No, it's not an April Fool's joke, rafael has released perl 5.9.2, the first development release in a long time. More details here, and the delta can be found here. demerphq will be pleased to know that his trie optimisation made the cut (but you|he knew that already of course), and ysth will be pleased to learn that Rafael chose a quote from Thomas Pynchon (the author I admire the most in 20th century literature).