{ "content": [ { "type": "text", "text": "# perl589delta (man)\n\n## NAME\n\nperl589delta - what is new for perl v5.8.9\n\n## DESCRIPTION\n\nThis document describes differences between the 5.8.8 release and the 5.8.9 release.\n\n## Sections\n\n- **NAME**\n- **DESCRIPTION**\n- **Notice** (56 subsections)\n- **Obituary**\n- **Acknowledgements** (1 subsections)\n- **SEE ALSO**\n\nUse structuredContent.sections for detailed options, examples, and full documentation.\n" } ], "structuredContent": { "command": "perl589delta", "section": "", "mode": "man", "summary": "perl589delta - what is new for perl v5.8.9", "synopsis": null, "tldr_summary": null, "tldr_examples": [], "tldr_source": null, "flags": [ { "flag": "-D", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "• \"-Dq\" suppresses the EXECUTING... message when running under \"-D\" • \"-Dl\" logs runops loop entry and exit, and jump level popping. • \"-Dv\" displays the process id as part of the trace output." } ], "examples": [], "see_also": [], "section_outline": [ { "name": "NAME", "lines": 2, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "DESCRIPTION", "lines": 2, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "Notice", "lines": 5, "subsections": [ { "name": "Incompatible Changes", "lines": 8 }, { "name": "Core Enhancements", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "Unicode Character Database 5.1.0.", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "stat and -X on directory handles", "lines": 5 }, { "name": "Source filters in @INC", "lines": 5 }, { "name": "Exceptions in constant folding", "lines": 6 }, { "name": "\"no VERSION\"", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "Improved internal UTF-8 caching code", "lines": 7 }, { "name": "Runtime relocatable installations", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "New internal variables", "lines": 10 }, { "name": "\"readpipe\" is now overridable", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "simple exception handling macros", "lines": 5 }, { "name": "-D option enhancements", "lines": 6, "flag": "-D" }, { "name": "XS-assisted SWASHGET", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "Constant subroutines", "lines": 16 }, { "name": "New Platforms", "lines": 12 }, { "name": "Modules and Pragmata", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "New Modules", "lines": 12 }, { "name": "Updated Modules", "lines": 409 }, { "name": "Utility Changes", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "debugger upgraded to version 1.31", "lines": 29 }, { "name": "New Documentation", "lines": 15 }, { "name": "Changes to Existing Documentation", "lines": 61 }, { "name": "Performance Enhancements", "lines": 39 }, { "name": "Installation and Configuration Improvements", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "Relocatable installations", "lines": 10 }, { "name": "Configuration improvements", "lines": 13 }, { "name": "Compilation improvements", "lines": 10 }, { "name": "Installation improvements.", "lines": 13 }, { "name": "Platform Specific Changes", "lines": 52 }, { "name": "Selected Bug Fixes", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "Unicode", "lines": 22 }, { "name": "PerlIO", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "Magic", "lines": 18 }, { "name": "Reblessing overloaded objects now works", "lines": 22 }, { "name": "\"strict\" now propagates correctly into string evals", "lines": 14 }, { "name": "Other fixes", "lines": 48 }, { "name": "Platform Specific Fixes", "lines": 56 }, { "name": "Smaller fixes", "lines": 39 }, { "name": "New or Changed Diagnostics", "lines": 5 }, { "name": "Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "panic: attempt to call %s in %s", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "FETCHSIZE returned a negative value", "lines": 2 }, { "name": "Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "Cannot make the non-overridable builtin %s fatal", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "Unrecognized character '%s' in column %d", "lines": 2 }, { "name": "Offset outside string", "lines": 2 }, { "name": "Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regexp; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/", "lines": 3 }, { "name": "Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "Changed Internals", "lines": 80 }, { "name": "Macro cleanups", "lines": 4 }, { "name": "New Tests", "lines": 85 }, { "name": "Known Problems", "lines": 14 }, { "name": "Platform Specific Notes", "lines": 1 }, { "name": "Win32", "lines": 33 } ] }, { "name": "Obituary", "lines": 4, "subsections": [] }, { "name": "Acknowledgements", "lines": 24, "subsections": [ { "name": "Reporting Bugs", "lines": 17 } ] }, { "name": "SEE ALSO", "lines": 11, "subsections": [] } ], "sections": { "NAME": { "content": "perl589delta - what is new for perl v5.8.9\n", "subsections": [] }, "DESCRIPTION": { "content": "This document describes differences between the 5.8.8 release and the 5.8.9 release.\n", "subsections": [] }, "Notice": { "content": "The 5.8.9 release will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x series. Any future\nreleases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with security issues, and platform build\nfailures. Hence you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already. See\n\"Known Problems\" for more information.\n", "subsections": [ { "name": "Incompatible Changes", "content": "A particular construction in the source code of extensions written in C++ may need changing.\nSee \"Changed Internals\" for more details. All extensions written in C, most written in C++,\nand all existing compiled extensions are unaffected. This was necessary to improve C++\nsupport.\n\nOther than this, there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.8.8. If any exist,\nthey are bugs and reports are welcome.\n" }, { "name": "Core Enhancements", "content": "" }, { "name": "Unicode Character Database 5.1.0.", "content": "The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has been updated to 5.1.0\nfrom 4.1.0. See for the\nnotable changes.\n" }, { "name": "stat and -X on directory handles", "content": "It is now possible to call \"stat\" and the \"-X\" filestat operators on directory handles. As\nboth directory and file handles are barewords, there can be ambiguities over which was\nintended. In these situations the file handle semantics are preferred. Both also treat\n*FILE{IO} filehandles like *FILE filehandles.\n" }, { "name": "Source filters in @INC", "content": "It's possible to enhance the mechanism of subroutine hooks in @INC by adding a source filter\non top of the filehandle opened and returned by the hook. This feature was planned a long\ntime ago, but wasn't quite working until now. See \"require\" in perlfunc for details.\n(Nicholas Clark)\n" }, { "name": "Exceptions in constant folding", "content": "The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and if folding throws an\nexception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl now retains the current optree, rather\nthan aborting the whole program. Without this change, programs would not compile if they had\nexpressions that happened to generate exceptions, even though those expressions were in code\nthat could never be reached at runtime. (Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)\n" }, { "name": "\"no VERSION\"", "content": "You can now use \"no\" followed by a version number to specify that you want to use a version\nof perl older than the specified one.