OS=Linux

I'm struggling to send special characters like umlauts ("äöüÄÖÜ") via X11::GUITest and SendKeys() to another application.

Is there a trick I am missing? Anything after the first special character is discarded.

If I try the linux tool xte from the package 'xautomation', it works fine from the console:

gnome-text-editor & sleep 1; xte "str äöüÄÖÜß"

2 C functions below differ in a single line marked with 3 stars. I thought that a modern decent compiler won't notice. I'm afraid I'm not qualified to analyse compiler flags differences. It's Win10, and 5.32 set-up long ago and portable 5.42 (PDL-edition) unpacked just now. (The code is about PWC-342-2, it's irrelevant and doesn't matter if it still returns valid answers after reduction to SSCCE). Have compiler optimisation settings been changed, in recent Strawberries, in what looks like wrong direction? (+ some more strange issues, but I'd better stay focused on this one)

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';
use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

use constant L => 1e5;
my $str = '1' x L;
substr $str, rand L, 1 , '0' for 1 .. L;

use Inline C => << 'END_OF_C';

int test_c_3( SV* str ) {
    int i, tmp, acc, max;
    
    STRLEN len;
    char* buf = SvPVbyte( str, len );
    len --;
    
    acc = 0;
    max = -2;
    for( i = 0; i < len; i ++ ) {
        acc += ( buf[ i ] == '1' );         // ***
        tmp = i - 2 * acc;
        if ( tmp > max ) max = tmp;
    }
    
    return max + acc + ( buf[ len ] == '1' ) + 1;
}

int test_c_4( SV* str ) {
    int i, tmp, acc, max;
    
    STRLEN len;
    char* buf = SvPVbyte( str, len );
    len --;
    
    acc = 0;
    max = -2;
    for( i = 0; i < len; i ++ ) {
        if ( buf[ i ] == '1' ) acc ++;      // ***
        tmp = i - 2 * acc;
        if ( tmp > max ) max = tmp;
    }
    
    return max + acc + ( buf[ len ] == '1' ) + 1;
}

END_OF_C

say $^V;
say 'String length: ', L;

cmpthese -2, {
    c3 => sub { test_c_3( $str )},
    c4 => sub { test_c_4( $str )},
};

__END__

v5.32.1
String length: 100000
     Rate  c4  c3
c4 8800/s  -- -0%
c3 8817/s  0%  --

v5.42.0
String length: 100000
     Rate   c4   c3
c4 2511/s   -- -71%
c3 8755/s 249%   --
[download]

Here we go again, a pretty little problem with installing a CPAN module that I want to be on my system. The failure is with Module::Manifest::Skip, its tests won't get past the compile stage. The relevant message as appears below is Can't locate object method "_install_subs" via package "Module::Manifest::Skip". The failure was thrown at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/5.40/Moo.pm line 49, so I updated Moo to release 2.005005 but that didn't solve the problem.

My system has these characteristics:

/usr/bin/perl    v5.40.3
MS Windows 11
CYGWIN_NT-10.0-26100 3.6.4-1.x86_64 2025-07-15 07:55 UTC x86_64 Cygwin
@INC:
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/local/share/perl5/site_perl/5.40
/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/5.40
/usr/lib/perl5/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/share/perl5/5.40

The following console output is a bit redundant but I wanted to be thorough:

Oct 12, 2025 at 18:37 UTC

use strict;
use Excel::Writer::XLSX;
 use Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX;
use Carp qw( croak );
use Cwd qw( abs_path );
use Path::Class;
 use Win32::OLE qw(in);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Word';
...

my $path=....;

    my $word =Win32::OLE->new('Word.Application','Quit');   
     my $word_file = file(abs_path($path)); 
 
    my $doc = $word->{Documents}->Open("$word_file");
print "after doc\n";
    my $tables = $word->ActiveDocument->{Tables};
 
    for my $table (in $tables) {
 
my $numrows=$table->Rows->Count; 
 $main::numcols=$table->Columns->Count; 
 
# Iterate through rows and count columns
foreach my $rownum (1 .. $table->Rows->Count) {
    my $row = $table->Rows->Item($rownum);# code crashes here

...

