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1 | =head1 NAME |
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2 | |
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3 | perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.0 |
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4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
6 | |
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7 | This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and the |
8 | 5.8.0 release. |
9 | |
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10 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
11 | |
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12 | =head2 64-bit platforms and malloc |
13 | |
14 | If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no more being |
15 | used because it simply does not work with 8-byte pointers. Also, |
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16 | usually the system mallocs on such platforms are much better optimized |
17 | for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. Such platforms |
18 | include 64-bit Alpha, MIPS, HPPA, PPC, and Sparc. |
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19 | |
20 | =head2 AIX Dynaloading |
21 | |
22 | The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native |
23 | dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This |
24 | change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled |
25 | modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other |
26 | applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface. |
27 | |
28 | =head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS |
29 | |
30 | The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being |
31 | statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient |
32 | TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test |
33 | Perl in such configurations. |
34 | |
35 | =head2 Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes \p{In...} |
36 | |
37 | As suggested by the Unicode consortium, the Unicode character classes |
38 | now prefer I<scripts> as opposed to I<blocks> (as defined by Unicode); |
39 | in Perl, when the C<\p{In....}> and the C<\p{In....}> regular expression |
40 | constructs are used. This has changed the definition of some of those |
41 | character classes. |
42 | |
43 | The difference between scripts and blocks is that scripts are the |
44 | glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while the blocks |
45 | are more artificial groupings of 256 characters based on the Unicode |
46 | numbering. |
47 | |
48 | In general this change results in more inclusive Unicode character |
49 | classes, but changes to the other direction also do take place: |
50 | for example while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin |
51 | characters and their various diacritic-adorned versions, it |
52 | does not include the various punctuation or digits (since they |
53 | are not solely C<Latin>). |
54 | |
55 | Changes in the character class semantics may have happened if a script |
56 | and a block happen to have the same name, for example C<Hebrew>. |
57 | In such cases the script wins and C<\p{InHebrew}> now means the script |
58 | definition of Hebrew. The block definition in still available, |
59 | though, by appending C<Block> to the name: C<\p{InHebrewBlock}> means |
60 | what C<\p{InHebrew}> meant in perl 5.6.0. For the full list |
61 | of affected character classes, see L<perlunicode/Blocks>. |
62 | |
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63 | =head2 Perl Parser Stress Tested |
64 | |
65 | The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and |
66 | Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been |
67 | fixed. |
68 | |
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69 | =head2 Deprecations |
70 | |
71 | The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird |
72 | use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0 |
73 | and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be |
74 | implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather |
75 | ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash |
76 | use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain |
77 | available. |
78 | |
79 | The syntaxes C<@a->[...]> and C<@h->{...}> have now been deprecated. |
80 | |
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81 | After years of trying the suidperl is considered to be too complex to |
82 | ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely |
83 | to be removed in a future release. |
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84 | |
85 | The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument has been |
86 | deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its |
87 | implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to |
88 | disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead. |
89 | |
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90 | =over 4 |
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91 | |
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92 | =item * |
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93 | |
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94 | The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves |
95 | it to make some sense, it is forbidden. |
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96 | |
97 | =item * |
98 | |
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99 | A reference to a reference now stringify as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead |
100 | of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return |
101 | value of ref(). |
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102 | |
103 | =item * |
104 | |
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105 | The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed. |
106 | Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that |
107 | the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly) |
108 | maintained. |
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109 | |
110 | =item * |
111 | |
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112 | The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed |
113 | to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned. |
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114 | |
115 | =item * |
116 | |
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117 | The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still |
118 | recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of |
119 | ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable |
120 | since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used. |
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121 | |
122 | =item * |
123 | |
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124 | The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning |
125 | ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape |
126 | any C<\w> character. |
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127 | |
128 | =item * |
129 | |
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130 | lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense. |
131 | In future releases this may become a fatal error. |
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132 | |
133 | =item * |
134 | |
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135 | The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison |
136 | operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed. |
137 | |
138 | =item * |
139 | |
140 | The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now |
141 | more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false |
142 | data lying around in them. |
143 | |
144 | =item * |
145 | |
146 | The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return; |
147 | the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar |
148 | functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...). |
149 | |
150 | =item * |
151 | |
152 | Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that |
153 | depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new |
154 | algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order. |
155 | More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">. |
156 | |
157 | =item * |
158 | |
159 | The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted |
160 | alphabetically to be csh-compliant. (bsd_glob() does still sort platform |
161 | natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.) |
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162 | |
163 | =back |
164 | |
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165 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
166 | |
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167 | =head2 AUTOLOAD Is Now Lvaluable |
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168 | |
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169 | AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute |
170 | to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value. |
171 | |
172 | =head2 PerlIO is Now The Default |
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173 | |
174 | =over 4 |
175 | |
176 | =item * |
177 | |
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178 | IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio". |
179 | PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the |
180 | handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg |
181 | form of open: |
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182 | |
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183 | open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ... |
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184 | |
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185 | or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>: |
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186 | |
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187 | binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)'); |
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188 | |
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189 | The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in |
190 | previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a |
191 | portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32, |
192 | but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if |
193 | platform supports it (mostly UNIXes). |
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194 | |
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195 | Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma. |
196 | |
197 | See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects |
198 | of PerlIO on your architecture name. |
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199 | |
200 | =item * |
201 | |
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202 | File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode |
203 | (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" : |
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204 | |
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205 | open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt"); |
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206 | |
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207 | Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named |
208 | for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead |
209 | UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and |
210 | http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information. |
211 | In future releases this naming may change. |
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212 | |
213 | =item * |
214 | |
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215 | File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal |
216 | Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer. |
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217 | |
218 | =item * |
219 | |
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220 | File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via: |
221 | |
222 | open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ... |
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223 | |
224 | =item * |
225 | |
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226 | Anonymous temporary files are available without need to |
227 | 'use FileHandle' or other module via |
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228 | |
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229 | open($fh,"+>", undef) || ... |
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230 | |
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231 | That is a literal undef, not an undefined value. |
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232 | |
233 | =item * |
234 | |
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235 | The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX): |
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236 | |
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237 | open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd') |
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238 | |
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239 | creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in |
240 | the child process. |
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241 | |
242 | =item * |
243 | |
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244 | The following builtin functions are now overridable: chop(), chomp(), |
245 | each(), keys(), pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift(). |
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246 | |
247 | =item * |
248 | |
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249 | Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields. |
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250 | |
251 | =item * |
252 | |
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253 | Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions |
254 | and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and |
255 | tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers. |
256 | This change leads into often slightly faster and always less lossy |
257 | arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers |
258 | in its math.) |
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259 | |
260 | =item * |
261 | |
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262 | The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the |
263 | C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example |
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264 | |
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265 | print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar"; |
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266 | |
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267 | will print "bar foo\n"; This feature helps in writing |
268 | internationalised software. |
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269 | |
270 | =item * |
271 | |
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272 | Unicode in general should be now much more usable. Unicode can be |
273 | used in hash keys, Unicode in regular expressions should work now, |
274 | Unicode in tr/// should work now (though tr/// seems to be a |
275 | particularly tricky to get right, so you have been warned) |
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276 | |
277 | =item * |
278 | |
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279 | The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded |
280 | to Unicode 3.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/, |
281 | and http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr27/ |
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282 | |
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283 | For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities: |
284 | almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in |
285 | the lib/unicode subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space |
286 | considerations, is the Unihan database. |
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287 | |
288 | =item * |
289 | |
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290 | The Unicode character classes \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been |
291 | added. "Blank" is like C isblank(), that is, it contains only |
292 | "horizontal whitespace" (the space character is, the newline isn't), |
293 | and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} |
294 | isn't, since that includes the vertical tabulator character, whereas |
295 | C<\s> doesn't.) |
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296 | |
297 | =back |
298 | |
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299 | =head2 Signals Are Now Safe |
300 | |
301 | Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments |
302 | could corrupt Perl's internal state. |
303 | |
304 | =head2 Understanding of Numbers |
305 | |
306 | In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's |
307 | understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in |
308 | many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()> |
309 | and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their |
310 | deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers. |
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311 | |
312 | =over 4 |
313 | |
314 | =item * |
315 | |
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316 | C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass |
317 | in multiple arguments.) |
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318 | |
319 | =item * |
320 | |
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321 | END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block. |
322 | Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by |
323 | PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new |
324 | behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See |
325 | L<perlembed>. |
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326 | |
327 | =item * |
328 | |
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329 | Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved |
330 | correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they |
331 | were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code. |
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332 | |
333 | =item * |
334 | |
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335 | Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that |
336 | were declared before the lexicals. |
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337 | |
338 | =item * |
339 | |
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340 | Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context. |
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341 | |
342 | =item * |
343 | |
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344 | A new special regular expression variable has been introduced: |
345 | C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch). |
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346 | |
347 | =item * |
348 | |
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349 | C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module. |
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350 | |
351 | =item * |
352 | |
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353 | The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand |
354 | is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified. |
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355 | |
356 | =item * |
357 | |
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358 | C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8. |
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359 | |
360 | =item * |
361 | |
61947107 |
362 | my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works. |
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363 | |
364 | =item * |
365 | |
61947107 |
366 | prototype(\&) is now available. |
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367 | |
368 | =item * |
369 | |
61947107 |
370 | Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string |
371 | concatenation be invoked too many times. |
372 | |
373 | =item * |
374 | |
375 | The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants |
376 | have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore |
377 | simply B<between digits>. |
378 | |
379 | =item * |
380 | |
381 | An UNTIE method is now available. |
382 | |
383 | =item * |
384 | |
385 | L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the |
386 | file timestamps to the current time. |
387 | |
388 | =item * |
389 | |
390 | C<eval "v200"> now works. |
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391 | |
392 | =back |
393 | |
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394 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
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395 | |
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396 | =head2 New Modules and Pragmata |
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397 | |
398 | =over 4 |
399 | |
400 | =item * |
401 | |
61947107 |
402 | C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers. |
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403 | |
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404 | package MyPack; |
405 | use Attribute::Handlers; |
406 | sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" } |
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407 | |
61947107 |
408 | # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack... |
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409 | |
61947107 |
410 | my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called |
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411 | |
61947107 |
412 | Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can |
413 | be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the |
414 | exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END). |
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415 | |
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416 | =item * |
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417 | |
61947107 |
418 | B<B::Concise> is a new compiler backend for walking the Perl syntax |
419 | tree, printing concise info about ops, from Stephen McCamant. The |
420 | output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>. |
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421 | |
422 | =item * |
423 | |
61947107 |
424 | C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree, |
425 | by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>. |
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426 | |
427 | =item * |
428 | |
61947107 |
429 | C<Cwd> has now a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is |
430 | used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust) |
431 | but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used. |
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432 | |
433 | =item * |
434 | |
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435 | C<Devel::PPPort>, from Kenneth Albanowski, has been added. It is |
436 | primarily used by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of of XS modules |
437 | between different versions of Perl. |
438 | |
439 | =item * |
440 | |
61947107 |
441 | C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from |
442 | Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>. |
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443 | |
444 | =item * |
445 | |
61947107 |
446 | C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in |
447 | RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>. |
