3 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.0
7 This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release
10 Many of the bug fixes in 5.8.0 were already seen in the 5.6.1
11 maintenance release since the two releases were kept closely
14 If you are upgrading from Perl 5.005_03, you might also want
15 to read L<perl56delta>.
17 =head1 Highlights In 5.8.0
23 Better Unicode support
27 New Thread Implementation
35 Better Numeric Accuracy
43 More Extensive Regression Testing
47 =head1 Incompatible Changes
49 =head2 64-bit platforms and malloc
51 If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no longer being
52 used because it does not work well with 8-byte pointers. Also,
53 usually the system mallocs on such platforms are much better optimized
54 for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. Some memory-hungry
55 Perl applications like the PDL don't work well with Perl's malloc.
56 Finally, other applications than Perl (like modperl) tend to prefer
57 the system malloc. Such platforms include Alpha and 64-bit HPPA,
60 =head2 AIX Dynaloading
62 The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native
63 dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This
64 change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled
65 modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other
66 applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface.
68 =head2 Attributes for C<my> variables now handled at run-time.
70 The C<my EXPR : ATTRS> syntax now applies variable attributes at
71 run-time. (Subroutine and C<our> variables still get attributes applied
72 at compile-time.) See L<attributes> for additional details. In particular,
73 however, this allows variable attributes to be useful for C<tie> interfaces,
74 which was a deficiency of earlier releases. Note that the new semantics
75 doesn't work with the Attribute::Handlers module (as of version 0.76).
77 =head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS
79 The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being
80 statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient
81 TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test
82 Perl in such configurations.
84 =head2 IEEE-format Floating Point Default on OpenVMS Alpha
86 Perl now uses IEEE format (T_FLOAT) as the default internal floating
87 point format on OpenVMS Alpha, potentially breaking binary compatibility
88 with external libraries or existing data. G_FLOAT is still available as
89 a configuration option. The default on VAX (D_FLOAT) has not changed.
91 =head2 New Unicode Properties
93 Unicode I<scripts> are now supported. Scripts are similar to (and superior
94 to) Unicode I<blocks>. The difference between scripts and blocks is that
95 scripts are the glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while
96 the blocks are more artificial groupings of (mostly) 256 characters based
97 on the Unicode numbering.
99 In general, scripts are more inclusive, but not universally so. For
100 example, while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin characters and
101 their various diacritic-adorned versions, it does not include the various
102 punctuation or digits (since they are not solely C<Latin>).
104 A number of other properties are now supported, including C<\p{L&}>,
105 C<\p{Any}> C<\p{Assigned}>, C<\p{Unassigned}>, C<\p{Blank}> and
106 C<\p{SpacePerl}> (along with their C<\P{...}> versions, of course).
107 See L<perlunicode> for details, and more additions.
109 The C<In> or C<Is> prefix to names used with the C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>
110 are now almost always optional. The only exception is that a C<In> prefix
111 is required to signify a Unicode block when a block name conflicts with a
112 script name. For example, C<\p{Tibetan}> refers to the script, while
113 C<\p{InTibetan}> refers to the block. When there is no name conflict, you
114 can omit the C<In> from the block name (e.g. C<\p{BraillePatterns}>), but
115 to be safe, it's probably best to always use the C<In>).
117 =head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...)
119 A reference to a reference now stringifies as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead
120 of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return
123 =head2 pack/unpack D/F recycled
125 The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recycled
126 for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the
127 platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used
128 to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.)
136 The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves
137 it to make some sense, it is forbidden.
141 The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed
142 to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned.
146 The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its
147 usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future
148 available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future
149 releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change.
153 The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed.
154 Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that
155 the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly)
160 The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning
161 ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape
166 The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
167 alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before
168 in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
169 natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
173 Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob()
174 caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed.
178 Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
179 depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
180 algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
181 More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
185 lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
186 In future releases this may become a fatal error.
190 The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument) has been
191 deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its
192 implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to
193 disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead.
197 The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still
198 recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of
199 ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable
200 since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used.
204 The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
205 use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
206 and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
207 implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather
208 ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
209 use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
210 available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to
211 be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>).
215 The syntaxes C<< @a->[...] >> and C<< %h->{...} >> have now been deprecated.
219 After years of trying the suidperl is considered to be too complex to
220 ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely
221 to be removed in a future release.
225 The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison
226 operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed.
230 The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return;
231 the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar
232 functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
236 Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)".
237 The prototypes are now checked at compile-time for invalid characters.
238 An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in prototype...")
239 but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future release.
243 =head1 Core Enhancements
245 =head2 PerlIO is Now The Default
251 IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio".
252 PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the
253 handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg
256 open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ...
258 or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>:
260 binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)');
262 The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in
263 previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a
264 portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32,
265 but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if
266 platform supports it (mostly UNIXes).
