From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 23:52:11 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Try to be clearer about perlio. X-Git-Url: http://git.shadowcat.co.uk/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=dd2bab0fb2e17ae44696734bb227a5e113986f34;p=p5sagit%2Fp5-mst-13.2.git Try to be clearer about perlio. p4raw-id: //depot/perl@16122 --- diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL index 63026ce..da0c726 100644 --- a/INSTALL +++ b/INSTALL @@ -806,18 +806,23 @@ and the long double support. =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms -Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in -stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allowed alternate IO -mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still -the default and is the only supported mechanism. +Executive summary: in Perl 5.8 you should use the default "PerlIO" +as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to. + +In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO +mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl +introuced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up +until and including Perl 5.6 stdio mechanism was still the default and +the only supported mechanism. Starting from Perl 5.8 the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms, instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O implementations. -This PerlIO abstraction can be disabled either on the Configure -command line with +This PerlIO abstraction can be disabled (but again, unless you know +what you are doing, should not) either on the Configure command line +with sh Configure -Uuseperlio