http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=872766

  
  {Neo sees a black cat walk by them, and then a similar black cat walk by them just like the first one}
  
  Neo:      Whoa. Deja vu.
  
  {Everyone freezes right in their tracks}
  
  Trinity:  What did you just say?
  Neo:      Nothing. Just had a little deja vu.
  Trinity:  What did you see?
  Cypher:   What happened?
  Neo:      A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
  Trinity:  How much like it? Was it the same cat?
  Neo:      It might have been. I'm not sure.
  Morpheus: Switch! Apoc!
  Neo:      What is it?
  Trinity:  A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.
  
     -- Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski, 'The Matrix'

It gives me great pleasure to announce the release of Perl 5.13.7.

This is the eighth DEVELOPMENT release in the 5.13.x series leading to a
stable release of Perl 5.14.0. You can find a list of high-profile changes
in this release in the file "perldelta.pod" inside the distribution.

You can (or will shortly be able to) download the 5.13.7 release from:

    http://search.cpan.org/~bingos/perl-5.13.7/

The release's SHA1 signatures are:

dadc05c687c349852bd7bc8c46e45f36b351ef34 perl-5.13.7.tar.bz2
335bb465f072a86c342230ea2e0cc198b9c5c7a5 perl-5.13.7.tar.gz

This release corresponds to commit 57fc91ac6f in Perl's git repository.
It is tagged as 'v5.13.7'.

We welcome your feedback on this release.

If Perl 5.13.7 works well for you, please use the 'perlthanks' tool
included in this distribution to tell the all-volunteer development team
how much you appreciate their work.

If you discover issues with Perl 5.13.7, please use the 'perlbug' tool
included in this distribution to report them.

If you write software in Perl, it is particularly important that you test
your software against development releases. While we strive to maintain
source compatibility with prior stable versions of Perl wherever possible,
it is always possible that a well-intentioned change can have unexpected
consequences. If you spot a change in a development version which breaks
your code, it's much more likely that we will be able to fix it before the
next stable release. If you only test your code against stable releases
of Perl, it may not be possible to undo a backwards-incompatible change
which breaks your code.

Perl 5.13.7 represents approximately one month of development since Perl 5.13.6
and contains 73100 lines of changes across 518 files from 39 authors and committers.

Notable changes in this release:

* Array and hash container functions accept references

* Improved support for custom OPs

* Single term prototype

* Unicode Version 6.0 is now supported (mostly)

* y///r

Thank you to the following for contributing to this release:

Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Ben Morrow, Chas. J. Owens IV, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, 
David Golden, David Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos, Fingle Nark, Florian Ragwitz, George Greer, 
Grant McLean, H.Merijn Brand, Ian Goodacre, Jan Dubois, Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Vincent, Karl Williamson, 
Lubomir Rintel, Marty Pauley, Moritz Lenz, Nicholas Clark, Nicolas Kaiser, Niko Tyni, Peter John Acklam, 
Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Shlomi Fish, Steffen Mueller, Steve Hay, Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, Tim Bunce, Todd Rinaldo, 
Tom Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook, Yves Orton, Zefram and brian d foy

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
modules included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN
community for helping Perl to flourish.

Development versions of Perl are released monthly on or about the 20th
of the month by a monthly "release manager". You can expect following
upcoming releases:

 December 20     -   Zefram
 January 20      -   Jesse
 February 20     -   Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
 March 20        -   Florian Ragwitz

Enjoy!

Chris 'BinGOs' Williams

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl v5.13.7 is released
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 21, 2010 at 17:54 UTC
    Most important change if you ask me

    All built-in functions that operate directly on array or hash containers now also accept hard references to arrays or hashes:

    |----------------------------+---------------------------| | Traditional syntax | Terse syntax | |----------------------------+---------------------------| | push @$arrayref, @stuff | push $arrayref, @stuff | | unshift @$arrayref, @stuff | unshift $arrayref, @stuff | | pop @$arrayref | pop $arrayref | | shift @$arrayref | shift $arrayref | | splice @$arrayref, 0, 2 | splice $arrayref, 0, 2 | | keys %$hashref | keys $hashref | | keys @$arrayref | keys $arrayref | | values %$hashref | values $hashref | | values @$arrayref | values $arrayref | | ($k,$v) = each %$hashref | ($k,$v) = each $hashref | | ($k,$v) = each @$arrayref | ($k,$v) = each $arrayref | |----------------------------+---------------------------|
      that's brilliant! :)

      Cheers Rolf

        ... even if it smells a little bit like PHP.

        Alexander

        --
        Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)
      I don't like that change. It adds more to the syntax confusion than it takes away. If I'm pushing values into an array, I expect the argument to be some kind of array. It feels natural in Perl. All those sigil-mangling changes (and I'd like to include Perl6's sigil immutability here) stray from that (relatively simple) direction.

      Automatic dereferencing syntax (meaning: s/@$/@/ or s/@{$ref}/@ref/) would be more useful. For example:

      |----------------------------+---------------------------|
      | Traditional syntax         | Auto syntax               |
      |----------------------------+---------------------------|
      | push @$arrayref, @stuff    | push @arrayref, @stuff    |
      | unshift @$arrayref, @stuff | unshift @arrayref, @stuff |
      | pop @$arrayref             | pop @arrayref             |
      | shift @$arrayref           | shift @arrayref           |
      | splice @$arrayref, 0, 2    | splice @arrayref, 0, 2    |
      | keys %$hashref             | keys @hashref             |
      | keys @$arrayref            | keys @arrayref            |
      | values %$hashref           | values @hashref           |
      | values @$arrayref          | values @arrayref          |
      | ($k,$v) = each %$hashref   | ($k,$v) = each @hashref   |
      | ($k,$v) = each @$arrayref  | ($k,$v) = each @arrayref  |
      |----------------------------+---------------------------|
      
      I was following the p5p discussion about these changes, but I kept silent, so it's probably too late for this kind of rant now :)
        > Automatic dereferencing syntax (meaning: s/@$/@/ or s/@{$ref}/@ref/) would be more useful.

        You're well aware of the fact that @ref and $ref are different variables with disjunct name-spaces in Perl?

        IMHO this ambiguity would produce hard to track bugs.

        Cheers Rolf

        I don't like that change. It adds more to the syntax confusion than it takes away.

        My immediate reaction is also one of disappointment.
        Given time, I expect we'll be able to push $arref1, $arref2
        Not sure if that will make me more disappointed or less disappointed ....

        Cheers,
        Rob