Yes, I still use Perl

Lost in Windowsland

2011-12-21T14:48:00.000-08:00

For the first time in 15 years, (maybe ever*), I've been working on Windows servers. I've always found Windows to be uncomfortable. Lousy shell, few if any tools -and you can't script a GUI. But lately, I've been intrigued by Powershell and have been using it a bit for things. With the addition of gVim, I am finding Windows to be more and more comfortable. (gVim is a lifesaver!)

Another thing I use is Strawberry Perl! Actually, I use it to write Powershell scripts for large lists of users [add mailbox, delete mailbox, add/del mailContact, etc.] But I am seeing some pretty cool Powershell tools (import-csv is cool) and someday, I'll just process files in Powershell and won't need Perl (on Windows). Yeah right!! And I'll switch to Notepad too. Ha!

So, I'm pretty much weaned off of Cygwin - yeah, practically a Windows native now except for gVim and Perl. I guess that okay, eh?

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* I went directly from being the Netware guy to being the UNIX guy and skipped the Windows NT, etc.

Excellent YAPC::NA (for me)

2011-06-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

Wow! A lot has changed since last year. It seems like this year was an emphasis on Perl 5 (which is fine by me). It looks like developement on Perl 5 has really picked up. There is a 6th edition of Learning Perl out which emphasizes Perl 5.14! (I'm waiting on the Kindle Edition) I found out that most people are using Perl 5.12. My old Solaris systems have 5.8 and I'm not even using any of the cool stuff from 5.10 yet. I'm excited to start after seeing so many examples of things I've been missing out on. PerlBrew should help with this and I need to start using cpanm.

Notes and reminders: Look into Test::More, Mouse, cpanm, PerlBrew, ZeroMQ, Plack, Dancer, Starman, Mongrel2, Catalyst and, as usual, make a point to spend more time on #perl and PerlMonks.

The interesting thing was Larry Wall's handling of the Perl 6 and the pumpkings. I have a feeling this year's State of the Onion will be jaw dropping.

Really good conference - even better than last year (for me). I'm loving the Perl 5 emphasis!

Looking forward to YAPC::NA

2011-06-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

I am really looking forward to YAPC::NA. Looks like it'll be another good one. I was especially interested in the Plack and Dancer talks (which are not yet confirmed according to the site). If you see Tatsuhiko Miyagawa or Mark Allen - tell them I'm counting on them!

Perl, I didn't know you could do that

2011-05-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

I happened to be clicking around and saw Perl.com had an entry called Writing on Walls with Facebook::Graph. Neat! It was preceded by Facebook Authentication with Perl and Facebook::Graph. I made a mental note to remember that and then Linux Magazine sent an article called FBCMB: Command Line for Facebook. Although somewhat unrelated, that sent me off to look for more Perl modules for Facebook only to find someone had already covered it in a blog entry called Writing a Facebook Applications in Perl.

Anyway, if, like me, you didn't know there was a lot of Perl resources for Facebook - now you do.

CPAN to the rescue

2011-04-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

I needed a quick tool to change HTML to POD. I coulda sworn I had a html2pod utility at the command line - nope - must've been that other Linux distro. No worries - I just grabbed Pod::HTML2Pod and with very little modification to the example code I had just what I wanted.

Mac OSX and CGI.pm

2011-03-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

"I'm NOT a web developer!" I've been saying that a lot lately. Even so, because I have done a bit of LDAP programming and they needed a web interface, I wrote a quick hack which turned into a big, long painful project. The biggest issue is so many things don't work the same (or at all) on Mac OSX. OpenLDAP, for instance (a whole other story). [It should be noted - I'm also not a Mac guy.]

I tried for several days to get CGI.pm redirects and refreshes to work but kept getting Error 302's. I found lots of people with the same issue on the Mac. Finally - someone said "You'll have to write it without CGI.pm because it doesn't 100% work on the Mac (and/or maybe the Apple Apache config was incriminated). Anyway, I rewrote the redirects without CGI.pm (ugly, inelegant Perl 4ish looking code) and it worked fine.

Since I never exactly found the answer - I want to state for future folks looking for an answer - "IT DOESN'T WORK RIGHT ON A MAC" (this phrase can be re-used for a great many things). And, if I'm wrong (because, remember, I'm not a web developer) it'd be great for someone to comment with the right answer.

I'll probably get comments such as "You're using CGI.pm for web development?! Are you from the past?!" To this I would say "Yes I am".

SDL and Perl

2011-02-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

I missed this article from Perl.com last month: Visualizing Music with SDL and Perl. It caught my eye because I've just recently read The Book of Xen (great book, btw) and it mentioned SDL as an alternative to, say, vnc, which sent me off looking up more about SDL. Anyhoo, the code looks like fun and uses concepts that could come in handy - especially if I ever get around to writing a video game (kidding - not likely to make it down that far on the list in this lifetime). So check it out - there's still lots of cool things going on with Perl all the time.

