perlver should die if the script doesn't compile

[pryrt]

After reading this perlmonks post, I did some investigating, and narrowed it down to 3 separate bugs or feature requests, which I'm raising as three separate issues.

I would think that if the script that you pass to perlver doesn't compile, it wouldn't try to tell you what version is required. For example, the code:

code: doesnt_compile.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

say "Hello";

Running perlver doesnt_compile.pl yields:

   ------------------------------------------------
 | file              | explicit | syntax | external |
 | ------------------------------------------------ |
 | doesnt_compile.pl | ~        | ~      | n/a      |
 | ------------------------------------------------ |
 | Minimum explicit version : ~                             |
 | Minimum syntax version   : ~                             |
 | Minimum version of perl  : v5.4.0 (default)              |
   ------------------------------------------------

I would expect this to die with some sort of error message. Maybe "cannot compile 'doesnt_compile.pl' so cannot determine minimum perl version required"

(If I add the use feature qw(say);, it will compile, and perlver correctly tells me it needs v5.10.0.)

(verified with perlver v1.40 on Perl 5.32)

[Grinnz]

perlver is a static analysis tool, and thus determining whether your code compiles is, in my opinion, beyond its scope.

[pryrt]

The script it is analyzing is calling say: either it needs to tell you that it requires 5.10, or it needs to admit it cannot figure out the minimum perl required. It does neither of these.

[Grinnz]

There are many ways for 'say' to be valid syntax that do not require 5.10, the most common being a declared sub say.