Slashdot Mirror

pondlife writes "A friend asked me today about using some Microsoft server components from Perl. Over the years he's built up a large collection of Perl/COM code using Win32::OLE and he had planned on doing the same thing here. The big problem is that as with many current MS APIs, they're available for .NET only because COM is effectively deprecated at this point. I did some Googling, expecting to find quickly the Perl equivalent of IronPython or IronRuby. But to my surprise I found almost nothing. ActiveState has PerlNET, but there's almost no information about it, and the mailing list 'activity' suggests it's dead or dying anyway. So, what are Perl/Windows shops doing now that more and more Microsoft components are .NET? Are people moving to other languages for Windows administration? Are they writing wrappers using COM interop? Or have I completely missed something out there that solves this problem?"

prostoalex writes "The ActiveState Perl Haiku Poetry Contest has ended. The results are in and here's the page with all the entries." Here's the original announcement.

ActiveState writes "Tell us why you love Perl. ActiveState is pleased to announce the ActiveState Perl Haiku Poetry Contest. Do you love Perl as much as we do? Then prove it with your passion, creativity, and wit! Categories include Best Haiku Poem Written in Perl and Best Haiku Poem About Perl. All entries will be featured on our website. Winners will be selected by ActiveState's Perl development team. Prizes will be awarded for the top three entries in each category and include licenses for ASPN Perl featuring Komodo Professional Edition, and cool ActiveState gear. The deadline for entries is 12:00PM PST, February 8, 2004. Winners will be announced on February 10. Full contest rules are also online. Good luck!"

ActiveState writes "Tell us why you love Perl. ActiveState is pleased to announce the ActiveState Perl Haiku Poetry Contest. Do you love Perl as much as we do? Then prove it with your passion, creativity, and wit! Categories include Best Haiku Poem Written in Perl and Best Haiku Poem About Perl. All entries will be featured on our website. Winners will be selected by ActiveState's Perl development team. Prizes will be awarded for the top three entries in each category and include licenses for ASPN Perl featuring Komodo Professional Edition, and cool ActiveState gear. The deadline for entries is 12:00PM PST, February 8, 2004. Winners will be announced on February 10. Full contest rules are also online. Good luck!"

ActiveState writes "Tell us why you love Perl. ActiveState is pleased to announce the ActiveState Perl Haiku Poetry Contest. Do you love Perl as much as we do? Then prove it with your passion, creativity, and wit! Categories include Best Haiku Poem Written in Perl and Best Haiku Poem About Perl. All entries will be featured on our website. Winners will be selected by ActiveState's Perl development team. Prizes will be awarded for the top three entries in each category and include licenses for ASPN Perl featuring Komodo Professional Edition, and cool ActiveState gear. The deadline for entries is 12:00PM PST, February 8, 2004. Winners will be announced on February 10. Full contest rules are also online. Good luck!"

Ursus Maximus writes "Eagerly awaited by many, this book reached bookstores just after Christmas, and updates the 1999 edition. Learning Python is O'Reilly's introduction to Python programming and at 591 pages, this is a major upgrade to the 366 page original. Furthermore, the Python language has undergone extensive improvements and additions in the last five years, and the new book does a good job of covering these changes." Learning Python 2nd Edition author Mark Lutz & David Ascher pages 591 publisher O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. rating 10 reviewer Ursus Maximus ISBN 0596002815 summary An introduction to Python programming

Python is a dynamic, interpreted, object oriented language used for both scripting and systems programming. Python is known for being easy to learn and use, while also being powerful enough to be used for such projects as Zope and the Chandler project. Its growing popularity is also based on its reputation for fostering programmer productivity and program maintainability. One drawback sometime cited is its relatively slow execution speed compared to compiled languages such as C.

For myself, I have probably read too many books about Python, but that is because I am an amateur hacker who learns programming slowly, and I find that reading several books about the same topic, covering the subject matter from different angles, allows me to better absorb the material. For me, this was a good review of the core language and a welcome refresher course on the newer aspects introduced in versions 2.2 and 2.3. For anyone who is new to Python and wants to learn from the ground up, this book would be a great place to start.

Mark Lutz is an authority on Python and one if its leading teachers, with both Learning and O'Reilly's Programming Python to his credit, as well as the courses and seminars he teaches professionally. In updating the original version, which was already very good, Mark has polished the chapters on the core language to a nearly perfect level, while his co-author David Ascher has done the same on the more advanced aspects of the book. In addition, Mr Lutz has benefited from extensive feedback from students and readers, and his explanations therefore anticipate common misunderstandings. Each chapter is accompanied by a problem and exercise section and answers are included at the back of the book.

