It may be salutary to build (from source) 5.8.8 on the same platform with two different compilers, say MVC and gcc.
The gcc compiler (assuming it's the MinGW port) will be using the Microsoft msvcrt.dll anyway. You might be able to find differences between the two if the MVC perl is built with a compiler other than VC6.0, but I find that that Strawberry Perl, ActivePerl, my own gcc-built perl, and my own VC7.0-built perl all produce the same result for the one liner originally presented.
Cheers, Rob
Comment on Re^2: Decimal precision issue: Windows vs. Unix
Rob, thanks for the answer. I wonder if the same sort of differences in floating point behavior could exist between Perl builds on, say, FreeBSD vs different Linux distros, etc.
Ed
Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc