Forem: Gabor Szabo

Perl 🐪 Weekly #766 - Perl: Past, Present and Future

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:07:08 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 766

Hi there,

This week's Perl landscape firmly establishes that while the history of Perl is rich and exciting, it is also a place for experimentation and innovation in the future. There have been handful of releases of Perl v5.43.9 which came up with plenty of changes and major one for me was the enhanced /xx pattern modifier. In between there was another very important patch was released, Perl v5.42.2-RC1, and Perl v5.40.4 addressing the vulnerability in Compress::Raw::Zlib. Don't dare call Perl is dead.

Ever worked with XS modules? Well we have three related XS modules that made it looks so simple and easy. The benefit of XS helps creating efficient and high speed unique identifier creation using Horus, Apophis, and Sekhmet. Bonus, you get to see how they can be used together. Robert seems to be on the roll with his another gem, Eshu, a code formatter written entirely in C and exposed to Perl through XS.

Not everything have to be, XS. Dave showed how you can work with TOON (Token-Oriented Object Notation), textual format for representing structured data, same data model as JSON. Using his new creation TOON, one can easily work with TOON data model. If you are XS fan, feel free to create XS version of TOON.

Do you use Java? If yes then you now have the choice of using Perl power inside Java. The project, PerlOnJava, gives us handy tool to get the job done: jperl, jcpan, and jprove.

The week was fun, too much to handle in such a short time but I am not complaining. I am finding it hard to keep up, how about you?

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

TPRF Board Announces the 2025 Annual Report

The Board is pleased to share the 2025 Annual Report from the The Perl and Raku Foundation.

Articles

Beautiful Perl feature: "heredocs", multi-line strings embedded in source code

This article on the Beautiful Perl Feature - Heredocs and MultiLine Strings provides a nice introductory overview of how to use Perl's heredoc syntax to create readable, maintainable multiline text. It provides practical examples combined with a simple explanation which allows experienced programmers and novices alike to have a fresh look at an item that has been around for many years.

Perl, the Strange Language That Built the Early Web

The unusual language that made the early web; a glimpse at the history of Perl less than truly alien to the average user; The original dynamic/interactive media for the internet; with its contribution to automation processes (primarily text); through CGI scripting - both technically and culturally; In terms of practicality or versatility; play a significant role in creating and supporting how the first wave of web interactivity was created and how it became an integral part of the early days of the world wide web.

Horus, Apophis, and Sekhmet: An C/XS Identifier Stack for Perl

This post focuses on three related XS modules for efficient and high speed unique identifier creation (UUID, ULID and deterministic) and content-addressable storage in Perl. It provides a comprehensive overview of how to use these tools in conjunction with each other to create an efficient and scalable unique ID workflow. It also demonstrates how they can be used together.

Eshu: Indentation Fixer for Eight Languages, Written in C

This article discusses a portable C-based program that formats code and will uniformly line up the indentation across eight different programming languages. It describes examples to show you how Eshu can help you make the indentation to your programming code consistent with very little effort and no extra heavy duty tools required. For Developers who choose to use other than traditional language-specific formattors, this document presents an overview of how Eshu creates a lightweight formatting solution that developers may find useful.

Writing a TOON Module for Perl

The article presents TOON (Token-Oriented Object Notation) which aims to be simple for both people and LMs to construct and understand while using as few punctuation marks as possible and maintaining an easily accessible structure of data. It also discusses the reasons why TOON will be beneficial and provides a Perl implementation module for TOON with a familiar interface to those that have used JSON.pm.

CPAN

Graphics::Toolkit::Color 2.0 feature overview

The Graphics::Toolkit::Color 2.0 feature overview post provides an impressive look at all of the most significant improvements that have been made in developing GTC 2.0. The description outlines how GTC has grown beyond only doing basic coloring routines to include now a much richer, more complex, multi-space colored library complete with the ability to create beautiful gradients, accurately measure colors for perceptual purposes, and a variety of tools for use by both designers and developers. Overall, this is a succinct overview that does an excellent job of showcasing the reasons why GTC 2.0 is a unique addition to CPAN.

PerlOnJava Gets a CPAN Client

This is a great update regarding the addition of native CPAN support to Perl-on-JVM tooling. The example uses the ability to use an already developed CPAN client for installing modules and accessing the overall CPAN ecosystem in a more natural way than would be done with the non-JVM versions of the clients. It gives many real-world examples and is an excellent source of information for those who want to connect Perl and Java.

Lingua::* - From 17 to 61 Languages: Resurrecting and Modernizing PetaMem's Number Conversion Suite

The blog entry, "Lingua Revival", is an interesting way to reintroduce Lingua by combining elements of memories with new features that apply to modern day Perl. The story is easy to follow and focuses on being usable in today's world, which will be beneficial to both long-time users and new users of the project.

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 Lance Wicks.

The Weekly Challenge - 367

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Max Odd Binary" and "Conflict Events". 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 - 366

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

Count the Times

Raku Musings has a clearly written "Count the Times" post that gives a well-organised overview. It shows how idiomatic features work together effectively in Raku, resulting in a clear and elegant solution. There is an excellent balance between compact code and an informative explanation. The post demonstrates the use of expressive constructs that lend themselves to solving this type of problem using Raku.

Could We Start Again, Please

Bob Lied writes an engaging post about a problem in a clear manner, interspersing logic with humor; making it a pleasure to read! The author reviews alternative methods and their advantages/disadvantages and demonstrates a practical approach as well as demonstrating good Perl coding skill.

Valid Times

Bob Lied's "Valid Times" post systematically breaks down the issue into distinct steps while also providing significant attention to detail in regards to possible edge cases and practical limitations of validation of times. It presents a succinct but complete Perl code and corresponds with sound logic behind the choice of this Perl implementation, which allows readers to follow along easily and use as a reference when addressing the same type of parsing problems.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 366

The Jaldhar's blog has written an extensive, interesting post detailing how to perform Week 366 tasks. It does so by separating them into two sections: Problem 1 and Problem 2. This helps readers easily understand the problems themselves, as well as providing a clear path to solution using Perl. The blog also clearly states the logic behind each step, allowing readers to learn from the blogs experience while still being able to easily move on to solving this week's challenges independently.

Pre-Timed Counters

The blog post written for the week of 366 by Jörg, presents an elegant solution that exemplifies the use of clear and concise Perl programming techniques with a command of idiomatic constructs. The reader will appreciate Sommrey's clean, logical approach in solving the problem space and his appreciation for the use of expressive and efficient code, which reflects both familiarity and appreciation for the inherent beauty of programming.

what time is it?

Luca Ferrari's post is a further example of his continuing theme of approaching Perl Weekly Challenge in an analytical as well as exploratory way; frequently developing solutions in several languages and platforms to help him better understand the challenges. Luca's posts provide very useful instruction/examples; help you learn through experimentation/experience; and help you to truly think about and re-examine/consider the real-world nature of the solution.

Perl Weekly Challenge 366

The write-up gives a very reasoned overview of the problem with easy-to-follow methods of solving it using logical thinking. There is a good amount of coding as well as thorough explanations that create a valid and helpful source for those searching for an understanding of this issue and its methods of resolution using Perl.

Counting Times Without Questions

The article from Matthias Muth, entitled Matthias Muth's Week 366, is a clear and precise description of his thought processes relating to solutions presented in a concise manner while also being well-organised so as to make it easy to understand the underlying concept. It has an elegant and idiomatic style similar to that of Matthias' other contributions to the Perl Weekly Challenge, and it has a very clean decomposition of the problem that allows more experienced readers to develop an appreciation for it.

The Times They Are A-Countin'

The entertaining narrative of Packy Anderson's post combines humor and solid technical approaches to a problem to keep readers interested and provide them with an enjoyable and intuitive experience involved in the solution. His creative approach to framing the challenge and providing clear examples of how to solve it makes for a positive experience for all.

Prefixes and times?

Peter Campbell Smith's Week 366 Write-up provides an unambiguous, pragmatic solution style representing a strong real-world Perl mindset. The emphasis is placed on solving the problem in an accurate and efficient manner through simple implementation methods. The provided solution is straightforward and effective; he understands the relevant tasks thoroughly and prefers to solve issues clearly and without complexity (typical of all Weekly Challenges).

The Weekly Challenge - 366: Count Prefixes

The writing style used by Reinier Maliepaard in his submission demonstrates a logical and coherent framework and logical correctness; Making it easy for the reader to follow. Reinier’s structure of writing reflects discipline and analytic thought, along with succinctness, resulting in a Combination of Clear and Robust Perl Source Code, which matches the strategy of problem-solving as well.

The Weekly Challenge - 366: Valid Token Counter

The Week 366 second post by Reinier Maliepaard provides another example of his methodical and rational approach to problem-solving with a detailed logical breakdown along with concise Perl code to solve the problem. The article focuses on providing a clear, correct, and easily read explanation of how to work through validation problems, offering users of all skill levels an accessible, educational account.

The Weekly Challenge #366

Robbie Hatley's Week 366 Answers includes usable Perl solutions, as well as easy to follow logical documentation for each step of reasoning. What is accomplished is a practical, understandable solution. While the solutions provide a clear method to convey both the "how-to" and "why" of developing the final product, they also teach the reader to think through each implementation logically.

The Time of the Count is Over

Week 366 of Roger's post is an impressive example of multi-language exploration with Ruby, Lua, PostScript and Raku; it illustrates how to solve problems in Perl and develop cross-language thinking by presenting examples of various programming paradigms solving the same problem as well as having clear and entertaining explanatory text.

Happy 7th birthday TWC!

Simon Green's 7th Anniversary Post for The Weekly Challenge is an amazing, heartfelt reflection of how far we've come as a community over the past seven years, combining his personal experience with his deep appreciation for all the amazing contributors & readers to our community. It's an uplifting and well-written post that captures the essence of what The Weekly Challenge is about and how it's positively affected our lives.

Rakudo

2026.12 Ich bin ein Berliner

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Perl Maven online: Testing in Perl - part 2

April 2, 2026

Perl Maven online: Testing in Perl - part 3

April 9, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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Perl Weekly #765 - Testing in Perl and AI

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:16:34 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 765

Hi there!

I am sending this edition rather late as I got into a frenzy of online courses that require a lot of preparation and only now I had time to work on the Perl Weekly. Sorry for that. In addition this edition has a lot of excellent articles. What happend? Last time I hardly found any article and now there are a lot. I am not complaining at all, I was just really surprised. Keep up the blogging so we we can share more content!

We have 3 grant reports, 2 reports from GPW, several article about the use of AI for Perl and many more. I think one of the keys is that several people have started to write serieses of articles. So they have a theme and explore it from various aspects.

I realized too late, but as I am stuck in Hungary for more than a month already, I should have visited the German Perl Workshop in Berlin. I thought about it too late. Anyway, there are at least the reports.

