(Message tpc:28) /home/mjd/bin/mailpager 28 Return-Path: www@oreilly.com Delivery-Date: Fri Mar 01 03:49:29 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: mjd-tpc6-proposals+@plover.com Received: (qmail 16599 invoked from network); 1 Mar 2002 03:49:28 -0000 Received: from conferences.oreillynet.com (HELO oreilly.com) (209.204.146.28) by plover.com with SMTP; 1 Mar 2002 03:49:28 -0000 Received: (from www@localhost) by oreilly.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id TAA12413; Thu, 28 Feb 2002 19:53:11 -0800 Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 19:53:11 -0800 Message-Id: <200203010353.TAA12413@oreilly.com> To: mjd-tpc6-proposals+@plover.com Subject: Please Review Proposal: Tricks of the Wizards From: "O'Reilly Conferences 15" Dear Mark-Jason Dominus: Thank you for submitting a conference proposal to O'Reilly & Associates. Please take a few moments to review your submission and respond within 24 hours if you would like to make any changes. Thank You, The O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2002 Committee O'Reilly & Associates ==================== Proposal Information ==================== Title: Tricks of the Wizards Conference: O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention 2002 Type: Duration: 3h Audience Level: Experienced Audience Type: Intermediate Perl users who want to become experts, and experts who want to become more expert. Preferred Date: All Description: This class will explore Perl's most unusual features. We'll look at some of the standard modules written by famous wizards like Tom Christiansen, Damian Conway, and Larry Wall, and learn what they're for and how they work. First we'll investigate Perl's remarkable 'glob' feature. We'll see many uses of globs, including the 'Exporter' module, which everyone uses but hardly anyone understands. We'll discuss how to accomplish the same globby magic in Perl 6, which won't have globs. After this we'll look at unusual uses of Perl's 'tie' function, which scoops the brain out of an ordinary Perl array, hash, or filehandle, replacing it with your own concoction. We'll make hashes with case-insensitive keys, arrays that mirror the contents of a file, and filehandles that suppress annoying output. Then we'll learn about AUTOLOAD, Perl's function of last resort. We'll see a tremendously useful application: How to generate the accessor methods of a class *without* writing pages of repetitive code. We'll see how Larry's 'Shell' module uses AUTOLOAD to emulate the Unix shell inside Perl scripts, and how Damian Conway's 'NEXT' module uses AUTOLOAD for method redispatch. Section 4 discusses Perl's new "source filter" feature. This magic allows you to write Perl programs in any language, and translate them to Perl at the last moment. We'll add a 'switch' statement to Perl and we'll see how Perl 5 can emulate the variable syntax of Perl 6. The class will finish with ten very small but useful enchantments that take thirty seconds each. Description Short: This class will explore Perl's most unusual features: Globs, 'tie', AUTLOAD, and source filters. We'll look at modules that use these features, written by famous wizards like Tom Christiansen, Damian Conway, and Larry Wall, and learn what they're for and how they work. Speaker Notes: Nat: I know you don't like when people present the same tutorial year after year after year. That's why I've revised this one substantially. About two thirds of it is completely new. I've gotten rid of the 'big techniques' section in favor of source filters, and done a major overhaul on the tie and autoload sections, which now feature new material on tied filehandles and on various Damian Conway horrors like 'NEXT'. Hope this suits you. Best, -D.