Editing Perl (section)

=== Perl 7 ===

In June 2020, Perl 7 was announced as the successor to Perl 5.<ref name="perl7announced">{{cite web |url=https://news.perlfoundation.org/post/perl_7_announced_sawyerx_conference |title=Perl 7 announced at Perl Conference in the Cloud |publisher=perlfoundation.org |date=2020-06-24 |access-date=2020-06-24 |archive-date=June 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626213418/https://news.perlfoundation.org/post/perl_7_announced_sawyerx_conference |url-status=live}}</ref> Perl 7 was to initially be based on Perl 5.32 with a release expected in first half of 2021, and release candidates sooner.<ref name="perl7">{{cite web |url=https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ |title=Announcing Perl 7 |publisher=perl.com |date=2020-06-24 |access-date=2020-06-24 |archive-date=June 24, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200624160531/https://www.perl.com/article/announcing-perl-7/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

This plan was revised in May 2021, without any release timeframe or version of Perl 5 for use as a baseline specified.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Steering Council meeting #019 2021-05-06|url=https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2021/05/msg260050.html|last1=Clark|first1=Nicholas|date=2021-05-09|quote=The plan remains that there will be a Perl 7 bump, but not immediately after 5.34.0 is released.{{nbsp}}... We don't think that we can deliver on [Perl 7] in 12 months.|access-date=2021-05-17|website=www.nntp.perl.org|archive-date=2021-05-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210518015233/https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2021/05/msg260050.html|url-status=live}}</ref> When Perl 7 would be released, Perl 5 would have gone into long term maintenance. Supported Perl 5 versions however would continue to get important security and bug fixes.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://leanpub.com/preparing_for_perl7 |title=Preparing for Perl 7d |publisher=leanpub.com |date=2020-06-24 |access-date=2020-06-24 |archive-date=June 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200625004047/https://leanpub.com/preparing_for_perl7 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Perl 7 was announced on 24 June 2020 at "The Perl Conference in the Cloud" as the successor to Perl 5.<ref name="perl7"/><ref name="perl7announced"/> Based on Perl 5.32, Perl 7 was planned to be [[Backward compatibility|backward compatible]] with modern Perl 5 code; Perl 5 code, without [[Boilerplate code|boilerplate]] (pragma) header needs adding <code>use compat::perl5;</code> to stay compatible, but modern code can drop some of the boilerplate.

The plan to go to Perl 7 brought up more discussion, however, and the Perl Steering Committee canceled it to avoid issues with backward compatibility for scripts that were not written to the pragmas and modules that would become the default in Perl 7. Perl 7 will only come out when the developers add enough features to warrant a major release upgrade.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Perl Steering Council |title=What happened to Perl 7? |url=https://blogs.perl.org/users/psc/2022/05/what-happened-to-perl-7.html |website=blogs.perl.org |access-date=7 July 2022}}</ref>