Personally I love testing. It is coding with very fast feedback that helps me stay sane. More or less :-)

Last week I taught a course on Testing in Python, but I thought one about Perl should be also done. So a few days from now I am going to start teaching a multi-part course about Testing in Perl. In Zoom.

Course attendance is free of charge.

The presentations will be recorded and will be uploaded to the Code Maven Academy where they will be available to paying subscribers.

I hope I'll see many of you and your co-workers at the course. Register here!

Enjoy your week

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Articles

Perl, the Strange Language That Built the Early Web

A bit of nostalgy and a lot of good insights.

TPRC Talk Submission Deadline extended

The new deadline is April 21, 2026. Go and submit your talk proposal!

Still on the [b]leading edge

The story of a crazy bug. Somewhere. Not in my code. discuss

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.42 & 2 CPAN::Meta* modules

Beautiful Perl feature: reusable subregexes

Stop Writing Release Notes: Accelerate with AI

Help testing DBD::Oracle

Discussion

Getting a 500 error on my website when running CGI script

Or, how to go from Perl v5.005 to Perl v5.32.1 in one step.

PetaPerl - reimplementation of perl

I have though several times about trying to reimplement Perl in Rust and every time I quickly convinced myself not to do it. First of all because it is way beyond my expertise. However also, what is the value of it? As I understand it there was a presentation about it at the German Perl Workshop covering the motivation as well. Very interesting. You can read the documentation and see the slides. I am rather excited!

Ambiguous use of ${x} resolved to $x

Code with winter clothes...

Perl and AI

Six Ways to Use AI Without Giving Up the Keys

The titles: 1. Unit Test Writing; 2. Documentation; 3. Release Notes; 4. Bug Triage; 5. Code Review; 6. Legacy Code Deciphering

experiments with claude, part ⅳ: dzilification of MIME-Lite

experiments with claude, part ⅴ: ClaudeLog

experiments with claude, part ⅲ: JMAP-Tester coverage

Grants

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): February 2026

PEVANS Core Perl 5: Grant Report for February 2026

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) February 2026

Perl

This week in PSC (218) | 2026-03-16

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 366

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Count Prefixes" and "Valid Times". 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 - 365

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Alphabet Index Digit Sum" and "Valid Token Counter" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

A Token Alphabet

An informative and thoughtful article which illustrates Raku's fantastic facilities for creating grammars and using tokens to model your own custom alphabet in a pleasing and expressive manner. Good balance of theory with practical approach; gives uncommon parsing concepts reasonable readability as well showcasing Raku's idiomatic implementation.

PWC365, Task 2 Valid Token Counter

The implementation of this solution has been done using a clean and organised manner. It shows excellent use of list processing in Raku while also using control flow to solve the problem effectively. Based on the written implementation, the author clearly understands how the system works as shown by their concise and logical reasoning in the code itself, as well as providing an idiomatic means of expressing themselves through the way they wrote their code.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 365

A clearly written and entertaining article that clearly shows both Perl and Raku solutions in parallel. This demonstrates the author's understanding of the idioms and strengths of both languages. The article provides clear logic as well as practical examples of how to implement the logic. The information provided in the article is helpful in showing the differences and similarities between the two programming languages, while also being concise and easy to read.

Sum Tokens and Count Digits

This is an intelligently written article that succinctly outlines how to utilise an effective problem-solving methodology without sacrificing either code readability or idiomatic use of language. In addition, the article does a wonderful job of providing clarity as well as technical depth in order to enhance both continuity in reasoning and elegance/instructional value of the solution.

The Weekly Challenge 365

This well-written article provides structure to help readers understand how each Weekly Challenge solution was developed. It combines clear explanations with practical examples of code to look at both how to apply a problem and how to solve it. The author demonstrates an understanding of their problem as well as the specific requirements that need to be satisfied in order for a given solution to be considered valid, but also gives the reader a fun place to explore various forms of programming using the languages of Perl and others.

regexps to rule them all!

An organised, well-articulated post that illustrates your consistent, orderly method for completing each week’s Challenge with great success in diverse languages. This demonstrates your problem solving capabilities as well as your versatility. All explanations provided were descriptive and practical; therefore were applicable across all languages. Also, by providing side-by-side examples of the various implementations from different programming languages, you have created meaningful comparisons; therefore illustrating each language’s distinctive characteristics.

Perl Weekly Challenge 365

A normalised write‑up is written in an interesting way, making it clear and fun to understand about solving both parts of the Weekly Challenges providing well-structured solutions and Perl/Raku examples. Examples will also be provided that are easy to read, written clearly and concisely, demonstrating logic that can be understood easily, by those with varying abilities.

Are Post Alphabits a Token Breakfast Cereal?

The post is full of energy and fun. It presents a practical, hands-on approach to completing the Weekly Challenge with appropriate justification and effective usage of Perl programming constructs. Solutions demonstrate an excellent understanding of the basics of programming (particularly list and string). Implementation of the solutions are both approachable and educational for the viewer.

Splitting and Summing and Checking and Counting

A concise README that is thoughtfully organised, with clear explanations and idiomatic code, that makes it easy to replicate your approach. You have demonstrated excellent problem solving and a high level of attention to clarity in your write-up; you have also successfully managed to balance the level of detail and technical depth for other people to follow.

I'll be the smartest bird the world has ever seen!

This is a creative solution that is fun, playful, uses a literary reference to solve a technical problem, and has clarity of thought and personality. The implementation is brief and uses idiomatic Perl. The strengths of Perl have been used to make it clear, and the story has been made clear and memorable.

Lots of counting

This is a good example of a solid engineering solution. It shows a structured and clear thinking process, as well as how well you have used the basic features of Perl to accomplish the task at hand. Your implementation is both concise and expressive; thus, demonstrating your mastery of decomposing problems into their components and using clean, idiomatic coding methods in your programming experience.

The Weekly Challenge - 365: Alphabet Index Digit Sum

This document has been created in a deliberate and orderly way which shows a good understanding of the problem at hand as well as the logic behind arriving at the answer; it also includes attention to detail when implementing the solution. The solution is practically designed as well as creatively developed and uses Perl features thoughtfully to create an efficient and effective answer.

The Weekly Challenge - 365: Valid Token Counter

It is a clear and well thought-out solution that uses a sound problem-solving method, reasoning clearly, and has clean, idiomatic Perl code. The method is easy to implement, efficient and has demonstrated the author's understanding of the problem and their attention to edge cases in the implementation process.

The Weekly Challenge #365

The post gives a comprehensive introduction to how to use Perl, as well as examples of its many capabilities. Each task has been addressed thoroughly by providing clear explanations and well‑structured code, illustrating the effective and creative use of Perl idiomatic patterns. All of these characteristics make this post an excellent resource for both learning Perl and using Perl as a reference.

Alphabet Digit Counter Token

This post presents a clear, thorough examination of the problem and provides an explanation of the solution to the problem through logical analysis. Roger has created a detailed description of the proposed solution, which includes smaller, clearer explanations and code so that all readers, whether looking for Perl or token-based parsing methods, can easily understand how to implement these methods in their own code.

Counting the index

A concise write-up, which clearly illustrates the two parts of the Weekly Challenge: counting an index, transforming alphabet position into repetitive digit sums, and validating tokens via concise logic expression, using both Python and Perl along with a clear explanation of the solution with examples of practical problem solving and proper implementation.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report;
StackOverflow Perl report.

Event reports

28th German Perl Workshop (2026, Berlin)

It sounds like the German Perl Workshop became a replacement to the mostly defunct YAPC::EU.

German Perl Workshop 2026 in Berlin

The usual very detailed review by domm.

Events

Perl Maven online: Testing in Perl - part 1

March 26, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #764 - Dancer to Desktop with Prima

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:57:14 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 764

Hi there,

The Perl community continues to move forward with exciting updates and useful new tools. Recently, a new release of Dancer has been announced. In his blog post, Jason A. Crome shared the release of Dancer 2.10, bringing improvements and fixes to the popular web framework. Dancer has long been appreciated for making web development in Perl simple and expressive, and this new version continues that tradition. It is always encouraging to see mature Perl frameworks still actively maintained and evolving with the needs of developers.

Another interesting project worth exploring is Prima, introduced by Reinier Maliepaard. Prima is a powerful GUI toolkit for Perl, allowing developers to build graphical desktop applications. Many Perl developers are familiar with web or command-line tools, but Prima reminds us that Perl can also be used effectively for desktop interfaces. The project demonstrates how flexible the language can be when building different kinds of applications.

The Perl Steering Council also published a new UPDATE: PSC (217) | 2026-03-09. These regular updates give a useful overview of what is happening around the Perl core and governance. They help the community stay informed about ongoing discussions, development priorities, and future plans. Transparency like this is very valuable for an open source language, as it helps everyone understand how decisions are made and where the project is heading.

Finally, it is always nice to see new modules appearing in the CPAN ecosystem. Recently I released a small module called DBIx::Class::MockData, which is designed to help generate mock data when working with DBIx::Class in tests. Creating realistic data for database tests can sometimes take extra effort, so tools that simplify this process can be quite helpful. As always, CPAN continues to grow thanks to contributions from many developers in the Perl community.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter. Stay safe and healthy.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Dancer 2.1.0 Released

In this short announcement, Jason A. Crome shares the release of Dancer 2.10, a new version of the popular Perl web framework Dancer. The post is brief and to the point, informing the community that the new version is now available on CPAN and ready for use. It highlights the continued maintenance and progress of the framework, which has long been valued for making web development in Perl simple and enjoyable.

Articles

This week in PSC (217) | 2026-03-09

The Perl Steering Council shares a short summary of their latest meeting and the topics currently on their radar. The meeting itself was brief, but it still covered a few important administrative and planning items related to the Perl core project. One of the main points discussed was the ongoing outreach to potential new members of the Perl core team. The council mentioned that they have contacted several people and are waiting for responses before holding a vote. Expanding or refreshing the group of contributors is an important step in keeping the Perl core development active and sustainable.

Mastering Perl Prima: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

The article explains that Prima provides a rich set of widgets and tools for creating graphical interfaces such as windows, buttons, and other interactive elements. With relatively small pieces of code, developers can create a working GUI application and run it through Prima's event loop. This makes it possible to build desktop programs in Perl without relying only on command-line interfaces or web frameworks.

Beautiful Perl feature : two-sided constructs, in list or in scalar context

In this article, Laurent Dami explores an interesting Perl concept: two-sided constructs that behave differently depending on list or scalar context. The post explains how certain Perl expressions can adapt their behavior based on what the surrounding code expects, which is one of the language's distinctive and powerful features.

CPAN

Mail::Make

Mail::Make is a modern Perl module for building and sending MIME email messages with a clean, fluent API. It allows developers to construct messages step-by-step (adding headers, text, HTML, attachments, etc.) while automatically generating the correct MIME structure for the email.