268 Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma.
270 See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects
271 of PerlIO on your architecture name.
275 File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
276 (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
278 open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt");
280 Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named
281 for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
282 UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
283 http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information.
284 In future releases this naming may change.
288 File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal
289 Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer.
293 File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via:
295 open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ...
299 Anonymous temporary files are available without need to
300 'use FileHandle' or other module via
302 open($fh,"+>", undef) || ...
304 That is a literal undef, not an undefined value.
308 The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX):
310 open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd')
312 creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
319 Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments
320 could corrupt Perl's internal state. Now Perl postpones handling of
321 signals until it's safe (between opcodes).
323 This change may have surprising side effects because signals no longer
324 interrupt Perl instantly. Perl will now first finish whatever it was
325 doing, like finishing an internal operation (like sort()) or an
326 external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any
327 arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt
328 internal state since the current operation is always finished first,
329 but the signal may take more time to get heard. Note that breaking
330 out from potentially blocking operations should still work, though.
332 =head2 Unicode Overhaul
334 Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0
335 (or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in
336 regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now,
337 Unicode in I/O should work now.
343 The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
344 to Unicode 3.1.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/.
348 For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
349 almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
350 the F<lib/unicore subdirectory>. The most notable omission, for space
351 considerations, is the Unihan database.
355 The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like
356 C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space
357 character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode
358 equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical
359 tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.)
361 See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional
362 information on changes with Unicode properties.
366 =head2 Understanding of Numbers
368 In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's
369 understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in
370 many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()>
371 and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their
372 deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers.
374 Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions
375 and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and
376 tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers.
377 This change leads to often slightly faster and always less lossy
378 arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
381 =head2 Miscellaneous Changes
387 AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute
388 to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value.
392 C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass
393 in multiple arguments.)
397 The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning
398 C<dump() better written as CORE::dump()>,
399 meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin
400 dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined
401 C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>.
402 (The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly
403 removed/changed in future releases.)
407 chomp() and chop() are now overridable. Note, however, that their
408 prototype (as given by C<prototype("CORE::chomp")> is undefined,
409 because it cannot be expressed and therefore one cannot really write
410 replacements to override these builtins.
414 END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block.
415 Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
416 PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
417 behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See
422 Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields.
426 Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
427 However, the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental.
431 A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been
432 restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.)
436 A new special regular expression variable has been introduced:
437 C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch).
441 C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.
445 The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand
446 is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified.
450 The following builtin functions are now overridable: each(), keys(),
451 pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift().
455 C<pack() / unpack()> now can group template letters with C<()> and then
456 apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups.
460 C<pack() / unpack()> can now process the Perl internal numeric types:
461 IVs, UVs, NVs-- and also long doubles, if supported by the platform.
462 The template letters are C<j>, C<J>, C<F>, and C<D>.
466 C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8.
470 my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works.
474 The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the
475 C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example
477 print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar";
479 will print "bar foo\n". This feature helps in writing
480 internationalised software, and in general when the order
481 of the parameters can vary.
485 prototype(\&) is now available.
489 prototype(\[$@%&]) is now available to implicitly create references
490 (useful for example if you want to emulate the tie() interface).
494 A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the
495 little brother of C<-T>: instead of dieing on taint violations,
496 lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary
497 debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications.
498 This is not a substitute for -T.>
502 In other taint news, the C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> have now been
503 considered too risky (think C<exec @ARGV>: it can start any program
504 with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning.
505 You should carefully launder the arguments to guarantee their
506 validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will become fatal
507 errors so consider starting laundering now.
511 If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to
516 untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
521 L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the
522 file timestamps to the current time.
526 The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants
527 have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore
528 simply B<between digits>.
532 Rather than relying on C's argv[0] (which may not contain a full pathname)
533 where possible $^X is now set by asking the operating system.
534 (eg by reading F</proc/self/exe> on Linux, F</proc/curproc/file> on FreeBSD)
538 A new variable, C<${^TAINT}>, indicates whether taint mode is enabled.
542 You can now override the readline() builtin, and this overrides also
543 the <FILEHANDLE> angle bracket operator.
547 The command-line options -s and -F are now recognized on the shebang
552 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
554 =head2 New Modules and Pragmata
560 C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers.
563 use Attribute::Handlers;
564 sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" }
566 # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack...
568 my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called
570 Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can
571 be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the
572 exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END).
576 B<B::Concise> is a new compiler backend for walking the Perl syntax
577 tree, printing concise info about ops, from Stephen McCamant. The
578 output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>.
582 C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree,
583 by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>.
587 C<Cwd> has now a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is
588 used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust)
589 but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used.
593 C<Devel::PPPort>, originally from Kenneth Albanowski and now
594 maintained by Paul Marquess, has been added. It is primarily used
595 by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of XS modules between different
600 C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from
601 Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>.
