feature(3pm)

📦
version 5.42.3 · 10 versions
, in alpine 3.24

💖 feature 💖

okay so bestie, this is the feature page from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide — aka feature(3pm) — and it's literally the pragma that lets Perl grow shiny new syntax without breaking every existing program. 🫶 It's giving "new features, but make it scoped," and the vibe check is immaculate. ✨

💅 NAME 💅

feature — Perl pragma to enable new features. That's the whole point, bestie: turn on the new stuff, no cap. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

use feature qw(fc say);

# Without the "use feature" above, this code would not be able to find
# the built-ins "say" or "fc":
say "The case-folded version of $x is: " . fc $x;

# set features to match the :5.36 bundle, which may turn off or on
# multiple features (see "FEATURE BUNDLES" below)
use feature ':5.36';

# implicitly loads :5.36 feature bundle
use v5.36;

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so real talk: it is usually impossible to add new syntax to Perl without breaking some existing programs. This pragma provides a way to minimize that risk. New syntactic constructs, or new semantic meanings to older constructs, can be enabled by use feature 'foo', and will be parsed only when the appropriate feature pragma is in scope. (Nevertheless, the CORE:: prefix provides access to all Perl keywords, regardless of this pragma.) ✨

💫 Lexical effect 💫

Like other pragmas (use strict, for example), features have a lexical effect. use feature qw(foo) will only make the feature foo available from that point to the end of the enclosing block.

{
    use feature 'say';
    say "say is available here";
}
print "But not here.\n";

🚫 "no feature" 🚫

Features can also be turned off by using no feature "foo". This too has lexical effect.

use feature 'say';
say "say is available here";
{
    no feature 'say';
    print "But not here.\n";
}
say "Yet it is here.";

no feature with no features specified will reset to the default group. To disable all features (an unusual request!) use no feature ':all'.

🌸 AVAILABLE FEATURES 🌸

Read FEATURE BUNDLES for the feature cheat sheet summary.

✨ The 'say' feature ✨

use feature 'say' tells the compiler to enable the Raku-inspired say function.

See say in perlfunc for details.

This feature is available starting with Perl 5.10.

🌟 The 'state' feature 🌟

use feature 'state' tells the compiler to enable state variables.

See Persistent Private Variables in perlsub for details.

This feature is available starting with Perl 5.10.

💥 The 'smartmatch' feature 💥

use feature 'smartmatch' tells the compiler to enable the smartmatch operator ~~. It is enabled by default, but can be turned off to disallow the ~~ operator.

This feature is disabled by default in the 5.42 feature bundle onwards:

$x ~~ $y; # fine
use v5.42;
$x ~~ $y; # error

This has no effect on the implicit smartmatches done by when.

See Smartmatch Operator in perlop for details.

🔀 The 'switch' feature 🔀

use feature 'switch' tells the compiler to enable the Raku given/when construct.

See Switch Statements in perlsyn for details.

This feature is available starting with Perl 5.10. It is enabled by feature bundles 5.10 through 5.34, and disabled from the 5.36 feature bundle onwards.

🌈 The 'unicode_strings' feature 🌈

use feature 'unicode_strings' tells the compiler to use Unicode rules in all string operations executed within its scope (unless they are also within the scope of either use locale or use bytes). The same applies to all regular expressions compiled within the scope, even if executed outside it. It does not change the internal representation of strings, but only how they are interpreted.

no feature 'unicode_strings' tells the compiler to use the traditional Perl rules wherein the native character set rules is used unless it is clear to Perl that Unicode is desired. This can lead to some surprises when the behavior suddenly changes. (See The "Unicode Bug" in perlunicode for details.) For this reason, if you are potentially using Unicode in your program, the use feature 'unicode_strings' subpragma is strongly recommended.

This feature is available starting with Perl 5.12; was almost fully implemented in Perl 5.14; and extended in Perl 5.16 to cover quotemeta; was extended further in Perl 5.26 to cover the range operator; and was extended again in Perl 5.28 to cover special-cased whitespace splitting.

