is an online event organised by Gabor Szabor titled Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at boot. Please register if you haven't already done so.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

HeroDevs Donates $10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundationby Olaf Alders

Olaf has announced that HeroDevs has donated $10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF), promoting how corporations' contributions support the essential features of community infrastructure, security work such as CPAN Security Group, and maintenance of ecosystem.

The videos of the German Perl Workshop 2026 are onlineby Max Maischein

The videos are now online on Youtube. Thanks again to all people presenting their projects and insights.

The Lightning Talks of the German Perl Workshop 2026 are onlineby Max Maischein

Thanks to some crafty editing by Lee, the lightning talks are also online on Youtube.

Articles

Running Perl/PAGI applications on Cloudflare Workers via WebAssemblyby Andrew Speer

Andrew makes an interesting breakthrough by using zeroperl to run Perl/PAGI web apps on Cloudflare Workers using WebAssembly. Packing in working demos with WebSockets and D1 database support, it opens up incredible new edge-hosting options for the Perl ecosystem.

PAGI Edge Cases: When to Spec and When is Silence OK?by John Napiorkowski

John observes protocol design through the appropriate handling of post-disconnection implementation of the receive() function in PAGI. He discusses particular nice cases, real-life failures, and technical shortcomings in order to better illustrate the necessity to find the right balance between strict protocol specifications and reasonable usability for developers. A good read for async Perl developers and all the people interested in low-level web interface specifications.

Grants

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) August 2026

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): August 2026

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge by Mohammad Sajid Anwar will help you step out of your comfort-zone. You can even win prize money of $50 by participating in the weekly challenge. We pick one champion at the end of the month from among all of the contributors during the month, thanks to the sponsor Marc Perry.

The Weekly Challenge - 391by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Array Median" and "Arrange Box". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 390by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Decode String" and "Order Characters" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

Weird Ways to Wrangle Wordsby Bob Lied

This article provides an example of efficient coding methods for solving problems. It points out how stepping back can lead to tidy solutions in Perl. Bob presents simple and efficient solutions to two problems, using regular expressions to solve nested string decoding and applying a depth-first search method to a string reordering problem.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 390by Jaldhar H. Vyas

Jaldhar writes a very neat post that combines solid engineering with solid algorithmic thinking. His approach in Task 1 uses stacks to deal with nested encodings without the cost of recursion, and his insight for Task 2 that k > 1 simply reduces to sorting means he has turned a difficult state-space problem into an efficient O(n log n) solution.

Decoded Permutationsby Jorg Sommrey

This article is an exceptionally informative technical paper that raises conventional algorithm solving to an entirely different level. The fact Jorg has proven that moves for k > 1 cover symmetric group Sn enables them to avoid lengthy graph search state spaces and perform optimal O(n log n) character sorting, together with very concise implementations in both Perl and J.

The Weekly Challenge 390by Luboš Kolouch

This blog post is an outstanding and organised guide to the solutions for the Perl Weekly Challenge containing idiomatic coding and sound algorithmic reasoning. Lubos uses brief explanations to clarify complex problems and produce clear, fast code that the Perl community can use as a guide.

Perl Weekly Challenge 390by W Luis Mochan

The post is noteworthy in the light of it's neat and crisp demonstration of the brilliance of Perl as a programming language by way of presenting a tricky logic problem as a format of a few short functional lines of code. The solutions presented by him is characterised by use of regular expression substitutions with iterative processing using the /e flag together with the List::Util::minstr module that uses an algorithm based on the principle of recursion.

How does it feel to decode me like you do?by Packy Anderson

Packy presents an exceedingly coherent and practical example of resolving string-manipulating and character-ordering issues in various languages in this article. It gives a clear insight into specific behaviour of regex in particular languages, particularly comparing how string interpolation works in Raku and where quotemeta is applied in Perl. This makes it a very educational article for multi-language developers. He also demonstrates good skills in iterative pattern matching as the implemented solutions are simple and comprehensible and allow to outline advantages of each particular programming language.

Multiply and orderby Peter Campbell Smith

The contribution of Peter in Week 390 presents a creative stack-based technique which brings the conventional regex-replacement process for string decoding to a new level. The method uses a stack to keep track of the active multiplication factors and thus it demonstrates efficient state management.

The Weekly Challenge - 390: Decode Stringby Reinier Maliepaard

Reinier's article on Perl Weekly Challenge 390 elaborates a simple and systematic answer to the task "Decode String." The post is notable for a clear, idiomatic Perl implementation that makes the process of string expansion very easy to understand.

Decode the Orderby Roger Bell West

This article offers a detailed and interesting presentation of Weekly Challenge 390. Roger presents his innovative switch from regex-based compression in Perl to depth-first search-based state-space search in Rust and PostScript in an excellent way. Moreover, Roger's clever way of using sorted BTreeSet builds a strong algorithmic approach throughout programming languages.

The First Expansionby Simon Green

In his post, Simon lays out a well-organised and clear explanation of Weekly Challenge 390 through the use of Python. His clever application of re.sub with a custom callback function simplifies the process of dealing with nested brackets in the string decoding assignment. Furthermore, Simon's use of a recursive search through state space, with visited set memoization, is instrumental in solving the challenge of ordering characters such that their arrangement is the lexicographically smallest one.

Rakudo

2026.35 Infinity Revisitedby Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstOctober 06, 2026

Boston Perl Mongers virtual monthlyOctober 12 2026

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

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(C) Copyright Gabor Szabo
The articles are copyright the respective authors.

