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 Perl Parser Stress Tested
119 The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
120 Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
123 =head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...)
125 A reference to a reference now stringifies as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead
126 of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return
129 =head2 pack/unpack D/F recycled
131 The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recyled
132 for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the
133 platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used
134 to be aliases for f/d, but you never knew that.)
142 The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves
143 it to make some sense, it is forbidden.
147 The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed
148 to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned.
152 The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its
153 usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future
154 available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future
155 releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change.
159 The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed.
160 Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that
161 the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly)
166 The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning
167 ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape
172 The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
173 alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before
174 in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
175 natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
179 Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob()
180 caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed.
184 Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
185 depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
186 algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
187 More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
191 lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
192 In future releases this may become a fatal error.
196 The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument) has been
197 deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its
198 implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to
199 disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead.
203 The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still
204 recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of
205 ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable
206 since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used.
210 The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
211 use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
212 and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
213 implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather
214 ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
215 use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
220 The syntaxes C<< @a->[...] >> and C<< %h->{...} >> have now been deprecated.
224 After years of trying the suidperl is considered to be too complex to
225 ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely
226 to be removed in a future release.
230 The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison
231 operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed.
235 The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return;
236 the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar
237 functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
241 Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)".
242 The prototypes are now checked at compile-time for invalid characters.
243 An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in prototype...")
244 but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future release.
248 =head1 Core Enhancements
250 =head2 PerlIO is Now The Default
256 IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio".
257 PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the
258 handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg
261 open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ...
263 or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>:
265 binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)');
267 The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in
268 previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a
269 portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32,
270 but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if
271 platform supports it (mostly UNIXes).
273 Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma.
275 See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects
276 of PerlIO on your architecture name.
280 File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
281 (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
283 open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt");
285 Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named
286 for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
287 UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
288 http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information.
289 In future releases this naming may change.
293 File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal
294 Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer.
298 File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via:
300 open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ...
304 Anonymous temporary files are available without need to
305 'use FileHandle' or other module via
307 open($fh,"+>", undef) || ...
309 That is a literal undef, not an undefined value.
313 The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX):
315 open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd')
317 creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
324 Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments
325 could corrupt Perl's internal state. Now Perl postpones handling of
326 signals until it's safe (between opcodes).
328 This change may have surprising side effects because signals no longer
329 interrupt Perl instantly. Perl will now first finish whatever it was
330 doing, like finishing an internal operation (like sort()) or an
331 external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any
332 arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt
333 internal state since the current operation is always finished first,
334 but the signal may take more time to get heard.
336 =head2 Unicode Overhaul
338 Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0
339 (or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in
340 regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now,
341 Unicode in I/O should work now.
347 The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
348 to Unicode 3.1.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/.
352 For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
353 almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
354 the F<lib/unicore subdirectory>. The most notable omission, for space
355 considerations, is the Unihan database.
359 The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like
360 C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space
361 character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode
362 equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical
363 tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.)
365 See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional
366 information on changes with Unicode properties.
370 =head2 Understanding of Numbers
372 In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's
373 understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in
374 many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()>
375 and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their
376 deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers.
378 Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions
379 and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and
380 tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers.
381 This change leads to often slightly faster and always less lossy
382 arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
385 =head2 Miscellaneous Changes
391 AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute
392 to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value.
396 C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass
397 in multiple arguments.)
401 The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning
402 C<Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::dump(), qualify as such or use &>
403 meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin
404 dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined
405 C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>.
406 (The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly
407 removed/changed in future releases.)
411 chomp() and chop() have been demoted back to I<not> being overrideable
412 because they cannot really be overridden-- the problem is that their
413 prototype cannot be expressed and therefore one really cannot write
414 replacements to override these builtins.
418 END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block.
419 Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
420 PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
421 behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See
426 Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields.
430 Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
431 However, the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental.
435 A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been
436 restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.)
440 A new special regular expression variable has been introduced:
441 C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch).
445 C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.
449 The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand
450 is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified.
454 The following builtin functions are now overridable: each(), keys(),
455 pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift().
459 C<pack() / unpack()> now can group template letters with C<()> and then
460 apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups.
464 C<pack() / unpack()> can now process the Perl internal numeric types:
465 IVs, UVs, NVs-- and also long doubles, if supported by the platform.
466 The template letters are C<j>, C<J>, C<F>, and C<D>.
470 C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8.
474 my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works.
478 The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the
479 C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example
481 print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar";
483 will print "bar foo\n". This feature helps in writing
484 internationalised software, and in general when the order
485 of the parameters can vary.
489 prototype(\&) is now available.
493 prototype(\[$@%&]) is now available to implicitly create references
494 (useful for example if you want to emulate the tie() interface).
498 A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the
499 little brother of C<-T>: instead of dieing on taint violations,
500 lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary
501 debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications.
502 This is not a substitute for -T.>
506 In other taint news, the C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> have now been
507 considered too risky (think C<exec @ARGV>: it can start any program
508 with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning.
509 You should carefully launder the arguments to guarantee their
510 validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will become fatal
511 errors so consider starting laundering now.
515 If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to
520 untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
525 L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the
526 file timestamps to the current time.
530 The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants
531 have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore
532 simply B<between digits>.
536 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
538 =head2 New Modules and Pragmata
544 C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers.
547 use Attribute::Handlers;
548 sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" }
550 # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack...
552 my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called
554 Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can
555 be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the
556 exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END).
560 B<B::Concise> is a new compiler backend for walking the Perl syntax
561 tree, printing concise info about ops, from Stephen McCamant. The
562 output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>.
566 C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree,
567 by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>.
571 C<Cwd> has now a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is
572 used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust)
573 but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used.
577 C<Devel::PPPort>, originally from Kenneth Albanowski and now
578 maintained by Paul Marquess, has been added. It is primarily used
579 by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of of XS modules between different
584 C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from
585 Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>.
589 C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in
590 RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>.
592 use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex';
594 $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel");
596 print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1
598 NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not
599 included since its further use is discouraged.
603 C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate
604 between different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
605 ISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are
606 compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese,
607 Chinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at
608 runtime. See L<Encode>.
610 Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
611 ":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
615 C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information.
616 See L<I18N::Langinfo>.
620 C<I18N::LangTags> has functions for dealing with RFC3066-style
621 language tags, by Sean Burke. See L<I18N::LangTags>.
625 C<ExtUtils::Constant> is a new tool for extension writers for
626 generating XS code to import C header constants, by Nicholas Clark.
627 See L<ExtUtils::Constant>.
631 C<Filter::Simple> is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call,
632 from Damian Conway. See L<Filter::Simple>.
638 use Filter::Simple sub {
639 while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) {
648 use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green';
650 print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n"
651 print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n"
655 print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n"
659 C<File::Temp> allows one to create temporary files and directories in
660 an easy, portable, and secure way, by Tim Jenness. See L<File::Temp>.
664 C<Filter::Util::Call> provides you with the framework to write
665 I<Source Filters> in Perl, from Paul Marquess. For most uses the
666 frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>.
670 C<if> is a new pragma for conditional inclusion of modules, from
675 L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network
676 programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>,
677 L<Net::Ping>, L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>.
679 Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure.
683 C<List::Util> is a selection of general-utility list subroutines, like
684 sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(), by Graham Barr. See L<List::Util>.
688 C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>, and
689 C<Locale::Language>, from Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the
690 codes for various locale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for
691 US Dollar, and "jp" for Japanese.
695 $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan'
696 $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no'
698 See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>,
699 and L<Locale::Language>.
703 C<Locale::Maketext> is localization framework from Sean Burke. See
704 L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an
705 article about software localization, originally published in The Perl
706 Journal #13, republished here with kind permission.
710 C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time,
711 from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>.