A major addition to the new edition is a chapter on "Advanced Function Topics," including list comprehensions, generators and iterators. Python is sometimes used with a functional programing style almost similar to Lisp, although to List purists that may sound like heresy. The recent versions of the language have significantly upgraded Python's support for the functional style. Functions cover three chapters in the 2nd edition instead of just one.

Another major change since the first edition is extended coverage of Modules, which now occupies four chapter instead of just one. Python modules are a high level package structure for code and data, and they help facilitate code reuse. Yet another addition is coverage of Python's "new style classes." Coverage of classes and object oriented programming has been greatly expanded and now includes five whole chapters and almost 100 pages. Coverage of exceptions now is expanded to three chapters.

If you have been considering learning Python, now would be a great time since this new book is the perfect introductory text. If you already know Python and have read the first edition of Learning Python or another introductory text, then this book may not be essential since the new language features are covered pretty well on the web in various places, and you might be better advised to read one of the other fine books on non-introductory aspects of Python. But this book is about as good an introduction to the language as you are likely to find. The book does not cover all of the Python libraries nor many other topics, but it does briefly touch on the major libraries, frameworks, gui toolkits, and community resources.

If you want to learn the core Python language quickly, this may be your best bet. Learning Python only covers the basics, but it is deep in information on what it does cover. Well written, understandable, and in a very logical arrangement, this book is densely packed with info.

I have often found myself returning to the original book, and the new book will now fill this role. It is deep in information, well written, and a joy to read. For an experienced programmer who is just learning Python, it may be possible to thoroughly learn everything about the core language in one reading of this book. For relative newbies, it will be an often-used resource.

To read more reviews of books about Python, visit the Python Learning Foundation. You can purchase the Learning Python, 2nd Ed. from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Jacco de Leeuw writes "I was checking the website of anti-virus vendor Sophos when I noticed a press release: " Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"

Jacco de Leeuw writes "I was checking the website of anti-virus vendor Sophos when I noticed a press release: " Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"

Jacco de Leeuw writes "I was checking the website of anti-virus vendor Sophos when I noticed a press release: " Sophos Acquires Anti-Spam Specialist ActiveState for $23 million in cash". I didn't even know ActiveState was into anti-spam! What will this mean for their ActivePerl or ActivePython products?"

Aneusomy writes "From Activestate: 'Compiled by Dr. John Graham-Cumming, a leading anti-spam researcher and member of the ActiveState Anti-Spam Task Force, the ActiveState Field Guide to Spam is a selection of the tricks spammers use to hide their messages from filters, providing examples taken from real-world spam messages.' The hope is that Activestate and others can contribute to continually expand this guide, so that anti-spam filters improve."

TorinEdge writes "ActiveState has finally released (as in out of Beta) their Komodo IDE for the GNU/Linux platform! Komodo is an integrated dev environment for open source languages. It provides colour-coded editing (and "code-folding" for collapsing sections of code), debugging etc... It's optimized for Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, and XSLT. Includes the RxToolkit for testing/checking your regular expressions; a godsend. Get it while it's hot!"

TorinEdge writes "ActiveState has finally released (as in out of Beta) their Komodo IDE for the GNU/Linux platform! Komodo is an integrated dev environment for open source languages. It provides colour-coded editing (and "code-folding" for collapsing sections of code), debugging etc... It's optimized for Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, and XSLT. Includes the RxToolkit for testing/checking your regular expressions; a godsend. Get it while it's hot!"

chromatic writes with the review below of Writing Perl Modules for CPAN, which explains at a level "between novice and intermediate user" (and in a minimum of space) how to contribute to Perl's own Library of Alexandria. Writing Perl Modules for CPAN author Sam Tregar pages 288 publisher Apress rating Recommended. reviewer chromatic ISBN 159059018X summary A guide to the use and production of Perl modules, from start to finish, in C and in Perl. The Scoop

Besides Perl's abilities as a rapid development language, it's widely believed that the CPAN is its most valuable feature. This network of freely distributable code allows competent developers to achieve great heights of productivity, reusing the work of a generous community of programmers.

Of course, just as some will argue that Perl's copious documentation (spread over two thousand pages) is not immediately obvious to beginners, neither is how to use and even to contribute to the CPAN. For every coder who's successfully published a module, how many more would jump at the chance? How many registered CPAN authors would like to improve their skills?

With that audience in mind, Sam Tregar's Writing Perl Modules for CPAN plants itself firmly in the gap between novice and intermediate user. While much of the book presents information present in a multitude of FAQs, manpages, and the bittersweet experiences of those of us who did things the hard way, he's collected much knowledge into a short and readable guide.

