3 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.9.4
7 This document describes differences between the 5.9.3 and the 5.9.4
8 developement releases. See L<perl590delta>, L<perl591delta>, L<perl592delta>
9 and L<perl593delta> for the differences between 5.8.0 and 5.9.3.
11 =head1 Incompatible Changes
15 A bareword argument to chdir is now recognized as a file handle.
16 Earlier releases interpreted the bareword as a directory name.
18 =head2 Handling of pmc files
20 TODO XXX explain what are pmc files
22 .pmc files are always loaded, even if they are older than a matching .pm
23 file. (This trick is used by Pugs.)
25 =head2 @- and @+ in patterns
27 The special arrays C<@-> and C<@+> are no longer interpolated in regular
30 =head2 $AUTOLOAD can now be tainted
32 If you call a subroutine by a tainted name, and if it defers to an
33 AUTOLOAD function, then $AUTOLOAD will be (correctly) tainted.
35 =head1 Core Enhancements
37 =head2 state() variables
39 =head2 UNIVERSAL:DOES()
41 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
43 C<encoding::warnings> is now a lexical pragma.
47 =head2 New Core Modules
53 C<Module::Build> has been added.
57 C<Hash::Util::FieldHash> has been added. This module provides support for
58 I<field hashes>: hashes that maintain an association of a reference with a
59 value, in a thread-safe garbage-collected way.
63 C<Win32API::File> has been added (for Windows builds). This module
64 provides low-level access to Win32 system API calls for files/dirs.
68 =head1 Utility Changes
72 =head2 New manpage, perlpragma
74 =head2 New manpage, perlreguts
76 =head2 New manpage, perlunitut
78 =head1 Performance Enhancements
82 Regular expressions (Yves)
84 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
88 Perl has been reported to work on DragonFlyBSD.
90 =head2 Compilation improvements
92 All F<ppport.h> files in the XS modules bundled with perl are now
93 autogenerated at build time.
97 The configuration process now detects whether strlcat and strlcpy are
98 available. When they are not available, perl's own version is used (from
99 Russ Allbery's public domain implementation). Various places in the perl
100 interpreter now uses them.
102 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
104 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
106 =head1 Changed Internals
110 Mathoms and factorizations (many PP functions are now shared for several ops)
112 =head1 Known Problems
114 =head2 Platform Specific Problems
116 =head1 Reporting Bugs
118 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
119 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
120 bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ . There may also be
121 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
123 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
124 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
125 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
126 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
127 analysed by the Perl porting team.
131 The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
133 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
135 The F<README> file for general stuff.
137 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.