}
}
[download]

Win32::OLE(0.1712) error 0x8002000e: "Invalid number of parameters" in METHOD/PROPERTYGET "Item" at C:/Strawberry/perl/lib/Devel/ptkdb.pm line 2658.

Greeting Monks,

I’m experimenting with using the built-in `DB` package to build a lightweight call tracer. I’ve previously done something similar using **Hook::LexWrap** and **Module::Info**, but this time I’d like to catch **entry and exit** events for subroutines directly through Perl’s built-in debugging interface.

Here’s the minimal prototype I’ve tried:

                                                                      
+        
package Devel::Lite;

use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::HiRes ();

our $IN_TRACE = 0;

sub DB::sub {
    return &$DB::sub(@_) if $IN_TRACE;
    local $IN_TRACE = 1;

    my $sub = $DB::sub;
    my @args = @_;

    print STDERR ">> entering $sub\n";
    my @ret;
    eval { @ret = &$sub(@args); };
    print STDERR "<< leaving $sub\n";

    die $@ if $@;
    return wantarray ? @ret : $ret[0];
}
1;
[download]

Then I run it like this:

perl -I. -d:TobyLite -e "sub x { print qq{okay\n}; } x();"
[download]

…but it loops endlessly and never reaches my test sub.

If I insert a print inside the loop, I see repeated `"Time::HiRes::time"`, suggesting recursion into the debugger hook itself.

I’ve tried things like skipping `Devel::Lite` and `Time::HiRes` calls explicitly, and guarding with `$IN_TRACE`, but the loop persists.

What I’d like to understand is:

1. Why is `DB::sub` being triggered recursively despite the guard?

2. What’s the correct minimal pattern for tracing sub entry/exit safely?

3. Bonus: how best to distinguish user code from CPAN/core subs to keep the trace clean?

Environment:

This is perl 5.38.x built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread

Running on Windows 10.

Any insight or examples would be appreciated — I’m not trying to build a full debugger, just a simple tracer that logs the call tree.

TIA

PS: So far this has stumped (in no order) ChatGPT, claude, and Gemini.

I know Perl maintains a pointer (offset), within an SV, of where actual data in PV buffer starts, -- is this "beheading" the reason for the slowdown as demonstrated?

use strict;
use warnings;
use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

my $str = ' ' x 1e5;

sub test1 {
    my $s = shift;
    my $copy = substr $str, 1;
    1 while $copy =~ /./g;
    _:
}

sub test2 {
    my $s = shift;
    substr $s, 0, 1, '';
    1 while $s =~ /./g;
    _:
}

cmpthese -1, {
    test1 => sub { test1( $str )},
    test2 => sub { test2( $str )},
};

#             (warning: too few iterations for a reliable count)
#         Rate test2 test1
# test2 2.79/s    --  -93%
# test1 41.0/s 1372%    --
[download]

Hello perMonks and perlNuns.

As my Subject indicates, I am thinking ahead to when the cygwin project upgrades Perl to 5.42. What I am asking isn't about the Perl language but rather about systems administration. I got badly burned by doing something ignorant awhile back, as discussed weeks ago in Nooo!... Have I trashed my Strawberry?.

When I update using cygwin setup.exe, I think I remember that the core language modules will not update, but rather are updated as a separate package from cygwin.com (is this right?). And what about the vendor modules? But mostly, what about the modules in site_perl locations, modules I've built and installed myself? I think one answer will be to autobundle using cpan, but there are other possible solutions. Any advice would be welcomed.

CygwinPerl on my system:

$ /usr/bin/perl -le 'print $^V'
v5.40.3

$ perl -le 'print for @INC'
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/local/share/perl5/site_perl/5.40
/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/5.40
/usr/lib/perl5/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/share/perl5/5.40

So when one autobundles, are modules selected from all dirs in @INC or only from the site_perl dirs, which are in my case (and presumably in all CygwinPerl users cases):

/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.40/x86_64-cygwin-threads
/usr/local/share/perl5/site_perl/5.40

Or does autobundle select everything, including core modules and vendor modules? If it does, I want a better solution.

Answers I got to that posting about trashing StrawberryPerl included this notable one: Re: Nooo!... Have I trashed my Strawberry?. I am going to look into the recommended UrBackup while I am awaiting advice here.

Oct 06, 2025 at 17:34 UTC