Perl 🐪 Weekly #789 - The impact of LLMs on Perl

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:32:44 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 789

Hi there,

The videos from the German Perl Workshop are available. They look very interesting, but not surprisingly many of them are in German. As you go through the list when you encounter one that you'd want to see if it was in English, let me know! I'll contact the speakers and I'll ask if they would be interested giving an English version of their presentation through the online Perl Maven events.

This, of course, reminds me that we are going to have such an online presentation today. The title is Async, Type-Safe, and Secure: Perl's Answer to FastAPI and the presenter is Mohammad Sajid Anwar, the other editor of this newsletter who also runs The Weekly Challenge and does a tons of other things. You can still register. Before the presentation begins we are going to have 30 minutes for mingling. That is, you'll have the opportunity to introduce yourself and build connections.

On our events page you can find the full list of Perl-related events we are aware of. There are a few in-person events and a few online events.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Articles

CPAN Uploads Are Up 50% Year-over-Year by Olaf Alders

What is the impact of LLMs on the Open Source ecosystem in general and on Perl in patricular? Let's talk about our corner.

DBI now has a minimum version of v5.12

AmberDB - An Embedded NoSQL Database Engine for Perl by Maruf Çetin

AmberDB is a high-performance, schema-driven NoSQL database engine for Perl, featuring ACID transactions and precomputed inverted indexing on top of Berkeley DB (DB_File). AmberDB on MetaCPAN. Based on the AGENTS.md file it is being developed on MS Windows with the aid of LLMs.

CVE-2026-18108: Net::SAML2 Authentication Bypass via Unsigned Encrypted Assertions (CVSS 9.8) Net::SAML2 provides SAML2 bindings and protocol implementation. This CVE along with a few others is already fixed.

Discussion

perl in cybersecurity? Should you learn Perl these days? What is the power of perl in cybersecurity today?

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 390by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Decode String" and "Order Characters". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 389by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Reorder Notes" and "ZigZag Subarray" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC389by Ali Moradi

The post features a simple and neat solution in Perl programming where multiple tests have been performed. The reordered notes solution stands out because of a straightforward mapping of array slots, and the zigzag subarray solution works well in terms of state change tracking. All in all, it is a good way of demonstrating a reliable well-tested code that has undergone some form of automatic testing through Test::More.

ZigZag Reorderby Arne Sommer

The article delivers an exceptionally clear and pragmatic breakdown of solving Weekly Challenge #389 using Raku. The post excels technically through its clean slice assignment for note reordering and its clever state-tracking approach using Raku's native gather/take construct to efficiently parse contiguous zigzag subarrays.

ZigZag Melodiesby Jorg Sommrey

This technical article offers some meaningful and mathematically sound treatment of Weekly Challenge #389 using both Perl and J. What's impressive here is an exhaustive analysis of the permutations involved followed by some wonderful demonstration of how to implement elegant array solutions with the help of Perl's PDL vector library and J expressive array primitives.

The Weekly Challenge 389by Luboš Kolouch

The post does an excellent job in Task 1 by successfully using idiomatic functional constructs (array slicing in Perl and zip sorting in Python) to avoid the need for explicit loops. In addition, Task 2's linear O(N) finite state machine gives it an elegant one-pass solution that takes care of tricky directional resets and edge cases.

Perl Weekly Challenge 389by W Luis Mochan

This article showcases an amazingly smart and practical Perl solution for Perl Weekly Challenge 389. It shows how well the language is mastered by implementing tail recursion to avoid using explicit loops in Task 1, including thorough try/catch validation, and using the spaceship operator (<=>) combined with array transformation methods for a smart solution of the ZigZag subarray problem.

Zig Zag Melodiesby Packy Anderson

Packy provides a delightful multilingual guide to Weekly Challenge #389 tackling different programming languages including Raku, Perl, Python, and Elixir. The post excels in its practical treatment of data structures across paradigms through methods such as list zipping and the use of native multi-variable loops in Perl 5.40. It also includes precise comparative implementation along with simple code samples and output verification.

Musical zigzagsby Peter Campbell Smith

Peter came up with an ingenious and creative take on Task 1, which, thanks to a do ... until structure, avoids the complications of looping altogether. His meticulousness, such as the use of true Unicode sharps / flats and the placement of tests inspired by famous composers like Mozart—results in a highly polished and engaging technical article.

The Weekly Challenge #389by Robbie Hatley

Robbie Hatley, in his post for Weekly Challenge #389, provides a very practical and straightforward explanation of the two assignments. He offers a very interesting idea regarding the array slice assignment for its usage for destination indexing in Task 1.

Zigzag Reorderby Roger Bell West

The article by Roger regarding Weekly Challenge #389 gives a good explanation of both challenges through various programming languages. The sequential explanation of the code written in functional programming language of Kotlin for sorting notes and using Perl programming language as the core programming framework makes it simple to understand complicated situations.

Zigzag notesby Simon Green

Simon's article presents an easy-to-understand, Python-centric explanation of Weekly Challenge #389. His comments successfully spell out the task procedures in a clear, understandable form of Python, which is useful for developers who are in search of reference implementations for array modification and sequence searching.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Event reports

The videos of the German Perl Workshop 2026 are onlineby Max Maischein

The playlist.

Events

Async, Type-Safe, and Secure: Perl's Answer to FastAPI with Mohammad Sajid AnwarSeptember 7, 2026

Boston Perl Mongers virtual monthlySeptember 8, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBASeptember 9, 2026

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstOctober 06, 2026

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

London Perl & Raku Workshop 2026November 21, 2026

YAPC::Tokyo 2026November 27, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2027April 14-16, 2027

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

Want to see more? See the archives of all the issues.

Not yet subscribed to the newsletter? Join us free of charge!

