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Perl 5.20.0 released

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Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#3

Post by DHowett » 

    This deprecation affects things like $\cT, where \cT is a literal control
    (such as a NAK or NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE character) in the source code.
    
    Surprisingly, it appears that originally this was intended as the
    canonical way of accessing variables like $^T, with the caret form only being
    added as an alternative.
I love perl and use it nigh-unto daily, but—what could possibly have been the thought process behind that? A literal control character?

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#4

Post by octo_t »

The biggest change is the move towards deprecating ascii-related functions:

  Use of any of these functions in the POSIX module is now deprecated: isalnum, isalpha, iscntrl, isdigit, isgraph, islower, isprint, ispunct, isspace, isupper, and isxdigit
these are going to be littered throughout most perl code - its definitely in a lot of my code.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#5

Post by eCa » 

    Perl 5.20.0 represents approximately 12 months of development
    since Perl 5.18.0 and contains approximately 470,000 lines of 
    changes across 2,900 files from 124 authors.
Thank you all.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#6

Post by deckiedan »

DHowett wrote: post #3

This deprecation affects things like $\cT, where \cT is a literal control (such as a NAK or NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE character) in the source code. Surprisingly, it appears that originally this was intended as the canonical way of accessing variables like $^T, with the caret form only being added as an alternative. I love perl and use it nigh-unto daily, but—what could possibly have been the thought process behind that?…

writing scripts that control programs (such as SSH, emacs, nano, etc) that expect a keyboard and TTY to be controlling them?

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#7

Post by jbert »

octo_t wrote: post #4

The biggest change is the move towards deprecating ascii-related functions: Use of any of these functions in the POSIX module is now deprecated: isalnum, isalpha, iscntrl, isdigit, isgraph, islower, isprint, ispunct, isspace, isupper, and isxdigit these are going to be littered throughout most perl code - its definitely in a lot of my code.

subroutine signatures look pretty interesting to me, albeit experimental.

https://metacpan.org/pod/release/RJBS/perl-5.20.0/pod/perlsu...

edit: and the copy-on-write string concatenating has the potential to speed up a lot of code, I think.

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#8

Post by peteretep »

octo_t wrote: post #4

The biggest change is the move towards deprecating ascii-related functions: Use of any of these functions in the POSIX module is now deprecated: isalnum, isalpha, iscntrl, isdigit, isgraph, islower, isprint, ispunct, isspace, isupper, and isxdigit these are going to be littered throughout most perl code - its definitely in a lot of my code.

    > these are going to be littered throughout most perl code 
    > - its definitely in a lot of my code
Interesting; I've been programming Perl for almost 20 years, and they're not in any of mine!

Re: Perl 5.20.0 released

#10

Post by joel_perl_prog »

tenfingers wrote: post #9

Perl gives me the impression of being one of the few language that's still evolving significantly on a syntax level despite being so old.

Definitely. And as I have lamented in several places online, as well as verbally in discussions about it, I really love Perl, the language, despite its warts. (For example, I view the slurpy subroutine argument style to be an advantage, if used correctly, rather than a wart; that said, having the option of formal parameters would be nice...)

I think we are well past the point now where the language itself is no longer the center of the discussion. Or should not be. What we have is a single back end that's difficult to work on, and which can only target one platform. It's compiled C. Naturally, that's not so bad, as we see Perl is everywhere that Linux is. Which is ... basically everywhere.

But how about a Perl 5 interpreter for the JVM? How about a Perl 5 to Javascript compiler (sort of like Clojurescript)? Or just any other target you can imagine. I really feel like the difficulty of working on the Perl 5 internals limits the language--and ultimately, will kill it.

"Kill it," of course, is a relative term. Perl 5 will most likely never truly die. Indeed, I'm writing (what I think is pretty cool) Perl 5 code right at this moment, and putting it on Github and CPAN.

But in terms of attracting new blood, new developers, young teams of vocal and enthusiastic programmers... I just don't see that happening. To me, it's a great sadness. I have yet to find another language that I love as much as Perl (and I wouldn't mind doing so, at this point).

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