Re: Writing for backwards compatibility

~~<nit>3-arg open was added in 5.005_03, not 5.6.</nit>~~

Update: Don't you just hate being completely and thoroughly being proven wrong? I do ... :-/

I've just spent a while rewriting Tree::Simple into Tree and reworking PDF::Template. After discussion with stvn, we decided to require 5.6 as a minimum Perl version. We don't see a lot of benefit in attempting to maintain compat with anything before that.

In our work, we target 5.8.6 as a minimum. For one thing, Unicode is handled much better (though not perfectly) in 5.8, which is nice. As for other features, it's nice to know that one has a better toolbox to reach for, even if one doesn't use them on a regular basis (or ever!)

Other languages have the same issue. For example, in JS, there's no reason to target anything under 1.5 - all modern browsers implement 1.5 (for some value of "implement") and attempting to write JS for pre-1.5 is an exercise in baldness. Ruby is the same way - 1.8 is the modern version, so I target it. (Ruby's dbi is written under 1.6, which makes it throw warnings under 1.8 - very annoying!)

My criteria for good software:

Does it work?
Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

Comment on Re: Writing for backwards compatibility

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Re^2: Writing for backwards compatibility by xdg (Monsignor) on Nov 08, 2005 at 20:24 UTC
<nit>3-arg open was added in 5.005_03, not 5.6.</nit> Really? If that's true, it seems to be undocumented (or obscurely documented). I was basing my statement off of perl56delta listing it as a core enhancement. And there's no reference to it in `perlfunc` in 5.005_03. Compare "open" in these two: http://search.cpan.org/~gbarr/perl5.005_03/pod/perlfunc.pod http://search.cpan.org/~gsar/perl-5.6.0/pod/perlfunc.pod -xdg Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^2: Writing for backwards compatibility
by xdg (Monsignor) on Nov 08, 2005 at 20:24 UTC

<nit>3-arg open was added in 5.005_03, not 5.6.</nit>

Really? If that's true, it seems to be undocumented (or obscurely documented). I was basing my statement off of perl56delta listing it as a core enhancement. And there's no reference to it in perlfunc in 5.005_03. Compare "open" in these two:

-xdg

Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.

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