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