8 ms·
Perl 5.17.6 is now available
- rnadna 14y agoFifteen years ago, people would have found this interesting.
- almost 14y agoThere's no need for snark, it adds nothing to the conversation and makes you seem like a bit of a dick. There's a load of interesting stuff happening in Perl, I don't use the language myself but I'm interested in what they're up to.
- peteretep 14y ago15 years ago you could have replied to it on /. with "F1rst P0st" and been vaguely relevant.
- lloeki 14y agoDespite being a pythonista at heart and a rubyist at work, Perl is still my go-to language for when I notice bash scripts getting messy and growing out of scope and destined to enrich my personal long-term unix toolset. Yes, Perl is still very relevant today, for me and for countless others[0] [0]: https://github.com/languages https://github.com/languages
- mogrim 14y agoOut of interest, why do you go to Perl instead of Ruby?
- protomyth 14y agoFor myself, it is CPAN and documentation.
- lloeki 14y ago1. It's everywhere. By that I mean my code will work everywhere, without much thinking about it being installed, versions, or packages, or whatnot. 2. Ruby is too 'core' and needs too much additionals gizmos to be efficient 3. Ruby is concise and conventional, while implicitness and terseness are idiomatic of Perl 4. I'm no Perl monk but things in my head translate to code structure more easily in Perl for this use case (unix tools, text/binary/file content stream manipulation) 5. Perl strict mode 6. Occasionally, Perl suid support 7. Bonus: performance under Windows, or rather lack thereof for Ruby Mind you, Ruby is extremely apt and I enjoy working with it (especially - but not only - with Rails), but this is more a matter of using the right tool for each problem.
- LoonyPandora 14y agoIn case it's not clear, this is a development version along the road to the stable 5.18 release, expected in May 2013. The Perl core team are getting very good at timeboxing their development and releasing on time.
- ojosilva 14y agoHere's the delta with the changes: https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perldelta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perldelta.p...
- draegtun 14y agoAnd below are all the delta changes in 5.17 uptil 5.17.6: * 5.17.0 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5170delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5170del... * 5.17.1 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5171delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5171del... * 5.17.2 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5172delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5172del... * 5.17.3 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5173delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5173del... * 5.17.4 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5174delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5174del... * 5.17.5 - https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5175delta.pod https://metacpan.org/module/RJBS/perl-5.17.6/pod/perl5175del...
- jerf 14y ago5.17.6: "The seed used by Perl's hash function is now random. This means that the order which keys/values will be returned from functions like keys(), values(), and each() will differ from run to run." Wait, what? 5.8.1: "Mainly due to security reasons, the "random ordering" of hashes has been made even more random. Previously while the order of hash elements from keys(), values(), and each() was essentially random, it was still repeatable. Now, however, the order varies between different runs of Perl." - http://search.cpan.org/~jhi/perl-5.8.1/pod/perldelta.pod#Hash_Randomisation http://search.cpan.org/~jhi/perl-5.8.1/pod/perldelta.pod#Has... , Sept 25 2003 When did that get undone? Edit: Admittedly, I just tried to verify that this actually happened in 5.8.1 and none of 5.8.8, 5.10.0, or 5.14.2 appear to be actually randomizing key order, at least according to the keys function.
- broquaint 14y agoRelevant discussion on perl5-porters: http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/10/msg194813.html http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/10/ms...
- peteretep 14y agoGood to see so much active work on Unicode support. Really feels like Perl is coming in to its own as the language to use with Unicode text...
- hahainternet 14y agoUnless you've been living under a rock Perl has been the goto language for Unicode support for half a decade now.
- mpyne 14y agoIndeed, the "Unicode support" in question is tracking changes to the Unicode standard itself. Perl 5 has long been one of the top-flight Unicode implementations (and not just implementation, but a community-wide set of best practices, documentation for use, etc.).
- buster 14y agoI must say, when Perl is the "top flight" implementation for unicode i don't want to be a programmer anymore.. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6162484/why-does-modern-perl-avoid-utf-8-by-default http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6162484/why-does-modern-p... Just scroll to the end of the first comment, boilerplate code.. jesus....
