Last Call for Papers, Perl Community Conference (Hybrid)

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Paper and talk submissions will be accepted until July 01, 2025 18:59 CDT

In particular I'd like to invite anyone who regrets not submitting a talk to the TPRC or who has gotten bit by the speaking bug. You are welcome to give your talk remotely.

This week in PSC (196) | 2025-06-19

Graham couldn’t make it, so only Aristotle and Philippe this week.

  • We discussed the structure of the feature.pm documentation and how unfeatures should be covered. Philippe has provided a first patch which extends the description of each unfeature with a note stating from which feature bundle onward it is disabled.
  • Relesae blocker triage continues. The meeting began without any unresolved blockers and ended the same way.
  • Philippe plans to ship 5.42.0-RC1 as soon as the last missing perldelta entries are in.

[P5P posting of this summary]

Array vs List in Perl


Quick refresher about Array and List in Perl.Please check out the link for more information: https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/array-vs-list

Learning XS - C data types

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This ninth post introduces you to C data types and how to expose them in perl.

Hello Datastar

Datastar is a new-ish entry in the world of hypermedia-oriented ,htmx alternatives, with a distinct focus on Server-Sent Events. It describes itself thus:

Datastar brings the functionality provided by libraries like Alpine.js (frontend reactivity) and htmx (backend reactivity) together, into one cohesive solution. It's a lightweight, extensible framework that allows you to:
  1. Manage state and build reactivity into your frontend using HTML attributes.
  2. Modify the DOM and state by sending events from your backend.

I added Perl for Datastar with Datastar::SSE, for the backend reactivity bits.

The PCC in July is Remote and Budget Friendly!

Hi, you my have noticed our "ad" showing up on on metacpan.org - many thanks to David Cross for helping us out there! You may have to hit "refresh" a few times to see it (but not too many, please! xD)

Now, as much as we'd love to see everyone in Austin, TX on July 3-4, and it's sure to be a lot of fun, the PCC is a hybrid event, meaning we do permit remote attendees and worthy talks.

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We already have many exciting and highly technical Perl talks. But we are selfish and we want more. It is okay if you even repeat a talk you've given elsewhere. We offer several levels of talks, including lightning talks, which we all know is how most of us got started. Do not be afraid! :-)

AWS Customer Key Encryption


Here is the final post about AWS S3 Server Side Encryption where I demo encryption using Customer Key.Please check out the link for more information: https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-customer-key-encryption

Learning XS - How to create an object

Over the past year, I’ve been self-studying XS and have now decided to share my learning journey through a series of blog posts. This first post introduces the fundamentals of creating an perl object from XS.

This week in PSC (193) | 2025-05-29

Just Aristotle and Graham this week.

  • This week CVE-2025-40909 was assigned, for an issue we were already tracking (GH #23010). We coordinated during the week to get a fix merged (GH #23019) before 5.41.13. Thanks to Vincent Lefèvre for the report and Leon Timmermans for the fix. During the meeting we discussed getting out security releases for this soon.
  • We caught up on release blocker triage. We are tentatively all clear: all previously identified release blockers are now resolved, and there were no new blockers in recent issues and pull requests – except possibly a 32-bit Windows build issue we are not yet certain about. We are keeping an eye on that.

[P5P posting of this summary]

Welcome to the Perl Toolchain Summit 2025

This post is adapted from my notes and recollection of the welcome speech I gave on the morning of Thursday May 1st, 2025, just before the initial stand-up.

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This post is brought to you by Booking.com, the Diamond sponsor for the Perl Toolchain Summit 2025.

Booking.com is proud to sponsor the 2025 Perl Toolchain Summit as Perl continues to be a vital piece of our technology stack. We continue to rely on the Perl platform and tooling to serve millions of customers every day, helping them experience the world. Other than our interest in the evolution and modernization of the platform and tooling, the PTS is also a great opportunity to connect with the larger community and share learnings about how other companies and projects are tackling the challenges of working with Perl at scale (talking about both in systems and teams scalability), and how Perl fits an ever-changing and diverse technological landscape in other organizations.

You can learn more about Booking.com at the end of this article.

