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1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | |
3 | perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.0 |
4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
6 | |
7 | This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and |
8 | the 5.8.0 release. |
9 | |
10 | Many of the bug fixes in 5.8.0 were already seen in the 5.6.1 |
11 | maintenance release since the two releases were kept closely |
12 | coordinated (while 5.8.0 was still called 5.7.something). |
13 | |
14 | Changes that were integrated into the 5.6.1 release are marked C<[561]>. |
15 | Many of these changes have been further developed since 5.6.1 was released, |
16 | those are marked C<[561+]>. |
17 | |
18 | You can see the list of changes in the 5.6.1 release (both from the |
19 | 5.005_03 release and the 5.6.0 release) by reading L<perl561delta>. |
20 | |
21 | =head1 Highlights In 5.8.0 |
22 | |
23 | =over 4 |
24 | |
25 | =item * |
26 | |
27 | Better Unicode support |
28 | |
29 | =item * |
30 | |
31 | New IO Implementation |
32 | |
33 | =item * |
34 | |
35 | New Thread Implementation |
36 | |
37 | =item * |
38 | |
39 | Better Numeric Accuracy |
40 | |
41 | =item * |
42 | |
43 | Safe Signals |
44 | |
45 | =item * |
46 | |
47 | Many New Modules |
48 | |
49 | =item * |
50 | |
51 | More Extensive Regression Testing |
52 | |
53 | =back |
54 | |
55 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
56 | |
57 | =head2 Binary Incompatibility |
58 | |
59 | B<Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier releases of Perl.> |
60 | |
61 | B<You have to recompile your XS modules.> |
62 | |
63 | (Pure Perl modules should continue to work.) |
64 | |
65 | The major reason for the discontinuity is the new IO architecture |
66 | called PerlIO. PerlIO is the default configuration because without |
67 | it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be used. In other words: |
68 | you just have to recompile your modules containing XS code, sorry |
69 | about that. |
70 | |
71 | In future releases of Perl, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become |
72 | completely unsupported. This shouldn't be too difficult for module |
73 | authors, however: PerlIO has been designed as a drop-in replacement |
74 | (at the source code level) for the stdio interface. |
75 | |
76 | Depending on your platform, there are also other reasons why |
77 | we decided to break binary compatibility, please read on. |
78 | |
79 | =head2 64-bit platforms and malloc |
80 | |
81 | If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no longer being |
82 | used because it does not work well with 8-byte pointers. Also, |
83 | usually the system mallocs on such platforms are much better optimized |
84 | for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. Some memory-hungry |
85 | Perl applications like the PDL don't work well with Perl's malloc. |
86 | Finally, other applications than Perl (such as mod_perl) tend to prefer |
87 | the system malloc. Such platforms include Alpha and 64-bit HPPA, |
88 | MIPS, PPC, and Sparc. |
89 | |
90 | =head2 AIX Dynaloading |
91 | |
92 | The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native |
93 | dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This |
94 | change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled |
95 | modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other |
96 | applications like mod_perl which are using the AIX native interface. |
97 | |
98 | =head2 Attributes for C<my> variables now handled at run-time |
99 | |
100 | The C<my EXPR : ATTRS> syntax now applies variable attributes at |
101 | run-time. (Subroutine and C<our> variables still get attributes applied |
102 | at compile-time.) See L<attributes> for additional details. In particular, |
103 | however, this allows variable attributes to be useful for C<tie> interfaces, |
104 | which was a deficiency of earlier releases. Note that the new semantics |
105 | doesn't work with the Attribute::Handlers module (as of version 0.76). |
106 | |
107 | =head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS |
108 | |
109 | The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being |
110 | statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient |
111 | TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test |
112 | Perl in such configurations. |
113 | |
114 | =head2 IEEE-format Floating Point Default on OpenVMS Alpha |
115 | |
116 | Perl now uses IEEE format (T_FLOAT) as the default internal floating |
117 | point format on OpenVMS Alpha, potentially breaking binary compatibility |
118 | with external libraries or existing data. G_FLOAT is still available as |
119 | a configuration option. The default on VAX (D_FLOAT) has not changed. |
120 | |
121 | =head2 New Unicode Semantics (no more C<use utf8>, almost) |
122 | |
123 | Previously in Perl 5.6 to use Unicode one would say "use utf8" and |
124 | then the operations (like string concatenation) were Unicode-aware |
125 | in that lexical scope. |
126 | |
127 | This was found to be an inconvenient interface, and in Perl 5.8 the |
128 | Unicode model has completely changed: now the "Unicodeness" is bound |
129 | to the data itself, and for most of the time "use utf8" is not needed |
130 | at all. The only remaining use of "use utf8" is when the Perl script |
131 | itself has been written in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. (UTF-8 has |
132 | not been made the default since there are many Perl scripts out there |
133 | that are using various national eight-bit character sets, which would |
134 | be illegal in UTF-8.) |
135 | |
136 | See L<perluniintro> for the explanation of the current model, |
137 | and L<utf8> for the current use of the utf8 pragma. |
138 | |
139 | =head2 New Unicode Properties |
140 | |
141 | Unicode I<scripts> are now supported. Scripts are similar to (and superior |
142 | to) Unicode I<blocks>. The difference between scripts and blocks is that |
143 | scripts are the glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while |
144 | the blocks are more artificial groupings of (mostly) 256 characters based |
145 | on the Unicode numbering. |
146 | |
147 | In general, scripts are more inclusive, but not universally so. For |
148 | example, while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin characters and |
149 | their various diacritic-adorned versions, it does not include the various |
150 | punctuation or digits (since they are not solely C<Latin>). |
151 | |
152 | A number of other properties are now supported, including C<\p{L&}>, |
153 | C<\p{Any}> C<\p{Assigned}>, C<\p{Unassigned}>, C<\p{Blank}> [561] and |
154 | C<\p{SpacePerl}> [561] (along with their C<\P{...}> versions, of course). |
155 | See L<perlunicode> for details, and more additions. |
156 | |
157 | The C<In> or C<Is> prefix to names used with the C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}> |
158 | are now almost always optional. The only exception is that a C<In> prefix |
159 | is required to signify a Unicode block when a block name conflicts with a |
160 | script name. For example, C<\p{Tibetan}> refers to the script, while |
161 | C<\p{InTibetan}> refers to the block. When there is no name conflict, you |
162 | can omit the C<In> from the block name (e.g. C<\p{BraillePatterns}>), but |
163 | to be safe, it's probably best to always use the C<In>). |
164 | |
165 | =head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...) |
166 | |
167 | A reference to a reference now stringifies as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead |
168 | of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return |
169 | value of ref(). |
170 | |
171 | =head2 pack/unpack D/F recycled |
172 | |
173 | The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recycled |
174 | for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the |
175 | platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used |
176 | to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.) |
177 | |
178 | =head2 glob() now returns filenames in alphabetical order |
179 | |
180 | The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted |
181 | alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before |
182 | in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform |
183 | natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.) [561] |
184 | |
185 | =head2 Deprecations |
186 | |
187 | =over 4 |
188 | |
189 | =item * |
190 | |
191 | The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves |
192 | it to make some sense, it is forbidden. |
193 | |
194 | =item * |
195 | |
196 | The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed |
197 | to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned. |
198 | |
199 | =item * |
200 | |
201 | Using chdir("") or chdir(undef) instead of explicit chdir() is |
202 | doubtful. A failure (think chdir(some_function()) can lead into |
203 | unintended chdir() to the home directory, therefore this behaviour |
204 | is deprecated. |
205 | |
206 | =item * |
207 | |
208 | The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its |
209 | usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future |
210 | available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future |
211 | releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change. |
212 | |
213 | =item * |
214 | |
215 | The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed. |
216 | Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that |
217 | the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly) |
218 | maintained. |
219 | |
220 | =item * |
221 | |
222 | The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning |
223 | ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape |
224 | any C<\w> character. |
225 | |
226 | =item * |
227 | |
228 | The *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated, use *glob{IO} instead. |
229 | |
230 | =item * |
231 | |
232 | The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument) has been |
233 | deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its |
234 | implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to |
235 | disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead. |
236 | |
237 | =item * |
238 | |
239 | The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still |
240 | recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of |
241 | ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable |
242 | since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used. |
243 | |
244 | =item * |
245 | |
246 | In future releases, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become completely |
247 | unsupported. Since PerlIO is a drop-in replacement for stdio at the |
248 | source code level, this shouldn't be that drastic a change. |
249 | |
250 | =item * |
251 | |
252 | Previous versions of perl and some readings of some sections of Camel |
253 | III implied that the C<:raw> "discipline" was the inverse of C<:crlf>. |
254 | Turning off "clrfness" is no longer enough to make a stream truly |
255 | binary. So the PerlIO C<:raw> layer (or "discipline", to use the Camel |
256 | book's older terminology) is now formally defined as being equivalent |
257 | to binmode(FH) - which is in turn defined as doing whatever is |
258 | necessary to pass each byte as-is without any translation. In |
259 | particular binmode(FH) - and hence C<:raw> - will now turn off both |
260 | CRLF and UTF-8 translation and remove other layers (e.g. :encoding()) |
261 | which would modify byte stream. |
262 | |
263 | =item * |
264 | |
265 | The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird |
266 | use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0 |
267 | and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be |
268 | implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather |
269 | ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash |
270 | use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain |
271 | available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to |
272 | be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>). If your existing |
273 | programs depends on the underlying implementation, consider using |
274 | L<Class::PseudoHash> from CPAN. |
275 | |
276 | =item * |
277 | |
278 | The syntaxes C<< @a->[...] >> and C<< %h->{...} >> have now been deprecated. |
279 | |
280 | =item * |
281 | |
282 | After years of trying, suidperl is considered to be too complex to |
283 | ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely |
284 | to be removed in a future release. |
285 | |
286 | =item * |
287 | |
288 | The 5.005 threads model (module C<Thread>) is deprecated and expected |
289 | to be removed in Perl 5.10. Multithreaded code should be migrated to |
290 | the new ithreads model (see L<threads>, L<threads::shared> and |
291 | L<perlthrtut>). |
292 | |
293 | =item * |
294 | |
295 | The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison |
296 | operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed. |
297 | |
298 | =item * |
299 | |
300 | The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return; |
301 | the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar |
302 | functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...). [561] |
303 | |
304 | =item * |
305 | |
306 | Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)". |
307 | The prototypes are now checked better at compile-time for invalid |
308 | syntax. An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in |
309 | prototype...") but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future |
310 | release. |
311 | |
312 | =item * |
313 | |
314 | The C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> operations now produce warnings on |
315 | tainted data and in some future release they will produce fatal errors. |
316 | |
317 | =item * |
318 | |
319 | The existing behaviour when localising tied arrays and hashes is wrong, |
320 | and will be changed in a future release, so do not rely on the existing |
321 | behaviour. See L<"Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken">. |
322 | |
323 | =back |
324 | |
325 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
326 | |
327 | =head2 Unicode Overhaul |
328 | |
329 | Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0 |
330 | (or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in |
331 | regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now, |
332 | Unicode in I/O should work now. See L<perluniintro> for introduction |
333 | and L<perlunicode> for details. |
334 | |
335 | =over 4 |
336 | |
337 | =item * |
338 | |
339 | The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded |
340 | to Unicode 3.2.0. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/ . |
341 | [561+] (5.6.1 has UCD 3.0.1.) |
342 | |
343 | =item * |
344 | |
345 | For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities: |
346 | almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in |
347 | the F<lib/unicore> subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space |
348 | considerations, is the Unihan database. |
349 | |
350 | =item * |
351 | |
352 | The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like |
353 | C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space |
354 | character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode |
355 | equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical |
356 | tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.) |
357 | |
358 | See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional |
359 | information on changes with Unicode properties. |
360 | |
361 | =back |
362 | |
363 | =head2 PerlIO is Now The Default |
364 | |
365 | =over 4 |
366 | |
367 | =item * |
368 | |
369 | IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio". |
370 | PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the |
371 | handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg |
372 | form of open: |
373 | |
374 | open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ... |
375 | |
376 | or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>: |
377 | |
378 | binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)'); |
379 | |
380 | The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in |
381 | previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a |
382 | portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32, |
383 | but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if |
384 | platform supports it (mostly UNIXes). |
385 | |
386 | Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma. |
387 | |
388 | See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects |
389 | of PerlIO on your architecture name. |
390 | |
391 | =item * |
392 | |
393 | If your platform supports fork(), you can use the list form of C<open> |
394 | for pipes. For example: |
395 | |
396 | open KID_PS, "-|", "ps", "aux" or die $!; |
397 | |
398 | forks the ps(1) command (without spawning a shell, as there are more |
399 | than three arguments to open()), and reads its standard output via the |
400 | C<KID_PS> filehandle. See L<perlipc>. |
401 | |
402 | =item * |
403 | |
404 | File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode |
405 | (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" : |
406 | |
407 | open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt"); |
408 | |
409 | Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named |
410 | for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead |
411 | UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and |
412 | http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information. |
413 | In future releases this naming may change. See L<perluniintro> |
414 | for more information about UTF-8. |
415 | |
416 | =item * |
417 | |
418 | If your environment variables (LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG, LANGUAGE) look |
419 | like you want to use UTF-8 (any of the the variables match C</utf-?8/i>), |
420 | your STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR handles and the default open layer |
