FAQ 1.4 What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?

This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq1.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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1.4: What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?

(contributed by brian d foy)

In short, Perl 4 is the past, Perl 5 is the present, and Perl 6 is the
future.

The number after perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release of
the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language. Each major
version has significant differences that earlier versions cannot
support.

The current major release of Perl is Perl 5, and was released in 1994.
It can run scripts from the previous major release, Perl 4 (March 1991),
but has significant differences. It introduced the concept of
references, complex data structures, and modules. The Perl 5 interpreter
was a complete re-write of the previous perl sources.

Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl, but it's still in development
in both its syntax and design. The work started in 2002 and is still
ongoing. Many of the most interesting features have shown up in the
latest versions of Perl 5, and some Perl 5 modules allow you to use some
Perl 6 syntax in your programs. You can learn more about Perl 6 at
http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ .

See perlhist for a history of Perl revisions.



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Re: FAQ 1.4 What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?

PerlFAQ Server wrote:
> This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq1.pod, which
> comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
> reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
> to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
> perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------ --------
>
> 1.4: What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?
>
> (contributed by brian d foy)
>
> In short, Perl 4 is the past, Perl 5 is the present, and Perl 6 is
> the future.

With all the wonderful developments I see going on with Perl 5 (5.10.0
has a few features, like given/when that were destined for Perl 6), I'm
left wondering if we really need Perl 6. I'm all for the better of
things for the future, but it seems to me Perl 5, especially with the
dawn of 5.10.0, is really holding it's own.

The new features (and I love how you can turn only specific things on,
or turn them all on) are great - I smiled practically all the way
through Perl 5.10.0's perldelata - so I really can't imagine Perl 6
being much better than what Perl 5 has evolved into (and to top it off
it's still pure Perl) :-)

--
szr

Re: FAQ 1.4 What are Perl 4, Perl 5, or Perl 6?

szr schreef:

> I really can't imagine Perl 6
> being much better than what Perl 5 has evolved into (and to top it off
> it's still pure Perl) :-)

I don't think you understand what Perl 6 is about.

A problem is that they called it Perl again, because it is quite a
different beast. I would have liked a different name, like Onion.

One of the things that Perl 6 will stand out in is parallellism, which
is important to get the most out of your 32 cores.
http://dev.perl.org/perl6/doc/design/syn/S03.html

--
Affijn, Ruud

"Gewoon is een tijger."