From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 6 19:16:34 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C0D6E16A4CE for ; Wed, 6 Oct 2004 19:16:34 +0000 (GMT) Received: from rwcrmhc13.comcast.net (rwcrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.198.39]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 98FFF43D31 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 2004 19:16:34 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from apeiron@comcast.net) Received: from prophecy.dyndns.org ([68.83.169.224]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc13) with SMTP id <20041006191633015003bm5ie> (Authid: apeiron); Wed, 6 Oct 2004 19:16:33 +0000 From: Christopher Nehren To: Ryan Newman In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="=-ZOe9CZ1chPUKreb9OnF/" Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 15:16:31 -0400 Message-Id: <1097090191.775.16.camel@prophecy.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.0FreeBSD GNOME Team Port cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: perl 5.8.5 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 19:16:34 -0000 --=-ZOe9CZ1chPUKreb9OnF/ Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Wed, 2004-10-06 at 18:36 +0000, Ryan Newman wrote: > I just installed the 5.3 beta-7 and noticed that perl 5.8.5 was installed= . =20 > Perl 5.8 breaks a lot of the complex applications that I need to run why = not=20 > stay with perl 5.6 which is more stable for applications ? Funny that you mention the word "stable"... If you read 'perldoc perl58delta', you'll see that 5.6 versions of Perl used quicksort for the sort() function, which is under some circumstances an unstable sort algorithm. Versions 5.8 and above use mergesort, which is guaranteed to be stable. I refer you to 'perldoc sort' (it's a pragma, too) for more information. ... then there's the algorithmic complexity attacks against the hashing algorithm, and many other things which were fixed in the 5.8 line (like the potentially massive delay on creating threads, ...). You wouldn't want people to be able to guess your hash keys / values, would you? --=-ZOe9CZ1chPUKreb9OnF/ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBBZESPk/lo7zvzJioRAq5sAJ9TDymooptHXq5B6mtYFDNTsHssWwCgqMqU lRvAth3ONYcvxdtB7wf5UmA= =jIn+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-ZOe9CZ1chPUKreb9OnF/--