Really good Perl book under a secretive title

2010-10-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

Since I've been doing a lot of LDAP programming lately, I finally broke down and bought O'Reilly's LDAP System Administration. I found a used paperback for $4! While I was waiting, I got impatient and bought the Kindle version for my Android phone. I just bought it for the LDAP ACL info but I was thrilled to see chapter 10 was devoted to Perl-LDAP. It explained a lot of things in the Perl-LDAP example code that I hadn't seen explained before (I'm sure it's out there but the author has done a nice job of digging it all up and putting it together). Anyway, if you're looking for a nice LDAP book, this is looking like a good one so far (still reading).

New technology I'm Working On

2010-08-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

I find that people often think because I work primarily on UNIX/Linux and still use Perl that I'm not learning anything new or that I do not like learning. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love new technology and I'm always learning something new.

Here's what I've been working on in the last year:

Solaris Zones and Containers
Solaris Zetabyte File system (ZFS)
GNU Screen
Ruby
More Perl LDAP programming
More Perl programming in general
Rakudo (a Perl 6 distro)
PUGS (another Perl 6 distro)
SQLite3 and Perl
RCS (Revision Control System)

Here's the list of what I hope to cover this year VERY SOON:

Solaris LDOMs (need a lab experiment)
See how ZFS is implemented under other OS's (e.g. FreeBSD)
Use More Ruby! (and I'm looking at a Rails book from the library)
Juniper's JunOS (I like the XML and the idea of scripting with Perl)
MORE Rakudo!! (Not so much Pugs) I hope to contribute bug reports
Sun's Dtrace (especially using Perl and Dtrace)
Xen and Linux - need a lab experiment
Btrfs - Linux's answer to ZFS? Need to explore in a lab.
Lots more SQLite (I really like that tool)

And, of course, my on going quests: (not necessarily in this order)

Python (Because Zope runs on it!)
Plone (runs on Zope)
C - need to refreshen my C programming skills - getting rusty
Java
Command line Sun VirtualBox
I'm sure there's a few more...

Anyway, this list keeps me pretty busy without doing anything much with any Windows projects. I can get around fine, IMO, on Windows. Just because I don't have any Windows projects on my plate doesn't mean I'm not learning anything new. Besides - aren't there plenty of others focusing JUST on Windows?

I'm pretty excited about my list (above) and do as much reading and experimenting as time permits. It sure seems to me that I'm learning new stuff - Well, I'm learning things that interest me. I guess because non-Windows things don't interest some I guess it appears that I'm not learning anything (that interests them). Oh well. Can't please everyone and I stopped trying long ago.

Perl and SQLite

2010-08-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to finishing my little SQLite and Perl program. To speed things up, I used a shell script with remote SSH commands to grab the data, then used Perl to stuff it into SQLite. Very cool! Need to use Perl's Net-SNMP on next version but this was mainly an excuse to use SQLite. Glad I did. There's a lot of strangeness - can't get used to putting a dot in front of commands and many of my favorite SQL commands are missing or renamed. Still - SO COOL to be able to create a database on the fly like that.

Nifty Perl Hack

2010-07-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

I threw together a tiny bit of code with the example code from Net::IMAP::Simple to make a program that watches for Mailman unsubscribe messages, logs them, then deletes the message. It was a 5 minute job (except for the part where my iteration was off by one and kept deleting the wrong message). Perl is so handy for things like this.

Juniper Switches and Perl

2010-05-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

We have some new switches at work - Juniper. I had a few scripts that could look at a Cisco switch and I could configure and modify Cisco switches. I had heard that the Juniper switches used Perl. Looks like they do. There are quite a few Juniper OS (Junos) Perl modules so maybe this won't be too bad.

Jr. High Math - Perl to the rescue

2010-05-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

My daughter needed a calculator to check square roots last night. I couldn't believe it - we didn't have one! Well, I had my beloved HP 15C from engineering school days. RPN is cool - right?! Yeah, you can imagine how that went over. So, then I grabbed a slide rule. I know! You guessed it - worse reaction than RPN. So then I grabbed her Dell netbook, which was running Ubuntu Linux , and wrote a Perl hack that was basically

   #!/usr/bin/perl
   print "Enter a number\n";
   $number = stdin;
   chomp $number;
   $root = sqrt $number;
   print "The square root of $number is $root\n";

Ha! It worked and she used it. Perl to the rescue!