605 C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in
606 RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>.
608 use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex';
610 $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel");
612 print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1
614 NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not
615 included since its further use is discouraged.
619 C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate
620 between different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
621 ISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are
622 compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese,
623 Chinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at
624 runtime. See L<Encode>.
626 Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
627 ":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
631 C<Hash::Util> is the interface to the new I<restricted hashes>
632 feature. A restricted hash is restricted to a certain set of keys,
633 no keys outside the set can be added. Also individual keys can be
634 restricted so that the key cannot be deleted and the value cannot be
635 changed. (Implemented by Jeffrey Friedl, Nick Ing-Simmons, and
640 C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information.
641 See L<I18N::Langinfo>.
645 C<I18N::LangTags> has functions for dealing with RFC3066-style
646 language tags, by Sean Burke. See L<I18N::LangTags>.
650 C<ExtUtils::Constant> is a new tool for extension writers for
651 generating XS code to import C header constants, by Nicholas Clark.
652 See L<ExtUtils::Constant>.
656 C<Filter::Simple> is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call,
657 from Damian Conway. See L<Filter::Simple>.
663 use Filter::Simple sub {
664 while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) {
673 use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green';
675 print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n"
676 print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n"
680 print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n"
684 C<File::Temp> allows one to create temporary files and directories in
685 an easy, portable, and secure way, by Tim Jenness. See L<File::Temp>.
689 C<Filter::Util::Call> provides you with the framework to write
690 I<Source Filters> in Perl, from Paul Marquess. For most uses the
691 frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>.
695 C<if> is a new pragma for conditional inclusion of modules, from
700 L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network
701 programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>,
702 L<Net::Ping>, L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>.
704 Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure.
708 C<List::Util> is a selection of general-utility list subroutines, like
709 sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(), by Graham Barr. See L<List::Util>.
713 C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>, and
714 C<Locale::Language>, from Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the
715 codes for various locale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for
716 US Dollar, and "jp" for Japanese.
720 $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan'
721 $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no'
723 See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>,
724 and L<Locale::Language>.
728 C<Locale::Maketext> is localization framework from Sean Burke. See
729 L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an
730 article about software localization, originally published in The Perl
731 Journal #13, republished here with kind permission.
735 C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time,
736 from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>.
740 C<MIME::Base64> allows you to encode data in base64, from Gisle Aas,
741 as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
746 $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');
747 $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
749 print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ=="
755 C<MIME::QuotedPrint> allows you to encode data in quoted-printable
756 encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
757 Extensions)>, from Gisle Aas.
759 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
761 $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}");
762 $decoded = decode_qp($encoded);
764 print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A"
766 MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods
767 necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in :
769 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
770 open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
772 See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>.
776 C<NEXT> is pseudo-class for method redispatch, from Damian Conway.
781 C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O disciplines
786 C<PerlIO::Scalar> provides the implementation of IO to "in memory"
787 Perl scalars as discussed above, from Nick Ing-Simmons. It also
788 serves as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future
789 possibilities include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code.
790 See L<PerlIO::Scalar>.
794 C<PerlIO::Via> acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps PerlIO layer
795 functionality provided by a class (typically implemented in perl
796 code), from Nick Ing-Simmons.
798 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
799 open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
801 This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh>
802 to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>.
806 C<Pod::ParseLink>, by Russ Allbery, has been added,
807 to parse LZ<><> links in pods as described in the new
812 C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added.
813 It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text.
814 See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>.
818 C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines,
819 like blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>.
823 C<sort> is a new pragma for controlling the behaviour of sort().
827 C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the
828 storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and
829 compact binary format, from Raphael Manfredi. See L<Storable>.
833 C<Switch>, from Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying
837 you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl.
843 case 1 { print "number 1" }
844 case "a" { print "string a" }
845 case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" }
846 case (@array) { print "number in list" }
847 case /\w+/ { print "pattern" }
848 case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" }
849 case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
850 case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
851 case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" }
852 else { print "previous case not true" }
859 C<Test::More> is yet another framework for writing test scripts,
860 more extensive than Test::Simple, by Michael Schwern. See L<Test::More>.
864 C<Test::Simple> has basic utilities for writing tests, by Michael
865 Schwern. See L<Test::Simple>.
869 C<Text::Balanced> has been added, for extracting delimited text
870 sequences from strings, from Damian Conway.
872 use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited';
874 ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", '');
876 $a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'.
878 In addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(),
879 extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(),
880 extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and
881 gen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced
882 parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>.
886 C<threads> is an interface to interpreter threads, by Arthur Bergman.
887 Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in
888 Perl 5.6 but only available as an internal interface for extension
889 writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>.
893 C<threads::shared> allows data sharing for interpreter threads, from
894 Arthur Bergman. In the ithreads model any data sharing between
895 threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model
896 where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>.
