http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=612820

swkronenfeld has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I just inherited some code that uses Test::Harness::Straps across a variety of platforms. I discovered that I have two different versions of Straps.pm (on two different platforms), but both of them are labeled 0.26.

The biggest difference that I noticed is that the analyze function returns a hash in one version, and returns a reference in the other version.

I was unable to find the change history online for specifically Test::Harness::Straps (I looked in the Test::Harness package change history, but it did not help). Below I have attached the top 20 or so lines from each file, down to the point where you can see that analyze returns a hash for one, and a reference for the other. It appears that the latter is the newer form, as that is what I see on CPAN.

Can anyone enlighten me on this? Rather than upgrading some of the older systems, I am about to put in code that treats the return value differently depending on if it is a reference. But before doing so, I would like to understand why I have different versions on two different systems (with the same version of perl), and why they have the same version number. Thanks!
RHEL 3 - x86 [root@vdt-fc3-ia32 tests]# perl -v This is perl, v5.8.5 built for i386-linux-thread-multi Straps.pm: # -*- Mode: cperl; cperl-indent-level: 4 -*- package Test::Harness::Straps; use strict; use vars qw($VERSION); $VERSION = '0.26'; use Config; use Test::Harness::Assert; use Test::Harness::Iterator; use Test::Harness::Point; # Flags used as return values from our methods. Just for internal # clarification. my $YES = (1==1); my $NO = !$YES; =head1 NAME Test::Harness::Straps - detailed analysis of test results =head1 SYNOPSIS use Test::Harness::Straps; my $strap = Test::Harness::Straps->new; # Various ways to interpret a test my %results = $strap->analyze($name, \@test_output); my %results = $strap->analyze_fh($name, $test_filehandle); my %results = $strap->analyze_file($test_file);

And the other system:
RHEL 4 - x86 [root@vdt-rhas4-ia32 tests]# perl -v This is perl, v5.8.5 built for i386-linux-thread-multi Straps.pm: # -*- Mode: cperl; cperl-indent-level: 4 -*- package Test::Harness::Straps; use strict; use vars qw($VERSION); $VERSION = '0.26'; use Config; use Test::Harness::Assert; use Test::Harness::Iterator; use Test::Harness::Point; use Test::Harness::Results; # Flags used as return values from our methods. Just for internal # clarification. my $YES = (1==1); my $NO = !$YES; =head1 NAME Test::Harness::Straps - detailed analysis of test results =head1 SYNOPSIS use Test::Harness::Straps; my $strap = Test::Harness::Straps->new; # Various ways to interpret a test my $results = $strap->analyze($name, \@test_output); my $results = $strap->analyze_fh($name, $test_filehandle); my $results = $strap->analyze_file($test_file);