[a-z] class in EBCDIC and Perl-MVS status question

Hi all
1.  In the last few months, I see periodically, some email speaking about 'smoke' tests.  Some pass and some fail.  It is not clear whether Perl for z/OS is ready or not.  Could somebody please shed some lite on the situation.  And if it is stable, where could I download it from (including installation instructions.)


2. The Perlre in perldocs (5.20), document states:
 (The following all specify the same class of three characters: [-az] , [az-] , and [a\-z] . All are different from [a-z] , which specifies a class containing twenty-six characters, even on EBCDIC-based character sets.)
The implication is that Perl somehow recognizes [a-z] and treats it as a special case in EBCDIC and ignore the non-letters gaps.  Do I understand it correctly and is it implemented as advertised?


Ze'ev Atlas