Perl v5.38 New Features

These items are in Perl New Features, a book from Perl School that you can buy on LeanPub or Amazon. Your support helps me to produce more content.


  • Perl 4 package separators are deprecated
  • user-defined bareword file handles are disabled with use v5.38
  • the new class feature
  • compilation stops on the first syntax error
  • deprecations now have subcategories
  • the new ${^LAST_SUCCESSFUL_PATTERN} variable
  • modules no longer have to return a true value
  • signatures can specify a default value if an argument is undefined or false
  • the switch feature is deprecated and scheduled for removal
  • Unicode 15