Perl Versions and Terminology

japhy — Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:06:54 +0000

"Perl 5" refers to the major revision between the Perl 4 series and the newer versions which support, among other things, object-orientation. Perl 5 was an entire re-write of the Perl core.

Perl 5.005_03 is the last (I believe) version of Perl to adhere to the MAJOR.MINOR_PATCH version-ing system that Perl had used for quite some time. It is probably the most widely used.

Perl 5.6.0 is the newest version of Perl. It supports things like the our() declaration (think my(), but for package variables), lvaluable-functions (so you can say name($object) = "japhy"), two new regular expression assertions that allow you to embed code in a regex (one of which makes it possible to match nested parentheses to ANY depth), and much more. Perl 5.6.1 is due to come out soon.

Perl 6 is going to be another rewrite of Perl. There are multiple mailing lists for it, and if you're interested in hearing what's up, you should go to the perl.org or perl.com web site and find the lists and sign up. Perl 6 may or may not be written in C++. It may or may not have somewhat radical changes (localtime() might return the ACTUAL year). It will still be Perl.

Mark Hensler — Wed, 21 Feb 2001 06:16:46 +0000

enough to warent another version
(I have no idea, never checked)