🧬 The 'unicode_eval' and 'evalbytes' features 🧬

Together, these two features are intended to replace the legacy string eval function, which behaves problematically in some instances. They are available starting with Perl 5.16, and are enabled by default by a use 5.16 or higher declaration.

unicode_eval changes the behavior of plain string eval to work more consistently, especially in the Unicode world. Certain (mis)behaviors couldn't be changed without breaking some things that had come to rely on them, so the feature can be enabled and disabled. Details are at Under the "unicode_eval" feature in perlfunc.

evalbytes is like string eval, but it treats its argument as a byte string. Details are at evalbytes EXPR in perlfunc. Without a use feature 'evalbytes' nor a use v5.16 (or higher) declaration in the current scope, you can still access it by instead writing CORE::evalbytes.

🌀 The 'current_sub' feature 🌀

This provides the __SUB__ token that returns a reference to the current subroutine or undef outside of a subroutine.

This feature is available starting with Perl 5.16.

📼 The 'array_base' feature 📼

This feature supported the legacy $[ variable. See $[ in perlvar. It was on by default but disabled under use v5.16 (see IMPLICIT LOADING, below) and unavailable since perl 5.30.

This feature is available under this name starting with Perl 5.16. In previous versions, it was simply on all the time, and this pragma knew nothing about it.

🔤 The 'fc' feature 🔤

use feature 'fc' tells the compiler to enable the fc function, which implements Unicode casefolding.

See fc in perlfunc for details.

This feature is available from Perl 5.16 onwards.

🧪 The 'lexical_subs' feature 🧪

In Perl versions prior to 5.26, this feature enabled declaration of subroutines via my sub foo, state sub foo and our sub foo syntax. See Lexical Subroutines in perlsub for details.

This feature is available from Perl 5.18 onwards. From Perl 5.18 to 5.24, it was classed as experimental, and Perl emitted a warning for its usage, except when explicitly disabled:

no warnings "experimental::lexical_subs";

As of Perl 5.26, use of this feature no longer triggers a warning, though the experimental::lexical_subs warning category still exists (for compatibility with code that disables it). In addition, this syntax is not only no longer experimental, but it is enabled for all Perl code, regardless of what feature declarations are in scope.

💫 The 'postderef' and 'postderef_qq' features 💫

The 'postderef_qq' feature extends the applicability of postfix dereference syntax so that postfix array dereference, postfix scalar dereference, and postfix array highest index access are available in double-quotish interpolations. For example, it makes the following two statements equivalent:

my $s = "[@{ $h->{a} }]";
my $s = "[$h->{a}->@*]";

This feature is available from Perl 5.20 onwards. In Perl 5.20 and 5.22, it was classed as experimental, and Perl emitted a warning for its usage, except when explicitly disabled:

no warnings "experimental::postderef";

As of Perl 5.24, use of this feature no longer triggers a warning, though the experimental::postderef warning category still exists (for compatibility with code that disables it).

The 'postderef' feature was used in Perl 5.20 and Perl 5.22 to enable postfix dereference syntax outside double-quotish interpolations. In those versions, using it triggered the experimental::postderef warning in the same way as the 'postderef_qq' feature did. As of Perl 5.24, this syntax is not only no longer experimental, but it is enabled for all Perl code, regardless of what feature declarations are in scope.

🎁 The 'signatures' feature 🎁

This enables syntax for declaring subroutine arguments as lexical variables. For example, for this subroutine:

sub foo ($left, $right) {
    return $left + $right;
}

Calling foo(3, 7) will assign 3 into $left and 7 into $right.

See Signatures in perlsub for details.

This feature is available from Perl 5.20 onwards. From Perl 5.20 to 5.34, it was classed as experimental, and Perl emitted a warning for its usage, except when explicitly disabled:

no warnings "experimental::signatures";

As of Perl 5.36, use of this feature no longer triggers a warning, though the experimental::signatures warning category still exists (for compatibility with code that disables it). This feature is now considered stable, and is enabled automatically by use v5.36 (or higher).

