Perl reporting versions 5.006 and 5.6.0

sm3g has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have been using the Pronto mail client for a while and have always been confused why it's My Info panel reports my Perl version as 5.006. I thought it was just a weird bug in it's detection system but I noticed a couple other programs showed it the same way.
Then last night discovered the $] "magic" variable that they all use to get the perl version number. Sure enough this code prints 5.006: perl -e 'print "$]\n";' I am using Perl version 5.6.0, or at least all the documentation and `perl --version` tell me so.
My question is this: Why does $] report the version as 5.006 and `perl --version` report it as 5.6.0? Re: Re: Re: use _specific_ version describes this behavior, so I understand what it does, I just don't get why the decision to do this was made. It seems unnecissarily confusing, but I have no doubt St. Larry Wall had a reason for it.

sm3g
perl -e 's;;uoli;;$a=length;y;g-w;e-u;;;$a--;s;j;$a;;print"$_\n";'

Comment on Perl reporting versions 5.006 and 5.6.0 Download Code

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Re: Perl reporting versions 5.006 and 5.6.0 by kwoff (Friar) on Oct 28, 2001 at 04:41 UTC
There is information in `perldoc perldelta`, section "Improved Perl version numbering system".	[reply]
Re: Re: Perl reporting versions 5.006 and 5.6.0 by sm3g (Hermit) on Oct 28, 2001 at 05:02 UTC
Thanks, I still think it's kind of weird, but at least I understand it now. sm3g perl -e 's;;uoli;;$a=length;y;g-w;e-u;;;$a--;s;j;$a;;print"$_\n";'	[reply]