[191] in Release_7.7_team
[Jonathan I. Kamens: Perl 5.0 Official Release Notice]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Fri Oct 21 15:40:37 1994
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 15:40:32 +0500
From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
------- Forwarded Message
From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@cam.ov.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 1994 14:27:11 -0400
To: watchmakers@MIT.EDU
Cc: jik@MIT.EDU
Subject: Perl 5.0 Official Release Notice
Cool!
------ Forwarded Article <383ke1$79k@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU>
------ From Larry Wall <lwall@netlabs.com>
From: Larry Wall <lwall@netlabs.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl,comp.unix.admin,comp.lang.misc,comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.questions,alt.sources.d,comp.sources.d
Subject: Perl 5.0 Official Release Notice
Date: 19 Oct 1994 17:18:57 GMT
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.
Expires: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 12:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <383ke1$79k@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU>
Reply-To: perl5-porters@isu.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: perl.com
Followups-To: comp.lang.perl
Originator: tchrist@mox
Table of Contents for this Message:
Intro
New Features List
New Documentation List
Getting Source and Documentation
Extension Modules
WWW Info
Known Bugs
Bug Reports
FAQ
------------------------------------------------------------
Intro:
After years of loving craftsmanship by many otherwise sane folks,
release 5 of Perl is now officially launched into production. The new
release provides many new features and an extremely high level of
compatibility with previous versions. But more importantly, Perl is
now philosophically committed to the notions of extensibility and
reusability, so that the language itself can stabilize.
Perl 5.0 should configure and build straight out of the box (as
it were) on virtually any UNIX system, and even on VMS, too!
Ports to other architectures (MS-DOS, Windows/NT) are in the works.
Have the appropriate amount of fun,
Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com
Wednesday, 19 October 1994
(tsc)
------------------------------------------------------------
New Features:
cleaner and more portable configuration and build process
greatly simplified grammar and faster, tighter interpreter
numerous legibility enhancements
optional compile-time restrictions on dubious constructs
greatly improved diagnostics
both lexical and dynamic scoping
anonymous data types: scalars, lists, hash table, functions
arbitrarily nested data structures
modularity and reusability
object-oriented programming
package constructors and destructors
embeddibility and extensibility
dynamic loading of C libraries
a POSIX 1003.1 compliant interface
multiple simultaneous DBM implementations
(dbm, sdbm, ndbm, gdbm, berkeley db)
operator overloading on arithmetic types
supplied: Complex, BigInt, and BigFloat
regular expression enhancements
extensions: curses, X11 support via Sx (Athena, Xlib) and Tk
------------------------------------------------------------
New Documentation:
The once onerous Perl man page has been broken up into many different
pieces, suitable for viewing with the standard man interface or via HTML.
The following separate sections are included:
perl Perl overview
perldata Perl data structures
perlsyn Perl syntax
perlop Perl operators and precedence
perlre Perl regular expressions
perlrun Perl execution and options
perlfunc Perl builtin functions
perlvar Perl predefined variables
perlsub Perl subroutines
perlmod Perl modules
perlref Perl references and nested data structures
perlobj Perl objects
perlbot Perl OO tricks and examples
perldebug Perl debugging
perldiag Perl diagnostic messages (*ALL* of them, w/ explanations!)
perlform Perl formats
perlipc Perl interprocess communication
perlsec Perl security
perltrap Perl traps for the unwary (includes perl4 vs perl5)
perlstyle Perl style guide
perlapi Perl application programming interface
perlguts Perl internal functions for those doing extensions
perlcall Perl calling conventions from C
perlovl Perl overloading semantics
perlbook Perl book information
Furthermore, there is documentation on the standalone programs
and the all Perl library modules. A pre-formatted postscript
version of these is available in one piece (240 pages);
see the "Docs" ftp entries below.
------------------------------------------------------------
Getting Source and Documentation:
North America
ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/src/5.0/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/perl/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.cbi.tamucc.edu/pub/duff/Perl/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/perlinfo/source/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://genetics.upenn.edu/perl5/perl5_000.zip
Europe
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/ports/perl5/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.zrz.tu-berlin.de/pub/unix/perl/perl5.000.tar.gz
ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/perl5/perl5.000.tar.gz
http://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/perl5/perl5.000.tar.gz
gopher://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/0/packages/perl5/perl5.000.tar.gz
Australia
ftp://sungear.mame.mu.oz.au/pub/perl/src/5.0/perl5.000.tar.gz
Docs:
http://www.metronet.com/0/perlinfo/perl5/manual/perl.html
ftp://ftp.uu.net/languages/perl/PerlDoc.ps.gz
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/PerlDoc.ps.gz
ftp://ftp.cbi.tamucc.edu/pub/duff/Perl/PerlDoc.ps.gz
ftp://www.metronet.com/pub/perlinfo/perl5/manual/PerlDoc.ps.gz
ftp://ftp.zrz.tu-berlin.de/pub/unix/perl/PerlDoc.ps.gz (Europe)
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/PerlDoc.ps.gz (Europe)
ftp://sungear.mame.mu.oz.au/pub/perl/doc/PerlDoc.ps.gz (Oz)
Email access:
The following is a list of known ftpmail sites. Please attempt to use
the site closest to you with the ftp archive closest to it. Many of
these sites already have perl on them. For information on how to use
one of these sites, send email containing the word "help" to the
address.
