I think this is an important issue -- Perl is complicated enough already without throwing in "Oh wait, what version are you using?" questions at new monks.

I started with Perl 5 (just as it was released, I think) in the summer of '98. The migration to 5.6 was relatively painless -- a new version of Programming Perl (2nd edition -> 3rd edition) was about the only change. Going to version 5.8 is going to take a little effort, and Perl 6.0 is going to require some major thought changes (not unlike Perl 4 -> 5).

Let's avoid a Tower of Babel situation -- there needs to be some version identification tied with the documentation on-site, along with links to where the newer stuff is. So currently the site documentation would be labelled as Perl 5.0 -- we need to have links to 5.6 docs (the current version) as well as 5.8 docs (the upgrade version currently under development) and eventually 6.0 docs (the really cooll new version that Damian Conway (among others) has been talking about for a year).

--t. alex

"Nyahhh (munch, munch) What's up, Doc?" --Bugs Bunny