Computer Science & Perl Programming

Part VIII. Internals

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Lexical Analysis

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

When I created the comp.lang.perl.modules and comp.lang.perl.tk newsgroups, I was on a roll. After some brainstorming on the perl5-porters mailing list, we decided to create a newsgroup dedicated to Perl internals called comp.lang.perl.guts. Normally, when you submit a proposal to create a newsgroup, there are two phases: the RFD (request for discussion) and the CFV (call for votes). But a Lord of Usenet denied even my request for discussion, claiming that the name wasn’t formal enough for Usenet.

To this day, there is no newsgroup dedicated to Perl internals. You’ll have to settle for the perl5-porters and perl6-porters lists—and this section, which has six articles about the guts of Perl. We begin with Nathan Torkington’s article on How to Improve Perl (originally titled “Hacking the Perl Core” in TPJ #16). Nathan tells you what to do if you want to contribute to the Perl development process, identifying some timeless principles that work just as well for Perl 6 as Perl 5.

Perl guru Chip Salzenberg follows with four of the articles from his Guts column. Components of the Perl Distribution provides a very brief overview of the components of a Perl distribution, followed by an explanation of how Perl interprets your programs in Basic Perl Anatomy. Next, he explains how Perl breaks apart your programs into tokens in Lexical Analysis, and then shows you the utility of the -D command-line switch in ...