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, its 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 developer's 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
--
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure
de Guerre.
