I use perl 5.005_03. It is what the sysops have installed on my server, and the default perl that came on my NT box at work. I don't really plan to upgrade, as this would involve installing a local perl (and eating up my home disk quota), and honestly I don't have any problems.

I am sure that there is still a lot of 5.005 out there, as well as 5.6 and 5.8. While the differences aren't dramatic, it only takes one line to make a program fail.

I think that, in light of the many versions out there, code authors need to be sure they think about this when coding -- and many do. It should become a new standard for robust code, along with strict and warnings.*

The bigger question is, of course, at what point do you continue to code for older versions, and at what point do you give them up? This is very much analagous to the situation with html and web browsers.

However, I don't want to go there right now. What do other monks think? Should it be best practice to start all programs with:

#/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
require 5.X;

[download]

* Of course, use warnings; instead of -w will fail on 5.005!!

</ajdelore>

In reply to Code should be version-aware by ajdelore

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