\n" }, { "name": "Improved internal UTF-8 caching code", "content": "The code that caches calculated UTF-8 byte offsets for character offsets for a string has\nbeen re-written. Several bugs have been located and eliminated, and the code now makes better\nuse of the information it has, so should be faster. In particular, it doesn't scan to the end\nof a string before calculating an offset within the string, which should speed up some\noperations on long strings. It is now possible to disable the caching code at run time, to\nverify that it is not the cause of suspected problems.\n" }, { "name": "Runtime relocatable installations", "content": "There is now Configure support for creating a perl tree that is relocatable at run time. see\n\"Relocatable installations\".\n" }, { "name": "New internal variables", "content": "\"${^CHILDERRORNATIVE}\"\nThis variable gives the native status returned by the last pipe close, backtick command,\nsuccessful call to \"wait\" or \"waitpid\", or from the \"system\" operator. See perlvar for\ndetails. (Contributed by Gisle Aas.)\n\n\"${^UTF8CACHE}\"\nThis variable controls the state of the internal UTF-8 offset caching code. 1 for on\n(the default), 0 for off, -1 to debug the caching code by checking all its results\nagainst linear scans, and panicking on any discrepancy.\n" }, { "name": "\"readpipe\" is now overridable", "content": "The built-in function \"readpipe\" is now overridable. Overriding it permits also to override\nits operator counterpart, \"qx//\" (also known as \"``\").\n" }, { "name": "simple exception handling macros", "content": "Perl 5.8.9 (and 5.10.0 onwards) now provides a couple of macros to do very basic exception\nhandling in XS modules. You can use these macros if you call code that may \"croak\", but you\nneed to do some cleanup before giving control back to Perl. See \"Exception Handling\" in\nperlguts for more details.\n" }, { "name": "-D option enhancements", "content": "• \"-Dq\" suppresses the EXECUTING... message when running under \"-D\"\n\n• \"-Dl\" logs runops loop entry and exit, and jump level popping.\n\n• \"-Dv\" displays the process id as part of the trace output.\n", "flag": "-D" }, { "name": "XS-assisted SWASHGET", "content": "Some pure-perl code that the regexp engine was using to retrieve Unicode properties and\ntransliteration mappings has been reimplemented in XS for faster execution. (SADAHIRO\nTomoyuki)\n" }, { "name": "Constant subroutines", "content": "The interpreter internals now support a far more memory efficient form of inlineable\nconstants. Storing a reference to a constant value in a symbol table is equivalent to a full\ntypeglob referencing a constant subroutine, but using about 400 bytes less memory. This proxy\nconstant subroutine is automatically upgraded to a real typeglob with subroutine if\nnecessary. The approach taken is analogous to the existing space optimisation for subroutine\nstub declarations, which are stored as plain scalars in place of the full typeglob.\n\nHowever, to aid backwards compatibility of existing code, which (wrongly) does not expect\nanything other than typeglobs in symbol tables, nothing in core uses this feature, other than\nthe regression tests.\n\nStubs for prototyped subroutines have been stored in symbol tables as plain strings, and\nstubs for unprototyped subroutines as the number -1, since 5.005, so code which assumes that\nthe core only places typeglobs in symbol tables has been making incorrect assumptions for\nover 10 years.\n" }, { "name": "New Platforms", "content": "Compile support added for:\n\n• DragonFlyBSD\n\n• MidnightBSD\n\n• MirOS BSD\n\n• RISC OS\n\n• Cray XT4/Catamount\n" }, { "name": "Modules and Pragmata", "content": "" }, { "name": "New Modules", "content": "• \"Module::Pluggable\" is a simple framework to create modules that accept pluggable sub-\nmodules. The bundled version is 3.8\n\n• \"Module::CoreList\" is a hash of hashes that is keyed on perl version as indicated in $].\nThe bundled version is 2.17\n\n• \"Win32API::File\" now available in core on Microsoft Windows. The bundled version is\n0.100101\n\n• \"Devel::InnerPackage\" finds all the packages defined by a single file. It is part of the\n\"Module::Pluggable\" distribution. The bundled version is 0.3\n" }, { "name": "Updated Modules", "content": "• \"attributes\" upgraded to version 0.09\n\n• \"AutoLoader\" upgraded to version 5.67\n\n• \"AutoSplit\" upgraded to 1.06\n\n• \"autouse\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• \"B\" upgraded from 1.0901 to 1.19\n\n• provides new pad related abstraction macros \"B::NV::COPSEQRANGELOW\",\n\"B::NV::COPSEQRANGEHIGH\", \"B::NV::PARENTPADINDEX\",\n\"B::NV::PARENTFAKELEXFLAGS\", which hides the difference in storage in 5.10.0 and\nlater.\n\n• provides \"B::subgeneration\", which exposes \"PLsubgeneration\"\n\n• provides \"B::GV::isGVwithGP\", which on pre-5.10 perls always returns true.\n\n• New type \"B::HE\" added with methods \"VAL\", \"HASH\" and \"SVKEYforce\"\n\n• The \"B::GVfIMPORTEDCV\" flag is now set correctly when a proxy constant subroutine\nis imported.\n\n• bugs fixed in the handling of \"PMOP\"s.\n\n• \"B::BM::PREVIOUS\" returns now \"U32\", not \"U16\". \"B::CV::START\" and \"B:CV::ROOT\"\nreturn now \"NULL\" on an XSUB, \"B::CV::XSUB\" and \"B::CV::XSUBANY\" return 0 on a non-\nXSUB.\n\n• \"B::C\" upgraded to 1.05\n\n• \"B::Concise\" upgraded to 0.76\n\n• new option \"-src\" causes the rendering of each statement (starting with the nextstate\nOP) to be preceded by the first line of source code that generates it.\n\n• new option \"-stash=\"somepackage\"\", \"require\"s \"somepackage\", and then renders each\nfunction defined in its namespace.\n\n• now has documentation of detailed hint symbols.\n\n• \"B::Debug\" upgraded to version 1.05\n\n• \"B::Deparse\" upgraded to version 0.87\n\n• properly deparse \"print readpipe $x, $y\".\n\n• now handles \"''->()\", \"::()\", \"sub :: {}\", etc. correctly [RT #43010]. All bugs in\nparsing these kinds of syntax are now fixed:\n\nperl -MO=Deparse -e '\"my %h = \"->()'\nperl -MO=Deparse -e '::->()'\nperl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub :: {}'\nperl -MO=Deparse -e 'package a; sub a::b::c {}'\nperl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub the::main::road {}'\n\n• does not deparse $^H{vstring}, which is automatically set by the internals.\n\n• \"B::Lint\" upgraded to version 1.11\n\n• \"B::Terse\" upgraded to version 1.05\n\n• \"base\" upgraded to version 2.13\n\n• loading a module via base.pm would mask a global $SIG{DIE} in that module.\n\n• push all classes at once in @ISA\n\n• \"Benchmark\" upgraded to version 1.10\n\n• \"bigint\" upgraded to 0.23\n\n• \"bignum\" upgraded to 0.23\n\n• \"bigrat\" upgraded to 0.23\n\n• \"blib\" upgraded to 0.04\n\n• \"Carp\" upgraded to version 1.10\n\nThe argument backtrace code now shows \"undef\" as \"undef\", instead of a string \"undef\".