March2006Meeting

March Meeting

March 8th, 6:30pm at Free Geek, 1741 SE 10th Ave

Topic: The Guts of Perl (and why you should care)

Slides

Podcast

Presenter: Eric Wilhelm

Briefly covering:

(roughly) What the perl interpreter does when you throw a program at it. How perlguts and compiled extensions work. How to peek into perl internals with Perl code. How this knowledge is useful.

Agenda:

• (requisite viewing of fluff / late arrivals)
• Overview of perl's parse, compile, run process.
• Possibly some mildly off-topic bits about XS, perlapi, etc.
• Tour of the B:: modules.
• (heckling)
• Comparisons between B and PPI approaches.
• (likely more heckling)
• Example code, case studies, and esoteric observations.
• (beer at the LuckyLab)

Applications:

• Mechanically analyzing readability and refactorability of Perl code.
• Design patterns and optimization insights.
• Better understanding of what is under the hood.
• An opportunity to heckle me (heckling-based learning optional.)