Perl 5 version history

! style="width: 3%" | Version

! style="width: 8%" | Release date

! style="width: 9%" | Links

! style="width: 100%" | Changes

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.26.0

| May 30, 2017

| [https://metacpan.org/pod/release/XSAWYERX/perl-5.26.0/pod/perldelta.pod Full release notes]

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• For security reasons, the current directory (".") is no longer included by default at the end of the module search path (@INC)
• Lexical subroutines are no longer experimental
• Indented Here-documents
• New regular expression modifiers and capture groups
• Unicode 9.0 is now supported
• Perl can now do default collation in UTF-8 locales on platforms that support it

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.24.0

| May 8, 2016

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5240delta.pod Full release notes]

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• Unicode 8.0 is now supported.
• New line break boundary in regular expressions
• Extended Bracketed Character Classes work in UTF-8 locales
• More explicit definitions for integer shifting
• Reordered precision arguments for printf and sprintf
• More fields provided to sigaction callback
• The experimental autoderef feature was removed.
• Postfix dereferencing is no longer experimental.

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.22.0

| June 1, 2015

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5220delta.pod Full release notes]

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• Unicode 7.0 is now supported.
• The historical modules CGI.pm and Module::Build were removed from the core distribution.
• The double diamond operator
• Disambiguated bitwise operators (as an experimental feature)
• Variable aliasing (as an experimental feature)
• Subroutine attribute and signature order was flipped, but this was flipped back in v5.28

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.20.0

| May 27, 2014

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5200delta.pod Full release notes]

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• Subroutine signatures (as an experimental feature)
• Postfix dereferencing (as an experimental feature)
• Key/value slice syntax

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.18.0

| May 18, 2013

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5180delta.pod Full release notes]

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• regular expression character set operations (as an experimental feature)
• lexical subroutines (as an experimental feature)

! style="background-color: #f8eaba; font-weight: normal;" | 5.16.0

| May 20, 2012

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5160delta.pod Full release notes]

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• __SUB__ for currently-executing subroutine
• encoding-disambiguated eval
• fc [https://metacpan.org/pod/perlfunc#fc case-folding] function

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.14.0

| May 14, 2011

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5140delta.pod Full release notes]

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• Unicode 6.0 is supported
• Unicode semantics applied to all strings
• Non-destructive substitution (s///r)
• Added /d, /l, /u and /a regular expression modifiers
• Re-entrant regular expressions
• Automatic dereference (autoderef) by built-ins (experimental feature, removed in v5.24)

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.12.0

| April 12, 2010

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5120delta.pod Full release notes]

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• Unicode 5.2 is supported
• New package NAME VERSION syntax
• The ... operator added
• Implicit strictures with use 5.12.0 (or later version)
• Year 2038 compliance

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.10.1

| August 23, 2009[https://perldoc.perl.org/perlhist perlhist]

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• Incompatible changes to the range operators and defined-or in boolean context, which affects the new switch feature
• Incompatible changes to the smart match operator
• Unicode 5.1.0 is supported
• A new interface for pluggable Method Resolution Orders
• A new overloading pragma
• Parallel tests
• DTrace support
• Bug fixes and module updates
• setuidperl deprecated

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.10.0

| December 18, 2007[https://perldoc.perl.org/perlhist perlhist]

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• Unicode 5.0 is supported
• New feature pragma
• New defined-or operator (//)
• New switch feature and related smart match operator{{what|date=July 2018}} (~~)
• Numerous new regular expression features
• New say built-in (via feature say)
• Ability to declare static variables with state

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.8.1

|September 25, 2003

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• Improved randomization of hash order, for security reasons.
• Unicode is not enabled by default based on locale settings.
• Version strings on the left of a fat comma are treated as string literals.
• Unsafe signals were re-added.
• Improved tied arrays with negative indexes
• Supports Unicode 4.0.0
• Pseudo-hashes are deprecated
• Old-style threads are deprecated.
• Various module upgrades.
• The `strict` pragma checks parameters.
• Documentation improvements.
• Bug fixes.

