Perl Programming/Humour

Obfuscated code

Some people claim Perl stands for 'Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister' due to the high use of meaningful punctuation characters in the language syntax.

In common with C programming language, obfuscated code competitions are an interesting feature of the Perl culture. Similar to obfuscated code but with a different purpose, Perl Poetry is the practice of writing poems that can actually be compiled by perl. This practice is fairly unique to Perl, due to the large number of regular English words used in the language. New poems can regularly be seen in the Perl Poetry section of perlmonks.org.

A Question

#!/usr/bin/perl
# which art form is practiced and appreciated by lawyers and perl programmers alike?
use strict; my $scupture = join("",<DATA>);$scupture =~ s/^\s*(.*?)\s*$/$1/; print unpack("A*", eval($scupture));
__DATA__
"\x20\x20\x0d\x0a\x6f\x62\x66\x75\x73\x63\x61\x74\x69\x6f\x6e\x0d\x0"
# Kevin Bade

Just another Perl Hacker

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a one-liner perl script which displays the phrase "Just another Perl hacker," (including the comma, and capitalization as shown). If successful, you win the right to use it as an email signature identifying yourself as a Perl hacker. Entries will be judged on how smart-ass the code is. Around 100 of the first JAPHs and some funky obfu Perl can be seen on CPAN.

Acme

There's always a place in Perl for odd modules, and one such place is the Acme:: namespace. If you have a module which knows how long a piece of string is, or one which converts your perl script into an image of Che Guevara, post it here.

Golf

Perl is a very compact language. So compact, that some have even create a game around perl's terseness called perlgolf. In perlgolf, you are given a problem to solve. You must solve it in the fewest number of characters possible. A scorecard is kept, and after 18 "holes", a winner is announced.