=encoding is not mentioned in http://search.cpan.org/~gsar/perl-5.6.0/pod/perlpod.pod on CPAN, but it is in http://perldoc.perl.org/5.8.8/perlpod.html.

I didn't see any mention of when it was added when I grepped through the perldelta docs

In reply to Re: What Version of Perl Introduced '=encoding'? by toolic
in thread What Version of Perl Introduced '=encoding'? by jgamble

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