Perl 5.8.1 RC1 Released

moksliukas writes "Perl 5.8.1 RC1 has been released. A major change is that due to security reasons, the "random ordering" of hashes has been made even more random. As always, there are other numerous changes, including some improved utf-8 handling support, deprecation of 5.005 style threads, $* magic variable, pseudo-hashes and a number of other improvements. As usual, perldelta summarises all changes."

Comments

Re:Perl6 is a mistake

[Cecil]

(and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

Ok, have you actually tried python?

My responses to your responses:

No -- The whitespace is hardly irritating. It makes the code readable and clear. It's beautiful. I thought it would be a pain at first until I realized that "Hey, all python's doing is enforcing (and interpreting) the way I already write my code, and the way that code should generally be written IMHO.

Yes -- And you still think it's irritating whitespace? If you're one of the people who tries to fit too many things onto one line, and don't include whitespace to make it clear what the hell you're doing, those are the sort of people who should be forced to use python. ;)

Re:...and "upgrading" will be a headache

[Hard_Code]

I didn't read the whole changelog, but I did read those two sections. Applications will only break if they relied on specific random ordering ACCROSS EXECUTIONS. E.g., if you dumped the contents of a hash into a file on two runs, and then compared, you may now get different ordering on identical data, whereas before you would (coincidentally) get the same random ordering and there would be no difference between the files. You probably shouldn't have been relying on this to begin with.

Re:Perl6 is a mistake

[togofspookware]

> Recently I've started using Ruby as well

Yeah. Ruby's awesome. Cleaner than Python and easier to write than Perl, IMO. But how do I use SSL? :-o!

> The whole thing is an exercise in
> pseudo-computer science masturbation
> with little real purpose

Which is exactly the reason I'm going to love it :-D

> (and not one with loads of irritating
> whitespace thank you very much)

I didn't like that much, either, but I found that a bigger issue, for me, was that I was constanly having to read the reference guide to figure out which module to import to do something really simple. Also the inconsistancies (sp?) in naming bugged me. Sometimes things are capitalized, sometimes not, sometimes with underscores, sometimes without... is it spelled "HTTPRequest", "HttpRequest", or "http_request"? mmm. depends on the module. gotta get the reference out...

I actually tried using Python a couple times, but never got the hang of it. As oppoesed to Ruby which I picked up right away and have been using ever since.