To clarify a few things...
The base version, upon which I made all my changes was 5.0. However, I think 5.2 was identical, as the only changes Eric made were in the programs which use the library, not the library itself.
The NEW_SPLIT code was just something he posted on the forum at bjmath.com, in response to some questioning. Unfortunately, that forum is down at the moment (don't know if it will ever come back up), so it's not possible to review all the discussions that went on there.
Both the old and new splitting code account for all the possible splits and resplits which may occur in order to calculate the EV of an initial pair. But they do it differently.
Consider an example -
Suppose you are evaluating 9,9 vs 2. When evaluating the split, you have to look at all the possible 9,X vs 2 hands (one half of the split), in the context of a shoe that has had one 9 removed. (And when X=9, there is the possibility of a resplit, meaning the same process must be repeated with two 9s removed from the shoe, and so on.)
Now consider the case when X=4. We will already have calculated the EVs for every possible action on 9,4 vs 2 for the full shoe, and found that standing was the highest.
Eric's original code dictates that the post-split strategy will always be to stand on the 9,4 vs 2, without checking whether hitting is now a better option (which it might be, because the missing 9 is one of the cards that would bust the hand if we hit). And if standing is actually still better that might not remain the case after further resplits, but again the code will always stand.
What the code
does do, however, is recalculate the EV for the post-split hand, in the context of the missing nine(s), and feed this into the calculation of the overall EV for splitting the original 9,9 pair.
The NEW_SPLIT code, however, will pick the action on 9,4 vs 2 with the highest EV in the context of the missing nine(s).
As I recall, the figures the new code produces match those of Cacarulo, on bjmath.com, and in the book Blackjack Attack III.
Hope all that makes sense.