I don't know AIX but your AIX 5.2 is running Perl 5.8.0 so there may be a good chance that the previous AIX upgrade involved a change from the previous stable branch of Perl, 5.6.?, to the next, 5.8.0. This would have been far more problematic than a move from 5.8.0 to 5.8.2 so, hopefully, you will find the proposed upgrade much simpler from a Perl perspective.

I hope it goes smoothly.

Cheers,

JohnGG