Perl 7 Announced As Evolving Perl 5 With Modern Defaults

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Perl 7 Announced As Evolving Perl 5 With Modern Defaults

Taking place this week is the virtual Perl + Raku "Conference in the Cloud" as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic causing the event to go virtual. A big announcement out of it is Perl 7...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Perl-7-Announced

[Michael_S]

Perl has been dying. This isn't enough to reverse that, but I think it is a necessary step in any attempt to reverse it.

In Perl 5.32 you need to use a bunch of flags at the top of each source file to use traditional function signatures and to get warnings for uninitialized variables and all kinds of similar corner cases. So when Perl 7 has that enabled by default, it's a removal of one big obstacle for novices and simplifies writing Perl scripts.

Still under discussion for Perl 8 or later is incorporating a full object-oriented system in the core language. Perl 5 has a large number of CPAN modules that provide it, most notably Moose, but being able to use it right out of the box will be another step forward.

[cynic]

I stopped programming in Perl a long time ago and never missed it! It was fun while I have to write small scripts, but, as long as script grown it was an hell.

I still have some collegue's script to maintain sometimes and they're really awful (not sure it's 100% due to language fault though )

[schmidtbag]

There was someone who used to write everything in Perl at my workplace. Such a PITA, since unlike languages like Python, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, shell scripting, etc, you can't just read Perl and get the gist of how to work with it. You really have to go out of your way to understand it. Very often, me or someone else would just re-write something from scratch in a different language because it isn't worth our time to learn it.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Use perl5 and keep it simple, don't use fancy stuff and I like it better than bash.

[bison]

Use perl5 and keep it simple, don't use fancy stuff and I like it better than bash.

I do too, but to be fair, I like almost everything better than bash.

[ssokolow]

I do too, but to be fair, I like almost everything better than bash.

Yeah. I use Python in that role and it's been so long since I used Perl that I'd have to get out my old books and refresh my memory of the syntax. I don't miss it.

[qlum]

I think bash is excellent for it's job. if you need to run a lot of different utilities and the primary thing you are doing is calling external processes bash is the best tool for the job. Granted you can do the same with a more limited shell. It's mostly a matter of picking the right tool for hte job. Python is more cumbersome in that regard.

[mos87]

yay! long live

[mos87]

There was someone who used to write everything in Perl at my workplace. Such a PITA, since unlike languages like Python, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, shell scripting, etc, you can't just read Perl and get the gist of how to work with it. You really have to go out of your way to understand it. Very often, me or someone else would just re-write something from scratch in a different language because it isn't worth our time to learn it.

complete and utter rubbish

monkeys love peanuts tho...