To me, perldoc.com looks like an outdated website from an individual (Carlos Ramirez) who is totally unknown to me. I wouldn't take his list as something that is supposed to be in perl 5.8.x. Having said that, I agree that most of the modules you list shouldn't have been in the core distribution. (Digest::MD5 is used by CPAN; Data::Dumper is probably tied into the internals tightly enough that it wouldn't survive outside the core distro).

The dbmopen support in perl5 ... Personally, I think that dbmopen and friends should be treated as locked is with Threads. If you use the module, you get the keyword, otherwise it's not reserved. I think that would be an acceptable compromise, but, then again, I've never used (or seen used) dbmopen and friends in my experience.

That's out of the question. Backwards compatibility is important. dbmopen/dbmclose have been available since at least perl-4.0.0 (which dates from 1991), probably even before that. There's not much gain in removing the keywords.

locked() isn't a reserved word in the core ...

Nope; but lock is.

Abigail