FAQ 1.7 How stable is Perl?

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1.7: How stable is Perl?

Production releases, which incorporate bug fixes and new functionality,
are widely tested before release. Since the 5.000 release, we have
averaged only about one production release per year.

Larry and the Perl development team occasionally make changes to the
internal core of the language, but all possible efforts are made toward
backward compatibility. While not quite all Perl 4 scripts run
flawlessly under Perl 5, an update to perl should nearly never
invalidate a program written for an earlier version of perl (barring
accidental bug fixes and the rare new keyword).



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