715 C<MIME::Base64> allows you to encode data in base64, from Gisle Aas,
716 as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
721 $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');
722 $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
724 print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ=="
730 C<MIME::QuotedPrint> allows you to encode data in quoted-printable
731 encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
732 Extensions)>, from Gisle Aas.
734 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
736 $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}");
737 $decoded = decode_qp($encoded);
739 print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A"
741 MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods
742 necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in :
744 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
745 open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
747 See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>.
751 C<NEXT> is pseudo-class for method redispatch, from Damian Conway.
756 C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O disciplines
761 C<PerlIO::Scalar> provides the implementation of IO to "in memory"
762 Perl scalars as discussed above, from Nick Ing-Simmons. It also
763 serves as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future
764 possibilities include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code.
765 See L<PerlIO::Scalar>.
769 C<PerlIO::Via> acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps PerlIO layer
770 functionality provided by a class (typically implemented in perl
771 code), from Nick Ing-Simmons.
773 use MIME::QuotedPrint;
774 open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
776 This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh>
777 to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>.
781 C<Pod::ParseLink>, by Russ Allbery, has been added,
782 to parse LZ<><> links in pods as described in the new
787 C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added.
788 It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text.
789 See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>.
793 C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines,
794 like blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>.
798 C<sort> is a new pragma for controlling the behaviour of sort().
802 C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the
803 storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and
804 compact binary format, from Raphael Manfredi. See L<Storable>.
808 C<Switch>, from Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying
812 you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl.
818 case 1 { print "number 1" }
819 case "a" { print "string a" }
820 case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" }
821 case (@array) { print "number in list" }
822 case /\w+/ { print "pattern" }
823 case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" }
824 case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
825 case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
826 case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" }
827 else { print "previous case not true" }
834 C<Test::More> is yet another framework for writing test scripts,
835 more extensive than Test::Simple, by Michael Schwern. See L<Test::More>.
839 C<Test::Simple> has basic utilities for writing tests, by Michael
840 Schwern. See L<Test::Simple>.
844 C<Text::Balanced> has been added, for extracting delimited text
845 sequences from strings, from Damian Conway.
847 use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited';
849 ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", '');
851 $a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'.
853 In addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(),
854 extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(),
855 extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and
856 gen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced
857 parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>.
861 C<threads> is an interface to interpreter threads, by Arthur Bergman.
862 Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in
863 Perl 5.6 but only available as an internal interface for extension
864 writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>.
868 C<threads::shared> allows data sharing for interpreter threads, from
869 Arthur Bergman. In the ithreads model any data sharing between
870 threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model
871 where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>.
875 C<Tie::Memoize>, by Ilya Zakharevich, provides on-demand loaded hashes.
879 C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash
880 references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained
881 within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>.
885 C<Time::HiRes> provides high resolution timing (ualarm, usleep,
886 and gettimeofday), from Douglas E. Wegscheid. See L<Time::HiRes>.
890 C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character
891 Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>.
895 C<Unicode::Collate> implements the UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm)
896 for sorting Unicode strings, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Collate>.
900 C<Unicode::Normalize> implements the various Unicode normalization
901 forms, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Normalize>.
905 C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
906 typemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code
911 =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
917 The following independently supported modules have been updated to the
918 newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp,
919 Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle
920 (Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable,
921 Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap.
925 The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments.
929 AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>.
933 B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost
934 all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed).
935 There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out.
939 Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time.
943 Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor
944 is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument.
948 Data::Dumper has now an option to sort hashes.
952 Data::Dumper has now an option to dump code references
957 DB_File now supports newer Berkeley DB versions, among
962 The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
965 use English '-no_performance_hit';
967 (Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables
968 C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and
969 C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>.
973 Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the
974 new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>).
975 This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster.
979 File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links.
983 File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also
984 correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks
985 (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work.
989 File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made
994 File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
995 prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
999 File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of
1000 the returned list of filenames.
1004 Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics
1005 (this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have
1006 compiled with debugging).
1010 IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors.
1014 IO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket
1015 is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable
1016 as a sockatmark() function.
1020 IO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform
1021 supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity
1022 you may want to prefer ReuseAddr.
1026 IO::Socket::INET now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning
1027 that the operating system will make one up.)
1031 use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories
1032 with 'no lib' now works.
1036 ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
1037 leads into better portability.
1041 Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite.
