On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Vic Norton wrote:
> Just installed Mail::Sendmail. Part of its test is to send an email.
> The test worked fine, but I was surprised by the message:
>
> This is a test message sent with Perl version 5.006 from a darwin system.
>
> Jeez, I was feeling guilty about not installing Perl 5.8, but I
> thought my iMac came with Perl 5.6. Be that as it may, the Perl code
>
> print "$]\n";
>
> produces 5.006 on my system. Am I missing something here?
Yeah, but don't worry -- it *is* needlessly confusing... :)
In a nutshell, after Perl 5 came out, the releases that followed weren't
considered to be anything more than patches, so the version number was
only incremented slightly. As in:
* Perl 5.000 in October 1994
* 5.001 in March 1995
* 5.002 in February 1996
* 5.003 in June 1996
* [not sure about 5.004, but I see a past-tense reference to versions
5.003_07, 5.003_24, and 5.004_66 from a July of 1997 citation]
* 5.005 in July 1998
* finally 5.006/5.6 in March 2000
At that point, it had more or less been decided that after six years, new
versions deserved to count for more than a thousandth of an upgrade, but
for back-compatibility the older notation still shows up here & there. So
5.006x is equivalent to 5.6.x, and 5.7.x or 5.8.x are equivalent to 5.007x
and 5.008x, respectively.
Copious details available at <http://history.perl.org/PerlTimeline.html>.
--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
time slice, n.
The occasional CPU cycle begrudgingly conceded by the operating system
to the user. Also called the period at risk.
Typically, the OS compares the complexity and importance of your
programs with those of its own internal problems. It then allocates
time slices (and memory, perhaps) accordingly. If you do gain a brief
place in the JOB TRICKLE, you can be assured that you really do have a
problem. See also RESPONSE TIME.
-- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, 1995
