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How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about

by fraktalisman (Hermit)
on Oct 20, 2004 at 18:04 UTC ( [id://400932]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

I'm not sure how long Perlmonks is up and running, was it already there when Perl 4 was still around?

Anyway, I wonder how to avoid confusion once Perl 6 is released and some Perlmonks discussions will be about Perl 6, others about Perl 5. (Like there are already Perl 6 discussions going on.) People might use (super) search or Google and find Perl 5 answers to their questions, and thus learn from them, without knowing that what they're just reading is about the old style.

No problem for advanced coders, but how to guide the newbies?

Maybe simply mark the new discussions with "Perl 6" and even add another search parameter that defaults to "only Perl 6" or "show Perl 6 first"?

  • Comment on How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about

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Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by hossman (Prior) on Oct 20, 2004 at 20:51 UTC

      Thanks, I was hoping someone would do the search that the original poster appears to not have done.

      This isn't much different than a ton of other configuration differences.

      I can ask a question for which the answers are quite independent of operating system (because Perl provides a good, portable solution for what I was asking about), and Perl version (because the solution don't have need for very new features so they all work for even quite old versions of Perl), and other possible configuration differences.

      If discussing Perl one-liners, then the Unix users are going to be writing perl -e '...' examples and the Win32 users are going to be writing perl -e "..." examples. A few will recognize the potential for confusion and address it.

      If I ask a question about a specific problem I am having using some regular expressions and note that I'm using Perl 5.006_00, it doesn't mean that answers dealing with Perl 5.009_01 can't be useful, because the problem might be enough to make upgrading Perl worthwhile for me.

      So I think there will be many threads where even Perl 5 vs. Perl 6 won't matter. They'll be even more threads were some parts address Perl 5, some parts address Perl 6, some parts apply equally to both, and some parts don't have much to do with either one.

      I liked the "use 5.006;" idea and I hope that Perl 6 will support it. So, for quite a while, if I publish Perl 6 code that is not meant to run in Perl 5, I'll include "use 6;" in it. And that should include code I write here.

      I'm don't see how any formalized system of trying to mark threads or nodes as "Perl 5" or "Perl 6" could avoid being either very inaccurately applied or very incompletely applied.

      I could see proposing an informal convention of including "(p6)" in nodes that are specific to Perl 6, starting now, while such nodes are still quite rare. When Perl 6 gets rolling along, we could propose doing a similar convention for "(p5)". And as those finally start becoming rare, we could propose that the "(p6)" convention be dropped.

      - tye        

Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by Juerd (Abbot) on Oct 20, 2004 at 18:14 UTC

    Since virtually *everything* here is either about Perl 5 or about the transition from Perl 5 to Perl 6, I'm all for starting all over. I don't know if building a new Monastery is doable or if others share my view, but it would IMHO be great to have a perl6monks.org and a perl5monks.org, with perlmonks.org first pointing to the old site, and when Perl 6 actually gets used much, to perl6monks.org.

    Same for CP[56]AN and perl[56]doc.

    Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by jacques (Priest) on Oct 20, 2004 at 18:23 UTC
    was PerlMonks already there when Perl 4 was still around?

    The Monastery predates the Atari 5200 but not the 2600 in the era of our Lord, Larry Wall.

      No wonder I was having trouble finding Perl 3 threads...
Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by coreolyn (Parson) on Oct 20, 2004 at 20:56 UTC

    Looking at Vroom's stats I'd say November of '99 is as far back as one could go for a start date.

Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by ggg (Scribe) on Oct 21, 2004 at 14:13 UTC
    It's always been good practice to include in writeups not only which Perl you're useing, but also which version of which OS and any other environmental details that may affect behavior. Even so, as tye pointed out, many people just don't know enough to do that. That won't change in the future, either. :)
    ggg
Re: How to let visitors know which Perl version we're talking about
by Anonymous Monk on Oct 21, 2004 at 08:28 UTC
    Since it'll be years before there will be a stable perl6, don't you think it's a tad early for this discussion? Perlmonks be a memory of a distant past by that time....
      Perlmonks be a memory of a distant past by that time....

      Are you saying that perlmonks will be long dead before perl6 comes out? That's extremely pessimistic on two fronts. On the one hand it implies that perl6 will be a long time coming (possibly true). But it also implies that perlmonks will die. The only way I can see that happening is if perl itself dies.

      What depressing thoughts!

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