Talks

Enigmatic Perl - Why Idioms Work - Paul Johnson
Thursday, The Morgan Stanley Room, 1510, 20 mins

A look at some common and not so common Perl idioms, what they really do and why they work.

This is not aimed at teaching basic idioms, but rather at explaining why some idioms work, probably things that you have seen in other programs or modules. For example, a programmer may understand that $|++ unbuffers the currently selected filehandle, but may wonder what would happen if some module had set $| = -1 beforehand.

Potential topics include:

  • $|++
  • while (<>)
  • $count = () = /.../g
  • local $/;
  • local $/ = 16;
  • for ($val) { }
  • select((select($h), $| = 1)[0])
  • local $^I = ""

This talk would be aimed at an intermediate to advanced audience.