A 5.8.1 version of Perl is in Panther, but whether *the* 5.8.1 final release will make Panther is another question.
I hope, at least, that the final Panther will include a newer Perl than the one in the preview. I spent most of today trying to track down a SIG11 bug in CamelBones. Out of desperation, I installed the newer 5.8.1-RC2 release of Perl under /opt. It's compiled with GCC 3.3, but otherwise configured identically to the 5.8.1 snapshot that's included with the Panther preview. With the 5.8.1-RC2 release, the SIG11 problems vanished and all the test CB cases worked perfectly.
I'll grant you that CB embeds Perl and makes heavy use of the libperl API; it probably tickles bugs in Perl that most people will never see. Still, the experience hasn't left me with much confidence in the Perl version that's included in the Panther preview.
The 5.8.1-RC2 release, on the other paw, is the first release I can recall that passed every single self-test on Mac OS X - even the long-standing libdb issue seems to have been fixed.
sherm--
