From comp.lang.perl Sun Oct 10 13:30:24 1993
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Path: ruuinf!sun4nl!mcsun!uunet!usc!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!galaxy.ucr.edu!network.ucsd.edu!news.cerf.net!netlabs!lwall
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Subject: Alpha 3 available
Message-ID: <1993Oct10.070614.25916@netlabs.com>
Sender: news@netlabs.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: scalpel.netlabs.com
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.
References: <1993Aug16.181531.4345@netlabs.com>
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1993 07:06:14 GMT
Lines: 50

The Alpha 3 prerelease version of Perl 5 is now available.

New in Alpha 3:
    Many bug fixes from Alpha 2.

    The caller function now returns a false value in a scalar context if there
    is no caller.  This lets library files determine if they're being required.

    m//g now attaches its state to the searched string rather than the
    regular expression.

    The -w switch is much more informative.

    Subroutines may now be called as list operators if they've already
    been declared.

    BEGIN subroutines now execute the moment they're parsed, and can thus
    be used to require things before the rest of the script is parsed.
    This has at least three benefits.  You can use required subroutines
    as if they were built-in list operators.  These requires are done before
    the -w typo check, so there are fewer false alarms.  And you can write
    an infinitely long script by writing a sequence of BEGIN{} blocks--each
    will be thrown away as soon as it has executed.

    Lexical scoping available via "my".  eval can see the current lexical
    variables.  The debugger knows about "my".

    Saying "package;" requires explicit package name on global symbols.

    The debugger works now.  Hmm.  I take that back.  I must have busted it
    with the BEGIN changes.  Darn.  Remove the "BEGIN" from toke.c if you
    want it to work.

Like the Alpha 2 prerelease, this is an unsupported code.  It is
expected to work only on a Sparc architecture machine.  No Configure
support is provided.  In fact, if you succeed in configuring and making
a new makefile, you'll probably overwrite the only makefile that
works.  (Note that a Sparc executable comes with the kit, so you may
not need to compile at all.)

Look in the Changes file for a more complete list of everything that's
new in Perl 5.

The kit is located on ftp.netlabs.com, in pub/outgoing/perl5.0/perl5a3.tar.Z.

Enjoy.

Larry



