> Mainly it's the availability of the ``qr//'' quote-like operator.
> Being able to compile an arbitrary regexp is really nice, and makes
> coding the Pure-Perl grep functions much nicer. The rest of the
> search enhancements get much easier and faster.

We should go ahead and require 5.005 if it is deployed sufficiently enough. Let's vote and make a survey on this:

• Vote: Yes/No/Pending
• Deployed versions: List of Perl versions on your machines (find out with: perl -v )

-- PeterThoeny - 15 Jul 2000

The Pure-Perl grep stuff is going to be important given the new abstract File API.

-- NicholasLee - 07 Aug 2000

I can live without it, but it will be slower and the code will be uglier. I'd rather not have to eval anything, but that might be the easiest way to do it without qr//.

-- KevinKinnell - 09 Aug 2000

This discussion was never concluded, but this is to flag that testenv in the TWikiAlphaRelease now complains if the Perl is older than 5.005_03 - since this is several years old (Red Hat 6.2 vintage) I don't think this is a big problem. The core code may still work on 5.004, but it is only being tested on 5.005_03 or later - see the TWikiDocumentation's system requirements section.

-- RichardDonkin - 26 Mar 2002

The core code in the TWikiAlphaRelease will soon require Perl 5.005, due to InternationalisationEnhancements that require the use of the qr// operator to build compiled regex objects. Internationalisation without use of this feature would have some performance hit and be harder to maintain - since there have been no complaints about the testenv script requiring 5.005_03 (most Linux distros have this, even old ones such as Red Hat 6.2), I think this is reasonable. 5.004 is now extremely old - it's three major versions behind, now that 5.8.0 is released.

-- RichardDonkin - 29 Nov 2002