Getting current versions of Perl

[tilly]

In RE: RE: RE: Data extraction from hash problem I pointed out that there were some serious known bugs with Perl 5.6.0. As an example I gave:

perl -e 'my $x = 10; $x = "2" . $x; print $x + 0'

which does something rather different than one would hope. I mentioned that "bleeding edge" Perls had fixes to most of the serious bugs, and when 5.6.1 came out it would be very good to upgrade to it. Unfortunately I did not then know how to get a bleeding edge Perl.

It turns out that my problems had to do with an overly restrictive firewall at ActiveState. Sarathy has announced that current versions will be available through http at http://public.ActiveState.com/gsar/APC/ and the firewall issues are being looked at.

I strongly recommend that anyone who is using 5.6.0 give thought to upgrading for some of the important bug fixes, and then upgrading again when 5.6.1 comes out. If you are still on the 5.005_03 series, my personal recommendation is to hold tight at least until 5.6.1. (I am taking this advice myself.)

[BlueLines]

i also noticed that going here shows 5.004_05 as the previous version. I was under the impression that 5.005_03 was the previous stable version...this caused massive problems when i told a co-worker to compile a perl with threads so that he could test some code i was working on (He went to the website, and grabbed what he thought was the old stable version, 5.004_05, which has no thread support). Is there a reason for this, or is this just a bug/typo on the website?

BlueLines

Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary.

[tilly]

I will tell you the situation, and you tell me how to classify it. :-)

The 5.005 series was a significant change from 5.004 because a lot of work was needed to make Windows one of the core platforms. Therefore the following releases happened in order:

5.004_04
5.005_00
5.005_01 (very shortly after IIRC)
5.005_02
5.005_03
5.004_05 (backported bug fixes for people who didn't switch)
5.6.0 (Note new numbering scheme)

If history repeats we would see more upgrades to 5.6.x, followed in due time by backported bug-fixes labelled 5.005_04.

So the last released version called stable before 5.6.0 was indeed 5.004_05.

Cheers,
Ben

[premchai21]

I tried that -e -- I know I'm using ActiveState 5.6.0 because perl -v shows that.

my $x=10; # sets $x to 10
$x="2" . $x; # prepends a 2 to $x
print $x+0; # prints $x+0.

except in the form you gave. It displays "210". What is the problem?

[tye]

ActiveState Perl 5.6.0 is not Perl 5.6.0. Try "perl -V" (capital "V") and you'll see something like "Locally applied patches:\tActivePerl Build 616". The fix for this bug is included in that patch.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

[premchai21]

You seem to be right. But that's odd... why would it be called 5.6.0 if it were not?

I have build 623, in fact.

As Douglas Adams said in "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe": "The Door would still be there, even if the door were not."

Thanks.

[lolindrath]

Is this just an ActiveState problem or has it been confirmed with other distributations?

--=Lolindrath=--

[tilly]

This is a bug on all platforms. FYI ActiveState does not maintain a separate code-base, and has not since 5.005 first came out.