DBIx::Class::MockData

The CPAN distribution DBIx-Class-MockData introduces a convenient way to generate mock data for testing applications built with DBIx::Class. It helps developers quickly populate schemas with realistic test records, making it easier to write and maintain database tests. Tools like this are particularly useful in projects using DBIx::Class, which maps relational database tables to Perl objects and is widely used in Perl web applications.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 365

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Alphabet Index Digit Sum" and "Valid Token Counter". 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 - 364

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

String Goal

The post showing effective use of features like gather/take and thoughtful string tokenization. The post combines readable code with solid explanation, making it useful and inspiring for anyone exploring Raku for text parsing tasks.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 364

The post provides a clear and well-structured walkthrough of Perl Weekly Challenge #364, presenting the problem statements alongside thoughtful explanations of the approach and implementation. The solutions are concise, readable, and demonstrate practical Perl/Raku techniques, making the article both informative and enjoyable for developers following the challenge.

Alternate Codes

This post presents solutions to Perl Weekly Challenge 364, with a strong focus on clear reasoning and elegant Perl implementations. The article walks through the logic behind each task and explains the approach in a concise but technical way, making it easy for readers to follow the thought process. It is a well-written challenge write-up that nicely demonstrates practical problem solving and expressive Perl code.

substituting strings!

The article offers a practical and technically rich walkthrough of the challenge tasks. The explanations are concise but clear, and the multiple implementations make the post especially interesting for readers who enjoy comparing solutions across languages and environments.

Perl Weekly Challenge 364

In this blog post, W. Luis Mochán shares his solutions to Perl Weekly Challenge 364, presenting concise and well-thought-out Perl implementations for both tasks. The article focuses on clear logic and often explores compact solutions, sometimes even demonstrating elegant one-liners and efficient use of Perl features.

Decrypted "715#15#15#112#": goooal!

The solutions demonstrate a thoughtful and elegant approach to Perl Weekly Challenge #364, combining clear reasoning with expressive Perl idioms. The code is concise yet readable, showing creative problem-solving and effective use of Perl's strengths to produce clean and well-structured implementations.

Andrés Cantor Goes West

The write-up balances technical detail with an informal and engaging style, making the reasoning behind the solutions easy to follow. It is an enjoyable and well-explained challenge post that highlights practical problem solving and thoughtful coding.

Weird encodings

This post shares Peter's solutions to Perl Weekly Challenge 364, presenting clear and well-structured Perl implementations for both tasks. It explains the reasoning behind the approach and walks the reader through the logic step by step, making the solutions easy to follow. Overall, it is a solid and educational write-up that demonstrates practical Perl problem-solving and clean coding style.

The Weekly Challenge - 364: Decrypt String

This post presents a clear and well-structured solution to one of the Perl Weekly Challenge tasks. Reinier explains the approach step by step and supports it with concise Perl code, making the logic easy to follow for readers interested in algorithmic problem solving. It is a solid technical walkthrough that demonstrates practical Perl usage while keeping the explanation accessible and educational.

The Weekly Challenge - 364: Goal Parser

This post presents a thoughtful solution to the second task of Perl Weekly Challenge 364, with a clear explanation of the algorithm and the reasoning behind it. Reinier walks through the logic step by step and supports it with concise Perl code, making the approach easy to understand. It is a well-written technical note that demonstrates practical problem solving and highlights Perl's strengths for implementing compact and readable solutions.

The Weekly Challenge #364

In this post, Robbie shares his Perl solutions for Perl Weekly Challenge 364, continuing his detailed and methodical style of writing about the weekly tasks. His solutions are well structured and focus on correctness and clarity, with carefully organised code and explanations that help readers understand the reasoning behind each step.

Decrypted Goals

In this post, Roger presents his solutions to Perl Weekly Challenge 364, focusing on the task involving "decrypted goals". The write-up explains the reasoning behind the algorithm and walks through a clear Perl implementation that solves the problem efficiently. It is a concise and technically solid article that demonstrates careful analysis and practical Perl problem-solving.

It's all about the translation

In this blog post, Simon shares his solutions to another Perl Weekly Challenge, following his usual workflow of first solving the tasks in Python and then translating the logic into Perl. This approach provides an interesting comparison between the two languages and highlights how similar algorithms can be implemented in different ways.

Rakudo

2026.10 Climbing CragCLI

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report;
StackOverflow Perl report.

Events

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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

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

Perl 🐪 Weekly #763 - Is WhatsApp the new IRC?

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:40:41 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 763

Hi there!

While we are still low on articles we had a good start in the WhatsApp group I mentioned 2 weeks ago. People introduced themselves and there were some light conversations. You are welcome to join us and write a few words about yourself.

There are also a number of Perl related events on the horizon in Paris and Berlin and the virtual event I organize.

Finally I published the Code Maven Academy site where there are already 140 hours of videos including 30 hours related to Perl. I'll keep recording these during live events and participants of my events will also get a discount coupon.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Announcements

Perl 5.42.1 is now available!

'We are pleased to announce version 42.1, the first maintenance release of version 42 of Perl 5.': Perldelta

Articles

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki & JSTree V 1.41, etc

Beautiful Perl feature : fat commas, a device for structuring lists

Beautiful Perl feature: trailing commas

More dev.to articles on beautiful Perl features

A meta-article about the series.

Discussion

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) with Perl

Perl

This week in PSC (216) | 2026-03-02

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 364

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Decrypt String" and "Goal Parser". 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 - 363

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

Sheriff Detector

The post offers a clear and elegant walkthrough of solving two interesting problems using Raku. It stands out for its well-explained code, practical examples, and thoughtful use of language features like subsets, parsing, and bitwise operations.

Lying Sheriffs

The article provides a clear and well-structured exploration of the challenge, combining thoughtful algorithmic reasoning with an elegant implementation. The use of Perl and PDL demonstrates both efficiency and creativity, making the solution not only correct but also technically insightful. Overall, it's an excellent example of concise problem analysis paired with expressive code.

Perl Weekly Challenge 363

The post presents a clean and well-reasoned solution to the Perl Weekly Challenge, with concise Perl code and a clear explanation of the underlying logic. The approach is methodical and easy to follow, demonstrating solid problem-solving and thoughtful handling of edge cases.

I Don't Lie, Sheriff!

The post demonstrates a clean and thoughtful Perl implementation, with clear logic and well-structured code. The approach effectively handles both the self-referential string validation and the subnet-membership check, showing careful attention to correctness and readability.

I Shot The Subnet…

The post presents a clear and engaging walkthrough of the challenge, combining solid problem decomposition with readable Perl implementations. The explanation of the approach is practical and easy to follow, while the multi-language comparisons add extra technical value for readers exploring different idioms. Overall, it's a well-structured and insightful solution write-up.

Lies and lies within

The write-up presents a clear and methodical approach to solving the Perl Weekly Challenge, with well-structured code and helpful explanations of the reasoning behind the solution. The implementation is clean and idiomatic Perl, making the logic easy to follow and reproduce. Overall, it's a thoughtful and technically solid exploration of the problem.

The Weekly Challenge - 363

The write-up provides a clear and well-structured solution to the challenge, with careful input validation and readable Perl code that emphasizes robustness. The step-by-step logic and defensive programming style make the implementation easy to understand and reliable.

The Weekly Challenge #363

The blog presents a thorough and thoughtfully structured solution to the Perl Weekly Challenge, combining clear reasoning with well-documented Perl code. The modular design and detailed explanations make the logic easy to follow while demonstrating solid engineering discipline.

Stringy Sheriff

The post offers a clear and thoughtful walkthrough of solving the challenge with practical reasoning and well-structured code. Roger nicely explains the approach step-by-step, making the solution easy to follow while highlighting useful string-processing techniques.

The subnet detector

The post provides a clear and practical walkthrough of both tasks from The Weekly Challenge, with well-structured solutions in Python and Perl. The explanations highlight useful techniques such as regex parsing, handling UTF-8 characters, and leveraging networking libraries like Python's ipaddress and Perl's Net::IP.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Perl Maven online: Code-reading and Open Source contribution

March 10, 2026

Paris.pm monthly meeting

March 11, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #762 - Perl with MetaCPAN

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:45:58 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 762

Hi there,

If there's one thing that keeps impressing me in our community, it's the dedication of people like Olaf Alders. Week after week, Olaf keeps refining MetaCPAN, polishing small details and improving the user experience. It's not always flashy work, but when you use MetaCPAN, you can feel it - everything feels smoother, faster, and more reliable. That kind of steady, thoughtful dedication really inspires me.

Speaking of inspiration, Dave Cross recently shared a neat little trick that I think many of us can use. He showed how your README file can be turned into a static website - yes, the README you already have for your module! The article on Dev.to is called "Your README is already a website" and it's a fun, practical reminder that sometimes the tools we already have, can do more than we think. I love seeing simple ideas like that applied in clever ways.

On my side of things, I've been quietly wrestling with some longstanding issues in DBIx::Class. Not only that, but DBIx::Class::Async shares the same quirks, so it's been double the fun. I managed to fix a few problems already, but some issues are tied to PostgreSQL-specific behavior. That turned out to be tricky because most of the existing tests run on SQLite - easy to spin up, but not the same as PostgreSQL. I stumbled upon Test::PostgreSQL, which looked perfect, and then found Test::DBIx::Class, which integrates smoothly with it. I thought, "Great! Just write a use case and done." Ha! Not quite. My Ubuntu 24.04 setup didn't want to play nicely with Test::PostgreSQL - some socket permission issues blocked me entirely. I decided to tinker and ended up creating Test::PostgreSQL::v2, which worked like a charm. Then came integrating it with Test::DBIx::Class, which needed a trait for my new module. After a little more work, I added Test::DBIx::Class::SchemaManager::Trait::Testpostgresqlv2, and voila - now anyone using Test::DBIx::Class with PostgreSQL can benefit. For me, that meant I finally had a reliable way to reproduce the issue and verify the fix, like in this unit test for DBIx::Class::Async v0.64: t/156-resultset-inflate-datetime.t. Feels good to see it all working.

While I was in tinkering mode, I also revisited Test::Spelling. I always get tripped up on British vs. American English in POD, and I wanted a unit test that could work across all my modules. Initially, I had to manually add stopwords per module - tedious! So I upgraded Test::Spelling and created Test::Spelling::Stopwords. Now I can generate stopwords automatically, and the same script works for every module. It's been a real time-saver, and I'm even using it in DBIx::Class::Async here: t/spell-pod.t

It's funny how small tools and little tweaks can make such a difference. Between Olaf's continuous improvements, Dave's clever README trick, and the testing adventures I've had, I feel reminded of what makes our Perl community special - curiosity, persistence, and a little bit of playful tinkering.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter and stay safe & healthy.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

TPRC call for presentations is open!

The Perl & Raku Foundation has opened its call for presentations for TPRC 2026, inviting submissions of 20 or 50 minute talks on topics of interest to the Perl and Raku communities. Accepted speakers will receive complimentary conference tickets, with sessions scheduled for June 26–28 in Greenville, SC—an excellent opportunity to share insights and help shape this year's technical programme.