What's to Like?

Tregar starts by describing the history and usage of the CPAN itself. This includes the three most popular approaches to building modules: through the CPAN shell (including its configuration), by hand, and with ActiveState's PPM tool. Next, he explains module development in forty pages. This is pretty dense stuff for the intended audience and might require several passes by newer coders. Only after re-reviewing the chapter for this summary did I realize how much he covered. The next chapter covers design and style, from naming schemes to appropriate laziness through code reuse. It's more philosophical and more important.

The next two chapters cover bundling and submitting modules to the CPAN, as well as being a good author and maintainer. The general tone is quite similar to the impressive Open Source Development with CVS. While manpages usually describe the mechanics of making a distribution, for example, they rarely explain the reasons why things are done that way. As with previous chapters, several code examples illustrate the concepts under discussion.

After a brief chapter discussing a few very effective CPAN modules, Tregar dives into XS (the interface between Perl and C). In 60 pages, he describes just enough of XS and the Perl API to teach careful programmers how to be effective at extending Perl. This introduction compares favorably to the first few chapters of the new (and excellent) Extending and Embedding Perl. As expected in an overview, he provides links to more information. The writing and example style is clear enough that a decent coder with sufficient C knowledge should be able to write a Perl wrapper to a C library with relative ease.

The last two chapters describe Inline::C, an abstraction layer that makes XS much easier, and CGI::ApplicationC, a state machine framework for Perl CGI applications. It's not quite clear why the last chapter was included (besides Tregar's desire to see more CPAN modules extending CGI::Application), but it serves as an example of using and extending a CPAN module. Perhaps a future version of the book will elaborate further.

What's to Consider

The book's code samples are generally good. In the first half, they are all related parts of a larger project. The rest of the book moves away from this approach. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile to continue the theme, though the nature of the material makes it difficult to see exactly how to accomplish this.

Tregar also avoids the use of strictures and warnings in his code examples, claiming that they would make the examples too verbose. I disagree with the given reasoning -- teaching is the best time to enforce good habits, especially when encouraging the students to distribute their code to the world. This is a minor issue, though, as the code is readable and reasonable.

In the past few months, two projects have gained a great deal of momentum in Perl space. These are the CPANPLUS (disclaimer: I am contributing to this project and have contributed to CPAN.pm) and Module::Build. They may become the new standards, replacing CPAN.pm and MakeMaker as early as Perl 5.10. The book omits mention of these. This is understandable, given the time frame -- and the current tools will not be disappearing any time soon. Potential replacements for h2xs are described in a sidebar, though.

The Summary

This is a readable book. It took only a couple of hours to read (though I'm assuredly not the target audience), and is well packed with good advice. Fresher Perl programmers who aren't yet comfortable enough with packages and interfaces will get the most benefit, but there's plenty of information for intermediate hackers as well.

Table of Contents

1. CPAN
2. Perl Module Basics
3. Module Design and Implementation
4. CPAN Module Distribution
5. Submitting Your Module to CPAN
6. Module Maintenance
7. Great CPAN Modules
8. Programming Perl in C
9. Writing C Modules with XS
10. Writing C Modules with Inline::C
11. CGI Application Modules for CPAN

You can purchase Writing Perl Modules for CPAN from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Lumpish Scholar writes "ActiveState founder Dick Hardt has quit. Or, as the press release puts it, "ActiveState Expands Board & Founder Steps Aside." No reason for the resignation was given, unless you count, "The company is looking to become a $100 million company, and they're looking for someone ... that [sic.] has that experience." ActiveState (profitably!) distributes its own proprietary products, and also both free and commercially supported versions of Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and XSLT, having given back significantly to the free / Open Source communities associated with those languages."

Lumpish Scholar writes "ActiveState founder Dick Hardt has quit. Or, as the press release puts it, "ActiveState Expands Board & Founder Steps Aside." No reason for the resignation was given, unless you count, "The company is looking to become a $100 million company, and they're looking for someone ... that [sic.] has that experience." ActiveState (profitably!) distributes its own proprietary products, and also both free and commercially supported versions of Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, and XSLT, having given back significantly to the free / Open Source communities associated with those languages."

JeanBaptiste writes: "I work for a small company that refuses to spend the money on visual studio. I need this (or some other language) to do my job (which isn't programming), and for about a year now I have had to use borland C++ 3.0 for dos to do the things that need doing. I know C/pascal/basic from years ago, but have not had to write any programs for work until recently. My question: Are there any cheap/free programming languages that will make a stable winNT/2000 app?" Well, there's ActiveState, which has perl, python, and assorted other packages and tools.

Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.

Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.

Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.

Lots of .NET stories in the news today and yesterday; it's a total coincidence that Microsoft started a huge marketing push on Wednesday, including the occasional Doubleclick ad running on Slashdot. BrendanL79 writes: "Peter Wright at Salon.com contributes to public awareness of Microsoft's .NET with this exuberant piece. The praise borders on sycophancy ("Gutenberg ... Babbage ... now Gates") with no apparent tongue in his cheek. Comments?" Reader vw writes: "Active State has just released Visual Perl 1.2, Visual Python 1.2, and Visual XSLT 1.2 as plugins for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET. Wonder how long it will take for a Mono hack." Numerous readers pointed to several stories about a buffer overflow problem in Visual Studio .NET which was supposed to be immune to buffer overflows - but it had passed Microsoft's stringent new security audit.

Josh Berkus asks: "I am an expert Visual Basic programmer who is looking to adopt a different, cross-platform language with a Linux-compatible IDE. After some research, the main offerings are theKompany's BlackAdder, borland's Kylix, and ActiveState's Komodo. What are your opinions about the languages and IDEs offered in these products? Has anyone switched to one of these from VB, and what were your experiences?"

"BlackAdder supports a Python-Qt synthesis that is very attractive as both languages have Open Source verisons. Their IDE costs only $250, which is doubly attractive.

Kylix is apparently a full featured IDE based on Borland's many years of experience with Delphi. However, one has to buy both Kylix ($199) and Delphi 6 ($999) and the language is proprietary.

Komodo suffers from the lack of a widget/forms set (as far as I can tell). However, their IDE supports 3 languages right now and will support more in the future. The $295 per user price is also attractive, as is the large knowledge base of advice and code snippets."

Are there other decent RAD packages out there for Unix systems or is this pretty much the cream of the crop?

surflorida writes: "ActiveState and Oreilly are co-sponsoring a project called the Python Cookbook that is currently being developed publicly and collaboratively at the ActiveState Web site. Individuals, members of the Python user community, are contributing the scripts. All the scripts are and will be available for free download from ActiveState's site. O'Reilly will publish the best ones in a book, and some of the proceeds will benefit the Python Software Foundation."

chipmunk writes "My prayers have been answered! Larry and Guido have joined forces to produce Parrot, what will surely become the best language ever written. The power of Perl and the sanity of Python. The Py3K and Perl 6 development are merging, with Jeremy Hylton and Dan Sugalski as joint development leads. Read more in the press release on use Perl;, and see a joint interview on perl.com!"

It's about time. It's like the right brain and left brain are working together, at long last. O'Reilly has already inked a deal to publish Programming Parrot, and Yet Another Society is set to merge with the recently launched Python Software Foundation. Both Guido and Larry will be working for ActiveState.

arkman writes: "In this morning's e-mail ActiveState has announced the availability of the beta release of the Komodo Integrated Development environment on Windows and the technology preview of Komodo for Linux. The relevant information can be viewed at their Web site. Komodo is ActiveState's cross-platform IDE, and it supports Perl, Python and Java Script." Looks very promising; I hope it doesn't suffer from the problems that certain other Mozilla-based products do.

arkman writes: "In this morning's e-mail ActiveState has announced the availability of the beta release of the Komodo Integrated Development environment on Windows and the technology preview of Komodo for Linux. The relevant information can be viewed at their Web site. Komodo is ActiveState's cross-platform IDE, and it supports Perl, Python and Java Script." Looks very promising; I hope it doesn't suffer from the problems that certain other Mozilla-based products do.

Chromatic, indefatigueable, has come up with another review. This time through the door he's gathered his reactions to Perl for System Administrators, one of the growing list of titles to help bridge the gap between SysAdmin and programmer.

Perl for System Administrators author David N. Blank-Edelman pages 430 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 9 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-609-9 summary A royal buffet of ideas to stimulate system administrators

The Scoop Despite being what some call 'the purest distillation of Unix thought,' Perl has earned a place on many Windows and Macintosh machines for its power and flexibility. Unix administrators have developed and honed small scripts for decades, but their brethren elsewhere have had no such luck until recently. Enter ActiveState, IndigoPerl, and MacPerl, to provide the tools, this book the knowledge. Floating subtle suggestions between pragmatic tips and tricks, David N. Blank-Edelman weaves nets, strong and sophisticated, for the perpetual battle against encroaching entropy. What's to Like? Anything that saves a beleagured sysadmin time is very good. Any one chapter read in isolation will yield at least one new idiom, if not many ideas on improving efficiency and accuracy. The central theme of the book ('make things better by using a database to store all of your information') is an excellent and timely idea. It's not essential to the presented examples, but has the potential to simplify your work dramatically. Besides maintaining a central repository for usernames, accounts, network information, and passwords, it allows automated configuration file building. Imagine never hand-editing DNS records again, or having to enter user data only once.

