3 perltodo - Perl TO-DO List
7 This is a list of wishes for Perl. Send updates to
8 I<perl5-porters@perl.org>. If you want to work on any of these
9 projects, be sure to check the perl5-porters archives for past ideas,
10 flames, and propaganda. This will save you time and also prevent you
11 from implementing something that Larry has already vetoed. One set
12 of archives may be found at:
14 http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
16 =head1 To do during 5.6.x
18 =head2 Support for I/O disciplines
20 C<perlio> provides this, but the interface could be a lot more
23 =head2 Autoload bytes.pm
25 When the lexer sees, for instance, C<bytes::length>, it should
26 automatically load the C<bytes> pragma.
28 =head2 Make "\u{XXXX}" et al work
30 Danger, Will Robinson! Discussing the semantics of C<"\x{F00}">,
31 C<"\xF00"> and C<"\U{F00}"> on P5P I<will> lead to a long and boring
34 =head2 Create a char *sv_pvprintify(sv, STRLEN *lenp, UV flags)
36 For displaying PVs with control characters, embedded nulls, and Unicode.
37 This would be useful for printing warnings, or data and regex dumping,
38 not_a_number(), and so on.
40 Requirements: should handle both byte and UTF8 strings. isPRINT()
41 characters printed as-is, character less than 256 as \xHH, Unicode
42 characters as \x{HHH}. Don't assume ASCII-like, either, get somebody
43 on EBCDIC to test the output.
45 Possible options, controlled by the flags:
46 - whitespace (other than ' ' of isPRINT()) printed as-is
47 - use isPRINT_LC() instead of isPRINT()
48 - print control characters like this: "\cA"
49 - print control characters like this: "^A"
50 - non-PRINTables printed as '.' instead of \xHH
51 - use \OOO instead of \xHH
52 - use the C/Perl-metacharacters like \n, \t
53 - have a maximum length for the produced string (read it from *lenp)
54 - append a "..." to the produced string if the maximum length is exceeded
55 - really fancy: print unicode characters as \N{...}
57 NOTE: pv_display(), pv_uni_display(), sv_uni_display() are already
58 doing something like the above.
60 =head2 Overloadable regex assertions
62 This may or may not be possible with the current regular expression
63 engine. The idea is that, for instance, C<\b> needs to be
64 algorithmically computed if you're dealing with Thai text. Hence, the
65 B<\b> assertion wants to be overloaded by a function.
73 Allow for long form of the General Category Properties, e.g
74 C<\p{IsOpenPunctuation}>, not just the abbreviated form, e.g.
79 Allow for the metaproperties: C<XID Start>, C<XID Continue>,
80 C<NF*_NO>, C<NF*_MAYBE> (require the DerivedCoreProperties and
81 DerviceNormalizationProperties files).
83 There are also multiple value properties still unimplemented:
84 C<Numeric Type>, C<East Asian Width>.
88 Case Mappings? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr21/
90 lc(), uc(), lcfirst(), and ucfirst() work only for some of the
91 simplest cases, where the mapping goes from a single Unicode character
92 to another single Unicode character. See lib/unicore/SpecCase.txt
97 UTF-8 identifier names should probably be canonicalized: NFC?
101 UTF-8 in package names and sub names? The first is problematic
102 because of the mapping to pathnames, ditto for the second one if
103 one does autosplitting, for example.
107 See L<perlunicode/UNICODE REGULAR EXPRESSION SUPPORT LEVEL> for what's
108 there and what's missing. Almost all of Levels 2 and 3 is missing,
109 and as of 5.8.0 not even all of Level 1 is there.
110 They have some tricks Perl doesn't yet implement, such as character
113 http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr18/
115 =head2 Work out exit/die semantics for threads
117 There are some suggestion for use a
118 C<use threads wait => x> syntax.
120 http://archive.develooper.com/perl5-porters@perl.org/msg79618.html
122 =head2 Better support for nonpreemptive threading systems like PTH
124 Perhaps do yield() before blocking calls, exchange calls to non blocking
125 calls specific for those libraries (for example GNUpth has a pth_sleep
126 which is a non pth aware version of sleep).