JavaScript events in the next 10 days

Gábor Szabó — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:50:10 +0000

I am building a site to make it easy to find both in-person and online events. It clearly needs a lot of improvements.

This is what I got out of it now.

2026-08-20 (online) 🎙️ Metarhia community call
2026-08-20 (in-person) Boston TypeScript Club
2026-08-20 (in-person) Coding Agent con TS && AWS
2026-08-21 (in-person) IKIGAI
2026-08-22 (in-person) React Meetup #107
2026-08-23 (in-person) Code and Tea at Panera
2026-08-25 (in-person) Your Agent is Starving
2026-08-25 (in-person) Isolation: VMs, Containers, Namespaces, Oh my! | DenverScript August 2026
2026-08-26 (in-person) JavaScript Luzern Grill Edition #5
2026-08-26 (online) JavaScriptMN Monthly Event: Open Floor Show/Tell and Discussion
2026-08-27 (in-person) Frontendistim Community August Meetup at Matia!
2026-08-27 (in-person) Paderborn.JS Meetup 2026
2026-08-27 (in-person) Jozi.JS August - Make the code work
2026-08-27 (online) 🎙️ Metarhia community call
2026-08-27 (in-person) Why to choose Ember.js in 2026
2026-08-28 (in-person) Zagreb Developers Drinkup

Perl 🐪 Weekly #786 - CPAN Day

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:07:39 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 786

Hi there,

Every year on August 16th, the Perl community celebrates CPAN Day in recognition of the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), which has been helping many applications for more than three decades. It is noteworthy that CPAN is neither a simple collection of coding resources nor a repository of modular code because it is one of the oldest and most reliable open-source systems in computer programming history. CPAN Day celebrations give us a chance to consider the volume of work that is performed to support this library every day.

At the core of the success of CPAN is its strong contributor network. Thousands of people are improving, supporting, documenting, and regulating thousands of modules every day, enabling developers worldwide to avoid duplicating efforts. That said, CPAN Day is a good day to celebrate all CPAN contributors that make this system work perfectly. As we are celebrating this day, it is important that all CPAN authors should make an effort to remove older obsolete distributions from PAUSE directories.

For me, I released Map::Tube::Plugin::Graph v1.1.2 to CPAN and also mark handful of older releases for deletion from PAUSE directories.

Last week, Gabor mentioned about upcoming online presentation, Async, Type-Safe, and Secure: Perl's Answer to FastAPI. Watching the growing list of audience, I am feeling little nervous. I had prepared the presentation slides as soon as I confirmed the event. But then keep updating the slides as the topic, PAGI::FastAPI is continuously improving. Currently working on to support message queue to PAGI::FasAPI. If I find time, I might add slides about message queue as well after the release. A big thanks to John Napiorkowski for advise and suggestions. I wouldn't have come this far without his support and encouragement. By the way, he is the creator of Perl Asynchronous Gateway Interface (PAGI).

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Articles

PAGI::FastAPI + WebSocketby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Let's build online chat using PAGI::FastAPI and Mojo::Pg. It is incredible easy to build the app with little effort.

PAGI::FastAPI + DBIx::Class::Asyncby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

When building async web framework, it is obvious to bring DBIx::Class::Async into the fold. In this post, you will see how database handle is injected as dependency. One of the cool features, my personal favourite.

Access / Refresh Tokenby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

A quick introduction to Access Token and Refresh Token, and end up creating a handy web application to demo the workings.

pperl 0.6.12+ - "Shall we play a game?"by Richard C. Jelinek

In versions 0.6.12 and up of pperl the development speed of the application is assessed while the Computer Language Benchmarks Game is updated. Initial tests show that the benchmark performance is 36 times better than standard Perl performance triggering redesigning of the JIT architecture to compete with Node.js/V8.

Pacman in Perl/Tkby Alex

In Pacman in Perl/Tk, Alex goes back to a project he worked on in 2013 in order to analyse the separation of logical state from visual representation. By implementing the maze as a two-dimensional array where the shifting and collision functions use tile coordinates instead of canvas pixels, the article is able to exhibit a surprisingly elegant architecture similar to the Model-View approach using standard Perl and Tk.

25+ useful and commonly used Regular Expressionsby Dennis

In this article, Dennis offers a useful reference guide containing patterns most often needed in various elements of work, namely for matching numbers, validating usernames, carrying out sophisticated RFC-compliant email verifications, and web scraping. The article is informative and useful for developers who perform tasks related to parsing and validating data.

Grants

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): July 2026

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) July 2026

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 387by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Rearrange Binary String" and "Atoms Count". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 386by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Reverse Base" and "Rational Numbers" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC386by Ali Moradi

Ali's answer uses a blend of conciseness in Perl with strong problem-solving skills in The Weekly Challenge assignment number 386. The first task of converting numbers from one base to another uses nicely achieved hash mapping and destructive string extraction, while the second task showcases impressive regex skills and presents a method for normalisation of decimals with no floating-point errors.

Reverse Lanoitarby Arne Sommer

In this post, Arne demonstrates how Raku works in a visually rich and elegant way. The blog is technologically satisfying as it best employs Raku features such as regex pattern matching, applied in decimal representation, and hyperoperators, which are good in performing precise comparison of rational numbers using cross multiplication.

All Your Base Are Belong to Rational Numbersby Bob Lied

Here Bob provides a concise and logical approach to this week’s Perl Weekly Challenge. He successfully addresses the tasks connected with rational numbers through using Perl’s built-in bigrat module that makes it easy to deal with fractional numbers, proving that intelligence in the use of libraries can make solving complex problems in number theory much easier.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 386by Jaldhar H. Vyas

The post offers an informative object-oriented perspective on Perl Weekly Challenge 386 in relation to Raku and Perl. Jaldhar thoroughly explains the procedure of dynamic base conversion in Task 1 with the use of Meta Object Protocol wrapping methodology, while the implemented Fraction class is presented in Task 2 for eliminating repetitive decimal fractions using GCD method.