421 | (see L<open>) are marked as UTF-8. (This feature, like other new |
422 | features that combine Unicode and I/O, work only if you are using |
423 | PerlIO, but that's the default.) |
424 | |
425 | Note that after this Perl really does assume that everything is UTF-8: |
426 | for example if some input handle is not, Perl will probably very soon |
427 | complain about the input data like this "Malformed UTF-8 ..." since |
428 | any old eight-bit data is not legal UTF-8. |
429 | |
430 | Note for code authors: if you want to enable your users to use UTF-8 |
431 | as their default encoding but in your code still have eight-bit I/O streams |
432 | (such as images or zip files), you need to explicitly open() or binmode() |
433 | with C<:bytes> (see L<perlfunc/open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>), or you |
434 | can just use C<binmode(FH)> (nice for pre-5.8.0 backward compatibility). |
435 | |
436 | =item * |
437 | |
438 | File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal |
439 | Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer. |
440 | |
441 | =item * |
442 | |
443 | File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via: |
444 | |
445 | open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ... |
446 | |
447 | =item * |
448 | |
449 | Anonymous temporary files are available without need to |
450 | 'use FileHandle' or other module via |
451 | |
452 | open($fh,"+>", undef) || ... |
453 | |
454 | That is a literal undef, not an undefined value. |
455 | |
456 | =back |
457 | |
458 | =head2 ithreads |
459 | |
460 | The new interpreter threads ("ithreads" for short) implementation of |
461 | multithreading, by Arthur Bergman, replaces the old "5.005 threads" |
462 | implementation. In the ithreads model any data sharing between |
463 | threads must be explicit, as opposed to the model where data sharing |
464 | was implicit. See L<threads> and L<threads::shared>, and |
465 | L<perlthrtut>. |
466 | |
467 | As a part of the ithreads implementation Perl will also use |
468 | any necessary and detectable reentrant libc interfaces. |
469 | |
470 | =head2 Restricted Hashes |
471 | |
472 | A restricted hash is restricted to a certain set of keys, no keys |
473 | outside the set can be added. Also individual keys can be restricted |
474 | so that the key cannot be deleted and the value cannot be changed. |
475 | No new syntax is involved: the Hash::Util module is the interface. |
476 | |
477 | =head2 Safe Signals |
478 | |
479 | Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments |
480 | could corrupt Perl's internal state. Now Perl postpones handling of |
481 | signals until it's safe (between opcodes). |
482 | |
483 | This change may have surprising side effects because signals no longer |
484 | interrupt Perl instantly. Perl will now first finish whatever it was |
485 | doing, like finishing an internal operation (like sort()) or an |
486 | external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any |
487 | arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt |
488 | internal state since the current operation is always finished first, |
489 | but the signal may take more time to get heard. Note that breaking |
490 | out from potentially blocking operations should still work, though. |
491 | |
492 | =head2 Understanding of Numbers |
493 | |
494 | In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's |
495 | understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in |
496 | many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()> |
497 | and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their |
498 | deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers. |
499 | |
500 | Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions |
501 | and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and |
502 | tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers. |
503 | This change leads to often slightly faster and always less lossy |
504 | arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers |
505 | in its math.) |
506 | |
507 | =head2 Arrays now always interpolate into double-quoted strings [561] |
508 | |
509 | In double-quoted strings, arrays now interpolate, no matter what. The |
510 | behavior in earlier versions of perl 5 was that arrays would interpolate |
511 | into strings if the array had been mentioned before the string was |
512 | compiled, and otherwise Perl would raise a fatal compile-time error. |
513 | In versions 5.000 through 5.003, the error was |
514 | |
515 | Literal @example now requires backslash |
516 | |
517 | In versions 5.004_01 through 5.6.0, the error was |
518 | |
519 | In string, @example now must be written as \@example |
520 | |
521 | The idea here was to get people into the habit of writing |
522 | C<"fred\@example.com"> when they wanted a literal C<@> sign, just as |
523 | they have always written C<"Give me back my \$5"> when they wanted a |
524 | literal C<$> sign. |
525 | |
526 | Starting with 5.6.1, when Perl now sees an C<@> sign in a |
527 | double-quoted string, it I<always> attempts to interpolate an array, |
528 | regardless of whether or not the array has been used or declared |
529 | already. The fatal error has been downgraded to an optional warning: |
530 | |
531 | Possible unintended interpolation of @example in string |
532 | |
533 | This warns you that C<"fred@example.com"> is going to turn into |
534 | C<fred.com> if you don't backslash the C<@>. |
535 | See http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/at-error.html for more details |
536 | about the history here. |
537 | |
538 | =head2 Miscellaneous Changes |
539 | |
540 | =over 4 |
541 | |
542 | =item * |
543 | |
544 | AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute |
545 | to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value. |
546 | |
547 | =item * |
548 | |
549 | The $Config{byteorder} (and corresponding BYTEORDER in config.h) was |
550 | previously wrong in platforms if sizeof(long) was 4, but sizeof(IV) |
551 | was 8. The byteorder was only sizeof(long) bytes long (1234 or 4321), |
552 | but now it is correctly sizeof(IV) bytes long, (12345678 or 87654321). |
553 | (This problem didn't affect Windows platforms.) |
554 | |
555 | Also, $Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically--this is more |
556 | robust with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries |
557 | for more than one binary platform, and when cross-compiling. |
558 | |
559 | =item * |
560 | |
561 | C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass |
562 | in multiple arguments.) |
563 | |
564 | =item * |
565 | |
566 | C<do> followed by a bareword now ensures that this bareword isn't |
567 | a keyword (to avoid a bug where C<do q(foo.pl)> tried to call a |
568 | subroutine called C<q>). This means that for example instead of |
569 | C<do format()> you must write C<do &format()>. |
570 | |
571 | =item * |
572 | |
573 | The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning |
574 | C<dump() better written as CORE::dump()>, |
575 | meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin |
576 | dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined |
577 | C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>. |
578 | (The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly |
579 | removed/changed in future releases.) |
580 | |
581 | =item * |
582 | |
583 | chomp() and chop() are now overridable. Note, however, that their |
584 | prototype (as given by C<prototype("CORE::chomp")> is undefined, |
585 | because it cannot be expressed and therefore one cannot really write |
586 | replacements to override these builtins. |
587 | |
588 | =item * |
589 | |
590 | END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block. |
591 | Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by |
592 | PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new |
593 | behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See |
594 | L<perlembed>. |
595 | |
596 | =item * |
597 | |
598 | Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields. |
599 | |
600 | =item * |
601 | |
602 | Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that |
603 | depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new |
604 | algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order. |
605 | More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">. |
606 | |
607 | =item * |
608 | |
609 | lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense. |
610 | In future releases this may become a fatal error. |
611 | |
612 | =item * |
613 | |
614 | Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob() |
615 | caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed. [561] |
616 | |
617 | =item * |
618 | |
619 | Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context. However, |
620 | the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental. [561+] |
621 | |
622 | =item * |
623 | |
624 | A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been |
625 | restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.) |
626 | |
627 | =item * |
628 | |
629 | A new special regular expression variable has been introduced: |
630 | C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch). |
631 | |
632 | =item * |
633 | |
634 | C<no Module;> does not produce an error even if Module does not have an |
635 | unimport() method. This parallels the behavior of C<use> vis-a-vis |
636 | C<import>. [561] |
637 | |
638 | =item * |
639 | |
640 | The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand |
641 | is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified. |
642 | |
643 | =item * |
644 | |
645 | C<our> can now have an experimental optional attribute C<unique> that |
646 | affects how global variables are shared among multiple interpreters, |
647 | see L<perlfunc/our>. |
648 | |
649 | =item * |
650 | |
651 | The following builtin functions are now overridable: each(), keys(), |
652 | pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift(). [561] |
653 | |
654 | =item * |
655 | |
656 | C<pack() / unpack()> can now group template letters with C<()> and then |
657 | apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups. |
658 | |
659 | =item * |
660 | |
661 | C<pack() / unpack()> can now process the Perl internal numeric types: |
662 | IVs, UVs, NVs-- and also long doubles, if supported by the platform. |
663 | The template letters are C<j>, C<J>, C<F>, and C<D>. |
664 | |
665 | =item * |
666 | |
667 | C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8. |
668 | |
669 | =item * |
670 | |
671 | my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works. [561] |
672 | |
673 | =item * |
674 | |
675 | POSIX::sleep() now returns the number of I<unslept> seconds |
676 | (as the POSIX standard says), as opposed to CORE::sleep() which |
677 | returns the number of slept seconds. |
678 | |
679 | =item * |
680 | |
681 | The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the |
682 | C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example |
683 | |
684 | print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar"; |
685 | |
686 | will print "bar foo\n". This feature helps in writing |
687 | internationalised software, and in general when the order |
688 | of the parameters can vary. |
689 | |
690 | =item * |
691 | |
692 | The (\&) prototype now works properly. [561] |
693 | |
694 | =item * |
695 | |
696 | prototype(\[$@%&]) is now available to implicitly create references |
697 | (useful for example if you want to emulate the tie() interface). |
698 | |
699 | =item * |
700 | |
701 | A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the |
702 | little brother of C<-T>: instead of dying on taint violations, |
703 | lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary |
704 | debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications. |
705 | This is not a substitute for -T.> |
706 | |
707 | =item * |
708 | |
709 | In other taint news, the C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> have now been |
710 | considered too risky (think C<exec @ARGV>: it can start any program |
711 | with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning under |
712 | lexical warnings. You should carefully launder the arguments to |
713 | guarantee their validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will |
714 | become fatal errors so consider starting laundering now. |
715 | |
716 | =item * |
717 | |
718 | Tied hash interfaces are now required to have the EXISTS and DELETE |
719 | methods (either own or inherited). |
720 | |
721 | =item * |
722 | |
723 | If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to |
724 | modify its target. |
725 | |
726 | =item * |
727 | |
728 | untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie> |
729 | for details. [561] |
730 | |
731 | =item * |
732 | |
733 | L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the |
734 | file timestamps to the current time. |
735 | |
736 | =item * |
737 | |
738 | The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants |
739 | have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore |
740 | simply B<between digits>. |
741 | |
742 | =item * |
743 | |
744 | Rather than relying on C's argv[0] (which may not contain a full pathname) |
745 | where possible $^X is now set by asking the operating system. |
746 | (eg by reading F</proc/self/exe> on Linux, F</proc/curproc/file> on FreeBSD) |
747 | |
748 | =item * |
749 | |
750 | A new variable, C<${^TAINT}>, indicates whether taint mode is enabled. |
751 | |
752 | =item * |
753 | |
754 | You can now override the readline() builtin, and this overrides also |
755 | the <FILEHANDLE> angle bracket operator. |
756 | |
757 | =item * |
758 | |
759 | The command-line options -s and -F are now recognized on the shebang |
760 | (#!) line. |
761 | |
762 | =item * |
763 | |
764 | Use of the C</c> match modifier without an accompanying C</g> modifier |
765 | elicits a new warning: C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g>. |
766 | |
767 | Use of C</c> in substitutions, even with C</g>, elicits |
768 | C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///>. |
769 | |
770 | Use of C</g> with C<split> elicits C<Use of /g modifier is meaningless |
771 | in split>. |
772 | |
773 | =item * |
774 | |
775 | Support for the C<CLONE> special subroutine had been added. |
776 | With ithreads, when a new thread is created, all Perl data is cloned, |
777 | however non-Perl data cannot be cloned automatically. In C<CLONE> you |
778 | can do whatever you need to do, like for example handle the cloning of |
779 | non-Perl data, if necessary. C<CLONE> will be executed once for every |
780 | package that has it defined or inherited. It will be called in the |
781 | context of the new thread, so all modifications are made in the new area. |
782 | |
783 | See L<perlmod> |
784 | |
785 | =back |
786 | |
787 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
788 | |
789 | =head2 New Modules and Pragmata |
790 | |
791 | =over 4 |
792 | |
793 | =item * |
794 | |
795 | C<Attribute::Handlers>, originally by Damian Conway and now maintained |
796 | by Arthur Bergman, allows a class to define attribute handlers. |
797 | |
798 | package MyPack; |
799 | use Attribute::Handlers; |
800 | sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" } |
801 | |
802 | # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack... |
803 | |
804 | my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called |
805 | |
806 | Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can |
807 | be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the |
808 | exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END). |
809 | See L<Attribute::Handlers>. |
810 | |
811 | =item * |
812 | |
813 | C<B::Concise>, by Stephen McCamant, is a new compiler backend for |
814 | walking the Perl syntax tree, printing concise info about ops. |
815 | The output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>. [561+] |
816 | |
817 | =item * |
818 | |
819 | The new bignum, bigint, and bigrat pragmas, by Tels, implement |
820 | transparent bignum support (using the Math::BigInt, Math::BigFloat, |
821 | and Math::BigRat backends). |
822 | |
823 | =item * |
824 | |
825 | C<Class::ISA>, by Sean Burke, is a module for reporting the search |
826 | path for a class's ISA tree. See L<Class::ISA>. |
827 | |
828 | =item * |
829 | |
830 | C<Cwd> now has a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is |
831 | used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust) |
832 | but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used. |
833 | |
834 | =item * |
835 | |
836 | C<Devel::PPPort>, originally by Kenneth Albanowski and now |
837 | maintained by Paul Marquess, has been added. It is primarily used |
838 | by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of XS modules between different |
839 | versions of Perl. See L<Devel::PPPort>. |
840 | |
841 | =item * |
842 | |
843 | C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from |
844 | Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>. |
845 | |
846 | =item * |
847 | |
848 | C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in |
849 | RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>. |
850 | |
851 | use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex'; |
852 | |
853 | $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel"); |
854 | |
855 | print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1 |
856 | |
857 | NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not |
858 | included since its further use is discouraged. |
859 | |
860 | See also L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>. |
861 | |
862 | =item * |
863 | |
864 | C<Encode>, originally by Nick Ing-Simmons and now maintained by Dan |
865 | Kogai, provides a mechanism to translate between different character |
866 | encodings. Support for Unicode, ISO-8859-1, and ASCII are compiled in |
867 | to the module. Several other encodings (like the rest of the |
868 | ISO-8859, CP*/Win*, Mac, KOI8-R, three variants EBCDIC, Chinese, |
869 | Japanese, and Korean encodings) are included and can be loaded at |
