man > perl5142delta(1)

PERL5142DELTA(1)                  Perl Programmers Reference Guide                  PERL5142DELTA(1)

NAME
       perl5142delta - what is new for perl v5.14.2

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.14.1 release and the 5.14.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.14.0, first read perl5141delta, which
       describes differences between 5.14.0 and 5.14.1.

Core Enhancements
       No changes since 5.14.0.

Security
   File::Glob::bsd_glob() memory error with GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC (CVE-2011-2728).
       Calling "File::Glob::bsd_glob" with the unsupported flag GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC would cause an
       access violation / segfault.  A Perl program that accepts a flags value from an external
       source could expose itself to denial of service or arbitrary code execution attacks.  There
       are no known exploits in the wild.  The problem has been corrected by explicitly disabling
       all unsupported flags and setting unused function pointers to null.  Bug reported by Clément
       Lecigne.

   "Encode" decode_xs n-byte heap-overflow (CVE-2011-2939)
       A bug in "Encode" could, on certain inputs, cause the heap to overflow.  This problem has
       been corrected.  Bug reported by Robert Zacek.

Incompatible Changes
       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.14.0. If any exist, they are bugs and
       reports are welcome.

Deprecations
       There have been no deprecations since 5.14.0.

Modules and Pragmata
   New Modules and Pragmata
       None

   Updated Modules and Pragmata
       •   CPAN has been upgraded from version 1.9600 to version 1.9600_01.

           CPAN::Distribution has been upgraded from version 1.9602 to 1.9602_01.

           Backported   bugfixes   from   CPAN   version   1.9800.    Ensures  proper  detection  of
           "configure_requires"  prerequisites  from   CPAN   Meta   files   in   the   case   where
           "dynamic_config" is true.  [rt.cpan.org #68835]

           Also  ensures  that "configure_requires" is only checked in META files, not MYMETA files,
           so protect against MYMETA generation that drops "configure_requires".

       •   Encode has been upgraded from version 2.42 to 2.42_01.

           See "Security".

       •   File::Glob has been upgraded from version 1.12 to version 1.13.

           See "Security".

       •   PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.11 to 0.11_01.

           It fixes a problem with "open my $fh, ">", \$scalar" not working if $scalar is a copy-on-
           write scalar.

   Removed Modules and Pragmata
       None

Platform Support
   New Platforms
       None

   Discontinued Platforms
       None

   Platform-Specific Notes
       HP-UX PA-RISC/64 now supports gcc-4.x
           A fix to correct the socketsize now makes the  test  suite  pass  on  HP-UX  PA-RISC  for
           64bitall builds.

       Building on OS X 10.7 Lion and Xcode 4 works again
           The build system has been updated to work with the build tools under Mac OS X 10.7.

Bug Fixes
       •   In  @INC  filters (subroutines returned by subroutines in @INC), $_ used to misbehave: If
           returned from a subroutine, it would not be copied, but  the  variable  itself  would  be
           returned;  and  freeing  $_  (e.g., with "undef *_") would cause perl to crash.  This has
           been fixed [perl #91880].

       •   Perl 5.10.0 introduced some faulty logic that made "U*" in the middle of a pack  template
           equivalent to "U0" if the input string was empty.  This has been fixed [perl #90160].

       •   "caller" no longer leaks memory when called from the DB package if @DB::args was assigned
           to after the first call to "caller".  Carp was triggering this bug [perl #97010].

       •   "utf8::decode" had a nasty bug that would modify copy-on-write scalars' string buffers in
           place  (i.e.,  skipping  the copy).  This could result in hashes having two elements with
           the same key [perl #91834].

       •   Localising a tied variable used to make it read-only  if  it  contained  a  copy-on-write
           string.

       •   Elements  of  restricted  hashes  (see the fields pragma) containing copy-on-write values
           couldn't be deleted, nor could such hashes be cleared ("%hash = ()").

       •   Locking a hash element that is a glob copy no longer causes subsequent assignment  to  it
           to corrupt the glob.

       •   A panic involving the combination of the regular expression modifiers "/aa" introduced in
           5.14.0 and the "\b" escape sequence has been fixed [perl #95964].

Known Problems
       This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from 5.12.0.

       •   "PERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT" is broken.

           Since  perl 5.14.0, building with "-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT" hasn't been possible. This means
           that perl currently doesn't work on any platforms that require it to be built  this  way,
           including Symbian.

           While  "PERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT"  now  works  again on recent development versions of perl, it
           actually working on Symbian again hasn't been verified.

           We'd be very interested in hearing from anyone working with Perl on Symbian.

Acknowledgements
       Perl 5.14.2 represents approximately three  months  of  development  since  Perl  5.14.1  and
       contains approximately 1200 lines of changes across 61 files from 9 authors.

       Perl  continues  to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and
       developers.  The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that  became
       Perl 5.14.2:

       Craig  A.  Berry,  David  Golden,  Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, H.Merijn Brand, Karl
       Williamson, Nicholas Clark, Pau Amma and Ricardo Signes.

Reporting Bugs
       If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the  articles  recently  posted  to  the
       comp.lang.perl.misc  newsgroup  and  the  perl  bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .
       There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.

       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug program included with  your
       release.  Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report,
       along  with  the  output of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug AT perl.org to be analysed by
       the Perl porting team.

       If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate  to  send
       to  a  publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report AT perl.org.
       This points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which  includes  all  the  core
       committers,  who  be  able  to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and
       help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across  all  platforms
       on  which  Perl  is  supported.  Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl
       core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.

SEE ALSO
       The Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed.

       The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.

       The README file for general stuff.

       The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.

perl v5.38.2                                 2026-06-12                             PERL5142DELTA(1)