🔥 The 'refaliasing' feature 🔥

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::refaliasing";

This enables aliasing via assignment to references:

\$a = \$b; # $a and $b now point to the same scalar
\@a = \@b; #                     to the same array
\%a = \%b;
\&a = \&b;
foreach \%hash (@array_of_hash_refs) {
    ...
}

See Assigning to References in perlref for details.

This feature is available from Perl 5.22 onwards.

🎨 The 'bitwise' feature 🎨

This makes the four standard bitwise operators (& | ^ ~) treat their operands consistently as numbers, and introduces four new dotted operators (&. |. ^. ~.) that treat their operands consistently as strings. The same applies to the assignment variants (&= |= ^= &.= |.= ^.=).

See Bitwise String Operators in perlop for details.

This feature is available from Perl 5.22 onwards. Starting in Perl 5.28, use v5.28 will enable the feature. Before 5.28, it was still experimental and would emit a warning in the experimental::bitwise category.

🧚 The 'declared_refs' feature 🧚

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::declared_refs";

This allows a reference to a variable to be declared with my, state, or our, or localized with local. It is intended mainly for use in conjunction with the refaliasing feature. See Declaring a Reference to a Variable in perlref for examples.

This feature is available from Perl 5.26 onwards.

The 'isa' feature ✨

Okay so this one unlocks the isa infix operator — the vibe check operator, basically. It tests whether the scalar given by the left operand is an object of the class given by the right operand. For the full lore, see "Class Instance Operator" in perlop. 🫶

This feature is available from Perl 5.32 onwards. From Perl 5.32 to 5.34, it was classed as experimental, and Perl emitted a warning for its usage, except when explicitly disabled:

no warnings "experimental::isa";

As of Perl 5.36, use of this feature no longer triggers a warning (though the experimental::isa warning category still exists for compatibility with code that disables it). This feature is now considered stable, and is enabled automatically by use v5.36 (or higher). 👑

The 'indirect' feature 🌀

This feature allows the use of indirect object syntax for method calls, e.g. new Foo 1, 2;. It is enabled by default, but can be turned off to disallow indirect object syntax.

This feature is available under this name from Perl 5.32 onwards. In previous versions, it was simply on all the time. To disallow (or warn on) indirect object syntax on older Perls, see the indirect CPAN module. It is disabled from the 5.36 feature bundle onwards.

The 'multidimensional' feature 🧊

This feature enables multidimensional array emulation, a perl 4 (or earlier) feature that was used to emulate multidimensional arrays with hashes. This works by converting code like $foo{$x, $y} into $foo{join($;, $x, $y)}. It is enabled by default, but can be turned off to disable multidimensional array emulation.

When this feature is disabled the syntax that is normally replaced will report a compilation error. 💀

This feature is available under this name from Perl 5.34 onwards. In previous versions, it was simply on all the time. It is disabled from the 5.36 feature bundle onwards.

You can use the multidimensional module on CPAN to disable multidimensional array emulation for older versions of Perl.

The 'bareword_filehandles' feature 🎀

This feature enables bareword filehandles for builtin functions operations, a generally discouraged practice. It is enabled by default, but can be turned off to disable bareword filehandles, except for the exceptions listed below.

The perl built-in filehandles STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, DATA, ARGV, ARGVOUT and the special _ are always enabled.

This feature is available under this name from Perl 5.34 onwards. In previous versions it was simply on all the time. It is disabled from the 5.38 feature bundle onwards.

You can use the bareword::filehandles module on CPAN to disable bareword filehandles for older versions of perl.

The 'try' feature 🛟

WARNING: This feature is still partly experimental, and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl.

This feature enables the try and catch syntax, which allows exception handling, where exceptions thrown from the body of the block introduced with try are caught by executing the body of the catch block.

This feature is available starting in Perl 5.34. Before Perl 5.40 it was classed as experimental, and Perl emitted a warning for its usage, except when explicitly disabled:

no warnings "experimental::try";

As of Perl 5.40, use of this feature without a finally block no longer triggers a warning. The optional finally block is still considered experimental and emits a warning, except when explicitly disabled as above.

