This Week on perl5-porters (Nov 01-09 2004)

This Week on perl5-porters (Nov 01-09 2004)

Tests failing when core extensions not built
  It's possible to configure perl without some built-in extensions,
  and this causes some tests to fail, so Nicholas was wondering about
  determining which extensions aren't enabled and skipping the corresponding
  tests.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-10/msg00637.html

Detecting strlcat() and strlcpy() in Configure
  H. Merijn Brand continued working on detecting these functions, which
  are safer versions of "strncat" and "strncpy". Craig Berry made it work
  on VMS. Adding the detection to Configure makes it easier for module
  writers to know if the functions are available.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-10/msg00613.html

Cwd test failing
  Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes reported (bug #32272) this test failure, which
  was later found to be ignorable. Yitzchak also mentioned that "Cwd" and
  "File::Spec" have been repackaged as "PathTools".

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00065.html

getXXXent functions break after recursing to grow buffer
  Bug #32154, apparently caused by RedHat's patched glibc, as it didn't
  show up in other distributions.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-10/msg00573.html

  Nicholas incidentally pointed out that source code is available directly

  ftp://ftp.linux.activestate.com/pub/staff/gsar/APC/perl-5.8.x/
  ftp://ftp.linux.activestate.com/pub/staff/gsar/APC/perl-current/

  and a repository browser is at

  http://public.activestate.com/cgi-bin/perlbrowse

Roadmap for 5.10
  Rafael listed points in the roadmap for 5.10. Michael Schwern added
  that "Module::Build" and "CPANPLUS" should be put into the core, and
  Randy Sims pointed out some work that needs done on "M::B" first.
  Also mentioned was incorporating a minimal subset of "Inline".

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00115.html

Peephole optimization
  Tassilo von Parseval is working on optionalizing the peephole optimizer.
  Rafael pointed out that the intent of this is to make sure that the
  optree produced by the compiler is correct, and Hugo added that it
  could also be used for avoiding certain optimizations and allowing
  other aggressive optimizations.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00150.html

  Tassilo investigated further which peephole optimizations are currently
  mandatory for tests to pass. Jim Cromie suggested that he mess with
  "B::Generate" and "optimizer", which are in need of work.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00185.html

Undefining signals
  Ben Morrow submitted, among other proposals, that

    $SIG{FOO} = undef;

  try to block the signal "FOO", then, failing that, "IGNORE" it.
  Nick Ing-Simmons brought up the problem of unmentioned signals
  being "undef", and the badness of blocking them (in particular,
  $SIG{INT}).

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00234.html

Sharing hash values
  Tels was dismayed by the inefficiency of the common "seen hash" idiom

    $seen{foo} = 1;
    if (exists $seen{foo}) { ... }

  Even using "undef" doesn't save much, so he wondered how he could
  share the undef for all the hash values. It turns out Gisle Aas
  has already done this with "Array::RefElem". Randy Sims suggested
  that we really want a set instead, for which Tels found "Set::Object".

  If you're like I was before doing the summaries, scanning for neat
  ideas, this thread is one you don't want to miss.

  http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2004-11/msg00288.html

In brief
  Allen Smith successfully trolled with an "-ize" vs. "-ise" comment
  (actually I found the discussion interesting).

  Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes fixed "do "c:/foo.pl"" on Cygwin.

  David Nicol discussed writing a distributed (network) lock manager.

  Gisle Aas fixed a stack corruption in "Tk", which fixing filled
  H.Merijn Brand with joy.

  Jim Cromie continued work on optree tests, a problem with interleaving
  stdout and stderr on VMS and Cygwin.

  Steve Peters resuscitated at least 16 old bugs on RT, only to crush
  most of them beneath his shoe.

References
  The thread for bug number $BUGNUM can be found at
  http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=$BUGNUM

About this summary
  This summary was written by Scott Lanning. Summaries are published
  weekly at http://use.perl.org/ and posted to a mailing list whose
  subscription address is [email protected]. The archive
  is at http://dev.perl.org/perl5/list-summaries/. Comments and
  corrections are welcome.