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 5.11.3 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
23 XXX For a release on a stable branch, this section aspires to be:
25 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.11.3. If any
26 exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
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
176 =head2 Pragmata Changes
186 =head2 Updated Modules
192 Updated CPANPLUS to cpan release 0.90
193 Bring up ExtUtils::MakeMaker to 6.56 - no functional changes from 6.55_03
194 Upgrade to threads 1.75
196 Import CPAN.pm 1.94_53 from CPAN
198 Updated Module::Build to 0.35_15
200 Update Cwd / PathTools to 3.31 to get us a non-devel version number based on a chat with Steffen. No code changes.
202 Updated to Pod::Simple 3.11 from CPAN [perl #71004]
205 Update Archive::Extract to cpan version 0.36
211 =head1 Utility Changes
213 XXX Changes to installed programs such as F<perlbug> and F<xsubpp> go
214 here. Most of these are built within the directories F<utils> and F<x2p>.
222 Perlbug no longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent the message
225 =head1 New Documentation
227 XXX Changes which create B<new> files in F<pod/> go here.
237 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
239 XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F<pod/> go here.
240 Any changes to F<pod/perldiag.pod> should go in L</New or Changed Diagnostics>.
243 legalize =begin foo bar
245 more aggressively deprecate L<section> and L<"section">
247 remove prohibition against L<text|href>
249 Document if.pm in perlfunc
253 =head1 Performance Enhancements
255 XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There
256 may well be none in a stable release.
266 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
268 XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
271 =head2 Configuration improvements
275 =head2 Compilation improvements
277 Make distclean work again
280 =head2 Platform Specific Changes
291 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
293 XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here.
294 Bug fixes in files in F<ext/> and F<lib/> are best summarised in
295 L</Modules and Pragmata>.
305 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
307 XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C<C> code go here.
313 Make split warn in void context
318 =head1 Changed Internals
320 XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C<XS> code go here.
332 XXX Changes which create B<new> files in F<t/> go here. Changes to
333 existing files in F<t/> aren't worth summarising, although the bugs that
334 they represent may be.
344 =head1 Known Problems
346 XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any
347 tests that had to be C<TODO>ed for the release would be noted here, unless
348 they were specific to a particular platform (see below).
350 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
351 from either 5.11.3 or 5.11.3.
363 XXX Add any new known deprecations here.
365 The following items are now deprecated.
369 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
371 Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner
372 scope is now deprecated. This rare use case was causing
373 problems in the implementation of scopes.
377 =head1 Platform Specific Notes
379 XXX Any changes specific to a particular platform. VMS and Win32 are the usual
380 stars here. It's probably best to group changes under the same section layout
381 as the main perldelta
385 XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary
388 =head1 Acknowledgements
390 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
393 =head1 Reporting Bugs
395 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
396 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
397 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
398 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
400 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
401 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
402 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
403 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
404 analysed by the Perl porting team.
406 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
407 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
408 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
409 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
410 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
411 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
412 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
413 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
418 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
421 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
423 The F<README> file for general stuff.
425 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
432 All changes through commit b4178430270dbe109e7609d0b50d6d54bf9e95d8
433 One "triage" pass done.
435 A second triage pass is still needed to remove unimportant changes
437 commit 9307c420fad2f6f5bd314f9ed66dd53288703e09
438 Author: Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
439 Date: Thu Dec 17 18:28:16 2009 -0800
441 Export PL_curinterp symbol for MULTIPLICITY without USE_ITHREADS
443 This is necessary for XS extensions that define PERL_CORE. In that
444 situation PERL_GET_CONTEXT will resolve to PL_curinterp, which is
445 normally not exported (extensions call Perl_Gcurinterp_ptr() to get a
446 pointer to PL_curinterp instead). With USE_ITHREADS defined
447 PERL_GET_CONTEXT will expand to Perl_get_context() even inside the
448 core because the context needs to be fetched from threadlocal storage.
450 commit 8703a9a4fd75723318bc4ba1afc42a215806f2d1
452 Correct some #ifdef USE_ITHREADS / USE_MULTI
454 Author: Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
455 Date: Wed Dec 16 15:42:19 2009 -0800
457 -t should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY
459 The Microsoft C version of isatty() returns TRUE for all
460 character mode devices, including the /dev/null style "nul"
461 device and printers like "lpt1".
463 The included test has only been tested on Windows and Linux;
464 the device names for OS/2 and VMS are just best guesses...
467 commit 2574563ed1cc89a9149d4a253b94199eab5bdf71
468 Author: Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@pobox.com>
469 Date: Tue Dec 15 23:04:11 2009 +0000
471 Allow override of PERL5OPT etc in t/TEST
473 commit 6a158b577769363e3a34f3dcb7321a0e933d3353
474 Author: Rafael Garcia-Suarez <rgs@consttype.org>
475 Date: Wed Dec 16 00:04:34 2009 +0100
477 Don't make C<use legacy> die on unknown legacy names
479 So we can use C<use legacy "qubits"> to avoid the new "qubit" behaviour,
480 without worrying about perls that didn't have qubit support at all. :)
482 commit 0f907b96d618c97cd2e020841a70ae037954a616
484 [perl #70171] 5.10.0 -> 5.10.1 Regression in fafafbaf70 (Big slowdown in 5.10 @_ parameter passing)
486 In this case my %x = %$x assigns a hash to itself. This causes the
487 hv_clear in pp_aassign to wipe away the hash before it can be copied.