870 | runtime. (For space considerations, the largest Chinese encodings |
871 | have been separated into their own CPAN module, Encode::HanExtra, |
872 | which Encode will use if available). See L<Encode>. |
873 | |
874 | Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the |
875 | ":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used. |
876 | |
877 | =item * |
878 | |
879 | C<Hash::Util> is the interface to the new I<restricted hashes> |
880 | feature. (Implemented by Jeffrey Friedl, Nick Ing-Simmons, and |
881 | Michael Schwern.) See L<Hash::Util>. |
882 | |
883 | =item * |
884 | |
885 | C<I18N::Langinfo> can be used to query locale information. |
886 | See L<I18N::Langinfo>. |
887 | |
888 | =item * |
889 | |
890 | C<I18N::LangTags>, by Sean Burke, has functions for dealing with |
891 | RFC3066-style language tags. See L<I18N::LangTags>. |
892 | |
893 | =item * |
894 | |
895 | C<ExtUtils::Constant>, by Nicholas Clark, is a new tool for extension |
896 | writers for generating XS code to import C header constants. |
897 | See L<ExtUtils::Constant>. |
898 | |
899 | =item * |
900 | |
901 | C<Filter::Simple>, by Damian Conway, is an easy-to-use frontend to |
902 | Filter::Util::Call. See L<Filter::Simple>. |
903 | |
904 | # in MyFilter.pm: |
905 | |
906 | package MyFilter; |
907 | |
908 | use Filter::Simple sub { |
909 | while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) { |
910 | s/$from/$to/g; |
911 | } |
912 | }; |
913 | |
914 | 1; |
915 | |
916 | # in user's code: |
917 | |
918 | use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green'; |
919 | |
920 | print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n" |
921 | print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n" |
922 | |
923 | no MyFilter; |
924 | |
925 | print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n" |
926 | |
927 | =item * |
928 | |
929 | C<File::Temp>, by Tim Jenness, allows one to create temporary files |
930 | and directories in an easy, portable, and secure way. See L<File::Temp>. |
931 | [561+] |
932 | |
933 | =item * |
934 | |
935 | C<Filter::Util::Call>, by Paul Marquess, provides you with the |
936 | framework to write I<source filters> in Perl. For most uses, the |
937 | frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>. |
938 | |
939 | =item * |
940 | |
941 | C<if>, by Ilya Zakharevich, is a new pragma for conditional inclusion |
942 | of modules. |
943 | |
944 | =item * |
945 | |
946 | L<libnet>, by Graham Barr, is a collection of perl5 modules related |
947 | to network programming. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>, L<Net::Ping> |
948 | (not part of libnet, but related), L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, |
949 | and L<Net::Time>. |
950 | |
951 | Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured; use F<libnetcfg> |
952 | to configure it. |
953 | |
954 | =item * |
955 | |
956 | C<List::Util>, by Graham Barr, is a selection of general-utility |
957 | list subroutines, such as sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(). |
958 | See L<List::Util>. |
959 | |
960 | =item * |
961 | |
962 | C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency> |
963 | C<Locale::Language>, and L<Locale::Script>, by Neil Bowers, have |
964 | been added. They provide the codes for various locale standards, such |
965 | as "fr" for France, "usd" for US Dollar, and "ja" for Japanese. |
966 | |
967 | use Locale::Country; |
968 | |
969 | $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan' |
970 | $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no' |
971 | |
972 | See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>, |
973 | and L<Locale::Language>. |
974 | |
975 | =item * |
976 | |
977 | C<Locale::Maketext>, by Sean Burke, is a localization framework. See |
978 | L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an |
979 | article about software localization, originally published in The Perl |
980 | Journal #13, and republished here with kind permission. |
981 | |
982 | =item * |
983 | |
984 | C<Math::BigRat> for big rational numbers, to accompany Math::BigInt and |
985 | Math::BigFloat, from Tels. See L<Math::BigRat>. |
986 | |
987 | =item * |
988 | |
989 | C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time, |
990 | from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>. |
991 | |
992 | =item * |
993 | |
994 | C<MIME::Base64>, by Gisle Aas, allows you to encode data in base64, |
995 | as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail |
996 | Extensions)>. |
997 | |
998 | use MIME::Base64; |
999 | |
1000 | $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame'); |
1001 | $decoded = decode_base64($encoded); |
1002 | |
1003 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==" |
1004 | |
1005 | See L<MIME::Base64>. |
1006 | |
1007 | =item * |
1008 | |
1009 | C<MIME::QuotedPrint>, by Gisle Aas, allows you to encode data |
1010 | in quoted-printable encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME |
1011 | (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)>. |
1012 | |
1013 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; |
1014 | |
1015 | $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}"); |
1016 | $decoded = decode_qp($encoded); |
1017 | |
1018 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A" |
1019 | |
1020 | See also L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>. |
1021 | |
1022 | =item * |
1023 | |
1024 | C<NEXT>, by Damian Conway, is a pseudo-class for method redispatch. |
1025 | See L<NEXT>. |
1026 | |
1027 | =item * |
1028 | |
1029 | C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O layers |
1030 | for open(). |
1031 | |
1032 | =item * |
1033 | |
1034 | C<PerlIO::scalar>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides the implementation |
1035 | of IO to "in memory" Perl scalars as discussed above. It also serves |
1036 | as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future possibilities |
1037 | include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. See L<PerlIO::scalar>. |
1038 | |
1039 | =item * |
1040 | |
1041 | C<PerlIO::via>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps |
1042 | PerlIO layer functionality provided by a class (typically implemented |
1043 | in Perl code). |
1044 | |
1045 | =item * |
1046 | |
1047 | C<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>, by Elizabeth Mattijsen, is an example |
1048 | of a C<PerlIO::via> class: |
1049 | |
1050 | use PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint; |
1051 | open($fh,">:via(QuotedPrint)",$path); |
1052 | |
1053 | This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh> to |
1054 | Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::via> and L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>. |
1055 | |
1056 | =item * |
1057 | |
1058 | C<Pod::ParseLink>, by Russ Allbery, has been added, |
1059 | to parse LZ<><> links in pods as described in the new |
1060 | perlpodspec. |
1061 | |
1062 | =item * |
1063 | |
1064 | C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added. |
1065 | It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text. |
1066 | See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>. [561+] |
1067 | |
1068 | =item * |
1069 | |
1070 | C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines, |
1071 | such as blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>. |
1072 | |
1073 | =item * |
1074 | |
1075 | C<sort> is a new pragma for controlling the behaviour of sort(). |
1076 | |
1077 | =item * |
1078 | |
1079 | C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the |
1080 | storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and |
1081 | compact binary format. Because in effect Storable does serialisation |
1082 | of Perl data structures, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical |
1083 | datastructures. Storable was originally created by Raphael Manfredi, |
1084 | but it is now maintained by Abhijit Menon-Sen. Storable has been |
1085 | enhanced to understand the two new hash features, Unicode keys and |
1086 | restricted hashes. See L<Storable>. |
1087 | |
1088 | =item * |
1089 | |
1090 | C<Switch>, by Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying |
1091 | |
1092 | use Switch; |
1093 | |
1094 | you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl. |
1095 | |
1096 | use Switch; |
1097 | |
1098 | switch ($val) { |
1099 | |
1100 | case 1 { print "number 1" } |
1101 | case "a" { print "string a" } |
1102 | case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" } |
1103 | case (@array) { print "number in list" } |
1104 | case /\w+/ { print "pattern" } |
1105 | case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" } |
1106 | case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" } |
1107 | case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" } |
1108 | case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" } |
1109 | else { print "previous case not true" } |
1110 | } |
1111 | |
1112 | See L<Switch>. |
1113 | |
1114 | =item * |
1115 | |
1116 | C<Test::More>, by Michael Schwern, is yet another framework for writing |
1117 | test scripts, more extensive than Test::Simple. See L<Test::More>. |
1118 | |
1119 | =item * |
1120 | |
1121 | C<Test::Simple>, by Michael Schwern, has basic utilities for writing |
1122 | tests. See L<Test::Simple>. |
1123 | |
1124 | =item * |
1125 | |
1126 | C<Text::Balanced>, by Damian Conway, has been added, for extracting |
1127 | delimited text sequences from strings. |
1128 | |
1129 | use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited'; |
1130 | |
1131 | ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", ''); |
1132 | |
1133 | $a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'. |
1134 | |
1135 | In addition to extract_delimited(), there are also extract_bracketed(), |
1136 | extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(), |
1137 | extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and |
1138 | gen_extract_tagged(). With these, you can implement rather advanced |
1139 | parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>. |
1140 | |
1141 | =item * |
1142 | |
1143 | C<threads>, by Arthur Bergman, is an interface to interpreter threads. |
1144 | Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in |
1145 | Perl 5.6 but only available as an internal interface for extension |
1146 | writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>, |
1147 | L<threads::shared>, and L<perlthrtut>. |
1148 | |
1149 | =item * |
1150 | |
1151 | C<threads::shared>, by Arthur Bergman, allows data sharing for |
1152 | interpreter threads. See L<threads::shared>. |
1153 | |
1154 | =item * |
1155 | |
1156 | C<Tie::File>, by Mark-Jason Dominus, associates a Perl array with the |
1157 | lines of a file. See L<Tie::File>. |
1158 | |
1159 | =item * |
1160 | |
1161 | C<Tie::Memoize>, by Ilya Zakharevich, provides on-demand loaded hashes. |
1162 | See L<Tie::Memoize>. |
1163 | |
1164 | =item * |
1165 | |
1166 | C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash |
1167 | references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained |
1168 | within Tie::RefHash. See L<Tie::RefHash>. |
1169 | |
1170 | =item * |
1171 | |
1172 | C<Time::HiRes>, by Douglas E. Wegscheid, provides high resolution |
1173 | timing (ualarm, usleep, and gettimeofday). See L<Time::HiRes>. |
1174 | |
1175 | =item * |
1176 | |
1177 | C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character |
1178 | Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>. |
1179 | |
1180 | =item * |
1181 | |
1182 | C<Unicode::Collate>, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki, implements the UCA |
1183 | (Unicode Collation Algorithm) for sorting Unicode strings. |
1184 | See L<Unicode::Collate>. |
1185 | |
1186 | =item * |
1187 | |
1188 | C<Unicode::Normalize>, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki, implements the various |
1189 | Unicode normalization forms. See L<Unicode::Normalize>. |
1190 | |
1191 | =item * |
1192 | |
1193 | C<XS::APItest>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS |
1194 | APIs. Currently only C<printf()> is tested: how to output various |
1195 | basic data types from XS. |
1196 | |
1197 | =item * |
1198 | |
1199 | C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises |
1200 | XS typemaps. Nothing gets installed, but the code is worth studying |
1201 | for extension writers. |
1202 | |
1203 | =back |
1204 | |
1205 | =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata |
1206 | |
1207 | =over 4 |
1208 | |
1209 | =item * |
1210 | |
1211 | The following independently supported modules have been updated to the |
1212 | newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp, |
1213 | Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle |
1214 | (Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX [561+], Pod::Parser, Storable, |
1215 | Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap. |
1216 | |
1217 | =item * |
1218 | |
1219 | attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments. |
1220 | |
1221 | =item * |
1222 | |
1223 | AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>. |
1224 | |
1225 | =item * |
1226 | |
1227 | B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced by Robin Houston. It can |
1228 | now deparse almost all of the standard test suite (so that the tests |
1229 | still succeed). There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this |
1230 | out. |
1231 | |
1232 | =item * |
1233 | |
1234 | Carp now has better interface documentation, and the @CARP_NOT |
1235 | interface has been added to get optional control over where errors |
1236 | are reported independently of @ISA, by Ben Tilly. |
1237 | |
1238 | =item * |
1239 | |
1240 | Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time. |
1241 | |
1242 | =item * |
1243 | |
1244 | Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor |
1245 | is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument. |
1246 | |
1247 | =item * |
1248 | |
1249 | The return value of Cwd::fastcwd() is now tainted. |
1250 | |
1251 | =item * |
1252 | |
1253 | Data::Dumper now has an option to sort hashes. |
1254 | |
1255 | =item * |
1256 | |
1257 | Data::Dumper now has an option to dump code references |
1258 | using B::Deparse. |
1259 | |
1260 | =item * |
1261 | |
1262 | DB_File now supports newer Berkeley DB versions, among |
1263 | other improvements. |
1264 | |
1265 | =item * |
1266 | |
1267 | Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics |
1268 | (this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have |
1269 | compiled with debugging). |
1270 | |
1271 | =item * |
1272 | |
1273 | The English module can now be used without the infamous performance |
1274 | hit by saying |
1275 | |
1276 | use English '-no_match_vars'; |
1277 | |
1278 | (Assuming, of course, that you don't need the troublesome variables |
1279 | C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and |
1280 | C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>. |
1281 | |
1282 | =item * |
1283 | |
1284 | ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been significantly cleaned up and fixed. |
1285 | The enhanced version has also been backported to earlier releases |
1286 | of Perl and submitted to CPAN so that the earlier releases can |
1287 | enjoy the fixes. |
1288 | |
1289 | =item * |
1290 | |
1291 | The arguments of WriteMakefile() in Makefile.PL are now checked |
1292 | for sanity much more carefully than before. This may cause new |
1293 | warnings when modules are being installed. See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> |
1294 | for more details. |
1295 | |
1296 | =item * |
1297 | |
1298 | ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully |
1299 | leads to better portability. |
1300 | |
1301 | =item * |
1302 | |
1303 | Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten by Nicholas Clark |
1304 | to use the new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>). |
1305 | This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster. |
1306 | |
1307 | =item * |
1308 | |
1309 | File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links. [561] |
1310 | |
1311 | =item * |
1312 | |
1313 | File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also |
1314 | correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks |
1315 | (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work. |
1316 | |
1317 | =item * |
1318 | |
1319 | File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made |
1320 | more portable. |
1321 | |
1322 | =item * |
1323 | |
1324 | The warnings issued by File::Find now belong to their own category. |
1325 | You can enable/disable them with C<use/no warnings 'File::Find';>. |
1326 | |
1327 | =item * |
1328 | |
1329 | File::Glob::glob() has been renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() |
1330 | because the name clashes with the builtin glob(). The older |
1331 | name is still available for compatibility, but is deprecated. [561] |
1332 | |
1333 | =item * |
1334 | |
1335 | File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of |
1336 | the returned list of filenames. |
1337 | |
1338 | =item * |
1339 | |
1340 | IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors. |
1341 | |
1342 | =item * |
1343 | |
1344 | IO::Socket now has an atmark() method, which returns true if the socket |
1345 | is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable |
1346 | as a sockatmark() function. |
1347 | |
1348 | =item * |
1349 | |
1350 | IO::Socket::INET failed to open the specified port if the service name |
1351 | was not known. It now correctly uses the supplied port number as is. [561] |
1352 | |
1353 | =item * |
1354 | |
1355 | IO::Socket::INET has support for the ReusePort option (if your |
1356 | platform supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. |
1357 | For clarity, you may want to prefer ReuseAddr. |
1358 | |
1359 | =item * |
1360 | |
1361 | IO::Socket::INET now supports a value of zero for C<LocalPort> |
1362 | (usually meaning that the operating system will make one up.) |
1363 | |
1364 | =item * |
1365 | |
