3 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.1
7 This document describes differences between the 5.11.0 release and
10 =head1 Incompatible Changes
16 The boolkeys op moved to the group of hash ops. This breaks binary compatibility.
20 C<\s> C<\w> and C<\d> once again have the semantics they had in Perl 5.8.x.
25 =head1 Core Enhancements
27 =head2 Add C<package NAME VERSION> syntax
29 This new syntax allows a module author to set the $VERSION of a namespace
30 when the namespace is declared with 'package'. It eliminates the need
31 for C<our $VERSION = ...> and similar constructs. E.g.
33 package Foo::Bar 1.23;
34 # $Foo::Bar::VERSION == 1.23
36 There are several advantages to this:
42 C<$VERSION> is parsed in I<exactly> the same way as C<use NAME VERSION>
46 C<$VERSION> is set at compile time
50 Eliminates C<$VERSION = ...> and C<eval $VERSION> clutter
54 As it requires VERSION to be a numeric literal or v-string
55 literal, it can be statically parsed by toolchain modules
56 without C<eval> the way MM-E<gt>parse_version does for C<$VERSION = ...>
60 Alpha versions with underscores do not need to be quoted; static
61 parsing will preserve the underscore, but during compilation, Perl
62 will remove underscores as it does for all numeric literals
64 It does not break old code with only 'package NAME', but code that uses
65 'package NAME VERSION' will need to be restricted to perl 5.11.X or newer
66 This is analogous to the change to open() from two-args to three-args.
67 Users requiring the latest Perl will benefit, and perhaps N years from
68 now it will become standard practice when Perl 5.12 is targeted the way
73 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
75 =head2 Updated Modules
81 Upgrade to Test-Simple 0.94
85 Upgrade to Storable 2.21
89 Upgrade to Pod-Simple 3.08
93 Upgrade to Parse-CPAN-Meta 1.40
97 Upgrade to ExtUtils-Manifest 1.57
101 Upgrade to ExtUtils-CBuilder 0.260301
105 Upgrade to CGI.pm-3.48
109 Upgrade CPANPLUS to CPAN version 0.89_02
113 Upgrade to threads::shared 1.32
117 Upgrade ExtUtils::ParseXS to 2.21
121 Upgrade File::Path to 2.08 (and add taint.t test)
125 Upgrade Module::CoreList to 2.20
129 Updated Object::Accessor to0.36
133 =head1 New Documentation
137 =item L<pod/perlpolicy.pod> extends the "Social contract about contributed modules" into the beginnings of a document on Perl porting policies.
141 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
145 =item Documentation for C<$1> in perlvar.pod clarified
149 =head1 Performance Enhancements
153 =item C<if (%foo)> has been optimized to be faster than C<if (keys %foo)>
157 =head1 Platform Specific Notes
161 =item Darwin (Mac OS X)
167 Skip testing the be_BY.CP1131 locale on Darwin 10 (Mac OS X 10.6),
172 Correct infelicities in the regexp used to identify buggy locales
173 on Darwin 8 and 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, respectively).
183 Fix thread library selection [perl #69686]
193 Initial support for mingw64 is now available
197 Various bits of Perl's build infrastructure are no longer converted to win32 line endings at release time. If this hurts you, please speak up.
204 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
210 Perl now properly returns a syntax error instead of segfaulting
211 if C<each>, C<keys> or C<values> is used without an argument
215 C<tell()> now fails properly if called without an argument and when no previous file was read
217 C<tell()> now returns C<-1>, and sets errno to C<EBADF>, thus restoring the 5.8.x behaviour
221 overload no longer implicitly unsets fallback on repeated 'use overload' lines
225 POSIX::strftime() can now handle Unicode characters in the format string.
229 The Windows select() implementation now supports all empty C<fd_set>s more correctly.
233 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
240 The 'syntax' category was removed from 5 warnings that should only be in 'deprecated'.
244 Three fatal pack/unpack error messages have been normalized to "panic: %s"
248 "Unicode character is illegal" has been rephrased to be more accurate
250 It now reads C<Unicode non-character is illegal in interchange> and the
251 perldiag documentation has been expanded a bit.
255 Perl now defaults to issuing a warning if a deprecated language feature is used.
257 To disable this feature in a given lexical scope, you should use C<no
258 warnings 'deprecated';> For information about which language features
259 are deprecated and explanations of various deprecation warnings, please
270 Significant cleanups to core tests to ensure that language and
271 interpreter features are not used before they're tested.
275 C<make test_porting> now runs a number of important pre-commit checks which might be of use to anyone working on the Perl core.
279 F<t/porting/podcheck.t> automatically checks the well-formedness of
280 POD found in all .pl, .pm and .pod files in the F<MANIFEST>, other than in
281 dual-lifed modules which are primarily maintained outside the Perl core.
285 F<t/porting/manifest.t> now tests that all files listed in MANIFEST are present.
289 =head1 Known Problems
293 =item Untriaged test crashes on Windows 2000
295 Several porters have reported mysterious crashes when Perl's entire test suite is run after a build on certain Windows 2000 systems. When run by hand, the individual tests reportedly work fine.
297 =item Known test failures on VMS
299 Perl 5.11.1 fails a small set of core and CPAN tests as of this release.
300 With luck, that'll be sorted out for 5.11.2
304 =head1 Errata for 5.11.0
308 =item The Perl 5.11.0 release notes incorrectly described 'delete local'
312 =head1 Acknowledgements
314 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
317 =head1 Reporting Bugs
319 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
320 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
321 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
322 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
324 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
325 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
326 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
327 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
328 analysed by the Perl porting team.
330 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
331 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
332 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
333 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
334 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
335 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
336 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
337 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
342 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
345 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
347 The F<README> file for general stuff.
349 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.