488 The â
\80\98panic: attempt to copy freed scalarâ
\80\99 error is triggered by this
489 line, which copies the value:
490 sv_setsv(tmpstr,*relem); /* value */
492 The solution is to make sure the OPpASSIGN_COMMON flag is on in such
493 cases, so that pp_aassign copies everything before doing the assignment.
495 commit 2ab54efd6265713df5cd4bd0927024245675c1c2
496 Author: Michael Breen <perl@mbreen.com>
498 fix bug 67156: overload: nomethod(..., '!') return value inverted
500 commit 412147f664b7f5805591ad996d7e5a9e70b3d80f
502 [perl #71204] diagnostics.pm suppresses 'Use of uninitialized value in range (or flip)' warning
504 (and bump version of diagnostics.pm)
506 commit 2653dd3c22bd18d7877da53d515dc31c46d8fbea
507 Author: Reini Urban <rurban@x-ray.at>
508 Date: Mon Dec 14 13:04:37 2009 +0100
510 cygwin IPv6 since 1.7
512 Use g++ as default linker
515 commit 69dc4b30f4725ad5f212d45d3c856ac1caaacf17
516 Author: Father Chrysostomos <sprout@cpan.org>
517 Date: Mon Dec 14 12:19:35 2009 +0100
519 [perl #70764] $' fails to initialized for pre-compiled regular expression matches
521 The match vars are associated with the regexp that last matched
522 successfully. In the case of $str =~ $qr or /$qr/, since the $qr could
523 be used in multiple scopes that need their own sets of match vars, the
524 $qr is cloned by Perl_reg_temp_copy as of change 30677/28d8d7f. This
525 happens in pp_regcomp before pp_match has stringified the LHS, hence the
526 bug. In short, /$gror/ is not equivalent to
527 ($which = !$which) ? /$gror/ : /$gror/, which is weird.
529 Author: Reini Urban <rurban@x-ray.at>
530 Date: Sun Dec 13 08:06:43 2009 +0100
532 Eliminate OP_SETSTATE from cop.h header
534 It had been added with change 3728 to track linenumbers in
535 optimized else, disabled by change 4309,
536 and removed with change 33072.
538 Bump copyright, latest change was "Fix MULTICALL in List-Util" 2009-03-07
542 Fix for [perl #70910] wrong line number in syntax error message
544 Document config_args limitations reported in [perl #70912]
546 proper error on "grep $x (1,2,3)". Solves [perl #37314]
548 commit 1cb985b013ea71b82afbc114ed06f94d451f5e04
550 Throw away uncleanable scopes when exiting a pseudo-forked process.
552 Commit adab9969 tried to clean up those additional scopes, but failed
553 because some of the memory was allocated from a different pool. To
554 avoid triggering the assert() in perl_destruct() this change instead
555 moves the one remaining scope back to the root of the stack, effectively
556 discarding the additional frames without any further processing.
558 commit 8a27a13e89107aaf68c0748b68ee71fbd86d774b
559 Author: Father Chrysostomos <sprout@cpan.org>
560 Date: Mon Dec 7 14:58:40 2009 +0100
562 [perl #71076] sort with active sub (5.10 regression)
564 One of the tests in sort.t causes a bus error (or sometimes â
\80\98Undefined
565 subroutine calledâ
\80\99) if run multiple times. This is because sort
566 decreases the refcount of an active sub used as a comparison routine.
568 commit 69c3dccf5322a59cb855347c04712ba11b65328f
570 Fix [perl #71078] Smart match against @_ gives false negatives
572 @_ can contain NULLs for undefined elements
574 [perl #71000] Wrong variable name in warning ; Add a new warning "Missing argument in %s"
577 preserve readonly flag when saving and restoring magic flags
579 commit c9930541bfa04399c3b648e83c9b750cee1154fb
581 [perl #70802] -i'*' refuses to work
583 commit c2123ae380a372d506d1b6938667bd785fd8728b
584 Author: Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>
585 Date: Wed Dec 2 16:01:10 2009 +0000
587 Ensure that pp_qr returns a new regexp SV each time. Resolves RT #69852.
589 Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled) regexp in the
590 optree, use reg_temp_copy() to create a copy of it, and return a reference to
591 that. This resolves issues about Regexp::DESTROY not being called in a timely
592 fashion (the original bug tracked by RT #69852), as well as bugs related to
593 blessing regexps, and of assigning to regexps, as described in correspondence
596 It transpires that we also need to undo the SvPVX() sharing when ithreads
597 cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL, instead of a cloned
598 copy of the mother_re. This change might fix bugs with regexps and threads in
599 certain other situations, but as yet neither tests nor bug reports have
600 indicated any problems, so it might not actually be an edge case that it's
603 commit adab996997d7ef1b54d382f5ab4304f438cd1dd0
605 Cleanup all scopes before exiting a pseudo-forked process.
607 perl_destruct() contains an assertion that the scope stack
608 is empty. The remaining scopes are due to fork() being
609 called from within a BEGIN block.
