# perl588delta - what is new for perl v5.8.8 - man(1) - [phpMan]

[_PERL588DELTA_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PERL588DELTA/1/markdown)                   Perl Programmers Reference Guide                   [_PERL588DELTA_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PERL588DELTA/1/markdown)

## NAME
       perl588delta - what is new for perl v5.8.8

## DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.8.7 release and the 5.8.8 release.

## Incompatible Changes
       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.8.7. If any exist, they are bugs and
       reports are welcome.

## Core Enhancements
       •   "chdir",  "chmod"  and  "chown"  can now work on filehandles as well as filenames, if the
           system supports respectively "fchdir", "fchmod" and "fchown", thanks to a patch  provided
           by Gisle Aas.

## Modules and Pragmata
       •   "[Attribute::Handlers](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Attribute%3A%3AHandlers/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.78_02

           •   Documentation typo fix

       •   "attrs" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Internal cleanup only

       •   "autouse" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   Simplified implementation

       •   "B" upgraded to version 1.09_01

           •   The  inheritance  hierarchy  of  the  "B::"  modules  has been corrected; "[B::NV](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/B%3A%3ANV/markdown)" now
               inherits from "[B::SV](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/B%3A%3ASV/markdown)" (instead of "[B::IV](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/B%3A%3AIV/markdown)").

       •   "blib" upgraded to version 1.03

           •   Documentation typo fix

       •   "ByteLoader" upgraded to version 0.06

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "CGI" upgraded to version 3.15

           •   Extraneous "?" from self_url() removed

           •   scrolling_list() select attribute fixed

           •   "virtual_port" now works properly with the https protocol

           •   upload_hook() and append() now works in function-oriented mode

           •   "POST_MAX" doesn't cause the client to hang any more

           •   Automatic tab indexes are now disabled and new "-tabindex" pragma has been  added  to
               turn automatic indexes back on

           •   end_form() doesn't emit empty (and non-validating) "<div>"

           •   "[CGI::Carp](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/CGI%3A%3ACarp/markdown)" works better in certain mod_perl configurations

           •   Setting $[CGI::TMPDIRECTORY](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/CGI%3A%3ATMPDIRECTORY/markdown) is now effective

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "charnames" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   viacode() now accept hex strings and has been optimized.

       •   "CPAN" upgraded to version 1.76_02

           •   1 minor bug fix for Win32

       •   "Cwd" upgraded to version 3.12

           •   canonpath() on Win32 now collapses _foo\.._ sections correctly.

           •   Improved behaviour on Symbian OS.

           •   Enhanced documentation and typo fixes

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[Data::Dumper](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Data%3A%3ADumper/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.121_08

           •   A  problem  where  "[Data::Dumper](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Data%3A%3ADumper/markdown)" would sometimes update the iterator state of hashes
               has been fixed

           •   Numeric labels now work

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "DB" upgraded to version 1.01

           •   A problem where the state of the regexp engine would  sometimes  get  clobbered  when
               running under the debugger has been fixed.

       •   "DB_File" upgraded to version 1.814

           •   Adds support for Berkeley DB 4.4.

       •   "[Devel::DProf](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Devel%3A%3ADProf/markdown)" upgraded to version 20050603.00

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[Devel::Peek](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Devel%3A%3APeek/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.03

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[Devel::PPPort](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Devel%3A%3APPPort/markdown)" upgraded to version 3.06_01

           •   "--compat-version" argument checking has been improved

           •   Files passed on the command line are filtered by default

           •   "--nofilter" option to override the filtering has been added

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "diagnostics" upgraded to version 1.15

           •   Documentation typo fix

       •   "Digest" upgraded to version 1.14

           •   The constructor now knows which module implements SHA-224

           •   Documentation tweaks and typo fixes

       •   "[Digest::MD5](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Digest%3A%3AMD5/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.36

           •   "XSLoader" is now used for faster loading

           •   Enhanced documentation including MD5 weaknesses discovered lately

       •   "Dumpvalue" upgraded to version 1.12

           •   Documentation fix

       •   "DynaLoader"  upgraded  but  unfortunately we're not able to increment its version number
           :-(

           •   Implements "dl_unload_file" on Win32

           •   Internal cleanup

           •   "XSLoader" 0.06 incorporated; small optimisation for calling bootstrap_inherit()  and
               documentation enhancements.