AWS Bedrock


Happy Friday, this is my first hand experience with AWS Bedrock.
Please check out the link for more information:
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-bedrock

Faster Readonly variables with Const::XS

So, what exactly is a Readonly variable in Perl? A readonly variable is one that, once assigned a value, cannot be changed. Any attempt to modify it will trigger a runtime error. This mechanism enforces immutability, ensuring that critical values remain untouched and are protected from accidental or unauthorised alterations.

This week in PSC (195) | 2025-06-12

All three of us attended.

  • Release blocker triage yielded no new blockers. We followed up on the issues we were already tracking.
  • The security release made some progress this week, but has been held up by the lack of a perldelta entry.

[P5P posting of this summary]

Testing distributions for potentially malicious Unicode

I was inspired by Daniel Stenberg's recent article Detecting malicious Unicode to write Test::MixedScripts, which tests Perl source code and other text files for unexpected Unicode scripts.

Why should you care about this?

There are Unicode characters in different scripts (alphabets) that look similar and are easily confused.

A malicious person could replace a domain name or other important token with one that looks correct, for is associated with a host or other resource that they control.

Consider the two domain names, "оnе.example.com" and "one.example.com". They look indistinguishable in many fonts, but the first one has Cyrillic letters.

Confusing Unicode might be added to your codebase through a malicious patch submission or pull request. Or it could be added as text from an email or web page that you copied and pasted into your code.

The module is easy to use, and defaults to testing for Latin and Common characters:

Sustainability, Resilience and Fun: Impressions from the German Perl/Raku Workshop 2025

Returning from the 27th installment of the German Perl or Perl/Raku Workshop, this time in Munich, I'd like to share some impressions.

CVE-2024-56406


Re-creating CVE-2024-56406 using docker container with affected Perl versions.
Please check out the link below for more information.
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/cve-2024-56406

This week in PSC (194) | 2025-06-06

All three of us attended.

  • Release blocker triage continues. Several more blockers have been resolved. We identified no blockers among new tickets but did consider #23346 and may ship it even if we do not consider it a blocker.
  • We discussed some feedback regarding the fix for CVE-2025-40909 and requested that the patch be amended. A perldelta entry is also missing before we can ship the security releases.
  • We discussed who will do then stable release and when. RC1 will be published by Philippe Bruhat on June 20th.
  • We went over the scalar-context pair constructor proposal. Changing the fat arrow in general is out of the question and we don’t think any other proposal is likely to work.
  • We went over the 2-arg open proposal. It seems mostly trivial to do and worthwhile as well, but the real complexity is in the implicit open done by readline. We will outline our thoughts on the thread.

[P5P posting of this summary]

A different Perl Toolchain Summit

A week ago I attended the 2025 PTS. For me it was a different PTS than the previous ones.

Firstly because it was my first PTS without Abe Timmerman. He was a regular in both the PTS (as maintainer of Test::Smoke), and of the Amsterdam Perl Mongers. In fact the last time I saw him was on our flight back to Amsterdam after the PTS in Lisbon last year. He was greatly missed.

Secondly, because of a question that Book asked at the very beginning of the PTS: how often we had been to the PTS before. I was one of the few who had attended more than 10 of them. Combined with the fact that several other regular attendees couldn't make it that meant that this PTS I spent more time than ever on helping others with various issues.

Call for Papers! - Perl Community Conference, Summer 2025

This is a hybrid (in-person and virtual) conference being held in Austin, TX on July 3rd-4th.

Did you miss your chance to speak or have wish to speak at the only available Perl Science Track (and get published in the Science Perl Journal)? Or maybe you just can't get enough Perl this summer??? Submit here ... or get more information on the PCC, including registration, special event registration, and donation links click here. For questions you may email us at [email protected] or find us in the Perl Applications & Algorithms discord server.

The following lengths will be accepted for publication and presentation:

  • Science Perl Track: Full length paper (10-36 pages, 50 minute speaker slot)
  • Science Perl Track: Short paper (2-9 pages, 20 minute speaker slot)
  • Science Perl Track: Extended Abstract (1 page, 5 minute lightning talk slot)
  • Normal Perl Track (45 minute speaker slot, no paper required)

You may ask, where is the Winter SPJ or videos? We are working on them, promise! (it's a lot of work as some of you know. See also on Perlmonks and r/perlcommunity.

AWS KMS Encryption


Continue with the blog series, in this post, I am talking about AWS KMS Encryption.
Please check out the link for more information:
https://theweeklychallenge.org/blog/aws-kms-encryption

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