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Perl 5.8.1 Released
langles writes "Perl 5.8.1 has been released. Read the official announcement,
then download it from a CPAN mirror near you.
If you've been following the Perl5 Porters List, you'll know this version was very well tested before they released it. However, there may be some modules that will need to be fixed before they will work with this release." The announcement also contains full details on incompatibilities and known issues, so give it a once over before upgrading, especially if from a pre-5.8 version.
Damn, Slackware 9.1 is out of date already...
...as I've encounted a few script problems with the last few perl incarnations. Could have been the libraries however.
But I have an honest confession.
Python has become my scripting language of choice over the last 2 years.
Does that mean I have a problem?
TO put things in perspective, I was an 0311 for 4 years so maybe that's why I have these recurring nightmares of perl necklaces and pythons tcling me.
and now they release both a new perl and a new slackware, after 3 months of unemployment. I say they do it to pester me.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Click here
You mean this one?
A quick pass through the changes uncovered:
;)
... now it will never die! :)
Miscellaneous Enhancements
map in void context is no longer expensive. map is now context aware, and will not construct a list if called in void context.
This must have been added to *end* the ceaseless wars over whether using "map" in a void context is lame, or not. This argument after repeated dowsing attempts, would constantly spring back into life with renewed vigor on comp.lang.perl.misc and other places.
Now it doesn't matter. Argument over. I think I'll miss it. Sort of. I can't remember a time when people weren't fighting about this. Next I suppose we'll be sorting out the whole "who would win, the Enterprise or a star destroyer?" mess
For those who don't know what I'm on about: "map" applies a subroutine or code block to each element in a list. Some people would use it to iterate over lists, instead of using "for". Perl is now smart enough to notice if you're not using the result of "map", and so won't generate the result list in that particular case.
The whole argument came down over whether to say:
map { do_stuff; } @list;
or
do_stuff for @list;
So the "for" people would, rightly, say that the "map" was inefficient if you weren't using the result list created by map, and the "map" people said that Perl should just figure it out and do the right thing.
Actually, now I think about it, this is going to make the argument *worse*, as now they are functionally equivalent, and it will just come down to taste! No! They don't know what they've done
Some code just deserves to be broken ;)
Yes, this is an excellent point. Case in point. Basically, everything can be done in any Turing-complete language (which is something I wish the "But you can do everything in Visual Basic!" sales people would get...).
My feeling is that, when people say something like "This language's code is easier to read", they don't mean as much the language's syntax, as the coding practices that the language's structure encourages.
See "There should be more than one way to do it" as opposed to "There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it", for instance. Different philosophies that fit different languages that fit different coding practices. You'll note that both principles do correlate with the main selling point of their respective language, namely, Perl's ability to be the shortest path from 'nothing' to 'job's done', and Python's knack at remaining damn readable through thousands of lines of code even for programmers not yet involved in the project (among other things).
Down the road it's only a matter of goals, and picking the most appropriate tool to reach that goal. The tricky part, of course, being that 'appropriate' is a relative thing, and sometimes a somewhat unfitting tool is more appropriate in terms of practicality than something you don't yet know and would have to learn from scratch.
Oh, and zealotry is sclerosis of the mind.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
This whole list of posts so far is really depressing. At times Slashdot is a great source of information, at times it is just worthless. It all depends on the people posting the comments. Moderators, I know you only have what you are given to work with, but 90% of theses posts are totaly off topic. Larry Wall and the shit in his pants have nothing to do with a new release of Perl. A release that does some pretty damn cool things BTW like making it possible to switch on and off the new signel behaviour with an ENV var.
If anyone wants to know where Perl is going in the future and why it is a damn good lang to stick with, read the O`Reilly book "Perl 6 Essentials" I think a lot of programmers, even some pretty experenced ones confuse syntax that they don't like with "bad" but as has been quoted over and over Perl is about having fun with programming, and being able to make your master work, or being able to dig your own grave. I very well know there are good and bad ways to program in any lang. Even PHP which I tend to dislike, I have to admit most of the reason is because of the nightmare applications that chew on their own tails to such a degree they are next to impossible to figure out. But I know it is possible to do better work in PHP than that. Perl started out in exactly that way with the oh so lovely Matt's script archive Perl 4 type of scripting. But back then it really was *just* a scripting lang. Now it is much more developed. A simple rule of thought that many of you guys need to consider from Aristotle that I here paraphrase; If a man is sitting on a chair and you maintain he is sitting, you are correct. If he gets up, but you still maintain he is sitting, you are incorrect. Sounds like duh huh? But it is the cleanest way I have every heard expressed the idea that if you base your opinons on information that is outdated, then your opinons can be just plain wrong.
Thanks,
Eric
Python 2.3.1 [python.org] final was released this week. Where was the Slashdot story about that one?
And they haven't even got a topic for Python yet... *grumble*.
Slashdot is quite a bit biased towards perl, probably because the engine has been coded in perl. Let's forgive them for that. However, it's a shame that a language that seems so far to be the only free-speech-free-beer language capable of taking on Java and C# gets so little attention.
Will it take a Chandler release for all of you to wake up? Obviously I'm treading the wrong territory here, this being a Perl article an all. By hacking w/ Python, many Perl mongers would be furthering the OSS movement more, not to mention their own careers...
As far as py2.3.1 goes, it's hardly big news, it being just a bugfix release after all.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
To clarify for those who don't know what he's talking about, neither does he. It doesn't make sense to read from an unopened filehandle; this is not something you can do in 5.6. The whole point of filehandles is that you can open the file once and then use the handle to read from it, rather than having to, say, open it every single time you want to access the file. If you haven't opened it first, of course, the filehandle is meaningless.
And, no, I didn't fall for your troll. But I may as well let those of us who don't know Perl know that you don't, either. "Perl hacker" my ass.
Yeah! He's a Christian, and therefore a lunatic. Clearly Perl's not worth anything because of that. Oh, but he's not only one! Isn't Donald Knuth a Christian? Everybody, take your copies of ``The Art of Computer Programming'' and burn them. Knuth's clearly a nut job!
But let's not stop there! Augustine, Martin Luther, Johann Sebastian Bach, Soren Kirkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, Thomas Moore, Dietrich Bonhoffer, John Wesley, Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, Martin Luther King, J.R.R. Tolkien... all obviously insane. I don't know why we keep printing their works.
(Stupid troll. Made me flame.)
Complete rewrite. As a side-effect, no longer refuses to startup when run by root.
Okay, okay, I know, root bad, now shut up. I don't know how many freakin times I've been hacking away at a perl script, as root and had to actually log in as a different user just to read the damn documentation. Thank Wall for small miracles.
Not that I often read documentation, but anyway.
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
trying to get the meaning of some Perl gibberish
This confirms my solid belief that those who complain about Perl are the ones who do not know Perl.
Those folks who bothered to learn Perl, usually find it readable, easy to maintain, quite robust, and easy to work with.
The fact that it takes a "wild mix" (your words) of other languages to simulate similar behavior should say something about the expressive power of Perl, and the limitations of said in other languages.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
it's called Ruby ;-)