       •   "Encode" upgraded to version 2.12

           •   A coderef is now acceptable for "CHECK"!

           •   3 new characters added to the ISO-8859-7 encoding

           •   New encoding "MIME-Header-ISO_2022_JP" added

           •   Problem with partial characters and encoding(utf-8-strict) fixed.

           •   Documentation enhancements and typo fixes

       •   "English" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   the $COMPILING variable has been added

       •   "[ExtUtils::Constant](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/ExtUtils%3A%3AConstant/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.17

           •   Improved compatibility with older versions of perl

       •   "[ExtUtils::MakeMaker](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/ExtUtils%3A%3AMakeMaker/markdown)" upgraded to version 6.30 (was 6.17)

           •   Too much to list here;  see <<http://search.cpan.org/dist/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/Changes>>

       •   "[File::Basename](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3ABasename/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.74, with changes contributed by Michael Schwern.

           •   Documentation clarified and errors corrected.

           •   "basename" now strips trailing path separators before processing the name.

           •   "basename"  now returns "/" for parameter "/", to make "basename" consistent with the
               shell utility of the same name.

           •   The suffix is no longer stripped if it is identical to the  remaining  characters  in
               the name, again for consistency with the shell utility.

           •   Some internal code cleanup.

       •   "[File::Copy](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3ACopy/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.09

           •   Copying a file onto itself used to fail.

           •   Moving  a  file  between  file systems now preserves the access and modification time
               stamps

       •   "[File::Find](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3AFind/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.10

           •   Win32 portability fixes

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "[File::Glob](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3AGlob/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[File::Path](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3APath/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.08

           •   "mkpath" now preserves "errno" when "mkdir" fails

       •   "[File::Spec](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3ASpec/markdown)" upgraded to version 3.12

           •   "[File::Spec](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/File%3A%3ASpec/markdown)->rootdir()" now returns "\" on Win32, instead of "/"

           •   $^O could sometimes become tainted. This has been fixed.

           •   "canonpath" on Win32 now collapses "foo/.." (or "foo\..") sections correctly,  rather
               than  doing  the  "misguided" work it was previously doing.  Note that "canonpath" on
               Unix still does **not **collapse these sections, as doing so would be incorrect.

           •   Some documentation improvements

           •   Some internal code cleanup

       •   "FileCache" upgraded to version 1.06

           •   POD formatting errors in the documentation fixed

       •   "[Filter::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Filter%3A%3ASimple/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.82

       •   "FindBin" upgraded to version 1.47

           •   Now works better with directories where  access  rights  are  more  restrictive  than
               usual.

       •   "GDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.08

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[Getopt::Long](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Getopt%3A%3ALong/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.35

           •   "prefix_pattern"   has   now   been   complemented  by  a  new  configuration  option
               "long_prefix_pattern" that allows the user to specify  what  prefix  patterns  should
               have long option style semantics applied.

           •   Options can now take multiple values at once (experimental)

           •   Various bug fixes

       •   "if" upgraded to version 0.05

           •   Give  more  meaningful error messages from "if" when invoked with a condition in list
               context.

