use Perl

• 5.6? (Score:1)

  by educated_foo (3106)

  IMHO you should definitely support 5.8, since it's the default Perl on the latest (or recent) versions of many distributions. I'm not sure 5.6 is worth the trouble, but then again, I can't think of anything in 5.8 that's radically new (e.g. given/when, dor).
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by chromatic (983)

    I can't think of anything in 5.8 that's radically new (e.g. given/when, dor).

    Working Unicode, more and updated core modules, bugfixes, much better testing....
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by educated_foo (3106)

      I mean nothing "radically new" in the sense that it makes your module totally unusable on an older Perl without. For example, I recently wanted to try out Parse::Marpa, but the author uses given/when all over the place. This makes it unusable without 5.10, without providing additional functionality (and with a marginal-at-best improvement in readability).

      New core modules? They're on CPAN. "Working" Unicode? Great if you need it (I don't), but the interface hasn't changed, has it? Testsing and bugfix
      • Re:5.6? (Score:1)

        by chromatic (983) on 2008.06.27 18:54 (#63664) Homepage Journal

        New core modules? They're on CPAN.

        Many are, but at some point CPAN authors really ought to be able to say "I (added a new feature to|fixed a bug in) Perl 5 years ago; I'm finally going to take advantage of it in code."

        Users oughtn't expect to run the new shiny on ancient installations.

        Reply to This

        Parent

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by educated_foo (3106)

          Yes, and as a module author you can always tell your users to go fuck themselves at any point. I polish and publish some of the code I write because I hope it can also benefit others, and it can hardly do that if it doesn't work with their versions of Perl. It already takes extra time to get from "works for me" to "works for other people (e.g. documentation), and "works on older Perl" is a minor effort compared to this.