Programming for kids

2010-04-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

I'm always on the lookout for books to get my kids interested in programming - you know - easy introductions. I recently found one while following a link off of PerlBuzz called Falling out of love with a language. In this, the author talks about getting bored with Perl and then discovering Ruby which was described as "Perl done right". I was intrigued so I googled and found a list of the best Ruby books. I then ordered this one used from Amazon:

Learn to Program, Second Edition (The Facets of Ruby Series)

I was really impressed with Ruby. I ran through the 20 minute tutorial and then started reading this book. The book is great! The author teaches children so he knows how to hold your attention. It's fun! I honestly have never in my life seen a better introduction to programming for kids or beginners. So, hopefully, the kids will enjoy learning Ruby this summer. I'm pretty sure my son will like the idea of programming an old style, text based adventure game. When they're done with that, I'll show them Perl.

Love the New System Admin w/Perl book (and RCS)!

2010-02-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a bit of Perl-LDAP programming and I had always found the 2000 version of Perl for System Administration to be really helpful - especially the tutorials in the appendix (more on that in a bit). I just got the the new version: Automating System Administration with Perl. I was amazed at how much more useful it was. Not only is there 50% more material, ALL of the older stuff has been reworked and freshened. The LDAP section I was using heavily is MUCH improved. Too much goodness to cover now - check it out yourself!

The reason I decided to make the post was to mention RCS, in the books appendix, the author has a 5 Minute RCS Tutorial which makes a strong case for using RCS instead of all of those other revision control systems. I've tried RSC in the past and I've tried CVS and the guys in the office recently tried to get me to use Mercurial (Wow! Talk about overkill for what I do!!) But the authors argument was, this is so simple and easy for your small scripts lying around - why not use it. I was initially daunted by all of the commands and things you could do when I had looked at it years ago but the author distilled it down to a handful of commands. I am going to distill it down further:

1) Check in and unlock your program (leaving a copy):
$ ci -u program
2) To edit, check out and lock your program:
$ co -l program
3) View your revision logs:
$ rlog program

So far, that works well enough for me. Be sure to read the whole 5 Minute RCS Tutorial (see link above). I wish I had used this on my most recent, arduous LDAP programming job. Instead made numbered versions and left them lying all over. I then had to open them to see why this one was named program-4 and how it differed from program-3, etc. I know - silly. Should've stuck with this when I looked at in in 1997 (Hey! I remember the project that caused me to consider rcs then - that's not weird!)

Slackware, Perl, SQLite and SOAP

2009-12-15T16:06:00.000-08:00

I was playing around with a project and decided it would be nice to finally try to do something useful with SQLite (and I threw in a SOAP server just-for-fun). I recently reloaded my system with Slackware 13. I was amazed at how easy it was to add Perl modules with Slackware. This is probably making someone out there go "Duh!" but under Fedora and Ubuntu (and Xubuntu, which I use a lot) installing modules on a vanilla system means configuring the CPAN.pm. That's not a big deal but Slackware must have a lot of the CPAN.pm config finished already. It just took off and ran! I had all of the modules I use downloaded in nothing flat and with NONE of the usual haggling I usually have to do to get some of them to load. You have to see it to appreciate it.

Newly Updated www.perl.org looks great!

2009-11-13T08:05:00.000-08:00

Just saw this on Perlbuzz: www.perl.org just got a total makeover. Very nicely organized. I like the layout a lot. The "Learning Perl" link has a list of resources which includes video! I never even thought about that before. For example, here's a video of a presentation on Perl's Object Oriented Module (Moose).

DSEE for Solaris 10x86 on OpenSolaris

2009-11-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

Ha! Well, not sure how far I'll get bu the first snag was I couldn't proceed because I didn't have SUNWpl5u installed. It turns out SUNWpl5u is Perl 5.8.4 and I do have it installed: It's just called SUNWperl584core. A simple symbolic link and it passes (for now). We'll see how far we get...

Off Topic Post Today

2009-09-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

It's also a bit of a cross-posting. I'm a UNIX systems administrator - a computer geek. I also raise and race pigeons. So, this article really grabbed my attention! It was an article about racing pigeons on SlashDot. Evidently, someone wrote an RFC for the Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers. That is, sending data using racing pigeons! Of course, this has been done (for a couple millennium) but they are now applying the standards of TCP/IP (the Internet Protocol) to the data. That is, how do you handle packet loss? (Such as interception by Prairie Falcon). Although, it was meant as a joke, they were able to use it. In one example they sent a 4GB SD card by pigeon in 48 minutes .

Okay, I posted this to my pigeon blog but it was not well received. Confused people asked me what it meant. I found the results of this years race on BBC this morning which state it more plainly:

Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Okay, it's got nothing to do with Perl but my racing pigeon buddies don't see the humor in the RFC for TCP/IP using Pigeons so I had to post it here. :-)

Wait - I've got it. This blog is for the Perl Ironman - right? That reminds me - "Ironman" Mike Tyson raises pigeons. [sound of crickets] That's all I've got.

Cheap Books!