Periodic Basesby Jorg Sommrey

The post discusses an admiringly strict mathematical and programming technique of solving the problems of Weekly Challenge 386 with the help of Perl and J languages. Jorg manages to dispense with the floating-point precision problems thanks to the natural algebraic proofs and succinct, neat implementations.

Perl Weekly Challenge 386by W Luis Mochan

The message outlines a very concise and precise solution to the Weekly Challenge 386 by Perl. The repetition of decimal fractions is modeled by using the knowledge of the geometric series, and W. Luis Mochan utilises the method of cross-multiplication, thus avoiding the pitfalls of floating-point precision. In addition to effective error handling, the message offers effective prototypes and other code design approaches.

We’re Talkin’ Algebraby Packy Anderson

This post demonstrates a thorough, organised, and very instructive description of how to solve the Perl Weekly Challenge 386 in various programming languages. It is impressive how Packy knows how to present complex mathematical algorithms in a useful step-by-step way, paying attention to such smart language tools as list inversion in Raku or pair transformations.

Hitting the bases with recurring numbersby Peter Campbell Smith

In week 386, Peter presents a neat, efficient, and very strong Perl design for the base conversion process. The blog post is remarkable because there is an insightful mention of the special cases, and all the edge cases are taken into account, for example, the digit limits and base limits, which makes it different from the others.

The Weekly Challenge #386by Robbie Hatley

Robbie has provided a very efficient and practical solution for Perl Weekly Challenge #386 using robust and standard Perl core/CPAN modules. In doing so, he has displayed a very analytical and practical approach and avoided tripping over the standard floating-point precision problems and unnecessary re-implementations with the nice adaptation of the base conversion to the custom characters.

A Rational Reverseby Roger Bell West

The article offers a neat and clear solution to Weekly Challenge 386 through the transformation of arbitrary bases and recurring decimals into appropriate rational fractions. Roger is adept at using solutions based upon a combination of excellent mathematical reasoning—like reduction of fractions through GCD/LCM in Perl—and unsophisticated parsing methods, thus presenting a fascinating way to demonstrate string parsing and implementing mathematical data structures.

The Rational Baseby Simon Green

The article offers a clear and simple explanation to solve the problem in Weekly Challenge 386 with the help of Python and Perl. Simon has used regular expressions efficiently to get the separated integer parts, finite decimal and repeating sequences of digits. The string extension technique discussed in the article helps the readers in comparison of rational numbers without complex fraction calculations.

Rakudo

2026.32 Dan Floating Hexby Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstSeptember 01, 2026

Async, Type-Safe, and Secure: Perl's Answer to FastAPI with Mohammad Sajid AnwarSeptember 7, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBASeptember 9, 2026

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstOctober 06, 2026

MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools - with Dave CrossOctober 21, 2026

Punk: Perl MVC, compiled at bootNovember 16, 2026

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

Want to see more? See the archives of all the issues.

Not yet subscribed to the newsletter? Join us free of charge!

Online Python events between Aug 17 - Aug 26

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 04:41:04 +0000

I found the following Python-related online events for the next 10 days.

Online events remove the physical barrier of who can participate. What remain are the time-zone differences and the language barrier. In order to make it easier for you to find events that match those constraints I started to collect the online events where you can filter by topic and time. In this table you can find events with starting time in a few selected time-zones. I hope it makes it easier to find an event that is relevant to you. The data and the code generating the pages are all on GitHub. Share your ideas on how to improve the listings to help you more.

Title	UTC	EST	PST	NZL
Monday office hour	Aug 17 16:00	Aug 17 12:00	Aug 17 09:00	Aug 18 04:00
Managing Secrets in Python	Aug 18 07:00	Aug 18 03:00	Aug 18 00:00	Aug 18 19:00
An Evening of Python Coding	Aug 19 00:00	Aug 18 20:00	Aug 18 17:00	Aug 19 12:00
Getting Started with Tabular Foundation Models with TabPFN	Aug 20 16:00	Aug 20 12:00	Aug 20 09:00	Aug 21 04:00
Databricks End-to-End Crash Course - DEB Learning Session # 3	Aug 21 06:00	Aug 21 02:00	Aug 20 23:00	Aug 21 18:00
Online: SD Python Saturday Study Group	Aug 22 17:00	Aug 22 13:00	Aug 22 10:00	Aug 23 05:00
Christchurch Python Meetup - August 2026	Aug 25 05:45	Aug 25 01:45	Aug 24 22:45	Aug 25 17:45
PyOrl @ ODevs Social	Aug 25 23:00	Aug 25 19:00	Aug 25 16:00	Aug 26 11:00
Think Functionally	Aug 27 02:00	Aug 26 22:00	Aug 26 19:00	Aug 27 14:00

Perl 🐪 Weekly #784 - Perl Catalyst

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:00:35 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 784

Hi there,

I remember the release of Catalyst, MVC web application framework in 2005. It was the first time, I heard about MVC. Unfortunately, I never got to work with it until I joined my current work place. We have very well crafted application using Catalyst. The creator of Catalyst, John Napiorkowski, recently shared his plan to revisit Catalyst and named the project (working name), CatalystNext. The details of the project is shared in the post. I am going to use this opportunity to learn Catalyst from zero.