Board Proposes Chris Prather (perigrin) for Membership

The Perl Foundation's board has put forward Chris Prather (perigrin) as a candidate for board membership, highlighting his decades of professional Perl experience and long‑standing community contributions. His vision emphasises strengthening the Foundation's role in uniting Perl and Raku projects, supporting maintainers, and fostering sustainable ecosystem growth.

Articles

Cloud VM Performance / Price comparison 2026

This post offers a timely, data‑driven benchmark of CPU performance versus cost across 7 major cloud providers and 44 VM families, using Perl‑based tooling for reproducible results. The concise summary and practical Docker‑ready benchmark suite make it a valuable reference for developers and architects seeking real‑world insights into cloud compute value.

Automatic cross-platform testing: part 7: 32 bit, again

David Cantrell's latest on automatic cross‑platform testing tackles the perennial challenge of running CI on 32‑bit environments using modern GitHub Actions, showing how to assemble a unified workflow across Unix‑like systems while handling 32‑bit builds. He walks through clever tricks for downloading artifacts and even building a 32‑bit Perl with 32‑bit integers for more thorough testing. It’s a practical, hands‑on guide for anyone keen to broaden test coverage beyond the usual 64‑bit platforms.

Podcast

The Underbar, episode 9: Olaf Kolkman (part 1)

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 first part, we discussed his involvement with Perl, DNSSEC and NLnet Labs.

CPAN

DBD::Mock::Session::GenerateFixtures v1.03

The latest release includes automatic mock data generation for transactional database interactions. That means it's much easier to capture and replay sequences that involve BEGIN WORK, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, and even nested try/catch logic.

App::Test::Generator v0.29

The latest release introduces mutation testing alongside a sleek HTML mutation dashboard, making it easier to see which lines of code survived mutations and where your tests could miss mistakes. Instead of just coverage numbers, you can now ask, "Would a mistake here be caught?" The dashboard highlights affected lines, provides helpful tooltips, and allows detailed per-line inspection.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 363

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "String Lie Detector" and "Subnet Sheriff". 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 - 362

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

TWC362

This blog post delivers clean, idiomatic Perl solutions to both parts of TWC 362, with clear logic in the echo_chamber looping and a well-structured number-to-words sorting implementation. The use of Perl's core functions keeps the code readable and efficient, making it a helpful reference for Perl Weekly Challenge enthusiasts.

Spellbound Echo

This post offers a clear and idiomatic Raku solution to the 'Echo Chamber' challenge, showcasing concise use of core language features like map, substr, and the repetition operator. The explanation is practical and easy to follow, making it a great example of writing expressive, efficient Raku code.

Echo Chamber

This write-up for PWC 362 gives a thoughtful and practical exploration of multiple Perl approaches to the 'Echo Chamber' string transformation problem. Bob clearly explains regex, list-mapping, and string-building techniques, offering insights into Perl's expressive power and performance trade-offs. It's a solid, engaging read with useful benchmarks for comparison.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 362

This Week 362 post on Braincells.com presents clear, idiomatic Perl solutions to the 'Echo Chamber' and spell-sorting tasks, with concise logic leveraging Perl's core functions for string repetition and custom sorting. The explanations walk through the problem and implementation cleanly, making it accessible even for those new to the weekly challenges. It's a solid technical write-up that showcases effective Perl problem-solving.

Lingua to the rescue!

This write-up on Perl Weekly Challenge 362: Lingua to the rescue! gives a clear and practical set of Perl and Raku solutions, especially for the 'Echo Chamber' string task using Raku's expressive constructs and Perl's repetition operator. The post balances readability with technical depth, making it engaging and informative for developers exploring language features.

Perl Weekly Challenge 362

This post delivers clear, idiomatic Perl solutions to both tasks of Perl Weekly Challenge 362, using expressive constructs like map‑based repetition for Echo Chamber and a well‑structured Schwartzian sort with language‑specific converters for Spellbound Sorting. The explanations make the logic easy to follow and showcase Perl's strengths in string and list processing.

What Sort of Echo?

This post gives a straightforward and well-structured Perl implementation for both parts of Perl Weekly Challenge 362, cleanly illustrating string expansion and English-word sorting logic. The code leverages familiar Perl idioms like map and split for clarity and effectiveness, making it easy to follow for readers interested in Perl string and list processing.

You Have No Choice

This write-up offers clear, practical multi-language solutions to the Perl Weekly Challenge 362 tasks, with nicely explained approaches in Raku, Perl, Python, and Elixir that make the logic easy to follow. Packy balances straightforward implementations with thoughtful commentary, making it a technically solid and engaging post for challenge enthusiasts.

Echo and wordy numbers

This challenge page from Peter presents the Perl Weekly Challenge 362 tasks with clear problem statements for both 'Echo Chamber' and 'Spellbound Sorting'. It provides a solid foundation for exploring string manipulation and sorting by word form, making it a useful resource for practicing concise algorithm design in Perl.

Echo Chamber

This Weekly Challenge 362 post offers a clean, beginner-friendly Perl implementation of the 'Echo Chamber' task, contrasting a straightforward loop approach with a more declarative map-and-join variant. The explanations highlight readable coding practices and clarify the benefits of each style, making it both instructive and approachable for Perl programmers.

Spellbound Sorting

This PWC 362 Part 2 post presents a clear and efficient Perl solution for sorting numbers by their spelled-out word forms using a classic Schwartzian Transform. The explanation shows thoughtful use of Lingua::Any::Numbers for multilingual support and highlights how to avoid repeated conversions for better performance. It's a technically solid and instructive example of Perl's data-processing strengths.

The Weekly Challenge #362

This post presents well‑thought‑out Perl solutions to the Perl Weekly Challenge 362 problems with clear logic and use of idiomatic Perl constructs. The code is structured for readability and correctness, making it a valuable example for anyone exploring challenge‑style problem solving in Perl.

Spellbound Echo

This post delivers a clear and well‑explained exploration of The Weekly Challenge 362 tasks, walking through character‑duplication and spelled‑number sorting logic with readable examples. The author balances practical code with thoughtful commentary, offering valuable insights into expressive string and list manipulation techniques.

The one liners

This post delivers clean, one‑liner solutions in both Python and Perl for the Weekly Challenge 362 tasks, showing concise use of enumeration and string repetition for Echo Chamber and leveraging language‑specific libraries for Spellbound Sorting. Simon's examples and side‑by‑side language comparison make the logic easy to grasp and technically satisfying.

Rakudo

2026.08 Positional Adverbs

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Perl Maven online: Code-reading and Open Source contribution

March 10, 2026

Paris.pm monthly meeting

March 11, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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 #761 - Perl on WhatsApp

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 05:27:56 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 761

Hi there!

Do you use WhatsApp? There is now a WhatsApp group for Perl. Join us!

Thanks to Mikko Koivunalho we now have a graph on the MetaCPAN stats page.

Perl-wise it was a rather weak week: we don't have many articles. On the other hand we are back with a new live online event where we are going to work on one or more CPAN modules. I hope this will encourage more of you to start contributing to open source projects in Perl and maybe also to write articles about your journey. Register here! If the scheduled time-slot is not good for you, come to our WhatsApp group and let's discuss it!

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Articles

ANN: CPAN::MetaCurator V 1.08, Perl.Wiki V 1.40 etc

Treating GitHub Copilot as a Contributor

Dave Cross just posted this article explaining how to use Github co-pilot as a contributor to your project. We will give it a try next meeting, but you can already try it yourself on one of the TODO items in our list.

Web

Perl/Plack Middleware for Emulating An Apache HTTP Server

Keith released a couple of new Plack middleware modules that he uses as a test web server for pages that will ultimately be under Apache httpd.

Websockets in Catalyst

A detailed example with explanation and use-case.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 362

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Echo Chamber" and "Spellbound Sorting". 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 - 361

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

TWC361

The blog post presents clear and idiomatic Perl solutions for both the Zeckendorf representation and the celebrity problem, showcasing practical logic and efficient algorithmic style. The code is easy to follow and well-structured, making it a great example of solving weekly challenge tasks with solid Perl techniques.

Celebrity Representation

The post showcases a clean and thoughtful Raku solution to computing Zeckendorf representations, demonstrating idiomatic use of sequences and recursion in the language. It's both well-structured and easy to follow, making it a valuable reference for Raku practitioners tackling algorithmic challenges.

numbers

The write-up presents clear and well-structured Raku solutions for both the Zeckendorf sequence and the celebrity problem, with straightforward logic that's easy to follow and learn from. The use of idiomatic Raku constructs and explanatory comments makes the post a solid reference for anyone tackling similar challenges.

Perl Weekly Challenge 361

The post delivers clear and practical Perl implementations for both the Zeckendorf representation and the celebrity detection problems, with complete working scripts and illustrative example outputs. Its well‑organised explanations and real usage examples make it an excellent reference for Perl developers tackling these classic algorithmic tasks.

Was Fibonacci ever a Celebrity?

The post offers solid, well-commented Perl implementations for both TWC361 tasks, clearly expressing the logic behind Zeckendorf decomposition and celebrity detection. The structured approach and readable code make it a valuable example for anyone exploring algorithmic solutions in Perl.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The write-up delivers clear and well-structured multi-language solutions for both the Zeckendorf representation and the celebrity detection tasks, with thoughtful explanations of the greedy algorithm and candidate evaluation. The step-by-step approach and readable Perl, Raku, Python, and Elixir code make the post a practical and educational resource for anyone exploring these classic algorithmic problems.

Zeckendorf, the celebrity

The Challenge 361 post clearly states the two tasks - computing the Zeckendorf representation of a number and finding a celebrity in a matrix, along with illustrative examples that make the problem definitions easy to grasp. Its structured presentation of inputs and expected outputs helps readers understand the algorithmic goals before diving into solutions, making it a solid reference for anyone exploring these classic programming challenges.

Zeckendorf Representation

The write-up presents a memory-efficient and well-explained Perl implementation for computing the Zeckendorf representation, cleverly using only two Fibonacci values at a time and clear test examples to illustrate the logic. Its structured presentation and readable code make it a helpful reference for anyone interested in elegant algorithmic Perl solutions.

Find Celebrity

The celebrity finder solution delivers a clear and self-contained Perl implementation that uses readable grep-based checks to identify the celebrity by row and column conditions, backed by several solid test cases illustrating correctness. Its straightforward logic and minimal reliance on external modules make it both accessible and practical for Perl programmers exploring matrix-based algorithms.

The Weekly Challenge #361

The Perl solutions for the challenge combine clear logic with well-commented, idiomatic code that makes both the Zeckendorf representation and celebrity detection easy to follow. The step-by-step explanations and practical test cases offer a solid, educational reference for Perl programmers engaging with classic algorithmic tasks.

Celebrity Zeckendorf

The post offers a clear, language-agnostic walk through both challenge tasks, computing the Zeckendorf representation and finding a celebrity in a matrix, with working code in several languages and readable explanations of the greedy Fibonacci strategy and set-based filtering. Its inclusion of multiple idiomatic implementations makes it a practical and educational read for programmers exploring these classic algorithmic problems.

