Perl 5.38 Released With Experimental Class Feature, Unicode 15

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Perl 5.38 Released With Experimental Class Feature, Unicode 15

After being in development for more than one year, Perl 5.38 released today as the latest feature update to this programming language...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Perl-5.38-Released

[Danny3]

Ok, cool!
But when will Perl have a switch-case statement like many other languages?
It sucks to have many if-else conditions and it sucks to have warnings with given-when!

[SleeepyKat]

Ok, cool!
But when will Perl have a switch-case statement like many other languages?
It sucks to have many if-else conditions and it sucks to have warnings with given-when!

Same here. And the docs say given/when will be removed in v5.42.0.

If you have ideas, please submit them here: https://github.com/Perl/PPCs

[Hohlraum]

Ok, cool!
But when will Perl have a switch-case statement like many other languages?
It sucks to have many if-else conditions and it sucks to have warnings with given-when!

https://metacpan.org/pod/Syntax::Keyword::Match

Written by the same guy who wrote the new Class functionality for perl 5.38 You can use his Object::Pad (from which the new Class feature was based) using https://metacpan.org/pod/Feature::Compat::Class with older perls. It has some features that aren't in the current class functionality yet.

Paul Evans has tons of awesome modules.

[uid313]

Wow, Perl is getting classes, something almost every other language had since decades ago. Well except for JavaScript which got it in 2015.

Ok, cool!
But when will Perl have a switch-case statement like many other languages?
It sucks to have many if-else conditions and it sucks to have warnings with given-when!

Python doesn't have a switch statement either, or well it didn't up until recently when the match statement was introduced in Python 3.10 released in 2022.

[rclark]

For what I use Perl for, classes and unicode (really?) aren't needed. But nice to see Perl getting some love .. so to speak.

[panikal]

For what I use Perl for, classes and unicode (really?) aren't needed. But nice to see Perl getting some love .. so to speak.

Perl has had unicode support since forever if you enable it. This is just for unicode v15. Probably some more emojis or something.

For those complaining about switch statements, if/else isn't really much more typing and perl has tried a *few* switch idioms over the years.. Perl has other similar short syntax alternatives - take a look at this StackOverflow answer for a list of easy for / regex equivalents that literally are less typing than the old perl use Switch and has a ton more flexibility - onsidering the alternatives, this is actually readable perl. https://stackoverflow.com/a/34819245

A built-in class is nice but 20 years too late. I have fond memories of perl - and the schwartzian transform influenced most languages - but I am also glad I've moved on. I just hope the continued love doesn't break old utilities/scripts and pragmas, I'm rusty enough now I can't even maintain my cpan stuff anymore. I presume most of the cpan modules are in this place which also doesn't really make me want to go back.

[kpedersen]

A built-in class is nice but 20 years too late.

I thought they rejected classes? Those that wanted them had Raku as the failed Perl 6. They are just going in circles.

I presume most of the cpan modules are in this place which also doesn't really make me want to go back.

To be honest, most language based package / dependency stores turn into this before long. NPM, and crates.io may be popular now (as CPAN was) but they will ultimately turn into the same old sad neglected places. Again, just going in circles.

[EphemeralEft]

What was wrong with the old blessing system?

[kylew77]

When I learned Perl in 2019 it quickly became my favorite language ever. C like syntax with Bash like simplicity.