We (as so many others) use perl intensivly, but we are currently stuck with the stock RHEL6 perl (that is 5.10.1).

I am considering building our own perl (in /opt/somehwere), adding the modules that we need, and keeping that up-to-date (using jenkins to build our own RPMs for deployment). I have a feeling about the amount of work involved with this (been down that road before), and my boss asked the ultimative question:

Is it worth it?

So I started to prepare a what's-the-difference tutorial (from perldelta's), then 5.18.0 came along and threw given/when and ~~ into experimental::smartmatch, so now I am (almost) back to square 0. Almost all I got is some optimizations and some hash-key security...

Compared to 5.10.1, why should I upgrade to 5.18.0?

• I know the pain, what is the gain?
• What do you think is the most important arguments for upgrading to 5.18.0?
• How will 5.18.0 make us happier, our life easier and sun shine more frequently?
• Or am I complete lost, and should I continue being stuck with the stock?

Thank you Monks, for allowing a humble perler interrupt you.