1042 They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various
1043 bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
1047 Math::Complex handles inf, NaN etc., better.
1051 Net::Ping has been muchly enhanced. Multihoming is now supported.
1052 There is now "external" protocol which uses Net::Ping::External module
1053 which runs external ping(1) and parses the output. A version of
1054 Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
1058 POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust.
1059 You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE'
1060 handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic.
1064 In Safe the C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that
1069 In SDBM_File on dosish platforms, some keys went missing because of
1070 lack of support for files with "holes". A workaround for the problem
1075 In Search::Dict one can now have a pre-processing hook for the
1076 lines being searched.
1080 The Shell module now has an OO interface.
1084 The Test module has been significantly enhanced.
1088 The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
1089 (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
1093 The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various
1094 Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
1095 internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
1096 has been implemented.
1100 =head1 Utility Changes
1106 Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version
1111 F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster.
1115 C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs.
1119 C<h2xs> now produces a template README.
1123 C<h2xs> now uses C<Devel::PPort> for better portability between
1124 different versions of Perl.
1128 C<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect
1129 newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is
1130 more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a
1131 prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined),
1132 less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the
1133 old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants),
1134 and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your
1135 extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy).
1136 L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs.
1140 C<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet.
1144 C<perlbug> is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to
1145 perl.org, not perl.com.
1149 C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is,
1150 command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
1151 (The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.)
1155 C<perlivp> is a new Installation Verification Procedure utility
1156 for running any time after installing Perl.
1160 C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory.
1164 C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full
1165 implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by
1166 using the C<psed> utility.)
1170 C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files.
1174 C<xsubpp> now supports OUT keyword.
1178 =head1 New Documentation
1184 perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the
1189 perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library
1190 functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core
1195 perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.
1199 perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms.
1203 perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl.
1207 perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers.
1211 perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules.
1215 perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.
1219 perlpacktut is a pack() tutorial.
1223 perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best
1224 practices gathered over the years.
1228 perlpodspec is a more formal specification of the pod format,
1229 mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to
1230 people writing in pod.
1234 perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.
1238 perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide.
1239 Yes, much quicker than perlretut.
1243 perltodo has been updated.
1247 perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict
1248 with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names)
1252 perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl.
1253 (perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background
1258 perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl
1263 The following platform-specific documents are available before
1264 the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation
1267 perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000
1268 perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux
1269 perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix
1270 perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris
1271 perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32
1277 The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid
1278 confusion with the Perl POSIX module.
1282 The documentation for the WinCE platform is called "CE", to avoid
1283 confusion with the perlwin32 documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems.
1287 =head1 Performance Enhancements
1293 map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates
1294 is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for
1299 sort() has been changed to use primarily mergesort internally as
1300 opposed to the earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may
1301 result in slightly slower sorting times, but in general the speedup
1302 should be at least 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case
1303 behaviour of sort() is now better (in computer science terms it now
1304 runs in time O(N log N), as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2)
1305 worst-case run time behaviour), and that sort() is now stable
1306 (meaning that elements with identical keys will stay ordered as they
1307 were before the sort). See the C<sort> pragma for information.
1309 The story in more detail: suppose you want to serve yourself a little
1312 @digits = ( 3,1,4,1,5,9 );
1314 A numerical sort of the digits will yield (1,1,3,4,5,9), as expected.
1315 Which C<1> comes first is hard to know, since one C<1> looks pretty
1316 much like any other. You can regard this as totally trivial,
1317 or somewhat profound. However, if you just want to sort the even
1318 digits ahead of the odd ones, then what will
1320 sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } @digits;
1322 yield? The only even digit, C<4>, will come first. But how about
1323 the odd numbers, which all compare equal? With the quicksort algorithm
1324 used to implement Perl 5.6 and earlier, the order of ties is left up
1325 to the sort. So, as you add more and more digits of Pi, the order
1326 in which the sorted even and odd digits appear will change.