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448 | |
449 | use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex'; |
450 | |
451 | $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel"); |
452 | |
453 | print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1 |
454 | |
61947107 |
455 | NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not |
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456 | included since its use is discouraged. |
457 | |
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458 | =item * |
459 | |
61947107 |
460 | C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate |
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461 | between different character encodings. Support for Unicode, |
462 | ISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are |
463 | compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese, |
464 | Chinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at |
61947107 |
465 | runtime. See L<Encode>. |
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466 | |
467 | Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the |
468 | ":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used. |
469 | |
61947107 |
470 | =item * |
471 | |
472 | C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information. |
473 | See L<I18N::Langinfo>. |
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474 | |
475 | =item * |
476 | |
61947107 |
477 | C<I18N::LangTags> has functions for dealing with RFC3066-style |
478 | language tags, by Sean Burke. See <I18N::LangTags>. |
479 | |
480 | =item * |
481 | |
482 | C<ExtUtils::Constant> is a new tool for extension writers for |
483 | generating XS code to import C header constants, by Nicholas Clark. |
484 | See L<ExtUtils::Constant>. |
485 | |
486 | =item * |
487 | |
488 | C<Filter::Simple> is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call, |
489 | from Damian Conway. See L<Filter::Simple>. |
f39f21d8 |
490 | |
491 | # in MyFilter.pm: |
492 | |
493 | package MyFilter; |
494 | |
495 | use Filter::Simple sub { |
496 | while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) { |
497 | s/$from/$to/g; |
498 | } |
499 | }; |
500 | |
501 | 1; |
502 | |
503 | # in user's code: |
504 | |
505 | use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green'; |
506 | |
507 | print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n" |
508 | print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n" |
509 | |
510 | no MyFilter; |
511 | |
512 | print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n" |
513 | |
61947107 |
514 | =item * |
515 | |
516 | C<File::Temp> allows one to create temporary files and directories in |
517 | an easy, portable, and secure way, by Tim Jenness. See L<File::Temp>. |
518 | |
519 | =item * |
520 | |
521 | C<Filter::Util::Call> provides you with the framework to write |
522 | I<Source Filters> in Perl, from Paul Marquess. For most uses the |
523 | frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>. |
524 | |
525 | =item * |
526 | |
527 | L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network |
528 | programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>, |
529 | L<Net::Ping>, L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>. |
530 | |
531 | Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure. |
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532 | |
533 | =item * |
534 | |
61947107 |
535 | C<List::Util> is a selection of general-utility list subroutines, like |
536 | sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(), by Graham barr. See L<List::Util>. |
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537 | |
538 | =item * |
539 | |
61947107 |
540 | C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>, and |
541 | C<Locale::Language>, from Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the |
542 | codes for various locale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for |
543 | US Dollar, and "jp" for Japanese. |
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544 | |
545 | use Locale::Country; |
546 | |
547 | $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan' |
548 | $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no' |
549 | |
550 | See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>, |
61947107 |
551 | and L<Locale::Language>. |
552 | |
553 | =item * |
554 | |
555 | C<Locale::Maketext> is localization framework from Sean Burke. See |
556 | L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an |
557 | article about software localization, originally published in The Perl |
558 | Journal #13, republished here with kind permission. |
559 | |
560 | =item * |
561 | |
562 | C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time, |
563 | from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>. |
f39f21d8 |
564 | |
565 | =item * |
566 | |
61947107 |
567 | C<MIME::Base64> allows you to encode data in base64, from Gisle Aas, |
568 | as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail |
569 | Extensions)>. |
f39f21d8 |
570 | |
571 | use MIME::Base64; |
572 | |
573 | $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame'); |
574 | $decoded = decode_base64($encoded); |
575 | |
576 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==" |
577 | |
61947107 |
578 | See L<MIME::Base64>. |
f39f21d8 |
579 | |
580 | =item * |
581 | |
61947107 |
582 | C<MIME::QuotedPrint> allows you to encode data in quoted-printable |
583 | encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail |
584 | Extensions)>, from Gisle Aas. |
f39f21d8 |
585 | |
586 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; |
587 | |
588 | $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}"); |
589 | $decoded = decode_qp($encoded); |
590 | |
591 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A" |
592 | |
593 | MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods |
594 | necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in : |
595 | |
596 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; |
597 | open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path) |
598 | |
61947107 |
599 | See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>. |
f39f21d8 |
600 | |
601 | =item * |
602 | |
61947107 |
603 | C<NEXT> is pseudo-class for method redispatch, from Damian Conway. |
604 | See L<NEXT>. |
f39f21d8 |
605 | |
606 | =item * |
607 | |
1e13d81f |
608 | C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O disciplines |
609 | for open(). |
610 | |
611 | =item * |
612 | |
61947107 |
613 | C<PerlIO::Scalar> provides the implementation of IO to "in memory" |
614 | Perl scalars as discussed above, from Nick Ing-Simmons. It also |
615 | serves as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future |
616 | possibilities include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. |
617 | See L<PerlIO::Scalar>. |
618 | |
619 | =item * |
620 | |
621 | C<PerlIO::Via> acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps PerlIO layer |
622 | functionality provided by a class (typically implemented in perl |
623 | code), from Nick Ing-Simmons. |
f39f21d8 |
624 | |
625 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; |
626 | open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path) |
627 | |
628 | This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh> |
61947107 |
629 | to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>. |
f39f21d8 |
630 | |
631 | =item * |
632 | |
1e13d81f |
633 | C<Pod::ParseLink>, by Russ Allbery, has been added, |
634 | to parse L<> links in pods as described in the new |
635 | perlpodspec. |
636 | |
637 | =item * |
638 | |
61947107 |
639 | C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added. |
f39f21d8 |
640 | It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text. |
61947107 |
641 | See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>. |
f39f21d8 |
642 | |
643 | =item * |
644 | |
61947107 |
645 | C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines, |
646 | like blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>. |
647 | |
648 | =item * |
649 | |
1e13d81f |
650 | C<sort> is a new pragma for controlling the behaviour of sort(). |
651 | |
652 | =item * |
653 | |
61947107 |
654 | C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the |
655 | storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and |
656 | compact binary format, from Raphael Manfredi. See L<Storable>. |
657 | |
658 | =item * |
659 | |
660 | C<Switch>, from Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying |
f39f21d8 |
661 | |
662 | use Switch; |
663 | |
664 | you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl. |
665 | |
666 | use Switch; |
667 | |
668 | switch ($val) { |
669 | |
670 | case 1 { print "number 1" } |
671 | case "a" { print "string a" } |
672 | case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" } |
673 | case (@array) { print "number in list" } |
674 | case /\w+/ { print "pattern" } |
675 | case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" } |
676 | case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" } |
677 | case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" } |
678 | case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" } |
679 | else { print "previous case not true" } |
680 | } |
681 | |
61947107 |
682 | See L<Switch>. |
683 | |
684 | =item * |
685 | |
686 | C<Test::More> is yet another framework for writing test scripts, |
687 | more extensive than Test::Simple, by Michael Schwern. See L<Test::More>. |
688 | |
689 | =item * |
690 | |
691 | C<Test::Simple> has the- basic utilities for writing tests, by Michael |
692 | Schwern. See L<Test::Simple>. |
77c8cf41 |
693 | |
694 | =item * |
695 | |
61947107 |
696 | C<Text::Balanced> has been added, for extracting delimited text |
697 | sequences from strings, from Damian Conway. |
77c8cf41 |
698 | |
699 | use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited'; |
700 | |
701 | ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", ''); |
702 | |
703 | $a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'. |
704 | |
705 | In addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(), |
706 | extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(), |
707 | extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and |
708 | gen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced |
61947107 |
709 | parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>. |
77c8cf41 |
710 | |
711 | =item * |
712 | |
61947107 |
713 | C<threads> is an interface interpreter threads, by Arthur Bergman. |
714 | Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in |
715 | Perl 5.6 but then available only as an internal interface for |
716 | extension writers. See L<threads>. |
77c8cf41 |
717 | |
718 | =item * |
719 | |
61947107 |
720 | C<threads::shared> allows data sharing for interpreter threads, from |
721 | Arthur Bergman. In the ithreads model any data sharing between |
722 | threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model |
723 | where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>. |
77c8cf41 |
724 | |
725 | =item * |
726 | |
61947107 |
727 | C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash |
ba370e9b |
728 | references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained |
729 | within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>. |
77c8cf41 |
730 | |
731 | =item * |
732 | |
61947107 |
733 | C<Time::HiRes> provides high resolution timing (ualarm, usleep, |
734 | and gettimeofday), from Douglas E. Wegscheid. See L<Time::HiRes>. |
77c8cf41 |
735 | |
736 | =item * |
737 | |
61947107 |
738 | C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character |
739 | Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>. |
77c8cf41 |
740 | |
741 | =item * |
742 | |
61947107 |
743 | C<Unicode::Collate> implements the UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm) |
