Do you mean that the Unicode Standard has moved on from what it was when
5.6.1 was released?
Yes.
What version of Unicode did 5.6.1 support?
3.0.1. (The same as Perl 5.6.0 supported.)
What version of Unicode will 5.8.0 support?
3.2.0.
> 3. In which areas is Perl 5.6.1's Unicode support deficient?
It's based on a model of operators within the scope of the utf8
pragma, wheras 5.8.0 will have a model attached to each scalar.
Do you mean that the utf8 pragma will no longer be required in ANY context?
No. It will be required if you want to write your Perl script in UTF-8.
Other than that, it's unused and uneffective.
--
$jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/
# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