For more information, see "Try Catch Exception Handling" in perlsyn.

The 'defer' feature ⏳

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::defer";

This feature enables the defer block syntax, which allows a block of code to be deferred until when the flow of control leaves the block which contained it. For more details, see "defer" in perlsyn.

This feature is available starting in Perl 5.36.

The 'extra_paired_delimiters' feature 🌸

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::extra_paired_delimiters";

This feature enables the use of more paired string delimiters than the traditional four, "< >", "( )", "{ }", and "[ ]". When this feature is on, for example, you can say qr«pat». 🦋

As with any usage of non-ASCII delimiters in a UTF-8-encoded source file, you will want to ensure the parser will decode the source code from UTF-8 bytes with a declaration such as use utf8.

This feature is available starting in Perl 5.36.

For a full list of the available characters, see "List of Extra Paired Delimiters" in perlop.

The 'module_true' feature 🧚

This feature removes the need to return a true value at the end of a module loaded with require or use. Any errors during compilation will cause failures, but reaching the end of the module when this feature is in effect will prevent perl from throwing an exception that the module "did not return a true value". ✨

The 'class' feature 👑

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::class";

This feature enables the class block syntax and other associated keywords which implement the "new" object system, previously codenamed "Corinna".

The 'apostrophe_as_package_separator' feature 🪄

This feature enables use "'" (apostrophe) as an alternative to using "::" as a separator in package and other global names.

This is enabled by default, but disabled from the 5.42 feature bundle onwards. In previous versions it was enabled all the time.

This only disables "'" in symbols in your source code, the internal conversion from "'" to "::", including for symbolic references, is always enabled.

The 'keyword_any' feature 🔍

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::keyword_any";

This feature enables the any operator keyword. It lets you test whether any of the values in a list satisfy a given condition, with short-circuiting behaviour as soon as it finds one.

The 'keyword_all' feature ✅

WARNING: This feature is still experimental and the implementation may change or be removed in future versions of Perl. For this reason, Perl will warn when you use the feature, unless you have explicitly disabled the warning:
no warnings "experimental::keyword_all";

This feature enables the all operator keyword. It lets you test whether all of the values in a list satisfy a given condition, with short-circuiting behaviour as soon as it finds one that does not.

🎀 FEATURE BUNDLES 🎀

okay so bestie, you can load multiple features together using a feature bundle ✨. The bundle name is prefixed with a colon so Perl knows it’s a bundle and not an actual feature. iconic behavior, honestly.

use feature ":5.10";

The following feature bundles are available — no cap, this is the whole lineup:

bundle    features included
--------- -----------------
:default  indirect multidimensional
          bareword_filehandles
          apostrophe_as_package_separator smartmatch

:5.10     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles indirect
          multidimensional say smartmatch state switch

:5.12     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles indirect
          multidimensional say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_strings

:5.14     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles indirect
          multidimensional say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_strings

:5.16     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional say smartmatch
          state switch unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.18     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional say smartmatch
          state switch unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.20     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional say smartmatch
          state switch unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.22     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional say smartmatch
          state switch unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.24     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional postderef_qq
          say smartmatch state switch unicode_eval
          unicode_strings

:5.26     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles current_sub evalbytes
          fc indirect multidimensional postderef_qq
          say smartmatch state switch unicode_eval
          unicode_strings

:5.28     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles bitwise current_sub
          evalbytes fc indirect multidimensional
          postderef_qq say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.30     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles bitwise current_sub
          evalbytes fc indirect multidimensional
          postderef_qq say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.32     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles bitwise current_sub
          evalbytes fc indirect multidimensional
          postderef_qq say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.34     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles bitwise current_sub
          evalbytes fc indirect multidimensional
          postderef_qq say smartmatch state switch
          unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.36     apostrophe_as_package_separator
          bareword_filehandles bitwise current_sub
          evalbytes fc isa postderef_qq say signatures
          smartmatch state unicode_eval
          unicode_strings

:5.38     apostrophe_as_package_separator bitwise
          current_sub evalbytes fc isa module_true
          postderef_qq say signatures smartmatch state
          unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.40     apostrophe_as_package_separator bitwise
          current_sub evalbytes fc isa module_true
          postderef_qq say signatures smartmatch state
          try unicode_eval unicode_strings

:5.42     bitwise current_sub evalbytes fc isa
          module_true postderef_qq say signatures
          state try unicode_eval unicode_strings

The :default bundle is literally the feature set that’s enabled before any use feature or no feature declaration 🫶.