744 | for sorting Unicode strings, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Collate>. |
77c8cf41 |
745 | |
746 | =item * |
747 | |
61947107 |
748 | C<Unicode::Normalize> implements the various Unicode normalization |
749 | forms, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Normalize>. |
77c8cf41 |
750 | |
751 | =item * |
752 | |
61947107 |
753 | C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS |
754 | typemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code |
755 | is worth studying. |
77c8cf41 |
756 | |
757 | =back |
758 | |
759 | =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata |
760 | |
761 | =over 4 |
762 | |
763 | =item * |
764 | |
61947107 |
765 | The following independently supported modules have been updated to the |
766 | newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp, |
767 | Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle |
768 | (Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable, |
769 | Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap. |
77c8cf41 |
770 | |
771 | =item * |
772 | |
61947107 |
773 | The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments. |
77c8cf41 |
774 | |
775 | =item * |
776 | |
61947107 |
777 | AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>, |
77c8cf41 |
778 | |
779 | =item * |
780 | |
1e13d81f |
781 | B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost |
782 | all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed). |
783 | There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out. |
77c8cf41 |
784 | |
785 | =item * |
786 | |
1e13d81f |
787 | Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time. |
77c8cf41 |
788 | |
789 | =item * |
790 | |
1e13d81f |
791 | Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor |
792 | is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument. |
77c8cf41 |
793 | |
794 | =item * |
795 | |
1e13d81f |
796 | Data::Dumper has now an option to sort hashes. |
77c8cf41 |
797 | |
798 | =item * |
799 | |
1e13d81f |
800 | Data::Dumper has now an option to dump code references |
801 | using B::Deparse. |
77c8cf41 |
802 | |
803 | =item * |
804 | |
1e13d81f |
805 | The English module can now be used without the infamous performance |
806 | hit by saying |
77c8cf41 |
807 | |
1e13d81f |
808 | use English '-no_performance_hit'; |
77c8cf41 |
809 | |
1e13d81f |
810 | (Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables |
811 | C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and |
812 | C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>. |
77c8cf41 |
813 | |
814 | =item * |
815 | |
1e13d81f |
816 | Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the |
817 | new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>). |
818 | This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster. |
77c8cf41 |
819 | |
820 | =item * |
821 | |
1e13d81f |
822 | File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also |
823 | correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks |
824 | (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work. |
61947107 |
825 | |
826 | =item * |
827 | |
1e13d81f |
828 | File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made |
829 | more portable. |
77c8cf41 |
830 | |
61947107 |
831 | =item * |
832 | |
1e13d81f |
833 | File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid |
834 | prototype mismatch with CORE::glob(). |
61947107 |
835 | |
836 | =item * |
837 | |
838 | File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of |
839 | the returned list of filenames. |
77c8cf41 |
840 | |
841 | =item * |
842 | |
843 | Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics |
844 | (this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have |
845 | compiled with debugging). |
846 | |
847 | =item * |
848 | |
1e13d81f |
849 | IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors. |
850 | |
851 | =item * |
852 | |
77c8cf41 |
853 | IO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket |
854 | is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable |
855 | as a sockatmark() function. |
856 | |
857 | =item * |
858 | |
859 | IO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform |
860 | supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity |
861 | you may want to prefer ReuseAddr. |
862 | |
863 | =item * |
864 | |
61947107 |
865 | IO::Socket::INET now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning |
866 | that the operating system will make one up.) |
77c8cf41 |
867 | |
868 | =item * |
869 | |
1e13d81f |
870 | use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories |
871 | with 'no lib' now works. |
872 | |
873 | =item * |
874 | |
875 | Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite. |
876 | They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various |
61947107 |
877 | bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends. |
f39f21d8 |
878 | |
879 | =item * |
880 | |
61947107 |
881 | Net::Ping has been enhanced. There is now "external" protocol which |
882 | uses Net::Ping::External module which runs external ping(1) and parses |
883 | the output. An alpha version of Net::Ping::External is available in |
884 | CPAN and in 5.7.2 the Net::Ping::External may be integrated to Perl. |
f39f21d8 |
885 | |
77c8cf41 |
886 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
887 | |
61947107 |
888 | POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust. |
889 | You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE' |
890 | handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic. |
f39f21d8 |
891 | |
892 | =item * |
893 | |
1e13d81f |
894 | C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that use/require work. |
895 | |
896 | =item * |
897 | |
898 | The Shell module now has an OO interface. |
899 | |
900 | =item * |
901 | |
61947107 |
902 | The Test module has been significantly enhanced. |
f39f21d8 |
903 | |
904 | =item * |
905 | |
61947107 |
906 | The C<vars> pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables. |
77c8cf41 |
907 | (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.) |
f39f21d8 |
908 | |
888aee59 |
909 | =item * |
910 | |
61947107 |
911 | The utf8:: name space (as in the pragma) provides various |
912 | Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's |
913 | internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length() |
914 | has been implemented. |
888aee59 |
915 | |
f39f21d8 |
916 | =back |
917 | |
77c8cf41 |
918 | =head1 Utility Changes |
f39f21d8 |
919 | |
920 | =over 4 |
921 | |
922 | =item * |
923 | |
61947107 |
924 | Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version |
77c8cf41 |
925 | 4.31. |
f39f21d8 |
926 | |
927 | =item * |
928 | |
61947107 |
929 | F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster. |
f39f21d8 |
930 | |
931 | =item * |
932 | |
1e13d81f |
933 | C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs. |
934 | |
935 | =item * |
936 | |
937 | C<h2xs> now produces a template README. |
f39f21d8 |
938 | |
77c8cf41 |
939 | =item * |
940 | |
1e13d81f |
941 | C<h2xs> now uses C<Devel::PPort> for better portability between |
942 | different versions of Perl. |
f39f21d8 |
943 | |
944 | =item * |
945 | |
1e13d81f |
946 | C<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect |
61947107 |
947 | newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is |
948 | more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a |
949 | prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined), |
950 | less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the |
951 | old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants), |
952 | and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your |
953 | extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy). |
954 | L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs. |
f39f21d8 |
955 | |
956 | =item * |
957 | |
1e13d81f |
958 | C<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet. |
f39f21d8 |
959 | |
960 | =item * |
961 | |
1e13d81f |
962 | C<perlbug> is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to |
61947107 |
963 | perl.org, not perl.com. |
f39f21d8 |
964 | |
965 | =item * |
966 | |
1e13d81f |
967 | C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is, |
61947107 |
968 | command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc. |
f39f21d8 |
969 | |
970 | =item * |
971 | |
1e13d81f |
972 | C<perlivp> is a new utility for doing Installation Verification |
61947107 |
973 | Procedure after installing Perl. |
f39f21d8 |
974 | |
975 | =item * |
976 | |
1e13d81f |
977 | C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory. |
f39f21d8 |
978 | |
979 | =item * |
980 | |
1e13d81f |
981 | C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full |
982 | implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by |
983 | using the C<psed> utility.) |
61947107 |
984 | |
985 | =item * |
986 | |
1e13d81f |
987 | C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files. |
f39f21d8 |
988 | |
989 | =item * |
990 | |
1e13d81f |
991 | C<xsubpp> now supports OUT keyword. |
f39f21d8 |
992 | |
993 | =back |
994 | |
77c8cf41 |
995 | =head1 New Documentation |
f39f21d8 |
996 | |
997 | =over 4 |
998 | |
999 | =item * |
1000 | |
77c8cf41 |
1001 | perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the |
1002 | 5.6.0 release. |
f39f21d8 |
1003 | |
1004 | =item * |
1005 | |
61947107 |
1006 | perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library |
1007 | functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core |
1008 | hackers.) |
1009 | |
1010 | =item * |
1011 | |
77c8cf41 |
1012 | perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial. |
f39f21d8 |
1013 | |
77c8cf41 |
1014 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1015 | |
77c8cf41 |
1016 | perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms. |
1017 | Note that unfortunately EBCDIC platforms that used to supported back in |
1018 | Perl 5.005 are still unsupported by Perl 5.7.0; the plan, however, is to |
1019 | bring them back to the fold. |
f39f21d8 |
1020 | |
77c8cf41 |
1021 | =item * |
1022 | |
888aee59 |
1023 | perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl. |
1024 | |
1025 | =item * |
1026 | |
61947107 |
1027 | perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers. |
1028 | |
1029 | =item * |
1030 | |
888aee59 |
1031 | perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules. |
1032 | |
1033 | =item * |
1034 | |
77c8cf41 |
1035 | perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module. |
f39f21d8 |
1036 | |
1037 | =item * |
1038 | |
888aee59 |
1039 | perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best |
1040 | practices gathered over the years. |
1041 | |
1042 | =item * |
1043 | |
1044 | perlpodstyle is a more formal specification of the pod format, |
1045 | mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to |
1046 | people writing in pod. |
1047 | |
1048 | =item * |
1049 | |
77c8cf41 |
1050 | perlposix-bc explains using Perl on the POSIX-BC platform |
1051 | (an EBCDIC mainframe platform). |
f39f21d8 |
1052 | |
1053 | =item * |
1054 | |
77c8cf41 |
1055 | perlretut is a regular expression tutorial. |
f39f21d8 |
1056 | |
1057 | =item * |
1058 | |
77c8cf41 |
1059 | perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide. |
1060 | Yes, much quicker than perlretut. |
f39f21d8 |
1061 | |
77c8cf41 |
1062 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1063 | |
61947107 |
1064 | perltodo has been updated. |
1065 | |
1066 | =item * |
1067 | |
888aee59 |
1068 | perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict |
61947107 |
1069 | with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names) |
888aee59 |
1070 | |
1071 | =item * |
1072 | |
1073 | perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl |
1074 | (perlunicode is more of a reference) |
1075 | |
1076 | =item * |
1077 | |
77c8cf41 |
1078 | perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl |
1079 | distribution. |
1080 | |
1081 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1082 | |
