That's what 'use 5.12' is for. That's preferred over 'use feature qw(:5.12)', as feature.pm didn't appear before 5.10, so if you run it on 5.8, you get an error complaining about a missing feature.pm, while if you have 'use 5.12', 5.8 understands this, and tells you 5.8 isn't a high enough version.