Category: new features

Perl v5.34 is scheduled to come out in May. Here’s what you can look forward to:

• Specify octal numbers with the 0o prefix
• Experimental try-catch syntax
• The no-minimum {,m} regex quantifier
• Add insignificant space in brace constructs, such as \x{...} and {n,m}

And, I’ll update the Perl New Features for v5.34 too.

Perl v5.32 is out and it has some interesting new features. The previous major releases focussed more on finally removing deprecations and shoring up odd cases, and you still find a few of those in this release. Full details, as always, are in the perldelta.

Sawyer X just announced Perl 7 as a major version jump that relabels what is now v5.32. If you’re code is ready for v5.32, you should be mostly ready for Perl 7.

• The new isa infix operator (“class instance”)
• The streamzip program comes with IO::Compress::Base, so it comes with perl
• Regex alpha assertions are stable
• Script runs are no longer experimental
• Alpha assertions are no longer experimental
• Match Unicode names with a pattern
• Mixed mode access to undef uses a temporary file
• "0" .. "-1" is fixed
• Modifiable contexts in constants now throw an exception
• User-defined properties override Unicode ones of the same name
• Use chained comparison operators
• Disable indirect object notation

Perl v5.29 is the development series leading up to the maintenance release v5.30 sometime in the middle of 2019. As it’s released—roughly monthly—you can get a peek at what’s coming up. You can track the progress by reading the perldelta documentation that comes with each Perl release (although you’ll need to select the development version you want to inspect).

• You no longer can declare lexical with false postfix conditionals
• The generalized quantifier can match more
• Delimiters must be graphemes
• File::Glob::glob() will disappear
• Some uses of an unescaped left brace “{” in a regex will be illegal
• Upgrades to Unicode 12
• Previously deprecated sysread()/syswrite() on :utf8 handles now fatal
• qr'\N{name}' is now supported
• There’s limited, experimental support for variable-width lookbehinds
• Match Unicode property values with a wildcard

Perl v5.28 has a few new features and several removals of old features that you shouldn’t have been using anyway (so I’m not going to mention them). Continue reading “Perl v5.28 new features”

Perl v5.26 has lots of improvements and some big changes with module loading. This might be the most backward-incompatible version this decade! As with any new perl, try it before you commit to it. You don’t want to install it over your currently working perl to later find out something doesn’t work.

Continue reading “Perl v5.26 new features”

Perl v5.24 may not look like it’s packed full of exciting features (indeed, it removes some of them) but it has lots of improvements under the hood. Here’s some of the user-visible features you might like. Continue reading “Perl v5.24 new features”

The first Perl 5.22 release candidate is out and there are some new operators and many enhancements to regular expressions that look interesting, along with some improvements that don’t require any work from you. Some of the features are experimental, so be careful that you don’t create problems by overusing them until they settle down. Continue reading “Perl 5.22 new features”

Perl 5.20 is out and there are some nice syntax changes that make life easier for Perlers, along with some improvements that don’t require any work from you. Some of the features are experimental, so be careful that you don’t create problems by overusing them until they settle down.

You can download the Perl source from CPAN. For Windows, Strawberry Perl 5.20 is available now. The full details are in the perldelta Continue reading “Perl 5.20 new features”

Perl v5.18 is out and there are some major changes that you should know about before you upgrade. Most notably, some features from v5.10 are now marked experimental. If you use those features, you get warnings.

You can download the Perl source from CPAN. For Windows, Strawberry Perl 5.18 is available now. Continue reading “Perl 5.18 new features”