61947107 |
1083 | The following platform-specific documents are available before |
1084 | the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation |
1085 | as perlI<platform>: |
f39f21d8 |
1086 | |
61947107 |
1087 | perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000 |
1088 | perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux |
1089 | perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix |
1090 | perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris |
1091 | perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32 |
77c8cf41 |
1092 | |
1093 | =over 4 |
1094 | |
1095 | =item * |
1096 | |
61947107 |
1097 | The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid |
1098 | confusion with the Perl POSIX module. |
77c8cf41 |
1099 | |
1100 | =item * |
1101 | |
61947107 |
1102 | The documentation for the WinCE platform is called "CE", to avoid |
1103 | confusion with the perlwin32 documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems. |
77c8cf41 |
1104 | |
1105 | =back |
1106 | |
1107 | =head1 Performance Enhancements |
1108 | |
1109 | =over 4 |
1110 | |
1111 | =item * |
1112 | |
1113 | map() that changes the size of the list should now work faster. |
1114 | |
1115 | =item * |
1116 | |
1117 | sort() has been changed to use mergesort internally as opposed to the |
1118 | earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may result in slightly |
1119 | slower sorting times, but in general the speedup should be at least |
1120 | 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case behaviour of sort() |
1121 | is now better (in computer science terms it now runs in time O(N log N), |
1122 | as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2) worst-case run time behaviour), |
1123 | and that sort() is now stable (meaning that elements with identical |
1124 | keys will stay ordered as they were before the sort). |
1125 | |
1126 | =item * |
1127 | |
1128 | Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm |
1129 | (http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html). This algorithm is |
1130 | reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than |
1131 | the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by |
1132 | Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of |
1133 | all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the |
1134 | DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this |
1135 | change has not affected the overall speed of Perl. |
1136 | |
1137 | =item * |
1138 | |
1139 | unshift() should now be noticeably faster. |
1140 | |
1141 | =back |
1142 | |
1143 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
1144 | |
1145 | =head2 Generic Improvements |
1146 | |
1147 | =over 4 |
1148 | |
1149 | =item * |
1150 | |
1151 | INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit |
1152 | integers even on non-64-bit platforms. |
1153 | |
1154 | =item * |
1155 | |
1156 | Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file |
1157 | (see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old |
1158 | Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of |
1159 | them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously |
1160 | only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour, |
1161 | specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly. |
1162 | |
1163 | =item * |
1164 | |
1165 | A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available. |
1166 | It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's |
1167 | own library directories. |
1168 | |
1169 | =item * |
1170 | |
1171 | In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to |
1172 | build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems |
1173 | to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler |
1174 | 'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead. |
1175 | |
1176 | =item * |
1177 | |
1178 | gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid |
1179 | build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different |
1180 | operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible |
1181 | warning that there may be trouble ahead. |
1182 | |
1183 | =item * |
1184 | |
1185 | If binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is not wanted, Configure |
1186 | no longer suggests including the 5.005 modules in @INC. |
1187 | |
1188 | =item * |
1189 | |
1190 | Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively. |
1191 | |
1192 | =item * |
1193 | |
1194 | configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them. |
f39f21d8 |
1195 | |
77c8cf41 |
1196 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1197 | |
77c8cf41 |
1198 | installperl now outputs everything to STDERR. |
f39f21d8 |
1199 | |
77c8cf41 |
1200 | =item * |
1201 | |
1202 | $Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust |
1203 | with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for |
1204 | more than one binary platform.) |
f39f21d8 |
1205 | |
1206 | =item * |
1207 | |
1208 | Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't |
1209 | get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore. |
1210 | Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command |
1211 | line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended. |
1212 | |
1213 | =item * |
1214 | |
1215 | Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all" |
1216 | (-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your |
1217 | pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.) |
1218 | |
1219 | =item * |
1220 | |
77c8cf41 |
1221 | In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be |
1222 | somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure |
1223 | parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>. |
1224 | |
1225 | =item * |
1226 | |
61947107 |
1227 | APPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been |
1228 | documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories |
1229 | to Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information. |
1230 | |
1231 | =item * |
1232 | |
77c8cf41 |
1233 | The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the |
1234 | DB_File extension) was built is now available as |
1235 | C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}> |
1236 | from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG |
1237 | DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C. |
1238 | |
1239 | =item * |
1240 | |
61947107 |
1241 | Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM |
1242 | has been documented in INSTALL. |
77c8cf41 |
1243 | |
1244 | =item * |
1245 | |
61947107 |
1246 | If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a |
1247 | CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and |
1248 | install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for |
1249 | more details. |
f39f21d8 |
1250 | |
61947107 |
1251 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1252 | |
61947107 |
1253 | In addition to config.over a new override file, config.arch, is |
1254 | available. That is supposed to be used by hints file writers for |
1255 | architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is for |
1256 | site-wide changes). |
f39f21d8 |
1257 | |
1258 | =item * |
1259 | |
61947107 |
1260 | For Perl developers several new make targets for profiling |
1261 | and debugging have been added, see L<perlhack>. |
1262 | |
1263 | =over 8 |
f39f21d8 |
1264 | |
1265 | =item * |
1266 | |
61947107 |
1267 | Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in |
1268 | L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for |
1269 | generating a gprofiled Perl executable. |
f39f21d8 |
1270 | |
1271 | =item * |
1272 | |
61947107 |
1273 | If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for |
1274 | creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See |
1275 | L<perlhack>. |
f39f21d8 |
1276 | |
1277 | =item * |
1278 | |
61947107 |
1279 | If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options |
1280 | have been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and |
1281 | Third Degree. |
1282 | |
1283 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1284 | |
1285 | =item * |
1286 | |
61947107 |
1287 | Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have |
1288 | been added to INSTALL. |
f39f21d8 |
1289 | |
1290 | =item * |
1291 | |
61947107 |
1292 | The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads |
1293 | (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the |
1294 | Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>). |
f39f21d8 |
1295 | |
61947107 |
1296 | But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both |
1297 | thread models. |
f39f21d8 |
1298 | |
61947107 |
1299 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1300 | |
61947107 |
1301 | =head2 New Or Improved Platforms |
f39f21d8 |
1302 | |
61947107 |
1303 | For the list of platforms known to support Perl, |
1304 | see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">. |
1305 | |
1306 | =over 4 |
f39f21d8 |
1307 | |
1308 | =item * |
1309 | |
61947107 |
1310 | AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported. |
f39f21d8 |
1311 | |
f39f21d8 |
1312 | =item * |
1313 | |
77c8cf41 |
1314 | AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the |
1315 | long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>. |
f39f21d8 |
1316 | |
1317 | =item * |
1318 | |
61947107 |
1319 | After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl. |
1320 | |
1321 | =item * |
1322 | |
77c8cf41 |
1323 | AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform. |
f39f21d8 |
1324 | |
77c8cf41 |
1325 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1326 | |
77c8cf41 |
1327 | DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>. |
f39f21d8 |
1328 | |
1329 | =item * |
1330 | |
77c8cf41 |
1331 | DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2. |
f39f21d8 |
1332 | |
1333 | =item * |
1334 | |
61947107 |
1335 | EBCDIC platforms (z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA) |
1336 | have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the |
1337 | co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the |
1338 | situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>, |
1339 | L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information. |
f39f21d8 |
1340 | |
1341 | =item * |
1342 | |
61947107 |
1343 | Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under |
1344 | HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will |
1345 | need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux. |
f39f21d8 |
1346 | |
77c8cf41 |
1347 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1348 | |
61947107 |
1349 | MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since |
1350 | perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl |
1351 | and MacPerl have been synchronised) |
f39f21d8 |
1352 | |
77c8cf41 |
1353 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1354 | |
61947107 |
1355 | MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+ |
1356 | filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.) |
f39f21d8 |
1357 | |
888aee59 |
1358 | =item * |
1359 | |
61947107 |
1360 | NCR MP-RAS is now supported. |
888aee59 |
1361 | |
1362 | =item * |
1363 | |
61947107 |
1364 | NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>. |
888aee59 |
1365 | |
1366 | =item * |
1367 | |
61947107 |
1368 | NonStop-UX is now supported. |
888aee59 |
1369 | |
1370 | =item * |
1371 | |
61947107 |
1372 | Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported. |
888aee59 |
1373 | |
1374 | =item * |
1375 | |
61947107 |
1376 | WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>. |
1377 | |
1378 | =item * |
1379 | |
1380 | z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now |
1381 | support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default, |
1382 | however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure. |
888aee59 |
1383 | |
f39f21d8 |
1384 | =back |
1385 | |
1386 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
1387 | |
ba370e9b |
1388 | Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been hunted down. |
1389 | Most importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite a bit. |
1390 | |
f39f21d8 |
1391 | =over 4 |
1392 | |
1393 | =item * |
1394 | |
77c8cf41 |
1395 | Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code, |
1396 | condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks |
1397 | line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output now |
1398 | goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. |
f39f21d8 |
1399 | |
1400 | =item * |
1401 | |
77c8cf41 |
1402 | C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works. |
f39f21d8 |
1403 | |
1404 | =item * |
1405 | |
77c8cf41 |
1406 | Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes. |
f39f21d8 |
1407 | |
1408 | =item * |
1409 | |
77c8cf41 |
1410 | Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works. |
f39f21d8 |
1411 | |
1412 | =item * |
1413 | |
77c8cf41 |
1414 | Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "". |
f39f21d8 |
1415 | |
1416 | =item * |
1417 | |
77c8cf41 |
1418 | Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to |
1419 | return 27406, instead of 27047). |
f39f21d8 |
1420 | |
1421 | =item * |
1422 | |
77c8cf41 |
1423 | Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be |
1424 | more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number. |
f39f21d8 |
1425 | |
1426 | =item * |
1427 | |
77c8cf41 |
1428 | our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings. |
f39f21d8 |
1429 | |
1430 | =item * |
1431 | |
77c8cf41 |
1432 | pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0". |
f39f21d8 |
1433 | |
1434 | =item * |
1435 | |
77c8cf41 |
1436 | Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms |
1437 | (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry. |
f39f21d8 |
1438 | |
1439 | =item * |
1440 | |
77c8cf41 |
1441 | printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C". |
f39f21d8 |
1442 | |
1443 | =item * |
1444 | |
77c8cf41 |
1445 | C<q(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>. |
f39f21d8 |
1446 | |
1447 | =item * |
1448 | |
77c8cf41 |
1449 | Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works |
1450 | without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform). |
f39f21d8 |
1451 | |
1452 | =item * |
1453 | |
77c8cf41 |
1454 | Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work. |
f39f21d8 |
1455 | |
1456 | =item * |
1457 | |
77c8cf41 |
1458 | scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context. |
f39f21d8 |
1459 | |
1460 | =item * |
1461 | |
77c8cf41 |
1462 | sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context |
1463 | (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself). |
f39f21d8 |
1464 | |
1465 | =item * |
1466 | |
77c8cf41 |
1467 | Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very |
1468 | rare) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character class |
1469 | C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace (currently, |
1470 | the space and the tab). |
f39f21d8 |
1471 | |
1472 | =item * |
1473 | |
77c8cf41 |
1474 | $AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses |
1475 | in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe. |
f39f21d8 |
1476 | |
1477 | =item * |
1478 | |
77c8cf41 |
1479 | Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///. |
f39f21d8 |
1480 | |
77c8cf41 |
1481 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1482 | |
77c8cf41 |
1483 | Several Unicode fixes (but still not perfect). |
f39f21d8 |
1484 | |
77c8cf41 |
1485 | =over 8 |
f39f21d8 |
1486 | |
1487 | =item * |
1488 | |
77c8cf41 |
1489 | BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files |
1490 | (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped. |
1491 | UTF-16 (UCS-2) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly. |
f39f21d8 |
1492 | |
1493 | =item * |
1494 | |
77c8cf41 |
1495 | The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.0.1. |
f39f21d8 |
1496 | |
1497 | =item * |
1498 | |
77c8cf41 |
1499 | chr() for values greater than 127 now create utf8 when under use |
1500 | utf8. |
f39f21d8 |
1501 | |
77c8cf41 |
1502 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1503 | |
77c8cf41 |
1504 | Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data into |
1505 | utf8. |
f39f21d8 |
1506 | |
77c8cf41 |
1507 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1508 | |
77c8cf41 |
1509 | C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase. |
f39f21d8 |
1510 | |
77c8cf41 |
1511 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1512 | |
77c8cf41 |
1513 | Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation, |
1514 | C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator, |
1515 | substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work--in |
1516 | theory. |
f39f21d8 |
1517 | |
77c8cf41 |
1518 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1519 | |
77c8cf41 |
1520 | The C<tr///> operator now works I<slightly> better but is still rather |
1521 | broken. Note that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed (but |
1522 | see pack('U0', ...)). |
f39f21d8 |
1523 | |
77c8cf41 |
1524 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1525 | |
77c8cf41 |
1526 | vec() now refuses to deal with characters >255. |
f39f21d8 |
1527 | |
77c8cf41 |
1528 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1529 | |
77c8cf41 |
1530 | Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>. |
f39f21d8 |
1531 | |
ba370e9b |
1532 | =item * |
1533 | |
1534 | chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in |
1535 | reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order. |
1536 | |
1537 | =item * |
1538 | |
1539 | The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable. |
1540 | |
1541 | =item * |
1542 | |
1543 | mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name, |
1544 | as mandated by POSIX. |
1545 | |
1546 | =item * |
1547 | |
1548 | Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our(). |
1549 | |
1550 | =item * |
1551 | |
1552 | The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments |
1553 | to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options. |
1554 | |
1555 | =item * |
1556 | |
1557 | The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does |
1558 | not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the |
1559 | behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation. |
1560 | |
1561 | =item * |
1562 | |
1563 | All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional. |
1564 | |
1565 | =item * |
1566 | |
1567 | Tie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken. |
1568 | |
1569 | =item * |
1570 | |
1571 | vec() now tries to work with characters <= 255 when possible, but it leaves |
1572 | higher character values in place. In that case, if vec() was used to modify |
1573 | the string, it is no longer considered to be utf8-encoded. |
1574 | |
1575 | =item * |
1576 | |
1577 | The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names. |
1578 | |
1579 | =item * |
1580 | |
1581 | The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as |
1582 | "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35, |
1583 | in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This |
1584 | was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation |
1585 | where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now |
1586 | Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts. |
1587 | |
1588 | =item * |
1589 | |
1590 | L<dprofpp> -R didn't work. |
1591 | |
1592 | =item * |
1593 | |
1594 | PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work. |
1595 | |
1596 | =item * |
1597 | |
1598 | L<Sys::Syslog> ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant. |
1599 | |
1600 | =item * |
1601 | |
1602 | Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds |
1603 | with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness |
1604 | and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have |
1605 | fixed the modfl() bug. |
1606 | |
1607 | =item * |
1608 | |
1609 | Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using |
1610 | accept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname(). |
1611 | |
1612 | =item * |
1613 | |
1614 | Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O. |
1615 | |
1616 | =item * |
1617 | |
1618 | Windows |
1619 | |
1620 | =over 8 |
1621 | |
1622 | =item * |
1623 | |
1624 | Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl. |
1625 | However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those |
1626 | generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). |
1627 | |
1628 | =item * |
1629 | |
1630 | Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root. |
1631 | Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. |
1632 | |
1633 | =item * |
1634 | |
1635 | Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x. |
1636 | |
1637 | =item * |
1638 | |
1639 | HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html |
1640 | |
1641 | =item * |
1642 | |
1643 | The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features |
1644 | enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution). |
1645 | |
1646 | =back |
1647 | |
77c8cf41 |
1648 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1649 | |
77c8cf41 |
1650 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1651 | |
77c8cf41 |
1652 | UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke |
1653 | the Tk extension with 5.6.0.) |
f39f21d8 |
1654 | |
77c8cf41 |
1655 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1656 | |
77c8cf41 |
1657 | Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm) |
1658 | when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x, |
1659 | which needs them. |
f39f21d8 |
1660 | |
77c8cf41 |
1661 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1662 | |
77c8cf41 |
1663 | SOCKS support is now much more robust. |
f39f21d8 |
1664 | |
77c8cf41 |
1665 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1666 | |
77c8cf41 |
1667 | If your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside |
1668 | of the source directory by |
f39f21d8 |
1669 | |
77c8cf41 |
1670 | mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory |
1671 | cd /tmp/perl/build/directory |
1672 | sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ... |
f39f21d8 |
1673 | |
77c8cf41 |
1674 | This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links |
1675 | pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left |
1676 | unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say |
f39f21d8 |
1677 | |
77c8cf41 |
1678 | make all test |
f39f21d8 |
1679 | |
77c8cf41 |
1680 | and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory. |
f39f21d8 |
1681 | |
77c8cf41 |
1682 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1683 | |
77c8cf41 |
1684 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes |
f39f21d8 |
1685 | |
1686 | =over 4 |
1687 | |
1688 | =item * |
1689 | |
77c8cf41 |
1690 | BSDI 4.* |
f39f21d8 |
1691 | |
77c8cf41 |
1692 | Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes. |
f39f21d8 |
1693 | |
1694 | =item * |
1695 | |
77c8cf41 |
1696 | All BSDs |
f39f21d8 |
1697 | |
77c8cf41 |
1698 | Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see perlvar for details). |
f39f21d8 |
1699 | |
1700 | =item * |
1701 | |
77c8cf41 |
1702 | Cygwin |
f39f21d8 |
1703 | |
77c8cf41 |
1704 | Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4. |
f39f21d8 |
1705 | |
1706 | =item * |
1707 | |
77c8cf41 |
1708 | EPOC |
f39f21d8 |
1709 | |
77c8cf41 |
1710 | EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc. |
f39f21d8 |
1711 | |
1712 | =item * |
1713 | |
77c8cf41 |
1714 | FreeBSD 3.* |
f39f21d8 |
1715 | |
77c8cf41 |
1716 | Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs. |
f39f21d8 |
1717 | |
1718 | =item * |
1719 | |
77c8cf41 |
1720 | HP-UX |
1721 | |
1722 | README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works. |
f39f21d8 |
1723 | |
1724 | =item * |
1725 | |
77c8cf41 |
1726 | IRIX |
f39f21d8 |
1727 | |
77c8cf41 |
1728 | Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing |
1729 | of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder. |
f39f21d8 |
1730 | |
77c8cf41 |
1731 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1732 | |
77c8cf41 |
1733 | Linux |
f39f21d8 |
1734 | |
77c8cf41 |
1735 | Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL). |
f39f21d8 |
1736 | |
1737 | =item * |
1738 | |
77c8cf41 |
1739 | MacOS Classic |
f39f21d8 |
1740 | |
77c8cf41 |
1741 | Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should |
1742 | now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and |
1743 | the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing |
1744 | list for details. |
f39f21d8 |
1745 | |
1746 | =item * |
1747 | |
77c8cf41 |
1748 | MPE/iX |
f39f21d8 |
1749 | |
77c8cf41 |
1750 | MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix. |
f39f21d8 |
1751 | |
1752 | =item * |
1753 | |
77c8cf41 |
1754 | NetBSD/sparc |
f39f21d8 |
1755 | |
77c8cf41 |
1756 | Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc. |
f39f21d8 |
1757 | |
1758 | =item * |
1759 | |
77c8cf41 |
1760 | OS/2 |
f39f21d8 |
1761 | |
77c8cf41 |
1762 | Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL). |
f39f21d8 |
1763 | |
1764 | =item * |
1765 | |
77c8cf41 |
1766 | Solaris |
f39f21d8 |
1767 | |
77c8cf41 |
1768 | 64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works. |
f39f21d8 |
1769 | |
1770 | =item * |
1771 | |
77c8cf41 |
1772 | Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1) |
f39f21d8 |
1773 | |
77c8cf41 |
1774 | The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}. |
1775 | Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling |
1776 | with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with |
1777 | gcc 2.95.2. |
f39f21d8 |
1778 | |
1779 | =item * |
1780 | |
77c8cf41 |
1781 | Unicos |
1782 | |
1783 | Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either |
1784 | during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime; |
1785 | now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using |
1786 | only 46 bit integers for speed. |
f39f21d8 |
1787 | |
1788 | =item * |
1789 | |
77c8cf41 |
1790 | VMS |
1791 | |
1792 | chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY |
1793 | (see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc. |
f39f21d8 |
1794 | |
1795 | =item * |
1796 | |
77c8cf41 |
1797 | Windows |
f39f21d8 |
1798 | |
77c8cf41 |
1799 | =over 8 |
f39f21d8 |
1800 | |
1801 | =item * |
1802 | |
77c8cf41 |
1803 | accept() no longer leaks memory. |
f39f21d8 |
1804 | |
1805 | =item * |
1806 | |
77c8cf41 |
1807 | Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory. |
f39f21d8 |
1808 | |
77c8cf41 |
1809 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1810 | |
77c8cf41 |
1811 | New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. |
f39f21d8 |
1812 | |
1813 | =item * |
1814 | |
77c8cf41 |
1815 | $ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C. |
1816 | |
1817 | =item * |
1818 | |
1819 | A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN. |
f39f21d8 |
1820 | |
1821 | =item * |
1822 | |
77c8cf41 |
1823 | Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry. |
f39f21d8 |
1824 | |
1825 | =item * |
1826 | |
77c8cf41 |
1827 | Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. |
f39f21d8 |
1828 | |
1829 | =item * |
1830 | |
77c8cf41 |
1831 | Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all. |
f39f21d8 |
1832 | |
1833 | =item * |
1834 | |
77c8cf41 |
1835 | Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run |
1836 | concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.) |
f39f21d8 |
1837 | |
1838 | =item * |
1839 | |
77c8cf41 |
1840 | C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp |
1841 | (works better when perl is running as service). |
f39f21d8 |
1842 | |
1843 | =item * |
1844 | |
77c8cf41 |
1845 | Better UNC path handling under ithreads. |
f39f21d8 |
1846 | |
1847 | =item * |
1848 | |
77c8cf41 |
1849 | wait() and waitpid() now work much better. |
f39f21d8 |
1850 | |
1851 | =item * |
1852 | |
77c8cf41 |
1853 | winsock handle leak fixed. |
f39f21d8 |
1854 | |
1855 | =back |
1856 | |
77c8cf41 |
1857 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
1858 | |
77c8cf41 |
1859 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
f39f21d8 |
1860 | |
ba370e9b |
1861 | =over 4 |
1862 | |
1863 | =item * |
1864 | |
77c8cf41 |
1865 | All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully |
1866 | easier to understand both because the error message now comes before |
1867 | the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly |
ba370e9b |
1868 | marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker. |
1869 | |
1870 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1871 | |
77c8cf41 |
1872 | The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings |
1873 | drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package, |
1874 | for example C<STDIN> instead of <main::STDIN>. |
f39f21d8 |
1875 | |
ba370e9b |
1876 | =item * |
1877 | |
77c8cf41 |
1878 | The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>, |
1879 | C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters. |
f39f21d8 |
1880 | |
ba370e9b |
1881 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1882 | |
77c8cf41 |
1883 | Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your |
1884 | Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace |
1885 | tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables, |
1886 | respectively. |
f39f21d8 |
1887 | |
1888 | =item * |
1889 | |
77c8cf41 |
1890 | If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index |
1891 | is made, a warning is given. |
f39f21d8 |
1892 | |
1893 | =item * |
1894 | |
77c8cf41 |
1895 | C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift) |
1896 | now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled |
1897 | code. |
f39f21d8 |
1898 | |
ba370e9b |
1899 | =item * |
1900 | |
1901 | If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255 |
1902 | using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly |
1903 | for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127. |
1904 | |
1905 | =item * |
1906 | |
1907 | Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to |
1908 | the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise. |
1909 | |
1910 | =item * |
1911 | |
1912 | Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<%foo->{bar}> has been |
1913 | deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning. |
1914 | |
f39f21d8 |
1915 | =back |
1916 | |
77c8cf41 |
1917 | =head1 Changed Internals |
f39f21d8 |
1918 | |
1919 | =over 4 |
1920 | |
1921 | =item * |
1922 | |
77c8cf41 |
1923 | perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the |
1924 | internal API. |
f39f21d8 |
1925 | |
1926 | =item * |
1927 | |
77c8cf41 |
1928 | You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl. |
1929 | Building microperl does not require even running Configure; |
1930 | C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes |
1931 | many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting |
1932 | executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. |
1933 | For careful hackers only. |
f39f21d8 |
1934 | |
1935 | =item * |
1936 | |
77c8cf41 |
1937 | Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join() to the publicised API. |
f39f21d8 |
1938 | |
1939 | =item * |
1940 | |
77c8cf41 |
1941 | Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing. |
f39f21d8 |
1942 | |
77c8cf41 |
1943 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1944 | |
77c8cf41 |
1945 | Added is_utf8_char(), is_utf8_string(), bytes_to_utf8(), and utf8_to_bytes(). |
f39f21d8 |
1946 | |
77c8cf41 |
1947 | =item * |
f39f21d8 |
1948 | |
77c8cf41 |
1949 | Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs. |
f39f21d8 |
1950 | |
1951 | =item * |
1952 | |
77c8cf41 |
1953 | Some new APIs: ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv(). |
1954 | For the full list of the available APIs see L<perlapi>. |
f39f21d8 |
1955 | |
1956 | =item * |
1957 | |
77c8cf41 |
1958 | dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's |
1959 | a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP. |
f39f21d8 |
1960 | |
1961 | =item * |
1962 | |
61947107 |
1963 | PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed. |
1964 | |
1965 | =item * |
1966 | |
ba370e9b |
1967 | The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied |
1968 | (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability |
1969 | and maintainability. |
1970 | |
1971 | =item * |
1972 | |
1973 | The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in |
1974 | the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the |
1975 | original regex expression. The information is attached to the new |
1976 | C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more |
1977 | complete information. |
1978 | |
1979 | =item * |
1980 | |
1981 | The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning |
1982 | messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with |
1983 | gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings |
1984 | are being worked on. |
1985 | |
1986 | =item * |
1987 | |
1988 | F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented. |
1989 | |
1990 | =item * |
1991 | |
61947107 |
1992 | Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added |
1993 | to F<Porting/repository.pod>. |
f39f21d8 |
1994 | |
888aee59 |
1995 | =item * |
1996 | |
61947107 |
1997 | There are now several profiling make targets |
1998 | |
1999 | =item * |
2000 | |
2001 | The C<op_clear> and C<op_null> are now exported. |
888aee59 |
2002 | |
77c8cf41 |
2003 | =back |
f39f21d8 |
2004 | |
77c8cf41 |
2005 | =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed |
f39f21d8 |
2006 | |
77c8cf41 |
2007 | (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.) |
f39f21d8 |
2008 | |
77c8cf41 |
2009 | A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component |
2010 | of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor |
2011 | installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable |
2012 | platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and |
2013 | various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability. |
2014 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt |
2015 | for more information. |
f39f21d8 |
2016 | |
77c8cf41 |
2017 | The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security |
2018 | exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux |
2019 | platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which |
2020 | when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in |
2021 | a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you |
2022 | don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if |
2023 | suidperl is not installed, you are safe. |
f39f21d8 |
2024 | |
77c8cf41 |
2025 | The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from |
2026 | Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also |
2027 | from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability |
2028 | isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are, |
ba370e9b |
2029 | unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most |
2030 | probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl |
2031 | should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are |
2032 | doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution |
2033 | such as sudo (see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/). |
77c8cf41 |
2034 | |
2035 | =head1 New Tests |
2036 | |
2037 | Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> subsection. |
2038 | |
2039 | The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls. |
2040 | (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved |
2041 | to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.) |
2042 | |
f39f21d8 |
2043 | =head1 Known Problems |
2044 | |
2045 | Note that unlike other sections in this document (which describe |
2046 | changes since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known |
2047 | problems for all the 5.7 releases. |
2048 | |
2049 | =head2 AIX |
2050 | |
2051 | =over 4 |
2052 | |
2053 | =item * |
2054 | |
2055 | In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics |
2056 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
2057 | In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with |
2058 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library |
2059 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
2060 | (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and |
2061 | therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. |
2062 | |
2063 | =item * |
2064 | |
2065 | vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl |
2066 | |
2067 | The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code, |
2068 | resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests |
2069 | are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least |
2070 | vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly. |
2071 | "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. |
2072 | |
2073 | =back |
2074 | |
2075 | =head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery |
2076 | |
2077 | One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v> |
2078 | works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason is |
2079 | known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library. |
2080 | |
2081 | =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure' |
2082 | |
2083 | Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead. |
2084 | |
2085 | =head2 Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12 |
2086 | |
2087 | The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work. |
2088 | |
2089 | =head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured |
2090 | |
2091 | The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been |
2092 | configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in |
2093 | this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The |
2094 | test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets |
2095 | which have multiple IP addresses). |
2096 | |
2097 | =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured |
2098 | |
2099 | If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the |
2100 | subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the |
2101 | subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the |
2102 | subtest 9 failed. |
2103 | |
2104 | =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48 |
2105 | |
2106 | No known fix. |
2107 | |
2108 | =head2 OS/390 |
2109 | |
2110 | OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually |
2111 | better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and |
2112 | tests have been added. |
2113 | |
2114 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
2115 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
2116 | ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14 |
2117 | ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1 |
2118 | ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598 |
2119 | 600 602 604-610 |
2120 | ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
2121 | ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14 |
2122 | ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
2123 | ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117 |
2124 | ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75 |
2125 | ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25 |
2126 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145 |
2127 | ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81 |
2128 | ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4 |
2129 | op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425 |
2130 | 626-627 |
2131 | op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ?? |
2132 | op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168 |
2133 | op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59 |
2134 | Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay. |
2135 | |
2136 | =head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 |
2137 | |
2138 | The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms. |
2139 | Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX. |
2140 | The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line |
2141 | 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce |
2142 | something other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using |
2143 | the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".) |
2144 | |
2145 | =head2 Failure of Thread tests |
2146 | |
2147 | B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental.> |
2148 | |
2149 | The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in |
2150 | the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl |
2151 | 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests. |
2152 | |
2153 | lib/autouse.t 4 |
2154 | t/lib/thr5005.t 19-20 |
2155 | |
2156 | =head2 UNICOS |
2157 | |
2158 | =over 4 |
2159 | |
2160 | =item * |
2161 | |
2162 | ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail. |
2163 | |
2164 | =item * |
2165 | |
2166 | lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed, |
2167 | which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests. |
2168 | |
2169 | =item * |
2170 | |
2171 | Numerous numerical test failures |
2172 | |
2173 | op/numconvert 209,210,217,218 |
2174 | op/override 7 |
2175 | ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9 |
2176 | lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145 |
2177 | lib/Math/Trig 25 |
2178 | |
2179 | These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies. |
2180 | |
2181 | =back |
2182 | |
2183 | =head2 UTS |
2184 | |
2185 | There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>. |
2186 | |
2187 | =head2 VMS |
2188 | |
2189 | Rather many tests are failing in VMS but that actually more tests |
2190 | succeed in VMS than they used to, it's just that there are many, |
2191 | many more tests than there used to be. |
2192 | |
2193 | Here are the known failures from some compiler/platform combinations. |
2194 | |
2195 | DEC C V5.3-006 on OpenVMS VAX V6.2 |
ba370e9b |
2196 | |
f39f21d8 |
2197 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
2198 | [-.ext.posix]sigaction..................FAILED on test 7 |
2199 | [-.ext.time.hires]hires.................FAILED on test 14 |
2200 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
2201 | [-.lib.math.bigint.t]bigintpm...........FAILED on test 1183 |
2202 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
2203 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
2204 | [.op]sprintf............................FAILED on test 12 |
2205 | Failed 8/399 tests, 91.23% okay. |
2206 | |
2207 | DEC C V6.0-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-1 and |
2208 | Compaq C V6.2-008 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.1 |
2209 | |
2210 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
2211 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
2212 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
2213 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
2214 | Failed 4/399 tests, 92.48% okay. |
2215 | |
2216 | Compaq C V6.4-005 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.1 |
2217 | |
2218 | [-.ext.b]showlex........................FAILED on test 1 |
2219 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
2220 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
2221 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
2222 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
2223 | [.op]misc...............................FAILED on test 49 |
2224 | Failed 6/401 tests, 92.77% okay. |
2225 | |
2226 | =head2 Win32 |
2227 | |
2228 | In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering: |
2229 | some output may appear twice. |
2230 | |
2231 | =head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory |
2232 | |
2233 | use Tie::Hash; |
2234 | tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; |
2235 | |
2236 | ... |
2237 | |
2238 | local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks |
2239 | |
2240 | Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local() |
2241 | is executed. |
2242 | |
2243 | =head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden |
2244 | |
2245 | Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and |
2246 | hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting |
2247 | frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is |
2248 | for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt). |
2249 | |
2250 | =head2 Variable Attributes are not Currently Usable for Tieing |
2251 | |
2252 | This limitation will hopefully be fixed in future. (Subroutine |
2253 | attributes work fine for tieing, see L<Attribute::Handlers>). |
2254 | |
2255 | =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles |
2256 | |
2257 | Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with |
2258 | `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets |
2259 | default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile |
2260 | at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good |
2261 | solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate |
2262 | non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config |
2263 | hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are |
2264 | having problems can try configuring themselves without the |
2265 | largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the |
2266 | solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether |
2267 | one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at |
2268 | all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is |
2269 | platform-dependent. |
2270 | |
2271 | =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental |
2272 | |
2273 | The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near |
2274 | working order yet. |
2275 | |
2276 | =head2 The Long Double Support is Still Experimental |
2277 | |
2278 | The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles", |
2279 | floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still |
2280 | experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet |
2281 | widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature |
2282 | or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare |
2283 | and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset |
2284 | by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the |
2285 | operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised |
2286 | libraries). |
33a87e58 |
2287 | |
cc0fca54 |
2288 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
2289 | |
d4ad863d |
2290 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
2291 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
2292 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be |
2293 | information at http://www.perl.com/perl/, the Perl Home Page. |
cc0fca54 |
2294 | |
2295 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
2296 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
2297 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
d4ad863d |
2298 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
cc0fca54 |
2299 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
2300 | |
2301 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
2302 | |
2303 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
2304 | |
2305 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
2306 | |
2307 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
2308 | |
2309 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
2310 | |
2311 | =head1 HISTORY |
2312 | |
d468ca04 |
2313 | Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>. |
cc0fca54 |
2314 | |
2315 | =cut |