\n\n• \"CGI\" upgraded to version 3.42\n\n• \"charnames\" upgraded to 1.06\n\n• \"constant\" upgraded to version 1.17\n\n• \"CPAN\" upgraded to version 1.9301\n\n• \"Cwd\" upgraded to version 3.29 with some platform specific improvements (including for\nVMS).\n\n• \"Data::Dumper\" upgraded to version 2.12117\n\n• Fixes hash iterator current position with the pure Perl version [RT #40668]\n\n• Performance enhancements, which will be most evident on platforms where repeated\ncalls to C's \"realloc()\" are slow, such as Win32.\n\n• \"DBFile\" upgraded to version 1.817\n\n• \"DBFilter\" upgraded to version 0.02\n\n• \"Devel::DProf\" upgraded to version 20080331.00\n\n• \"Devel::Peek\" upgraded to version 1.04\n\n• \"Devel::PPPort\" upgraded to version 3.14\n\n• \"diagnostics\" upgraded to version 1.16\n\n• \"Digest\" upgraded to version 1.15\n\n• \"Digest::MD5\" upgraded to version 2.37\n\n• \"DirHandle\" upgraded to version 1.02\n\n• now localises $., $@, $!, $^E, and $? before closing the directory handle to suppress\nleaking any side effects of warnings about it already being closed.\n\n• \"DynaLoader\" upgraded to version 1.09\n\n\"DynaLoader\" can now dynamically load a loadable object from a file with a non-default\nfile extension.\n\n• \"Encode\" upgraded to version 2.26\n\n\"Encode::Alias\" includes a fix for encoding \"646\" on Solaris (better known as ASCII).\n\n• \"English\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"Errno\" upgraded to version 1.10\n\n• \"Exporter\" upgraded to version 5.63\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Command\" upgraded to version 1.15\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Constant\" upgraded to version 0.21\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Embed\" upgraded to version 1.28\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Install\" upgraded to version 1.5001\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Installed\" upgraded to version 1.43\n\n• \"ExtUtils::MakeMaker\" upgraded to version 6.48\n\n• support for \"INSTALLSITESCRIPT\" and \"INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT\" configuration.\n\n• \"ExtUtils::Manifest\" upgraded to version 1.55\n\n• \"ExtUtils::ParseXS\" upgraded to version 2.19\n\n• \"Fatal\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• allows built-ins in \"CORE::GLOBAL\" to be made fatal.\n\n• \"Fcntl\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• \"fields\" upgraded to version 2.12\n\n• \"File::Basename\" upgraded to version 2.77\n\n• \"FileCache\" upgraded to version 1.07\n\n• \"File::Compare\" upgraded to 1.1005\n\n• \"File::Copy\" upgraded to 2.13\n\n• now uses 3-arg open.\n\n• \"File::DosGlob\" upgraded to 1.01\n\n• \"File::Find\" upgraded to version 1.13\n\n• \"File::Glob\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• fixes spurious results with brackets inside braces.\n\n• \"File::Path\" upgraded to version 2.0702\n\n• \"File::Spec\" upgraded to version 3.29\n\n• improved handling of bad arguments.\n\n• some platform specific improvements (including for VMS and Cygwin), with an\noptimisation on \"abs2rel\" when handling both relative arguments.\n\n• \"File::stat\" upgraded to version 1.01\n\n• \"File::Temp\" upgraded to version 0.20\n\n• \"filetest\" upgraded to version 1.02\n\n• \"Filter::Util::Call\" upgraded to version 1.07\n\n• \"Filter::Simple\" upgraded to version 0.83\n\n• \"FindBin\" upgraded to version 1.49\n\n• \"GDBMFile\" upgraded to version 1.09\n\n• \"Getopt::Long\" upgraded to version 2.37\n\n• \"Getopt::Std\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• \"Hash::Util\" upgraded to version 0.06\n\n• \"if\" upgraded to version 0.05\n\n• \"IO\" upgraded to version 1.23\n\nReduced number of calls to \"getpeername\" in \"IO::Socket\"\n\n• \"IPC::Open\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"IPC::Open3\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"IPC::SysV\" upgraded to version 2.00\n\n• \"lib\" upgraded to version 0.61\n\n• avoid warning about loading .par files.\n\n• \"libnet\" upgraded to version 1.22\n\n• \"List::Util\" upgraded to 1.19\n\n• \"Locale::Maketext\" upgraded to 1.13\n\n• \"Math::BigFloat\" upgraded to version 1.60\n\n• \"Math::BigInt\" upgraded to version 1.89\n\n• \"Math::BigRat\" upgraded to version 0.22\n\n• implements new \"asfloat\" method.\n\n• \"Math::Complex\" upgraded to version 1.54.\n\n• \"Math::Trig\" upgraded to version 1.18.\n\n• \"NDBMFile\" upgraded to version 1.07\n\n• improve g++ handling for systems using GDBM compatibility headers.\n\n• \"Net::Ping\" upgraded to version 2.35\n\n• \"NEXT\" upgraded to version 0.61\n\n• fix several bugs with \"NEXT\" when working with \"AUTOLOAD\", \"eval\" block, and within\noverloaded stringification.\n\n• \"ODBMFile\" upgraded to 1.07\n\n• \"open\" upgraded to 1.06\n\n• \"ops\" upgraded to 1.02\n\n• \"PerlIO::encoding\" upgraded to version 0.11\n\n• \"PerlIO::scalar\" upgraded to version 0.06\n\n• [RT #40267] \"PerlIO::scalar\" doesn't respect readonly-ness.\n\n• \"PerlIO::via\" upgraded to version 0.05\n\n• \"Pod::Html\" upgraded to version 1.09\n\n• \"Pod::Parser\" upgraded to version 1.35\n\n• \"Pod::Usage\" upgraded to version 1.35\n\n• \"POSIX\" upgraded to version 1.15\n\n• \"POSIX\" constants that duplicate those in \"Fcntl\" are now imported from \"Fcntl\" and\nre-exported, rather than being duplicated by \"POSIX\"\n\n• \"POSIX::remove\" can remove empty directories.\n\n• \"POSIX::setlocale\" safer to call multiple times.\n\n• \"POSIX::SigRt\" added, which provides access to POSIX realtime signal functionality on\nsystems that support it.\n\n• \"re\" upgraded to version 0.0601\n\n• \"Safe\" upgraded to version 2.16\n\n• \"Scalar::Util\" upgraded to 1.19\n\n• \"SDBMFile\" upgraded to version 1.06\n\n• \"SelfLoader\" upgraded to version 1.17\n\n• \"Shell\" upgraded to version 0.72\n\n• \"sigtrap\" upgraded to version 1.04\n\n• \"Socket\" upgraded to version 1.81\n\n• this fixes an optimistic use of \"gethostbyname\"\n\n• \"Storable\" upgraded to 2.19\n\n• \"Switch\" upgraded to version 2.13\n\n• \"Sys::Syslog\" upgraded to version 0.27\n\n• \"Term::ANSIColor\" upgraded to version 1.12\n\n• \"Term::Cap\" upgraded to version 1.12\n\n• \"Term::ReadLine\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"Test::Builder\" upgraded to version 0.80\n\n• \"Test::Harness\" upgraded version to 2.64\n\n• this makes it able to handle newlines.\n\n• \"Test::More\" upgraded to version 0.80\n\n• \"Test::Simple\" upgraded to version 0.80\n\n• \"Text::Balanced\" upgraded to version 1.98\n\n• \"Text::ParseWords\" upgraded to version 3.27\n\n• \"Text::Soundex\" upgraded to version 3.03\n\n• \"Text::Tabs\" upgraded to version 2007.1117\n\n• \"Text::Wrap\" upgraded to version 2006.1117\n\n• \"Thread\" upgraded to version 2.01\n\n• \"Thread::Semaphore\" upgraded to version 2.09\n\n• \"Thread::Queue\" upgraded to version 2.11\n\n• added capability to add complex structures (e.g., hash of hashes) to queues.\n\n• added capability to dequeue multiple items at once.\n\n• added new methods to inspect and manipulate queues: \"peek\", \"insert\" and \"extract\"\n\n• \"Tie::Handle\" upgraded to version 4.2\n\n• \"Tie::Hash\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"Tie::Memoize\" upgraded to version 1.1\n\n• \"Tie::Memoize::EXISTS\" now correctly caches its results.\n\n• \"Tie::RefHash\" upgraded to version 1.38\n\n• \"Tie::Scalar\" upgraded to version 1.01\n\n• \"Tie::StdHandle\" upgraded to version 4.2\n\n• \"Time::gmtime\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"Time::Local\" upgraded to version 1.1901\n\n• \"Time::HiRes\" upgraded to version 1.9715 with various build improvements (including VMS)\nand minor platform-specific bug fixes (including for HP-UX 11 ia64).\n\n• \"threads\" upgraded to 1.71\n\n• new thread state information methods: \"isrunning\", \"isdetached\" and \"isjoinable\".\n\"list\" method enhanced to return running or joinable threads.\n\n• new thread signal method: \"kill\"\n\n• added capability to specify thread stack size.\n\n• added capability to control thread exiting behavior. Added a new \"exit\" method.\n\n• \"threads::shared\" upgraded to version 1.27\n\n• smaller and faster implementation that eliminates one internal structure and the\nconsequent level of indirection.\n\n• user locks are now stored in a safer manner.\n\n• new function \"sharedclone\" creates a copy of an object leaving shared elements as-is\nand deep-cloning non-shared elements.\n\n• added new \"isshared\" method.\n\n• \"Unicode::Normalize\" upgraded to version 1.02\n\n• \"Unicode::UCD\" upgraded to version 0.25\n\n• \"warnings\" upgraded to version 1.0501\n\n• \"Win32\" upgraded to version 0.38\n\n• added new function \"GetCurrentProcessId\" which returns the regular Windows process\nidentifier of the current process, even when called from within a fork.\n\n• \"XSLoader\" upgraded to version 0.10\n\n• \"XS::APItest\" and \"XS::Typemap\" are for internal use only and hence no longer installed.\nMany more tests have been added to \"XS::APItest\".\n" }, { "name": "Utility Changes", "content": "" }, { "name": "debugger upgraded to version 1.31", "content": "• Andreas König contributed two functions to save and load the debugger history.\n\n• \"NEXT::AUTOLOAD\" no longer emits warnings under the debugger.\n\n• The debugger should now correctly find tty the device on OS X 10.5 and VMS when the\nprogram \"fork\"s.\n\n• LVALUE subs now work inside the debugger.\n\nperlthanks\nPerl 5.8.9 adds a new utility perlthanks, which is a variant of perlbug, but for sending non-\nbug-reports to the authors and maintainers of Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can\nbecome a bit demoralising - we'll see if this changes things.\n\nperlbug\nperlbug now checks if you're reporting about a non-core module and suggests you report it to\nthe CPAN author instead.\n\nh2xs\n• won't define an empty string as a constant [RT #25366]\n\n• has examples for \"h2xs -X\"\n\nh2ph\n• now attempts to deal sensibly with the difference in path implications between \"\" and\n\"<>\" quoting in \"#include\" statements.\n\n• now generates correct code for \"#if defined A || defined B\" [RT #39130]\n" }, { "name": "New Documentation", "content": "As usual, the documentation received its share of corrections, clarifications and other\nnitfixes. More \"\" tags were added for indexing.\n\nperlunitut is a tutorial written by Juerd Waalboer on Unicode-related terminology and how to\ncorrectly handle Unicode in Perl scripts.\n\nperlunicode is updated in section user defined properties.\n\nperluniintro has been updated in the example of detecting data that is not valid in\nparticular encoding.\n\nperlcommunity provides an overview of the Perl Community along with further resources.\n\nCORE documents the pseudo-namespace for Perl's core routines.\n" }, { "name": "Changes to Existing Documentation", "content": "perlglossary adds deprecated modules and features and to be dropped modules.\n\nperlhack has been updated and added resources on smoke testing.\n\nThe Perl FAQs (perlfaq1..perlfaq9) have been updated.\n\nperlcheat is updated with better details on \"\\w\", \"\\d\", and \"\\s\".\n\nperldebug is updated with information on how to call the debugger.\n\nperldiag documentation updated with subroutine with an ampersand on the argument to \"exists\"\nand \"delete\" and also several terminology updates on warnings.\n\nperlfork documents the limitation of \"exec\" inside pseudo-processes.\n\nperlfunc:\n\n• Documentation is fixed in section \"caller\" and \"pop\".\n\n• Function \"alarm\" now mentions \"Time::HiRes::ualarm\" in preference to \"select\".\n\n• Regarding precedence in \"-X\", filetest operators are the same as unary operators, but not\nregarding parsing and parentheses (spotted by Eirik Berg Hanssen).\n\n• \"reverse\" function documentation received scalar context examples.\n\nperllocale documentation is adjusted for number localization and \"POSIX::setlocale\" to fix\nDebian bug #379463.\n\nperlmodlib is updated with \"CPAN::API::HOWTO\" and \"Sys::Syslog::win32::Win32\"\n\nperlre documentation updated to reflect the differences between \"[[:xxxxx:]]\" and\n\"\\p{IsXxxxx}\" matches. Also added section on \"/g\" and \"/c\" modifiers.\n\nperlreguts describe the internals of the regular expressions engine. It has been contributed\nby Yves Orton.\n\nperlrebackslash describes all perl regular expression backslash and escape sequences.\n\nperlrecharclass describes the syntax and use of character classes in Perl Regular\nExpressions.\n\nperlrun is updated to clarify on the hash seed PERLHASHSEED. Also more information in\noptions \"-x\" and \"-u\".\n\nperlsub example is updated to use a lexical variable for \"opendir\" syntax.\n\nperlvar fixes confusion about real GID $( and effective GID $).\n\nPerl thread tutorial example is fixed in section \"Queues: Passing Data Around\" in perlthrtut\nand perlthrtut.\n\nperlhack documentation extensively improved by Jarkko Hietaniemi and others.\n\nperltoot provides information on modifying @UNIVERSAL::ISA.\n\nperlport documentation extended to include different \"kill(-9, ...)\" semantics on Windows.\nIt also clearly states \"dump\" is not supported on Win32 and cygwin.\n\nINSTALL has been updated and modernised.\n" }, { "name": "Performance Enhancements", "content": "• The default since perl 5.000 has been for perl to create an empty scalar with every new\ntypeglob. The increased use of lexical variables means that most are now unused. Thanks\nto Nicholas Clark's efforts, Perl can now be compiled with \"-DPERLDONTCREATEGVSV\" to\navoid creating these empty scalars. This will significantly decrease the number of\nscalars allocated for all configurations, and the number of scalars that need to be\ncopied for ithread creation. Whilst this option is binary compatible with existing perl\ninstallations, it does change a long-standing assumption about the internals, hence it is\nnot enabled by default, as some third party code may rely on the old behaviour.\n\nWe would recommend testing with this configuration on new deployments of perl,\nparticularly for multi-threaded servers, to see whether all third party code is\ncompatible with it, as this configuration may give useful performance improvements. For\nexisting installations we would not recommend changing to this configuration unless\nthorough testing is performed before deployment.\n\n• \"diagnostics\" no longer uses $&, which results in large speedups for regexp matching in\nall code using it.\n\n• Regular expressions classes of a single character are now treated the same as if the\ncharacter had been used as a literal, meaning that code that uses char-classes as an\nescaping mechanism will see a speedup. (Yves Orton)\n\n• Creating anonymous array and hash references (ie. \"[]\" and \"{}\") now incurs no more\noverhead than creating an anonymous list or hash. Nicholas Clark provided changes with a\nsaving of two ops and one stack push, which was measured as a slightly better than 5%\nimprovement for these operations.\n\n• Many calls to \"strlen()\" have been eliminated, either because the length was already\nknown, or by adopting or enhancing APIs that pass lengths. This has been aided by the\nadoption of a \"mysprintf()\" wrapper, which returns the correct C89 value - the length of\nthe formatted string. Previously we could not rely on the return value of \"sprintf()\",\nbecause on some ancient but extant platforms it still returns \"char *\".\n\n• \"index\" is now faster if the search string is stored in UTF-8 but only contains\ncharacters in the Latin-1 range.\n\n• The Unicode swatch cache inside the regexp engine is now used. (the lookup had a key\nmismatch, present since the initial implementation). [RT #42839]\n" }, { "name": "Installation and Configuration Improvements", "content": "" }, { "name": "Relocatable installations", "content": "There is now Configure support for creating a relocatable perl tree. If you Configure with\n\"-Duserelocatableinc\", then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be\noptionally located via the path of the perl executable.\n\nAt start time, if any paths in @INC or \"Config\" that Configure marked as relocatable (by\nstarting them with \".../\"), then they are prefixed the directory of $^X. This allows the\nrelocation can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with\n\"-Duserelocatableinc\" is that everything is relocated. The initial install is done to the\noriginal configured prefix.\n" }, { "name": "Configuration improvements", "content": "Configure is now better at removing temporary files. Tom Callaway (from RedHat) also\ncontributed patches that complete the set of flags passed to the compiler and the linker, in\nparticular that \"-fPIC\" is now enabled on Linux. It will also croak when your /dev/null isn't\na device.\n\nA new configuration variable \"dpseudofork\" has been to Configure, and is available as\n$Config{dpseudofork} in the \"Config\" module. This distinguishes real \"fork\" support from the\npseudofork emulation used on Windows platforms.\n\nConfig.pod and config.sh are now placed correctly for cross-compilation.\n\n$Config{useshrplib} is now 'true' rather than 'yes' when using a shared perl library.\n" }, { "name": "Compilation improvements", "content": "Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems if \"make test\"\nis instructed to run in parallel.\n\nMany compilation warnings have been cleaned up. A very stubborn compiler warning in\n\"Semulateeaccess()\" was killed after six attempts. g++ support has been tuned, especially\nfor FreeBSD.\n\nmkppport has been integrated, and all ppport.h files in the core will now be autogenerated at\nbuild time (and removed during cleanup).\n" }, { "name": "Installation improvements.", "content": "installman now works with \"-Duserelocatableinc\" and \"DESTDIR\".\n\ninstallperl no longer installs:\n\n• static library files of statically linked extensions when a shared perl library is being\nused. (They are not needed. See \"Windows\" below).\n\n• SIGNATURE and PAUSE*.pub (CPAN files)\n\n• NOTES and PATCHING (ExtUtils files)\n\n• perlld and ld2 (Cygwin files)\n" }, { "name": "Platform Specific Changes", "content": "There are improved hints for AIX, Cygwin, DEC/OSF, FreeBSD, HP/UX, Irix 6 Linux, MachTen,\nNetBSD, OS/390, QNX, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, System V Release 5.x (UnixWare 7, OpenUNIX 8),\nUltrix, UMIPS, uts and VOS.\n\nFreeBSD\n\n• Drop \"-std=c89\" and \"-ansi\" if using \"long long\" as the main integral type, else in\nFreeBSD 6.2 (and perhaps other releases), system headers do not declare some functions\nrequired by perl.\n\nSolaris\n\n• Starting with Solaris 10, we do not want versioned shared libraries, because those often\nindicate a private use only library. These problems could often be triggered when SUNWbdb\n(Berkeley DB) was installed. Hence if Solaris 10 is detected set\n\"ignoreversionedsolibs=y\".\n\nVMS\n\n• Allow IEEE math to be deselected on OpenVMS I64 (but it remains the default).\n\n• Record IEEE usage in \"config.h\"\n\n• Help older VMS compilers by using \"ccflags\" when building \"munchconfig.exe\".\n\n• Don't try to build old \"Thread\" extension on VMS when \"-Duseithreads\" has been chosen.\n\n• Passing a raw string of \"NaN\" to nawk causes a core dump - so the string has been changed\nto \"*NaN*\"\n\n• t/op/stat.t tests will now test hard links on VMS if they are supported.\n\nWindows\n\n• When using a shared perl library installperl no longer installs static library files,\nimport library files and export library files (of statically linked extensions) and empty\nbootstrap files (of dynamically linked extensions). This fixes a problem building PAR-\nPacker on Win32 with a debug build of perl.\n\n• Various improvements to the win32 build process, including support for Visual C++ 2005\nExpress Edition (aka Visual C++ 8.x).\n\n• perl.exe will now have an icon if built with MinGW or Borland.\n\n• Improvements to the perl-static.exe build process.\n\n• Add Win32 makefile option to link all extensions statically.\n\n• The WinCE directory has been merged into the Win32 directory.\n\n• \"setlocale\" tests have been re-enabled for Windows XP onwards.\n" }, { "name": "Selected Bug Fixes", "content": "" }, { "name": "Unicode", "content": "Many many bugs related to the internal Unicode implementation (UTF-8) have been fixed. In\nparticular, long standing bugs related to returning Unicode via \"tie\", overloading or $@ are\nnow gone, some of which were never reported.\n\n\"unpack\" will internally convert the string back from UTF-8 on numeric types. This is a\ncompromise between the full consistency now in 5.10, and the current behaviour, which is\noften used as a \"feature\" on string types.\n\nUsing \":crlf\" and \"UTF-16\" IO layers together will now work.\n\nFixed problems with \"split\", Unicode \"/\\s+/\" and \"/ \\0/\".\n\nFixed bug RT #40641 - encoding of Unicode characters in regular expressions.\n\nFixed a bug where using certain patterns in a regexp led to a panic. [RT #45337]\n\nPerl no longer segfaults (due to infinite internal recursion) if the locale's character is\nnot UTF-8 [RT #41442]:\n\nuse open ':locale';\nprint STDERR \"\\x{201e}\"; # „\n" }, { "name": "PerlIO", "content": "Inconsistencies have been fixed in the reference counting PerlIO uses to keep track of Unix\nfile descriptors, and the API used by XS code to manage getting and releasing \"FILE *\"s\n" }, { "name": "Magic", "content": "Several bugs have been fixed in Magic, the internal system used to implement features such as\n\"tie\", tainting and threads sharing.\n\n\"undef @array\" on a tied array now correctly calls the \"CLEAR\" method.\n\nSome of the bitwise ops were not checking whether their arguments were magical before using\nthem. [RT #24816]\n\nMagic is no longer invoked twice by the expression \"\\&$x\"\n\nA bug with assigning large numbers and tainting has been resolved. [RT #40708]\n\nA new entry has been added to the MAGIC vtable - \"svtlocal\". This is used when copying magic\nto the new value during \"local\", allowing certain problems with localising shared variables\nto be resolved.\n\nFor the implementation details, see \"Magic Virtual Tables\" in perlguts.\n" }, { "name": "Reblessing overloaded objects now works", "content": "Internally, perl object-ness is on the referent, not the reference, even though methods can\nonly be called via a reference. However, the original implementation of overloading stored\nflags related to overloading on the reference, relying on the flags being copied when the\nreference was copied, or set at the creation of a new reference. This manifests in a bug - if\nyou rebless an object from a class that has overloading, into one that does not, then any\nother existing references think that they (still) point to an overloaded object, choose these\nC code paths, and then throw errors. Analogously, blessing into an overloaded class when\nother references exist will result in them not using overloading.\n\nThe implementation has been fixed for 5.10, but this fix changes the semantics of flag bits,\nso is not binary compatible, so can't be applied to 5.8.9. However, 5.8.9 has a work-around\nthat implements the same bug fix. If the referent has multiple references, then all the other\nreferences are located and corrected. A full search is avoided whenever possible by scanning\nlexicals outwards from the current subroutine, and the argument stack.\n\nA certain well known Linux vendor applied incomplete versions of this bug fix to their\n/usr/bin/perl and then prematurely closed bug reports about performance issues without\nconsulting back upstream. This not being enough, they then proceeded to ignore the necessary\nfixes to these unreleased changes for 11 months, until massive pressure was applied by their\nlong-suffering paying customers, catalysed by the failings being featured on a prominent blog\nand Slashdot.\n" }, { "name": "\"strict\" now propagates correctly into string evals", "content": "Under 5.8.8 and earlier:\n\n$ perl5.8.8 -e 'use strict; eval \"use foo bar\" or die $@'\nCan't locate foo.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ... .) at (eval 1) line 2.\nBEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 2.\n\nUnder 5.8.9 and later:\n\n$ perl5.8.9 -e 'use strict; eval \"use foo bar\" or die $@'\nBareword \"bar\" not allowed while \"strict subs\" in use at (eval 1) line 1.\n\nThis may cause problems with programs that parse the error message and rely on the buggy\nbehaviour.\n" }, { "name": "Other fixes", "content": "• The tokenizer no longer treats \"=cute\" (and other words beginning with \"=cut\") as a\nsynonym for \"=cut\".\n\n• Calling \"CORE::require\"\n\n\"CORE::require\" and \"CORE::do\" were always parsed as \"require\" and \"do\" when they were\noverridden. This is now fixed.\n\n• Stopped memory leak on long /etc/groups entries.\n\n• \"while (my $x ...) { ...; redo }\" shouldn't \"undef $x\".\n\nIn the presence of \"my\" in the conditional of a \"while()\", \"until()\", or \"for(;;)\" loop,\nwe now add an extra scope to the body so that \"redo\" doesn't \"undef\" the lexical.\n\n• The \"encoding\" pragma now correctly ignores anything following an \"@\" character in the\n\"LCALL\" and \"LANG\" environment variables. [RT # 49646]\n\n• A segfault observed with some gcc 3.3 optimisations is resolved.\n\n• A possible segfault when \"unpack\" used in scalar context with \"()\" groups is resolved.\n[RT #50256]\n\n• Resolved issue where $! could be changed by a signal handler interrupting a \"system\"\ncall.\n\n• Fixed bug RT #37886, symbolic dereferencing was allowed in the argument of \"defined\" even\nunder the influence of \"use strict 'refs'\".\n\n• Fixed bug RT #43207, where \"lc\"/\"uc\" inside \"sort\" affected the return value.\n\n• Fixed bug RT #45607, where \"*{\"BONK\"} = \\&{\"BONK\"}\" didn't work correctly.\n\n• Fixed bug RT #35878, croaking from a XSUB called via \"goto &xsub\" corrupts perl\ninternals.\n\n• Fixed bug RT #32539, DynaLoader.o is moved into libperl.so to avoid the need to\nstatically link DynaLoader into the stub perl executable. With this libperl.so provides\neverything needed to get a functional embedded perl interpreter to run.\n\n• Fix bug RT #36267 so that assigning to a tied hash doesn't change the underlying hash.\n\n• Fix bug RT #6006, regexp replaces using large replacement variables fail some of the\ntime, i.e. when substitution contains something like \"${10}\" (note the bracket) instead\nof just $10.\n\n• Fix bug RT #45053, \"PerlnewCONSTSUB()\" is now thread safe.\n" }, { "name": "Platform Specific Fixes", "content": "Darwin / MacOS X\n\n• Various improvements to 64 bit builds.\n\n• Mutex protection added in \"PerlIOStdioclose()\" to avoid race conditions. Hopefully this\nfixes failures in the threads tests free.t and blocks.t.\n\n• Added forked terminal support to the debugger, with the ability to update the window\ntitle.\n\nOS/2\n\n• A build problem with specifying \"USEMULTI\" and \"USEITHREADS\" but without \"USEIMPSYS\"\nhas been fixed.\n\n• \"OS2::REXX\" upgraded to version 1.04\n\nTru64\n\n• Aligned floating point build policies for cc and gcc.\n\nRedHat Linux\n\n• Revisited a patch from 5.6.1 for RH7.2 for Intel's icc [RT #7916], added an additional\ncheck for $Config{gccversion}.\n\nSolaris/i386\n\n• Use \"-DPTRISLONG\" when using 64 bit integers\n\nVMS\n\n• Fixed \"PerlIO::Scalar\" in-memory file record-style reads.\n\n• pipe shutdown at process exit should now be more robust.\n\n• Bugs in VMS exit handling tickled by \"Test::Harness\" 2.64 have been fixed.\n\n• Fix \"fcntl()\" locking capability test in configure.com.\n\n• Replaced \"shrplib='define'\" with \"useshrplib='true'\" on VMS.\n\nWindows\n\n• \"File::Find\" used to fail when the target directory is a bare drive letter and \"nochdir\"\nis 1 (the default is 0). [RT #41555]\n\n• A build problem with specifying \"USEMULTI\" and \"USEITHREADS\" but without \"USEIMPSYS\"\nhas been fixed.\n\n• The process id is no longer truncated to 16 bits on some Windows platforms (\nhttp://bugs.activestate.com/showbug.cgi?id=72443 )\n\n• Fixed bug RT #54828 in perlio.c where calling \"binmode\" on Win32 and Cygwin may cause a\nsegmentation fault.\n" }, { "name": "Smaller fixes", "content": "• It is now possible to overload \"eq\" when using \"nomethod\".\n\n• Various problems using \"overload\" with 64 bit integers corrected.\n\n• The reference count of \"PerlIO\" file descriptors is now correctly handled.\n\n• On VMS, escaped dots will be preserved when converted to Unix syntax.\n\n• \"keys %+\" no longer throws an 'ambiguous' warning.\n\n• Using \"#!perl -d\" could trigger an assertion, which has been fixed.\n\n• Don't stringify tied code references in @INC when calling \"require\".\n\n• Code references in @INC report the correct file name when \"FILE\" is used.\n\n• Width and precision in sprintf didn't handle characters above 255 correctly. [RT #40473]\n\n• List slices with indices out of range now work more consistently. [RT #39882]\n\n• A change introduced with perl 5.8.1 broke the parsing of arguments of the form \"-foo=bar\"\nwith the \"-s\" on the <#!> line. This has been fixed. See\nhttp://bugs.activestate.com/showbug.cgi?id=43483\n\n• \"tr///\" is now threadsafe. Previously it was storing a swash inside its OP, rather than\nin a pad.\n\n• pod2html labels anchors more consistently and handles nested definition lists better.\n\n• \"threads\" cleanup veto has been extended to include \"perlfree()\" and \"perldestruct()\"\n\n• On some systems, changes to $ENV{TZ} would not always be respected by the underlying\ncalls to \"localtimer()\". Perl now forces the inspection of the environment on these\nsystems.\n\n• The special variable $^R is now more consistently set when executing regexps using the\n\"(?{...})\" construct. In particular, it will still be set even if backreferences or\noptional sub-patterns \"(?:...)?\" are used.\n" }, { "name": "New or Changed Diagnostics", "content": "panic: svchop %s\nThis new fatal error occurs when the C routine \"Perlsvchop()\" was passed a position that is\nnot within the scalar's string buffer. This is caused by buggy XS code, and at this point\nrecovery is not possible.\n" }, { "name": "Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded", "content": "This new fatal error occurs when the perl process has to abort due to too many pending\nsignals, which is bound to prevent perl from being able to handle further incoming signals\nsafely.\n" }, { "name": "panic: attempt to call %s in %s", "content": "This new fatal error occurs when the ACL version file test operator is used where it is not\navailable on the current platform. Earlier checks mean that it should never be possible to\nget this.\n" }, { "name": "FETCHSIZE returned a negative value", "content": "New error indicating that a tied array has claimed to have a negative number of elements.\n" }, { "name": "Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d", "content": "Previously the internal error from the SV upgrade code was the less informative Can't upgrade\nthat kind of scalar. It now reports the current internal type, and the new type requested.\n" }, { "name": "%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine", "content": "This error, thrown if an invalid argument is provided to \"exists\" now correctly includes \"or\na subroutine\". [RT #38955]\n" }, { "name": "Cannot make the non-overridable builtin %s fatal", "content": "This error in \"Fatal\" previously did not show the name of the builtin in question (now\nrepresented by %s above).\n" }, { "name": "Unrecognized character '%s' in column %d", "content": "This error previously did not state the column.\n" }, { "name": "Offset outside string", "content": "This can now also be generated by a \"seek\" on a file handle using \"PerlIO::scalar\".\n" }, { "name": "Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regexp; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/", "content": "New error, introduced as part of the fix to RT #40641 to handle encoding of Unicode\ncharacters in regular expression comments.\n" }, { "name": "Your machine doesn't support dump/undump.", "content": "A more informative fatal error issued when calling \"dump\" on Win32 and Cygwin. (Given that\nthe purpose of \"dump\" is to abort with a core dump, and core dumps can't be produced on these\nplatforms, this is more useful than silently exiting.)\n" }, { "name": "Changed Internals", "content": "The perl sources can now be compiled with a C++ compiler instead of a C compiler. A necessary\nimplementation details is that under C++, the macro \"XS\" used to define XSUBs now includes an\n\"extern \"C\"\" definition. A side effect of this is that C++ code that used the construction\n\ntypedef XS(SwigPerlWrapper);\n\nnow needs to be written\n\ntypedef XSPROTO(SwigPerlWrapper);\n\nusing the new \"XSPROTO\" macro, in order to compile. C extensions are unaffected, although C\nextensions are encouraged to use \"XSPROTO\" too. This change was present in the 5.10.0\nrelease of perl, so any actively maintained code that happened to use this construction\nshould already have been adapted. Code that needs changing will fail with a compilation\nerror.\n\n\"set\" magic on localizing/assigning to a magic variable will now only trigger for container\nmagics, i.e. it will for %ENV or %SIG but not for $#array.\n\nThe new API macro \"newSVpvs()\" can be used in place of constructions such as \"newSVpvn(\"ISA\",\n3)\". It takes a single string constant, and at C compile time determines its length.\n\nThe new API function \"PerlnewSVtype()\" can be used as a more efficient replacement of the\ncommon idiom\n\nsv = newSV(0);\nsvupgrade(sv, type);\n\nSimilarly \"PerlnewSVpvnflags()\" can be used to combine \"PerlnewSVpv()\" with\n\"Perlsv2mortal()\" or the equivalent \"Perlsvnewmortal()\" with \"Perlsvsetpvn()\"\n\nTwo new macros \"mPUSHs()\" and \"mXPUSHs()\" are added, to make it easier to push mortal SVs\nonto the stack. They were then used to fix several bugs where values on the stack had not\nbeen mortalised.\n\nA \"Perlsignbit()\" function was added to test the sign of an \"NV\". It maps to the system one\nwhen available.\n\n\"Perlavreify()\", \"Perllexend()\", \"Perlmod()\", \"Perlopclear()\", \"Perlpopreturn()\",\n\"Perlqerror()\", \"Perlsetdefout()\", \"Perlvivifydefelem()\" and \"Perlyylex()\" are now\nvisible to extensions. This was required to allow \"Data::Alias\" to work on Windows.\n\n\"Perlfindruncv()\" is now visible to perl core extensions. This was required to allow\n\"Sub::Current\" to work on Windows.\n\n\"ptrtable*\" functions are now available in unthreaded perl. \"Storable\" takes advantage of\nthis.\n\nThere have been many small cleanups made to the internals. In particular, \"Perlsvupgrade()\"\nhas been simplified considerably, with a straight-through code path that uses \"memset()\" and\n\"memcpy()\" to initialise the new body, rather than assignment via multiple temporary\nvariables. It has also benefited from simplification and de-duplication of the arena\nmanagement code.\n\nA lot of small improvements in the code base were made due to reports from the Coverity\nstatic code analyzer.\n\nCorrected use and documentation of \"Perlgvstashpv()\", \"Perlgvstashpvn()\",\n\"Perlgvstashsv()\" functions (last parameter is a bitmask, not boolean).\n\n\"PERLSYSINIT\", \"PERLSYSINIT3\" and \"PERLSYSTERM\" macros have been changed into\nfunctions.\n\n\"PERLSYSTERM\" no longer requires a context. \"PerlIOteardown()\" is now called without a\ncontext, and debugging output in this function has been disabled because that required that\nan interpreter was present, an invalid assumption at termination time.\n\nAll compile time options which affect binary compatibility have been grouped together into a\nglobal variable (\"PLbincompatoptions\").\n\nThe values of \"PERLREVISION\", \"PERLVERSION\" and \"PERLSUBVERSION\" are now baked into global\nvariables (and hence into any shared perl library). Additionally under \"MULTIPLICITY\", the\nperl executable now records the size of the interpreter structure (total, and for this\nversion). Coupled with \"PLbincompatoptions\" this will allow 5.8.10 (and later), when\ncompiled with a shared perl library, to perform sanity checks in \"main()\" to verify that the\nshared library is indeed binary compatible.\n\nSymbolic references can now have embedded NULs. The new public function\n\"Perlgetcvnflags()\" can be used in extensions if you have to handle them.\n" }, { "name": "Macro cleanups", "content": "The core code, and XS code in ext that is not dual-lived on CPAN, no longer uses the macros\n\"PLna\", \"NEWSV()\", \"Null()\", \"Nullav\", \"Nullcv\", \"Nullhv\", \"Nullhv\" etc. Their use is\ndiscouraged in new code, particularly \"PLna\", which is a small performance hit.\n" }, { "name": "New Tests", "content": "Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests. Some core specific tests have been\nadded:\n\next/DynaLoader/t/DynaLoader.t\nTests for the \"DynaLoader\" module.\n\nt/comp/fold.t\nTests for compile-time constant folding.\n\nt/io/pvbm.t\nTests incorporated from 5.10.0 which check that there is no unexpected interaction\nbetween the internal types \"PVBM\" and \"PVGV\".\n\nt/lib/proxyconstantsubs.t\nTests for the new form of constant subroutines.\n\nt/op/attrhand.t\nTests for \"Attribute::Handlers\".\n\nt/op/dbm.t\nTests for \"dbmopen\".\n\nt/op/inccode-tie.t\nCalls all tests in t/op/inccode.t after first tying @INC.\n\nt/op/incfilter.t\nTests for source filters returned from code references in @INC.\n\nt/op/kill0.t\nTests for RT #30970.\n\nt/op/qrstack.t\nTests for RT #41484.\n\nt/op/qr.t\nTests for the \"qr//\" construct.\n\nt/op/regexpqrembed.t\nTests for the \"qr//\" construct within another regexp.\n\nt/op/regexpqr.t\nTests for the \"qr//\" construct.\n\nt/op/rxcode.t\nTests for RT #32840.\n\nt/op/studytied.t\nTests for \"study\" on tied scalars.\n\nt/op/substT.t\nTests for \"subst\" run under \"-T\" mode.\n\nt/op/symbolcache.t\nTests for \"undef\" and \"delete\" on stash entries that are bound to subroutines or methods.\n\nt/op/upgrade.t\nTests for \"Perlsvupgrade()\".\n\nt/mro/packagealiases.t\nMRO tests for \"isa\" and package aliases.\n\nt/pod/twice.t\nTests for calling \"Pod::Parser\" twice.\n\nt/run/cloexec.t\nTests for inheriting file descriptors across \"exec\" (close-on-exec).\n\nt/uni/cache.t\nTests for the UTF-8 caching code.\n\nt/uni/chr.t\nTest that strange encodings do not upset \"Perlppchr()\".\n\nt/uni/greek.t\nTests for RT #40641.\n\nt/uni/latin2.t\nTests for RT #40641.\n\nt/uni/overload.t\nTests for returning Unicode from overloaded values.\n\nt/uni/tie.t\nTests for returning Unicode from tied variables.\n" }, { "name": "Known Problems", "content": "There are no known new bugs.\n\nHowever, programs that rely on bugs that have been fixed will have problems. Also, many bug\nfixes present in 5.10.0 can't be back-ported to the 5.8.x branch, because they require\nchanges that are binary incompatible, or because the code changes are too large and hence too\nrisky to incorporate.\n\nWe have only limited volunteer labour, and the maintenance burden is getting increasingly\ncomplex. Hence this will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x series. Any future\nreleases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with security issues, and platform build\nfailures. Hence you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already.\nAlternatively, if business requirements constrain you to continue to use 5.8.x, you may wish\nto consider commercial support from firms such as ActiveState.\n" }, { "name": "Platform Specific Notes", "content": "" }, { "name": "Win32", "content": "\"readdir()\", \"cwd()\", $^X and @INC now use the alternate (short) filename if the long name is\noutside the current codepage (Jan Dubois).\n\nUpdated Modules\n\n• \"Win32\" upgraded to version 0.38. Now has a documented 'WinVista' response from\n\"GetOSName\" and support for Vista's privilege elevation in \"IsAdminUser\". Support for\nUnicode characters in path names. Improved cygwin and Win64 compatibility.\n\n• \"Win32API\" updated to 0.100101\n\n• \"killpg()\" support added to \"MSWin32\" (Jan Dubois).\n\n• \"File::Spec::Win32\" upgraded to version 3.2701\n\nOS/2\nUpdated Modules\n\n• \"OS2::Process\" upgraded to 1.03\n\nIlya Zakharevich has added and documented several \"Window*\" and \"Clipbrd*\" functions.\n\n• \"OS2::REXX::DLL\", \"OS2::REXX\" updated to version 1.03\n\nVMS\nUpdated Modules\n\n• \"DCLsym\" upgraded to version 1.03\n\n• \"Stdio\" upgraded to version 2.4\n\n• \"VMS::XSSymSet\" upgraded to 1.1.\n" } ] }, "Obituary": { "content": "Nick Ing-Simmons, long time Perl hacker, author of the \"Tk\" and \"Encode\" modules, perlio.c in\nthe core, and 5.00302 pumpking, died of a heart attack on 25th September 2006. He will be\nmissed.\n", "subsections": [] }, "Acknowledgements": { "content": "Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant.\n\nSteve Hay worked behind the scenes working out the causes of the differences between core\nmodules, their CPAN releases, and previous core releases, and the best way to rectify them.\nHe doesn't want to do it again. I know this feeling, and I'm very glad he did it this time,\ninstead of me.\n\nPaul Fenwick assembled a team of 18 volunteers, who broke the back of writing this document.\nIn particular, Bradley Dean, Eddy Tan, and Vincent Pit provided half the team's contribution.\n\nSchwern verified the list of updated module versions, correcting quite a few errors that I\n(and everyone else) had missed, both wrongly stated module versions, and changed modules that\nhad not been listed.\n\nThe crack Berlin-based QA team of Andreas König and Slaven Rezic tirelessly re-built\nsnapshots, tested most everything CPAN against them, and then identified the changes\nresponsible for any module regressions, ensuring that several show-stopper bugs were stomped\nbefore the first release candidate was cut.\n\nThe other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied most of the patches\nsent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in AUTHORS.\n\nAnd obviously, Larry Wall, without whom we wouldn't have Perl.\n", "subsections": [ { "name": "Reporting Bugs", "content": "If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently posted to the\ncomp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may\nalso be information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page.\n\nIf you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug program included with your\nrelease. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report,\nalong with the output of \"perl -V\", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by\nthe Perl porting team. You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/\n\nIf the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send\nto a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org.\nThis points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core\ncommitters, who will be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution,\nand help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all\nplatforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security issues in the\nPerl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.\n" } ] }, "SEE ALSO": { "content": "The Changes file for exhaustive details on what changed.\n\nThe INSTALL file for how to build Perl.\n\nThe README file for general stuff.\n\nThe Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.\n\n\n\nperl v5.34.0 2025-07-25 PERL589DELTA(1)", "subsections": [] } } } }