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.8.0

|July 18, 2002

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• Supports Unicode 3.2.0
• Regular expressions now work with Unicode
• Support for non-Latin encodings via Encode module
• Introduction of interpreter threads
• New PerlIO implementation
• Scalars can be used as file handles
• Improved numeric accuracy for string-number conversion via built-in routine
• Finalized 64-bit support
• New sort pragma to change the sort algorithm. (This was disabled in v5.28.)
• New modules: Digest::MD5, File::Temp, Filter::Simple, libnet, List::Util, Memoize, MIME::Base64, Scalar::Util, Storable, Switch, Test::More, Test::Simple, Text::Balanced, Tie::File, etc.
• Incompatibilities:

:*Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with any earlier Perl release

:*64-bit versions no longer use Perl malloc.

:*hash order changed

:*dump() command becomes obsolete.

:*5.005 threads are deprecated.

:*user-visible implementation of pseudohashes is deprecated and scheduled for removal

:*Use of tainted data in exec LIST and system LIST issues warning, and will become fatal error in a future release

:*For tr///C, tr///U, pack("C0", ...) and pack("U0", ...) can be used instead

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;"| 5.6.0

|March 22, 2000

|

• Version numbering changed to 'revision.version.subversion' format
• Internal representation for strings is changed to UTF-8, with EBCDIC support discontinued.
• Better support for interpreter concurrency.
• String literals can be written using character ordinals.
• New syntax for subroutine attributes. (The attrs pragma is now deprecated.)
• Support for large files, where available.
• Support for binary numbers.
• JPL ("Java Perl Lingo") distribution comes bundled with Perl.
• Much new documentation in the form of tutorials and reference information has been added.
• Experimental features:

:*Support for Unicode

:*Support for threading, and the fork() emulation on Windows.

:*64-bit support.

:*Lvalue subroutines.

:*Weak references.

:*Pseudo-hash data type.

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.005

| July 22, 1998

|

• 5.005 is not binary compatible with previous releases.
• Source code now in ANSI C.
• New supported platforms include BeOS, DOS, MPE/ix.
• EXPR foreach EXPR syntax is supported.
• Experimental features:

:*C++ Perl Object abstraction supported on Win32.

:*Precompiled regular expressions.

:*Enhanced 64-bit support.

:*Reliable signals, when threading is enabled.

:*Extended support for exception handling.

:*EGCS/GCC compilers are now supported on Win32.

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.004

| May 15, 1997

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/blead/pod/perl5004delta.pod perl5004delta - what's new for perl5.004]

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! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.003_1

| July 31, 1996

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/0b7ed9495fa7de460d26ce01fe8b909352839cd4/Changes Full release notes]

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! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.003

| June 25, 1996

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/e2cc866690eb0f477bfd2c7e4de56b01900fc7f6/Changes Full release notes]

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• Security fixes
• Bug fixes

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.002_1

| March 25, 1996

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/9003a52329b06e192c972632de380bcd51cc2086/Changes5.003 Full release notes]

|

• EMBED namespace changes are now used by default
• Fixed several bugs in the core
• Added two new magic variables: $^E and $^O
• A mechanism was added to allow listing of locally applied patches in the perl -v output
• Miscellaneous minor corrections and updates were made to the documentation
• Extensive updates made to the OS/2 and VMS ports
• Other miscellaneous changes and bug fixes

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.002

| February 29, 1996

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/e0baa280674b8c7baf79d8fb5733b1e5d44b4f53/Changes5.002 Full release notes]

|

• Added a new feature: Prototypes
• Extensive upgrades to nearly all of Perl's modules
• Massive changes to both the configure and build systems
• Bug fixes

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.001

| March 13, 1995

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/748a93069b3d16374a9859d1456065dd3ae11394/Changes Full release notes]

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• Added two new hooks: $SIG{__WARN__} and $SIG{__DIE__}
• Added closures
• Now counts imported routines as "defined" for redef warnings
• Bug fixes

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 5.000

| October 17, 1994

| [https://github.com/Perl/perl5/blob/a0d0e21ea6ea90a22318550944fe6cb09ae10cda/Changes Full release notes]

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• Near complete rewrite of the interpreter
• Added Objects
• Added References
• Added lexical (my) variables
• Added modules which allow extending the language without modifying the interpreter

! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 4.000

| March 21, 1991

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! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 3.000

| October 18, 1989

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! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 2.000

| June 5, 1988

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! style="background-color: #eed3d7; font-weight: normal;" | 1.000

| December 18, 1987

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