           •   Restore backwards compatibility with earlier versions of perl

       •   "IO" upgraded to version 1.22

           •   Enhanced documentation

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[IPC::Open2](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/IPC%3A%3AOpen2/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "[IPC::Open3](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/IPC%3A%3AOpen3/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "[List::Util](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/List%3A%3AUtil/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.18 (was 1.14)

           •   Fix pure-perl version of "refaddr" to avoid blessing an un-blessed reference

           •   Use "XSLoader" for faster loading

           •   Fixed various memory leaks

           •   Internal cleanup and portability fixes

       •   "[Math::Complex](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Math%3A%3AComplex/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.35

           •   "atan2(0, i)" now works, as do all the (computable) complex argument cases

           •   Fixes for certain bugs in "make" and "emake"

           •   Support returning the _k_th root directly

           •   Support "[2,-3pi/8]" in "emake"

           •   Support "inf" for "make"/"emake"

           •   Document "make"/"emake" more visibly

       •   "[Math::Trig](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Math%3A%3ATrig/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.03

           •   Add     more     great     circle     routines:      "great_circle_waypoint"      and
               "great_circle_destination"

       •   "[MIME::Base64](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/MIME%3A%3ABase64/markdown)" upgraded to version 3.07

           •   Use "XSLoader" for faster loading

           •   Enhanced documentation

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "NDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "ODBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06

           •   Documentation typo fixed

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "Opcode" upgraded to version 1.06

           •   Enhanced documentation

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "open" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "overload" upgraded to version 1.04

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "PerlIO" upgraded to version 1.04

           •   "[PerlIO::via](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/PerlIO%3A%3Avia/markdown)" iterate over layers properly now

           •   "[PerlIO::scalar](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/PerlIO%3A%3Ascalar/markdown)" understands "$/ = """ now

           •   encoding(utf-8-strict) with partial characters now works

           •   Enhanced documentation

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "[Pod::Functions](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AFunctions/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.03

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "[Pod::Html](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AHtml/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.0504

           •   HTML output will now correctly link to "=item"s on the same page, and should be valid
               XHTML.

           •   Variable names are recognized as intended

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "[Pod::Parser](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AParser/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.32

           •   Allow files that start with "=head" on the first line

           •   Win32 portability fix

           •   Exit status of "pod2usage" fixed

           •   New "-noperldoc" switch for "pod2usage"

           •   Arbitrary URL schemes now allowed

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "POSIX" upgraded to version 1.09

           •   Documentation typos fixed

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "re" upgraded to version 0.05

           •   Documentation typo fixed

       •   "Safe" upgraded to version 2.12

           •   Minor documentation enhancement

       •   "SDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   Documentation typo fixed

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "Socket" upgraded to version 1.78

           •   Internal cleanup

       •   "Storable" upgraded to version 2.15

           •   This  includes  the  "STORABLE_attach"  hook functionality added by Adam Kennedy, and
               more  frugal  memory  requirements  when  storing  under  "ithreads",  by  using  the
               "ithreads" cloning tracking code.

       •   "Switch" upgraded to version 2.10_01

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "[Sys::Syslog](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Sys%3A%3ASyslog/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.13

           •   Now provides numeric macros and meaningful "Exporter" tags.

           •   No  longer  uses  "[Sys::Hostname](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Sys%3A%3AHostname/markdown)"  as  it  may provide useless values in unconfigured
               network environments, so instead uses "INADDR_LOOPBACK" directly.

           •   syslog() now uses local timestamp.

           •   setlogmask() now behaves like its C counterpart.

           •   setlogsock() will now croak() as documented.

           •   Improved error and warnings messages.

           •   Improved documentation.

       •   "[Term::ANSIColor](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Term%3A%3AANSIColor/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.10

           •   Fixes a bug in "colored" when $EACHLINE is set that caused  it  to  not  color  lines
               consisting solely of 0 (literal zero).

           •   Improved tests.

       •   "[Term::ReadLine](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Term%3A%3AReadLine/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Documentation tweaks

       •   "[Test::Harness](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Test%3A%3AHarness/markdown)" upgraded to version 2.56 (was 2.48)

           •   The "[Test::Harness](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Test%3A%3AHarness/markdown)" timer is now off by default.

           •   Now shows elapsed time in milliseconds.

