Perl 5.7.0 Released (Devel Version)

qbasicprogrammer writes "The long awaited Perl 5.7.0 version has finally been released! Source code is available from CPAN. If you haven't upgraded yet, now is the time. In related news, development of Perl 6 is continuing swiftly as demonstrated by the Perl 6 Library." Check out the head's up story saying that it was coming - just a reminder this is *devel*. Don't play with it unless you know what you are doing.

*PLEASE* do not install 5.7.0 into production use!

Hi,

this is the Perl patch pumpking (release wrangler, if you will) speaking. Please read the announcement letter carefully. The bottom line: you should NOT install 5.7.0 into production use. Unless you know who are the perl5-porters, what is perlbug, and preferably, how to pronounce my name :-) you should not even think about installing 5.7.0.

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[e-mail]

Development release!

Since no one has commented on this yet: this is a development release! It is not intended for public consumption. It *probably* breaks lots of stuff. Don't run this anywhere your job is on the line.

As was announced with Perl 5.6.0, Perl is now following a release style similar to Linux - even numbered releases are 'production' releases (e.g. 5.6.x, 5.8.x, 5.10.x), odd numbered releases are 'development' releases (5.7.x, 5.9.x, etc).

I haven't checked out the change summary yet - I wonder what's been improved. My personal hope is the Perl compiler (B::C, B::CC, etc). Neat stuff!

Larry Wall speeks

Larry Wall speeks [technetcast.com] at Dr. Dobbs about PERL6.

Perl VS Python

I agree that it's silly to evade language comparisons with the excuse that they're not directly comparable. Perl and Python are similar enough to invite comparison. They are both high-level interpreted (effectively) languages. Here are the main differences as I see them:

1. Python uses indentation as punctuation. This could be great or terrible. Look at it this way - if you write perl per `perldoc perlstyle` you're describing block structures twice - once with indentation level, and once with braces. This naturally leads to errors where the indentation (highly visible) is correct but a brace is missing or extra. Python lets the visible thing (indentation) take on the syntactic role. The downside, if any, is that you lose the freedom to indent code however you want.
2. Python is believed to have better object-orientation than Perl. Since I don't have the OO religion, this makes very little impression on me.
3. Python is purist/academic in flavor, while Perl is eclectic/pragmatic. Perl's power is strongly tied to its mixed ancestry. Perl basically swallowed C, shell, and either sed or awk.
4. Last time I checked, Python's regular expressions were inferior to Perl's in speed, ease of notation, and power/comprehensiveness. This may not be true anymore.

In case it's not obvious, I'm a bit biased towards Perl. I program a lot in Perl and never in Python. The one place I can imagine Python being superior is a largish team of newbie programmers. The enforced indentation would help ensure uniformity of style, and the bias towards object orientation might encourage modular and reusable code.

Short answer: not anytime soon

Take a look at the mailing list [perl.org] traffic (which is so overwhelming that people holding full-time jobs cannot hope to follow).

Its pretty obvious that no one really knows yet what perl6 is going to be.

Some factions are gunning for radical changes, others (notably Tom Christiansen) seem to be holding a conservative stance.

One thig is certain - perl6 is not coming in any form anytime soon. Try 2002.