900 C<Tie::File>, by Mark-Jason Dominus, associates a Perl array with the
905 C<Tie::Memoize>, by Ilya Zakharevich, provides on-demand loaded hashes.
909 C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash
910 references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained
911 within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>.
915 C<Time::HiRes> provides high resolution timing (ualarm, usleep,
916 and gettimeofday), from Douglas E. Wegscheid. See L<Time::HiRes>.
920 C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character
921 Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>.
925 C<Unicode::Collate> implements the UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm)
926 for sorting Unicode strings, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Collate>.
930 C<Unicode::Normalize> implements the various Unicode normalization
931 forms, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Normalize>.
935 C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
936 typemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code
941 =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
947 The following independently supported modules have been updated to the
948 newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp,
949 Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle
950 (Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable,
951 Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap.
955 The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments.
959 AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>.
963 B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost
964 all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed).
965 There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out.
969 Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time.
973 Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor
974 is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument.
978 Data::Dumper has now an option to sort hashes.
982 Data::Dumper has now an option to dump code references
987 DB_File now supports newer Berkeley DB versions, among
992 The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
995 use English '-no_match_vars';
997 (Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables
998 C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and
999 C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>.
1003 Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the
1004 new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>).
1005 This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster.
1009 File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links.
1013 File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also
1014 correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks
1015 (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work.
1019 File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made
1024 The warnings issued by File::Find now belong to their own category.
1025 You can enable/disable them with C<use/no warnings 'File::Find';>.
1029 File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
1030 prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
1034 File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of
1035 the returned list of filenames.
1039 Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics
1040 (this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have
1041 compiled with debugging).
1045 IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors.
1049 IO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket
1050 is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable
1051 as a sockatmark() function.
1055 IO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform
1056 supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity
1057 you may want to prefer ReuseAddr.
1061 IO::Socket::INET now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning
1062 that the operating system will make one up.)
1066 use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories
1067 with 'no lib' now works.
1071 ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
1072 leads into better portability.
1076 Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite.
1077 They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various
1078 bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
1082 Math::Complex handles inf, NaN etc., better.
1086 Net::Ping has been muchly enhanced. Multihoming is now supported.
1087 There is now "external" protocol which uses Net::Ping::External module
1088 which runs external ping(1) and parses the output. A version of
1089 Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
1093 POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust.
1094 You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE'
1095 handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic.
1099 In Safe the C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that
1104 In SDBM_File on dosish platforms, some keys went missing because of
1105 lack of support for files with "holes". A workaround for the problem
1110 In Search::Dict one can now have a pre-processing hook for the
1111 lines being searched.
1115 The Shell module now has an OO interface.
1119 The Test module has been significantly enhanced.
1123 The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
1124 (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
1128 The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various
1129 Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
1130 internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
1131 has been implemented.
1135 =head1 Utility Changes
1141 Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version
1146 F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster.
1150 C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs.
1154 C<h2xs> now produces a template README.
1158 C<h2xs> now uses C<Devel::PPort> for better portability between
1159 different versions of Perl.
1163 C<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect
1164 newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is
1165 more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a
1166 prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined),
1167 less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the
1168 old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants),
1169 and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your
1170 extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy).
1171 L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs.
1175 C<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet.
1179 C<perlbug> is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to
1180 perl.org, not perl.com.
1184 C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is,
1185 command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
1186 (The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.)
1190 C<perlivp> is a new Installation Verification Procedure utility
1191 for running any time after installing Perl.
1195 C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory.
1199 C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full
1200 implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by
1201 using the C<psed> utility.)
1205 C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files.
1209 C<xsubpp> now supports OUT keyword.
1213 =head1 New Documentation
1219 perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the
1224 perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library
1225 functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core
1230 perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.
1234 perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms.
1238 perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl.
1242 perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers.
1246 perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules.
1250 perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.
1254 perlpacktut is a pack() tutorial.
1258 perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best
1259 practices gathered over the years.
1263 perlpodspec is a more formal specification of the pod format,
1264 mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to
1265 people writing in pod.
1269 perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.
1273 perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide.
1274 Yes, much quicker than perlretut.
1278 perltodo has been updated.
1282 perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict
1283 with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names)
1287 perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl.
1288 (perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background
1293 perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl
1298 The following platform-specific documents are available before
1299 the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation
1302 perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000
1303 perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux
1304 perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix
1305 perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris
1306 perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32
1312 The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid
1313 confusion with the Perl POSIX module.
1317 The documentation for the WinCE platform is called "CE", to avoid
1318 confusion with the perlwin32 documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems.