In case you missed, we just had two maintenance releases, Perl v5.40.5 and Perl v5.42.3. The highlights of both releases was security patches, CVE-2026-8376, CVE-2026-57432 and CVE-2026-13221. Thank you core team members.

I am a big fan of experimental class feature of latest Perl. Recently I came across a documentary titled, The Java Story. It brought back some old memories when I was offered to pick the languages: Perl and Java. No prize for the guessing the answer, I chose Perl. After watching the documentary, I decided to checkout how experimental class deals with Encapsulation, Reflection and Immutable Class. Please checkout the blog post below where I shared my findings.

I came across this talk, Regex Optimization From Hours to Second by Deven Corzine. I had to watch it few times to get my head around it. Talks like this make attending Perl conference worth it. Another talk that caught my eyes, All About Test2 by Chad Graham. Thanks to TPRC team for sharing the video.

Another exciting news, pperl, now has Perl v5.44 as compatibility target. Please checkout the details in the post.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Perl v5.40.5by Steve Hay

The maintenace release of Perl v5.40.5 with security patches.

Perl v5.42.3by Steve Hay

The maintenace release of Perl v5.42.3 with security patches.

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.51, CPAN::MetaCurator V 1.27, etcby Ron Savage

The highlight of latest release of Perl.Wiki is CPAN::MetaCurator v1.27.

Articles

The Future Isn’t Evenly Distributedby Dave Cross

By analysing the request for support on a 25-year-old Perl CGI script that he recently got, Dave Cross explains why developers’ apps are usually lagging behind in technology. Developers should realise that technological advancements do not solely depend on innovations in technology but also on economic factors. Indeed, businesses usually do not require the latest tools, they seek a way to make yesterday’s solutions work today.

Immutable Classby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

In this post, I analyse the treatment of immutability in contemporary Perl by comparing and contrasting the explicit runtime optimisation provided by Moose to the experimental class features offered by core Perl concerning automatic enforcement of immutability from an external perspective.

Reflection/MOPby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Here I document the evolution of code reflection and metaobject protocols from Lisp and CLOS all the way to contemporary object systems. And finally turn the attention to how Perl has evolved—starting with the first implementation of a symbol table with %main:: and the Moose framework's use of Class::MOP, and now to features that have become intrinsic to the language like the isa operator, CLASS and capability testing via $obj->can().

CatalystNext: What Should We Keep, Change, and Rethink? by John Napiorkowski

John Napiorkowski starts the conversation on CatalystNext, which refers to a new concept associated with the old Catalyst Perl web framework on the basis of PAGI technology. In this article, he weighs the benefits of keeping action-subroutine attributes rather than using route DSL, improving the syntax of the chained dispatch method, separating code bundles from URLs, and improving state/service boundaries while avoiding a fundamental issue of historical compatibility.

Moving Targets - PetaPerl 0.6.8by Richard C. Jelinek

PetaMem has launched the new version 0.6.8 of pperl, increasing its minimum version requirement from now on to Perl 5.44. Some of the main highlights of the release include an implemented zero-setup native DBI that allows for PostgreSQL and MySQL support via FFI without any need for XS compiling.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 385by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Uncommon Words" and "Outermost Parentheses". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 384by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Base N" and "Special Binary Substrings" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC384by Ali Moradi

The solution set provided by Ali includes easy-to-read implementations in Perl, testable via Test::More. The basic conversion function works perfectly with custom symbols, and the binary substring method utilises brief regular expressions in order to achieve simplicity in its logic.

N Binary with Rakuby Arne Sommer

Arne makes use of Raku to tackle arbitrary base conversion (using multiple dispatch as well as built-in base and custom-character fallback logic for many bases up to 64) and identifies special binary substrings with the aid of subset typing, index iteration, and regex checking.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 384by Jaldhar H. Vyas

Jaldhar's article about Raku's Metaobject Protocol in PWC 384 presents an interesting approach in dynamically wrapping Int.base() in order to accomplish base conversions up to Base 64. When combined with the elegant solutions in Perl and Raku, this post offers an elegant and educational solution to both challenges.

Special Basesby Jorg Sommrey

Jorg's article is all about the comparison of Perl and J implementations. In Task 1, he dynamically creates an ASCII digit table which supports Base 94 without using magic literals in Perl. The function Math::Prime::Util::todigits in Perl is paired with the user-defined monadic/dyadic inverses for J. In Task 2, substring searching is converted from O(n^2) naive approach to the candidate expansion process by employing List::Gather in Perl and the fold conjunction (F:).

Perl Weekly Challenge 384by W Luis Mochan

Luis's blog uses modern Perl syntax (try/catch, use v5.40) to produce amazing compact and expressive results. The regex-based technique for Task 2 effectively solves substring matching in a one-liner, while the mathematical checks in Task 1 are encapsulated neatly via a one-liner.

A Helpful Module and a Recursive Patternby Matthias Muth

The article by Matthias provides a fabulous class in Perl programming with high efficiency. In his solution of Task 1, he makes an effective use of Math::Prime::Util::todigits function in association with lookup tables. With the help of these tricks he limits the number of bases to 64. The solution crafted by Matthias in Task 2 is even more brilliant as he writes the entire code in just a single statement. He arrives at this potential solution due to great ingenuity of his approach, based on recursive regular expressions.

A heaven on earth, they call it Base-N Streetby Packy Anderson

Packy produced multi-language project across Perl, Raku, Python, and Elixir. The first task involved building a base-N radix array algorithm without using any built-in conversion tools to introduce the nuances between different languages such as floating-point truncating in Perl's int() as opposed to divmod in Python. The second task uses the same process but applies a non-destructive regex approach and verifies digit sums to deduplicate consecutive binary substrings in the four programming languages.

