Perl 🐪 Weekly #796 - Perl and PHP
Originally published at Perl Weekly 796 Hi there, While PHP developments are rushing to resolve "php2shell" RCE vulnerabilities ( CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 ) caused by memory corruption and stale worker states, professionals that have worked with Perl approach the event with mixed feelings. For years, both languages used a very similar approach towards utilising scripts, however, owing…
In the most recent Perl Weekly Issue #796, dedicated to Perl and PHP, developers witnessed PHP's efforts to patch critical vulnerabilities resulting from memory corruption and stale worker states. These issues, known as php2shell RCE vulnerabilities, were assigned CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619. Professionals with Perl experience viewed these developments with mixed emotions; while they appreciated PHP's rapid response to security concerns, they were also wary of the language's susceptibility to state leak defects due to its multi-request process worker model.
This model shares similarities with traditional CGI or PSGI/Plack architectures, which would not have experienced such vulnerabilities.
The Perl and Raku community remained focused on celebrating their shared interests, with registration and talk proposals now open for the London Perl & Raku Workshop (LPW) 2026. Scheduled for Saturday, November 21st, 2026, at The Cafe at Zoopla in Central London, the event represents an opportunity for Perl and Raku enthusiasts to engage with one another and share their knowledge.
The Perl and Raku Foundation's 25-year financial history has been analyzed by Olaf Alders, revealing periods of decline followed by recovery. This analysis, titled "The Perl and Raku Foundation by the Numbers," highlights the organization's resilience and growth despite challenges.
Robert Acock introduced Ex::Op, an XS alternative to Perl's classic Exporter. This drop-in replacement simplifies module imports and loop executions, ultimately improving performance. Additionally, John Napiorkowski reported that the PAGI specification, along with related tools, is transitioning to Perl 5.24 due to updates in its major dependencies. This change necessitates an upgrade for users with older Perl versions.
Rob Lauer shared an update on the libapreq2 library, which had been rendered incompatible with the latest CPAN installers. Lauer's version 2.18 resolves build issues, allowing old installations of mod_perl to function once again.
The Weekly Challenge provides participants with an opportunity to expand their coding horizons and potentially win a $50 prize. In Issue #796, participants were tasked with solving "Absent Smallest Positive" and "Binary Reflection" challenges. Contributors were encouraged to share their solutions, offering valuable insights to the community.
Ali Moradi's feature article offers a concise and idiomatic solution to a Perl problem, utilizing built-in functions and straightforward pointer-based scan loops. Arne Sommer's piece showcases Raku's expressiveness through features such as the zip comparison operator, regex captures, and antipairs. Bob Lied's analysis highlights the simplicity and effectiveness of solving problems using Perl, while also emphasizing the importance of maintaining proper tracking of states in cross-language implementations.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
