Earlier this week, I saw this code being recommended on Stack Overflow. The code contains a nasty, but rather subtle bug. The version I saw has been fixed now, but I thought there were some interesting lessons to learn by looking at the problems in some detail. Let’s start by working out what the bug […]
Earlier this week, the Perl magazine site, perl.com, published an article about writing web applications using CGI.pm. That seemed like a bizarre choice to me, but I’ve decided to use it as an excuse to write an article explaining why I think that’s a really bad idea. It’s important to start by getting some definitions […]
I fixed a bug earlier this week. Ok, actually, I introduced a bug and then spent the next few hours tracking it down and fixing it – but that doesn’t sound quite so positive, does it? I thought it might be interesting to talk you through the bug and the fix. I should point out […]
I’m a republican. No… wait… come back! That’s not what I mean. I’m a long way from being a supporter of the Republican Party. I mean “republican” in its older meaning of “someone who thinks their country should be a republic. That is to say, I’m not a big fan of the British royal family. […]
Ok, yes, I’ve been writing Perl for over twenty years. But Perl 5.26 was released this week and for the first time, my name is mentioned in the release notes. Because I have not one, but two fixes in this release of Perl. The first is this commit which fixes a piece of documentation to […]
