5 ms·

Perl 5.12.3 released

65 points by Phra 16y ago

mmaunder 16y ago
The poem posted with the announcement is below. Come join us on the mountain top. -- I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. 'Lie down, lie down!' the people cried. 'The great machine is history!' My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so. Howard W. Campbell, Jr. "Reflections on Not Participating in Current Events"
- rudiger 16y ago
  But isn't Perl the one we all left behind?
  - prog 16y ago
    I wouldn't say that. Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features. One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)). As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html [2] http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html [3] http://perlcabal.org/syn/ http://perlcabal.org/syn/
bch 16y ago
Currently, the .pod delta for 5.12.3 actually seems to be the content of 5.12.0 -> 5.12.1, except for the title. edit: this appears to be proper delta: http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5123delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5123delta.po...
- thomas11 16y ago
  I told Ricardo Signes, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.
toadi 16y ago
Several years ago I would be raving about it. I attended several YAPC's established the first perlmongers group in my country. When I went to see the state of perl a few months back I noticed the language is maturing, CPAN is still strong. I think they have a PR problem.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  It's not a PR problem. People have been trying to fix the "PR problem" for at least half a decade. If that were the issue they would have made headway by now. The real issue is that a new programming language can be quite an investment. Some people learn lots of languages but many people actually stick with just one. Perl has nothing compelling over the other languages. You don't really lose anything buy picking e.g. Python or Ruby instead. So people tend to pick a language based on what cool new thing is written in it and that cool new thing is never in perl. Perl always rushes in later with a "me too" copy but it's never where a new breakthrough happens.
  - darklajid 16y ago
    One could argue that "cool new things" being never written in perl _is_ a ~marketing~ problem. I think the GP was actually trying to say that the traction is missing for an otherwise nice and mature/stable infrastructure. A couple of "shiny" projects that boldly host with a powered by perl on their page might bring in fresh blood..
    - mst 16y ago
      One could equally argue that not jumping on new concepts until they've been demonstrated to have real world value is an advantage. As a community, we tend to like to really think about things before implementing them - which means that while new ideas might turn up in perl a bit later than in other places, they tend to turn up in a well thought out way that we can confidently maintain backwards compatibility with over time. When you're writing code that may still be in production in five or ten years, this tends to be an advantage.
  - 16y ago
igravious 16y ago
Perl 5.12.3 represents approximately four months of development since Perl 5.12.2 and contains approximately 2500 lines of changes across 54 files from 16 authors. Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.3: [...], Father Chrysostomos, [...] !!! Good to see Father Chrysostomos cranking out the code in between delivering presents around the world with his team of flying reindeer. Um. Seems like there's at least one Joycean nerd Perl hacker out there, I seem to remember that this is a coinage from near the beginning of Ulysses and it translates from ancient greek into modern English as Golden Mouth?
- ffffruit 16y ago
  I think you might be a bit confused. Father (John) Chrysostomos, aka Ioannis Xrysostomos in Greek, was an archbishop in Constantinople. He was renounced for his preaching skills thus the translation "Golder mouth". I'm pretty sure he's not Santa.
  - igravious 16y ago
    It just goes to show you that puns are the worst form of humour. Please see my comment near here to nkurz!
- nkurz 16y ago
  Actually, while he may be a closet Joycean, I think he's indeed an Orthodox religious figure. I've shared some mailing lists with him, and got this impression although I don't recall it being directly discussed. I could be wrong, but your reindeer comments might be more impolite than you intended.
  - igravious 16y ago
    Of course I didn't mean to impolite, apologies if I caused any offense. Hey - different cultural background, please no more down-votes, thanks! From Wikipedia: James Joyce's novel Ulysses includes a character named Mulligan who brings 'Chrysostomos' into another character's mind because Mulligan's gold-stopped teeth and his gift of the gab earn him the title which St. John Chrysostom's preaching earned him, 'golden-mouthed':[45] Chrysostomos also refers to Stephen, the independent and exiled genius: "He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos." The original John Chrysostom died in 407 apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom
ssn 16y ago
What's new?
- notthetup 16y ago
  Yea.. Can someone explain what's new in simple terms.. Lazy to dig into the delta documentations..
  - chromatic 16y ago
    Perl 5.12.3 has a handful of bugfixes over 5.12.2. It's a very small change. Anything interesting is in the delta between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0.
- wazoox 16y ago
  See http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5121delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5121delta.po... , that's not very long. If you want to know the enhancements from 5.10.x to 5.12.x, see http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5120delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5120delta.p...
ahi 16y ago
I teach a course that uses perl. I really wish we used something else. Perl on Windows is a clusterfuck; including core modules that ship broken. I don't really use Windows, except helping my students get stuff running, so maybe programming in general is a clusterfuck on Windows?
- chromatic 16y ago
  Try Strawberry Perl: http://www.strawberryperl.com/ http://www.strawberryperl.com/

