From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 12 03:19:59 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 7684D16A4CE for ; Tue, 12 Oct 2004 03:19:59 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mproxy.gmail.com (rproxy.gmail.com [64.233.170.200]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2501243D1D for ; Tue, 12 Oct 2004 03:19:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from barnaclewes@gmail.com) Received: by mproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 74so319353rnl for ; Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:19:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.39.1.30 with SMTP id d30mr1630600rni; Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:19:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.38.67.18 with HTTP; Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:19:53 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2004 20:19:53 -0700 From: Wes Peters To: Ryan Newman In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: cc: drosih@rpi.edu cc: current@freebsd.org cc: rainer@ultra-secure.de Subject: Re: perl 5.8.5 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Wes Peters List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 03:19:59 -0000 On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 19:25:44 +0000, Ryan Newman wrote: > >From: Garance A Drosihn > >To: "Ryan Newman" , rainer@ultra-secure.de > >CC: current@freebsd.org > >Subject: Re: perl 5.8.5 > >Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 15:12:00 -0400 > > > >At 6:51 PM +0000 10/6/04, Ryan Newman wrote: > >>>From: Rainer Duffner > >>> > >>>Is there actually anything that doesn't work with 5.8 but does > >>>work with 5.6? > >> > >>The biggest problem is that 5.8 defaults to unicode support which > >>ends up breaking a lot of complex applications. I know that linux > >>has shifted from 5.6 to 5.8 and this has caused a lot of people > >>problems on the linux platform. > > > >Here at work we are in the process of upgrading some older Linux > >systems to a newer release of Redhat, and we have been nailed by > >these unicode-related bugs in perl, particularly with some regexp > >patterns. In some cases this has caused a few scripts to fail > >in subtle ways, which is to say the script "succeeds" and claims > >everything went just fine, but the script didn't actually do what > >it was supposed to do, and what it had been doing for the past > >few years. In at least some of those cases, I think these are > >BUGS in the way perl handles the expression, and not "unavoidable > >consequences of Unicode support". That's just my opinion, though. > > > >I don't know if perl 5.8 on FreeBSD will cause the same issues. > >I have the impression that the default for unicode-handling can > >be changed on a system-wide basis (at least on Redhat), but I am > >not sure of the details. > > > >Even though I have hit some of these problems, I do think it is a > >good idea to make the change to 5.8 as part of FreeBSD 5.3-release. > >People should be taking a bit more time to check, cross-check, and > >re-check everything they are running if they are upgrading to > >5.3-release from 4.x-release. > > > > Having 5.3 default to perl 5.8 will add a lot of delay in several peoples > migration from 4.x for sure. And hasten a few others, no doubt. We have to pick what we want to support for the next 'N' years, and perl 5.6 is not that. -- Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain. Friedrich Schiller