What's New?

**UPDATED** Last update to Appearance Schedule: 16 April 2003

Last update to Book status report: 25 April 2003

27 May 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Tie::File version 0.96

Tie::File associates the lines of a file with elements of an array. If you read or change the array, that reads or changes the file in the corresponding way. It's safe, fast, and easy.

perlfaq5 contains the question:

How do I change one line in a file/delete a line in a file/insert a line in the middle of a file/append to the beginning of a file?

Tie::File is the answer to this question.

To change one line in a file, do $line[$n] = $new;.
To delete a line from a file, use splice @line, $n, 1, or shift @line (to delete the first line) or pop @line (to delete the last line).
To insert a line in the middle of a file, use splice @line, $n, 0, $new.
To append to the beginning of a file, use unshift @line, $new.

Relevant links:

6 May 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Making Programs Faster (Benchmarking, Profiling, and Performance Tuning)

Another new 3-hour class, this one written for the O'Reilly Perl Conference. Again, I think it's really excellent, and the test audience seemed to think so too. Detailed information is available.

6 May 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: "How do I delete a line from a file?" (Strategies for Lightweight Databases)

I wrote this all-new 3-hour class for presentation in Haifa, Israel. It discusses techniques for managing flat text files and DBM files. I think it's really excellent. Detailed information is available.

29 April 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Text::Template 1.44

Current version: 1.44. Last update: 2003-04-29.

There are no feature changes. There is one bug fix, which repairs a memory leak when Text::Template was used in long-running programs. There are some minor changes to the documentation and test suite.

What's Not So New?

16 April 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Tricks of the Wizards: The O'Reilly Perl Conference has accepted Tricks of the Wizards again, so I've revised and updated it thoroughly. Detailed information is available.
9 April 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: The Perl Hardware Store (DC.pm Edition): I once again dusted off my old 1998-1999 Perl Hardware Store talks and revised and improved the slides, this time for presentation to DC.pm. Comparing these with the original versions might be an interesting exercise for my future biographers.
4 April 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: System programming in Perl: This is a revised version of my earlier Internals of Familiar Unix Commands talk, extended with more detailed code examples in Perl. I gave it at Trinity College in Dublin this week. Here are the slides.
16 March 2003: Happy Birthday RMS!!: Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software movement and the GNU project, and a hero of mine, turns 50 today! Congratulations RMS!
5 March 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: File Locking Tricks and Traps: I gave a talk to the Philadelphia area Linux Users' Group about File Locking Tricks and Traps. Here are the slides.
25 February 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Hook::LexWrap: I gave a talk to the Philadelphia Perl Mongers about the use and implementation of Damian Conway's Hook::LexWrap module. Here are the slides.

14 January 2003: Eighth Anniversary!

My web site, The Universe of Discourse, is eight years old today.

16 December 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Open-enrollment classes in Philadelphia

I'll be doing two public, open-enrollment classes in Conshohocken, near Philadelphia: A three-day Hands-On Introduction to Perl and a six-hour Perl Program Repair Shop and Red Flags. For more complete information, see my public appearance schedule.

4 December 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Internals of Familiar Unix Commands

I gave this talk on 4 December 2002 at the Philadelphia Linux Users' Group meeting. The talk investigates the Unix process model and u structure, the semantics of the fork and exec calls, and how this impacts the design of certain well-known Unix commands such as the shell, ls, nice, and others.

The slides

26 October 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Quiz of the Week

I'm now running a mailing list called Quiz of the Week which carries a 'regular' and an 'expert' quiz each week. For complete information, see the page.

5 October 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Classes and Talks

I did a mega-overhaul on the 'Classes and Talks' section of the site. Everything is cleaned up; all the pages are generated automatically from templates. This should make it easier to maintain this section of the site and keep it up to date.

In particular, I added information about three long classes that have been pending for a long time:

And I updated the information about Hands-On Introduction to Perl, which has undergone substantial revisions.

Hands-On Introduction to Perl

11 July 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Memoize

Current version: 1.01.

There are no significant changes. However, if you couldn't use version 1.00 because of the dependence on warnings.pm, this version will fix that problem.

1 July 2002: Some Talks from YAPC 2002

I gave a lot of talks at YAPC this year. Some are new.

18 April 2002: Mark Dominus at Perl Conference 6

I'll be giving three talks totalling nine hours at this year's Perl conference in San Diego. One is completely new; one is extensively refurbished.

Would you like to read the proposals I sent that were turned down?

This isn't as many as last year, but the conference has only half as much space this year.

18 April 2002: What Talks Should I Give at YAPC?

I can't decide which talks I should give at YAPC, so I've decided to poll public opinion. If you are planning to go to YAPC (or you think you might go to YAPC), please fill out this form.

15 April 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: TieFile short talk

I gave this short talk on 15 April 2002 to the Philadelphia Perl Mongers. Tie::File is my new module for inserting lines into the middle of a text file and for doing other text file operations that used to be difficult.

9 April 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Interpolation

In 1998, Jendy Krynicky sent me some useful patches. I didn't put them in for four years (!!!) so I have finally turned the maintenance of the module over to Jenda. Jenda immediately put the patches in and released versions 0.67 and 0.68. 0.68 is available from CPAN and from Jenda's web pages.

Jenda's Interpolation page
My old Interpolation pages. Caution: I may stop maintaining these.

4 April 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Tie::File version 0.93

29 March 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Memoize

Current version: 1.00.

There are no significant changes. However, after more than four years, I finally decided that the module awas mature and stable enough to warrant removing the 'beta test release' label, so I promoted the version number to 1.00.

21 March 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: The Perl Hardware Store (NYLUG Edition)

On 20 March I dusted off my old Perl Hardware Store talk from 1998, revised it a little, and went up to New York to show it to the New York Linux Users' Group.

The revised slides are now online

31 January 2002: Perl Paraphernalia: Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are on for YAPC 2002 in Saint Louis.

What's Old? (1997-2001)

Return to: Universe of Discourse main page | Perl Paraphernalia

mjd-perl-www@plover.com