There may be trouble ahead,
        But while there's music and moonlight,
        And love and romance,
        Let's face the music and dance.

        Before the fiddlers have fled,
        Before they ask us to pay the bill,
        And while we still have that chance,
        Let's face the music and dance.

        Soon, we'll be without the moon,
        Humming a different tune, and then,

        There may be teardrops to shed,
        So while there's music and moonlight,
        And love and romance,
        Let's face the music and dance.

                Irving Berlin

Please test it thoroughly and find all the discords so that we can resolve
them before the public performance. Currently it's at

  http://www.ccl4.org/~nick/P/perl-5.8.3-RC1.tar.bz2

(or s/bz2$/gz/ if you really want a 25% larger download.) Please don't
publicise that URL outside p5p  - instead

  ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN/authors/id/N/NW/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.3-RC1.ta...

Once it's propagated round the CPAN mirrors I'll make an announcement
on use.perl

I'm interested in confirmation of binary compatibility between 5.8.3 and
modules compiled under previous 5.8.x releases, and anything which is a new
bug in 5.8.3, particularly if it breaks current modules on CPAN.

  rsync ftp.linux.activestate.com::perl-5.8.x/

will be at RC1 for the next 16 hours or so.

If the only reports are of music, sweet music then I hope to release the
real thing in about 10 days.

Nicholas Clark