1327 and, for sufficiently large slices of Pi, the quicksort algorithm
1328 in Perl 5.8 won't return the same results even if reinvoked with the
1329 same input. The justification for this rests with quicksort's
1330 worst case behavior. If you run
1332 sort { $a <=> $b } ( 1 .. $N , 1 .. $N );
1334 (something you might approximate if you wanted to merge two sorted
1335 arrays using sort), doubling $N doesn't just double the quicksort time,
1336 it I<quadruples> it. Quicksort has a worst case run time that can
1337 grow like N**2, so-called I<quadratic> behaviour, and it can happen
1338 on patterns that may well arise in normal use. You won't notice this
1339 for small arrays, but you I<will> notice it with larger arrays,
1340 and you may not live long enough for the sort to complete on arrays
1341 of a million elements. So the 5.8 quicksort scrambles large arrays
1342 before sorting them, as a statistical defence against quadratic behaviour.
1343 But that means if you sort the same large array twice, ties may be
1344 broken in different ways.
1346 Because of the unpredictability of tie-breaking order, and the quadratic
1347 worst-case behaviour, quicksort was I<almost> replaced completely with
1348 a stable mergesort. I<Stable> means that ties are broken to preserve
1349 the original order of appearance in the input array. So
1351 sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } (3,1,4,1,5,9);
1353 will yield (4,3,1,1,5,9), guaranteed. The even and odd numbers
1354 appear in the output in the same order they appeared in the input.
1355 Mergesort has worst case O(NlogN) behaviour, the best value
1356 attainable. And, ironically, this mergesort does particularly
1357 well where quicksort goes quadratic: mergesort sorts (1..$N, 1..$N)
1358 in O(N) time. But quicksort was rescued at the last moment because
1359 it is faster than mergesort on certain inputs and platforms.
1360 For example, if you really I<don't> care about the order of even
1361 and odd digits, quicksort will run in O(N) time; it's very good
1362 at sorting many repetitions of a small number of distinct elements.
1363 The quicksort divide and conquer strategy works well on platforms
1364 with relatively small, very fast, caches. Eventually, the problem gets
1365 whittled down to one that fits in the cache, from which point it
1366 benefits from the increased memory speed.
1368 Quicksort was rescued by implementing a sort pragma to control aspects
1369 of the sort. The B<stable> subpragma forces stable behaviour,
1370 regardless of algorithm. The B<_quicksort> and B<_mergesort>
1371 subpragmas are heavy-handed ways to select the underlying implementation.
1372 The leading C<_> is a reminder that these subpragmas may not survive
1373 beyond 5.8. More appropriate mechanisms for selecting the implementation
1374 exist, but they wouldn't have arrived in time to save quicksort.
1378 Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
1379 (http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html). This algorithm is
1380 reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than
1381 the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by
1382 Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of
1383 all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the
1384 DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this
1385 change has not affected the overall speed of Perl.
1389 unshift() should now be noticeably faster.
1393 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
1395 =head2 Generic Improvements
1401 INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit
1402 integers even on non-64-bit platforms.
1406 Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file
1407 (see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old
1408 Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of
1409 them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously
1410 only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour,
1411 specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly.
1415 A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available.
1416 It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's
1417 own library directories.
1421 In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to
1422 build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems
1423 to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler
1424 'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead.
1428 gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid
1429 build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different
1430 operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible
1431 warning that there may be trouble ahead.
1435 If binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is not wanted, Configure
1436 no longer suggests including the 5.005 modules in @INC.
1440 Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively.
1444 Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due
1449 configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them.
1453 installperl now outputs everything to STDERR.
1457 $Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust
1458 with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for
1459 more than one binary platform.)
1463 Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't
1464 get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore.
1465 Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command
1466 line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended.
1470 Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all"
1471 (-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your
1472 pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.)
1476 In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be
1477 somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure
1478 parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>.
1482 APPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been
1483 documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories
1484 to Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information.
1488 The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the
1489 DB_File extension) was built is now available as
1490 C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}>
1491 from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG
1492 DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C.
1496 Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM
1497 has been documented in INSTALL.
1501 If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a
1502 CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and
1503 install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for
1508 In addition to config.over a new override file, config.arch, is
1509 available. That is supposed to be used by hints file writers for
1510 architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is for
1515 If your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside
1516 of the source directory by
1518 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
1519 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
1520 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
1522 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
1523 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
1524 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
1528 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
1532 For Perl developers several new make targets for profiling
1533 and debugging have been added, see L<perlhack>.