128 =head2 Typed lexicals for compiler
130 =head2 Compiler workarounds for Win32
132 =head2 AUTOLOADing in the compiler
134 =head2 Fixing comppadlist when compiling
136 =head2 Cleaning up exported namespace
138 =head2 Complete signal handling
140 Add C<PERL_ASYNC_CHECK> to opcodes which loop; replace C<sigsetjmp> with
141 C<sigjmp>; check C<wait> for signal safety.
143 =head2 Out-of-source builds
145 This was done for 5.6.0, but needs reworking for 5.7.x
147 =head2 POSIX realtime support
149 POSIX 1003.1 1996 Edition support--realtime stuff: POSIX semaphores,
150 message queues, shared memory, realtime clocks, timers, signals (the
151 metaconfig units mostly already exist for these)
153 =head2 UNIX98 support
155 Reader-writer locks, realtime/asynchronous IO
159 There are non-core modules, such as C<Socket6>, but these will need
160 integrating when IPv6 actually starts to really happen. See RFC 2292
163 =head2 Long double conversion
165 Floating point formatting is still causing some weird test failures.
169 Locales and Unicode interact with each other in unpleasant ways.
170 One possible solution would be to adopt/support ICU:
172 http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/project/
174 =head2 Arithmetic on non-Arabic numerals
176 C<[1234567890]> aren't the only numerals any more.
178 =head2 POSIX Unicode character classes
180 (C<[=a=]> for equivalance classes, C<[.ch.]> for collation.)
181 These are dependent on Unicode normalization and collation.
183 =head2 Factoring out common suffices/prefices in regexps (trie optimization)
185 Currently, the user has to optimize C<foo|far> and C<foo|goo> into
186 C<f(?:oo|ar)> and C<[fg]oo> by hand; this could be done automatically.
188 =head2 Security audit shipped utilities
190 All the code we ship with Perl needs to be sensible about temporary file
191 handling, locking, input validation, and so on.
193 =head2 Sort out the uid-setting mess
195 Currently there are several problems with the setting of uids ($<, $>
196 for the real and effective uids). Firstly, what exactly setuid() call
197 gets invoked in which platform is simply a big mess that needs to be
198 untangled. Secondly, the effects are apparently not standard across
199 platforms, (if you first set $< and then $>, or vice versa, being
200 uid == euid == zero, or just euid == zero, or as a normal user, what are
201 the results?). The test suite not (usually) being run as root means
202 that these things do not get much testing. Thirdly, there's quite
203 often a third uid called saved uid, and Perl has no knowledge of that
204 feature in any way. (If one has the saved uid of zero, one can get
205 back any real and effective uids.) As an example, to change also the
206 saved uid, one needs to set the real and effective uids B<twice>-- in
207 most systems, that is: in HP-UX that doesn't seem to work.
209 =head2 Custom opcodes
211 Have a way to introduce user-defined opcodes without the subroutine call
212 overhead of an XSUB; the user should be able to create PP code. Simon
213 Cozens has some ideas on this.
215 =head2 DLL Versioning
217 Windows needs a way to know what version of an XS or C<libperl> DLL it's
220 =head2 Introduce @( and @)
222 C<$(> may return "foo bar baz". Unfortunately, since groups can
223 theoretically have spaces in their names, this could be one, two or
226 =head2 Floating point handling
228 C<NaN> and C<inf> support is particularly troublesome.
229 (fp_classify(), fp_class(), fp_class_d(), class(), isinf(),
230 isfinite(), finite(), isnormal(), unordered(), <ieeefp.h>,
231 <fp_class.h> (there are metaconfig units for all these) (I think),
232 fp_setmask(), fp_getmask(), fp_setround(), fp_getround()
233 (no metaconfig units yet for these). Don't forget finitel(), fp_classl(),
234 fp_class_l(), (yes, both do, unfortunately, exist), and unorderedl().)
236 As of Perl 5.6.1, there is a Perl macro, Perl_isnan().
238 =head2 IV/UV preservation
240 Nicholas Clark has done a lot of work on this, but work is continuing.
241 C<+>, C<-> and C<*> work, but guards need to be in place for C<%>, C</>,
242 C<&>, C<oct>, C<hex> and C<pack>.
244 =head2 Replace pod2html with something using Pod::Parser
246 The CPAN module C<Marek::Pod::Html> may be a more suitable basis for a
247 C<pod2html> convertor; the current one duplicates the functionality
248 abstracted in C<Pod::Parser>, which makes updating the POD language
251 =head2 Automate module testing on CPAN
253 When a new Perl is being beta tested, porters have to manually grab
254 their favourite CPAN modules and test them - this should be done
257 =head2 sendmsg and recvmsg
259 We have all the other BSD socket functions but these. There are
260 metaconfig units for these functions which can be added. To avoid these
261 being new opcodes, a solution similar to the way C<sockatmark> was added
262 would be preferable. (Autoload the C<IO::whatever> module.)
