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Perl power tools

Classic Unix tools reimplementation project

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"Our goal is quite simply to reimplement the classic Unix command
set in pure Perl, and to have as much fun as we can doing so."

PPT was a short time project started by Tom in 1997 or 1998

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, "Loose him, and let him go." -- John 11:43-44, KJV

ppt project now was moved to SPAN. See Casey West - ppt-0.14 - search.cpan.org

Source tree at Sourceforge is still exists: SourceForge.net Repository - [ppt] Index of -ppt-bin

Once lost in time and space, Tom Christiansen's noble work has been restored. The Perl Power Tools once served as a feather in Perl's cap. Tens of developers flocked, submitted, and patched. Due to a horrible hard disk crash, the project stood still in time. One day, the unthinkable. Gone were the last vestiges, erased from the face of the Internet.

In my quest to uncover the original works from days past, I struggled many days. Google was no help, it had forgotten. language.perl.com is no longer the resource of yore, it was lost. No one had a copy saved, for its stagnation had brought it doom. Lo! But what does locate uncover in the furthest reaches of my backup server? Yes, it's a silhouette too familiar, victory approaches! Shaking off the dust, unpacking the tarball, it is the mysterious Perl Power Tools of days past.

Moving though the directories I find the original website. Pressing on, the original sources representing countless developers' toils. Still further, the treasure chest. Locked in utility scripts, hidden in __DATA__, lay Tom's true goal. Hundreds of tools he sought to emulate, to bring to the world on Perl's high hump.

Lost no more. Hours I slaved. Rebuilding the source, creating a master index, uncovering the ambition of one fearless hacker. Tool by tool, contribution by contribution, no stone left unturned, I finished the resurrection.

Humbly I offer, as my gift to fellow Perl hackers, the Unix Reconstruction Project in full glory. Armed with mailing list[1], distribution[2], and website[3], the PPT may once again take its place in Perl's powerful cap.

See http://search.cpan.org/dist/ppt

Casey West

Here is the sttatus of re-implmentation of various utilities

PPT Long Status Listing


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NEWS CONTENTS

Old News ;-)

[Oct 17, 2010] SourceForge.net Repository - [ppt] Index of -ppt-bin

29 Jun 2004

Abigail

PPT was a short time project started by Tom in 1997 or 1998, and it lasted only a few weeks, after people moved on and did other interesting, but not very useful, things.

PPT was never more than a proof of concept project. It was never intended to be an alternative distribution of Unix tools.

Every now and then people ask about PPT, which makes me wonder. What do people want from PPT? There's little point in using any of the PPT tools - there are free C programs available which are (much) faster, and often
have more options (PPT's "standard" was Unix Version 7 - ancient). If you want to write Unix tools in Perl, just do it. One doesn't need PPT for that (all tools were standalone anyway).

Clyde Ingram

Abigail,

> Every now and then people ask about PPT, which makes me wonder. What do
> people want from PPT?

When I first encountered PPT several years back, I was hunting urgently for
replacements for Solaris 2.6's "sort" and "comm" utilities, because they
were limited to maximum input record lengths of less than about 3,500
characters. And I needed implementations that could handle record lengths
just over (er...) 40,000 characters.

And PPT baled me out at a quick, no-effort stroke. No record length
limit -- free magic.

> There's little point in using any of the PPT tools -
> there are free C programs available which are (much) faster, and often
> have more options (PPT's "standard" was Unix Version 7 - ancient).

All the same, I am a happy customer of 2 PPT tools.

Journal of cwest (1514)

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth." And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, "Loose him, and let him go." -- John 11:43-44, KJV

Once lost in time and space, Tom Christiansen's noble work has been restored. The Perl Power Tools once served as a feather in Perl's cap. Tens of developers flocked, submitted, and patched. Due to a horrible hard disk crash, the project stood still in time. One day, the unthinkable. Gone were the last vestiges, erased from the face of the Internet.

In my quest to uncover the original works from days past, I struggled many days. Google was no help, it had forgotten. language.perl.com is no longer the resource of yore, it was lost. No one had a copy saved, for its stagnation had brought it doom. Lo! But what does locate uncover in the furthest reaches of my backup server? Yes, it's a silhouette too familiar, victory approaches! Shaking off the dust, unpacking the tarball, it is the mysterious Perl Power Tools of days past.

Moving though the directories I find the original website. Pressing on, the original sources representing countless developers' toils. Still further, the treasure chest. Locked in utility scripts, hidden in __DATA__, lay Tom's true goal. Hundreds of tools he sought to emulate, to bring to the world on Perl's high hump.

Lost no more. Hours I slaved. Rebuilding the source, creating a master index, uncovering the ambition of one fearless hacker. Tool by tool, contribution by contribution, no stone left unturned, I finished the resurrection.

Humbly I offer, as my gift to fellow Perl hackers, the Unix Reconstruction Project in full glory. Armed with mailing list[1], distribution[2], and website[3], the PPT may once again take its place in Perl's powerful cap.

Casey West

[1] [email protected] (subscribe with [email protected])
[2] http://search.cpan.org/dist/ppt
[3] http://search.cpan.org/src/CWEST/ppt-0.13/html/index.html

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