How has support for printing Unicode on Windows changed across recent Perl versions?

Perl's support for printing Unicode on Windows has evolved significantly over the years, particularly from version 5.8 onwards. Each version has introduced enhancements that make it easier to handle Unicode data. In recent versions, Perl has improved its handling of UTF-8 encoding, making it more straightforward for developers to output Unicode characters directly to the console.

One of the most notable changes is the improved support for UTF-8 in the STDOUT and STDERR filehandles. This means that when printing Unicode strings, developers no longer need to explicitly encode them to UTF-8, simplifying the process and reducing the risk of encoding errors.

Overall, these improvements have made Perl a more robust option for developing applications that require Unicode support on Windows platforms.