613 Improvements to fix C++ compilation errors when -Dmad is defined
615 Fixes for -Dmad: double free or corruption
618 commit 576b33a19ccaf98d4dfe201d529c55c3747f0cb6
620 [rt.cpan.org #51574] Safe.pm sort {} bug accessing $a and $b with -Dusethreads
622 commit ee6ba15dedda3e88eb66891eaf387c00a4c0a2fb
624 Fix -DPERL_NO_UTF16_FILTER
626 commit dfd167e94af611f6248e804cb228b35ca4123bd6
628 Handle $@ being assigned a read-only value (without error or busting the stack).
630 Discovered whilst investigating RT #70862.
632 commit f5fa9033b8c1fdcbd7710850b3b0380d6b937853
634 Fix RT #70862 by converting ERRSV to GvSVn() to ensure a non-NULL GvSV().
636 commit ff868e665bf85a829dc47bfa1243b26d4367cacd
638 Add error codes for getaddrinfo() and getnameinfo()
640 commit 17cc9359ea8ee1b546aa067b91362160e3c1e1ee
641 Author: Zefram <zefram@fysh.org>
642 Date: Wed Nov 25 22:17:52 2009 +0000
644 perl-5.11.2 breaks NYTProf savesrc option (Lexer API suspected)
647 >The primary issue is the off-by-one error in the array indexing.
649 There's a bit more to it than that. The indexing was off-by-one for
650 *some* places that process a new line, but correct for others, so the
651 saved source as a whole was mangled rather than simply offset. Also,
652 there were some redundant calls to update_debugger_info(), so some lines
653 got saved twice, in some cases off-by-one for one saving and not for
654 the other. The saved source is, therefore, hopelessly broken in 5.11.2.
656 Attached patch fixes the source saving. Includes a new test, which works
657 through all reachable places that source lines get saved. This should
662 commit ec983580254c32fd44889fde43973ac5dd74257b
664 Add code and starting perldoc for warnings::fatal_enabled.
666 This is an analog for warnings::enabled, except it tests whether the
667 given category has been set fatal using "use warnings FATAL => foo".
668 This is mostly for symmetry.
670 Assumes that the fatal bit for a category will have an offset one higher
671 than the regular bit for the category, because otherwise much rewriting
672 of __chk would be required.
674 commit 6b1226db4432ba7f08619ebe4c5365f692dcbbf7
676 Add missing library to VC++ section of Win32 dmake makefile
678 commit 5e8632492467a144fabe819ac1f4206ecde8d14d
680 Avoid circularity in $(LINK_FLAGS) definition in Win32 dmake makefile
682 commit dbb3120a48c1483138e02a3fadf359e5b664ae11
684 Fix code-before-declaration error on Win32 with recent VC++ compilers
686 (We only #define SET_INVALID_PARAMETER_HANDLER for VC2005 and later, so
687 users of earlier compilers will not have seen this error)
689 commit 61fc5122f0d8a509834282b8ecb3252d2e4c9f5d
691 Make unicode semantics the default
695 commit 021f53de09926928546378b3552f9240c9241dde
696 Author: Gerard Goossen <gerard@ggoossen.net>
697 Date: Mon Nov 16 13:58:24 2009 +0100
699 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.
701 commit 6a0e50422a84b53e998825128c56791913cd03aa
702 Author: Craig A. Berry <craigberry@mac.com>
703 Date: Sat Nov 21 11:17:38 2009 -0600
705 Make -UDEBUGGING the default on VMS for 5.12.0.
707 Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make
708 command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in
709 configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying
710 no in answer to the interactive question.
712 commit 4ebea3c679ca93eb90d62be76bf8eb3cd7d14160
713 Author: Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>
714 Date: Thu Apr 30 16:53:20 2009 -0700
716 Always add a manifest resource to perl.exe to specify the <trustInfo>
717 settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this setting Windows
718 will treat perl.exe as a legacy application and apply various
719 heuristics like redirecting access to protected file system areas
720 (like the "Program Files" folder) to the users "VirtualStore"
721 instead of generating a proper "permission denied" error.
723 For VC8 and VC9 this manifest setting is automatically generated by
724 the compiler/linker (together with the binding information for their
725 respective runtime libraries); for all other compilers we need to
726 embed the manifest resource explicitly in the external resource file.
728 This change also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls version 6.0
729 (themed controls introduced in Windows XP) via the dependency list
730 in the assembly manifest. For VC8 and VC9 this is specified using the
731 /manifestdependency linker commandline option instead.
733 commit 51393fc07355ffd0a4b6b212fd676ee37de23e09
735 File::Find was not resolving paths of the form "/..////../" correctly.
736 Fixed by adding a quantifier to the substitution parameter in
739 commit 31c9a3ace4f559b79a21319b8903e92f53b44868
740 Author: Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>
741 Date: Fri Nov 20 10:23:54 2009 +0000
743 Always bless filehandles into IO::Handle:: - don't try for FileHandle:: first.