           •   Various bug fixes

       •   "[Test::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Test%3A%3ASimple/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.62 (was 0.54)

           •   is_deeply() no longer fails to work for many cases

           •   Various minor bug fixes

           •   Documentation enhancements

       •   "[Text::Tabs](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Text%3A%3ATabs/markdown)" upgraded to version 2005.0824

           •   Provides a faster implementation of "expand"

       •   "[Text::Wrap](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Text%3A%3AWrap/markdown)" upgraded to version 2005.082401

           •   Adds  $[Text::Wrap::separator2](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Text%3A%3AWrap%3A%3Aseparator2/markdown), which allows you to preserve existing newlines but add
               line-breaks with some other string.

       •   "threads" upgraded to version 1.07

           •   "threads" will now honour "no warnings 'threads'"

           •   A thread's interpreter is now freed after "$t->join()" rather than after "undef  $t",
               which should fix some "ithreads" memory leaks. (Fixed by Dave Mitchell)

           •   Some documentation typo fixes.

       •   "[threads::shared](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/threads%3A%3Ashared/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.94

           •   Documentation changes only

           •   Note:  An  improved  implementation  of "[threads::shared](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/threads%3A%3Ashared/markdown)" is available on CPAN - this
               will be merged into 5.8.9 if it proves stable.

       •   "[Tie::Hash](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Tie%3A%3AHash/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Documentation typo fixed

       •   "[Time::HiRes](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Time%3A%3AHiRes/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.86 (was 1.66)

           •   clock_nanosleep() and clock() functions added

           •   Support for the POSIX clock_gettime() and clock_getres() has been added

           •   Return "undef" or an empty list if the C gettimeofday() function fails

           •   Improved "nanosleep" detection

           •   Internal cleanup

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "[Unicode::Collate](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Unicode%3A%3ACollate/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.52

           •   Now implements UCA Revision 14 (based on Unicode 4.1.0).

           •   "[Unicode::Collate](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Unicode%3A%3ACollate/markdown)->new" method no longer overwrites user's $_

           •   Enhanced documentation

       •   "[Unicode::UCD](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Unicode%3A%3AUCD/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.24

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "[User::grent](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/User%3A%3Agrent/markdown)" upgraded to version 1.01

           •   Documentation typo fixed

       •   "utf8" upgraded to version 1.06

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "vmsish" upgraded to version 1.02

           •   Documentation typos fixed

       •   "warnings" upgraded to version 1.05

           •   Gentler messing with "Carp::" internals

           •   Internal cleanup

           •   Documentation update

       •   "Win32" upgraded to version 0.2601

           •   Provides Windows Vista support to "[Win32::GetOSName](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Win32%3A%3AGetOSName/markdown)"

           •   Documentation enhancements

       •   "[XS::Typemap](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/XS%3A%3ATypemap/markdown)" upgraded to version 0.02

           •   Internal cleanup

## Utility Changes
### "h2xs" enhancements
       "h2xs" implements new option "--use-xsloader" to force use of "XSLoader"  even  in  backwards
       compatible modules.

       The handling of authors' names that had apostrophes has been fixed.

       Any enums with negative values are now skipped.

### "perlivp" enhancements
       "perlivp"  implements  new option "-a" and will not check for _*.ph_ files by default any more.
       Use the "-a" option to run _all_ tests.

## New Documentation
       The perlglossary manpage is a glossary of terms used in the Perl documentation, technical and
       otherwise, kindly provided by O'Reilly Media, inc.

## Performance Enhancements
       •   Weak reference creation is now [_O(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/O/1/markdown)_ rather than [_O(n)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/O/n/markdown)_, courtesy of  Nicholas  Clark.  Weak
           reference  deletion remains [_O(n)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/O/n/markdown)_, but if deletion only happens at program exit, it may be
           skipped completely.

       •   Salvador Fandiño provided improvements to reduce the memory usage of "sort" and to  speed
           up some cases.