1322 =head1 Performance Enhancements
1328 map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates
1329 is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for
1334 sort() has been changed to use primarily mergesort internally as
1335 opposed to the earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may
1336 result in slightly slower sorting times, but in general the speedup
1337 should be at least 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case
1338 behaviour of sort() is now better (in computer science terms it now
1339 runs in time O(N log N), as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2)
1340 worst-case run time behaviour), and that sort() is now stable
1341 (meaning that elements with identical keys will stay ordered as they
1342 were before the sort). See the C<sort> pragma for information.
1344 The story in more detail: suppose you want to serve yourself a little
1347 @digits = ( 3,1,4,1,5,9 );
1349 A numerical sort of the digits will yield (1,1,3,4,5,9), as expected.
1350 Which C<1> comes first is hard to know, since one C<1> looks pretty
1351 much like any other. You can regard this as totally trivial,
1352 or somewhat profound. However, if you just want to sort the even
1353 digits ahead of the odd ones, then what will
1355 sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } @digits;
1357 yield? The only even digit, C<4>, will come first. But how about
1358 the odd numbers, which all compare equal? With the quicksort algorithm
1359 used to implement Perl 5.6 and earlier, the order of ties is left up
1360 to the sort. So, as you add more and more digits of Pi, the order
1361 in which the sorted even and odd digits appear will change.
1362 and, for sufficiently large slices of Pi, the quicksort algorithm
1363 in Perl 5.8 won't return the same results even if reinvoked with the
1364 same input. The justification for this rests with quicksort's
1365 worst case behavior. If you run
1367 sort { $a <=> $b } ( 1 .. $N , 1 .. $N );
1369 (something you might approximate if you wanted to merge two sorted
1370 arrays using sort), doubling $N doesn't just double the quicksort time,
1371 it I<quadruples> it. Quicksort has a worst case run time that can
1372 grow like N**2, so-called I<quadratic> behaviour, and it can happen
1373 on patterns that may well arise in normal use. You won't notice this
1374 for small arrays, but you I<will> notice it with larger arrays,
1375 and you may not live long enough for the sort to complete on arrays
1376 of a million elements. So the 5.8 quicksort scrambles large arrays
1377 before sorting them, as a statistical defence against quadratic behaviour.
1378 But that means if you sort the same large array twice, ties may be
1379 broken in different ways.
1381 Because of the unpredictability of tie-breaking order, and the quadratic
1382 worst-case behaviour, quicksort was I<almost> replaced completely with
1383 a stable mergesort. I<Stable> means that ties are broken to preserve
1384 the original order of appearance in the input array. So
1386 sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } (3,1,4,1,5,9);
1388 will yield (4,3,1,1,5,9), guaranteed. The even and odd numbers
1389 appear in the output in the same order they appeared in the input.
1390 Mergesort has worst case O(NlogN) behaviour, the best value
1391 attainable. And, ironically, this mergesort does particularly
1392 well where quicksort goes quadratic: mergesort sorts (1..$N, 1..$N)
1393 in O(N) time. But quicksort was rescued at the last moment because
1394 it is faster than mergesort on certain inputs and platforms.
1395 For example, if you really I<don't> care about the order of even
1396 and odd digits, quicksort will run in O(N) time; it's very good
1397 at sorting many repetitions of a small number of distinct elements.
1398 The quicksort divide and conquer strategy works well on platforms
1399 with relatively small, very fast, caches. Eventually, the problem gets
1400 whittled down to one that fits in the cache, from which point it
1401 benefits from the increased memory speed.
1403 Quicksort was rescued by implementing a sort pragma to control aspects
1404 of the sort. The B<stable> subpragma forces stable behaviour,
1405 regardless of algorithm. The B<_quicksort> and B<_mergesort>
1406 subpragmas are heavy-handed ways to select the underlying implementation.
1407 The leading C<_> is a reminder that these subpragmas may not survive
1408 beyond 5.8. More appropriate mechanisms for selecting the implementation
1409 exist, but they wouldn't have arrived in time to save quicksort.
1413 Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
1414 (http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html). This algorithm is
1415 reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than
1416 the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by
1417 Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of
1418 all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the
1419 DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this
1420 change has not affected the overall speed of Perl.
1424 unshift() should now be noticeably faster.
1428 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
1430 =head2 Generic Improvements
1436 INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit
1437 integers even on non-64-bit platforms.
1441 Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file
1442 (see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old
1443 Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of
1444 them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously
1445 only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour,
1446 specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly.
1450 A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available.
1451 It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's
1452 own library directories.
1456 In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to
1457 build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems
1458 to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler
1459 'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead.
1463 gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid
1464 build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different
1465 operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible
1466 warning that there may be trouble ahead.
1470 If binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is not wanted, Configure
1471 no longer suggests including the 5.005 modules in @INC.
1475 Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively.
1479 Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due
1484 configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them.
1488 installperl now outputs everything to STDERR.
1492 $Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust
1493 with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for
1494 more than one binary platform.)
