What's New?

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Last update to Appearance Schedule: 20 June 2003

11 July 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Regular Expression Mastery

Thanks to the persuasion of the kind folks at my BOF session at OSCON today, I have made the complete slides available.

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

Sample slides are now available.

What's Not So New?

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:

• Tie::File main page
• Download most recent version including Makefile and test suite
• Advertisement and examples
• Read the manual
• View source code

16 April 2003: Perl Paraphernalia: Tricks of the Wizards

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.

• Text::Template main page
• Read documentation
• Download version 1.44 including Makefile and test suite
• View source code

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!