65 points by Phra 16y ago

The poem posted with the announcement is below. Come join us on the mountain top. -- I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. 'Lie down, lie down!' the people cried. 'The great machine is history!' My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so. Howard W. Campbell, Jr. "Reflections on Not Participating in Current Events"

rudiger 16y ago
But isn't Perl the one we all left behind?
- prog 16y ago
  I wouldn't say that. Perl 5 is quite an amazing language once you get used to the syntax and begin to grok it. I say this as a Python programmer who has only recently begun to seriously learn Perl as my day job demands it. Earlier, I had used Perl only off and on for small scripts. I was always put off by Perl syntax and contexts. However, once I got over that and started using it seriously, it does have a lot of neat features. One example, I recently got to know about attributes[1] (which probably people using Perl for some time may know already) and its neat uses. I can use attributes to do what I would do with a Python decorator[2]. IIUC, this feature has been in Perl since 5.6 (2003). Yes, I still like Python and I continue to believe that its easier to write bad code in Perl than in Python but I have a lot more respect, liking and understanding of Perl than I did a month ago. IMO Perl 5 is well positioned for meeting enterprise needs as it stands today. I understand this now after I spend the last 3 months debating and discussing with the architecture board of my employer to introduce Python as an officially approved language for our IT applications (I work for a large corporation so we have a lot of policies ;)). As a language, I like Perl 6 even more based on what I have read[3]. I hope to spend some time playing with Rakudo sometime soon and eagerly await a production ready package. [1] http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html [2] http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html http://www.perl.com/pub/2007/04/12/lightning-four.html [3] http://perlcabal.org/syn/ http://perlcabal.org/syn/

bch 16y ago

Currently, the .pod delta for 5.12.3 actually seems to be the content of 5.12.0 -> 5.12.1, except for the title. edit: this appears to be proper delta: http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5123delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5123delta.po...

thomas11 16y ago
I told Ricardo Signes, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

toadi 16y ago

Several years ago I would be raving about it. I attended several YAPC's established the first perlmongers group in my country. When I went to see the state of perl a few months back I noticed the language is maturing, CPAN is still strong. I think they have a PR problem.

loewenskind 16y ago
It's not a PR problem. People have been trying to fix the "PR problem" for at least half a decade. If that were the issue they would have made headway by now. The real issue is that a new programming language can be quite an investment. Some people learn lots of languages but many people actually stick with just one. Perl has nothing compelling over the other languages. You don't really lose anything buy picking e.g. Python or Ruby instead. So people tend to pick a language based on what cool new thing is written in it and that cool new thing is never in perl. Perl always rushes in later with a "me too" copy but it's never where a new breakthrough happens.
- darklajid 16y ago
  One could argue that "cool new things" being never written in perl _is_ a ~marketing~ problem. I think the GP was actually trying to say that the traction is missing for an otherwise nice and mature/stable infrastructure. A couple of "shiny" projects that boldly host with a powered by perl on their page might bring in fresh blood..
  - mst 16y ago
    One could equally argue that not jumping on new concepts until they've been demonstrated to have real world value is an advantage. As a community, we tend to like to really think about things before implementing them - which means that while new ideas might turn up in perl a bit later than in other places, they tend to turn up in a well thought out way that we can confidently maintain backwards compatibility with over time. When you're writing code that may still be in production in five or ten years, this tends to be an advantage.
- 16y ago

igravious 16y ago

Perl 5.12.3 represents approximately four months of development since Perl 5.12.2 and contains approximately 2500 lines of changes across 54 files from 16 authors. Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.3: [...], Father Chrysostomos, [...] !!! Good to see Father Chrysostomos cranking out the code in between delivering presents around the world with his team of flying reindeer. Um. Seems like there's at least one Joycean nerd Perl hacker out there, I seem to remember that this is a coinage from near the beginning of Ulysses and it translates from ancient greek into modern English as Golden Mouth?

ffffruit 16y ago
I think you might be a bit confused. Father (John) Chrysostomos, aka Ioannis Xrysostomos in Greek, was an archbishop in Constantinople. He was renounced for his preaching skills thus the translation "Golder mouth". I'm pretty sure he's not Santa.
- igravious 16y ago
  It just goes to show you that puns are the worst form of humour. Please see my comment near here to nkurz!
nkurz 16y ago
Actually, while he may be a closet Joycean, I think he's indeed an Orthodox religious figure. I've shared some mailing lists with him, and got this impression although I don't recall it being directly discussed. I could be wrong, but your reindeer comments might be more impolite than you intended.
- igravious 16y ago
  Of course I didn't mean to impolite, apologies if I caused any offense. Hey - different cultural background, please no more down-votes, thanks! From Wikipedia: James Joyce's novel Ulysses includes a character named Mulligan who brings 'Chrysostomos' into another character's mind because Mulligan's gold-stopped teeth and his gift of the gab earn him the title which St. John Chrysostom's preaching earned him, 'golden-mouthed':[45] Chrysostomos also refers to Stephen, the independent and exiled genius: "He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos." The original John Chrysostom died in 407 apparently. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom

ssn 16y ago

What's new?

notthetup 16y ago
Yea.. Can someone explain what's new in simple terms.. Lazy to dig into the delta documentations..
- chromatic 16y ago
  Perl 5.12.3 has a handful of bugfixes over 5.12.2. It's a very small change. Anything interesting is in the delta between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0.
wazoox 16y ago
See http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5121delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/dist/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5121delta.po... , that's not very long. If you want to know the enhancements from 5.10.x to 5.12.x, see http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5120delta.pod http://search.cpan.org/~rjbs/perl-5.12.3/pod/perl5120delta.p...

ahi 16y ago

I teach a course that uses perl. I really wish we used something else. Perl on Windows is a clusterfuck; including core modules that ship broken. I don't really use Windows, except helping my students get stuff running, so maybe programming in general is a clusterfuck on Windows?

chromatic 16y ago
Try Strawberry Perl: http://www.strawberryperl.com/ http://www.strawberryperl.com/