Perl 5.14 Released

chromatic writes "Pumpking Jesse Vincent has just released Perl 5.14, the latest stable version of the venerable Perl 5 programming language. The list of changes in Perl 5.14 includes several enhancements, including performance tuning, Unicode improvements, and updates to the core libraries and documentation. Perl 5.16 is on track for a release next April."

Re:What about Perl 6?

[symbolset]

The more mature a programming language is, the harder it is to extend it. Mature languages have vast codebases that must be supported, and substantive changes break legacy support. That's why it's best to get it right early on.

Re:Perl - the COBOL of scripting languages

[gman003]

Perl makes a GREAT "general-administration" tool. I use it as basically bash++ - it's the best way,bar none, to write programs on the command-line. There's a reason even the ultra-minimalist OpenBSD includes Perl in the default install.

Re:What about Perl 6?

[bunratty]

Python 3 is barely different from Python 2. It is not backwards compatible, but I've ported Python 3 programs to Python 2 (when I realized I had to use SciPy or run the code on a system with only Python 2), and nearly the only changes I had to make were changes for // for integer division and required () for print -- and these changes were trivial if I could simply import from __future__. In contrast, Perl 6 is very different from Perl 5.

Re:What about Perl 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perl Nukem Forever?

Re:Perl - the COBOL of scripting languages

[jimmydigital]

Excellent troll... really first rate. Did you get federal funding from the Ministry of Trolling for that gem? I've been working professionally in unix/linux environments for about 12 years and believe me perl is still quite alive and well doing real work in lots of different kinds of companies. Php is somewhat painful to code in by comparison but both have their place. Except for java.. it has no sane place but you still find it in use everywhere which just goes to show anything can succeed in this world with enough marketing dollars behind it.

but the power

[Anonymous Coward]

With Perl, that complexity gives you power. If one does lots of programming, and their mind is in good shape, Perl can be used to rapidly dispatch programming problems.

Re:Perl - the COBOL of scripting languages

[jimmydigital]

All I'll say to that is that the entire computing world does not revolve around websites... or programming certification mills. =] Perl is the duct tape that holds the networked world together... and it's not dying any more than actual duct tape is. It's a refined tool used by professionals to do the jobs that have always needed done in a minimum of time and that don't cater to the latest buzz word laden development methodology.

Re:Perl is alive!

[rubycodez]

last time I checked the UI of Slashdot was becoming ever more bloated, ugly and less functional. They should ditch the Perl for a modern language while rewriting the whole ball of shit.

Re:What about Perl 6?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's the reason why it makes my anus hurt when I have to read it.

The reading glasses that the doctor gave you are meant for external use, resting on the bridge of your nose - not for internal use. Stop using them as a suppository, and your anus should stop hurting within a few days.

Re:The question nobody wants to ask....

[petermgreen]

The big problem with an approximately equals for floats operator is that it provides no way for the user to specify the acceptable margin of error. So the language designer has to guess a value that they thing is "big enough" to avoid (possibly heavily compounded) rounding errors while not being so big as to cause unwanted matches. IMO that kind of judgement call should be something consciously made by the programmer (and they should be having the releated thought of "should I really be using a floating point type here at all" not something hardcoded into the language.

Similarly for strings "approximately equals" sounds like a nice idea but it's very hard to define in a robust way. Again probablly not something that should be in the core of a langauge but something provided by a library that can give options on what exactly constitutes approximately equals.

Finally using === to signify approximately equals seems like a bad idea given that many dynamic languages are using it for something closer to "exactly equals".

Re:but the power

[kiddygrinder]

unless your problem is "what the hell does this code do that i wrote 6 months ago".

Re:What about Perl 6?

[RDW]

"I was just going to say that back in about 2001 someone gave me advice not to learn Perl 5 because a Perl 6 release was imminent."

It's a shame that this 'Osborne effect' has hung over Perl for the last decade. I wonder how Perl 5 would now be perceived if Perl 6 had been given a different name and announced as a research project into language development, rather than the next version of Perl? With better PR, Perl 5.10 could easily have been 'Perl 6'.

All this tends to obscure the quet evolution of Perl 5 programming into what 'chromatic' and others are calling 'Modern Perl', using an idiomatic style that takes full advantage of recent language features (some borrowed from Perl 6) and CPAN to write efficient and maintainable code:

http://www.modernperlbooks.com/ [modernperlbooks.com]
http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/ [onyxneon.com]

As always, a lot of the most active development is happening outside the core language. Anyone interested in some of the directions Perl 5 is going in today ought to check out projects like these:

http://www.iinteractive.com/moose/ [iinteractive.com]
http://plackperl.org/ [plackperl.org]
http://www.catalystframework.org/ [catalystframework.org]
http://mojolicio.us/ [mojolicio.us]