Specifying sub-versions like the 0 in 5.14.0 in feature bundles has no effect — feature bundles are guaranteed to be the same for all sub-versions. so you can chill about that 💅.

use feature ":5.14.0";    # same as ":5.14"
use feature ":5.14.1";    # same as ":5.14"

You can also do:

use feature ":all";

or

no feature ":all";
but heads up, bestie 😭: the first may enable features in a later version of Perl that change the meaning of your code, and the second may disable mechanisms that are part of Perl’s current behavior that have been turned into features, just as indirect and bareword_filehandles were. so yeah, :all is giving main character energy but maybe read the room first 💀.

🦋 IMPLICIT LOADING 🦋

Instead of loading feature bundles by name, it’s easier to let Perl do the implicit loading of a feature bundle for you. yes ma’am, Perl’s got you ✨.

There are two ways to load the feature pragma implicitly:

  • By using the -E switch on the Perl command-line instead of -e. That will enable the feature bundle for that version of Perl in the main compilation unit — that is, the one-liner that follows -E.
  • By explicitly requiring a minimum Perl version number for your program, with the use VERSION construct. Like this:
use v5.36.0;

will do an implicit

no feature ':all';
use feature ':5.36';

and so on. Note how the trailing sub-version is automatically stripped from the version 👑.

But to avoid portability warnings — see "use" in perlfunc — you may prefer:

use 5.036;

with the same effect 💖.

If the required version is older than Perl 5.10, the :default feature bundle is automatically loaded instead.

Unlike use feature ":5.12", saying use v5.12 (or any higher version) also does the equivalent of use strict; see "use" in perlfunc for details. the more you know 🌈.

💅 CHECKING FEATURES 💅

feature provides some simple APIs to check which features are enabled. detective era, honestly 🔍✨.

These functions cannot be imported and must be called by their fully qualified names. If you don’t otherwise need to set a feature, you’ll need to ensure feature is loaded with:

use feature ();

✨ feature_enabled($feature) / feature_enabled($feature, $depth) ✨

package MyStandardEnforcer;
use feature ();
use Carp "croak";
sub import {
  croak "disable indirect!" if feature::feature_enabled("indirect");
}

Test whether a named feature is enabled at a given level in the call stack, returning a true value if it is ✅. $depth defaults to 1, which checks the scope that called the scope calling feature::feature_enabled().

croaks for an unknown feature name. rude but fair 😭.

🌸 features_enabled() / features_enabled($depth) 🌸

package ReportEnabledFeatures;
use feature "say";
sub import {
  say STDERR join " ", feature::features_enabled();
}

Returns a list of the features enabled at a given level in the call stack 📋. $depth defaults to 1, which checks the scope that called the scope calling feature::features_enabled().

🎀 feature_bundle() / feature_bundle($depth) 🎀

Returns the feature bundle, if any, selected at a given level in the call stack. $depth defaults to 1, which checks the scope that called the scope calling feature::feature_bundle().

Returns an undefined value if no feature bundle is selected in the scope.

The bundle name returned will be for the earliest bundle matching the selected bundle, so:

use feature ();
use v5.12;
BEGIN { print feature::feature_bundle(0); }

will print 5.11.

This returns internal state, at this point use v5.12; sets the feature bundle, but use feature ":5.12"; does not set the feature bundle. This may change in a future release of perl. internal state lore iykyk 🧚.

Stay slaying, bestie 💖 — this was feature(3pm) from Perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03. periodt 🫶✨

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