- draegtun 14y agoThis is very thorough boilerplate code for dealing with all corner cases when using utf-8 data with Perl. Instead of dismissing or dissing Tom Christiansen excellent post I would highly recommend reading into his The Good, the Bad, & the (mostly) Ugly presentation from OSCON 2011 [1] where he compares Unicode handling across mainstream languages and then see how this code (and Perl) shapes up in comparison. In the meantime pragmatic Perl programmers can cover most of that utf-8 boilerplate with just: use 5.016; use warnings; use utf8::all; Or if you're like me and use perl5i [2] then its just: use perl5i::2; [1]: http://training.perl.com/OSCON2011/index.html http://training.perl.com/OSCON2011/index.html [2]: https://metacpan.org/module/perl5i https://metacpan.org/module/perl5i
- z3phyr 14y agoThank you perl! You taught me ruby..... And you taught me, how to be dynamic ...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rjh29 14y agoIt got upvoted, that seems like justification enough.
- agranig 14y agoOh, we've done a little Perl code challenge to win some free beer lately: http://www.sipwise.com/news/jobs/hiring-by-curiosity-part-1/ http://www.sipwise.com/news/jobs/hiring-by-curiosity-part-1/ The free beer event is already over, but it's still fun to try if you can make it :)
- new299 14y agoI'd be genuinely interested in reasons why I should learn Perl? I've been hacking away at some Perl interfaces lately but finding it difficult. It seems like a big language (I'm reading Perl Programming, which is certainly a big book). So rather than just hacking away, is there a good reason I should learn the language properly and push through "Perl Programming" or say learning Ruby, Python or golang really well. Will Perl remain relevant in 15 years time? Or at least more relevant than other current languages with similar applications? I should say that I come from a background of C and C++ programming, which may effect my mindset somewhat.
- peteretep 14y agoI watched a keynote recently where Guido - the Python guy - made the point that Ruby, Python, and Perl are all essentially the same language. I like Perl because it's: * Stable, reliable, very very mature * Has a testing culture really second to none, excellent testing tools, and a unifying testing mechanism (TAP) * CPAN really is awesome * Almost any tool you enjoy from the other languages, Perl has an equivalent
- jonathansizz 14y agoInstalling a new version of Perl doesn't break your old code! This is not true for Ruby (I'm not sure about Python as I no longer use it much), which is a huge argument in favour of using Perl over Ruby. Having said that, it's certainly possible to use all of these languages, and once you are good at one, it should take little extra effort to learn the others. All of them have their strong points and you'll probably regularly see code in each of them, so just learn them all.
- harbud 14y agoExcept perl 5.17.6! (I suspect the hash randomization feature will cause a lot of disturbance)
- jnazario 14y agoi'll wade in. note that i'm bigoted against perl, i'll say so clearly up front. perl is better than shell scripting at automation, this much is true. perl has a strong use case there. had, i'll argue. perl's idioms and structure promotes wonky, hard to read and hard to maintain code. it's true. get even the most die hard perl fan a beer or two and they'll wind up admitting it, sheepishly and quietly. but yeah, perl too easily promotes a mess. and when you have to maintain code, borrow code, etc .. readable code matters. my biggest complaints about perl usually fall into the bucket that perl fans claim are its strengths. brevity, wit, etc. those wind up confusing almost all perl developers and users, in my experience, because you have to shift gears mentally to figure out wtf a piece of code is doing, what the developer intended it to do, and thus diagnosis is a pain. too many perl users just laugh and say, "yeah, i can't figure it out either." funny until you realize they're laughing about wasting your time. my second biggest complaint falls into the reusability of perl by its design. not so modular without some surgery (minor or major, depending). the C (or ruby or python) code that people trained on perl develop is, almost always, horridly inefficient. CPAN is nice, i wish my language of choice (python) had as extensive a library so easy to use. and then you get into the mess of CPAN, which is littered with half completed, poorly documented modules. you wind up having two or three modules that do the same thing but are dependencies elsewhere or actually implement some promised functionality, etc. (cheeseshop, pip, etc yes ... but so much stuff isn't deployable like that is my point...) the perl documentation library was a big selling point about 10 or 12 years ago, not so much now. everyone else caught up is my point. python, ruby, etc are now mainstream. the "perl is everywhere" mantra used to be compelling, too. but python and ruby are just as widely available on systems and ... far more suited to long term development and maintenance than perl is. again, "better" languages for long term use and development are now mainstream. they weren't before. i tend to sum all this up for someone with "perl sucks" or "don't use perl, it promotes brain rot". and no, i wont revisit my thinking. perl had its day, but i think the sun has set and rightfully so.