       •   Jarkko Hietaniemi and Andy Lester worked to mark as much data as possible in the C source
           files  as  "static", to increase the proportion of the executable file that the operating
           system can share between process,  and  thus  reduce  real  memory  usage  on  multi-user
           systems.

## Installation and Configuration Improvements
       Parallel  makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems if "make test"
       is instructed to run in parallel.

       Building with Borland's compilers on Win32 should work more smoothly. In particular Steve Hay
       has worked to side step many warnings emitted by their compilers and at least one C  compiler
       internal error.

       "Configure"  will now detect "clearenv" and "unsetenv", thanks to a patch from Alan Burlison.
       It will also probe for "futimes" and whether "sprintf" correctly returns the  length  of  the
       formatted string, which will both be used in perl 5.8.9.

       There  are improved hints for next-3.0, vmesa, IX, Darwin, Solaris, Linux, DEC/OSF, HP-UX and
       MPE/iX

       Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into the Perl DLL, thanks to a work by
       Vadim Konovalov. (This improvement was actually in 5.8.7, but was accidentally  omitted  from
       perl587delta).

## Selected Bug Fixes
### no warnings 'category' works correctly with -w
       Previously  when  running  with  warnings  enabled  globally via "-w", selective disabling of
       specific warning categories would actually turn off all warnings.  This is now fixed; now "no
       warnings 'io';" will  only  turn  off  warnings  in  the  "io"  class.  Previously  it  would
       erroneously turn off all warnings.

       This bug fix may cause some programs to start correctly issuing warnings.

### Remove over-optimisation
       Perl  5.8.4  introduced  a  change so that assignments of "undef" to a scalar, or of an empty
       list to an array or a hash, were optimised away. As this could  cause  problems  when  "goto"
       jumps were involved, this change has been backed out.

### sprintf() fixes
       Using  the  **sprintf()  **function  with  some  formats  could lead to a buffer overflow in some
       specific cases. This has been fixed,  along  with  several  other  bugs,  notably  in  bounds
       checking.

       In  related  fixes,  it  was  possible  for  badly  written  code  that  did  not  follow the
       documentation of "[Sys::Syslog](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Sys%3A%3ASyslog/markdown)" to have formatting vulnerabilities.   "[Sys::Syslog](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Sys%3A%3ASyslog/markdown)"  has  been
       changed to protect people from poor quality third party code.

### Debugger and Unicode slowdown
       It  had  been  reported that running under perl's debugger when processing Unicode data could
       cause unexpectedly large slowdowns. The most likely cause of this was identified and fixed by
       Nicholas Clark.

### Smaller fixes
       •   "FindBin" now works better with directories where access rights are more restrictive than
           usual.

       •   Several  memory  leaks  in  ithreads  were  closed.   An   improved   implementation   of
           "[threads::shared](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/threads%3A%3Ashared/markdown)"  is  available  on  CPAN  - this will be merged into 5.8.9 if it proves
           stable.

       •   Trailing spaces are now trimmed from $! and $^E.

       •   Operations that require perl to read a process's list of groups, such as reads of $(  and
           $), now dynamically allocate memory rather than using a fixed sized array. The fixed size
           array  could  cause  C  stack  exhaustion  on  systems configured to use large numbers of
           groups.

       •   "[PerlIO::scalar](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/PerlIO%3A%3Ascalar/markdown)" now works better with non-default $/ settings.

       •   You can now use the "x" operator to repeat a "qw//" list. This used  to  raise  a  syntax
           error.

       •   The  debugger  now  traces  correctly execution in eval("")uated code that contains #line
           directives.

       •   The value of the "open" pragma is no longer ignored for three-argument opens.

       •   The optimisation of "for (reverse @a)" introduced in perl 5.8.6 could misbehave when  the
           array  had  undefined  elements  and was used in LVALUE context. Dave Mitchell provided a
           fix.