2009-09-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

Wow! This is pretty neat! Too bad I already own both of those. If you didn't catch it - use Perl; says O'Reilly has dropped the price of Learning Perl and Mastering Perl to $9.99 - before other discounts! I have all of the Learning Perl editions! Some are signed by the Author(s). :-p

So what does this mean? I hope it means a 6th edition of Learning Perl is coming out and not something else (remember "cut-out albums"?).

It's tough to say something EVERY WEEK

2009-08-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

Man! This is harder than I thought. I don't have any trouble blogging about my racing pigeon training or my catch-all blog (that has revolved around beekeeping lately) . I've got ideas for a couple of other blogs too. But, what to say about my baby-talk Perl that won't be ridiculed? Well, one thing, in response to the co-workers who said "Perl is dead", I thought this news about the new Android phone using Perl spoke for itself!

Am I the only one NOT using "strict"?

2009-08-17T11:16:00.001-07:00

An old friend came to town the other day. He's quite a Perl guru. Like me, he was a Perl user prior to Perl 5 and I figured he'd be someone who, like me, NEVER uses 'use strict'; in their code. I was wrong! Man, that's one of the things I like about Perl. It'll let me ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Drive without a seat belt. Go swimming in less than 30 minutes after I've eaten or even run with scissors! I know! I know! These are not good ideas - but short cuts seldom are. It's the price you pay and as long as you know the risks, it's nice that Perl lets you use a variable that has not been declared or invoke $_ with the notion that both Perl and yourself know what you're talking about (in that context). I like that freedom. I guess the other side of the coin is you're also allowed to add "use strict" and "use warnings". I'm just glad it's not the default (yet).

"Parrot even runs BASIC programs"

2009-08-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

This might be old news but I was recently told "Parrot even runs BASIC programs". However, when I went looking for examples - I found none. All of the references were from 2002 or so. Then I ran across this: "Parrot BASIC — For the Parrot virtual machine; V 1.0 is modeled on GW-BASIC, V 2.0 is modeled on Microsoft QuickBASIC version 4.5." (see Parrot BASIC under the list of BASIC dialests on Wikipedia.) Wow! I'm probably the only one who would think that was really, really cool! I switched TO Perl from QuickBASIC 4.5! Does anyone know of some good examples of running BASIC programs through Parrot?

Perl 6 ponderings

2009-07-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

I wonder when the new Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials will come out? It was supposed to come out yearly. I guess that didn't turn out to be very practical. I'd like to see a "Perl 6 for Perl 5 programmers". The examples I have run across are pretty generic Perl. I guess I should be glad. Perl 6 isn't as scary as it is played up to be.

Finally installed Perl 6

2009-07-29T13:55:00.001-07:00

Tried Pugs - had a difficult time with the development framework required. Rakudo Perl 6 went on pretty smoothly once I added the --gen-parrot parameter to the "perl Configure.pl" command. Made a hello.pl6 program that used Perl 5.10's "say" command (without the usual preface in the code to invoke 5.10 stuff). Yeah, pretty weak. Need to look at some more interesting examples. (and now I can!)

use Net::LDAP::LDIF - no, really, use it!

2009-07-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to figure this one out. I guess if I had a better grasp of hashes, this would've been more obvious. The LDIF I was reading was HUGE. I found a good example on PerlMonks that showed this VERY useful line:

$uid = $entry->get_value("uid");

I used DataDumper to find the key names of the other values and then I was off and running: parsing an LDIF filled with 40,000 users and running reports on anything I wanted. On my workstation, it only took 24 seconds to generate multiple reports! VERY COOL!

Joining The Perl Iron Man Program

2009-07-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

Just noticed the Iron Man blogging Challenge at Enlightened Perl. Sounds fun - promoting Perl by blogging about it. Funny - that came up at work recently. The younger guys at work here are convinced Perl died a long time ago and I should be learning Python. "Have you noticed NO ONE is talking about Perl anymore?!" they chided. One thing that lead them to believe that (I think) was my homepage which had a programming republic of Perl icon which had been linked to perl.com for years. Since I force my web page to be the homepage for every server I manage, they see this site a lot (and they like it!). The Perl icon used to take you to this stale website that had all of the really old post dates plainly in view. (Funny - they have removed the post dates now.) But I wanted to convince them Perl wasn't dead (just Perl.com), so I changed my programming republic of Perl icon to point at a custom page of Perl links I threw together. It had active sites like Perl Buzz, Perl Monks, Planet Perl and Use Perl. I also included the [somewhat] nearby and very active Perl Monger Groups: St.Louis Perl Mongers and Purdue Perl Mongers. The guys here are not convinced yet, but maybe the Iron Man competition will throw Perl back on their radar and make it "fashionable" (to them) once again. Meanwhile, I'll still use it to "get things done". :-p