what are these differences between perl D.5.8.3.A and perl B.5.6.1.C?

[Hanry Zhou]

when I run "swlist -l bundle | grep -i perl",
I am getting two difference version of perl on different servers.

What are these differences between these two? I kind of know B.5.6.1.C is hp version of perl, but what version I should install?

I tried one perl script, and got expected output on perl D.5.8.3.A, but got nothing on perl B.5.6.1.C. I suspect there are big difference between these two.

Please let me know. Thanks!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Hanry:

Use 'perl -v' to see the version of any Perl.

Perl 5.6.1 dates to about 2001 whereas 5.8.3 appeared around 2004. More importantly, the 5.8 versions brought a substantial number modules into the core distribution, the inclusion of Unicode and improvements in signals and threading.

Perl 5.8.8 is the current production version of Perl.

Regards!

...JRF...

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

IMHO 5.8.4 and up mainly excel over the 5.6.x branch regarding 64bit issues and Unicode reliability. I don't ever use threads, but there have been numerous issues fixed in the current 5.8 branch over 5.6.

All changes can be viewed on an incremental basis. For all releases, there is a delta document that explains the changes. e.g. to see the changes from 5.8.3 to 5.8.4 type

# perldoc perl584delta

And you will see something like

PERL584DELTA(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation PERL584DELTA(1)

NAME
perl584delta â what is new for perl v5.8.4

DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.8.3 release and the
5.8.4 release.


Of course, delta's are only included up to the version of distribution, so you cannot see what changed in 5.8.8 when you have 5.8.3 installed.

I have all the 5.8.x announcements linked on my page 1), so they are all accessable from the web, and summarize the major differences:

1) http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/#Perl
5.8.1: http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2003/perl-5.8.1.html
5.8.2: http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2003/perl-5.8.2.html
5.8.3: http://dev.perl.org/perl5/news/2004/perl-5.8.3.html
5.8.4: http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/23/0951239
5.8.5: http://use.perl.org/articles/04/07/21/175235.shtml?tid=6
5.8.6: http://use.perl.org/articles/04/11/30/1125252.shtml?tid=6
5.8.7: http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/04/1711216
5.8.8: http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/02/1714258

All recent/actual documentation is also available on-line on http://perldoc.perl.org/
The delta's as available for perldoc are here too. e.g. the 5.8.1 delta is
http://perldoc.perl.org/perl581delta.html

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Hanry Zhou]

thanks for all your respnoses.

However, when I suggest to upgrade perl to D.5.8.3 or higher across all servers here, someone here doens't believe it is necessary to make such upgrade, because they feel it is just version different.

How much we will need to use the newer version of perl? and how to persuade management to make such move?

[James R. Ferguson]

HI (again) Hanry:

> When I suggest to upgrade perl to D.5.8.3 or higher across all servers here, someone here doens't believe it is necessary to make such upgrade, because they feel it is just version different. How much we will need to use the newer version of perl? and how to persuade management to make such move?

The answer would be that if you want the enhancements and fixes that have occured since 5.6 then upgrade. Since either HP or Merijn offer a packaged binary for installation, the "upgrade" is simple, quick and without undue pain.

If you want a binary built with the HP compiler, use:

http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=PERL

If you want a binary built with the 'gcc' C compiler, use Merijn's:

http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/downloads.html

Regards!

...JRF...