Keeping It Simple

Category: perl

  • Parrot Web Framework?

    Wondering if the following idea could be feasible:

    • Architect a web framework that emphasizes Inversion of Control.
    • Implement core web framework in Parrot (now that this dynamic language platform has released its 1.0).
    • Voila! A web framework that supports any language implemented for Parrot platform.
    • Developers write plugins in any language: Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl6, Lua, C, or any other language supported on Parrot.

    Although the Parrot platform is now 1.0, specific language implementations are still in various stages of development. Realistically, I would guess that it’ll be some years before the architecture above is ready for production.

  • Splitting a String in Perl

    A user recently asked:

    How do I take a string in Perl and split it up into an array with entries two characters long each?

    Ultimately I want to turn something like this

    F53CBBA476

    into and array containing

    F5 3C BB A4 76

    This was my answer:

    @array = ( $string =~ m/../g );

    The pattern-matching operator behaves in a special way in a list context in Perl. It processes the operation iteratively, matching the pattern against the remainder of the text after the previous match. Then the list is formed from all the text that matched during each application of the pattern-matching.

    I’m posting to my blog the questions I’ve answered on StackOverflow, which earned the “Good Answer” badge. This was my answer to “How can I split a string into chunks of two characters each in Perl?“

  • Best. Perl Script. Ever.

    A user recently asked:

    What has been your best programming experience so far?

    The most successful program I’ve ever written was this Perl script:

    map(($r=$_,map(($y=$r-$_/3,$l[24-$r]
.=(' ','@')[$y**2-20*$y+($_**2)/3<0]),(0..30)),),(0..24));
print join("\n", map(reverse($_).$_, @l)), "\n";

    I wrote this for a woman I was dating in 2001. Writing a Perl script for my girlfriend is not as geeky as it sounds, at least in this case. She’s also a software developer, and she was taking a Perl class at the time.

    I consider this script a great success because she married me in 2007!

    I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to run the script in a console window and see its output (I promise it’s not a Trojan Horse or any other kind of evil trick).

    I’m posting to my blog the questions I’ve answered on StackOverflow, which earned the “Good Answer” badge. This was based on my answer to “What is your best programming experience?“