The sample code is clean and understandable, taking full advantage of many CPAN modules. When competing modules exist, Blank-Edelman demonstrates each, with an eye to advantages and disadvantages. This pragmatic analysis governs other discussions, especially concerning cross-platform and Pure Perl versus glue-code isses. Realizing that most networks combine many different clients (Unix flavors, the Windows cousins, and Apple machines), the author provides solutions to the same problem on all applicable platforms.

Though pushing the envelope on certain technologies (at the expense of others), the Appendices provide adequate introduction. The LDAP and SNMP sections stand out in particular. The author provides enough background, whether on Active Directory, TCP packet construction, or e-mail headers, to flesh out his examples. A table at the end of each chapter lists all modules covered, authors and versions, CPAN ids, and alternate download sites. In addition, the book provides many links to further information on techniques, RFCs, references, and vendors. If you're left wondering where to go to learn more, it will be your own fault.

What's to Consider? The book assumes a working knowledge of Perl. Anyone who's made it through 'Learning Perl' or 'Elements of Programming With Perl' should have no trouble -- complex idioms and module peculiarities receive sufficient explanation. Beware, though, that the sample code does not enable warnings or run under strict mode. (Production programs need error checking, which, the author explains, could easily double the size of his examples.)

Not all sections apply to all OSs. The Macintosh, for example, has no concept of multiple users (OS X not being covered). These differences could hinder the text, but are clearly marked and can be skipped with no ill effects. Besides, few networks are homogenous, and astute readers will learn more about the system in general from the similarities and differences.

Some common administrative tasks have been left out in favor of emerging or more complex technologies. There's nothing on managing printers or backups. A sysadmin of reasonable experience who makes it through the book will have gained a proper mental framework to tackle other tasks, though.

The Summary Perl for System Administrators is packed with useful tips, making the most of Perl's ecological niche. Whether you're a junior administrator venturing out into the wild world for the first time, or a seasoned BOFH, you'll find something to digest here. You might even get some free time out of it. Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Filesystems
3. User Accounts
4. User Activity
5. TCP/IP Name Services
6. Directory Services
7. SQL Database Administration
8. Electronic Mail
9. Log Files
10. Security and Network Monitoring

1. The Five-Minute RCS Tutorial
2. The Ten-Minute LDAP Tutorial
3. The Eight-Minute XML Tutorial
4. The Fifteen-Minute SQL Tutorial
5. The Twenty-Minute SNMP Tutorial

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

WhyteRabbyt writes: "ActiveState have announced Komodo, an open-source IDE for Perl, Python and Javascript. The application framework is to be based on Mozilla. The press release is here." tenchiken contributed a bit more information about the project, writing: "More information is here , including the announcement a few days ago that they would be writing python and perl bindings to XPCOM. Like Perl? How 'bout client side perl!" No, it's not out yet -- but it's cool to see Mozilla as the engine behind yet another project.

WhyteRabbyt writes: "ActiveState have announced Komodo, an open-source IDE for Perl, Python and Javascript. The application framework is to be based on Mozilla. The press release is here." tenchiken contributed a bit more information about the project, writing: "More information is here , including the announcement a few days ago that they would be writing python and perl bindings to XPCOM. Like Perl? How 'bout client side perl!" No, it's not out yet -- but it's cool to see Mozilla as the engine behind yet another project.

feeder sent us a recent Techweb story purporting to talk about the Open Source community reaction to the announcement from Microsoft and ActiveState about ActiveState being funded to extend Perl support under Windows. The story is indicative of some of the standard concerns-but how much do we have fear - what does everyone think?

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this Press Release, Microsoft has signed an aggreement with Active State to add missing functionality to the Windows version of Perl. But the FAQ states that they also want Perl to "take advantage of platform features on Windows". "

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this Press Release, Microsoft has signed an aggreement with Active State to add missing functionality to the Windows version of Perl. But the FAQ states that they also want Perl to "take advantage of platform features on Windows". "

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this Press Release, Microsoft has signed an aggreement with Active State to add missing functionality to the Windows version of Perl. But the FAQ states that they also want Perl to "take advantage of platform features on Windows". "