Just a few hours ago, Jarkko released release-candidate 2 for 5.8.1. Jarkko will be away for two weeks, and hopefully 5.8.1 will hit the world soon.

This is your chance to contribute. Download it from http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/J/JH/JHI/jhi/perl-5.8.1-RC2.tar.gz or your local CPAN mirror (it's trickling down the mirrors now, so wait a few hours if it's not there yet) and start testing it! Run your favourite Perl applications with it! Don't wait till 5.8.1 is out, and you have to wait another year till the next release.

Abigail