Circumstance leading up to removal of perl from base?

[Wojciech Puchar]

>
> I know it was a long time ago, but I was talking with a co-worker about why 
> perl was removed from the base in v5 -- I seem to recall a discussion on some 
> mailing list about either the number of arguments or the format of the 
> arguments and/or output of a base perl function having changed between 5.005 
> and 5.6.1.

because it's not needed for programs in base system, but you have ports 
and always can install it.

the rule is keep base system simple and small. it's BSD anyway :)