If your manager or employees are leery of unsupported software, or software
which doesn't officially ship with your Operating System, you might try to
appeal to their self-interest. If programmers can be more productive using
and utilizing Perl constructs, functionality, simplicity, and power, then
the typical manager/supervisor/employee may be persuaded. Regarding using
Perl in general, it's also sometimes helpful to point out that delivery
times, using Perl, as compared to other languages, may be reduced. If you
have a project which has a bottleneck, especially in terms of translation,
or testing, Perl almost certainly will provide a viable, and quick
solution. In conjunction with any persuasion effort, you should not fail to
point out that Perl is used, quite extensively, and with extremely reliable
and valuable results, at many large computer software and/or hardware
companies throughout the world. In fact, many Unix vendors now ship Perl by
default, and support is usually just a news-posting away, if you can't find
the answer in the comprehensive documentation, including this
FAQ.
If you face reluctance to upgrading from an older version of perl, then point out that version 4 is utterly unmaintained and unsupported by the Perl Development Team. Another big sell for Perl5 is the large number of modules and extensions which greatly reduce development time, for any given task. Also mention that the difference between version 4 and version 5 of Perl is like the difference between awk and
C++. (Well, ok, maybe not quite that distinct, but you get the idea.) If you want support and a reasonable guarantee that what you're developing will continue to work in the future, then you have to run the supported version. That probably means running the 5.004 release, although 5.003 isn't that bad (it's just one year and one release behind). Several important bugs were fixed from the 5.000 through 5.002 versions, though, so try upgrading past them if possible.