What are perl4 and perl5?
Perl4 and perl5 are informal names for different versions of the Perl programming language. It’s easier to say “perl5” than it is to say “the 5 release of Perl”, but some people have interpreted this to mean there’s a language called “perl5”, which isn’t the case. Perl5 is merely the popular name for the fifth major release (October 1994), while perl4 was the fourth major release (March 1991). There was also a perl1 (in January 1988), a perl2 (June 1988), and a perl3 (October 1989).
