Re: perl 5.8.5

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 19:25:44 +0000, Ryan Newman
<ryannewman47_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih_at_rpi.edu>
> >To: "Ryan Newman" <ryannewman47_at_hotmail.com>, rainer_at_ultra-secure.de
> >CC: current_at_freebsd.org
> >Subject: Re: perl 5.8.5
> >Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 15:12:00 -0400
> >
> >At 6:51 PM +0000 10/6/04, Ryan Newman wrote:
> >>>From: Rainer Duffner <rainer_at_ultra-secure.de>
> >>>
> >>>Is there actually anything that doesn't work with 5.8 but does
> >>>work with 5.6?
> >>
> >>The biggest problem is that 5.8 defaults to unicode support which
> >>ends up breaking a lot of complex applications.  I know that linux
> >>has shifted from 5.6 to 5.8 and this has caused a lot of people
> >>problems on the linux platform.
> >
> >Here at work we are in the process of upgrading some older Linux
> >systems to a newer release of Redhat, and we have been nailed by
> >these unicode-related bugs in perl, particularly with some regexp
> >patterns.  In some cases this has caused a few scripts to fail
> >in subtle ways, which is to say the script "succeeds" and claims
> >everything went just fine, but the script didn't actually do what
> >it was supposed to do, and what it had been doing for the past
> >few years.  In at least some of those cases, I think these are
> >BUGS in the way perl handles the expression, and not "unavoidable
> >consequences of Unicode support".  That's just my opinion, though.
> >
> >I don't know if perl 5.8 on FreeBSD will cause the same issues.
> >I have the impression that the default for unicode-handling can
> >be changed on a system-wide basis (at least on Redhat), but I am
> >not sure of the details.
> >
> >Even though I have hit some of these problems, I do think it is a
> >good idea to make the change to 5.8 as part of FreeBSD 5.3-release.
> >People should be taking a bit more time to check, cross-check, and
> >re-check everything they are running if they are upgrading to
> >5.3-release from 4.x-release.
> >
> 
> Having 5.3 default to perl 5.8 will add a lot of delay in several peoples
> migration from 4.x for sure.

And hasten a few others, no doubt.  We have to pick what we want
to support for the next 'N' years, and perl 5.6 is not that.

-- 
Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.
                                         Friedrich Schiller