Gábor Szabó

Posted on Sep 20 Originally published at perlweekly.com

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

#perl #news #programming

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 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 - 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.