       •   Some case insensitive matches between UTF-8 encoded data and  8  bit  regexps,  and  vice
           versa,  could  give  malformed character warnings. These have been fixed by Dave Mitchell
           and Yves Orton.

       •   "lcfirst" and "ucfirst" could corrupt the string for certain cases where the length UTF-8
           encoding of the string in lower case, upper case or title case differed. This  was  fixed
           by Nicholas Clark.

       •   Perl will now use the C library calls "unsetenv" and "clearenv" if present to delete keys
           from %ENV and delete %ENV entirely, thanks to a patch from Alan Burlison.

## New or Changed Diagnostics
### Attempt to set length of freed array
       This is a new warning, produced in situations such as this:

           $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
           $$r = 503;

### Non-string passed as bitmask
       This  is  a  new  warning,  produced  when number has been passed as an argument to **select()**,
       instead of a bitmask.

           # Wrong, will now warn
           $rin = fileno(STDIN);
           ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);

           # Should be
           $rin = '';
           vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
           ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);

### Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
       This syntax error indicates that the lexer couldn't find the final delimiter of a "?PATTERN?"
       construct. Mentioning the ternary operator in this error message makes it easier to  diagnose
       syntax errors.

## Changed Internals
       There  has been a fair amount of refactoring of the "C" source code, partly to make it tidier
       and more maintainable. The resulting object code and the "perl" binary may  well  be  smaller
       than  5.8.7,  in  particular  due to a change contributed by Dave Mitchell which reworked the
       warnings code to be significantly smaller. Apart from  being  smaller  and  possibly  faster,
       there should be no user-detectable changes.

       Andy  Lester  supplied  many  improvements  to  determine which function parameters and local
       variables could actually be declared "const" to the C compiler.  Steve  Peters  provided  new
       *_set  macros  and  reworked  the core to use these rather than assigning to macros in LVALUE
       context.

       Dave Mitchell improved the lexer debugging output under "-DT"

       Nicholas Clark changed the string buffer allocation so that it is now rounded up to the  next
       multiple  of  4  (or  8  on platforms with 64 bit pointers). This should reduce the number of
       calls to "realloc" without actually using any extra memory.

       The "HV"'s array of "HE*"s is now allocated at the correct (minimal) size, thanks to  another
       change  by Nicholas Clark. Compile with "-DPERL_USE_LARGE_HV_ALLOC" to use the old, sloppier,
       default.

       For   XS    or    embedding    debugging    purposes,    if    perl    is    compiled    with
       "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS_FORK_DUMP"  in  addition  to  "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS" then a child
       process is "fork"ed just before global destruction, which is used to display  the  values  of
       any  scalars found to have leaked at the end of global destruction. Without this, the scalars
       have already been freed sufficiently at the point of  detection  that  it  is  impossible  to
       produce  any  meaningful  dump  of  their  contents.   This  feature  was  implemented by the
       indefatigable Nicholas Clark, based on an idea by Mike Giroux.

## Platform Specific Problems
       The optimiser on HP-UX 11.23 (Itanium 2) is currently partly disabled (scaled  down  to  +O1)
       when using HP C-ANSI-C; the cause of problems at higher optimisation levels is still unclear.

       There  are  a  handful  of remaining test failures on VMS, mostly due to test fixes and minor
       module tweaks with too many dependencies to integrate into this release from the  development
       stream,  where  they  have  all been corrected.  The following is a list of expected failures
       with the patch number of the fix where that is known:

           ext/Devel/PPPort/t/ppphtest.t  #26913
           ext/List/Util/t/p_tainted.t    #26912
           lib/ExtUtils/t/PL_FILES.t      #26813
           lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.t         #26813
           t/io/fs.t
           t/op/cmp.t

## 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://bugs.perl.org>.  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@perl.org> to be analysed by
       the Perl porting team.  You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at <http://bugs.perl.org/>

## SEE ALSO
       The _Changes_ file for 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                                 2026-08-18                              [_PERL588DELTA_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PERL588DELTA/1/markdown)
