CONTENTS

• NAME
• DESCRIPTION
• INTRODUCTION
• THE KEEPERS OF THE PUMPKIN
  • PUMPKIN?
• THE RECORDS
  • SELECTED RELEASE SIZES
  • SELECTED PATCH SIZES
• THE KEEPERS OF THE RECORDS

#NAME

perlhist - the Perl history records

#DESCRIPTION

This document aims to record the Perl source code releases.

#INTRODUCTION

Perl history in brief, by Larry Wall:

Perl 0 introduced Perl to my officemates.
Perl 1 introduced Perl to the world, and changed /\(...\|...\)/ to
    /(...|...)/.  \(Dan Faigin still hasn't forgiven me. :-\)
Perl 2 introduced Henry Spencer's regular expression package.
Perl 3 introduced the ability to handle binary data (embedded nulls).
Perl 4 introduced the first Camel book.  Really.  We mostly just
    switched version numbers so the book could refer to 4.000.
Perl 5 introduced everything else, including the ability to
    introduce everything else.

#THE KEEPERS OF THE PUMPKIN

Larry Wall, Andy Dougherty, Tom Christiansen, Charles Bailey, Nick Ing-Simmons, Chip Salzenberg, Tim Bunce, Malcolm Beattie, Gurusamy Sarathy, Graham Barr, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Hugo van der Sanden, Michael Schwern, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Nicholas Clark, Richard Clamp, Leon Brocard.

#PUMPKIN?

[from Porting/pumpkin.pod in the Perl source code distribution]

Chip Salzenberg gets credit for that, with a nod to his cow orker, David Croy. We had passed around various names (baton, token, hot potato) but none caught on. Then, Chip asked:

[begin quote]

Who has the patch pumpkin?

To explain: David Croy once told me once that at a previous job, there was one tape drive and multiple systems that used it for backups. But instead of some high-tech exclusion software, they used a low-tech method to prevent multiple simultaneous backups: a stuffed pumpkin. No one was allowed to make backups unless they had the "backup pumpkin".

[end quote]

The name has stuck. The holder of the pumpkin is sometimes called the pumpking (keeping the source afloat?) or the pumpkineer (pulling the strings?).

#