All in all, there's still far too many 5.8.5-5.8.9 installations out there.

You complete failed to understand my post. I'm not saying everyone should upgrade (at my current gig, they run end-of-lifed Perls as well). I'm just saying we should stop assuming they still run on 5.8. We should stop saying "well, for this solution, you'd need 5.10". Just as we stopped saying "you need 5.6" or "you need 5.8" years ago.

Both 5.8 and 5.10 are declared end-of-life. If the questioner runs a very old Perl, the burden is on him, not on the person answering.