1498 Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't
1499 get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore.
1500 Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command
1501 line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended.
1505 Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all"
1506 (-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your
1507 pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.)
1511 In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be
1512 somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure
1513 parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>.
1517 APPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been
1518 documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories
1519 to Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information.
1523 The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the
1524 DB_File extension) was built is now available as
1525 C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}>
1526 from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG
1527 DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C.
1531 Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM
1532 has been documented in INSTALL.
1536 If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a
1537 CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and
1538 install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for
1543 In addition to config.over a new override file, config.arch, is
1544 available. That is supposed to be used by hints file writers for
1545 architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is for
1550 If your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside
1551 of the source directory by
1553 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
1554 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
1555 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
1557 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
1558 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
1559 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
1563 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
1567 For Perl developers several new make targets for profiling
1568 and debugging have been added, see L<perlhack>.
1574 Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in
1575 L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for
1576 generating a gprofiled Perl executable.
1580 If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for
1581 creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See
1586 If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options
1587 have been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and
1594 Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have
1595 been added to INSTALL.
1599 The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads
1600 (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the
1601 Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>).
1603 But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
1608 The Gconvert macro ($Config{d_Gconvert}) used by perl for stringifying
1609 floating-point numbers is now more picky about using sprintf %.*g
1610 rules for the conversion. Some platforms that used to use gcvt may
1611 now resort to the slower sprintf.
1615 =head2 New Or Improved Platforms
1617 For the list of platforms known to support Perl,
1618 see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">.
1624 AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported.
1628 AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the
1629 long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>.
1633 After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
1637 AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform.
1641 BeOS has been reclaimed.
1645 DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>.
1649 DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2.
1653 EBCDIC platforms (z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA)
1654 have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the
1655 co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the
1656 situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>,
1657 L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information.
1661 Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under
1662 HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will
1663 need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux.
1667 MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since
1668 perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl
1669 and MacPerl have been synchronised)
1673 MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+
1674 filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.)
1678 NCR MP-RAS is now supported.
1682 All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation
1683 specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
1687 NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>.
1691 NonStop-UX is now supported.
1695 NEC SUPER-UX is now supported.
1699 All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation
1700 specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
1704 Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package
1705 ( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ) . All but one thread
1706 test worked, and that one failure was because of test results arriving
1707 in unexpected order.
1711 Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
1715 WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>.
1719 z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now
1720 support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default,
1721 however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure.
1725 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
1727 Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been
1728 hunted down. Most importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite
1735 The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names.
1739 caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was sometimes
1740 affected by this problem.
1744 chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
1745 reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
1749 Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
1750 when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x,
1755 The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as
1756 "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35,
1757 in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This
1758 was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation
1759 where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now
1760 Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts.
1764 The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
1768 Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
1769 condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
1770 line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output
1771 now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
1775 Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of dl_error()
1776 when statically building extensions into perl. This has been corrected.
1780 L<dprofpp> -R didn't work.
1784 C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works.
1787 Infinity is now recognized as a number.
1791 UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke
1792 the Tk extension with 5.6.0.)
1796 Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved
1797 correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they
1798 were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code.
1802 Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that
1803 were declared before the lexicals.
1807 Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes
1808 and into C<eval "...">.
1812 C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been
1817 warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller
1818 isn't using lexical warnings.
1822 Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works.
1826 Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "".
1830 mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name,
1831 as mandated by POSIX.
1835 Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds
1836 with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness
1837 and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have
1838 fixed the modfl() bug.
1842 Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to
1843 return 27406, instead of 27047).
1847 Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be
1848 more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.
1852 Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value
1853 properly in certain circumstances.
1857 Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our().
1861 our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings.
1865 "our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks
1866 resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables.
1867 The problem has been corrected.
1871 pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0".
1875 Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms
1876 (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry.
1880 The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments
1881 to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options.
1885 PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work.
1889 printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C".
1893 C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
1897 pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier
1898 versions. This is now handled correctly.
1902 Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works
1903 without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform).
1907 Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.
1911 Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string
1912 concatenation be invoked too many times.
1916 scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context.
1920 SOCKS support is now much more robust.
1924 sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
1925 (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
1926 The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments
1927 to be sorted are always provided list context.
1931 Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very
1932 rarely used) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character
1933 class C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace
1934 (currently, the space and the tab).
1938 The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does
1939 not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the
1940 behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation.
1944 Some cases of inconsistent taint propagation (such as within hash
1945 values) have been fixed.
1949 The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds
1950 of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better.
1954 Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'>
1955 or via C<-Dr>) now looks better.
1959 Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The
1964 Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This
1969 The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now
1970 more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
1971 data lying around in them.
1975 readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra "" at
1976 the end in certain situations. This has been corrected.
1980 Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described
1981 in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works
1986 Sys::Syslog ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant.
1990 All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional.
1994 $AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses
1995 in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe.
1999 Tie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken.
2003 Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///.
2007 If C<STDERR> is tied, warnings caused by C<warn> and C<die> now
2008 correctly pass to it.
2012 Several Unicode fixes.
2018 BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files
2019 (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped.
2020 UTF-16 (UCS-2) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
2024 The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.1.1.
2028 Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data
2029 into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data
2030 from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded
2035 Generating illegal Unicode code points like U+FFFE, or the UTF-16
2036 surrogates, now also generates an optional warning.
2040 C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase.
2044 Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation,
2045 C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator,
2046 substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work.
2050 The C<tr///> operator now works. Note that the C<tr///CU>
2051 functionality has been removed (but see pack('U0', ...)).
2055 C<eval "v200"> now works.
2059 Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings.
2060 This has been corrected.
2064 Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>.
2070 Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their
2071 unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations.
2075 =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
2083 Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes.
2089 Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see L<perlvar> for details).
2095 Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.3.10.
2099 Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O.
2105 EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc.
2111 Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs.
2117 README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works.
2123 Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing
2124 of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder.
2134 Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL).
2138 Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using
2139 accept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname().
2147 Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should
2148 now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and
2149 the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing
2156 MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix.
2162 Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc.
2168 Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL).
2174 64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works.
2178 Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1)
2180 The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}.
2181 Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling
2182 with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with
2189 Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either
2190 during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime;
2191 now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
2192 only 46 bit integers for speed.
2198 chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY
2199 (see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc.
2201 The tainting of C<%ENV> elements via C<keys> or C<values> was previously
2202 unimplemented. It now works as documented.
2204 The C<waitpid> emulation has been improved. The worst bug (now fixed)
2205 was that a pid of -1 would cause a wildcard search of all processes on
2206 the system. The most significant enhancement is that we can now
2207 usually get the completion status of a terminated process.
2209 POSIX-style signals are now emulated much better on VMS versions prior
2212 The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved
2213 functionality and better error handling.
2215 File access tests now use current process privileges rather than the
2216 user's default privileges, which could sometimes result in a mismatch
2217 between reported access and actual access.
2227 accept() no longer leaks memory.
2231 Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
2232 However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
2233 generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++).
2237 Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
2241 Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
2245 New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.
2249 Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
2254 $ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
2258 fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues
2259 to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats.
2263 A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
2267 Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
2268 Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed.
2272 HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
2276 The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features
2277 enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution).
2281 Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
2285 Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.
2289 Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
2293 %SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely
2294 unsupported under all configurations.
2298 Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
2299 concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
2303 C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
2304 (works better when perl is running as service).
2308 Better UNC path handling under ithreads.
2312 wait(), waitpid() and backticks now return the correct exit status under
2317 winsock handle leak fixed.
2321 The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
2322 Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
2329 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
2335 The lexical warnings category "deprecated" is no longer a sub-category
2336 of the "syntax" category. It is now a top-level category in its own
2341 All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
2342 easier to understand both because the error message now comes before
2343 the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly
2344 marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker.
2348 The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings
2349 drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package,
2350 for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>.
2354 The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
2355 C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
2359 Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
2360 Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace
2361 tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
2366 perl5db.pl has been modified to present a more consistent commands
2367 interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was also added to test the
2368 changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
2374 The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum
2375 depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has
2376 been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a
2377 depth of at most I<N> levels.
2381 If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index
2382 is made, a warning is given.
2386 C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift)
2387 now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled
2392 If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255
2393 using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly
2394 for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127.
2398 Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to
2399 the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise.
2403 Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
2404 has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning.
2408 Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning.
2409 This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed.
2413 =head1 Changed Internals
2419 perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the
2424 You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl.
2425 Building microperl does not require even running Configure;
2426 C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes
2427 many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting
2428 executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways.
2429 For careful hackers only.
2433 Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join(), op_clear, op_null,
2434 ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv(), and several UTF-8
2435 interfaces to the publicised API. For the full list of the available
2436 APIs see L<perlapi>.
2440 Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing.
2444 Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs. (Well, at least the
2445 built-in attributes.)
2449 dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's
2450 a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP.
2454 PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed.
2458 The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied
2459 (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability
2460 and maintainability.
2464 The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in
2465 the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the
2466 original regex expression. The information is attached to the new
2467 C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more
2468 complete information.
2472 The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning
2473 messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with
2474 gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings
2475 are being worked on.
2479 F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented.
2483 Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added
2484 to F<Porting/repository.pod>.
2488 There are now several profiling make targets.
2492 =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
2494 (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
2496 A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
2497 of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
2498 installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable
2499 platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and
2500 various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability.
2501 See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt
2502 for more information.
2504 The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security
2505 exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux
2506 platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which
2507 when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in
2508 a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you
2509 don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if
2510 suidperl is not installed, you are safe.
