2004 Perl Advent Calendar Begins

JeffMagnus writes "In another sign of the rapid approach of Christmas, Mark Fowler has posted the first entry in his 2004 Perl Advent Calendar. Each day until December 25, Mark will post a review of some Perl module he finds useful. This marks the fifth year for this Perl Christmastime tradition."

Nice idea

[rwinston]

This is a gem - I checked last year's Perl advent calendar daily. Well worth checking out - there's lot of useful info in there.

Re:Nice idea

[xmas2003]

Just to echo rwinston's comments above, this is darn good stuff ... and for December 1st [perladvent.org] they are talking about DateTime which is an extremely useful module which I've used in a variety of code.

Re:Nice idea

[jonadab]

> December 1st they are talking about DateTime which is an extremely useful

DateTime is more than just useful -- it's *essential*. I have no idea why it
isn't in the core distribution, but it's on my list of things that have to be
installed on any new computer before it's ready for use. Seriously, when was
the last time you wrote a program of any significant size that *didn't* have
to deal with dates and times? I use DateTime in *most* of my programs. (No,
don't talk to me about localtime and gmtime; thos

Re:Nice idea

[xmas2003]

I agree with all you have written above - yea, why this isn't in the core distribution is a bit confusion - maybe for Perl6?!? ;-)

BTW, I was tweeking my christmas webcam [komar.org] code today and I was actually surprised that I do NOT use DateTime there ... but I don't do much time manipulation and I intentionally tried to minimize modules inclusion for performance reasons ... but rest assured I use it in a lotta other code!

Re:Nice idea

[Rysc]

I learned of HTML::Template in last years perl-advent, and at the moment it's an essential module in some in-house software I would otherwise not be being paid to develop.

I will be watching this years closely for any useful tidbits.

Don't miss last year's 19th!

[rduke15]

Where he talks about some of the Acme:: modules: Perl 2003 Advent Calendar: Acme::Code::FreedomFighter [perladvent.org].

Then, you can go explore the rest of the Acme namespace [cpan.org].

PHP

[cuteseal]

Awesome! Is there one for php/mysql too? I think that's more popular these days...

Real dates for advent

[randomtangent]

Sorry upbringing kicking in here.
Advent is not dec 1 - 25.
It changes every year always starting on a sunday and ending on christmas eve.
this year it started on the 28 of December.
See complete calendar at http://www.cresourcei.org/cydatesA.html

Not to take away form the program but calling it an advent calendar seems a bit off. Oh well the co-opting of a taken over stolen holiday must continue.

Re:Real dates for advent

[IpalindromeI]

this year it started on the 28 of December

Dec 28 to Dec 24? Advent travels backward through time this year? That will be a great trick. Maybe we'll be able to track it using Time::Travel [cpan.org] or Time::Warp [cpan.org].