Perl 5.38 was released this week “after being in development for more than one year,” reports Phoronix. “Perl 5.38 brings a new experimental syntax for defining object classes where per-instance data is stored in ‘field’ variables that behave like lexicals.”
“Maybe, just maybe, the new features introduced into the language in this newest version will attract much sought new talent,” writes the site I Programmer, noting the argument that Perl is installed by default everywhere — and has the “fun factor… The class keyword is part of the plan to bring effective OOP to the Perl core while still keeping Perl being Perl.”
The Perl docs warn that “This remains a new and experimental feature, and is very much still under development. It will be the subject of much further addition, refinement and alteration in future releases.” But “Since Perl 5, support for objects revolved around the concept of blessing