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To be honest Perl 5 isn't really like Perl 4. They are quite different languages - Perl 4 didn't have objects, and Perl 5 places heavy emphasis on them. Up to
by jlokier 6y ago
To be honest Perl 5 isn't really like Perl 4. They are quite different languages - Perl 4 didn't have objects, and Perl 5 places heavy emphasis on them.
Up to you to decide when you think it started, but I'd say the current language we think of as "Perl" started with the release of Perl 5.
- kungtotte 6y agoAnd even in that case it predates all the other languages except Python by almost a year (Python 1.0 came out in January 1994).
- folmar 6y agoPHP has object since v3 ('97).
- loulouxiv 6y agoWasn't it then limited to stdClass ?
- btilly 6y agoMost Perl 4 runs under Perl 5, and most Perl 5 written in the early years did not place heavy emphasis on objects. When I started in Perl, it was common to write code in such a way that it would run under either because it might have to. Today, objects are used heavily. And furthermore the way we write those classes has changed a lot since Moose and friends became popular. As a result most Perl code bases written in the last dozen years look less like early Perl 5 than early Perl 5 looked like Perl 4. Perl 4 and Perl 5 are more of a continuum than different languages.