United States:
Massachusetts: ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
New Jersey: bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu
North Carolina: ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu
Europe/UK:
Germany: ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de
bitftp@vx.gmd.de
UK: ftpmail@doc.ic.ac.uk
Australia: ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au
Henk P Penning* suggests that if you are in Europe you should try the
following (if you are in Germany or the UK, you should probably use one
of the servers listed above):
Email: Send a message to 'mail-server@cs.ruu.nl' containing:
begin
path your_email_address
send help
send PERL/INDEX
end
The path-line may be omitted if your message contains a normal
From:-line. You will receive a help-file and an index of the
directory that contains the Perl stuff.
You should probably ask for something like these:
send PERL/perl5.000.tar.gz
send PERL/PerlDoc.ps.gz
*PLEASE* use email ftp access only has a last recourse, and
please wait as long as possible before sending in your request,
so the load on the server is spread over a longer period.
------------------------------------------------------------
Extension Modules:
Tk (as in tcl/tk, but sans tcl)
ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/src/tkperl/tkperl5a4.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/extensions/tkperl5a4.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perlinfo/perl5/tkperl/tkperl5a4.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/tkperl5a4.tar.gz
ftp://black.ox.ac.uk/src/ALPHA/tkperl5a4.tar.gz
(try 5a5 everywhere after 2pm UST Thu 20 Oct 1994, as in)
ftp://sable.ox.ac.uk/pub/perl/tkperl5a5.tar.gz
Curses (standard C library)
ftp://ftp.ncsu.edu/pub/math/wsetzer/cursperl5a6.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perlinfo/perl5/cursperl5a6.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/cursperl5a6.tar.gz
Msql (SQL)
ftp://ftp.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE/pub/unix/perl/MsqlPerl-a1.tgz
ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/extensions/MsqlPerl-a1.tgz
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perlinfo/perl5/MsqlPerl5-a1.tgz
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/MsqlPerl-a1.tar.gz
Sx (Athena & Xlib)
ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/pub/Perl/Sx.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/extensions/Sx.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perlinfo/perl5/Sx.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/perl5.0/PerlDoc.ps.gz
Database (Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Ingress, etc)
ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/perl/db
ftp::/ftp.cis.ufl.edu//pub/perl/scripts/db
------------------------------------------------------------
WWW Info:
Web access to random perl information is found here:
General:
http://www.metronet.com/perlinfo/perl5.html
Full on-line hypertextual PerlDoc:
http://www.metronet.com/0/perlinfo/perl5/manual/perl.html
http://www.mit.edu:8001/perl/perl.html (might just be gamma)
------------------------------------------------------------
Known Bugs:
The README says it's a pre-release.
Workaround: ignore this sentence.
Installs perl0.000 and sperl0.000 instead of 5.000.
Workaround: rename the files.
The debugger appears to be broken on "my" variables;
Workaround: none yet
Recursive signal handlers eventually core dump.
Workaround: ease up on the ^C key.
The following code misbehaves: print ++$_ . "\n" until /0/;
Workaround: initialize your variable
Destructors can clobber $@ on exit from an eval
Workaround: local $@; eval {...};
------------------------------------------------------------
Bug Reports:
The best place to send your bug is to the Perl Porters mailing list
<perl5-porters@isu.edu>. You may subscribe to the list in the customary
fashion via mail to <perl5-porters-request@isu.edu>. Feel free to post
your bugs to the comp.lang.perl newsgroup as well, but do make sure they
still go to the mailing list.
To enhance your chances of getting any bug you report fixed:
1. Try to narrow the problem down to as small a piece of code as
possible. If you can get it down to 1 line of Perl then so much
the better.
2. Include a copy of the output from the myconfig script from the
Perl source distribution in your posting.
------------------------------------------------------------
FAQ:
The Perl Frequently Asked Questions list (in somewhat antiquated form,
especially now that Perl 5.0 is out) may be found here, amongst other
places:
ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/doc/faq.gz
ftp://sungear.mame.mu.oz.au/pub/perl/doc/faq.gz
ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/FAQ.gz
------ End of Forwarded Article
--
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@cam.ov.com
------- End Forwarded Message