The Weekly Challenge #384by Robbie Hatley

Robbie's article discusses a practical and performance-oriented solution to the jobs at hand. In Task 1, he purposefully employs Math::BigInt with GNU Multiple Precision (GMP) library for high-performance and precise conversion of bases. In Task 2, he makes use of a clear dual nested-loop algorithm to process the even-length substrings and obtain all the unique consecutive sequences in binary.

Are Your Substrings Based?by Roger Bell West

The post written by Roger suggests straightforward and practical methods for solving both problems; it has an elegant solution regarding edge cases in base-N conversions and a clear method for tracking states when analyzing binary substrings. The explanations are lucid and the implementation in Crystal is neat, making it an interesting and informative piece for anyone working on algorithmic problems.

Base substringsby Simon Green

Simon contributes a very neat and effective method for Challenge 384, which emphasises early and proper input validation as well as a clear presentation of the custom base-64 alphabet ordering. The act of generating candidate character sets before worrying about the substring matching process also greatly reinforces the explanation's clarity and results in a highly readable dual Python/Perl solution guide.

Rakudo

2026.28/29/30 Thank you!by Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstAugust 04, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBAAugust 12, 2026

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstSeptember 01, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBASeptember 9, 2026

Amsterdam PM bijeenkomstOctober 06, 2026

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #782 - Perl v5.44

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:24:22 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 782

Hi there,

Finally we had maintenance release of Perl v5.44 on 15th July. This is the first release which I watched the process very closely by joining the P5P Mailing List. I have high respect to each core member. The amount of work that goes into each release is unbelievable. They discuss every minute details before commit. It's fascinating just reading the discussion. You get to know so many different aspects. The best part is anyone can take part in the discussion. Feel free to share your concern and suggestion. I am sure you will get instant response from one of the core team members.

As I am talking about Perl release, I came across something very interesting, Parallel Perl. It is also referred as pperl. As documented, it is next-generation Perl 5 runtime written in Rust, with JIT and auto-parallelization. If I am not wrong, Perl is written in C, does that mean Rust is the new C? I don't know either of them enough to read the source code. Rust has been making some noise in the Perl community.

Another big announcement by Salve J. Nilsen about the April Task Force. It sounds very heavy loaded. It is nice to see TPRF taking the security matter seriously. With the dedicated team, we are in a safe hands.

Don't forget to try the new features in v5.44 and share your experience with us. Enjoy the rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Announcing the April Task ForcePermalinkby Salve Nilsen

April Task Force is set up to strengthen the CPANSec CNA Function, improve the security posture of CPAN and Perl, and to help prepare these communities for the impact expected from the general availability of security analysis-capable Large Language Models.

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.50, Mojo.Wiki V 1.21 etcby Ron Savage

Two wikis, CPAN metacurator and Tree Cladogram/DAG are now available in the latest release.

Articles

DBIx::Class vs DBIOby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

I took a moment off writing the book on DBIx::Class to explore DBIO, a new competitor in the Perl ORM sector. I faced some difficulties installing the system but shared useful comparisons of standard table schemas, result classes, and test cases demonstrating the similarity.

SQL JOIN using DBIx::Classby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

In this post, I share the application of different SQL JOINs within the database application created using DBIx::Class. It illustrates the four important types of joins using an example of unit testing which employs User and Profile tables.

Flatpak with Perlby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

In this tutorial, I show how to effectively use Flatpak to containerise their Perl script in a sandbox that is isolated from the network. Using a manifest file that pulls in dependencies from CPAN, I explain how to compile and run their Perl application across all possible modern Linux distributions without running into any trouble.

SOLID using Perlby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Having done the book on Design Patterns, it is time to talk about Design Principles. In this post, I look at SOLID design principles using Perl.

IoC using Perlby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Having done Design Patterns and Design Principles in Perl, it is natural to discuss Inversion of Control (IoC) next.

Three ways to write a table in Podliteby Aliaksandr Zahatski

In the article, Aliaksandr Zahatski investigates the capacities for grid creation inherent in the block-markup language Podlite. The article elaborates various specific syntax types—text mode that suits for performing quick note-taking, structure block format that is meant for cell-spanning arrangements and rich content, as well as data-driven integration for processing unformatted CSV or TSV files.

Grants

PEVANS Core Perl 5: Grant Report for June 2026

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) June 2026

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): June 2026

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 383by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Similar List" and "Nearest RGB". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 382by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Hamiltonian Cycle" and "Replace Question Mark" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

Hamiltonian Question Markby Arne Sommer

This blog post shows the advantages of Raku by using simple recursion and backtracking for the challenging Hamiltonian Cycle problem as well as using a simple iterative queue for string replacement. Each script is provided with documentation and numerous test outputs which provide excellent learning aid for novice and expert Raku users alike.

PWC 382 Hamiltonian Cycleby Bob Lied

A superb analysis of Hamiltonian Cycle is shared in this post. Bob has superbly converted the issue into an interesting graph theory problem and has effectively proposed a powerful breadth-first search strategy. With the provision of efficient data structures, exact mathematical restrictions, and clear explanations of how the code works, this analysis is highly useful to all the persons who want to learn algorithmic Perl.

PWC 382 Replace Question Marksby Bob Lied

Bob kicks off the post by presenting an interesting technique - a concise, built-in kind of shell-like one-liner with the use of glob - followed by a discussion of a sophisticated queue-based substitution algorithm. The final description proves to be a great demonstration of how Perl can tackle string manipulation problems effectively and concisely, as a result of using smart resources like index.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 382by Jaldhar H. Vyas

This article provides amazing, well-analysed insights on the Perl Weekly Challenge #382, including the two similar solutions in Raku and Perl. Jaldhar excellently solves the Hamiltonian Cycle problem while defining it using adjacent graph lists. Plus, valuable information is given on how to deal with certain peculiarities of the languages.

