Perl Hacks : Tips and Tools for Programming,

Like all of the books in O'Reilly's "Hacks" series, "Perl Hacks" will appeal to a variety of programmers - from seasoned pros to dabblers and learners who enjoy the fun of technology. Each hack is designed to be a short lesson: Some are practical, task-based exercises that teach the reader essential skills, while many hacks are simply fun examples of the many cool things that can be done with Perl, the ultimate versatile scripting language. Example hacks include a way to add CPAN shortcuts to the Firefox web browser, a hack to read files backwards, and tips for writing graphical games in Perl. The audience for this book is not limited to Perl programmers either; many non-programmers use Perl as one of several enabling technologies, and it will be useful to them by showing specialized idioms and ideas for common situations.

chromatic is the technical editor of the O'Reilly Network, where he edits Perl.com, ONLamp.com, and the Linux and Security dev centers. He is also the author of the Extreme Programming Pocket Guide, Running Weblogs with Slash, and Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook as well as the editor of BSD Hacks and Gaming Hacks. He is the original author of Test::Builder, the foundation for most modern testing modules in Perl 5, and has contributed many of the tests for core Perl. He has given tutorials and presentations at several Perl conferences, including OSCON.

Dr. Damian Conway is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), where he teaches object-oriented software engineering. He is an effective teacher, an accomplished writer, and the author of several popular Perl modules. He is also a semi-regular contributor to the Perl Journal. In 1998 he was the winner of the Larry Wall Award for Practical Utility for two modules (Getopt::Declare and Lingua::EN::Inflect) and in 1999 he won his second "Larry" for his Coy.pm haiku-generation module.

Curtis (Ovid) Poe is a CPAN author, a TPF Steering Committee Member, and the TPF Grant Committee Secretary. He likes long walks on the beach and single malt scotch, but hates writing bios. Ovid writes for Perl.com too.

Credits

ix

Preface

xv

Productivity Hacks

1

(27)

Add CPAN Shortcuts to Firefox

1

(2)

Put Perldoc to Work

3

(3)

Browse Perl Docs Online

6

(2)

Make the Most of Shell Aliases

8

(3)

Autocomplete Perl Identifiers in Vim

11

(3)

Use the Best Emacs Mode for Perl

14

(1)

Enforce Local Style

15

(3)

Don't Save Bad Perl

18

(4)

Automate Checkin Code Reviews

22

(3)

Run Tests from Within Vim

25

(1)

Run Perl from Emacs

26

(2)

User Interaction

28

(23)

Use Seditor As Your UI

28

(2)

Interact Correctly on the Command Line

30

(2)

Simplify Your Terminal Interactions

32

(5)

Alert Your Mac

37

(2)

Interactive Graphical Apps

39

(6)

Collect Configuration Information

45

(3)

Rewrite the Web

48

(3)

Data Munging

51

(20)

Treat a File As an Array

51

(2)

Read Files Backwards

53

(1)

Use Any Spreadsheet As a Data Source

54

(4)

Factor Out Database Code

58

(3)

Build a SQL Library

61

(2)

Query Databases Dynamically Without SQL

63

(1)

Bind Database Columns

64

(2)

Iterate and Generate Expensive Data

66

(2)

Pull Multiple Values from an Iterator

68

(3)

Working with Modules

71

(35)

Shorten Long Class Names

71

(1)

Manage Module Paths

72

(2)

Reload Modified Modules

74

(2)

Create Personal Module Bundles

76

(2)

Manage Module Installations

78

(3)

Presolve Module Paths

81

(2)

Create a Standard Module Toolkit

83

(2)

Write Demos from Tutorials

85

(2)

Replace Bad Code from the Outside

87

(2)

Drink to the CPAN

89

(1)

Improve Exceptional Conditions

90

(3)

Search CPAN Modules Locally

93

(3)

Package Standalone Perl Applications

96

(3)

Create Your Own Lexical Warnings

99

(2)

Find and Report Module Bugs

101

(5)

Object Hacks

106

(23)

Turn Your Objects Inside Out

106

(3)

Serialize Objects (Mostly) for Free

109

(2)

Add Information with Attributes

111

(2)

Make Methods Really Private

113

(3)

Autodeclare Method Arguments

116

(3)

Control Access to Remote Objects

119

(3)

Make Your Objects Truly Polymorphic

122

(3)

Autogenerate Your Accessors

125

(4)

Debugging

129

(21)

Find Compilation Errors Fast

129

(1)

Make Invisible Characters Apparent

130

(3)

Debug with Test Cases

133

(2)

Debug with Comments

135

(3)

Show Source Code on Errors

138

(3)

Deparse Anonymous Functions

141

(2)

Name Your Anonymous Subroutines

143

(2)

Find a Subroutine's Source

145

(1)

Customize the Debugger

146

(4)

Developer Tricks

150

(28)

Rebuild Your Distributions

150

(1)

Test with Specifications

151

(4)

Segregate Developer and User Tests

155

(3)

Run Tests Automatically

158

(1)

See Test Failure Diagnostics---In Color!

159

(3)

Test Live Code

162

(2)

Cheat on Benchmarks

164

(2)

Build Your Own Perl

166

(2)

Run Test Suites Persistently

168

(5)

Simulate Hostile Environments in Your Tests

173

(5)

Know Thy Code

178

(37)

Understand What Happens When

178

(4)

Inspect Your Data Structures

182

(2)

Find Functions Safely

184

(2)

Know What's Core and When

186

(1)

Trace All Used Modules

187

(4)

Find All Symbols in a Package

191

(2)

Peek Inside Closures

193

(3)

Find All Global Variables

196

(2)

Introspect Your Subroutines

198

(4)

Find Imported Functions

202

(2)

Profile Your Program Size

204

(2)

Reuse Perl Processes

206

(2)

Trace Your Ops

208

(3)

Write Your Own Warnings

211

(4)

Expand Your Perl Foo

215

(52)

Double Your Data with Dualvars

215

(2)

Replace Soft References with Real Ones

217

(2)

Optimize Away the Annoying Stuff

219

(2)

Lock Down Your Hashes

221

(1)

Clean Up at the End of a Scope

222

(2)

Invoke Functions in Odd Ways

224

(6)

Glob Those Sequences

230

(3)

Write Less Error-Checking Code

233

(2)

Return Smarter Values

235

(3)

Return Active Values

238

(3)

Add Your Own Perl Syntax

241

(3)

Modify Semantics with a Source Filter

244

(4)

Use Shared Libraries Without XS

248

(2)

Run Two Services on a Single TCP Port

250

(3)

Improve Your Dispatch Tables

253

(4)

Track Your Approximations

257

(3)

Overload Your Operators

260

(4)

Learn from Obfuscations

264

(3)

Index

267

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Perl Hacks : Tips and Tools for Programming, Debugging, and Surviving

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials