Re^4: Loop to merge every two columns

Therefore sometimes it's easier to just assume they don't have access to certain features.

Sure, but where do you stop? Perhaps people should stop argueing to use "modern" 3-arg open and autovivifying file handles as well? Moose would be right out, now that it's dropping support for 5.8. Perhaps we shouldn't even assume they have Perl 5. (5.8 was released 8 years after 5.000; we're now 9 years after the release of 5.8 - if we let 5.000 coincide with the presumed birth of Jesus, and 5.14 now, 5.8 was released in the middle of the 10th century (Vikings discover America), and 5.10 in the 16th (right after the Middle Ages)).

I think that after 3.5 years, 2 major releases, and an EOL announcement, we should stop the "oh, let's assume they haven't this yet". Let's start assuming they do. Let's stop treating 5.10 as the "new shiny thing only the cool kids have".

Comment on Re^4: Loop to merge every two columns

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^5: Loop to merge every two columns by Tanktalus (Canon) on May 20, 2011 at 21:00 UTC
If only it were that simple. I get to use AIX 6.1 at $work. Released in 2007 (according to Wikipedia), it comes with 5.8.8. Not even 5.8.9. Yes, I've complained to the devs, well over a year ago. My contact passed it on, and now she's at a new job ("IBM = I've Been Moved", she tells me). sigh Earlier this week, I compiled my own copy of Perl 5.14.0 to ship with our AIX product. Getting management and legal approval to actually ship it, though, means another year of 5.8.8, at least. I suspect that this is not the only commercial platform that has not incremented its base level of perl in ages. Without paying customers complaining, they likely don't have anyone who cares enough to drive it internally. Then, those of us who do care, have only a few choices, including: pester the vendor (you may not give them enough $$ to make your requests a priority), or convince your lawyers to allow you to build/install it yourself. In the latter case, if you don't already have the compiler for the platform, you may need to buy that for some platforms, which increases the cost considerably (the README.aix file said gcc would work, but using xlC is better - in my case, I found a box with a licensed xlC, making that easier). If you're using it internally, this is about it. But if you then need to ship that version of Perl to your own customers, you may need another round with the lawyers. This, of course, all depends on how comfortable your lawyers are with open-source tools, combined with the bean-counters' need to monetise everything and eliminate all risk to that money. In my case, the lawyers are slow and the bean-counters don't get that shipping Perl is not a risk. All in all, there's still far too many 5.8.5-5.8.9 installations out there. And I'm not terribly happy about it, either.	[reply]
Re^6: Loop to merge every two columns by JavaFan (Canon) on May 20, 2011 at 21:57 UTC
All in all, there's still far too many 5.8.5-5.8.9 installations out there. You complete failed to understand my post. I'm not saying everyone should upgrade (at my current gig, they run end-of-lifed Perls as well). I'm just saying we should stop assuming they still run on 5.8. We should stop saying "well, for this solution, you'd need 5.10". Just as we stopped saying "you need 5.6" or "you need 5.8" years ago. Both 5.8 and 5.10 are declared end-of-life. If the questioner runs a very old Perl, the burden is on him, not on the person answering.	[reply]
Re^5: Loop to merge every two columns by stvn (Monsignor) on May 21, 2011 at 01:31 UTC
Moose would be right out, now that it's dropping support for 5.8. To be clear, we are not so much dropping support for 5.8, we are simply not willing to support it ourselves. This means that if someone else wants to maintain 5.8 compat, we welcome that person to do so and we will be glad to combine our efforts with theirs. In short, we (the core Moose team) are all volunteers and it is no longer interesting, useful or profitable for us to continue to support a version of Perl that none of us use anymore. -stvn	[reply]
Re^5: Loop to merge every two columns by wind (Priest) on May 20, 2011 at 17:47 UTC
I mostly agree. Certainly perlmonks is the one forum that should be encouraging the use of the latest features which is why I listed both solutions here and qualified newer with dirty quotes. However, I find helping people upgrade their perl or install cpan modules to be completely uninteresting. I'd rather just suggest a core library that does the job than bother with trying to get some person in India to install a more helpful cpan module. Maybe it's laziness on my part, but it's also about ROI of my time. It'd be cool if we had some statistics on what the development environment is for recent posters. At what point will the 5.8'ers be less significant percentage? I have a feeling it will be a while though, as I still come by people using 5.6 on other forums.	[reply]


Come for the quick hacks, stay for the epiphanies.
	PerlMonks