Representing a celebrity

The post delivers clear, well‑structured Python (with Perl) implementations for both the Zeckendorf representation and celebrity detection tasks, showcasing thoughtful logic and solid error handling. The explanations and example inputs/outputs make the solutions easy to understand and follow, making it a useful resource for anyone practicing these classic algorithmic problems.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Perl Maven online: Code-reading and Open Source contribution

March 3, 2026

Paris.pm monthly meeting

March 11, 2026

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2026

Perl Toolchain Summit 2026

April 23-26, 2026

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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 #760 - Async Perl

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 04:06:46 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 760

Hi there,

Perl's asynchronous ecosystem continues to grow, enabling developers to build non-blocking, responsive applications with ease. Modules like IO::Async, async features in Mojolicious, and helpers for asynchronous database operations (such as DBIx::Class::Async) allow event-driven designs, background tasks, and futures/promises, making high-throughput web services, real time APIs, and streaming pipelines straightforward to implement.

Projects like PAGI and PAGI::Server, now with HTTP/2 support, and Thunderhorse showcase how Perl can handle multiple connections efficiently while keeping code clear and maintainable. Together, these tools make it easier to build responsive, scalable, and maintainable applications, all while retaining the expressive, pragmatic style that continues to define Perl.

With each new module and project, Perl's potential in the modern, concurrent world keeps expanding, the best is yet to come.

A small milestone reached with this issue, my 200th edition. Enjoy rest of the newsletter and stay safe.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Join us for TPRC 2026 in Greenville, SC!

It’s great to see the announcement for The Perl and Raku Conference 2026 (TPRC) taking shape, with registration opening and plans underway for a vibrant community gathering in Greenville, SC this June. The post reinforces the value of bringing Perl and Raku developers together for talks, workshops, and networking. A highlight on the opensource calendar that strengthens the ecosystem and connects contributors across projects.

This week in PSC (215) | 2026-02-11

In This week in PSC 215, the Perl Steering Council covered a deep discussion around legal identifier name restrictions for security without reaching consensus and planning to broaden the conversation beyond p5p, tackled the challenge of an absent maintainer for the dual‑life Encode module, and decided to hold off on merging larger PRs like magic v2 and attributes v2 due to the upcoming freeze in this release cycle. These updates give a clear snapshot of ongoing governance and core maintenance decisions within the Perl project.

Articles

Poplar Decisions

The post reflects on the challenge of rational decision‑making with a quirky, human‑centred anecdote, weaving in the idea that structured data models, like decision trees, can help bring objectivity to complex choices. The post’s blend of storytelling and commentary on data structures adds a thoughtful and entertaining perspective for programmers thinking about reasoning and modeling in code.

Mojo with WebSocket

A practical real‑world example of using Mojolicious’ built‑in WebSocket support to build an interactive online chat app in Perl, complete with multiple server variants and integration options like Redis or PostgreSQL. The repository showcases how easily Mojolicious can handle real‑time bidirectional communication with WebSockets, making it a solid reference for Perl developers exploring event‑driven web apps.

Coding Agents using Anthropic and z.ai - presentation at the German Perl Workshop 2026

The post previews Max's talk at the German Perl Workshop 2026, exploring how modern AI coding agents from Anthropic and z.ai can assist with Perl development, what differences exist between the models, and tips for getting them to write good code. It’s an engaging look at practical uses of agentic AI in real world programming contexts, a timely topic for anyone curious about AI‑assisted development.

Beautiful Perl feature: 'local', for temporary changes to global variables

This article highlights one of Perl’s unique strengths, the local keyword, showing how it enables temporary, dynamic changes to global variables without permanent side effects. With clear examples manipulating %ENV, special Perl variables and even symbol table entries, it makes a compelling case for using local judiciously to solve real world problems that lexical scoping alone can’t.

CPAN

PAGI::Server, now with HTTP/2!

The announcement of PAGI::Server 0.001017 highlights experimental HTTP/2 support built on nghttp2, bringing both cleartext h2c and TLS‑based HTTP/2 to Perl web services with automatic protocol detection and solid h2spec compliance. The write‑up explains why HTTP/2 matters for backend performance and modern use cases like gRPC and multiplexed APIs, and it also outlines other quality‑of‑life improvements and operational fixes in the release.

Black box test generator version 0.28 released

Version 0.28 of App::Test::Generator, the black‑box test case generator, has just been released with improved schema extraction and test generation accuracy, tightening detection of getter/setter methods and better typing in generated tests. These enhancements make it easier to produce honest, robust fuzz and corpus driven test harnesses from your Perl modules.

Run::WeeklyChallenge

Run::WeeklyChallenge is a small but useful CPAN module that helps you automate running solutions to challenges from The Weekly Challenge site by passing one or more sets of JSON‑formatted inputs to your code. It cleanly wraps your solution logic and input schema validation, making it easier to test and reuse challenge solutions programmatically.

DBIx::Class::Async

DBIx::Class::Async is a modern asynchronous wrapper for DBIx::Class that allows non‑blocking database operations in Perl, keeping the familiar DBIC interface while running queries in the background via futures. The latest update brings several improvements: caching is now disabled by default (TTL 0), automatic detection of non-deterministic SQL functions (like NOW() and RAND()) ensures safe bypass of caching, cache invalidation on update/delete operations is more precise using primary keys, and count() queries are no longer cached to guarantee accurate row counts. These enhancements make asynchronous DBIC usage both safer and more reliable.

Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Kate

Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Kate provides Perl programs with robust syntax highlighting using the same engine as the Kate editor. The latest update fixes Issue #23 in Template.pm: the testDetectSpaces() regex was corrected, ensuring only spaces and tabs are matched and improving number highlighting in Perl and other languages. The test suite expected outputs were also updated to reflect the corrected highlighting behavior.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 361

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Zeckendorf Representation" and "Find Celebrity". 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 - 360

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

TWC360

This write-up delivers straightforward, idiomatic Perl solutions for both text justification and word sorting, showing practical use of fc for case-insensitive comparisons and clear subroutine design. The concise code examples make the challenge solutions easy to follow and apply.

Full Circle

In this post, an effective solution to The Weekly Challenge #360 is given, with beautiful examples showing how Raku can be implemented for text justification and sorting as the output. Most of the explanations are fairly short, but they are clearly defined, giving lots of examples; and, they consider the idiomatic usage of Raku's features to make the output readable and helpful.

Pertaining to a subtlety of sorting

This article offers a thoughtful take on the Word Sorter task from PWC 360, with a clear explanation of the case-insensitive sort and an efficient Perl solution using a Schwartzian transform. The benchmarking insight and attention to Unicode case folding nuance show both practical coding skill and depth of understanding.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 360

This write-up clearly presents both Text Justifier and Word Sorter tasks with simple, idiomatic Perl and Raku solutions that showcase practical string manipulation and sorting techniques. The inclusion of multiple examples and cross-language snippets makes the challenge approachable and highlights the expressive power of each language.

Perl Weekly Challenge 360

This post showcases clear, idiomatic Perl solutions for both the Text Justifier and Word Sorter tasks, with one‑liner examples and concise logic that demonstrate practical use of integer arithmetic and case‑preserving sorting. The included sample inputs and outputs make the behavior easy to follow and verify.

This is exactly the sort of justification that I was looking for

This post methodically implements both Text Justifier and Word Sorter solutions for PWC 360 in clear Perl code, showing careful step-by-step padding logic and idiomatic sorting. The explanations of how the examples are handled make the approach easy to follow and instructive for readers.

Justifying TIMTOWTDI

The post offers well‑structured Perl solutions that clearly implement both text justification and alphabetical word sorting with idiomatic constructs and practical tests. The use of case‑preserving sorting and centered padding logic demonstrates good command of Perl’s core features and makes the solutions easy to follow and reuse.

Word Crimes are Justified

An excellent and clear walk-through of the Perl Weekly Challenge tasks, with well-structured multi-language solutions and thoughtful explanations that make the text justification and word sorting problems easy to follow. The blend of Perl, Raku, Python, and Elixir examples shows both depth and versatility of approach.

Padding and sorting

The post presents the Text Justifier and Word Sorter tasks clearly with well-explained inputs and desired outputs, giving readers a solid grounding in the problem definitions. The examples are practical and show the expected string centering and alphabetical ordering behavior in a way that supports straightforward implementation.

The Weekly Challenge - 360: Text Justifier

This post demonstrates a practical and idiomatic Perl solution by leveraging String::Pad for Text Justifier, showcasing how using existing modules can simplify challenge tasks. The concise examples with clear input/output make it easy to grasp the task mechanics and verify correctness.

The Weekly Challenge - 360: Word Sorter

This write-up delivers a succinct and idiomatic Perl solution to the Word Sorter task, using a case-insensitive sort and clean split/grep logic that keeps words unchanged while ordering them alphabetically. The included test cases make the behavior clear and easy to verify.

Justify the Words

This post delivers clear and well-commented solutions to both Text Justifier and Word Sorter tasks from The Weekly Challenge 360, using concise Lua, Raku, Perl and other language examples with practical explanations of key steps like centered padding and case-insensitive sorting. The author’s discussion of different implementation strategies highlights thoughtful coding decisions that make the techniques accessible and educational for readers.

Padding and sorting

This write‑up walks through both the Text Justifier and Word Sorter tasks from The Weekly Challenge 360 with clear Python and Perl solutions, showing well‑structured logic for string padding and case‑insensitive sorting. The practical examples and side‑by‑side language implementations make the techniques easy to understand and apply.

Perl Power: Two Tiny Scripts, Big Learning!

This write‑up distills both Text Justifier and Word Sorter solutions into clean, minimal Perl scripts with clear logic for padding and sorting, and emphasizes solid test‑driven development and edge‑case handling. The examples and explanation of core techniques make it both beginner‑friendly and technically sound.

Rakudo

2026.06 CÔD YN GYMRAEG

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

The corner of Gabor

A couple of entries sneaked in by Gabor.

Do you use WhatsApp? Join the Perl Maven chat group!

Events

Paris.pm monthly meeting

March 11, 2025

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2025

The Perl and Raku Conference 2026

June 26-29, 2026, Greenville, SC, USA

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 #758 - PTS 2026

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:34:27 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 758

Hi there,

The upcoming Perl Toolchain Summit (PTS) in Vienna is more than just a conference, it's an important event at which to maintain, discuss, and improve on the CPAN toolchain, which is the fundamental foundation of the Perl ecosystem. Through their commitment to volunteerism, the volunteers who attend this gathering can provide significant amounts of personal time and expertise towards supporting the efforts of others in the Perl community, benefiting every single person and company that utilises Perl.