2512 The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from
2513 Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also
2514 from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability
2515 isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are,
2516 unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most
2517 probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl
2518 should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are
2519 doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution
2520 such as sudo (see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/).
2524 Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib>
2525 subsection. There are now about 56 000 individual tests (spread over
2526 about 620 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
2527 11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are introduced
2528 by the new modules, but still in general Perl is now more thoroughly
2531 Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite
2532 will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite
2533 to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. In a really
2534 fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 6-8 minutes
2537 The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls.
2538 (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved
2539 to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.)
2541 =head1 Known Problems
2549 In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
2550 may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
2551 In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
2552 the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
2553 has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
2554 (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
2555 therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
2559 vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl
2561 The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code,
2562 resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
2563 are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least
2564 vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
2565 "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. See README.aix.
2569 =head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery
2571 One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v>
2572 works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason isn't
2573 known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library.
2575 =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
2577 Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
2579 =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
2581 If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
2582 subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
2583 subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the
2586 =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48
2592 The following tests are known to fail:
2594 Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
2595 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
2596 ../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ??
2597 ../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65
2598 ../ext/POSIX/t/posix.t 31 1 3.23% 10
2600 If you are building on a UFS partition, you will also probably see
2601 t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not
2602 supporting inode change time.
2606 OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
2607 better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
2608 tests have been added.
2610 ../ext/B/t/deparse.t 17 1 5.88% 14
2611 ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5
2612 ../lib/utf8.t 94 13 13.83% 27 30-31 43 46 73
2615 ../lib/Benchmark.t 1 256 159 1 0.63% 75
2616 ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9
2617 ../lib/ExtUtils/t/ExtUtils.t 27 19 70.37% 5-23
2618 op/pat.t 858 9 1.05% 242-243 665 776 785
2620 op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136
2621 op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74
2622 uni/fold.t 767 8 1.04% 25-26 62 169 196
2624 57 tests and 377 subtests skipped.
2626 =head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130
2628 The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
2629 Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX.
2630 The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
2631 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce
2632 something other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
2633 the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
2635 =head2 Failure of Thread tests
2637 B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental
2638 and practically unsupported.>
2640 The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
2641 the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
2642 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
2644 ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7
2645 ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3
2646 ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3
2647 ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_onl 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5
2648 ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4
2649 op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15
2651 These failures are unlikely to get fixed as the 5.005-style
2652 threads are considered fundamentally broken.
2656 ../ext/Socket/socketpair.t 1 256 45 1 2.22% 12
2657 ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25
2658 ../lib/warnings.t 460 1 0.22% 425
2659 io/fs.t 36 1 2.78% 31
2660 op/numconvert.t 1440 13 0.90% 208 509-510
2661 657-658 665-666 829-830 989-990 1149-1150
2663 =head2 UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
2665 The io/fs test #31 is failing because in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
2666 truncate() cannot be used to grow the size of filehandles, only
2667 to reduce the size. The workaround is to truncate files instead
2672 There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>.
2676 There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration,
2677 though there are a number of tests marked TODO that point to areas
2678 needing further debugging and/or porting work.
2682 In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
2683 some output may appear twice. The Win32 following failures are known
2686 ..\ext/Encode/t/JP.t 4 1024 22 4 18.18% 9 14 18 21
2687 ..\ext/threads/t/end.t 6 4 66.67% 3-6
2688 ..\lib/blib.t 3 768 7 3 42.86% 1 4-5
2690 =head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
2693 tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
2697 local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
2699 Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
2702 =head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
2706 doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored
2709 =head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden
2711 Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
2712 hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
2713 frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is
2714 for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
2716 =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
2718 Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
2719 `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
2720 default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
2721 at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good
2722 solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate
2723 non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config
2724 hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are
2725 having problems can try configuring themselves without the
2726 largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the
2727 solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether
2728 one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at
2729 all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is
2732 =head2 Unicode Support on EBCDIC Still Spotty
2734 Though mostly working, Unicode support still has problem spots on
2735 EBCDIC platforms. One such known spot are the C<\p{}> and C<\P{}>
2736 regular expression constructs for code points less than 256: the
2737 pP are testing for Unicode code points, not knowing about EBCDIC.
2739 =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
2741 The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be
2742 highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged.
2744 =head2 The Long Double Support Is Still Experimental
2746 The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles",
2747 floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still
2748 experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet
2749 widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature
2750 or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare
2751 and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset
2752 by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the
2753 operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised
2756 =head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now
2758 C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed
2759 because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a
2760 core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available
2763 =head1 Reporting Bugs
2765 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
2766 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
2767 bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be
2768 information at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.
2770 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
2771 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
2772 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
2773 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
2774 analysed by the Perl porting team.
2778 The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
2780 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
2782 The F<README> file for general stuff.
2784 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
2788 Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>.