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Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 13:05:11 +0300
From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
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To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>
CC: FreeBSD Questions <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: perl -> perl5?
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Doug White wrote:
> 
> Hello...
> 
> Is there any problems with installing perl5 on FreeBSD 2.1.5 systems and
> making it the system default?  Ie, will it break adduser and other perl4
> scripts?
> 
> Thanks for any information.
> 
> Doug White                              | University of Oregon
> Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
> http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major

Well, I'm running all my machines with /bin/perl symlinked to perl5
(started with 2.1.0, but went through 2.1.5,6,7 on about 4 machines).
Never had any perl problems, but I'm not sure that I looked well enough.

perl isn't completly backward compatible, but if you follow the
"recommended" (i.e. camel book) style of writing, it pretty much makes
it so. I do remember some thread about such problems in -questions about
half a year ago, but I think it wasn't with any standard perl scripts
that come with FreeBSD.

Anyhow, this is just my $0.02.

Nadav

PS,
If you do find that something breaks in perl5, it may be a good reason
to fix it so that it works both way. Usually, it's not too hard.