A recent article by Philippe Bruhat reports on the true cost associated with collaborating to support the PTS. The article provides a new paradigm for companies wanting to provide sponsorship for their employees who will be attending on paid time: consider "paying it forward". Estimate the cost of your employee's participation and provide that amount to the PTS in the form of a monetary sponsorship. By doing this simple action of doubling your company's investment, your company will directly provide the funding for another deserving attendee of the PTS to benefit as well, thus increasing the overall impact of the PTS.

This proposed model transforms how a company supports the employee(s) attending, creating a ripple effect through the Perl community by providing additional funding to support a more diverse, larger pool of contributors, which will serve to support the continued viability and innovation of the tools that are relied upon by everyone within the community, regardless of whether or not they attend the PTS.

This isn't simply charity, it's a wise business strategy for investing in the foundation of the Perl community. Through "pay it forward" sponsorship opportunities, companies have access to those developing the guidelines for developing and supporting the future of Perl. This creates visibility for them as true community supporters while helping the PTS remain the innovative, viable engine that brings Perl into a current competitive position. Let's continue to support all those that also support us.

Last year, I was lucky enough to attend the event as I received a surprise invitation by the organisers. From this experience, I can say it was the best of all Perl events I have been to. Contributing in any small way was a great feeling and made it worthwhile. One of the highlights was observing how committed all the top individuals in the Perl community were. They worked together on multiple projects simultaneously, with maximum efficiency, to achieve all that they could during the event.

Keep your spirits up and stay healthy. Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

Sydney February Meeting! 2025

Sydney Perl continues regular meetings with our next in February

This week in PSC (213) | 2026-01-26

Perl Steering Council, discussing topics like improvements to Perl's random number generator and integrating TLS functionality into the core.

A new sponsorship model

A new sponsorship model for the 2026 Perl Toolchain Summit. It encourages employers sending staff to the event to "pay it forward" by also providing monetary sponsorship to help cover costs for other attendees.

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.39 & Mojolicious.Wiki V 1.13

Articles

What I learned from being an editor/reviewer for the 2025 Perl Advent Calendar

Marc contemplates on having a wonderful experience reviewing for the Perl Advent Calendar 2025. He noted that through writing and editing articles about other peoples' articles and writing with CPAN, he learned about many new things (CPAN modules) as well as found renewed interest in various community activities such as The Weekly Perl Challenge.

Lock and unlock hash using Hash::Util

The post demonstrates how to use the Hash::Util module's lock_hash function in Perl to prevent accidental modifications to a hash, protecting it from changes, deletions, or new key additions. By unlocking the hash with unlock_hash, the program regains the ability to modify its structure, which is shown with practical code examples.

Podlite comes to Perl: a lightweight block-based markup language for everyday use

The article introduces Podlite, a new lightweight, block-based markup language that brings the readability and structure of Raku's documentation format (Pod) to the Perl ecosystem. It highlights how Podlite offers three interchangeable block styles for writing documentation within Perl code and announces its arrival via a CPAN module, positioning it as a modern tool for everyday use.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 359

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Digital Root" and "String Reduction". 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 - 358

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

/Stringed Max

In addition to providing an intuitive method of handling both numeric and non-numeric strings, this solution illustrates Raku's syntax for implementing pattern matching and type-converting through the use of cleanly written code.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 358

Jaldhar is using both Raku and Perl versions in order to demonstrate an accurate solution and make the language-specific optimizations (e.g., using map and the modulo operator) obvious by showing how he was able to arrive at a practical solution in one line of code.

Maximum Encryption

An in-depth study of technical solutions where unique implementations are provided for both Perl as well as J. Jorg used sophisticated methods, such as the String::Compile::Tr module, to translate from one programming language to another at runtime and explores more unusual 'under' conjunctions in J.

using brute force!

Explicitly calling methods such as "brute force", Luca particularly favours a try-catch approach (as in Java and Python) for converting strings into integers. This method is an interesting and practical alternative to the regular expression check that most people use.

Perl Weekly Challenge 358

This blog post offers a concise and efficient one-liner approach to both tasks of Weekly Challenge 358, with a particular focus on Perl's command-line capabilities.

nbyqyyefswbuffyhay

Matthias Muth's solutions are exemplary for their elegant use of Perl's functional features and their practical robustness. They achieve maximum effect with minimal code, a hallmark of expert Perl programming.

It’s What You Value

This solution from Packy is both distinctive and highly educational. It provides a fantastic comparative study across four languages (Raku, Perl, Python, and Elixir), showcasing how to solve the same problems with each language's unique idioms and strengths. The author's thoughtful explanations make it a great learning resource.

A number of strings

This approach places emphasis on clarity, detail, and practical (real-life) use of the code to solve the problem at hand as opposed to using clever short phrases (i.e., making it well-engineered). An example of properly designed, production focused,

The Weekly Challenge #358

Robbie Hatley's Perl provided an easy to follow solution which employed procedural programming techniques for the two tasks. The approach is reasonable and aligns closely with the specifications given in the problem statement.

Encrypted Max

The practical programming method and mathematically careful design are what makes this solution stand out. It puts its emphasis on correctness and safety and places particular emphasis on how the modulo function and character encodings are handled; therefore, it is a well-thought-out and robust implementation.

Maximum Encryption

Simon Green's solutions stand out for their practical efficiency, clear idiomatic code, and a smart pre-computation strategy that differentiates them from the more common inline calculation methods.

When Strings Become Numbers and Letters Start Shifting

The main factor separating this solution from others is its pedagogical quality, not the code itself. The explanation of how the algorithms (digit validation, ASCII rotation) work is clear, and demonstrates Perl's suitability for these types of tasks. Additionally, this solution emphasizes the importance of writing testable code, which provides valuable insight.

Rakudo

2026.04 Hello, Goodbye

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

The corner of Gabor

A couple of entries sneaked in by Gabor.

Add META data, .gitignore and GitHub Actions to Common::CodingTools

This is the video recording from December 2025. It includes some explanation on how to find a Perl module to contribute to and we also make some small contributions. For similar events check out the OSDC Perl page.

Perl-related GitHub organizations

There are now some 40 organization listed, thanks in no small part to the people in the Perl community who suggested them.

Join the Perl Maven chat group on WhatsApp!

Join the Perl Maven chat group on Telegram!

Events

Perl Maven online: Code-reading and Open Source contribution

February 10, 2025

Boston.pm - online

February 10, 2025

Paris.pm monthly meeting

February 11, 2025

Paris.pm monthly meeting

March 11, 2025

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2025

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.

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #757 - Contribute to CPAN!

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 06:29:33 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 757

Hi there!

On Saturday, (evening for me, noon-ish in the Americas) we had an excellent meeting and there are recordings you can watch. In the first hour I showed some PRs I sent to MIME::Lite. You can watch the video here. In the second hour we changed the setup and we continued in driver-navigator style pair programming. I was giving the instructions and two other participants made the changes and sent the PR. Others in the audience made suggestions. So actually this was mob programming. As far as I know, this was the first time they contributed to open source projects. One of the PRs was already accepted while we were still in the meeting. Talk about quick feedback and fast ROI. You can watch the video here. Don't forget to 'like' the videos on YouTube and to follow the channel!

I've scheduled the next such event. Register here!. My hope is that many more of you will participate and then after getting a taste and having some practice you'll spend 15-20 min a day (2 hours a week) on similar contributions. Having 10-20 or maybe even 100 people doing that consistently will have a huge impact on Perl within a year.

Before that, however, there is the FOSDEM Community dinner on Saturday. If you are in Brussels.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Announcements

FOSDEM Community dinner information

On 31st January 2026 19:30,

Announcing the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026!

The 16th Perl Toolchain Summit will be held in Vienna, Austria, from Thursday April 23rd till Sunday April 26th, 2026.

Articles

Otobo supports the German Perl Workshop

Otobo is the Open Source Service Management Platform, a 2019 fork of OTRS.

vitroconnect sponsors the German Perl Workshop

vitroconnect

Open Source contribution - Perl - Tree-STR, JSON-Lines, and Protocol-Sys-Virt - Setup GitHub Actions

One hour long video driver-navigator style pair-programming contributing to open source Perl modules.

Open source contribution - Perl - MIME::Lite - GitHub Actions, test coverage and adding a test

One hour long presentation about 3 pull-requests that were sent to MIME::Lite

SBOM::CycloneDX 1.07 is released

A new version of SBOM::CycloneDX with support for the OWASP CycloneDX 1.7 specification (ECMA-424).

🚀 sqltool: A Lightweight Local MySQL/MariaDB Instance Manager (No Containers Needed)

Venus v5 released: Modern OO standard library (and more) for Perl 5

Discuss it on Reddit

Ready, Set, Compile... you slow Camel

An excellent writeup on the process of optimization. Basically saying: don't do what you don't have to. This is specifically about optimizing OOP systems in Perl. Feel free to comment either on the bpo version of the article or here.

Call for proofreaders : blogging on beautiful Perl features

Laurent is looking for help with Python and Java for an article series he is writing. Send him an email!

Discussion

I wrote a Plack handler for HTTP/2, and it's now available on CPAN :)

Features of Plack-Handler-H2: * Full HTTP/2 spec via nghttp2; * Non-blocking via libevent; * Supports the entire PSGI spec; * Automatically generates self-signed certs if none are provided as args;

Geo::Gpx.pm: no 'speed' field (even is GPX 1.0?)

Web

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.38 & Mojolicious.Wiki V 1.12

I'll Have a Mojolicious::Lite

Gwyn built mojoeye, a tiny Perl app to run system and security checks across their internal Linux hosts.

Perl

Retrospective on the Perl Development Release 5.43.7

Corion mentions a number of places where things can be improved. I am surprised that the whole process is not fully automated yet. I mean some of the brightest people in the Perl community work on the core of perl.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 358

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Max Str Value" and "Encrypted String". 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 - 357

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Kaprekar Constant" and "Unique Fraction Generator" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

Uniquely Constant

The article skillfully uses Raku's comb, sort, and flip operations for digit manipulation to offer a straightforward and idiomatic solution to the Kaprekar's ongoing problem. It is both instructive and useful for Raku programmers since it carefully addresses edge cases like non-convergence and shows verbose iteration output.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 357

The post offers concise and illustrative Perl and Raku solutions to the tasks from Week 357, particularly the Kaprekar Constant implementation with examples that match the problem specification and well-explained iteration logic. For Perl enthusiasts, its clear explanations and references to actual Wikipedia details make the algorithms simple to understand and instructive.

Fractional Fix Points

The Kaprekar Constant and Unique Fraction Generator tasks are explained in a clear and organised manner in this post, which also provides step-by-step iteration breakdowns and solid examples to illustrate the problem. For Perl/Raku learners taking on the Weekly Challenge, its solutions demonstrate careful algorithm design and address important edge cases, making it instructive and useful.

Perl Weekly Challenge 357: arrays everywhere!

Luca provides a thorough and systematic collection of answers to the problems issued in all the languages (Raku, PL/Perl, Python and PostgreSQL) and has demonstrated proficiency in both algorithmic reasoning and the use and applicability of various characteristics of each of these programming languages. The articles describe in detail how to implement algorithms logically. As a result, readers are provided with clean and accurate code as examples of how to successfully implement these algorithms through the use of the listed languages.

