Perl 5 version history

Perl is an open-source programming language whose first version, 1.0, was released in 1987. The following table contains the Perl 5 version history, showing its release versions. Not all versions are covered yet.

Note that additional minor release versions are not shown in this chart. Additional information can be found on the official Perl website.

Version history

Legend:	Current	Legacy

Version	Release date	Links	Changes
5.32.0	June 20, 2020	Full release notes	isa operator chained comparisons (e.g. 1 <= $x <= 10) Unicode 13.0 is supported
5.30.0	May 22, 2019	Full release notes	Unicode 12.1 support Variable length lookbehind in regular expression patterns
5.28.0	June 22, 2018	Full release notes	Unicode 10.0 is supported delete on key/value hash slices alphabetic synonyms for some regular expression assertions (experimental) Mixed Unicode scripts are now detectable In-place editing with perl -i is now safer Initialisation of aggregate state variables Full-size inode numbers The sprintf %j format size modifier is now available with pre-C99 compilers Close-on-exec flag set atomically String- and number-specific bitwise ops are no longer experimental Locales are now thread-safe on systems that support them New read-only predefined variable ${^SAFE_LOCALES} Security fixes
5.26.0	May 30, 2017	Full release notes	For security reasons, the current directory (".") is no longer included by default at the end of the module search path (@INC) Lexical subroutines are no longer experimental Indented Here-documents New regular expression modifiers and capture groups Unicode 9.0 is now supported Perl can now do default collation in UTF-8 locales on platforms that support it
5.24.0	May 8, 2016	Full release notes	Unicode 8.0 is now supported. New line break boundary in regular expressions Extended Bracketed Character Classes work in UTF-8 locales More explicit definitions for integer shifting Reordered precision arguments for printf and sprintf More fields provided to sigaction callback
5.22.0	June 1, 2015	Full release notes	Unicode 7.0 is now supported. The historical modules CGI.pm and Module::Build were removed from the core distribution. The double diamond operator Disambiguated bitwise operators (as an experimental feature) Variable aliasing (as an experimental feature)
5.20.0	May 27, 2014	Full release notes	Subroutine signatures (as an experimental feature) Postfix dereferencing (as an experimental feature) Key/value slice syntax
5.18.0	May 18, 2013	Full release notes	regular expression character set operations (as an experimental feature) lexical subroutines (as an experimental feature)
5.16.0	May 20, 2012	Full release notes	__SUB__ for currently-executing subroutine encoding-disambiguated eval
5.14.0	May 14, 2011	Full release notes	Unicode 6.0 is supported Unicode semantics applied to all strings Non-destructive substitution (s///r) Re-entrant regular expressions Automagical dereference by built-ins (later removed)
5.12.0	April 12, 2010	Full release notes	Unicode 5.2 is supported New package NAME VERSION syntax The ... operator added Implicit strictures with use 5.12.0 (or later version) Year 2038 compliance
5.10.0	December 18, 2007	Full release notes	Unicode 5.0 is supported New feature pragma New defined-or operator (//) New switch feature and related smart match operator (~~) Numerous new regular expression features New say built-in (via feature say)
5.8.0	July 18, 2002	Perl 5.8.0 Release Announcement	Supports Unicode 3.2.0 Regular expressions now work with Unicode Support for non-Latin encodings via Encode module Introduction of interpreter threads New PerlIO implementation Improved numeric accuracy for string-number conversion via built-in routine Finalized 64-bit support New modules: Digest::MD5, File::Temp, Filter::Simple, libnet, List::Util, Memoize, MIME::Base64, Scalar::Util, Storable, Switch, Test::More, Test::Simple, Text::Balanced, Tie::File, etc. Incompatibilities: Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with any earlier Perl release 64-bit versions no longer use Perl malloc. hash order changed dump() command becomes obsolete. 5.005 threads are deprecated. user-visible implementation of pseudohashes is deprecated and scheduled for removal Use of tainted data in exec LIST and system LIST issues warning, and will become fatal error in a future release For tr///C, tr///U, pack("C0", ...) and pack("U0", ...) can be used instead
5.6.0	March 22, 2000	Perl v5.6.0 released	Version numbering changed to 'revision.version.subversion' format Internal representation for strings is changed to UTF-8, with EBCDIC support discontinued. Better support for interpreter concurrency. String literals can be written using character ordinals. New syntax for subroutine attributes. (The attrs pragma is now deprecated.) Support for large files, where available. Support for binary numbers. JPL ("Java Perl Lingo") distribution comes bundled with Perl. Much new documentation in the form of tutorials and reference information has been added. Experimental features: Support for Unicode Support for threading, and the fork() emulation on Windows. 64-bit support. Lvalue subroutines. Weak references. Pseudo-hash data type.
5.005	July 22, 1998	5.005 released (with maintenance update 01)	5.005 is not binary compatible with previous releases. Source code now in ANSI C. New supported platforms include BeOS, DOS, MPE/ix. EXPR foreach EXPR syntax is supported. Experimental features: C++ Perl Object abstraction supported on Win32. Precompiled regular expressions. Enhanced 64-bit support. Reliable signals, when threading is enabled. Extended support for exception handling. EGCS/GCC compilers are now supported on Win32.
5.004	May 15, 1997	perl5004delta - what's new for perl5.004
5.003_1	July 31, 1996	Full release notes
5.003	June 25, 1996	Full release notes	Security fixes Bug fixes
5.002_1	March 25, 1996	Full release notes	EMBED namespace changes are now used by default Fixed several bugs in the core Added two new magic variables: $^E and $^O A mechanism was added to allow listing of locally applied patches in the perl -v output Miscellaneous minor corrections and updates were made to the documentation Extensive updates made to the OS/2 and VMS ports Other miscellaneous changes and bug fixes
5.002	February 29, 1996	Full release notes	Added a new feature: Prototypes Extensive upgrades to nearly all of Perl's modules Massive changes to both the configure and build systems Bug fixes
5.001	March 13, 1995	Full release notes	Added two new hooks: $SIG{__WARN__} and $SIG{__DIE__} Added closures Now counts imported routines as "defined" for redef warnings Bug fixes
5.000	October 17, 1994	Full release notes	Near complete rewrite of the interpreter Added Objects Added References Added lexical (my) variables Added modules which allow extending the language without modifying the interpreter