264 =head2 Rewrite perlre documentation
266 The new-style patterns need full documentation, and the whole document
267 needs to be a lot clearer.
269 =head2 Convert example code to IO::Handle filehandles
271 =head2 Document Win32 choices
273 =head2 Check new modules
275 =head2 Make roffitall find pods and libs itself
277 Simon Cozens has done some work on this but it needs a rethink.
279 =head1 To do at some point
281 These are ideas that have been regularly tossed around, that most
282 people believe should be done maybe during 5.8.x
284 =head2 Remove regular expression recursion
286 Because the regular expression engine is recursive, badly designed
287 expressions can lead to lots of recursion filling up the stack. Ilya
288 claims that it is easy to convert the engine to being iterative, but
289 this has still not yet been done. There may be a regular expression
290 engine hit squad meeting at TPC5.
292 =head2 Memory leaks after failed eval
294 Perl will leak memory if you C<eval "hlagh hlagh hlagh hlagh">. This is
295 partially because it attempts to build up an op tree for that code and
296 doesn't properly free it. The same goes for non-syntactically-correct
297 regular expressions. Hugo looked into this, but decided it needed a
298 mark-and-sweep GC implementation.
300 Alan notes that: The basic idea was to extend the parser token stack
301 (C<YYSTYPE>) to include a type field so we knew what sort of thing each
302 element of the stack was. The F<perly.c> code would then have to be
303 postprocessed to record the type of each entry on the stack as it was
304 created, and the parser patched so that it could unroll the stack
307 This is possible to do, but would be pretty messy to implement, as it
308 would rely on even more sed hackery in F<perly.fixer>.
310 =head2 bitfields in pack
312 =head2 Cross compilation
314 Make Perl buildable with a cross-compiler. This will play havoc with
315 Configure, which needs to know how the target system will respond to
316 its tests; maybe C<microperl> will be a good starting point here.
317 (Indeed, Bart Schuller reports that he compiled up C<microperl> for
318 the Agenda PDA and it works fine.) A really big spanner in the works
319 is the bootstrapping build process of Perl: if the filesystem the
320 target systems sees is not the same what the build host sees, various
321 input, output, and (Perl) library files need to be copied back and forth.
323 As of 5.8.0 Configure mostly works for cross-compilation
324 (used successfully for iPAQ Linux), miniperl gets built,
325 but then building DynaLoader (and other extensions) fails
326 since MakeMaker knows nothing of cross-compilation.
327 (See INSTALL/Cross-compilation for the state of things.)
329 =head2 Perl preprocessor / macros
331 Source filters help with this, but do not get us all the way. For
332 instance, it should be possible to implement the C<??> operator somehow;
333 source filters don't (quite) cut it.
335 =head2 Perl lexer in Perl
337 Damian Conway is planning to work on this, but it hasn't happened yet.
339 =head2 Using POSIX calls internally
341 When faced with a BSD vs. SysV -style interface to some library or
342 system function, perl's roots show in that it typically prefers the BSD
343 interface (but falls back to the SysV one). One example is getpgrp().
344 Other examples include C<memcpy> vs. C<bcopy>. There are others, mostly in
347 Mostly, this item is a suggestion for which way to start a journey into
348 an C<#ifdef> forest. It is not primarily a suggestion to eliminate any of
349 the C<#ifdef> forests.
351 POSIX calls are perhaps more likely to be portable to unexpected
352 architectures. They are also perhaps more likely to be actively
353 maintained by a current vendor. They are also perhaps more likely to be
354 available in thread-safe versions, if appropriate.
356 =head2 -i rename file when changed
358 It's only necessary to rename a file when inplace editing when the file
359 has changed. Detecting a change is perhaps the difficult bit.
361 =head2 All ARGV input should act like E<lt>E<gt>
363 eg C<read(ARGV, ...)> doesn't currently read across multiple files.
365 =head2 Support for rerunning debugger
367 There should be a way of restarting the debugger on demand.
369 =head2 Test Suite for the Debugger
371 The debugger is a complex piece of software and fixing something
372 here may inadvertently break something else over there. To tame
373 this chaotic behaviour, a test suite is necessary.