1539 Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in
1540 L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for
1541 generating a gprofiled Perl executable.
1545 If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for
1546 creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See
1551 If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options
1552 have been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and
1559 Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have
1560 been added to INSTALL.
1564 The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads
1565 (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the
1566 Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>).
1568 But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
1573 =head2 New Or Improved Platforms
1575 For the list of platforms known to support Perl,
1576 see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">.
1582 AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported.
1586 AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the
1587 long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>.
1591 After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
1595 AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform.
1599 BeOS has been reclaimed.
1603 DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>.
1607 DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2.
1611 EBCDIC platforms (z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA)
1612 have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the
1613 co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the
1614 situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>,
1615 L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information.
1619 Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under
1620 HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will
1621 need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux.
1625 MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since
1626 perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl
1627 and MacPerl have been synchronised)
1631 MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+
1632 filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.)
1636 NCR MP-RAS is now supported.
1640 All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation
1641 specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
1645 NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>.
1649 NonStop-UX is now supported.
1653 NEC SUPER-UX is now supported.
1657 All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation
1658 specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
1662 Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package
1663 ( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ) . All but one thread
1664 test worked, and that one failure was because of test results arriving
1665 in unexpected order.
1669 Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
1673 WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>.
1677 z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now
1678 support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default,
1679 however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure.
1683 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
1685 Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been
1686 hunted down. Most importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite
1693 The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names.
1697 caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was sometimes
1698 affected by this problem.
1702 chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
1703 reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
1707 Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
1708 when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x,
1713 The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as
1714 "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35,
1715 in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This
1716 was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation
1717 where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now
1718 Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts.
1722 The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
1726 Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
1727 condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
1728 line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output
1729 now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
1733 Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of dl_error()
1734 when statically building extensions into perl. This has been corrected.
1738 L<dprofpp> -R didn't work.
1742 C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works.
1745 Infinity is now recognized as a number.
1749 UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke
1750 the Tk extension with 5.6.0.)
1754 Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved
1755 correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they
1756 were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code.
1760 Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that
1761 were declared before the lexicals.
1765 Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes
1766 and into C<eval "...">.
1770 C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been
1775 warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller
1776 isn't using lexical warnings.
1780 Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works.
1784 Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "".
1788 mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name,
1789 as mandated by POSIX.
1793 Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds
1794 with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness
1795 and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have
1796 fixed the modfl() bug.
1800 Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to
1801 return 27406, instead of 27047).
1805 Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be
1806 more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.
1810 Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value
1811 properly in certain circumstances.
1815 Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our().
1819 our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings.
1823 "our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks
1824 resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables.
1825 The problem has been corrected.
1829 pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0".
1833 Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms
1834 (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry.
1838 The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments
1839 to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options.
1843 PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work.
1847 printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C".
1851 C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
1855 pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier
1856 versions. This is now handled correctly.
1860 Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works
1861 without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform).
1865 Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.
1869 Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string
1870 concatenation be invoked too many times.
1874 scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context.
1878 SOCKS support is now much more robust.
1882 sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
1883 (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
1884 The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments
1885 to be sorted are always provided list context.
1889 Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very
1890 rarely used) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character
1891 class C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace
1892 (currently, the space and the tab).
1896 The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does
1897 not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the
1898 behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation.
1902 Some cases of inconsistent taint propagation (such as within hash
1903 values) have been fixed.
1907 The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds
1908 of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better.
1912 Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'>
1913 or via C<-Dr>) now looks better.
1917 Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The
1922 Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This
1927 The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now
1928 more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
1929 data lying around in them.
1933 readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra "" at
1934 the end in certain situations. This has been corrected.
1938 Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described
1939 in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works
1944 Sys::Syslog ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant.
1948 All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional.
1952 $AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses
1953 in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe.
1957 Tie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken.
1961 Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///.
1965 Several Unicode fixes.
1971 BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files
1972 (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped.