1366 | 'use lib' now works identically to @INC. Removing directories |
1367 | with 'no lib' now works. |
1368 | |
1369 | =item * |
1370 | |
1371 | Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite by Tels. |
1372 | They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various bignum |
1373 | libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends. |
1374 | |
1375 | =item * |
1376 | |
1377 | Math::Complex handles inf, NaN etc., better. |
1378 | |
1379 | =item * |
1380 | |
1381 | Net::Ping has been considerably enhanced by Rob Brown: multihoming is |
1382 | now supported, Win32 functionality is better, there is now time |
1383 | measuring functionality (optionally high-resolution using |
1384 | Time::HiRes), and there is now "external" protocol which uses |
1385 | Net::Ping::External module which runs your external ping utility and |
1386 | parses the output. A version of Net::Ping::External is available in |
1387 | CPAN. |
1388 | |
1389 | Note that some of the Net::Ping tests are disabled when running |
1390 | under the Perl distribution since one cannot assume one or more |
1391 | of the following: enabled echo port at localhost, full Internet |
1392 | connectivity, or sympathetic firewalls. You can set the environment |
1393 | variable PERL_TEST_Net_Ping to "1" (one) before running the Perl test |
1394 | suite to enable all the Net::Ping tests. |
1395 | |
1396 | =item * |
1397 | |
1398 | POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust. |
1399 | You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE' |
1400 | handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic. |
1401 | |
1402 | =item * |
1403 | |
1404 | In Safe, C<%INC> is now localised in a Safe compartment so that |
1405 | use/require work. |
1406 | |
1407 | =item * |
1408 | |
1409 | In SDBM_File on dosish platforms, some keys went missing because of |
1410 | lack of support for files with "holes". A workaround for the problem |
1411 | has been added. |
1412 | |
1413 | =item * |
1414 | |
1415 | In Search::Dict one can now have a pre-processing hook for the |
1416 | lines being searched. |
1417 | |
1418 | =item * |
1419 | |
1420 | The Shell module now has an OO interface. |
1421 | |
1422 | =item * |
1423 | |
1424 | In Sys::Syslog there is now a failover mechanism that will go |
1425 | through alternative connection mechanisms until the message |
1426 | is successfully logged. |
1427 | |
1428 | =item * |
1429 | |
1430 | The Test module has been significantly enhanced. |
1431 | |
1432 | =item * |
1433 | |
1434 | Time::Local::timelocal() does not handle fractional seconds anymore. |
1435 | The rationale is that neither does localtime(), and timelocal() and |
1436 | localtime() are supposed to be inverses of each other. |
1437 | |
1438 | =item * |
1439 | |
1440 | The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables. |
1441 | (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.) |
1442 | |
1443 | =item * |
1444 | |
1445 | The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various |
1446 | Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's |
1447 | internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length() |
1448 | has been implemented. |
1449 | |
1450 | =back |
1451 | |
1452 | =head1 Utility Changes |
1453 | |
1454 | =over 4 |
1455 | |
1456 | =item * |
1457 | |
1458 | Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version |
1459 | 4.31. |
1460 | |
1461 | =item * |
1462 | |
1463 | F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster. |
1464 | |
1465 | =item * |
1466 | |
1467 | C<enc2xs> is a tool for people adding their own encodings to the |
1468 | Encode module. |
1469 | |
1470 | =item * |
1471 | |
1472 | C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs. |
1473 | |
1474 | =item * |
1475 | |
1476 | C<h2xs> now produces a template README. |
1477 | |
1478 | =item * |
1479 | |
1480 | C<h2xs> now uses C<Devel::PPPort> for better portability between |
1481 | different versions of Perl. |
1482 | |
1483 | =item * |
1484 | |
1485 | C<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant|ExtUtils::Constant> module |
1486 | which will affect newly created extensions that define constants. |
1487 | Since the new code is more correct (if you have two constants where the |
1488 | first one is a prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> |
1489 | got defined), less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, |
1490 | as opposed to the old code that used floating point numbers even for |
1491 | integer constants), and slightly faster, you might want to consider |
1492 | regenerating your extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating |
1493 | easy). L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs. |
1494 | |
1495 | =item * |
1496 | |
1497 | C<libnetcfg> has been added to configure libnet. |
1498 | |
1499 | =item * |
1500 | |
1501 | C<perlbug> is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to |
1502 | perl.org, not perl.com. |
1503 | |
1504 | =item * |
1505 | |
1506 | C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is, |
1507 | command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc. |
1508 | (The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.) |
1509 | B<Note that perlcc is still considered very experimental and |
1510 | unsupported.> [561] |
1511 | |
1512 | =item * |
1513 | |
1514 | C<perlivp> is a new Installation Verification Procedure utility |
1515 | for running any time after installing Perl. |
1516 | |
1517 | =item * |
1518 | |
1519 | C<piconv> is an implementation of the character conversion utility |
1520 | C<iconv>, demonstrating the new Encode module. |
1521 | |
1522 | =item * |
1523 | |
1524 | C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory. |
1525 | |
1526 | =item * |
1527 | |
1528 | C<pod2html> now produces XHTML 1.0. |
1529 | |
1530 | =item * |
1531 | |
1532 | C<pod2html> now understands POD written using different line endings |
1533 | (PC-like CRLF versus UNIX-like LF versus MacClassic-like CR). |
1534 | |
1535 | =item * |
1536 | |
1537 | C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full |
1538 | implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by |
1539 | using the C<psed> utility.) |
1540 | |
1541 | =item * |
1542 | |
1543 | C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs |
1544 | files. [561] |
1545 | |
1546 | =item * |
1547 | |
1548 | C<xsubpp> now supports the OUT keyword. |
1549 | |
1550 | =back |
1551 | |
1552 | =head1 New Documentation |
1553 | |
1554 | =over 4 |
1555 | |
1556 | =item * |
1557 | |
1558 | perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the |
1559 | 5.6.0 release. |
1560 | |
1561 | =item * |
1562 | |
1563 | perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library |
1564 | functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core |
1565 | hackers.) [561+] |
1566 | |
1567 | =item * |
1568 | |
1569 | perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial. [561+] |
1570 | |
1571 | =item * |
1572 | |
1573 | perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC |
1574 | platforms. [561+] |
1575 | |
1576 | =item * |
1577 | |
1578 | perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl. |
1579 | |
1580 | =item * |
1581 | |
1582 | perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers. |
1583 | |
1584 | =item * |
1585 | |
1586 | perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules. |
1587 | |
1588 | =item * |
1589 | |
1590 | perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module. [561+] |
1591 | |
1592 | =item * |
1593 | |
1594 | perlpacktut is a pack() tutorial. |
1595 | |
1596 | =item * |
1597 | |
1598 | perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best |
1599 | practices gathered over the years. |
1600 | |
1601 | =item * |
1602 | |
1603 | perlpodspec is a more formal specification of the pod format, |
1604 | mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to |
1605 | people writing in pod. |
1606 | |
1607 | =item * |
1608 | |
1609 | perlretut is a regular expression tutorial. [561+] |
1610 | |
1611 | =item * |
1612 | |
1613 | perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide. |
1614 | Yes, much quicker than perlretut. [561] |
1615 | |
1616 | =item * |
1617 | |
1618 | perltodo has been updated. |
1619 | |
1620 | =item * |
1621 | |
1622 | perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict |
1623 | with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names). |
1624 | |
1625 | =item * |
1626 | |
1627 | perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl. |
1628 | (perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background |
1629 | information) |
1630 | |
1631 | =item * |
1632 | |
1633 | perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl |
1634 | distribution. [561+] |
1635 | |
1636 | =back |
1637 | |
1638 | The following platform-specific documents are available before |
1639 | the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation |
1640 | as perlI<platform>: |
1641 | |
1642 | perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000 |
1643 | perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlfreebsd perlhpux |
1644 | perlhurd perlirix perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix |
1645 | perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris |
1646 | perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32 |
1647 | |
1648 | These documents usually detail one or more of the following subjects: |
1649 | configuring, building, testing, installing, and sometimes also using |
1650 | Perl on the said platform. |
1651 | |
1652 | Eastern Asian Perl users are now welcomed in their own languages: |
1653 | README.jp (Japanese), README.ko (Korean), README.cn (simplified |
1654 | Chinese) and README.tw (traditional Chinese), which are written in |
1655 | normal pod but encoded in EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-CN and Big5. These |
1656 | will get installed as |
1657 | |
1658 | perljp perlko perlcn perltw |
1659 | |
1660 | =over 4 |
1661 | |
1662 | =item * |
1663 | |
1664 | The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid |
1665 | confusion with the Perl POSIX module. |
1666 | |
1667 | =item * |
1668 | |
1669 | The documentation for the WinCE platform is called perlce (README.ce |
1670 | in the source code kit), to avoid confusion with the perlwin32 |
1671 | documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems. |
1672 | |
1673 | =back |
1674 | |
1675 | =head1 Performance Enhancements |
1676 | |
1677 | =over 4 |
1678 | |
1679 | =item * |
1680 | |
1681 | map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates |
1682 | is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for |
1683 | common scenarios. [561] |
1684 | |
1685 | =item * |
1686 | |
1687 | sort() is also fully reentrant, in the sense that the sort function |
1688 | can itself call sort(). This did not work reliably in previous |
1689 | releases. [561] |
1690 | |
1691 | =item * |
1692 | |
1693 | sort() has been changed to use primarily mergesort internally as |
1694 | opposed to the earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may |
1695 | result in slightly slower sorting times, but in general the speedup |
1696 | should be at least 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case |
1697 | behaviour of sort() is now better (in computer science terms it now |
1698 | runs in time O(N log N), as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2) |
1699 | worst-case run time behaviour), and that sort() is now stable |
1700 | (meaning that elements with identical keys will stay ordered as they |
1701 | were before the sort). See the C<sort> pragma for information. |
1702 | |
1703 | The story in more detail: suppose you want to serve yourself a little |
1704 | slice of Pi. |
1705 | |
1706 | @digits = ( 3,1,4,1,5,9 ); |
1707 | |
1708 | A numerical sort of the digits will yield (1,1,3,4,5,9), as expected. |
1709 | Which C<1> comes first is hard to know, since one C<1> looks pretty |
1710 | much like any other. You can regard this as totally trivial, |
1711 | or somewhat profound. However, if you just want to sort the even |
1712 | digits ahead of the odd ones, then what will |
1713 | |
1714 | sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } @digits; |
1715 | |
1716 | yield? The only even digit, C<4>, will come first. But how about |
1717 | the odd numbers, which all compare equal? With the quicksort algorithm |
1718 | used to implement Perl 5.6 and earlier, the order of ties is left up |
1719 | to the sort. So, as you add more and more digits of Pi, the order |
1720 | in which the sorted even and odd digits appear will change. |
1721 | and, for sufficiently large slices of Pi, the quicksort algorithm |
1722 | in Perl 5.8 won't return the same results even if reinvoked with the |
1723 | same input. The justification for this rests with quicksort's |
1724 | worst case behavior. If you run |
1725 | |
1726 | sort { $a <=> $b } ( 1 .. $N , 1 .. $N ); |
1727 | |
1728 | (something you might approximate if you wanted to merge two sorted |
1729 | arrays using sort), doubling $N doesn't just double the quicksort time, |
1730 | it I<quadruples> it. Quicksort has a worst case run time that can |
1731 | grow like N**2, so-called I<quadratic> behaviour, and it can happen |
1732 | on patterns that may well arise in normal use. You won't notice this |
1733 | for small arrays, but you I<will> notice it with larger arrays, |
1734 | and you may not live long enough for the sort to complete on arrays |
1735 | of a million elements. So the 5.8 quicksort scrambles large arrays |
1736 | before sorting them, as a statistical defence against quadratic behaviour. |
1737 | But that means if you sort the same large array twice, ties may be |
1738 | broken in different ways. |
1739 | |
1740 | Because of the unpredictability of tie-breaking order, and the quadratic |
1741 | worst-case behaviour, quicksort was I<almost> replaced completely with |
1742 | a stable mergesort. I<Stable> means that ties are broken to preserve |
1743 | the original order of appearance in the input array. So |
1744 | |
1745 | sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } (3,1,4,1,5,9); |
1746 | |
1747 | will yield (4,3,1,1,5,9), guaranteed. The even and odd numbers |
1748 | appear in the output in the same order they appeared in the input. |
1749 | Mergesort has worst case O(N log N) behaviour, the best value |
1750 | attainable. And, ironically, this mergesort does particularly |
1751 | well where quicksort goes quadratic: mergesort sorts (1..$N, 1..$N) |
1752 | in O(N) time. But quicksort was rescued at the last moment because |
1753 | it is faster than mergesort on certain inputs and platforms. |
1754 | For example, if you really I<don't> care about the order of even |
1755 | and odd digits, quicksort will run in O(N) time; it's very good |
1756 | at sorting many repetitions of a small number of distinct elements. |
1757 | The quicksort divide and conquer strategy works well on platforms |
1758 | with relatively small, very fast, caches. Eventually, the problem gets |
1759 | whittled down to one that fits in the cache, from which point it |
1760 | benefits from the increased memory speed. |
1761 | |
1762 | Quicksort was rescued by implementing a sort pragma to control aspects |
1763 | of the sort. The B<stable> subpragma forces stable behaviour, |
1764 | regardless of algorithm. The B<_quicksort> and B<_mergesort> |
1765 | subpragmas are heavy-handed ways to select the underlying implementation. |
1766 | The leading C<_> is a reminder that these subpragmas may not survive |
1767 | beyond 5.8. More appropriate mechanisms for selecting the implementation |
1768 | exist, but they wouldn't have arrived in time to save quicksort. |
1769 | |
1770 | =item * |
1771 | |
1772 | Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm |
1773 | ( http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html ). This algorithm is |
1774 | reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than |
1775 | the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by |
1776 | Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of |
1777 | all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the |
1778 | DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this |
1779 | change has not affected the overall speed of Perl. |
1780 | |
1781 | =item * |
1782 | |
1783 | unshift() should now be noticeably faster. |
1784 | |
1785 | =back |
1786 | |
1787 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
1788 | |
1789 | =head2 Generic Improvements |
1790 | |
1791 | =over 4 |
1792 | |
1793 | =item * |
1794 | |
1795 | INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit |
1796 | integers even on non-64-bit platforms. |
1797 | |
1798 | =item * |
1799 | |
1800 | Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file |
1801 | (see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old |
1802 | Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of |
1803 | them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously |
1804 | only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour, |
1805 | specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly. |
1806 | |
1807 | =item * |
1808 | |
1809 | A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available. |
1810 | It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's |
1811 | own library directories. |
1812 | |
1813 | =item * |
1814 | |
1815 | In many platforms, the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to |
1816 | build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems |
1817 | to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler |
1818 | 'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead. |
1819 | |
1820 | =item * |
1821 | |
1822 | gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid |
1823 | build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different |
1824 | operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible |
1825 | warning that there may be trouble ahead. |
1826 | |
1827 | =item * |
1828 | |
1829 | Since Perl 5.8 is not binary-compatible with previous releases |