Perl Weekly Challenge 357

The blog post provides a comprehensive overview of how to implement the Kaprekar Constant and Unique Fraction Generator tasks in Perl. The examples provided demonstrate the idiomatic (one-line) style of coding that is used to represent both of the tasks. Additionally, the post discusses how to handle exceptions such as non-convergence and uniqueness of fractions, in a sensible manner.

One Constant, and Many Fractions

Matthias's solutions are easy to follow and use a typical hiring challenge style for each week. Each of his solutions adhere to the challenge's requirements. Additionally, all of his implementations demonstrate good programming practices for Perl.

I could drink a case of you…

Packy's write-up for week 357 of the Perl Weekly Challenge offers a fresh perspective on the challenge by telling an entertaining story that incorporates the Kaprekar problem into the write-up. The article clearly details how to implement the code and produces good results as well. The final product is easy to understand and provides a fun, educational experience to those tackling the challenge this week.

Converging on fractions

A thorough explanation of the solution (both tasks) is provided in the post. The Perl code included is easy to read and closely adheres to the descriptions of each problem. Furthermore, the code has been written such that it handles 'non-convergence' where applicable, with clear and logical outputs as well as analyses of each step helping the reader to learn about the algorithms and their correctness.

The Weekly Challenge #357

Robbie has provided full Perl implementations of the Kaprekar Constant and Unique Fraction Generator problems, including clear descriptions and links to the source code for both projects. His article is very well organised and user-friendly, allowing readers to quickly familiarise themselves with both tasks and check out Robbie's own code implementations.

Uniquely Kaprekar

The article provides all the vital information you need to comprehend the fundamental algorithms of each challenge, including thorough code sample illustrations, as well as an extensive discussion on iteration behaviour and the reasons you don't want to use floating-point division in programming.

Fractional Constant

This blog article describes how to perform both Weekly Challenge 357 tasks step by step, showing examples of useful and correct code in both the Python and Perl programming languages, as well as considering input validation and control structures for the Kaprekar constant, as well as selecting the correct data structures to store unique fractions and display them in sorted order. By comparing the differences between the two programming languages alongside their implementation details, this blog is a valuable resource to help those programming these challenges as they learn about them.

Kaprekar Steps & Ordered Fractions

The Kaprekar steps and unique ordered fractions problems are two challenging problems; the author has provided a short list of Perl-based, well-considered solutions to handling leading zeroes, digit sorting, finding loops and sequence detection, and performing value-based ordering of fractions with duplicate removal. These solutions outline the steps taken and lessons learned while approaching each problem.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Perl Maven online: Code-reading and Open Source contribution

February 10, 2025

Boston.pm - online

February 10, 2025

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2025

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 #756 - Perl in 2026

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 05:22:54 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 756

Hi there,

Perl continues to show remarkable momentum in early 2026, with Dean highlighting the language's improved position in the TIOBE Index, signaling renewed attention and ongoing relevance. This renewed visibility is supported by active development and innovative tooling, from Toby Inkster's performance-boosting Moose extensions to William McLean's demonstration of deploying Perl MCP servers on Cloud Run.

Community and ecosystem engagement remain strong, as seen with CosmoShop sponsoring the German Perl Workshop and the launch of the Thunderhorse web framework beta, offering modern features like WebSockets and SSE. Open-source contributions continue to thrive, exemplified by Corion's 2025 module releases and Robert Acock's work on practical data structures, helping developers build efficient, real-world applications.

The Perl community also places emphasis on knowledge-sharing and accessibility. Dave Cross's slide archives provide a wealth of training resources, while the Perl Ad Server enables easy promotion of community events, jobs, and podcasts, strengthening connections across the ecosystem.

Finally, discussions within the Perl Steering Council, such as those on experimental features like refaliasing and declared_refs, demonstrate ongoing efforts to evolve the language responsibly. Alongside a growing focus on transparency and sustainability, as highlighted in Makoto Nozaki's financial analysis of TPRF, these developments show a community that balances innovation, support, and stewardship.

Stay positive and healthy, enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

This week in PSC (211) | 2026-01-12

We mostly discussed the experimental refaliasing and declared_refs features to see if we can find a path towards declaring at least the latter non-experimental.

Cosmoshop supports the German Perl Workshop 2026

Max Maischein announces that CosmoShop, one of the world’s largest pure‑Perl shop systems, is once again sponsoring the German Perl Workshop in 2026, strengthening community support for this key Perl/Raku conference. This continued backing highlights the vibrant ecosystem and industry engagement around Perl events.

Thunderhorse Beta released!

The blog announces the beta release of Thunderhorse, a new Perl web framework drawing on lessons from Kelp and built natively on PAGI, with real‑time features like WebSocket and SSE support and a focus on extensibility and high code quality.

Slide archive: Learn with Dave Cross

Dave Cross has published an archive of slides from his long‑running technical training courses on Perl and other developer topics, going back many years and available for free download. These slide decks offer a valuable resource for anyone wanting concise, well‑structured material from experienced instruction.

The corner of Gabor

A couple of entries sneaked in by Gabor.

Perl code reading and open source contribution

One of the best ways to learn is by reading other people's code, making small contributions and getting feedback. That's exactly what we do at these online sessions. The next one taking place on January 24 in a Zoom near you. Join us!

Articles

What I released in 2025

In his year‑in‑review post, Corion reflects on a productive 2025 by highlighting several useful Perl modules he published, including Text::HTML::Turndown for converting HTML to Markdown and Date::Find for extracting dates from filenames. He also shares a paranoid Mojo::UserAgent extension and contributions to core modules, giving readers insight into both his releases and ongoing development work.

How can we make this Moose faster?

Toby Inkster introduces performance‑boosting extensions to Moose with MooseX::XSAccessor and the new MooseX::XSConstructor, showing significant speedups in object creation and method access. His benchmarks suggest up to ~76 % faster performance using XS‑based accessors and constructors, offering a practical way to accelerate Moose‑based Perl code.

Understanding TPRF's Finance, 2026 Edition

Makoto Nozaki takes a clear, numbers‑driven look at The Perl and Raku Foundation’s 2024 financials, showing a significant increase in revenue but expenses that far exceeded income and halved its assets. His breakdown highlights both positive trends in donations and a strong call for greater transparency to ensure the foundation’s long‑term sustainability.

Taking the Win - Perl in the TIOBE Index

Dean celebrates Perl’s improved position in the TIOBE Index during 2025 and highlights the ongoing momentum in the Perl community, from steady releases to vibrant events and tooling support. While acknowledging healthy skepticism about popularity metrics, he encourages readers to "take the win" and appreciate the positive signals for Perl’s ecosystem.

Firestore MCP Development with Perl, Cloud Run, and Gemini CLI

William McLean walks through building a minimal Perl‑based MCP (Model Context Protocol) server backed by Firestore, showing how to validate it locally and deploy it to Google Cloud Run using the Gemini CLI. The article highlights practical steps for integrating Perl with modern AI‑oriented workflows beyond the usual Python ecosystem and gives clear pointers for developers looking to experiment with MCP and Cloud Run deployments.

Doubly: Why Arrays Aren't Always Enough

Robert explores when traditional arrays fall short and makes a compelling case for using doubly linked lists instead, especially for operations like O(1) insertions and intuitive cursor navigation. Through Perl examples and performance trade‑offs across multiple implementations, from pure Perl to thread‑safe C registries, the article highlights practical data‑structure choices and when they pay off.

Perl Ad Server

The Perl Ad Server makes it easy to promote Perl‑related announcements, from events and podcasts to jobs and newsletters, by embedding a tiny JavaScript snippet that displays rotating banners on your website. It’s simple to style and control, and contributions are welcomed via GitHub for anyone who wants to add or manage ads for the community.

Grants

Maintaining Perl 5 Core (Dave Mitchell): December 2025

Maintaining Perl (Tony Cook) December 2025

PEVANS Core Perl 5: Grant Report for December 2025

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 357

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Kaprekar Constant" and "Unique Fraction Generator". 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 - 356

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

Kolakoski Wins

The article clearly demonstrates a thoughtful Raku solution to generating the Kolakoski sequence and counting 1s, leveraging Raku’s gather/take constructs for elegant lazy sequence generation. The examples and code comments make the approach easy to understand.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 356

The post delivers a technically clear explanation of both the Kolakoski Sequence and Who Wins tasks with illustrative examples and thoughtful insight into simplifying the problem logic—showcasing an effective balance between correctness and practical Perl coding. The walkthroughs help demystify the challenge specifications and offer useful implementation perspectives for Perl developers.

Self-Generating Games

The post delivers clear, well-structured solutions to both tasks, especially with its concise explanation of generating the Kolakoski sequence and counting elements. The breakdowns and examples make the logic easy to follow and practically useful for coding challenges.

Perl Weekly Challenge 356

The post showcases concise and effective Perl implementations for both the Kolakoski‑Sequence and Who‑Wins tasks, with a compact self‑referential sequence generator and a structured playoff progression model. The code is thoughtfully organised and demonstrates practical mastery of sequence construction and game logic within Perl’s syntax.

Kolakoski called, he wants his sequence back(!)

The post offers a thoughtful, well-commented Perl exploration of the Kolakoski sequence that breaks down the generation logic with clear analogies and illustrative code, making the algorithm approachable even for those new to the concept. Its lively explanation paired with working examples enhances understanding and practical problem-solving.

Who’s Kolakoski?

The write-up presents a thoughtful multilingual exploration of the Kolakoski challenge with clear logic and practical code that demonstrates command over sequence generation and problem constraints, making it both accessible and instructive. Packy’s commentary and stepwise approach enhance readability and offer valuable insights for anyone tackling the Weekly Challenge tasks.

Sequence and consequence

The post provides a clear, well-reasoned implementation of both tasks, with the Kolakoski solution closely following the Wikipedia algorithm and demonstrating impressive performance at scale. The NFL playoff logic is neatly modeled with concise Perl code, showing careful handling of seeding, sorting, and edge cases in a readable and maintainable way.

The Weekly Challenge #356

The post offers clear, well-structured Perl solutions for both the Kolakoski sequence and "Who Wins" tasks, closely following the problem definitions with readable logic and solid use of Perl idioms. The explanations make the algorithms accessible while the included references help ground the implementation in established techniques.

Kolakoski Wins

The post presents elegant and thoughtfully implemented solutions to both tasks, with the Kolakoski sequence logic clearly articulated and efficiently expressed in Raku. The playoff "Who Wins" solution demonstrates solid handling of round progression and seed logic, showcasing clean algorithm design and practical Rust usage.

Winning sequence

The write-up delivers concise and effective Python solutions for both the Kolakoski Sequence and Who Wins tasks, with a clever analytical shortcut for the sequence count and a clean stepwise modeling of the playoff progression. The inclusion of examples and clear logic makes the implementations easy to follow and practically useful.