375 =head2 my sub foo { }
377 The basic principle is sound, but there are problems with the semantics
378 of self-referential and mutually referential lexical subs: how to
381 =head2 One-pass global destruction
383 Sweeping away all the allocated memory in one go is a laudable goal, but
384 it's difficult and in most cases, it's easier to let the memory get
387 =head2 Rewrite regexp parser
389 There has been talk recently of rewriting the regular expression parser
390 to produce an optree instead of a chain of opcodes; it's unclear whether
391 or not this would be a win.
393 =head2 Cache recently used regexps
397 for my $re (@regexps) {
401 C<qr//> already gives us a way of saving compiled regexps, but it should
402 be done automatically.
404 =head2 Re-entrant functions
406 Add configure probes for C<_r> forms of system calls and fit them to the
407 core. Unfortunately, calling conventions for these functions and not
410 =head2 Cross-compilation support
412 Bart Schuller reports that using C<microperl> and a cross-compiler, he
413 got Perl working on the Agenda PDA. However, one cannot build a full
414 Perl because Configure needs to get the results for the target platform,
417 =head2 Bit-shifting bitvectors
421 vec($v, 1000, 1) = 1;
423 One should be able to do
427 and have the 999'th bit set.
429 Currently if you try with shift bitvectors you shift the NV/UV, instead
430 of the bits in the PV. Not very logical.
432 =head2 debugger pragma
434 The debugger is implemented in Perl in F<perl5db.pl>; turning it into a
435 pragma should be easy, but making it work lexically might be more
436 difficult. Fiddling with C<$^P> would be necessary.
438 =head2 use less pragma
440 Identify areas where speed/memory tradeoffs can be made and have a hint
441 to switch between them.
443 =head2 switch structures
445 Although we have C<Switch.pm> in core, Larry points to the dormant
446 C<nswitch> and C<cswitch> ops in F<pp.c>; using these opcodes would be
449 =head2 Cache eval tree
453 =head2 Shrink opcode tables
455 =head2 Optimize away @_
457 Look at the "reification" code in C<av.c>
459 =head2 Prototypes versus indirect objects
461 Currently, indirect object syntax bypasses prototype checks.
465 HTML versions of the documentation need to be installed by default; a
466 call to C<installhtml> from C<installperl> may be all that's necessary.
468 =head2 Prototype method calls
470 =head2 Return context prototype declarations
474 =head2 Garbage collection
476 There have been persistent mumblings about putting a mark-and-sweep
477 garbage detector into Perl; Alan Burlison has some ideas about this.
481 Mark-Jason Dominus has the beginnings of one of these.
483 =head2 Rewrite perldoc
485 There are a few suggestions for what to do with C<perldoc>: maybe a
486 full-text search, an index function, locating pages on a particular
487 high-level subject, and so on.
489 =head2 Install .3p manpages
491 This is a bone of contention; we can create C<.3p> manpages for each
492 built-in function, but should we install them by default? Tcl does this,
493 and it clutters up C<apropos>.
495 =head2 Unicode tutorial
497 Simon Cozens promises to do this before he gets old.
499 =head2 Update POSIX.pm for 1003.1-2
501 =head2 Retargetable installation
503 Allow C<@INC> to be changed after Perl is built.
505 =head2 POSIX emulation on non-POSIX systems
507 Make C<POSIX.pm> behave as POSIXly as possible everywhere, meaning we
508 have to implement POSIX equivalents for some functions if necessary.
510 =head2 Rename Win32 headers
512 =head2 Finish off lvalue functions
514 They don't work in the debugger, and they don't work for list or hash
517 =head2 Update sprintf documentation
519 Hugo van der Sanden plans to look at this.
521 =head2 Use fchown/fchmod internally
523 This has been done in places, but needs a thorough code review.
524 Also fchdir is available in some platforms.
526 =head2 Make v-strings overloaded objects
528 Instead of having to guess whether a string is a v-string and thus
529 needs to be displayed with %vd, make v-strings (readonly) objects
530 (class "vstring"?) with a stringify overload.
532 =head2 Allow restricted hash assignment
534 Currently you're not allowed to assign to a restricted hash at all,
535 even with the same keys.
537 %restricted = (foo => 42); # error
539 This should be allowed if the new keyset is a subset of the old
540 keyset. May require more extra code than we'd like in pp_aassign.
542 =head2 Should overload be inheritable?
