Why you need to know ?. I think that perl 5.8 is very good and we have perlmonks.org at our disposal. Ask the developers or use whatever on CPAN that has been developed. Whenever it will be ready, I suppose there will be a accepting and learning curve and lots of problems with CPAN modules and your existing code. I believe that people will continue to work with 5.8 or 5.10 even an year after perl 6 will come, because of the practice and liking from the past.

To find number of days/months/years, we can start predicting game. I thought there was a poll on this also somewhere. I had read somewhere that first it was set to release in August,2001. You can also read the timeline by Larry posted here.

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Here is more accurate answer from perl6 development faq.

When will Perl 6 be released? The current plan is to have a working 6.0.0 compiler ready in the 3rd quarter of 2005, based on a snapshot of the language design taken in late 2004. This goal is, however, predicated on The Perl Foundation receiving sufficient contributions to fund the 5 or more developer-years of effort required to complete the implementation. Without that funding, development will continue, but on a volunteer basis and hence more slowly.

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