in reply to still support old version?
This is a topic that borders on religion, politics, and what is the best Scotch (Glenmorangie.)
After reading, and posting, many comments on this, I have come to the conclusion that whenever possible I will write code that will run on 5.8.8 if it is intended for public consumption such as on CPAN. That said, when working in a private, dedicated environment (such as work) where we have full control over what is installed then I feel free to take advantage of whatever features are available with our version of Perl (currently v5.16.)
I concur with the preceding post that 5.8.8 (and arguably 5.8.9) is so common because of the length of time before 5.10 came out. I also agree with the speculation that the frequent updates since then have prevented any single version of Perl (starting with 5.10) since then from gaining widespread acceptance as being the de-facto standard. (I would entertain arguments that 5.10 should be the new minimum version to code to.)
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