Hamiltonian Marksby Jorg Sommrey

The article presents an outstanding technical analysis of Perl Weekly Challenge #382 using tools like Maxima and J. Jorg skillfully emphasises the greatly effective graph-theory libraries in Maxima for a quick solution of the NP-complete problem of Hamiltonian Cycle using CPAN modules such as List::Gather and Math::Prime::Util to create clear Perl code. Programmers looking for unusual mathematical syntax and language profiling will enjoy the reading.

Perl Weekly Challenge 382by W Luis Mochan

Perl Weekly Challenge #382 is reviewed in an excellent and in-depth way in this article. W. Luis Mochan wins the hearts of the readers by putting forward his compact 3-line regex-based recursive solution and then presenting the optimal way of implementation in the form of the pre-computed follower map (%follower).

The Recursive Challengeby Matthias Muth

Matthias demonstrates good layout for the code and good documentation for the code which has made it better to read. This implementation will be beneficial for engineers who want to learn about modular problem solving in Perl.

The World Turned Upside Down!by Packy Anderson

This article presents an incredibly imaginative technical analysis of the Perl Weekly Challenge #382 by the fantastic use of the inversion of an algorithm. Rather than going through all the remaining values to find their sums as squares, Packy cycles through previously-calculated squares and checks whether the differential exists, which results in a much more efficient search. It is extremely entertaining while maintaining a perfect balance between detailed explanation of graph theory and utilising code in different languages.

Hamilton’s questionsby Peter Campbell Smith

The article talks about Perl Weekly Challenge #382 in great detail, being proposed by the same person who initially proposed Hamiltonian Cycle to the community. The write-up provides historical perspective on the problem while introducing a rather ingenious way of using string matching (qq[~$possible~]) to keep track of graph adjacency and implement the task in a full Perl.

The Weekly Challenge - 382: Replace Question Markby Reinier Maliepaard

In this article, you will see a clear and straightforward solution for Task 2 of Perl Weekly Challenge #382. Reinier has perfectly delivered the main idea of the task - generating all binary combinations to replace the question marks in a very simple manner without making it unnecessarily complex. This article would be a brilliant assistance to anyone who would like to implement this task in an easy and efficient manner and yet ensure proper substitution of the strings.

Questioning the Cycleby Roger Bell West

In this post, you will find an amazing technical analysis of Perl Weekly Challenge #382, with valuable insights based on a complex multi-language approach including not only Raku but also Scala. This particular post stands out from the crowd due to the fact that Roger has created a complete stand-alone testing function (is_adjacentsquared), which allows him to confirm results produced by the algorithm and put to work an effective neighbor mapping approach based on Raku’s native Set types. The article is very informative and will be of great help for those interested in the issues of algorithmic safety, depth-first search optimization, and polyglot programming.

The Hamiltonian Questionby Simon Green

Here you will find an outstanding technical critique of the Perl Weekly Challenge #382 through the lens of Python implementations of both challenges. Simon brings a very eloquent readable solution to Task 1 which deals with the Hamiltonian Cycle graph traversal and also shares personal details about Task 2 which was based on a real-time coding-interview question. The paper demonstrates excellent use of modern algorithm patterns and provides good data on how efficient the solution is and what its limitations are.

Rakudo

2026.27 TRF Lives!by Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Perl development using AI + Open Source (online)July 29, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBAAugust 12, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBASeptember 9, 2026

You joined the Perl Weekly to get weekly e-mails about the Perl programming language and related topics.

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #780 - TRF

Gábor Szabó — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:27:12 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 780

Hi there,

The Raku Foundation (TRF) was officially announced last month, as suggested in the post by Damian Conway. I am super happy for the core team behind Raku.

Does that mean there is no more The Perl and Raku Foundation (TPRF)?

Now that TRF is live, it would make sense to go back to the good old The Perl Foundation (TPF). I don't know the technical details yet, but I think it is a great move. Now Perl and Raku can live in their own worlds without any interference. It is good to see Damian promoting Raku. If I am not mistaken, even Larry was once involved in the project.

For all Perl fans, very soon there will be a major release, Perl v5.44. I am eagerly waiting for it.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

perl-lsp version 0.6.0by Veesh Goldman

The version 0.6.0 is now available on crates.io & in both VS Code and The Zed Editor. This is a huge milestone for the Perl-LSP project with some great improvements such as smart type narrowing for block variables, smart inherited method renewal using inherited methods, and different heatmap cli for analysing function complexity and usage.

Articles

Automate Perl module testing with GitHub Actionsby Dragos Trif

This is a very handy guide that explains how to set up a CI/CD pipeline for your Perl projects via GitHub Actions. The guide elaborates on what steps to follow so that when you push code, all of the projects automatically run tests against several different Perl versions and several different operating systems. This will allow developers to check for compatibility on multiple platforms, while also providing developers with a way to keep their code at high quality with as little manual work as possible.

How One Pull Request Took App::HTTPThis to Version 1.0by Dave Cross

A simple pull request intended to improve the honesty of a startup message caused a rewrite of the architecture for App::HTTPThis. The original binding configuration was set to all interfaces, but by modifying it to use 127.0.0.1, and providing targeted support for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), this tool has come a very long way to reach a very solid, secure, cross-platform milestone for release version of 1.0.0.