1830 | of Perl, Configure no longer suggests including the 5.005 |
1831 | modules in @INC. |
1832 | |
1833 | =item * |
1834 | |
1835 | Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively. [561] |
1836 | |
1837 | =item * |
1838 | |
1839 | Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due |
1840 | to obsolescence. [561] |
1841 | |
1842 | =item * |
1843 | |
1844 | configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them. |
1845 | |
1846 | =item * |
1847 | |
1848 | installperl now outputs everything to STDERR. |
1849 | |
1850 | =item * |
1851 | |
1852 | Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't |
1853 | get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore. |
1854 | Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command |
1855 | line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended. |
1856 | |
1857 | =item * |
1858 | |
1859 | Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all" |
1860 | (-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your |
1861 | pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.) |
1862 | |
1863 | =item * |
1864 | |
1865 | In AFS installations, one can configure the root of the AFS to be |
1866 | somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure |
1867 | parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>. |
1868 | |
1869 | =item * |
1870 | |
1871 | APPLLIB_EXP, a lesser-known configuration-time definition, has been |
1872 | documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories |
1873 | to Perl's default search path (@INC); see INSTALL for information. |
1874 | |
1875 | =item * |
1876 | |
1877 | The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the |
1878 | DB_File extension) was built is now available as |
1879 | C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}> |
1880 | from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG |
1881 | DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C. |
1882 | |
1883 | =item * |
1884 | |
1885 | Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM |
1886 | has been documented in INSTALL. |
1887 | |
1888 | =item * |
1889 | |
1890 | If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a |
1891 | CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and |
1892 | install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for |
1893 | more details. |
1894 | |
1895 | =item * |
1896 | |
1897 | In addition to config.over, a new override file, config.arch, is |
1898 | available. This file is supposed to be used by hints file writers |
1899 | for architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is |
1900 | for site-wide changes). |
1901 | |
1902 | =item * |
1903 | |
1904 | If your file system supports symbolic links, you can build Perl outside |
1905 | of the source directory by |
1906 | |
1907 | mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory |
1908 | cd /tmp/perl/build/directory |
1909 | sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ... |
1910 | |
1911 | This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links |
1912 | pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left |
1913 | unaffected. After Configure has finished, you can just say |
1914 | |
1915 | make all test |
1916 | |
1917 | and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory. |
1918 | [561] |
1919 | |
1920 | =item * |
1921 | |
1922 | For Perl developers, several new make targets for profiling |
1923 | and debugging have been added; see L<perlhack>. |
1924 | |
1925 | =over 8 |
1926 | |
1927 | =item * |
1928 | |
1929 | Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in |
1930 | L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for |
1931 | generating a gprofiled Perl executable. |
1932 | |
1933 | =item * |
1934 | |
1935 | If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for |
1936 | creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See |
1937 | L<perlhack>. |
1938 | |
1939 | =item * |
1940 | |
1941 | If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options |
1942 | have been added; see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and |
1943 | Third Degree. |
1944 | |
1945 | =back |
1946 | |
1947 | =item * |
1948 | |
1949 | Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have |
1950 | been added to INSTALL. |
1951 | |
1952 | =item * |
1953 | |
1954 | The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads |
1955 | (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the |
1956 | Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>). |
1957 | |
1958 | B<Note that the 5.005 threads are unsupported and deprecated: if you |
1959 | have code written for the old threads you should migrate it to the |
1960 | new ithreads model.> |
1961 | |
1962 | =item * |
1963 | |
1964 | The Gconvert macro ($Config{d_Gconvert}) used by perl for stringifying |
1965 | floating-point numbers is now more picky about using sprintf %.*g |
1966 | rules for the conversion. Some platforms that used to use gcvt may |
1967 | now resort to the slower sprintf. |
1968 | |
1969 | =item * |
1970 | |
1971 | The obsolete method of making a special (e.g., debugging) flavor |
1972 | of perl by saying |
1973 | |
1974 | make LIBPERL=libperld.a |
1975 | |
1976 | has been removed. Use -DDEBUGGING instead. |
1977 | |
1978 | =back |
1979 | |
1980 | =head2 New Or Improved Platforms |
1981 | |
1982 | For the list of platforms known to support Perl, |
1983 | see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">. |
1984 | |
1985 | =over 4 |
1986 | |
1987 | =item * |
1988 | |
1989 | AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported. |
1990 | |
1991 | =item * |
1992 | |
1993 | AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the |
1994 | long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>. |
1995 | |
1996 | =item * |
1997 | |
1998 | AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform. |
1999 | |
2000 | =item * |
2001 | |
2002 | BeOS has been reclaimed. |
2003 | |
2004 | =item * |
2005 | |
2006 | The DG/UX platform now supports 5.005-style threads. |
2007 | See L<perldgux>. |
2008 | |
2009 | =item * |
2010 | |
2011 | The DYNIX/ptx platform (also known as dynixptx) is supported at or |
2012 | near osvers 4.5.2. |
2013 | |
2014 | =item * |
2015 | |
2016 | EBCDIC platforms (z/OS (also known as OS/390), POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA) |
2017 | have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the |
2018 | co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the |
2019 | situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>, |
2020 | L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information. |
2021 | |
2022 | =item * |
2023 | |
2024 | Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under |
2025 | HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will |
2026 | need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux. [561] |
2027 | |
2028 | =item * |
2029 | |
2030 | Mac OS Classic is now supported in the mainstream source package |
2031 | (MacPerl has of course been available since perl 5.004 but now the |
2032 | source code bases of standard Perl and MacPerl have been synchronised) |
2033 | [561] |
2034 | |
2035 | =item * |
2036 | |
2037 | Mac OS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+ |
2038 | filesystems. (The case-insensitivity used to confuse the Perl build |
2039 | process.) |
2040 | |
2041 | =item * |
2042 | |
2043 | NCR MP-RAS is now supported. [561] |
2044 | |
2045 | =item * |
2046 | |
2047 | All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation |
2048 | specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution. |
2049 | |
2050 | =item * |
2051 | |
2052 | NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>. |
2053 | |
2054 | =item * |
2055 | |
2056 | NonStop-UX is now supported. [561] |
2057 | |
2058 | =item * |
2059 | |
2060 | NEC SUPER-UX is now supported. |
2061 | |
2062 | =item * |
2063 | |
2064 | All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation |
2065 | specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution. |
2066 | |
2067 | =item * |
2068 | |
2069 | Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package |
2070 | ( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ). All thread tests |
2071 | of Perl now work, but not without adding some yield()s to the tests, |
2072 | so while pth (and other userlevel thread implementations) can be |
2073 | considered to be "working" with Perl ithreads, keep in mind the |
2074 | possible non-preemptability of the underlying thread implementation. |
2075 | |
2076 | =item * |
2077 | |
2078 | Stratus VOS is now supported using Perl's native build method |
2079 | (Configure). This is the recommended method to build Perl on |
2080 | VOS. The older methods, which build miniperl, are still |
2081 | available. See L<perlvos>. [561+] |
2082 | |
2083 | =item * |
2084 | |
2085 | The Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported. [561] |
2086 | |
2087 | =item * |
2088 | |
2089 | WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>. |
2090 | |
2091 | =item * |
2092 | |
2093 | z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) now has |
2094 | support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default, |
2095 | however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure. [561] |
2096 | |
2097 | =back |
2098 | |
2099 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
2100 | |
2101 | Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been |
2102 | hunted down. Most importantly, anonymous subs used to leak quite |
2103 | a bit. [561] |
2104 | |
2105 | =over 4 |
2106 | |
2107 | =item * |
2108 | |
2109 | The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names. |
2110 | |
2111 | =item * |
2112 | |
2113 | caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was |
2114 | sometimes affected by this problem. In particular, caller() now |
2115 | returns a subroutine name of C<(unknown)> for subroutines that have |
2116 | been removed from the symbol table. |
2117 | |
2118 | =item * |
2119 | |
2120 | chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in |
2121 | reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order. [561] |
2122 | |
2123 | =item * |
2124 | |
2125 | Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm) |
2126 | when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x, |
2127 | which needs them. [561] |
2128 | |
2129 | =item * |
2130 | |
2131 | The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as |
2132 | "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35, |
2133 | in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This |
2134 | was caused by Perl's using the operating system libraries in a situation |
2135 | where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now |
2136 | Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts. |
2137 | |
2138 | =item * |
2139 | |
2140 | Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code, |
2141 | condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks |
2142 | line number, C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, and all debugger output |
2143 | now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. [561] |
2144 | |
2145 | =item * |
2146 | |
2147 | The debugger (perl5db.pl) has been modified to present a more |
2148 | consistent commands interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was |
2149 | also added to test the changes, and as a placeholder for further tests. |
2150 | |
2151 | See L<perldebug>. |
2152 | |
2153 | =item * |
2154 | |
2155 | The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum |
2156 | depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has |
2157 | been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a |
2158 | depth of at most I<N> levels. |
2159 | |
2160 | =item * |
2161 | |
2162 | The debugger can now show lexical variables if you have the CPAN |
2163 | module PadWalker installed. |
2164 | |
2165 | =item * |
2166 | |
2167 | The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable. |
2168 | |
2169 | =item * |
2170 | |
2171 | Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of |
2172 | dl_error() when statically building extensions into perl. |
2173 | This has been corrected. [561] |
2174 | |
2175 | =item * |
2176 | |
2177 | L<dprofpp> -R didn't work. |
2178 | |
2179 | =item * |
2180 | |
2181 | C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works. |
2182 | |
2183 | =item * |
2184 | |
2185 | Infinity is now recognized as a number. |
2186 | |
2187 | =item * |
2188 | |
2189 | UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke |
2190 | the Tk extension with 5.6.0.) [561] |
2191 | |
2192 | =item * |
2193 | |
2194 | Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved |
2195 | correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they |
2196 | were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code. |
2197 | |
2198 | =item * |
2199 | |
2200 | Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that |
2201 | were declared before the lexicals. |
2202 | |
2203 | =item * |
2204 | |
2205 | Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes |
2206 | and into C<eval "...">. |
2207 | |
2208 | =item * |
2209 | |
2210 | C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been |
2211 | corrected. [561] |
2212 | |
2213 | =item * |
2214 | |
2215 | warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller |
2216 | isn't using lexical warnings. [561] |
2217 | |
2218 | =item * |
2219 | |
2220 | Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works. [561] |
2221 | |
2222 | =item * |
2223 | |
2224 | Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "". |
2225 | |
2226 | =item * |
2227 | |
2228 | Localised tied variables no longer leak memory |
2229 | |
2230 | use Tie::Hash; |
2231 | tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; |
2232 | |
2233 | ... |
2234 | |
2235 | # Used to leak memory every time local() was called; |
2236 | # in a loop, this added up. |
2237 | local($tied_hash{Foo}) = 1; |
2238 | |
2239 | =item * |
2240 | |
2241 | Localised hash elements (and %ENV) are correctly unlocalised to not |
2242 | exist, if they didn't before they were localised. |
2243 | |
2244 | |
2245 | use Tie::Hash; |
2246 | tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; |
2247 | |
2248 | ... |
2249 | |
2250 | # Nothing has set the FOO element so far |
2251 | |
2252 | { local $tied_hash{FOO} = 'Bar' } |
2253 | |
2254 | # This used to print, but not now. |
2255 | print "exists!\n" if exists $tied_hash{FOO}; |
2256 | |
2257 | As a side effect of this fix, tied hash interfaces B<must> define |
2258 | the EXISTS and DELETE methods. |
2259 | |
2260 | =item * |
2261 | |
2262 | mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name, |
2263 | as mandated by POSIX. |
2264 | |
2265 | =item * |
2266 | |
2267 | Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds |
2268 | with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness |
2269 | and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have |
2270 | fixed the modfl() bug. |
2271 | |
2272 | =item * |
2273 | |
2274 | Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to |
2275 | return 27406, instead of 27047). [561] |
2276 | |
2277 | =item * |
2278 | |
2279 | Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be |
2280 | more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number. [561] |
2281 | |
2282 | =item * |
2283 | |
2284 | Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value |
2285 | properly in certain circumstances. [561] |
2286 | |
2287 | =item * |
2288 | |
2289 | Attributes (such as :shared) didn't work with our(). |
2290 | |
2291 | =item * |
2292 | |
2293 | our() variables will not cause bogus "Variable will not stay shared" |
2294 | warnings. [561] |
2295 | |
2296 | =item * |
2297 | |
2298 | "our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks |
2299 | resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables. |
2300 | The problem has been corrected. [561] |
2301 | |
2302 | =item * |
2303 | |
2304 | pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0". |
2305 | |
2306 | =item * |
2307 | |
2308 | Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms |
2309 | (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry. |
2310 | |
2311 | =item * |
2312 | |
2313 | The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments |
2314 | to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options. [561] |
2315 | |
2316 | =item * |
2317 | |
2318 | PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work. |
2319 | |
2320 | =item * |
2321 | |
2322 | printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C". |
2323 | |
2324 | =item * |
2325 | |
2326 | C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>: that is, as three |
2327 | characters, not four. [561] |
2328 | |
2329 | =item * |
2330 | |
2331 | pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier |
2332 | versions. This is now handled correctly. [561] |
2333 | |
2334 | =item * |
2335 | |
2336 | Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works |
2337 | without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform). |
2338 | |
2339 | =item * |
2340 | |
2341 | Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work. [561+] |
2342 | |
2343 | =item * |
2344 | |
2345 | Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string |
2346 | concatenation be invoked too many times. |
2347 | |
2348 | =item * |
2349 | |
2350 | scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context. |
2351 | |
2352 | =item * |
2353 | |
2354 | SOCKS support is now much more robust. |
2355 | |
2356 | =item * |
2357 | |
2358 | sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context |
2359 | (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself). |
2360 | The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments |
2361 | to be sorted are always provided list context. [561] |
2362 | |
2363 | =item * |
2364 | |
2365 | Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very |
2366 | rarely used) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character |
2367 | class C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace |
2368 | (currently, the space and the tab). |
2369 | |
2370 | =item * |
