Dave Mitchell writes: I spent the majority of my time last month working on a function called Perl_re_intuit_start in the regex engine. This function is one of the major optimisations in the regex engine. For each compiled pattern, it is noted what is the longest fixed and floating strings that must appear in the string for the match to succeed, along with what char class the pattern must start with.

Dave Mitchell writes: I spent the majority of my time last month fixing compiler warnings in smokes; along with fixing a few bugs, "working" my p5p mailbox etc. Over the last month I have averaged 17.1 hours per week. As of 2013/11/30: since the beginning of the grant: bq. 6.9 weeks 115.6 total hours 16.8 average hours per week There are 284 hours left on the grant. bq. 7:55 RT#119847

I am pleased to announce that Dave Mitchell's grant application, "Maintaining the Perl 5 Core":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2013/09/grant-application-maintaining-1.html, was accepted. This is his first report. Dave Mitchell writes: I spent my time mainly working on several bug reports, applying patches, fixing smokes, and "working" my p5p mailbox etc. None of the fixes are particularly noteworthy. Over the last month I have averaged 16.1 hours per week. As of 2013/10/31: since the beginning of

Tony Cook has requested an extension of $13,000 for his "Maintaining Perl 5 grant":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2013/05/grant-application-maintaining.html. This grant was started in July 2013 and was successfully completed. The requested extension would allow Tony to devote another 260 hours to the project. The funds for this extension would come from the "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_5_core_maintenance_fund. Tony provided detailed monthly reports of the work he completed and these can be found in the

Nicholas Clark writes: As per my grant conditions, here is a report for the August period. Multiple cores are the future! And we need to enjoy this, because we aren't going to get any choice about it. The current hardware for the hot backup for perl5.git.perl.org has 24 cores, and even mobile phones are thinking about going quad-core. The upshot of this is that the more that you can get

Nicholas Clark writes: As per my grant conditions, here is a report for the July period. The main theme for this month seems to be "clean up parts of the build". perl was first developed on a Unix system, back in the times when there dozens of different Unix variants. Hence portability was initially across the different C libraries Figuring out precisely what the system could do was performed by

Tony Cook writes: The most interesting changes this month were probably: "115928":https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=115928 a common rand implementation "117265":https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=117265 failing system calls on embedded NULs "3330":https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=3330 warning on ++$foo when $foo isn't a number, or magically incrementable "85104":https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=85104 preserving $^E across signal handlers

I'm pleased to announce that diakopter's grant proposal, "Wrap up Perl 5 Interop for Rakudo Perl 6 on MoarVM":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2013/07/hague-grant-application.html, has been accepted. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to comment on the proposal. If you would like to help fund grants like this or any of our other projects please visit our "donation system":https://secure.donor.com/pf012/give.

Tony Cook writes: The most interesting changes this month were probably: 116190 making -F imply -a and -a imply -n. 116989 S_croak_memory_wrap 117265 safesyscalls 74798 Data::Dumper XS I added tests and fix for that, and applied it as 2780a6ed. Of course this being Data::Dumper, a change in the code broke some tests on CPAN, in one case a tweak to the output format to match the pure perl code exactly

We have received a new grant application, under the Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund, from David Mitchell. Before we vote on this proposal we would like to get feedback and endorsements from the Perl community. Please leave feedback in the comments or send email with your comments to karen at perlfoundation.org. Name: David Mitchell Project Title: Maintaining the Perl 5 Core Synopsis Having recently finished a three-year TPF grant devoted

Tony Cook writes: The most interesting changes this month were probably: 116190 making -F imply -a and -a imply -n. 116989 S_croak_memory_wrap 117265 safesyscalls 74798 Data::Dumper XS The original request in this ticket was that -F without -a should warn or fail with an error. The problem with that, as discussed, is that there's a perfectly reasonable thing to do instead: have -F switch on

I am pleased to announce that Dr Nicholas Clark's "Improving Perl 5":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/08/grant-proposal-improving-perl.html grant has been extended by another 400 hours. I would like to thank everyone who commented on his "request for an extension":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2013/07/grant-extension-request---impr-4.html for their feedback. I would also like to thank all those who continue to provide financial support to the "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund.":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_5_core_maintenance_fund

Nicholas Clark writes: As per my grant conditions, here is a report for the June period. bq. The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from I guess the same can be said about build systems. So the structural intent of the build is Permit the user to choose configuration options Build the package so the configuration system has to run using native tools. And

Nicholas Clark writes: As per my grant conditions, here is a report for the May period. This month I simplified part of the implementation of pack and unpack, removing about 130 lines of code, and reducing the object code size by about 2K. The only casualty was support for mixed-endian systems. Sorry, PDP-11 users. In the medal stakes for "risk to sanity", the implementation of pack and unpack are strong

We have received the following Hague Grant application from diakopter. Before we vote on this proposal we would like to have a period of community consultation for 10 days. Please leave feedback in the comments or if you prefer send email with your comments to karen at perlfoundation.org. Applicant's Name: diakopter Project Title Wrap up Perl 5 Interop for Rakudo Perl 6 on MoarVM Synopsis Embed Perl 5 in Rakudo's

Dr. Nicholas Clark has requested an extension of $20,000 for his "Improving Perl 5":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/08/grant-proposal-improving-perl.html grant. This grant started in September 2011 and has been running successfully since then. The requested extension would allow Nicholas to devote another 400 hours to the project. The funds for this extension would come from the "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_5_core_maintenance_fund. As well as weekly reports posted on the p5p mailing list Nicholas provides detailed

I am pleased to announce that The Perl Foundation has accepted Tony Cook's grant application for "Maintaining Perl 5":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2013/05/grant-application-maintaining.html. As always the application was considered after a public consultation and feedback period. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to view, assess, and provide feedback on the application. This grant was awarded from money previously raised for the "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_5_core_maintenance_fund, an initiative maintained by

Nicholas Clark writes: As per my grant conditions, here is a report for the April period. I started the month looking at the Unicode Names code. At Karl's suggestion I changed it to parse the UnicodeData.txt file properly. Previously it had hardcoded various constants, particularly related to the CJK ideographs and Hangul syllables. The CJK ranges in Unicode have increased in the past, and so it's possible that they will

Dave Mitchell writes: This month was mostly spent on removing global state from the regex engine, making re-entrantcy less error-prone. The extract from the merge commit description below gives you all the details you could ever want. Apart from that I spent a few hours re-enabling Copy-on_Write by default post the 5.18.0 release, plus a few other bits and pieces. It turns out that I have finally used up all

We have received the following grant application, under the "Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl_5_core_maintenance_fund, from Tony Cook. Before we vote on this proposal we would like to get feedback and endorsements from the Perl community. Please leave feedback in the comments or send email with your comments to karen at perlfoundation.org. Project Title: Maintaining Perl 5 Name: Tony Cook Synopsis Free up one of the Perl 5 core's contributors to