544 Should overload be 'contagious' through @ISA so that derived classes
545 would inherit their base classes' overload definitions? What to do
546 in case of overload conflicts?
550 Should taint be stopped from affecting control flow, if ($tainted)?
551 Should tainted symbolic method calls and subref calls be stopped?
552 (Look at Ruby's $SAFE levels for inspiration?)
556 Ideas which have been discussed, and which may or may not happen.
558 =head2 ref() in list context
560 It's unclear what this should do or how to do it without breaking old
563 =head2 Make tr/// return histogram of characters in list context
565 There is a patch for this, but it may require Unicodification.
567 =head2 Compile to real threaded code
569 =head2 Structured types
571 =head2 Modifiable $1 et al.
573 ($x = "elephant") =~ /e(ph)/;
574 $1 = "g"; # $x = "elegant"
576 What happens if there are multiple (nested?) brackets? What if the
577 string changes between the match and the assignment?
579 =head2 Procedural interfaces for IO::*, etc.
581 Some core modules have been accused of being overly-OO. Adding
582 procedural interfaces could demystify them.
586 =head2 Attach/detach debugger from running program
588 With C<gdb>, you can attach the debugger to a running program if you
589 pass the process ID. It would be good to do this with the Perl debugger
590 on a running Perl program, although I'm not sure how it would be done.
594 A non-core module that would use "native" GUI to create graphical
597 =head2 foreach(reverse ...)
601 foreach (reverse @_) { ... }
603 puts C<@_> on the stack, reverses it putting the reversed version on the
604 stack, then iterates forwards. Instead, it could be special-cased to put
605 C<@_> on the stack then iterate backwards.
607 =head2 Constant function cache
609 =head2 Approximate regular expression matching
613 These items B<always> need doing:
615 =head2 Update guts documentation
617 Simon Cozens tries to do this when possible, and contributions to the
618 C<perlapi> documentation is welcome.
620 =head2 Add more tests
622 Michael Schwern will donate $500 to Yet Another Society when all core
625 =head2 Update auxiliary tools
627 The code we ship with Perl should look like good Perl 5.
629 =head2 Create debugging macros
631 Debugging macros (like printsv, dump) can make debugging perl inside a
632 C debugger much easier. A good set for gdb comes with mod_perl.
633 Something similar should be distributed with perl.
635 The proper way to do this is to use and extend Devel::DebugInit.
636 Devel::DebugInit also needs to be extended to support threads.
638 See p5p archives for late May/early June 2001 for a recent discussion
641 =head2 truncate to the people
643 One can emulate ftruncate() using F_FREESP and F_CHSIZ fcntls
644 (see the UNIX FAQ for details). This needs to go somewhere near
645 pp_sys.c:pp_truncate().
647 One can emulate truncate() easily if one has ftruncate().
648 This emulation should also go near pp_sys.pp_truncate().
650 =head2 Unicode in Filenames
652 chdir, chmod, chown, chroot, exec, glob, link, lstat, mkdir, open, qx,
653 readdir, readlink, rename, rmdir, stat, symlink, sysopen, system,
654 truncate, unlink, utime. All these could potentially accept Unicode
655 filenames either as input or output (and in the case of system and qx
656 Unicode in general, as input or output to/from the shell). Whether a
657 filesystem - an operating system pair understands Unicode in filenames
660 Known combinations that have some level of understanding include
661 Microsoft NTFS, Apple HFS+ (In Mac OS 9 and X) and Apple UFS (in Mac
662 OS X), NFS v4 is rumored to be Unicode, and of course Plan 9. How to
663 create Unicode filenames, what forms of Unicode are accepted and used
664 (UCS-2, UTF-16, UTF-8), what (if any) is the normalization form used,
665 and so on, varies. Finding the right level of interfacing to Perl
666 requires some thought. Remember that an OS does not implicate a
669 Note that in Windows the -C command line flag already does quite
670 a bit of the above (but even there the support is not complete:
671 for example the exec/spawn are not Unicode-aware) by turning on
672 the so-called "wide API support".
674 =head1 Recently done things
676 These are things which have been on the todo lists in previous releases
677 but have recently been completed.
679 =head2 Alternative RE syntax module
681 The C<Regexp::English> module, available from the CPAN, provides this:
683 my $re = Regexp::English
685 -> literal('Flippers')
696 =head2 Safe signal handling
698 A new signal model went into 5.7.1 without much fanfare. Operations and
699 C<malloc>s are no longer interrupted by signals, which are handled
700 between opcodes. This means that C<PERL_ASYNC_CHECK> now actually does
701 something. However, there are still a few things that need to be done.