1973 UTF-16 (UCS-2) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
1977 The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.1.1.
1981 Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data
1982 into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data
1983 from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded
1988 Generating illegal Unicode code points like U+FFFE, or the UTF-16
1989 surrogates, now also generates an optional warning.
1993 C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase.
1997 Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation,
1998 C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator,
1999 substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work.
2003 The C<tr///> operator now works. Note that the C<tr///CU>
2004 functionality has been removed (but see pack('U0', ...)).
2008 C<eval "v200"> now works.
2012 Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings.
2013 This has been corrected.
2017 Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>.
2023 Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their
2024 unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations.
2028 =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
2036 Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes.
2042 Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see L<perlvar> for details).
2048 Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4.
2052 Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O.
2058 EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc.
2064 Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs.
2070 README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works.
2076 Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing
2077 of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder.
2087 Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL).
2091 Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using
2092 accept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname().
2100 Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should
2101 now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and
2102 the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing
2109 MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix.
2115 Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc.
2121 Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL).
2127 64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works.
2131 Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1)
2133 The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}.
2134 Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling
2135 with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with
2142 Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either
2143 during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime;
2144 now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
2145 only 46 bit integers for speed.
2151 chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY
2152 (see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc.
2154 The tainting of C<%ENV> elements via C<keys> or C<values> was previously
2155 unimplemented. It now works as documented.
2157 The C<waitpid> emulation has been improved. The worst bug (now fixed)
2158 was that a pid of -1 would cause a wildcard search of all processes on
2159 the system. The most significant enhancement is that we can now
2160 usually get the completion status of a terminated process.
2162 POSIX-style signals are now emulated much better on VMS versions prior
2165 The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved
2166 functionality and better error handling.
2176 accept() no longer leaks memory.
2180 Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
2181 However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
2182 generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++).
2186 Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
2190 Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
2194 New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.
2198 Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
2203 $ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
2207 fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues
2208 to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats.
2212 A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
2216 Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
2217 Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed.
2221 HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
2225 The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features
2226 enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution).
2230 Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
2234 Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.
2238 Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
2242 %SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely
2243 unsupported under all configurations.
2247 Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
2248 concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
2252 C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
2253 (works better when perl is running as service).
2257 Better UNC path handling under ithreads.
2261 wait(), waitpid() and backticks now return the correct exit status under
2266 winsock handle leak fixed.
2272 =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
2278 All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
2279 easier to understand both because the error message now comes before
2280 the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly
2281 marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker.
2285 The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings
2286 drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package,
2287 for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>.
2291 The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
2292 C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
2296 Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
2297 Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace
2298 tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
2303 perl5db.pl has been modified to present a more consistent commands
2304 interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was also added to test the
2305 changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
2311 If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index
2312 is made, a warning is given.
2316 C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift)
2317 now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled
2322 If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255
2323 using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly
2324 for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127.
2328 Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to
2329 the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise.
2333 Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
2334 has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning.
2338 =head1 Changed Internals
2344 perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the
2349 You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl.
2350 Building microperl does not require even running Configure;
2351 C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes
2352 many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting
2353 executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways.
2354 For careful hackers only.
2358 Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join(), op_clear, op_null,
2359 ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv(), and several UTF-8
2360 interfaces to the publicised API. For the full list of the available
2361 APIs see L<perlapi>.
2365 Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing.
2369 Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs. (Well, at least the
2370 built-in attributes.)
2374 dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's
2375 a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP.
2379 PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed.
2383 The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied
2384 (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability
2385 and maintainability.
2389 The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in
2390 the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the
2391 original regex expression. The information is attached to the new
2392 C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more
2393 complete information.
2397 The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning
2398 messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with
2399 gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings
2400 are being worked on.
2404 F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented.
2408 Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added
2409 to F<Porting/repository.pod>.
2413 There are now several profiling make targets.
2417 =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
2419 (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
2421 A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
2422 of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
2423 installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable
2424 platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and
2425 various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability.
2426 See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt
2427 for more information.
2429 The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security
2430 exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux
2431 platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which
2432 when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in
2433 a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you
2434 don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if
2435 suidperl is not installed, you are safe.