Rakudo

2026.02 Resolutions

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week;
MetaCPAN weekly report.

Events

Perl Maven online: Live Open Source contribution

January 24, 2025

Boston.pm - online

February 10, 2025

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2025

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 #755 - Does TIOBE help Perl?

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:07:17 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 755

Hi there!

Dave Cross has an article showing position of Perl on the TIOBE index. As I don't see any up-tick in new subscribers to the Perl Weekly nor do I see any increase in the MetaCPAN activity I keep track of, I doubt that the changes in the position reflects actual changes in the market. However I wonder, could the TIOBE index have an impact on the interest in Perl? How and when could we see that?

Speaking of the MetaCPAN report, I'd love if someone sent a PR to the Perl Weekly that would generates same graphs using these numbers. Here is the issue for it.

And another comment related to those stats. I just noticed that the No CI column went up from 30-40% to 80-90% in recent weeks. I wonder why? Is it because some changes in the way I am collecting the data or are those real changes? Is it real change? I also just noticed some negative numbers in the No VCS (%) column. That's not good. I guess I have to investigate this. Maybe during one of the Perl code reading and open source contribution events.

Enjoy your week!

--
Your editor: Gabor Szabo.

Announcements

New York Perlmongers (NY.PM)

New York Perlmongers (NY.PM) has a new mailing-list organized as a Google Group. Sign up here. (Note: we are not doing unrequested transfers from our previous mailing list.) NY.PM social event: Thursday, January 15, 6:00 pm EST at Barcade, 148 West 24 St, Manhattan: send-off for a long-time member returning to the U.K.

ANNOUNCE: Perl.Wiki V 1.37

Get it, as usual, from his Wiki Haven.

Articles

Marlin Racing

Which of the 7 OOP frameworks of Perl is the fastest?

The Perl Claude Agent

It's a library that brings the agentic capabilities of Claude Code into your Perl applications.

Manwar sending a Pull-Request to JQ::Lite

This video was recorded during the most recent Perl code reading and open source contribution event. For links check out the OSDC Perl page and join us at our next event!

Perl in the TIOBE Index

DBIx::Class::Async - UPDATE

Discussion

nfo - a user-friendly info reader

Why do you need Perl for this? - asks the first commenter.

convert string to regex

Allowing your users to put regexes in a configuration file. Is it a good idea? How to do it?

MetaCPAN

perlmodules.net is (was) down for 1-2 weeks

Is the MetaCPAN API changing?

The ElasticSearch upgrade on MetaCPAN impaceted a number of other web site, but it seems things are working again.

Perl

This week in PSC (210) | 2026-01-05

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 356

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Kolakoski Sequence" and "Who Wins". 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 - 355

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

Mountain Separator

The post demonstrates an idiomatic and compact use of Raku for typical programming challenges. It balances expressive language features with clarity, though readers unfamiliar with hyperoperators and the pipeline style might need supplemental explanation.

Perl Weekly Challenge: Week 355

Technically solid, readable, and well-structured. The solutions are both correct and practical, illustrating good problem decomposition and Perl/Raku coding style.

Separated Mountains

Efficient and idiomatic Perl for the thousand separator using a classic unpack pattern.️ A formally defined mountain array solution with vectorised and language-diverse implementations.

number formatting and sorting

This is a well‑engineered, comprehensive, and professionally presented technical write‑up that goes beyond minimal solutions to showcase how to solve the Weekly Challenge across ecosystems. It favors clarity and breadth over micro‑optimizations, making it valuable for learners and polyglot developers alike.

Perl Weekly Challenge 355

The solutions for Weekly Challenge #355 are technically strong, correct, and efficient. Task 2 (Mountain Array) leverages PDL for vectorized comparisons, producing a concise, single-pass check for mountain arrays while correctly handling edge cases such as plateaus and short arrays.

Thousand Mountains

This is technically excellent, showing a high level of Perl proficiency, algorithmic awareness, and performance consciousness. Both tasks are solved correctly, with multiple alternative implementations explored and benchmarked, demonstrating a thoughtful and professional approach rather than a "just pass the tests" mentality.

Oh to live on Array Mountain…

This post is a strong, well-executed multi-language technical write-up that emphasizes algorithmic reasoning, clarity of transformation, and comparative programming paradigms over minimalism or raw performance.

Thousands of mountains

This submission demonstrates strong problem understanding, solid algorithmic choices, and pragmatic Perl coding. The solutions are intentionally explicit, readable, and correct, favoring clarity and single-pass logic over clever one-liners. Both tasks are handled with approaches that scale reasonably and align well with Perl’s strengths.

The Weekly Challenge #355

This submission is technically strong, correct, and deliberately written for clarity and maintainability rather than brevity. It reflects an experienced Perl programmer who values explicit logic, readable structure, and thorough documentation.

Mountains by the Thousand

This is a thoughtful, well-structured solution to both Weekly Challenge tasks, with a clear emphasis on explicit logic and state-based reasoning rather than relying on library tricks. Roger demonstrates good cross-language fluency and a solid grasp of algorithm design.

Commify every mountain

This post delivers clean, pragmatic, and idiomatic solutions to both tasks in The Weekly Challenge #355. It emphasizes using the right tool for the job, clarity, and efficiency over algorithmic novelty.

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

Events

Perl Maven online: Live Open Source contribution

January 24, 2025

Boston.pm - online

February 10, 2025

German Perl/Raku Workshop 2026 in Berlin

March 16-18, 2025

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Perl 🐪 Weekly #754 - New Year Resolution

Gabor Szabo — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 07:23:05 +0000

Originally published at Perl Weekly 754

Hi there,

Happy New Year, everyone (albeit a belated one).

Any New Year's resolutions this time? For me, none. I'm too old for such customs. However, I always have a full plate, which is nice.

Normally, you expect the new year to bring new energy but that rarely happens. Instead you often already feel tired from a busy schedule, gift shopping, and attending parties. How was yours?

I luckily had an extended break this time, so I used it to work on my upcoming book on DBIx::Class. I have a habit of getting deep into the skin of a subject, and this time was no different. When I shared updates on social media, I received many positive reviews. One suggestion to add asynchronous operation support to DBIx::Class. I must admit that before this book, I had barely touched it, although my current work place uses it extensively. In the past, I mostly worked with an in-house ORM written in Perl.

While working on the book, I decided to share my initial draft for supporting async operations in DBIx::Class and released DBIx::Class::Async on the first day of 2026. It's still experimental, but I received a few suggestions from big shots, which led to another quick update to address their feedback. I wrote a blog post to introduce the new creation and am working on another post to discuss further improvements since the initial release. I had hoped to have it ready for this newsletter, but not everything goes according to plan. Never mind - in a couple of days - I will share it with you.

Two major blockers I encountered during my research were transactions and searches with prefetch. I will continue working on these until I find a satisfactory solution. I also come across another new distribution on the same subject, DBIx::Quick. I'm happy to see the sudden renewed interest in ORM in general.

Today is my first working day of 2026, so I'm very excited. Please share your experiences.

Enjoy rest of the newsletter.

--
Your editor: Mohammad Sajid Anwar.

Announcements

The Underbar, episode 8

As preparations are underway for the Perl Toolchain Summit 2026, this short episode is the last excerpt recorded during PTS 2025 (as a tangent during the CPAN Testers interview, published as episode 6). BooK starts by explaining the selection process for the Perl Toolchain Summit and some of the history, and then Doug, Ruth, Breno and Ferki reminisce about what makes the event so special.

Articles

App::HTTPThis: the tiny web server I keep reaching for

Dave shares his long-time favorite tool for static site work: App::HTTPThis. This Perl module is a friction-free command-line web server that instantly serves any directory over HTTP, perfect for testing links, assets, and real browser behavior without the overhead of Apache or nginx.

DBIx::Class::Async

A gentle tntroduction to DBIx::Class::Async. Please share your suggestions.

Episode 9: Perl, the Language That Refuses to Die (And Honestly, Good for It)

A very interesting read, unfortunately it is behind Medium's paywall, marked as members only.

jq-lite: A jq Alternative for Legacy and Restricted Systems

jq-lite is a jq-compatible JSON processor written in pure Perl. It is designed for legacy, restricted, and minimal environments where installing jq is not possible.

The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge - 355

Welcome to a new week with a couple of fun tasks "Thousand Separator" and "Mountain 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 - 354

Enjoy a quick recap of last week's contributions by Team PWC dealing with the "Min Abs Diff" and "Shift Grid" tasks in Perl and Raku. You will find plenty of solutions to keep you busy.

MAD Shift

The post showcases excellent problem-solving skills and clear pedagogical explanations. The implemented code for the first challenge and the conceptual solution for the second are both technically sound and well-justified.

Shifted Differences

This is a competent Perl implementation that demonstrates strong algorithmic thinking, particularly for the grid rotation problem. Jorg shows good understanding of Perl's array manipulation capabilities and mathematical optimisation.

Perl Weekly Challenge 354

Expert-level PDL implementation that leverages specialized numerical libraries for concise, high-performance solutions. This approach is optimal for numerical computing contexts but requires deep PDL knowledge.

Min Abs Diff Shift Grid. What??

Matthias demonstrates both theoretical knowledge (complexity analysis) and practical skill (performance optimisation), making this an exemplary technical solution.

Some Grids

This is a well-written and highly educational post. Packy successfully demonstrates how to solve algorithmic problems using the distinct styles of different programming languages. The solutions are correct, clearly explained, and follow good practices.

Mad numbers and shifty grid

Peter demonstrates a pragmatic, straightforward approach to solving the weekly challenge #354. The code is clear, functional, and focuses on delivering correct results with minimal complexity.

The Weekly Challenge #354

This solution set takes a functional but brute-force approach to the problems. While correct, it prioritizes straightforward implementation over algorithmic optimisation.

Min Grid Diffs the Shift

This is a sophisticated, well-optimized solution that correctly identifies and implements the most efficient algorithms for both challenges. Roger demonstrates strong understanding of algorithmic complexity and language-specific optimizations.

New Year, New Challenges

High-quality, production-ready solutions with excellent algorithm choices, clean implementations, and thoughtful language-specific optimizations. Simon demonstrates strong command of both algorithmic thinking and practical coding.

Rakudo

2025.52 Release #188 & State of the Onion

Weekly collections

NICEPERL's lists

Great CPAN modules released last week.

The corner of Gabor

A couple of entries sneaked in by Gabor.

The new pull-request challenge (club)

Recently I saw that the PullRequest.Club closed on January 1st. It's a pity as it was a good idea. But don't worry, the new PRC is here. Less organized but here. The challenge is to send a PR to any CPAN module once a week and share the link to it on this issue. (see my first comments on that issue). If you have never contributed to an open source project or if you have never sent a PR, don't worry. I organize live online sessions where I demonstrate the whole process as I am working on a project. You can watch. You can ask question. You can learn. Then you can implement and send your own PRs. Check the events here!

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