use Perl

STBEY writes "I think Strawberry Perl is absolutely great!
But...

What do you do on Windows machines where you do not have Administrator rights, or no rights at all to install anything, to be more precise?
Such as e.g. in large companies, with very restrictive user policies?
And by "installing" I mean running an installer, configuring the binary and changing the registry like Strawberry Perl does.

What often DOES work on these machines though is copying files.

So we need a Perl binary which will install on any drive, just by unpacking a ZIP archive, for instance.
And if you don't have the rights to change the system's PATH environment variable, you need a batch script to call Perl for you, to be copied into one of the directories in the PATH, or to any directory you have write permissions to, and from which you will be calling Perl.

It may seem awkward, but in return you will have a fully-fledged Perl running on your crippled PC.
If this is what you need, have a look at http://www.engelschall.com/u/sb/download/win32/perl-5.10.1-win32-bin-0001.zip.
(See the README.txt file in the root directory for all the gory details)

The installation is simpler than it sounds.
Hope this helps!
Enjoy!"

http://perlmonks.org/?node=Corion asked about measuring memory allocation in IRC but I was reminded of something I've poked at recently which is measuring how much memory is copy-on-write shared between forked mod_perl processes. Thus far, when on Linux the only answer I know of is to use the exmap kernel module. The main page is http://www.berthels.co.uk/exmap/ but Dave Olszewski wrote some bug fixes for it at http://github.com/cxreg/exmap. exmap uses a kernel module to add a new /proc/exmap file. To read physical page stats, write the PID to this file, then read the results. The exmap distribution comes with a C++ and perl GTK program to interpret the kernel data. Below is what I know of the format for the kernel data.

To use:

$ echo $pid > /proc/exmap
$ cat /proc/exmap
VMA 400000 87
1 0 1c6e7
1 0 1c6e8
1 0 1d328
...

$ grep 400000 /proc/$pid/maps
00400000-00457000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 722755 /usr/bin/screen

The sections provided by /proc/exmap correspond to each of the chunks in /proc/$pid/maps. Each line then details a page, whether it is swapped, and whether it is writable.

(
    VMA $address $page_count
    ( $resident $writable $page_id )+
)+

Anyway, just thought I'd share. If you know a better trick, I'd love to hear of it. When I next get around to improving my search servers I'll likely actually try to use this but for now this is just a tool I think I plan to use but haven't done serious work with yet.

jesse writes "Whispers of an "evil power" were heard in lines at dairy
        shops, in streetcars, stores, arguments, kitchens, suburban
        and long-distance trains, at stations large and small,
        in dachas and on beaches. Needless to say, truly mature
        and cultured people did not tell these stories about an
        evil power's visit to the capital. In fact, they even
        made fun of them and tried to talk sense into those who
        told them. Nevertheless, facts are facts, as they say,
        and cannot simply be dismissed without explanation:
        somebody had visited the capital. The charred cinders
        of Griboyedov alone, and many other things besides,
        confirmed it. Cultured people shared the point of view
        of the investigating team: it was the work of a gang of
        hypnotists and ventriloquists magnificently skilled in
        their art.
                        M. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of Perl 5.11.0.

Perl 5.11.0 is a DEVELOPMENT release. We're making it available to you today to make it easy for you to test your software on what will eventually become Perl 5.12.

This release is the result of over two years of development by a global community of developers.

nuba writes "We are proud to announce the YAPC::Brasil 2009, to be held from 30/October to 1/November in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

We have humble goals this year: to put forth the greatest YAPC::Brasil ever, celebrate the Joy of Perl among ourselves, and tempt everyone else to join us in developing the programming language that has the happiest users!

We hope to deliver expertise in all levels, from introductory workshops {say "hello Perl!"} to perlguts, SMOP, Reaction and Metaprogramming to list a few and also a good number of slots for lightning talks to encourage newcomers!

Niterói holds one of the highest Human Development Indexes (HDI) of the country, and stays just a 15-minute ferry boat ride away from the famous, infamous and glamorous Rio de Janeiro. If you happen to be nearby, hop aboard and come join us!

More information:
http://yapcbrasil.org.br/2009
http://twitter.com/yapcbrasil #yapcbrasil09
organizacao@yapcbrasil.org.br"