5.8.8 - 31 January 2006

5.10.0 - 18 December 2007, 20th birthday of Perl 1.000

5.8.9 - 14 December 2008

5.10.1 - 23 August 2009

5.12.0 - 12 April 2010

5.12.1 - 16 May 2010

talk by Nicholas Clark in YAPC::Europe 2004, Belfast

Why Perl 5.8.6 is boring (and why you should be excited by this)

Perl 5.12.. actually "boring"

the yada yada operator: ...

placeholder for code that is not yet implemented

throws an exception with the text "Unimplemented"

    sub shortest_path {
        my (@hops) = @_;

        # solve the corresponding salesman problem
        ...
    }

do not confuse with ... (range operator) nor with ... (flip-flop)

now works on arrays

    @a = qw< paff zap thwapp >;

    while (my ($key, $value) = each @a) {
        print "$key : $value\n"
    }

    0 : paff
    1 : zap
    2 : thwapp

locally delete a hash entry

    $, = " ";
    %color = ( red => "#FF0000", green => "#00FF00", blue => "#0000FF" );

    print %color;

    {
        delete local $color{red};
        print %color;
    }

    print %color

    green #00FF00 blue #0000FF red #FF0000
    green #00FF00 blue #0000FF
    green #00FF00 blue #0000FF red #FF0000

package App::Whatever v1.42.0

parsed at compile time, exactly the same way as use NAME VERSION

$VERSION is an object, and requires a new, "strict" version number format

formalisation of version number formats

strict format: positive decimal number without exponentiation (1.42), or dotted-decimal v-string with a leading "v" and at least three components (v1.23.45)

lax format: v-strings may lack the leading "v" or may have less than three components; trailing alpha component, separated by underscore, is allowed (1.42_03)

version::is_strict() and version::is_lax()

    given ($something) {
        $abc    = 1 when /^abc/;
        $just_a = 1 when /^a/;
        $other  = 1;
    }

    for (@names) {
        admin($_)   when [ qw< Alice Bob > ];
        regular($_) when [ qw< Chris David Ellen > ];
    }

flip-flop operators .. and ... now evaluated in boolean context

    when (/^=begin/ .. /^=end/) {
        # ...
    }

when (expr1 // expr2) now treated as boolean if expr1 is boolean

reverse of \n

do not confuse with \N{name}

• (as a consequence, numbers and things like "3,4" no longer are valid names)

use 5.12.0

implicitly loads use strict and use features ':5.12'

deprecated features now warn by default

no warnings "deprecated" to disable

numerous new warnings and diagnostics

internal time-related functions now are Y2038 compliant

see also Time::y2038 on the CPAN

isa() a bit faster thanks to an internal cache

C3 linearisation 40% faster for classes with single inheritance

empty DESTROY methods now ignored

keys on empty hash now faster

if (%hash) now faster than if (keys %hash)

in-place array reversing (@a = reverse @a) now orders of magnitude faster

Unicode 5.2.0

handling of every Unicode character property (see perluniprops)

qr// overloading

pluggable keywords thanks to a specific API

• see XS::APItest::KeywordRPN for an example

DTrace support

autodie

Compress::Raw::Bzip2

parent

Archive::Tar, Attribute::Handlers, B::Deparse, CGI,

Compress::Raw::Zlib, CPAN, CPANPLUS, Devel::PPPort,

Encode, ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Module::Build,

Module::Pluggable, mro, Pod::Simple, threads,

Test::Harness, Test::Simple, version

...

87 KB - perl5120delta.pod

5 KB - perl586delta.pod

53 KB - perl5100delta.pod

112 KB - perl58delta.pod

105 KB - perl56delta.pod

122 KB - perl561delta.pod