=head1 NAME
-perlfaq1 - General Questions About Perl ($Revision: 1.5 $, $Date: 2002/01/27 20:22:52 $)
+perlfaq1 - General Questions About Perl ($Revision: 1.14 $, $Date: 2003/11/23 08:02:29 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
are a rag-tag band of highly altruistic individuals committed to
producing better software for free than you could hope to purchase for
money. You may snoop on pending developments via the archives at
-http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
-and http://archive.develooper.com/perl5-porters@perl.org/
+http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
+and http://archive.develooper.com/perl5-porters@perl.org/
or the news gateway nntp://nntp.perl.org/perl.perl5.porters or
its web interface at http://nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters ,
-or read the faq at http://perlhacker.org/p5p-faq,
+or read the faq at http://simon-cozens.org/writings/p5p-faq ,
or you can subscribe to the mailing list by sending
perl5-porters-request@perl.org a subscription request
(an empty message with no subject is fine).
You should definitely use version 5. Version 4 is old, limited, and
no longer maintained; its last patch (4.036) was in 1992, long ago and
far away. Sure, it's stable, but so is anything that's dead; in fact,
-perl4 had been called a dead, flea-bitten camel carcass. The most recent
-production release is 5.6 (although 5.005_03 is still supported).
-The most cutting-edge development release is 5.7. Further references
-to the Perl language in this document refer to the production release
-unless otherwise specified. There may be one or more official bug fixes
-by the time you read this, and also perhaps some experimental versions
-on the way to the next release. All releases prior to 5.004 were subject
-to buffer overruns, a grave security issue.
+perl4 had been called a dead, flea-bitten camel carcass. The most
+recent production release is 5.8.2 (although 5.005_03 and 5.6.2 are
+still supported). The most cutting-edge development release is 5.9.
+Further references to the Perl language in this document refer to the
+production release unless otherwise specified. There may be one or
+more official bug fixes by the time you read this, and also perhaps
+some experimental versions on the way to the next release.
+All releases prior to 5.004 were subject to buffer overruns, a grave
+security issue.
=head2 What are perl4 and perl5?
perl source code from releases 1 through 4. It has been modularized,
object-oriented, tweaked, trimmed, and optimized until it almost doesn't
look like the old code. However, the interface is mostly the same, and
-compatibility with previous releases is very high.
+compatibility with previous releases is very high.
See L<perltrap/"Perl4 to Perl5 Traps">.
To avoid the "what language is perl5?" confusion, some people prefer to
See L<perlhist> for a history of Perl revisions.
+=head2 What is Ponie?
+
+At The O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention in 2003, Artur
+Bergman, Fotango, and The Perl Foundation announced a project to
+run perl5 on the Parrot virtual machine named Ponie. Ponie stands for
+Perl On New Internal Engine. The Perl 5.10 language implementation
+will be used for Ponie, and there will be no language level
+differences between perl5 and ponie. Ponie is not a complete rewrite
+of perl5.
+
+For more details, see http://www.poniecode.org/
+
=head2 What is perl6?
-At The Second O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention, Larry Wall
+At The Second O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention, Larry Wall
announced Perl6 development would begin in earnest. Perl6 was an oft
used term for Chip Salzenberg's project to rewrite Perl in C++ named
Topaz. However, Topaz provided valuable insights to the next version
-of Perl and its implementation, but was ultimately abandoned.
+of Perl and its implementation, but was ultimately abandoned.
-If you want to learn more about Perl6, or have a desire to help in
-the crusade to make Perl a better place then peruse the Perl6 developers
+If you want to learn more about Perl6, or have a desire to help in
+the crusade to make Perl a better place then peruse the Perl6 developers
page at http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ and get involved.
Perl6 is not scheduled for release yet, and Perl5 will still be supported
can parse Perl." You may or may not choose to follow this usage. For
example, parallelism means "awk and perl" and "Python and Perl" look
OK, while "awk and Perl" and "Python and perl" do not. But never
-write "PERL", because perl isn't really an acronym, apocryphal
+write "PERL", because perl is not an acronym, apocryphal
folklore and post-facto expansions notwithstanding.
=head2 Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?
Over a hundred quips by Larry, from postings of his or source code,
can be found at http://www.cpan.org/misc/lwall-quotes.txt.gz .
-=head2 How can I convince my sysadmin/supervisor/employees to use version 5/5.005/Perl instead of some other language?
+=head2 How can I convince my sysadmin/supervisor/employees to use version 5/5.6.1/Perl instead of some other language?
If your manager or employees are wary of unsupported software, or
software which doesn't officially ship with your operating system, you
(Well, OK, maybe it's not quite that distinct, but you get the idea.)
If you want support and a reasonable guarantee that what you're
developing will continue to work in the future, then you have to run
-the supported version. As of April 2001 that probably means
-running either of the releases 5.6.1 (released in April 2001) or
-5.005_03 (released in March 1999), although 5.004_05 isn't that bad
-if you B<absolutely> need such an old version (released in April 1999)
-for stability reasons. Anything older than 5.004_05 shouldn't be used.
+the supported version. As of December 2003 that means running either
+5.8.2 (released in November 2003), or one of the older releases like
+5.6.2 (also released in November 2003; a maintenance release to let perl
+5.6 compile on newer systems as 5.6.1 was released in April 2001) or
+5.005_03 (released in March 1999),
+although 5.004_05 isn't that bad if you B<absolutely> need such an old
+version (released in April 1999) for stability reasons.
+Anything older than 5.004_05 shouldn't be used.
Of particular note is the massive bug hunt for buffer overflow
problems that went into the 5.004 release. All releases prior to
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff