3 [ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as
4 XXX needs to be processed before release. ]
6 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.3
10 This document describes differences between the 5.11.2 release and
13 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.11.3, first read
14 the L<perl5XXXdelta>, which describes differences between 5.11.3 and
19 XXX Any important notices here
21 =head1 Incompatible Changes
25 =item Filehandles are blessed directly into C<IO::Handle::>, as C<FileHandle> is merely a wrapper around C<IO::Handle>.
29 =head1 Core Enhancements
31 XXX New core language features go here. Summarise user-visible core language
32 enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go
33 here, but most should go in the L</Performance Enhancements> section.
35 =head2 Unicode version
37 Perl is shipped with the latest Unicode version, 5.2, October 2009. See
38 L<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0> for details about this release
41 But, an installation can now fairly easily change Perl to operate on any
42 Unicode release. Perl is shipped with the latest official release, but
43 an installation can download and install any prior release from Unicode, and
44 cause Perl to work with that (or even multiple releases). Instructions are in
47 =head2 Unicode properties
49 Perl can now handle every Unicode character property. A new pod,
50 L<perluniprops>, lists all available non-Unihan character properties. By
51 default the Unihan properties and certain others (deprecated and Unicode
52 internal-only ones) are not exposed. See below for more details on
53 these; there is also a section in the pod listing them, and why they are
56 Perl now fully supports the Unicode compound-style of using C<=> and C<:>
57 in writing regular expressions: C<\p{property=value}> and
58 C<\p{property:value}> (both of which mean the same thing).
60 Perl now supports fully the Unicode loose matching rules for text
61 between the braces in C<\p{...}> constructs. In addition, Perl also allows
62 underscores between digits of numbers.
64 All the Unicode-defined synonyms for properties and property values are
67 C<qr/\X/>, which matches a Unicode logical character, has been expanded to work
68 better with various Asian languages. It now is defined as an C<extended
69 grapheme cluster>. (See L<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>). One change
70 due to this is that C<\X> will match the whole sequence C<S<CR LF>>. Another
71 change is that C<\X> will match an isolated mark. Marks generally come after a
72 base character, but it is possible in Unicode to have them in isolation, and
73 C<\X> will now handle that case. Otherwise, this change should be transparent
74 for the non-affected languages.
76 C<\p{...}> matches using the Canonical_Combining_Class property were
77 completely broken in previous Perls. This is now fixed.
79 In previous Perls, the Unicode Decomposition_Type=Compat property and a
80 Perl extension had the same name, which led to neither matching all the
81 correct values (with more than 100 mistakes in one, and several thousand
82 in the other). The Perl extension has now been renamed to be
83 Decomposition_Type=Noncanonical (short: dt=noncanon). It has the same
84 meaning as was previously intended, namely the union of all the
85 non-canonical Decomposition types, with Unicode Compat being just one of
88 C<\p{Uppercase}> and C<\p{Lowercase}> have been brought into line with the
89 Unicode definitions. This means they each match a few more characters
92 C<\p{Cntrl}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Control}>. This means it
93 no longer will match Private Use (gc=co), Surrogates (gc=cs), nor Format
94 (gc=cf) code points. The Format code points represent the biggest
95 possible problem. All but 36 of them are either officially deprecated
96 or strongly discouraged from being used. Of those 36, likely the most
97 widely used are the soft hyphen (U+00AD), and BOM, ZWSP, ZWNJ, WJ, and
98 similar, plus Bi-directional controls.
100 C<\p{Alpha}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Alphabetic}>. The Perl
101 definition included a number of things that aren't really alpha (all
102 marks), while omitting many that were. The Unicode definition is
103 clearly better, so we are switching to it. As a direct consequence, the
104 definitions of C<\p{Alnum}> and C<\p{Word}> which depend on Alpha also change.
106 C<\p{Word}> also now doesn't match certain characters it wasn't supposed
107 to, such as fractions.
109 C<\p{Print}> no longer matches the line control characters: tab, lf, cr,
110 ff, vt, and nel. This brings it in line with the documentation.
112 \p{Decomposition_Type=Canonical} now includes the Hangul syllables
114 The Numeric type property has been extended to include the Unihan
117 There is a new Perl extension, the 'Present_In', or simply 'In'
118 property. This is an extension of the Unicode Age property, but
119 C<\p{In=5.0}> matches any code point whose usage has been determined as of
120 Unicode version 5.0. The C<\p{Age=5.0}> only matches code points added in 5.0.
122 A number of properties did not have the correct values for unassigned
123 code points. This is now fixed. The affected properties are
124 Bidi_Class, East_Asian_Width, Joining_Type, Decomposition_Type,
125 Hangul_Syllable_Type, Numeric_Type, and Line_Break.
127 The Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, ID_Continue, and ID_Start properties
128 have been updated to their current definitions.
130 Certain properties that are supposed to be Unicode internal-only were
131 erroneously exposed by previous Perls. Use of these in regular
132 expressions will now generate a deprecated warning message, if those
133 warnings are enabled. The properties are: Other_Alphabetic,
134 Other_Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, Other_Grapheme_Extend,
135 Other_ID_Continue, Other_ID_Start, Other_Lowercase, Other_Math, and
138 An installation can now fairly easily change which Unicode properties
139 Perl understands. As mentioned above, certain properties are by default
140 turned off. These include all the Unihan properties (which should be
141 accessible via the CPAN module Unicode::Unihan) and any deprecated or
142 Unicode internal-only property that Perl has never exposed.
144 The files in the To directory are now more clearly marked as being
145 stable, directly usable by applications. New hash entries in them give
146 the format of the normal entries which allows for easier machine
147 parsing. Perl can generate files in this directory for any property,
148 though most are suppressed. An installation can choose to change which
149 get written. Instructions are in L<perluniprops>.
153 XXX List any platforms that this version of perl compiles on, that previous
154 versions did not. These will either be enabled by new files in the F<hints/>
155 directories, or new subdirectories and F<README> files at the top level of the
158 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
160 XXX All changes to installed files in F<cpan/>, F<dist/>, F<ext/> and F<lib/>
161 go here, in a list ordered by distribution name. Minimally it should be the
162 module version, but it's more useful to the end user to give a paragraph's
163 summary of the module's changes. In an ideal world, dual-life modules would
164 have a F<Changes> file that could be cribbed.
166 =head2 New Modules and Pragmata
170 =item C<warnings::fatal_enabled>
172 Add code and starting perldoc for warnings::fatal_enabled.
174 This is an analog for warnings::enabled, except it tests whether the
175 given category has been set fatal using "use warnings FATAL => foo".
176 This is mostly for symmetry.
178 Assumes that the fatal bit for a category will have an offset one higher
179 than the regular bit for the category, because otherwise much rewriting
180 of __chk would be required.
186 =head2 Pragmata Changes
190 =item Don't make C<use legacy> die on unknown legacy names
192 So we can use C<use legacy "qubits"> to avoid the new "qubit" behaviour,
193 without worrying about perls that didn't have qubit support at all. :)
195 NOTE: C<B<legacy>> will be removed before 5.12.0.
200 =head2 Updated Modules
206 Updated CPANPLUS to cpan release 0.90
207 Bring up ExtUtils::MakeMaker to 6.56 - no functional changes from 6.55_03
208 Upgrade to threads 1.75
210 Import CPAN.pm 1.94_53 from CPAN
212 Updated Module::Build to 0.35_15
214 Update Cwd / PathTools to 3.31 to get us a non-devel version number based on a chat with Steffen. No code changes.
216 Updated to Pod::Simple 3.11 from CPAN [perl #71004]
219 Update Archive::Extract to cpan version 0.36
224 File::Find was not resolving paths of the form "/..////../" correctly.
225 Fixed by adding a quantifier to the substitution parameter in
228 =item ExtUtils::MakeMaker
230 New BUILD_REQUIRES key to indicate build-only prerequisites.
234 Support new "package NAME VERSION" syntax.
238 =head1 Utility Changes
240 XXX Changes to installed programs such as F<perlbug> and F<xsubpp> go
241 here. Most of these are built within the directories F<utils> and F<x2p>.
249 Perlbug no longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent the message
253 =head1 New Documentation
255 XXX Changes which create B<new> files in F<pod/> go here.
265 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
267 XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F<pod/> go here.
268 Any changes to F<pod/perldiag.pod> should go in L</New or Changed Diagnostics>.
271 The Pod specification (L<perlpodspec>) has been updated to bring the
272 specification in line with modern usage already supported by most Pod systems.
273 A parameter string may now follow the format name in a "begin/end" region.
274 Links to URIs with a text description are now allowed. The usage of
275 C<LE<lt>"section"E<gt>> has been marked as deprecated.
277 L<if.pm|if> has been documented in L<perlfunc/use> as a means to get
278 conditional loading of modules despite the implicit BEGIN block around C<use>.
282 =head1 Performance Enhancements
284 XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There
285 may well be none in a stable release.
295 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
297 XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
300 =head2 Configuration improvements
304 =head2 Compilation improvements
306 Make distclean work again
309 =head2 Testing improvements
313 =item It's now possible to override C<PERL5OPT> and friends in F<t/TEST>
317 =head2 Platform Specific Changes
327 Always add a manifest resource to C<perl.exe> to specify the <trustInfo>
328 settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this setting Windows
329 will treat C<perl.exe> as a legacy application and apply various
330 heuristics like redirecting access to protected file system areas
331 (like the "Program Files" folder) to the users "VirtualStore"
332 instead of generating a proper "permission denied" error.
334 For VC8 and VC9 this manifest setting is automatically generated by
335 the compiler/linker (together with the binding information for their
336 respective runtime libraries); for all other compilers we need to
337 embed the manifest resource explicitly in the external resource file.
339 This change also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls version 6.0
340 (themed controls introduced in Windows XP) via the dependency list
341 in the assembly manifest. For VC8 and VC9 this is specified using the
342 C</manifestdependency> linker commandline option instead.
350 =item Enable IPv6 support on cygwin 1.7 and newer
358 =item Make -UDEBUGGING the default on VMS for 5.12.0.
360 Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make
361 command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in
362 configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying
363 no in answer to the interactive question.
369 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
371 XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here.
372 Bug fixes in files in F<ext/> and F<lib/> are best summarised in
373 L</Modules and Pragmata>.
379 Ensure that pp_qr returns a new regexp SV each time. Resolves RT #69852.
381 Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled) regexp in the
382 optree, use reg_temp_copy() to create a copy of it, and return a reference to
383 that. This resolves issues about Regexp::DESTROY not being called in a timely
384 fashion (the original bug tracked by RT #69852), as well as bugs related to
385 blessing regexps, and of assigning to regexps, as described in correspondence
388 It transpires that we also need to undo the SvPVX() sharing when ithreads
389 cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL, instead of a cloned
390 copy of the mother_re. This change might fix bugs with regexps and threads in
391 certain other situations, but as yet neither tests nor bug reports have
392 indicated any problems, so it might not actually be an edge case that it's
397 Several compilation errors and segfaults when perl was built with C<-Dmad> were fixed.
401 Fixes for lexer API changes in 5.11.2 which broke NYTProf's savesrc option.
405 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
407 XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C<C> code go here.
413 Make split warn in void context
418 =head1 Changed Internals
420 XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C<XS> code go here.
432 XXX Changes which create B<new> files in F<t/> go here. Changes to
433 existing files in F<t/> aren't worth summarising, although the bugs that
434 they represent may be.
444 =head1 Known Problems
446 XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any
447 tests that had to be C<TODO>ed for the release would be noted here, unless
448 they were specific to a particular platform (see below).
450 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
451 from either 5.11.3 or 5.11.3.
463 XXX Add any new known deprecations here.
465 The following items are now deprecated.
469 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
471 Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
472 scope is now deprecated. This rare use case was causing
473 problems in the implementation of scopes.
477 =head1 Platform Specific Notes
479 XXX Any changes specific to a particular platform. VMS and Win32 are the usual
480 stars here. It's probably best to group changes under the same section layout
481 as the main perldelta
485 XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary
488 =head1 Acknowledgements
490 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
493 =head1 Reporting Bugs
495 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
496 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
497 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
498 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
500 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
501 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
502 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
503 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
504 analysed by the Perl porting team.
506 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
507 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
508 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
509 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
510 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
511 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
512 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
513 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
518 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
521 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
523 The F<README> file for general stuff.
525 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
532 All changes through commit b4178430270dbe109e7609d0b50d6d54bf9e95d8
533 One "triage" pass done.
535 A second triage pass is still needed to remove unimportant changes
537 commit 9307c420fad2f6f5bd314f9ed66dd53288703e09
538 Author: Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
539 Date: Thu Dec 17 18:28:16 2009 -0800
541 Export PL_curinterp symbol for MULTIPLICITY without USE_ITHREADS
543 This is necessary for XS extensions that define PERL_CORE. In that
544 situation PERL_GET_CONTEXT will resolve to PL_curinterp, which is
545 normally not exported (extensions call Perl_Gcurinterp_ptr() to get a
546 pointer to PL_curinterp instead). With USE_ITHREADS defined
547 PERL_GET_CONTEXT will expand to Perl_get_context() even inside the
548 core because the context needs to be fetched from threadlocal storage.
550 commit 8703a9a4fd75723318bc4ba1afc42a215806f2d1
552 Correct some #ifdef USE_ITHREADS / USE_MULTI
554 Author: Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
555 Date: Wed Dec 16 15:42:19 2009 -0800
557 -t should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY
559 The Microsoft C version of isatty() returns TRUE for all
560 character mode devices, including the /dev/null style "nul"
561 device and printers like "lpt1".
563 The included test has only been tested on Windows and Linux;
564 the device names for OS/2 and VMS are just best guesses...
566 commit 0f907b96d618c97cd2e020841a70ae037954a616
568 [perl #70171] 5.10.0 -> 5.10.1 Regression in fafafbaf70 (Big slowdown in 5.10 @_ parameter passing)
570 commit 2ab54efd6265713df5cd4bd0927024245675c1c2
572 fix bug 67156: overload: nomethod(..., '!') return value inverted
574 commit 412147f664b7f5805591ad996d7e5a9e70b3d80f
576 [perl #71204] diagnostics.pm suppresses 'Use of uninitialized value in range (or flip)' warning
579 commit 69dc4b30f4725ad5f212d45d3c856ac1caaacf17
580 Author: Father Chrysostomos <sprout@cpan.org>
581 Date: Mon Dec 14 12:19:35 2009 +0100
583 [perl #70764] $' fails to initialized for pre-compiled regular expression matches
585 The match vars are associated with the regexp that last matched
586 successfully. In the case of $str =~ $qr or /$qr/, since the $qr could
587 be used in multiple scopes that need their own sets of match vars, the
588 $qr is cloned by Perl_reg_temp_copy as of change 30677/28d8d7f. This
589 happens in pp_regcomp before pp_match has stringified the LHS, hence the
590 bug. In short, /$gror/ is not equivalent to
591 ($which = !$which) ? /$gror/ : /$gror/, which is weird.
593 Author: Reini Urban <rurban@x-ray.at>
594 Date: Sun Dec 13 08:06:43 2009 +0100
596 Eliminate OP_SETSTATE from cop.h header
598 It had been added with change 3728 to track linenumbers in
599 optimized else, disabled by change 4309,
600 and removed with change 33072.
602 Bump copyright, latest change was "Fix MULTICALL in List-Util" 2009-03-07
606 Fix for [perl #70910] wrong line number in syntax error message
608 Document config_args limitations reported in [perl #70912]
610 proper error on "grep $x (1,2,3)". Solves [perl #37314]
612 commit 8a27a13e89107aaf68c0748b68ee71fbd86d774b
614 [perl #71076] sort with active sub (5.10 regression)
616 One of the tests in sort.t causes a bus error (or sometimes â
\80\98Undefined
617 subroutine calledâ
\80\99) if run multiple times. This is because sort
618 decreases the refcount of an active sub used as a comparison routine.
620 commit 69c3dccf5322a59cb855347c04712ba11b65328f
622 Fix [perl #71078] Smart match against @_ gives false negatives
624 @_ can contain NULLs for undefined elements
626 [perl #71000] Wrong variable name in warning ; Add a new warning "Missing argument in %s"
629 preserve readonly flag when saving and restoring magic flags
631 commit c9930541bfa04399c3b648e83c9b750cee1154fb
633 [perl #70802] -i'*' refuses to work
635 commit adab996997d7ef1b54d382f5ab4304f438cd1dd0
637 Cleanup all scopes before exiting a pseudo-forked process.
639 perl_destruct() contains an assertion that the scope stack
640 is empty. The remaining scopes are due to fork() being
641 called from within a BEGIN block.
643 commit 576b33a19ccaf98d4dfe201d529c55c3747f0cb6
645 [rt.cpan.org #51574] Safe.pm sort {} bug accessing $a and $b with -Dusethreads
647 commit ee6ba15dedda3e88eb66891eaf387c00a4c0a2fb
649 Fix -DPERL_NO_UTF16_FILTER
651 commit dfd167e94af611f6248e804cb228b35ca4123bd6
653 Handle $@ being assigned a read-only value (without error or busting the stack).
655 Discovered whilst investigating RT #70862.
657 commit f5fa9033b8c1fdcbd7710850b3b0380d6b937853
659 Fix RT #70862 by converting ERRSV to GvSVn() to ensure a non-NULL GvSV().
661 commit ff868e665bf85a829dc47bfa1243b26d4367cacd
663 Add error codes for getaddrinfo() and getnameinfo()
665 commit 61fc5122f0d8a509834282b8ecb3252d2e4c9f5d
667 Make unicode semantics the default
671 commit 021f53de09926928546378b3552f9240c9241dde
672 Author: Gerard Goossen <gerard@ggoossen.net>
673 Date: Mon Nov 16 13:58:24 2009 +0100
675 Force OP_REQUIRE to scalar context at the end of ck_require and don't let it become void context. Fixes problem with require not always being in scalar context.
677 commit 6a0e50422a84b53e998825128c56791913cd03aa
678 Author: Craig A. Berry <craigberry@mac.com>
679 Date: Sat Nov 21 11:17:38 2009 -0600