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A new version of the documentation for using xsubs in perl extension code is part of the Perl 5.43.6 devel-branch package.

This is news from Reddit r/perl yesterday and also mentioned at TPF and I think it's significant enough to have a mention here at Perlmonks too.

r/perl user Grinnz posted:

David Mitchell completely rewrote the perlxs reference manual for the XS language for extending Perl in C. The rewritten version was just released in the development release 5.43.6 and will be included in the next stable release of Perl.

I used pod2pdf to generate a PDF version of the document* once I'd built 5.43.6 (using perlbrew btw) and it's 77 pages in US-Letter size format. I didn't check for the length of the previous version of perlxs.pod but 77 pages is a small book; this is not a minor achievement but rather a significant contribution of the sort that does not always get the recognition and accolades it deserves.

* I put it in my Google Drive, hopefully I've got the settings right so that you should be able to download it from there. sorry, Google Drive doesn't work that way. Or just run pod2pdf on the pod yourself, of course–it's not a difficult tool to use).

Edit Again

Should have listened to my first vague recollection of how Google Drive works. Yes, it can serve as a file-sharing system if the right settings are enabled. Now they are—now anyone with the URL should be able to view / download the PDF file in the link above.

Dec 23, 2025 at 16:10 UTC

Dave Cross has posted Dotcom Survivor Syndrome � How Perl�s Early Success Created the Seeds of Its Downfall about current misconceptions about Perl and how those misconceptions came to be.

Can We Move On?

Dotcom Survivor Syndrome is real. So is Version Number Paralysis. Together, they�ve unfairly buried a language that remains fast, expressive, and battle-tested.

We can�t change the past. But we can:

• Acknowledge the emotional and historical baggage
• Celebrate the role Perl played in inventing the modern web
• Educate developers about what Perl really is today
• Push back against the assumption that old == obsolete

Certain vendors have certainly played the appeal to novelty fallacy to its outer limits to sell their own gimmicks while simultaneously maligning Perl. That'll take a lot to overcome, but is doable.

Maybe I ate too much turkey yesterday, but ... using perl 5.40.1, why does this code work:

$ perl -MTry::Tiny -e 'try {1/0};'
$
[download]

$ perl -MTry::Tiny -E 'try {1/0};'
syntax error at -e line 1, near "};"
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
$
[download]