Thanks to some posts to the perl5-porters mailing list (February 12 1996) by Tom Christiansen , Andy Dougherty , and Hal Furuseth ; we have a rough outline of Perl's release history:
  • 1986 perl0
  • 1987 perl1
  • 1988 perl2
  • 1989 perl3
  • 1991 perl4 (well, around Christmas 90, actually, I think)
  • 1992 perl4.036
  • 1993 perl5 alpha/beta (Only the very earliest alpha's were in '93.)
  • 1994 perl5 production (perl5alpha7 came out on March 25, 1994; 5.000 came out on October 17, 1994.)
  • 1995 perl5.001
  • 1996 perl5.002