I dunno. I waited patiently for 5.8.0 and avoided the temptation to grab any of the release candidates for my production server. I, too, shuddered to think of what would happen to my nice mod_perl website if I installed a beta quality Perl. Mind you, I don't work for a multi-billion dollar company, so my production server isn't worth as much real money, but even still...

But, while roaming looking for fun, exciting new things to play with on my development server, I noticed that it no longer said 'perl-5.8.0RC2.tar.gz'. Nope, this was the real thing. So, I had a race between my Linux Celeron 733 and my NetBSD Pentium II/333 to see which would compile first. The race was much closer than many may have thought.

And I've had no reason to curse my impulsiveness on seeing that Perl had been deemed release quality. My mod_perl recompiled against 5.8.0 without a hitch. My development mod_perl 1.99a also compiled against 5.8.0 without a hitch. My website was safe, and the Camel looked exactly the same, if maybe a little older.

So, if you're having problems with your Perl, I say "It's gotta be your OS, eh?"