perlfaq1 - General Questions About Perl
-=head1 DESCRIPTION
+=head1 DESCRIPTION
This section of the FAQ answers very general, high-level questions
about Perl.
=item *
-No one is actively supporting Perl 4. Five years ago it was a dead
+No one is actively supporting Perl 4. Ten years ago it was a dead
camel carcass (according to this document). Now it's barely a skeleton
as its whitewashed bones have fractured or eroded.
=item *
There is no Perl 6 release scheduled, but it will be available when
-it's ready. Stay tuned, but don't worry that you'll have to change
-major versions of Perl; no one is going to take Perl 5 away from you.
+it's ready. The joke is that it's scheduled for Christmas, but that we
+just don't know which one. Stay tuned, but don't worry that you'll
+have to change major versions of Perl; no one is going to take Perl 5
+away from you.
=item *
In short, Perl 4 is the past, Perl 5 is the present, and Perl 6 is the
future.
-The number after perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release
+The number after Perl (i.e. the 5 after Perl 5) is the major release
of the perl interpreter as well as the version of the language. Each
major version has significant differences that earlier versions cannot
support.
-The current major release of Perl is Perl 5, and was released in 1994.
-It can run scripts from the previous major release, Perl 4 (March 1991),
-but has significant differences. It introduced the concept of references,
-complex data structures, and modules. The Perl 5 interpreter was a
-complete re-write of the previous perl sources.
+The current major release of Perl is Perl 5, and was first released in
+1994. It can run scripts from the previous major release, Perl 4
+(March 1991), but has significant differences. It introduced the
+concept of references, complex data structures, and modules. The Perl
+5 interpreter was a complete re-write of the previous perl sources.
-Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl, but it's still in development
-in both its syntax and design. The work started in 2002 and is still
-ongoing. Many of the most interesting features have shown up in the
-latest versions of Perl 5, and some Perl 5 modules allow you to use some
-Perl 6 syntax in your programs. You can learn more about Perl 6 at
-http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ .
+Perl 6 is the next major version of Perl, although it's not intended to
+replace Perl 5. It's still in development in both its syntax and
+design. The work started in 2002 and is still ongoing. Some of the
+most interesting features have shown up in the latest versions of Perl
+5, and some Perl 5 modules allow you to use some Perl 6 syntax in your
+programs. The current leading implementation of Perl 6 is Rakudo (
+http://rakudo.org ).
See L<perlhist> for a history of Perl revisions.
-=head2 What was Ponie?
-
-(contributed by brian d foy)
-
-Ponie stands for "Perl On the New Internal Engine", started by Arthur
-Bergman from Fotango in 2003, and subsequently run as a project of The
-Perl Foundation. It was abandoned in 2006
-( http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.ponie.dev/487 ).
-
-Instead of using the current Perl internals, Ponie aimed to create a
-new one that would provide a translation path from Perl 5 to Perl 6
-(or anything else that targets Parrot, actually). You would have been
-able to just keep using Perl 5 with Parrot, the virtual machine which
-will compile and run Perl 6 bytecode.
-
=head2 What is Perl 6?
At The Second O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention, Larry Wall
or gives them something (flexibility, power, testability).
In general, the benefit of a language is closely related to the skill of
-the people using that language. If you or your team can be more faster,
+the people using that language. If you or your team can be faster,
better, and stronger through Perl, you'll deliver more value. Remember,
people often respond better to what they get out of it. If you run
into resistance, figure out what those people get out of the other
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff