Re: Bug in perlguts documentation?

[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / pod / perl572delta.pod

=head1 NAME

perl571delta - what's new for perl v5.7.2

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.7.1 release and the
5.7.2 release.  

(To view the differences between the 5.6.0 release and the 5.7.0
release, see L<perl570delta>.  To view the differences between the
5.7.0 release and the 5.7.1 release, see L<perl571delta>.)

=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed

(This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)

A security vulnerability affecting all Perl versions prior to 5.6.1
was found in August 2000.  The vulnerability does not affect default
installations and as far as is known affects only the Linux platform.

You should upgrade your Perl to 5.6.1 as soon as possible.  Patches
for earlier releases exist but they require full recompilation from
the source code so 5.6.1 is your best choice.
See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt
for more information.

=head1 Incompatible Changes

=head1 Future Deprecations

The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be implemented
differently.  Not only is the current interface rather ugly, but the
current implementation slows down normal array and hash use quite
noticeably. The 'fields' pragma interface will remain available.

=head1 Core Enhancements

=head1 Modules and Pragmata

=head2 New Modules

=head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata

=head1 Performance Enhancements

=head1 Utility Changes

=head1 New Documentation

=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements

=head2 New Or Improved Platforms

=head2 Generic Improvements

=head1 Selected Bug Fixes

=head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes

=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics

=head1 Changed Internals

=head2 Regex pre-/post-compilation items matched up

The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in
the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the
original regex expression.  The information is attached to the new
C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more
complete information.

=head1 New Tests

=head1 Known Problems

Note that unlike other sections in this document (which describe
changes since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known
problems for all the 5.7 releases.

=head2 AIX vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl

The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code,
resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
are run by hand, they succeed.  We suggest upgrading to at least
vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
"lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version.

=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'

Don't panic.  Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.

=head2 lib/io_multihomed Fails In LP64-Configured HP-UX

The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been
configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in
this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The
test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets
which have multiple IP addresses).

=head2 Test lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails In LP64-Configured HP-UX

If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the
subtest 9 failed.

=head2 lib/b test 19

The test fails on various platforms (PA64 and IA64 are known), but the
exact cause is still being investigated.

=head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48

No known fix.

=head2 sigaction test 13 in VMS

The test is known to fail; whether it's because of VMS of because
of faulty test is not known.

=head2 sprintf tests 129 and 130

The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX.
The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact.  (They produce
something else than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)

=head2  Failure of Thread tests

The subtests 19 and 20 of lib/thr5005.t test are known to fail due to
fundamental problems in the 5.005 threading implementation. These are
not new failures--Perl 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have
these tests. (Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains
experimental.)

=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory

    use Tie::Hash;
    tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';

    ...

    local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks

Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
is executed.

=head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden

Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
hard-to-fix ways.  As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is
for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).

=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles

Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
`largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
default to 64 bits wide, where supported.  Modules may fail to compile
at all or compile and work incorrectly.  Currently there is no good
solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate
non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config
hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are
having problems can try configuring themselves without the
largefileness.  This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the
solution may not even work at all.  One potential failure is whether
one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at
all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is
platform-dependent.

=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental

The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near
working order yet.

=head1 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.com/perl/, the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<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 C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
analysed by the Perl porting team.

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.

The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.

The F<README> file for general stuff.

The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.

=head1 HISTORY

Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>, with many contributions
from The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches.

Send omissions or corrections to <F<perlbug@perl.org>>.

=cut