This month, we're doing Lightning Talks. Lightning talks are 5-10 minute informal (slides-optional) presentations.

The meeting will be this week, May 26. Doors open at 6:30pm, and the meeting starts at 7. RSVP to attend on the Chicago.PM Meetup page

This month, anything goes, so you can talk about whatever you'd like to talk about. If you've got something you'd like to present, leave a comment on the Chicago.PM Meetup page.

This month, Doug Bell will be giving a presentation on the most important features and modules added to the Perl core since the 5.8 series.

RSVP on the Chicago.PM Meetup page to attend.

If you upgrade to 5.10 you get:

• say
• state
• defined-or (//)
• Switch (given/when)
• Module::CoreList - List the modules your Perl has in core

If you upgrade to 5.12 you get:

• The yada-yada operator (...)
• each(), keys(), and values() on arrays
• autodie

If you upgrade to 5.14 you get:

• Non-destructive substitution (s///r)
• More reliable exception throwing
• HTTP::Tiny
• JSON::PP

If you upgrade to 5.16 you get:

• Reference to the current running sub (__SUB__)

If you upgrade to 5.18 you get:

• Lexical subroutines (my sub, our sub, state sub)

Awaiting us in 5.20:

• Hash-based slices (%hash{...} and %array[...])
• EXP: Postfix dereference operators ($ref->%*)
• EXP: Subroutine signatures (sub mysub( $foo, $bar, @baz ) { ... })
• IO::Socket::IP

This will be an intermediate-level presentation on how to build command-line applications in Perl. It starts out with some simple command-line scripts, and moves on to building testable, reusable command-line applications using modules and CPAN frameworks. Knowledge of Perl and using the command-line is recommended. Previous knowledge of writing command-line applications is not required.

Pizza and beverages will be provided (if you have requests for specific flavors of pizza or beverage, let me know). Please RSVP on the meetup page before 4:00pm on Thursday to make your entrance as smooth as possible.

This will be the first in a set of free, open-source intermediate-level presentations released by the Chicago.PM organization on Github. The presentation itself will be released with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, and the code inside the presentation will be licensed under the same terms as Perl itself (Artistic License 1 or GPL version 1 at your discretion). Our goal is to build a repository of living presentations that pick up after the beginner's workshops and explore single topics with some depth. Emphasis will be placed on best practices with pragmatism: Here's multiple ways to do it, here's why you might choose one way over another, here's some things you might see out in the wild and how to improve on them. Our github organization is located at http://github.com/ChicagoPM

More information is available on the meetup page.

Update: Slides are available on the Talks page