From rkleeman at energoncube.net  Mon May 16 15:07:35 2016
From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann)
Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 15:07:35 -0700
Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Perl News
Message-ID: <CAO6cO59uAu=hXTTf5FMu+x4At_R+Y2aQ4kH_WkrbD4bt4-14fA@mail.gmail.com>

Perl Mongers,

Just a quick reminder that there is *NO* meeting this month.  We changed
from monthly meetings to quarterly, so the next meeting will be in July.
If you have questions, ideas, comments, or concerns you'd like to
share/discuss, please send them to this mailing list.

I also wanted everyone to be aware that Perl 5.24 has been released.  As
with all versions of Perl, there are numerous fixes, changes, improvements,
all of which you can see in the perldelta file:
https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/perl/pod/perldelta.pod.  Are there
any changes that you like or dislike?  Is there anything that you want more
information about?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions.

   Bob
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From chris.grau at gmail.com  Wed May 18 07:50:41 2016
From: chris.grau at gmail.com (Christopher Grau)
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 07:50:41 -0700
Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Perl 5.24
Message-ID: <CABd74ryQCcmCd_K5by-RSgKyg5Rajwig1MQSPhkOVyin0A_1MA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Bob Kleemann <rkleeman at energoncube.net> wrote:
> I also wanted everyone to be aware that Perl 5.24 has been released.  As
> with all versions of Perl, there are numerous fixes, changes, improvements,
> all of which you can see in the perldelta file:
> https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/perl/pod/perldelta.pod.  Are there any
> changes that you like or dislike?  Is there anything that you want more
> information about?

While I've installed 5.24.0 under plenv and am using it for my own
programs, I've not spent any time reviewing the perldelta document.
Nor do we yet have it installed for use at my day job.

The last new feature I've really taken advantage of is non-destructive
substitution (s///r), which was introduced way back in 5.14. It
simplifies all the long map pipelines I'm so fond of writing.

Postfix dereferencing maturing from its experimental status seems to
be the feature I've heard the most excitement about. It looks like a
nice feature for making my code easier to read, but I can't say I've
used it yet.

Looking over perldelta, I don't see anything that jumps out at me.
It's nice to see the continuing improvements, though. I've certainly
been pleased since Perl gained a regular release schedule. It feels
very mature as a project and it gives me something to reference when
those who may be less informed ask why I still consider a "dead
language" my strongest.

From rkleeman at energoncube.net  Wed May 18 15:59:43 2016
From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann)
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 15:59:43 -0700
Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Perl 5.24
In-Reply-To: <CABd74ryQCcmCd_K5by-RSgKyg5Rajwig1MQSPhkOVyin0A_1MA@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CABd74ryQCcmCd_K5by-RSgKyg5Rajwig1MQSPhkOVyin0A_1MA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAO6cO5_6hwR32ojjjmLdO+bKbA7K4jjRHG=ij=noqkVA_yeGzw@mail.gmail.com>

Postfix dereferencing ( $array_ref->@* ) looks like it could be helpful
sugar, but I'm not sure it's really going to solve a lot of problems,
though it might, since they removed the auto-dereferencing in many internal
functions ( keys $hash_ref isn't allowed, it's back to keys %$hash_ref or
the new keys $hash_ref->%* ).  Time will definitely tell on that one.

I'll agree that non-destructive substitution (s///r) is definitely the most
convenient feature they've added in recent memory.

I wish they would figure out smartmatch, so that it moves out of
experimental.  I've found when(){} really helpful for undef, strings,
numbers, and regexes (areas where it's not confusing what is going on).  I
can see how arrays, hashes, functions, and several other types could be
tough to figure out, so make those throw up the warning about experimental
features and let the easy ones work.

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 7:50 AM, Christopher Grau <chris.grau at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Bob Kleemann <rkleeman at energoncube.net>
> wrote:
> > I also wanted everyone to be aware that Perl 5.24 has been released.  As
> > with all versions of Perl, there are numerous fixes, changes,
> improvements,
> > all of which you can see in the perldelta file:
> > https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/perl/pod/perldelta.pod.  Are
> there any
> > changes that you like or dislike?  Is there anything that you want more
> > information about?
>
> While I've installed 5.24.0 under plenv and am using it for my own
> programs, I've not spent any time reviewing the perldelta document.
> Nor do we yet have it installed for use at my day job.
>
> The last new feature I've really taken advantage of is non-destructive
> substitution (s///r), which was introduced way back in 5.14. It
> simplifies all the long map pipelines I'm so fond of writing.
>
> Postfix dereferencing maturing from its experimental status seems to
> be the feature I've heard the most excitement about. It looks like a
> nice feature for making my code easier to read, but I can't say I've
> used it yet.
>
> Looking over perldelta, I don't see anything that jumps out at me.
> It's nice to see the continuing improvements, though. I've certainly
> been pleased since Perl gained a regular release schedule. It feels
> very mature as a project and it gives me something to reference when
> those who may be less informed ask why I still consider a "dead
> language" my strongest.
> _______________________________________________
> San-Diego-pm mailing list
> San-Diego-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm
>
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From chris.grau at gmail.com  Thu May 19 10:14:29 2016
From: chris.grau at gmail.com (Christopher Grau)
Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 10:14:29 -0700
Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Perl 5.24
In-Reply-To: <CAO6cO5_6hwR32ojjjmLdO+bKbA7K4jjRHG=ij=noqkVA_yeGzw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CABd74ryQCcmCd_K5by-RSgKyg5Rajwig1MQSPhkOVyin0A_1MA@mail.gmail.com>
	<CAO6cO5_6hwR32ojjjmLdO+bKbA7K4jjRHG=ij=noqkVA_yeGzw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CABd74rzJ++Zga0FbHLDB9RS1Nbhyc8i6_WPb7Oq1V4_uT1eN7w@mail.gmail.com>

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 3:59 PM, Bob Kleemann <rkleeman at energoncube.net> wrote:
> Postfix dereferencing ( $array_ref->@* ) looks like it could be helpful
> sugar, but I'm not sure it's really going to solve a lot of problems, though
> it might, since they removed the auto-dereferencing in many internal
> functions ( keys $hash_ref isn't allowed, it's back to keys %$hash_ref or
> the new keys $hash_ref->%* ).  Time will definitely tell on that one.

I see it as a nice bit of syntactic sugar, which I may come to enjoy.
Recently, I saw an example for which it makes the code read more
naturally, left-to-right, rather than inside-out.

    foreach my $key ( keys $gimme_a_ref->()->@[0]->%* ) {

http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/2016/04/postfix-dereferencing-is-stable-is-v5-24/

> I wish they would figure out smartmatch, so that it moves out of
> experimental.  I've found when(){} really helpful for undef, strings,
> numbers, and regexes (areas where it's not confusing what is going on).  I
> can see how arrays, hashes, functions, and several other types could be
> tough to figure out, so make those throw up the warning about experimental
> features and let the easy ones work.

Agreed. I've found the given/when syntax so nice. From what I've read,
a lot of people were annoyed that smart match was marked as
experimental after it was considered stable. Though in the end, I
think it was a good lesson and the Perl development team has been much
more thoughtful in how they implement and mark new features.