Meetings

Iterators and inside-out objects: Perl closures at work

Andy Lester

Tuesday Jan 10th 2006 at 7:00pm
Wheaton, Illinois Institute of Technology - Rice Campus, Room 103

Abstract

Closures are a powerful abstraction common to modern dynamic languages. They're functions that maintain information between calls, and can in some ways be thought of as objects.

In this gentle introduction to this advanced concept, you'll learn how Perl's lexical variable scoping allows closures, and how to apply them. We'll discuss:

* Iterators that allow walking through a sequence of data or actions by maintaining state between calls.

* "Inside-out objects", a method of creating objects in Perl that is gaining in popularity.

Speaker Bio

Andy Lester started with computers early by keypunching letters to Grandma on IBM 029 punchcards. Now into his third decade of professional software development, he's the QA & Release Manager for Socialtext. Andy is also in charge of PR for The Perl Foundation and maintains over 25 modules on CPAN. Andy's two latest book projects are "Mac OS X Tiger In A Nutshell" from O'Reilly, and "Pro Perl Debugging" from Apress.

Getting to the meeting

The next PerlSIG meeting of UniForum Chicago will be at:

        IIT Rice Campus
        Room 103
        201 East Loop Road
        Wheaton, IL 60187-8489

Directions to IIT - Rice Campus in Wheaton
The 19-acre campus is located just northeast of the intersection of Naperville and Butterfield roads in south Wheaton's Danada development. The campus is three miles west of the Butterfield Road interchange of the N orth-South Tollway (I-355) and two miles north of the Naperville Road interchange of the East-West Tollway ( I-88).

From the North or South: From I-355 (North-South Tollway), exit westbound at Rt.56/Butterfield Road and proceed west 3 1/2 miles on Butterfield Road to East Loop Road. Turn right onto East Loop Road (Phillip's 66 Gas Station on the corner); the campus will be on your right about a block north of Butterfield Road, behind Cozymel's. Park in the Student parking lot behind the building. Room 103 is the first room inside the north enterance.

From the I-294 (Tri-State Tollway), take the I-88 (East-West Tollway) westbound and follow directions "From the East or West" below.

From the East or West: From I-88 (East-West Tollway), take the Naperville Road exit. At the traffic light, turn left onto Naperville Road and continue north for 1\275 miles to Rt. 56/Butterfield Road. Turn right onto Rt. 56/Butterfield Road and proceed 1/4 mile to the first traffic light (East Loop Road). Turn left on to East Loop Road, ( Phillip's 66 Gas station on the corner); the campus will be on your right about a block north of Butterfield Road, behind Cozymel's. Park in the Student parking lot behind the building.

Room 103 is the first room inside the north enterance.

Contact Deborah Vose at vosedj@yahoo.com for additional information about the meeting.