2371 | |
2372 | The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does |
2373 | not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the |
2374 | behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation. [561] |
2375 | |
2376 | =item * |
2377 | |
2378 | Some cases of inconsistent taint propagation (such as within hash |
2379 | values) have been fixed. |
2380 | |
2381 | =item * |
2382 | |
2383 | The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds |
2384 | of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better. [561] |
2385 | |
2386 | =item * |
2387 | |
2388 | Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'> |
2389 | or via C<-Dr>) now looks better. [561] |
2390 | |
2391 | =item * |
2392 | |
2393 | Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The |
2394 | bug has been fixed. [561] |
2395 | |
2396 | =item * |
2397 | |
2398 | Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This |
2399 | is now avoided. [561] |
2400 | |
2401 | =item * |
2402 | |
2403 | The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now |
2404 | more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false |
2405 | data lying around in them. [561] |
2406 | |
2407 | =item * |
2408 | |
2409 | readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra |
2410 | "" (blank line) at the end in certain situations. This has been |
2411 | corrected. [561] |
2412 | |
2413 | =item * |
2414 | |
2415 | Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described |
2416 | in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works |
2417 | again now. [561] |
2418 | |
2419 | =item * |
2420 | |
2421 | Sys::Syslog ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant. |
2422 | |
2423 | =item * |
2424 | |
2425 | $AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses |
2426 | in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe. |
2427 | |
2428 | =item * |
2429 | |
2430 | Tie::Array's SPLICE method was broken. |
2431 | |
2432 | =item * |
2433 | |
2434 | Allow a read-only string on the left-hand side of a non-modifying tr///. |
2435 | |
2436 | =item * |
2437 | |
2438 | If C<STDERR> is tied, warnings caused by C<warn> and C<die> now |
2439 | correctly pass to it. |
2440 | |
2441 | =item * |
2442 | |
2443 | Several Unicode fixes. |
2444 | |
2445 | =over 8 |
2446 | |
2447 | =item * |
2448 | |
2449 | BOMs (byte order marks) at the beginning of Perl files |
2450 | (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped. |
2451 | UTF-16 and UCS-2 encoded Perl files should now be read correctly. |
2452 | |
2453 | =item * |
2454 | |
2455 | The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.2.0. |
2456 | |
2457 | =item * |
2458 | |
2459 | Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data |
2460 | into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data |
2461 | from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded |
2462 | as UTF-8.) |
2463 | |
2464 | =item * |
2465 | |
2466 | Generating illegal Unicode code points such as U+FFFE, or the UTF-16 |
2467 | surrogates, now also generates an optional warning. |
2468 | |
2469 | =item * |
2470 | |
2471 | C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase. |
2472 | |
2473 | =item * |
2474 | |
2475 | Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation, |
2476 | C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator, |
2477 | substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work. |
2478 | |
2479 | =item * |
2480 | |
2481 | The C<tr///> operator now works. Note that the C<tr///CU> |
2482 | functionality has been removed (but see pack('U0', ...)). |
2483 | |
2484 | =item * |
2485 | |
2486 | C<eval "v200"> now works. |
2487 | |
2488 | =item * |
2489 | |
2490 | Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings. |
2491 | This has been corrected. [561] |
2492 | |
2493 | =item * |
2494 | |
2495 | Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes such as C<IsDigit>. |
2496 | |
2497 | =back |
2498 | |
2499 | =item * |
2500 | |
2501 | Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their |
2502 | unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations. [561] |
2503 | |
2504 | =item * |
2505 | |
2506 | The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and |
2507 | Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been |
2508 | fixed. |
2509 | |
2510 | =back |
2511 | |
2512 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes |
2513 | |
2514 | =over 4 |
2515 | |
2516 | =item * |
2517 | |
2518 | BSDI 4.* |
2519 | |
2520 | Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes. |
2521 | |
2522 | =item * |
2523 | |
2524 | All BSDs |
2525 | |
2526 | Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see L<perlvar> for details). |
2527 | |
2528 | =item * |
2529 | |
2530 | Cygwin |
2531 | |
2532 | Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.3.10. |
2533 | |
2534 | =item * |
2535 | |
2536 | Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O. |
2537 | |
2538 | =item * |
2539 | |
2540 | EPOC |
2541 | |
2542 | EPOC now better supported. See README.epoc. [561] |
2543 | |
2544 | =item * |
2545 | |
2546 | FreeBSD 3.* |
2547 | |
2548 | Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs. |
2549 | |
2550 | =item * |
2551 | |
2552 | HP-UX |
2553 | |
2554 | README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works; |
2555 | now uses HP-UX malloc instead of Perl malloc. |
2556 | |
2557 | =item * |
2558 | |
2559 | IRIX |
2560 | |
2561 | Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing |
2562 | of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder. |
2563 | |
2564 | =item * |
2565 | |
2566 | Linux |
2567 | |
2568 | =over 8 |
2569 | |
2570 | =item * |
2571 | |
2572 | Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL). [561] |
2573 | |
2574 | =item * |
2575 | |
2576 | Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using |
2577 | accept(), recvfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and |
2578 | getsockname(). |
2579 | |
2580 | =back |
2581 | |
2582 | =item * |
2583 | |
2584 | Mac OS Classic |
2585 | |
2586 | Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in Mac OS Classic should |
2587 | now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and the |
2588 | missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing list |
2589 | for details. |
2590 | |
2591 | =item * |
2592 | |
2593 | MPE/iX |
2594 | |
2595 | MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix. [561] |
2596 | |
2597 | =item * |
2598 | |
2599 | NetBSD/threads: try installing the GNU pth (should be in the |
2600 | packages collection, or http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/), |
2601 | and Configure with -Duseithreads. |
2602 | |
2603 | =item * |
2604 | |
2605 | NetBSD/sparc |
2606 | |
2607 | Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc. |
2608 | |
2609 | =item * |
2610 | |
2611 | OS/2 |
2612 | |
2613 | Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL). [561] |
2614 | |
2615 | =item * |
2616 | |
2617 | Solaris |
2618 | |
2619 | 64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works. |
2620 | |
2621 | =item * |
2622 | |
2623 | Stratus VOS |
2624 | |
2625 | The native build method requires at least VOS Release 14.5.0 |
2626 | and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1 or later. The Perl pack function |
2627 | now maps overflowed values to +infinity and underflowed values |
2628 | to -infinity. |
2629 | |
2630 | =item * |
2631 | |
2632 | Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1) |
2633 | |
2634 | The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}. |
2635 | Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling |
2636 | with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with |
2637 | gcc 2.95.2. |
2638 | |
2639 | =item * |
2640 | |
2641 | Unicos |
2642 | |
2643 | Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either |
2644 | during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime; |
2645 | now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using |
2646 | only 46 bit integers for speed. |
2647 | |
2648 | =item * |
2649 | |
2650 | VMS |
2651 | |
2652 | See L</"Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS"> and L</"IEEE-format Floating Point |
2653 | Default on OpenVMS Alpha"> for important changes not otherwise listed here. |
2654 | |
2655 | chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY |
2656 | (see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc. |
2657 | |
2658 | The tainting of C<%ENV> elements via C<keys> or C<values> was previously |
2659 | unimplemented. It now works as documented. |
2660 | |
2661 | The C<waitpid> emulation has been improved. The worst bug (now fixed) |
2662 | was that a pid of -1 would cause a wildcard search of all processes on |
2663 | the system. |
2664 | |
2665 | POSIX-style signals are now emulated much better on VMS versions prior |
2666 | to 7.0. |
2667 | |
2668 | The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved |
2669 | functionality and better error handling. [561] |
2670 | |
2671 | File access tests now use current process privileges rather than the |
2672 | user's default privileges, which could sometimes result in a mismatch |
2673 | between reported access and actual access. This improvement is only |
2674 | available on VMS v6.0 and later. |
2675 | |
2676 | There is a new C<kill> implementation based on C<sys$sigprc> that allows |
2677 | older VMS systems (pre-7.0) to use C<kill> to send signals rather than |
2678 | simply force exit. This implementation also allows later systems to |
2679 | call C<kill> from within a signal handler. |
2680 | |
2681 | Iterative logical name translations are now limited to 10 iterations in |
2682 | imitation of SHOW LOGICAL and other OpenVMS facilities. |
2683 | |
2684 | =item * |
2685 | |
2686 | Windows |
2687 | |
2688 | =over 8 |
2689 | |
2690 | =item * |
2691 | |
2692 | Signal handling now works better than it used to. It is now implemented |
2693 | using a Windows message loop, and is therefore less prone to random |
2694 | crashes. |
2695 | |
2696 | =item * |
2697 | |
2698 | fork() emulation is now more robust, but still continues to have a few |
2699 | esoteric bugs and caveats. See L<perlfork> for details. [561+] |
2700 | |
2701 | =item * |
2702 | |
2703 | A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN. [561] |
2704 | |
2705 | =item * |
2706 | |
2707 | The following modules now work on Windows: |
2708 | |
2709 | ExtUtils::Embed [561] |
2710 | IO::Pipe |
2711 | IO::Poll |
2712 | Net::Ping |
2713 | |
2714 | =item * |
2715 | |
2716 | IO::File::new_tmpfile() is no longer limited to 32767 invocations |
2717 | per-process. |
2718 | |
2719 | =item * |
2720 | |
2721 | Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory. |
2722 | |
2723 | =item * |
2724 | |
2725 | Compiling perl using the 64-bit Platform SDK tools is now supported. |
2726 | |
2727 | =item * |
2728 | |
2729 | The Win32::SetChildShowWindow() builtin can be used to control the |
2730 | visibility of windows created by child processes. See L<Win32> for |
2731 | details. |
2732 | |
2733 | =item * |
2734 | |
2735 | Non-blocking waits for child processes (or pseudo-processes) are |
2736 | supported via C<waitpid($pid, &POSIX::WNOHANG)>. |
2737 | |
2738 | =item * |
2739 | |
2740 | The behavior of system() with multiple arguments has been rationalized. |
2741 | Each unquoted argument will be automatically quoted to protect whitespace, |
2742 | and any existing whitespace in the arguments will be preserved. This |
2743 | improves the portability of system(@args) by avoiding the need for |
2744 | Windows C<cmd> shell specific quoting in perl programs. |
2745 | |
2746 | Note that this means that some scripts that may have relied on earlier |
2747 | buggy behavior may no longer work correctly. For example, |
2748 | C<system("nmake /nologo", @args)> will now attempt to run the file |
2749 | C<nmake /nologo> and will fail when such a file isn't found. |
2750 | On the other hand, perl will now execute code such as |
2751 | C<system("c:/Program Files/MyApp/foo.exe", @args)> correctly. |
2752 | |
2753 | =item * |
2754 | |
2755 | The perl header files no longer suppress common warnings from the |
2756 | Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. This means that additional warnings may |
2757 | now show up when compiling XS code. |
2758 | |
2759 | =item * |
2760 | |
2761 | Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl. |
2762 | However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those |
2763 | generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). [561] |
2764 | |
2765 | =item * |
2766 | |
2767 | Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x. |
2768 | [561] |
2769 | |
2770 | =item * |
2771 | |
2772 | Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child |
2773 | processes. [561] |
2774 | |
2775 | =item * |
2776 | |
2777 | New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. [561] |
2778 | |
2779 | =item * |
2780 | |
2781 | Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root. |
2782 | Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. [561] |
2783 | |
2784 | =item * |
2785 | |
2786 | The makefiles now default to the features enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl |
2787 | (a popular Win32 binary distribution). [561] |
2788 | |
2789 | =item * |
2790 | |
2791 | HTML files will now be installed in c:\perl\html instead of |
2792 | c:\perl\lib\pod\html |
2793 | |
2794 | =item * |
2795 | |
2796 | REG_EXPAND_SZ keys are now allowed in registry settings used by perl. [561] |
2797 | |
2798 | =item * |
2799 | |
2800 | Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. [561] |
2801 | |
2802 | =item * |
2803 | |
2804 | ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses $ENV{LIB} to search for libraries. [561] |
2805 | |
2806 | =item * |
2807 | |
2808 | Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run |
2809 | concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.) [561] |
2810 | |
2811 | =item * |
2812 | |
2813 | C<< File::Spec->tmpdir() >> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp |
2814 | (works better when perl is running as service). |
2815 | |
2816 | =item * |
2817 | |
2818 | Better UNC path handling under ithreads. [561] |
2819 | |
2820 | =item * |
2821 | |
2822 | wait(), waitpid(), and backticks now return the correct exit status |
2823 | under Windows 9x. [561] |
2824 | |
2825 | =item * |
2826 | |
2827 | A socket handle leak in accept() has been fixed. [561] |
2828 | |
2829 | =back |
2830 | |
2831 | =back |
2832 | |
2833 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
2834 | |
2835 | Please see L<perldiag> for more details. |
2836 | |
2837 | =over 4 |
2838 | |
2839 | =item * |
2840 | |
2841 | Ambiguous range in the transliteration operator (like a-z-9) now |
2842 | gives a warning. |
2843 | |
2844 | =item * |
2845 | |
2846 | chdir("") and chdir(undef) now give a deprecation warning because they |
2847 | cause a possible unintentional chdir to the home directory. |
2848 | Say chdir() if you really mean that. |
2849 | |
2850 | =item * |
2851 | |
2852 | Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your |
2853 | Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT [561] and -DR options to trace |
2854 | tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables, |
2855 | respectively. |
2856 | |
2857 | =item * |
2858 | |
2859 | The lexical warnings category "deprecated" is no longer a sub-category |
2860 | of the "syntax" category. It is now a top-level category in its own |
2861 | right. |
2862 | |
2863 | =item * |
2864 | |
2865 | Unadorned dump() will now give a warning suggesting to |
2866 | use explicit CORE::dump() if that's what really is meant. |
2867 | |
2868 | =item * |
2869 | |
2870 | The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>, |
2871 | C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters. |
2872 | |
2873 | =item * |
2874 | |
2875 | All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully |
2876 | easier to understand both because the error message now comes before |
2877 | the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly |
2878 | marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker. |
2879 | |
2880 | =item * |
2881 | |
2882 | Various I/O (and socket) functions like binmode(), close(), and so |
2883 | forth now more consistently warn if they are used illogically either |
2884 | on a yet unopened or on an already closed filehandle (or socket). |
2885 | |
2886 | =item * |
2887 | |
2888 | Using lstat() on a filehandle now gives a warning. (It's a non-sensical |
2889 | thing to do.) |
2890 | |
2891 | =item * |
2892 | |
2893 | The C<-M> and C<-m> options now warn if you didn't supply the module name. |
2894 | |
2895 | =item * |
2896 | |
2897 | If you in C<use> specify a required minimum version, modules matching |
2898 | the name and but not defining a $VERSION will cause a fatal failure. |
2899 | |
2900 | =item * |
2901 | |
2902 | Using negative offset for vec() in lvalue context is now a warnable offense. |
2903 | |
2904 | =item * |
2905 | |
2906 | Odd number of arguments to oveload::constant now elicits a warning. |
2907 | |
2908 | =item * |
2909 | |
2910 | Odd number of elements to in anonymous hash now elicits a warning. |
2911 | |
2912 | =item * |
2913 | |
2914 | The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings |
2915 | drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package, |
2916 | for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>. |
2917 | |
2918 | =item * |
2919 | |
2920 | Subroutine prototypes are now checked more carefully, you may |
2921 | get warnings for example if you have used non-prototype characters. |
2922 | |
2923 | =item * |
2924 | |
2925 | If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index |
2926 | is made, a warning is given. |
2927 | |
2928 | =item * |
2929 | |
2930 | C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift) |
2931 | now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled |
2932 | code. |
2933 | |
2934 | =item * |
2935 | |
2936 | If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255 |
2937 | using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly |
2938 | for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127. |
2939 | |
2940 | =item * |
2941 | |
2942 | pack C<P> format now demands an explicit size. |
2943 | |
2944 | =item * |
2945 | |
2946 | unpack C<w> now warns of unterminated compressed integers. |
2947 | |
2948 | =item * |
2949 | |
2950 | Warnings relating to the use of PerlIO have been added. |
2951 | |
2952 | =item * |
2953 | |
2954 | Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to |
2955 | the entire regex. You will get an optional warning if you try to do |
2956 | otherwise. |
2957 | |
2958 | =item * |
2959 | |
2960 | Variable length lookbehind has not yet been implemented, trying to |
2961 | use it will tell that. |
2962 | |
2963 | =item * |
2964 | |
2965 | Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >> |
2966 | has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning. |
2967 | |
2968 | =item * |
2969 | |
2970 | Warnings relating to the use of the new restricted hashes feature |
2971 | have been added. |
2972 | |
2973 | =item * |
2974 | |
2975 | Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported and fatal errors |
2976 | will happen even at an attempt to do so. |
2977 | |
2978 | =item * |
2979 | |
2980 | Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning. |
2981 | This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed. |
2982 | |
2983 | =item * |
2984 | |
2985 | Using the /g modifier in split() is meaningless and will cause a warning. |
2986 | |
2987 | =item * |
2988 | |
2989 | Using splice() past the end of an array now causes a warning. |
2990 | |
2991 | =item * |
2992 | |
2993 | Malformed Unicode encodings (UTF-8 and UTF-16) cause a lot of warnings, |
2994 | ad doestrying to use UTF-16 surrogates (which are unimplemented). |
2995 | |
2996 | =item * |
2997 | |
2998 | Trying to use Unicode characters on an I/O stream without marking the |
2999 | stream's encoding (using open() or binmode()) will cause "Wide character" |
3000 | warnings. |
3001 | |
3002 | =item * |
3003 | |
3004 | Use of v-strings in use/require causes a (backward) portability warning. |
3005 | |
3006 | =item * |
3007 | |
3008 | Warnings relating to the use interpreter threads and their shared data |
3009 | have been added. |
3010 | |
3011 | =back |
3012 | |
3013 | =head1 Changed Internals |
3014 | |
3015 | =over 4 |
3016 | |
3017 | =item * |
3018 | |
3019 | PerlIO is now the default. |
3020 | |
3021 | =item * |
3022 | |
3023 | perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the |
3024 | internal API. |
3025 | |
3026 | =item * |
3027 | |
3028 | You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl. |
3029 | Building microperl does not require even running Configure; |
3030 | C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes |
3031 | many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting |
3032 | executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. |
3033 | For careful hackers only. |
3034 | |
3035 | =item * |
3036 | |
3037 | Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join(), op_clear, op_null, |
3038 | ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv(), and several UTF-8 |
3039 | interfaces to the publicised API. For the full list of the available |
3040 | APIs see L<perlapi>. |
3041 | |
3042 | =item * |
3043 | |
3044 | Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing. |
3045 | |
3046 | =item * |
3047 | |
3048 | Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs. (Well, at least the |
3049 | built-in attributes.) |
3050 | |
3051 | =item * |
3052 | |
3053 | dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's |
3054 | a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP. |
3055 | |
3056 | =item * |
3057 | |
3058 | PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed. |
3059 | |
3060 | =item * |
3061 | |
3062 | The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied |
3063 | (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability |
3064 | and maintainability. |
3065 | |
3066 | =item * |
3067 | |
3068 | The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in |
3069 | the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the |
3070 | original regex expression. The information is attached to the new |
3071 | C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more |
3072 | complete information. |
3073 | |
3074 | =item * |
3075 | |
3076 | The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning |
3077 | messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with |
3078 | gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings |
3079 | are being worked on. |
3080 | |
3081 | =item * |
3082 | |
3083 | F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented. |
3084 | |
3085 | =item * |
3086 | |
3087 | Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added |
3088 | to F<Porting/repository.pod>. |
3089 | |
3090 | =item * |
3091 | |
3092 | There are now several profiling make targets. |
3093 | |
3094 | =back |
3095 | |
3096 | =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed [561] |
3097 | |
3098 | (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.) |
3099 | (5.7.0 came out before 5.6.1: the development branch 5.7 released |
3100 | earlier than the maintenance branch 5.6) |
3101 | |
3102 | A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component |
3103 | of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor |
3104 | installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable |
3105 | platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and |
3106 | various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability. |
3107 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt |
3108 | for more information. |
3109 | |
3110 | The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security |
3111 | exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux |
3112 | platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which |
3113 | when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in |
3114 | a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you |
3115 | don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if |
3116 | suidperl is not installed, you are safe. |
3117 | |
3118 | The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from |
3119 | Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also |
3120 | from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability |
3121 | isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are, |
3122 | unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most |
3123 | probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl |
3124 | should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are |
3125 | doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution |
3126 | such as sudo ( see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ ). |
3127 | |
3128 | =head1 New Tests |
3129 | |
3130 | Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> and |
3131 | F<ext> subsections. There are now about 69 000 individual tests |
3132 | (spread over about 700 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 |
3133 | has about 11 700 tests, in 258 test scripts) The exact numbers depend |
3134 | on the platform and Perl configuration used. Many of the new tests |
3135 | are of course introduced by the new modules, but still in general Perl |
3136 | is now more thoroughly tested. |
3137 | |
3138 | Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite |
3139 | will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite |
3140 | to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. On a really |
3141 | fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 6-8 minutes |
3142 | (wallclock time). |
3143 | |
3144 | The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls. |
3145 | (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved |
3146 | to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.) |
3147 | |
3148 | =head1 Known Problems |
3149 | |
3150 | =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Very Experimental |
3151 | |
3152 | The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be |
3153 | highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged. |
3154 | |
3155 | =head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken |
3156 | |
3157 | local %tied_array; |
3158 | |
3159 | doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored |
3160 | incorrectly. This will be changed in a future release, but we don't |
3161 | know yet what the new semantics will exactly be. In any case, the |
3162 | change will break existing code that relies on the current |
3163 | (ill-defined) semantics, so just avoid doing this in general. |
3164 | |
3165 | =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles |
3166 | |
3167 | Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with |
3168 | `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets |
3169 | default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile |
3170 | at all, or they may compile and work incorrectly. Currently, there |
3171 | is no good solution for the problem, but Configure now provides |
3172 | appropriate non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs |
3173 | in the %Config hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the |
3174 | extensions that are having problems can try configuring themselves |
3175 | without the largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, |
3176 | and the solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is |
3177 | whether one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea to) link |
3178 | together at all binaries with different ideas about file offsets; |
3179 | all this is platform-dependent. |
3180 | |
3181 | =head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..) |
3182 | |
3183 | for (1..5) { $_++ } |
3184 | |
3185 | works without complaint. It shouldn't. (You should be able to |
3186 | modify only lvalue elements inside the loops.) You can see the |
3187 | correct behaviour by replacing the 1..5 with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. |
3188 | |
3189 | =head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl |
3190 | |
3191 | Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher. |
3192 | |
3193 | =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure' |
3194 | |
3195 | Don't panic. Read the 'make test' section of INSTALL instead. |
3196 | |
3197 | =head2 libwww-perl (LWP) fails base/date #51 |
3198 | |
3199 | Use libwww-perl 5.65 or later. |
3200 | |
3201 | =head2 PDL failing some tests |
3202 | |
3203 | Use PDL 2.3.4 or later. |
3204 | |
3205 | =head2 Perl_get_sv |
3206 | |
3207 | You may get errors like 'Undefined symbol "Perl_get_sv"' or "can't |
3208 | resolve symbol 'Perl_get_sv'", or the symbol may be "Perl_sv_2pv". |
3209 | This probably means that you are trying to use an older shared Perl |
3210 | library (or extensions linked with such) with Perl 5.8.0 executable. |
3211 | Perl used to have such a subroutine, but that is no more the case. |
3212 | Check your shared library path, and any shared Perl libraries in those |
3213 | directories. |
3214 | |
3215 | Sometimes this problem may also indicate a partial Perl 5.8.0 |
3216 | installation, see L</"Mac OS X dyld undefined symbols"> for an |
3217 | example and how to deal with it. |
3218 | |
3219 | =head2 Self-tying Problems |
3220 | |
3221 | Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and |
3222 | hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting |
3223 | frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often), it is |
3224 | forbidden for now (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt). |
3225 | |
3226 | A change to self-tying of globs has caused them to be recursively |
3227 | referenced (see: L<perlobj/"Two-Phased Garbage Collection">). You |
3228 | will now need an explicit untie to destroy a self-tied glob. This |
3229 | behaviour may be fixed at a later date. |
3230 | |
3231 | Self-tying of scalars and IO thingies works. |
3232 | |
3233 | =head2 ext/threads/t/libc |
3234 | |
3235 | If this test fails, it indicates that your libc (C library) is not |
3236 | threadsafe. This particular test stress tests the localtime() call to |
3237 | find out whether it is threadsafe. See L<perlthrtut> for more information. |
3238 | |
3239 | =head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests |
3240 | |
3241 | B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading is deprecated, |
3242 | experimental and practically unsupported. In 5.10, it is expected |
3243 | to be removed. You should migrate your code to ithreads.> |
3244 | |
3245 | The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in |
3246 | the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl |
3247 | 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests. |
3248 | |
3249 | ../ext/B/t/xref.t 255 65280 14 12 85.71% 3-14 |
3250 | ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7 |
3251 | ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3 |
3252 | ../lib/FileCache.t 5 1 20.00% 5 |
3253 | ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3 |
3254 | ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_only. 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5 |
3255 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bare_mbf.t 1627 4 0.25% 8 11 1626-1627 |
3256 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigfltpm.t 1629 4 0.25% 10 13 1628- |
3257 | 1629 |
3258 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/sub_mbf.t 1633 4 0.24% 8 11 1632-1633 |
3259 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/with_sub.t 1628 4 0.25% 9 12 1627-1628 |
3260 | ../lib/Tie/File/t/31_autodefer.t 255 65280 65 32 49.23% 34-65 |
3261 | ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4 |
3262 | op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15 |
3263 | |
3264 | These failures are unlikely to get fixed as 5.005-style threads |
3265 | are considered fundamentally broken. (Basically what happens is that |
3266 | competing threads can corrupt shared global state, one good example |
3267 | being regular expression engine's state.) |
3268 | |
3269 | =head2 Timing problems |
3270 | |
3271 | The following tests may fail intermittently because of timing |
3272 | problems, for example if the system is heavily loaded. |
3273 | |
3274 | t/op/alarm.t |
3275 | ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t |
3276 | lib/Benchmark.t |
3277 | lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t |
3278 | lib/Memoize/t/speed.t |
3279 | |
3280 | In case of failure please try running them manually, for example |
3281 | |
3282 | ./perl -Ilib ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t |
3283 | |
3284 | =head2 Tied/Magical Array/Hash Elements Do Not Autovivify |
3285 | |
3286 | For normal arrays C<$foo = \$bar[1]> will assign C<undef> to |
3287 | C<$bar[1]> (assuming that it didn't exist before), but for |
3288 | tied/magical arrays and hashes such autovivification does not happen |
3289 | because there is currently no way to catch the reference creation. |
3290 | The same problem affects slicing over non-existent indices/keys of |
3291 | a tied/magical array/hash. |
3292 | |
3293 | =head2 Unicode in package/class and subroutine names does not work |
3294 | |
3295 | One can have Unicode in identifier names, but not in package/class or |
3296 | subroutine names. While some limited functionality towards this does |
3297 | exist as of Perl 5.8.0, that is more accidental than designed; use of |
3298 | Unicode for the said purposes is unsupported. |
3299 | |
3300 | One reason of this unfinishedness is its (currently) inherent |
3301 | unportability: since both package names and subroutine names may |
3302 | need to be mapped to file and directory names, the Unicode capability |
3303 | of the filesystem becomes important-- and there unfortunately aren't |
3304 | portable answers. |
3305 | |
3306 | =head1 Platform Specific Problems |
3307 | |
3308 | =head2 AIX |
3309 | |
3310 | =over 4 |
3311 | |
3312 | =item * |
3313 | |
3314 | If using the AIX native make command, instead of just "make" issue |
3315 | "make all". In some setups the former has been known to spuriously |
3316 | also try to run "make install". Alternatively, you may want to use |
3317 | GNU make. |
3318 | |
3319 | =item * |
3320 | |
3321 | In AIX 4.2, Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics |
3322 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
3323 | In newer AIX releases, this has been solved by linking Perl with |
3324 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library |
3325 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
3326 | (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and |
3327 | therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against libC_r. |
3328 | |
3329 | =item * |
3330 | |
3331 | vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl |
3332 | |
3333 | The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code, |
3334 | resulting in a few random tests failing when run as part of "make |
3335 | test", but when the failing tests are run by hand, they succeed. |
3336 | We suggest upgrading to at least vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been |
3337 | known to compile Perl correctly. "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell |
3338 | you the vac version. See README.aix. |
3339 | |
3340 | =item * |
3341 | |
3342 | If building threaded Perl, you may get compilation warning from pp_sys.c: |
3343 | |
3344 | "pp_sys.c", line 4651.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed. |
3345 | |
3346 | This is harmless; it is caused by the getnetbyaddr() and getnetbyaddr_r() |
3347 | having slightly different types for their first argument. |
3348 | |
3349 | =back |
3350 | |
3351 | =head2 Alpha systems with old gccs fail several tests |
3352 | |
3353 | If you see op/pack, op/pat, op/regexp, or ext/Storable tests failing |
3354 | in a Linux/alpha or *BSD/Alpha, it's probably time to upgrade your gcc. |
3355 | gccs prior to 2.95.3 are definitely not good enough, and gcc 3.1 may |
3356 | be even better. (RedHat Linux/alpha with gcc 3.1 reported no problems, |
3357 | as did Linux 2.4.18 with gcc 2.95.4.) (In Tru64, it is preferable to |
3358 | use the bundled C compiler.) |
3359 | |
3360 | =head2 AmigaOS |
3361 | |
3362 | Perl 5.8.0 doesn't build in AmigaOS. It broke at some point during |
3363 | the ithreads work and we could not find Amiga experts to unbreak the |
3364 | problems. Perl 5.6.1 still works for AmigaOS (as does the the 5.7.2 |
3365 | development release). |
3366 | |
3367 | =head2 BeOS |
3368 | |
3369 | The following tests fail on 5.8.0 Perl in BeOS Personal 5.03: |
3370 | |
3371 | t/op/lfs............................FAILED at test 17 |
3372 | t/op/magic..........................FAILED at test 24 |
3373 | ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs..................FAILED at test 17 |
3374 | ext/File/Glob/t/basic...............FAILED at test 3 |
3375 | ext/POSIX/t/sigaction...............FAILED at test 13 |
3376 | ext/POSIX/t/waitpid.................FAILED at test 1 |
3377 | |
3378 | See L<perlbeos> (README.beos) for more details. |
3379 | |
3380 | =head2 Cygwin "unable to remap" |
3381 | |
3382 | For example when building the Tk extension for Cygwin, |
3383 | you may get an error message saying "unable to remap". |
3384 | This is known problem with Cygwin, and a workaround is |
3385 | detailed in here: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html |
3386 | |
3387 | =head2 Cygwin ndbm tests fail on FAT |
3388 | |
3389 | One can build but not install (or test the build of) the NDBM_File |
3390 | on FAT filesystems. Installation (or build) on NTFS works fine. |
3391 | If one attempts the test on a FAT install (or build) the following |
3392 | failures are expected: |
3393 | |
3394 | ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t 13 3328 71 59 83.10% 1-2 4 16-71 |
3395 | ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t 255 65280 ?? ?? % ?? |
3396 | ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t 2 512 12 2 16.67% 1 4 |
3397 | ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t 0 139 11 5 45.45% 7-11 |
3398 | ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t 13 3328 4 4 100.00% 1-4 |
3399 | run/fresh_perl.t 97 1 1.03% 91 |
3400 | |
3401 | NDBM_File fails and ODBM_File just coredumps. |
3402 | |
3403 | =head2 DJGPP Failures |
3404 | |
3405 | t/op/stat............................FAILED at test 29 |
3406 | lib/File/Find/t/find.................FAILED at test 1 |
3407 | lib/File/Find/t/taint................FAILED at test 1 |
3408 | lib/h2xs.............................FAILED at test 15 |
3409 | lib/Pod/t/eol........................FAILED at test 1 |
3410 | lib/Test/Harness/t/strap-analyze.....FAILED at test 8 |
3411 | lib/Test/Harness/t/test-harness......FAILED at test 23 |
3412 | lib/Test/Simple/t/exit...............FAILED at test 1 |
3413 | |
3414 | The above failures are known as of 5.8.0 with native builds with long |
3415 | filenames, but there are a few more if running under dosemu because of |
3416 | limitations (and maybe bugs) of dosemu: |
3417 | |
3418 | t/comp/cpp...........................FAILED at test 3 |
3419 | t/op/inccode.........................(crash) |
3420 | |
3421 | and a few lib/ExtUtils tests, and several hundred Encode/t/Aliases.t |
3422 | failures that work fine with long filenames. So you really might |
3423 | prefer native builds and long filenames. |
3424 | |
3425 | =head2 FreeBSD built with ithreads coredumps reading large directories |
3426 | |
3427 | This is a known bug in FreeBSD 4.5's readdir_r(), it has been fixed in |
3428 | FreeBSD 4.6 (see L<perlfreebsd> (README.freebsd)). |
3429 | |
3430 | =head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO 8859-15 Locales |
3431 | |
3432 | The ISO 8859-15 locales may fail the locale test 117 in FreeBSD. |
3433 | This is caused by the characters \xFF (y with diaeresis) and \xBE |
3434 | (Y with diaeresis) not behaving correctly when being matched |
3435 | case-insensitively. Apparently this problem has been fixed in |
3436 | the latest FreeBSD releases. |
3437 | ( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=34308 ) |
3438 | |
3439 | =head2 IRIX fails ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t or Digest::MD5 |
3440 | |
3441 | IRIX with MIPSpro 7.3.1.2m or 7.3.1.3m compiler may fail the List::Util |
3442 | test ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t by dumping core. This seems to be |
3443 | a compiler error since if compiled with gcc no core dump ensues, and |
3444 | no failures have been seen on the said test on any other platform. |
3445 | |
3446 | Similarly, building the Digest::MD5 extension has been |
3447 | known to fail with "*** Termination code 139 (bu21)". |
3448 | |
3449 | The cure is to drop optimization level (Configure -Doptimize=-O2). |
3450 | |
3451 | =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured |
3452 | |
3453 | If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the |
3454 | subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the |
3455 | subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the |
3456 | subtest 9 failed. |
3457 | |
3458 | =head2 Linux with glibc 2.2.5 fails t/op/int subtest #6 with -Duse64bitint |
3459 | |
3460 | This is a known bug in the glibc 2.2.5 with long long integers. |
3461 | ( http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=65612 ) |
3462 | |
3463 | =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48 |
3464 | |
3465 | No known fix. |
3466 | |
3467 | =head2 Mac OS X |
3468 | |
3469 | Please remember to set your environment variable LC_ALL to "C" |
3470 | (setenv LC_ALL C) before running "make test" to avoid a lot of |
3471 | warnings about the broken locales of Mac OS X. |
3472 | |
3473 | The following tests are known to fail in Mac OS X 10.1.5 because of |
3474 | buggy (old) implementations of Berkeley DB included in Mac OS X: |
3475 | |
3476 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
3477 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
3478 | ../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ?? |
3479 | ../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65 |
3480 | |
3481 | If you are building on a UFS partition, you will also probably see |
3482 | t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not |
3483 | supporting inode change time. |
3484 | |
3485 | Also the ext/POSIX/t/posix.t subtest #10 fails but it is skipped for |
3486 | now because the failure is Apple's fault, not Perl's (blocked signals |
3487 | are lost). |
3488 | |
3489 | If you Configure with ithreads, ext/threads/t/libc.t will fail. Again, |
3490 | this is not Perl's fault-- the libc of Mac OS X is not threadsafe |
3491 | (in this particular test, the localtime() call is found to be |
3492 | threadunsafe.) |
3493 | |
3494 | =head2 Mac OS X dyld undefined symbols |
3495 | |
3496 | If after installing Perl 5.8.0 you are getting warnings about missing |
3497 | symbols, for example |
3498 | |
3499 | dyld: perl Undefined symbols |
3500 | _perl_sv_2pv |
3501 | _perl_get_sv |
3502 | |
3503 | you probably have an old pre-Perl-5.8.0 installation (or parts of one) |
3504 | in /Library/Perl (the undefined symbols used to exist in pre-5.8.0 Perls). |
3505 | It seems that for some reason "make install" doesn't always completely |
3506 | overwrite the files in /Library/Perl. You can move the old Perl |
3507 | shared library out of the way like this: |
3508 | |
3509 | cd /Library/Perl/darwin/CORE |
3510 | mv libperl.dylib libperlold.dylib |
3511 | |
3512 | and then reissue "make install". Note that the above of course is |
3513 | extremely disruptive for anything using the /usr/local/bin/perl. |
3514 | If that doesn't help, you may have to try removing all the .bundle |
3515 | files from beneath /Library/Perl, and again "make install"-ing. |
3516 | |
3517 | =head2 OS/2 Test Failures |
3518 | |
3519 | The following tests are known to fail on OS/2 (for clarity |
3520 | only the failures are shown, not the full error messages): |
3521 | |
3522 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Mkbootstrap.t 1 256 18 1 5.56% 8 |
3523 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Packlist.t 1 256 34 1 2.94% 17 |
3524 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.t 1 256 17 1 5.88% 14 |
3525 | lib/os2_process.t 2 512 227 2 0.88% 174 209 |
3526 | lib/os2_process_kid.t 227 2 0.88% 174 209 |
3527 | lib/rx_cmprt.t 255 65280 18 3 16.67% 16-18 |
3528 | |
3529 | =head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 |
3530 | |
3531 | The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms. |
3532 | Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX. |
3533 | |
3534 | Test 91 is known to fail on QNX6 (nto), because C<sprintf '%e',0> |
3535 | incorrectly produces C<0.000000e+0> instead of C<0.000000e+00>. |
3536 | |
3537 | For tests 129 and 130, the failing platforms do not comply with |
3538 | the ANSI C Standard: lines 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989, to |
3539 | be exact. (They produce something other than "1" and "-1" when |
3540 | formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using the printf format "%.0f"; most often, |
3541 | they produce "0" and "-0".) |
3542 | |
3543 | =head2 Solaris 2.5 |
3544 | |
3545 | In case you are still using Solaris 2.5 (aka SunOS 5.5), you may |
3546 | experience failures (the test core dumping) in lib/locale.t. |
3547 | The suggested cure is to upgrade your Solaris. |
3548 | |
3549 | =head2 Solaris x86 Fails Tests With -Duse64bitint |
3550 | |
3551 | The following tests are known to fail in Solaris x86 with Perl |
3552 | configured to use 64 bit integers: |
3553 | |
3554 | ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.............FAILED at test 268 |
3555 | ext/Devel/Peek/Peek..................FAILED at test 7 |
3556 | |
3557 | =head2 SUPER-UX (NEC SX) |
3558 | |
3559 | The following tests are known to fail on SUPER-UX: |
3560 | |
3561 | op/64bitint...........................FAILED tests 29-30, 32-33, 35-36 |
3562 | op/arith..............................FAILED tests 128-130 |
3563 | op/pack...............................FAILED tests 25-5625 |
3564 | op/pow................................ |
3565 | op/taint..............................# msgsnd failed |
3566 | ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_poll............FAILED tests 3-4 |
3567 | ../ext/IPC/SysV/ipcsysv...............FAILED tests 2, 5-6 |
3568 | ../ext/IPC/SysV/t/msg.................FAILED tests 2, 4-6 |
3569 | ../ext/Socket/socketpair..............FAILED tests 12 |
3570 | ../lib/IPC/SysV.......................FAILED tests 2, 5-6 |
3571 | ../lib/warnings.......................FAILED tests 115-116, 118-119 |
3572 | |
3573 | The op/pack failure ("Cannot compress negative numbers at op/pack.t line 126") |
3574 | is serious but as of yet unsolved. It points at some problems with the |
3575 | signedness handling of the C compiler, as do the 64bitint, arith, and pow |
3576 | failures. Most of the rest point at problems with SysV IPC. |
3577 | |
3578 | =head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32 |
3579 | |
3580 | Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later. |
3581 | |
3582 | =head2 UNICOS/mk |
3583 | |
3584 | =over 4 |
3585 | |
3586 | =item * |
3587 | |
3588 | During Configure, the test |
3589 | |
3590 | Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define... |
3591 | |
3592 | will probably fail with error messages like |
3593 | |
3594 | CC-20 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3 |
3595 | The identifier "bad" is undefined. |
3596 | |
3597 | bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79#ifdef A29K |
3598 | ^ |
3599 | |
3600 | CC-65 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3 |
3601 | A semicolon is expected at this point. |
3602 | |
3603 | This is caused by a bug in the awk utility of UNICOS/mk. You can ignore |
3604 | the error, but it does cause a slight problem: you cannot fully |
3605 | benefit from the h2ph utility (see L<h2ph>) that can be used to |
3606 | convert C headers to Perl libraries, mainly used to be able to access |
3607 | from Perl the constants defined using C preprocessor, cpp. Because of |
3608 | the above error, parts of the converted headers will be invisible. |
3609 | Luckily, these days the need for h2ph is rare. |
3610 | |
3611 | =item * |
3612 | |
3613 | If building Perl with interpreter threads (ithreads), the |
3614 | getgrent(), getgrnam(), and getgrgid() functions cannot return the |
3615 | list of the group members due to a bug in the multithreaded support of |
3616 | UNICOS/mk. What this means is that in list context the functions will |
3617 | return only three values, not four. |
3618 | |
3619 | =back |
3620 | |
3621 | =head2 UTS |
3622 | |
3623 | There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts> (README.uts). |
3624 | |
3625 | =head2 VOS (Stratus) |
3626 | |
3627 | When Perl is built using the native build process on VOS Release |
3628 | 14.5.0 and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1, all attempted tests either |
3629 | pass or result in TODO (ignored) failures. |
3630 | |
3631 | =head2 VMS |
3632 | |
3633 | There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration, |
3634 | though there are a number of tests marked TODO that point to areas |
3635 | needing further debugging and/or porting work. |
3636 | |
3637 | =head2 Win32 |
3638 | |
3639 | In multi-CPU boxes, there are some problems with the I/O buffering: |
3640 | some output may appear twice. |
3641 | |
3642 | =head2 XML::Parser not working |
3643 | |
3644 | Use XML::Parser 2.31 or later. |
3645 | |
3646 | =head2 z/OS (OS/390) |
3647 | |
3648 | z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually much |
3649 | better than it was in 5.6.0; it's just that so many new modules and |
3650 | tests have been added. |
3651 | |
3652 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
3653 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
3654 | ../ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.t 357 8 2.24% 311 314 325 327 |
3655 | 331 333 337 339 |
3656 | ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5 |
3657 | ../ext/Storable/t/downgrade.t 12 3072 169 12 7.10% 14-15 46-47 78-79 |
3658 | 110-111 150 161 |
3659 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant.t 121 30976 48 48 100.00% 1-48 |
3660 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9 |
3661 | op/pat.t 922 7 0.76% 665 776 785 832- |
3662 | 834 845 |
3663 | op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136 |
3664 | op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74 |
3665 | uni/fold.t 780 6 0.77% 61 169 196 661 |
3666 | 710-711 |
3667 | |
3668 | The failures in dumper.t and downgrade.t are problems in the tests, |
3669 | those in io_unix and sprintf are problems in the USS (UDP sockets and |
3670 | printf formats). The pat, tr, and fold failures are genuine Perl |
3671 | problems caused by EBCDIC (and in the pat and fold cases, combining |
3672 | that with Unicode). The Constant and Embed are probably problems in |
3673 | the tests (since they test Perl's ability to build extensions, and |
3674 | that seems to be working reasonably well.) |
3675 | |
3676 | =head2 Unicode Support on EBCDIC Still Spotty |
3677 | |
3678 | Though mostly working, Unicode support still has problem spots on |
3679 | EBCDIC platforms. One such known spot are the C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> |
3680 | regular expression constructs for code points less than 256: the |
3681 | C<pP> are testing for Unicode code points, not knowing about EBCDIC. |
3682 | |
3683 | =head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now |
3684 | |
3685 | C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed |
3686 | because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a |
3687 | core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available |
3688 | from the CPAN. |
3689 | |
3690 | Perl 5.8 unfortunately does not build anymore on AmigaOS; this broke |
3691 | accidentally at some point. Since there are not that many Amiga |
3692 | developers available, we could not get this fixed and tested in time |
3693 | for 5.8.0. Perl 5.6.1 still works for AmigaOS (as does the the 5.7.2 |
3694 | development release). |
3695 | |
3696 | The C<PerlIO::Scalar> and C<PerlIO::Via> (capitalised) were renamed as |
3697 | C<PerlIO::scalar> and C<PerlIO::via> (all lowercase) just before 5.8.0. |
3698 | The main rationale was to have all core PerlIO layers to have all |
3699 | lowercase names. The "plugins" are named as usual, for example |
3700 | C<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>. |
3701 | |
3702 | The C<threads::shared::queue> and C<threads::shared::semaphore> were |
3703 | renamed as C<Thread::Queue> and C<Thread::Semaphore> just before 5.8.0. |
3704 | The main rationale was to have thread modules to obey normal naming, |
3705 | C<Thread::> (the C<threads> and C<threads::shared> themselves are |
3706 | more pragma-like, they affect compile-time, so they stay lowercase). |
3707 | |
3708 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
3709 | |
3710 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
3711 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
3712 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ . There may also be |
3713 | information at http://www.perl.com/ , the Perl Home Page. |
3714 | |
3715 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
3716 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
3717 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
3718 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
3719 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
3720 | |
3721 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
3722 | |
3723 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
3724 | |
3725 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
3726 | |
3727 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
3728 | |
3729 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
3730 | |
3731 | =head1 HISTORY |
3732 | |
3733 | Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>. |
3734 | |
3735 | =cut |