Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 20:10:18 +0000 (GMT) From: Paul Richards <paul@originat.demon.co.uk> To: jlemon@americantv.com (Jonathan Lemon) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, ejs@bfd.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who needs Perl? We do! Message-ID: <199611192010.UAA01460@originat.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <199611191933.TAA26518@right.PCS> from "Jonathan Lemon" at Nov 19, 96 01:33:50 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In reply to Jonathan Lemon who said > > > This is the rub. PERL is not stable over the release cycle period for > > FreeBSD. People are *always* complaining "why don't you upgrade your > > PERL?", even when it it well known that an upgrade frequently requires > > updating all of the PERL-dependent scripts to the new syntax, since > > the syntax is not sufficiently stable. > > I take exception to this. The only syntax changes were from perl4 -> perl5, > and were extremely minor. (actually syntax cleanup, to be pedantic). There > haven't been any syntax changes internal to the p5 releases, unless you count > the addition of new features. The converse is infact generally true. You can run perl4 scripts under perl5 with very minor changes. Most perl5 scripts have no chance of being back-ported to perl4. Things have changed a lot. Unless you're writing very basic scripts you're going to be using all the new features like dereferencing, new C-like function syntax, prototypes (well actually that's a 5.003 thing) and objects. It's almost certainly the case that you're going to be making heavy use of modules too. Really, perl4 is a dead language. -- Paul Richards, Originative Solutions Ltd. Internet: paul@netcraft.co.uk, http://www.netcraft.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1225 447500 (work)
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199611192010.UAA01460>