2437 The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from
2438 Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also
2439 from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability
2440 isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are,
2441 unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most
2442 probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl
2443 should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are
2444 doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution
2445 such as sudo (see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/).
2449 Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib>
2450 subsection. There are now about 34 000 individual tests (spread over
2451 about 530 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
2452 11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are introduced
2453 by the new modules, but still in general Perl is now more thoroughly
2456 Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite
2457 will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite
2458 to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. In a really
2459 fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 5 minutes
2462 The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls.
2463 (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved
2464 to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.)
2466 =head1 Known Problems
2474 In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
2475 may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
2476 In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
2477 the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
2478 has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
2479 (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
2480 therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
2484 vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl
2486 The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code,
2487 resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
2488 are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least
2489 vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
2490 "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version.
2494 =head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery
2496 One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v>
2497 works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason isn't
2498 known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library.
2500 =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
2502 Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
2504 =head2 Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12
2506 The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work.
2508 =head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured
2510 The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been
2511 configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in
2512 this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The
2513 test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets
2514 which have multiple IP addresses).
2516 =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
2518 If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
2519 subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
2520 subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the
2523 =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48
2529 The following tests are known to fail:
2531 Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
2532 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
2533 ../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ??
2534 ../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65
2535 ../ext/POSIX/t/posix.t 31 1 3.23% 10
2536 ../lib/warnings.t 450 1 0.22% 316
2540 OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
2541 better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
2542 tests have been added.
2544 Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
2545 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2546 ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14
2547 ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1
2548 ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598
2550 ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5
2551 ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14
2552 ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5
2553 ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117
2554 ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75
2555 ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25
2556 ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145
2557 ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81
2558 ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4
2559 op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425
2561 op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ??
2562 op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168
2563 op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59
2564 Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay.
2566 =head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130
2568 The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
2569 Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX.
2570 The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
2571 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce
2572 something other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
2573 the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
2575 =head2 Failure of Thread tests
2577 B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental
2578 and practically unsupported.>
2580 The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
2581 the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
2582 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
2584 ext/List/Util/t/first 2
2586 ext/Thread/thr5005 19-20
2588 These failures are unlikely to get fixed.
2596 ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail.
2600 lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed,
2601 which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests.
2605 Numerous numerical test failures
2607 op/numconvert 209,210,217,218
2609 ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9
2610 lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145
2613 These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies.
2617 =head2 UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
2619 The io/fs test #31 is failing because in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
2620 truncate() cannot be used to grow the size of filehandles, only
2621 to reduce the size. The workaround is to truncate files instead
2626 There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>.
2630 There is one known test failure with a default configuration:
2632 [.run]switches..........................FAILED on test 1
2636 In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
2637 some output may appear twice.
2639 =head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
2642 tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
2646 local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
2648 Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
2651 =head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
2655 doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored
2658 =head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden
2660 Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
2661 hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
2662 frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is
2663 for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
2665 =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
2667 Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
2668 `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
2669 default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
2670 at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good
2671 solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate
2672 non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config
2673 hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are
2674 having problems can try configuring themselves without the
2675 largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the
2676 solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether
2677 one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at
2678 all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is
2681 =head2 Unicode Support on EBCDIC Still Spotty
2683 Though mostly working, Unicode support still has problem spots on
2684 EBCDIC platforms. One such known spot are the C<\p{}> and C<\P{}>
2685 regular expression constructs for code points less than 256: the
2686 pP are testing for Unicode code points, not knowing about EBCDIC.
2688 =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
2690 The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be
2691 highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged.
2693 =head2 The Long Double Support Is Still Experimental
2695 The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles",
2696 floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still
2697 experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet
2698 widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature
2699 or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare
2700 and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset
2701 by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the
2702 operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised
2705 =head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now
2707 C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed
2708 because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a
2709 core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available
2712 =head1 Reporting Bugs
2714 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
2715 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
2716 bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be
2717 information at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.
2719 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
2720 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
2721 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
2722 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
2723 analysed by the Perl porting team.
2727 The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
2729 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
2731 The F<README> file for general stuff.
2733 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
2737 Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>.