I hereby announce the release of a new JSON encoder/decoder module called JSON::SIMD.

It is a fork of JSON::XS where the decoder was replaced with simdjson, a recent high-performance C++ JSON parser that uses SIMD instructions found in newer CPUs to make decoding as fast as possible.

The module is intended to be a drop-in replacement for JSON::XS, indeed the encoder part is unmodified, and the legacy decoder is kept to support the functionality that could not be implemented with the simdjson decoder. But for the most common scenarios the simdjson decoder is the default, offering a speedup ranging from a few percents to 100+%, depending on the size and structure of the JSON document and the available instruction set. See the documentation for benchmarks.

The interface is mostly the same as that of JSON::XS, with one notable addition: there is a new method decode_at_pointer, which leverages simdjson's ability to quickly scan through the document to return just a part of the document, without needing to decode and allocate for the rest.

Example:

my $large_json = '{
   "ignore": "this",
   "don't need": ["these", "either"],
   "foo": ["bar", {"baz": "quux"}]
}';
JSON::SIMD->new->use_simdjson->decode_at_pointer($large_json, '/foo/1'
+);
=> {bar => 'quux'}
[download]

I'd be interested in seeing benchmarks - if you create one, please include the output of simdjson_version as well.

FAQ (Facetiously Anticipated Questions):

Why a new module?

When I came across simdjson, I've looked at the section in their documentation that listed the available ports and bindings, and noticed that one particular language was conspicuously missing. I wanted to remedy that situation.

Why JSON::XS?

I didn't want to start with a clean slate, because I saw value in having the encoder and decoder in the same all-in-one package, and I didn't want to rewrite the encoder part from scratch, so it was logical to start from an established module. JSON::XS was chosen as the basis for the fork because I has been using that module at $work and elsewhere without problems, so preserving compatibility with it was seen as an important goal.

• It supports modules highgui, imgcodecs, imgproc, objdetect, tracking, videoio
• In particular, it supports just about every class and function within those modules that are supported by the Python binding
• Where possible, all inputs and outputs are ndarrays which get wrapped into Mat, Rect, std::vector<int>, etc internally, then translated back
• There is a simplistic translation of the Doxygen docs into POD, see on MetaCPAN: https://metacpan.org/dist/PDL-OpenCV
• It includes a perldl demo which shows off basic image-processing stuff (demo opencv)

• Support the Params classes (possibly from Perl-land as a hash-ref)
• Support more of the modules, both in the main OpenCV distribution and the "contrib" ones

The IRC channel (#pdl on irc.perl.org) is a great virtual place to come and ask questions, or just watch the GitHub messages flow by.

Please give the new release a try and report problems.

• allow OtherPars of e.g. nsize => n to set index-size of not-otherwise-used index
• fix [o] OtherPars to work if PMCode provided
• fix nested loop() bug for Pars with e.g. (n,n)
• add pp_add_typemaps
• bug fixes: MatrixOps::det now always returns an ndarray
• fixed the intersect bug in 11150528

The IRC channel (#pdl on irc.perl.org) is a great virtual place to come and ask questions, or just watch the GitHub messages flow by.

Please give the new release a try and report problems.

The full article.

I'm pretty excited to share the news that The Perl and Raku Conference will be in Toronto this year, July 11-13, 2023. You can find the TPF posting here and you can go to the cool tprc-to website here.

The Call For Papers is now open, and the deadline is the end of March .. so if you have something you'd like to present, get that in soon! I'm looking forward to seeing lots of folks at this event.

In this post Mark Keating announces the closing down of the Enlightened Perl Organisation.

Among other things of them I see strawberryperl

L*

perl.social is here!

perl.social announcement on reddit

perl.social Standards of Conduct

L*

As per this tweet from MetaCPAN the Twitter API changes coming very soon will mean an end to using Twitter to login to MetaCPAN. If this is your only login method, now might be a good time to pick another one.

I miss BitCard.

Update: the full-fat twitter link is here, in case the nitter version fails.

https://perladvent.org/2022/.

The German Perl/Raku Workshop takes place from February 27 to March 1st 2023 in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

We are looking for your contribution in the form a talk (20 minutes or 40 minutes), a lighting talk (5 minutes) or a workshop (2-4 hours). Please submit your proposals using this online form.

The theme in 2023 is Perl Futures - of course the two developments of Perl, Raku and Perl as well as the reference to the financial metropolis Frankfurt am Main. Presentations with these emphases are especially sought after, but all contributions on Perl, Raku and software development in general are welcome.

Read the complete Call for Papers

• Most of PDL::VectorValued has now been incorporated into PDL::Primitive
• Bugfixes including the t_rot one in 683514, and to MatrixOps::inv, conv2d and MatrixOps::identity
• inflateN added
• allow [o] on OtherPars, which helps towards PDL::OpenCV

The IRC channel (#pdl on irc.perl.org) is a great virtual place to come and ask questions, or just watch the GitHub messages flow by.

Please give the new PDL a try and report problems.

It seems that summer 2023 might be again a summer for a Perl conference, in Helsinki: https://intro.perlkohacon.fi, and a Google document with some facts!

One of the requirements for the SRE at Google:

- Experience programming in one or more of the following languages: C, C++, Java, Python, Go, Perl, or Ruby.