Reading UTF-8 at GB/sby Christian Hansen

Christian highlights a bottleneck in Perl's read operator regarding how it counts UTF-8 sequences and introduces a high-performance workaround via Unicode::UTF8::read_utf8. By reading and validating UTF-8 streams in a single pass, this new feature achieves impressive speeds—delivering 7x to 16x faster throughput than native reads.

The AI Revolution is Validating 40 Years of Perl Philosophyby Randal Schwartz

Randal examines the relationship between the emergence of large language models and Larry Wall’s original concept of Perl as a language based on context (semiotics) and language. The shift toward a semantic/conceptual view of programming allows AI systems to start operating based on principles that have been used by Perl programmers all along, rather than forcing us to program like mathematical devices.

Web

SOAP and Perlby Mohammad Sajid Anwar

This article investigates both the past and the present of using Perl to connect to SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web services. The article discusses how useful an existing SOAP:Lite module is for creating applications that can still be used today by legacy companies, along with performance related suggestions when working with XML payloads, WSDL files, and options for building robust API integration using modern technology.

CPAN

JSON::JSONFoldby Yair Lenga

A fresh CPAN module that helps you read compact JSON and create pretty printed representations of those same objects. JSON::JSONFold does this by building on top of existing serialisers to fold small/simple structures onto a single line, while also aligning grid-like data.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 381by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Same Row Column" and "Smaller Greater Element". If you are new to the weekly challenge then why not join us and have fun every week. For more information, please read the FAQ.

RECAP - The Weekly Challenge - 380by Mohammad Sajid Anwar

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Sum of Frequencies" and "Reverse Degree" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

TWC380by Ali Moradi

In this post, you'll find extremely concise and idiomatic code solutions written in Perl. Utilising the many powerful built-in list functions in Perl's List::Util module (e.g., max() and sum0()), as well as utilising clever array slicing to achieve succinctness, Ali has written very elegant and extremely efficient code that solves each of the two assigned problems in no more than just a few lines of code and makes use of the modules' built-in test coverage features.

Reverse Sumby Arne Sommer

An excellent, organised demonstration of Raku's unique language capabilities for Weekly Challenge #380. Author beautifully combines native features, including Bag data structures and state variables, by developing clear, practical solutions. In addition, Arne also provides thorough testing to validate the logic correctly.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 380by Jaldhar H. Vyas

This post presents a very interesting and informative comparison of Perl and Raku in regard to Weekly Challenge #380 by visually demonstrating some of the advanced features of the two programming languages, namely by using the (s///ger) operator as a frequency counter in the same manner in both Perl and Raku and providing an excellent example of how Perl's built in index function has recently improved, allowing for an easier way of indexing various items.

Reverse Frequenciesby Jorg Sommrey

The blog post does an amazing job of explaining weekly challenge #380 technically through comparing the two very different programming paradigms of Perl and J. The use of multi-dimensional hashes in Perl gives an aesthetically pleasing and simple way to organise information into categories, whereas the functional style of J provides a mathematically elegant solution for dealing with arrays and their indices, as well as character mapping.

The Weekly Challenge 380by Lubos Kolouch

In this article, solutions presented were derived by showing the strengths of each language by providing a clear and technical comparison of how Perl's regex-based string manipulation can be contrasted with the expressive nature of Python's list comprehensions and the built-in dictionary structures.

Perl Weekly Challenge 380by W Luis Mochan

W. Luis Mochán's innovation in reducing the complexity of frequency mapping, to succinct "1.5-liner" executable format as well as clever strategy on Task 1 all contribute to his demonstrated skills at successfully combining structural simplicity and robustness of execution presented via use of multiple try/catch validation blocks, to form an elite standard for executing Perl hacks.

Watch Your Zeros, and Don’t Get Off by One!by Matthias Muth

Matthias takes the opportunity to highlight edge cases, to demonstrate how to use case insensitive file name matching (using the fc function) instead of zero based indexing and loop multipliers, and to use an innovative way of adding a safety net around the injection of zeros to avoid producing undefined exceptions.

Just like honey, baby, from the beeby Packy Anderson

Packy gives a detailed and multilingual look at Weekly Challenge #380 with his solutions in Raku, Perl, Python and Elixir. His use of "bag" data structures in all four languages shows how the same underlying frequency logic is implemented across those four languages, and also provides important technical details about special edge case code requirements for Raku, such as preventing -Inf math results.

Frequencies and degreesby Peter Campbell Smith

Peter utilising natively fast ASCII byte operations and provides a very elegant and performance-based method to solving weekly challenge. With the help of integer array indices created through the ord() function instead of performing heavier hash lookups, Peter produces an outstandingly fast frequency counter.

Reverse the Frequency, Kennethby Roger Bell West

The post demonstrates the use of both idiomatic Perl and a clever implementation of it in PostScript. Roger's ability to transfer algorithmic logic between these two very different styles of programming (high level hashes for frequency counting in perl, to low level stack manipulations and dictionary management for postscript) shows great creativity, as well as the experience to structurally solve programming problems.

The race car has rhythmby Simon Green

In the post, Simon has shown how the multiple paradigms can be assimilated into one cohesive framework of the same operational flow; ie. Using Python's high-level native collection's Counter module, one can progress in a relatively seamless manner all the way down to Perl's low-level core tools using split and explicit hash manipulation techniques.

Rakudo

2026.26 Release #194by Elizabeth Mattijsen

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's listsby Miguel Prz

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Perl development using AI (online)July 8, 2026

Paris.pm monthly meetingJuly 8, 2026

Purdue Perl Mongers (HackLafayette) - TBAJuly 8, 2026

Boston Perl Mongers virtual monthlyJuly 14, 2026

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