There could be some more sharp edges than that, I just know about only this one..

Courage, the Cowardly Dog

Jan Dubois from ActiveState said on the AS list that USE_LARGE_FILES is enabled. I can't find the e-mail in the archive but if you feel like looking for yourself there is more information over here.

__SIG__
use B;
printf "You are here %08x\n", unpack "L!", unpack "P4", pack
  "L!", B::svref_2object(sub{})->OUTSIDE;
[download]

The message I mentioned is here:

http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2002-11/msg00305.html

You're absolutely right: they compiled with "USE_LARGE_FILES" enabled, but that option was not default on 5.8.0 source distribution in time.
as a result, that distribution that I compiled for me by myself, has that option switched off :(

Thanks for helping me to clarify the situation!

Courage, the Cowardly Dog

Well...when can you tell that the version is stable?

To my opinion, it is only stable when all your tests run successfull, and you are pleased with its stability in your environment.

Even when Active State delivers a full GA 5.8, it still contains bugs, and therefore can cause problems in your environment.

So, I would say, install it on a test server, and configure it to use with your application. When it runs fine, it has a good chance to be OK.

---------------------------
Dr. Mark Ceulemans
Senior Consultant
IT Masters, Belgium

True, but there's still more odd corners of perl than any one person can find.

I meant this post to be a clearing house for caveats like "the CR/LF problem with sockets is still there", or other such items. That one, for instance, is not something my code would run into, since I'm not using perl for networking much at the moment.
--
Mike

Of course, it's possible there are no differences, but then, why wait 3 months to release AP 5.8?
--
Mike

I think 3 months was because they rebuilt a huge ammount of supported by them modules, which could be seen at http://www.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.8-windows/, with proper adjusting and testing of modules that begun to refuse to be built.

Courage, the Cowardly Dog

You can see a huge diff against the official perl5.8.0 release

You can also download the source for the latest activeperl 5.8 beta and build it yourself if you want large file support.

-- simonflk

Cool! That's perfect...

I wish ActiveState had exactly that note on their 5.8 download page, though, or had those items listed in the release notes.

Oh well, I guess that's one of the reasons it's a beta :)
--
Mike