705 Modules which implement arrays in terms of strings, substrings or files
706 can be found on the CPAN.
710 C<Time::HiRes> has been integrated into the core.
712 =head2 setitimer and getimiter
714 Adding C<Time::HiRes> got us this too.
716 =head2 Testing __DIE__ hook
718 Tests have been added.
720 =head2 CPP equivalent in Perl
722 A C Yardley will probably have done this by the time you can read this.
723 This allows for a generalization of the C constant detection used in
724 building C<Errno.pm>.
726 =head2 Explicit switch statements
728 C<Switch.pm> has been integrated into the core to give you all manner of
729 C<switch...case> semantics.
737 Nick Ing-Simmons has made UTF-EBCDIC (UTR13) work with Perl.
739 EBCDIC? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/
743 Although there are probably some small bugs to be rooted out, Jarkko
744 Hietaniemi has made regular expressions polymorphic between bytes and
747 =head2 perlcc to produce executable
749 C<perlcc> was recently rewritten, and can now produce standalone
752 =head2 END blocks saved in compiled output
754 =head2 Secure temporary file module
756 Tim Jenness' C<File::Temp> is now in core.
758 =head2 Integrate Time::HiRes
760 This module is now part of core.
762 =head2 Turn Cwd into XS
764 Benjamin Sugars has done this.
766 =head2 Mmap for input
768 Nick Ing-Simmons' C<perlio> supports an C<mmap> IO method.
770 =head2 Byte to/from UTF8 and UTF8 to/from local conversion
772 C<Encode> provides this.
774 =head2 Add sockatmark support
778 =head2 Mailing list archives
780 http://lists.perl.org/ , http://archive.develooper.com/
784 Richard Foley has written the bug tracking system at http://bugs.perl.org/
786 =head2 Integrate MacPerl
788 Chris Nandor and Matthias Neeracher have integrated the MacPerl changes
791 =head2 Web "nerve center" for Perl
793 http://use.perl.org/ is what you're looking for.
795 =head2 Regular expression tutorial
797 C<perlretut>, provided by Mark Kvale.
799 =head2 Debugging Tutorial
801 C<perldebtut>, written by Richard Foley.
803 =head2 Integrate new modules
805 Jarkko has been integrating madly into 5.7.x
807 =head2 Integrate profiler
809 C<Devel::DProf> is now a core module.
811 =head2 Y2K error detection
813 There's a configure option to detect unsafe concatenation with "19", and
814 a CPAN module. (C<D'oh::Year>)
816 =head2 Regular expression debugger
818 While not part of core, Mark-Jason Dominus has written C<Rx> and has
819 also come up with a generalised strategy for regular expression
824 That's, uh, F<podchecker>
826 =head2 "Dynamic" lexicals
828 =head2 Cache precompiled modules
830 =head1 Deprecated Wishes
832 These are items which used to be in the todo file, but have been
833 deprecated for some reason.
835 =head2 Loop control on do{}
837 This would break old code; use C<do{{ }}> instead.
839 =head2 Lexically scoped typeglobs
841 Not needed now we have lexical IO handles.
847 Damian Conway's text formatting modules seem to be the Way To Go.
849 =head2 Generalised want()/caller())
851 Robin Houston's C<Want> module does this.
853 =head2 Named prototypes
855 This seems to be delayed until Perl 6.
857 =head2 Built-in globbing
859 The C<File::Glob> module has been used to replace the C<glob> function.
861 =head2 Regression tests for suidperl
863 C<suidperl> is deprecated in favour of common sense.
865 =head2 Cached hash values
867 We have shared hash keys, which perform the same job.
869 =head2 Add compression modules
871 The compression modules are a little heavy; meanwhile, Nick Clark is
872 working on experimental pragmata to do transparent decompression on
875 =head2 Reorganise documentation into tutorials/references
877 Could not get consensus on P5P about this.
879 =head2 Remove distinction between functions and operators
881 Caution: highly flammable.
883 =head2 Make XS easier to use
885 Use C<Inline> instead, or SWIG.
887 =head2 Make embedding easier to use
893 See the Perl Power Tools. ( http://language.perl.com/ppt/ )
895 =head2 my $Package::variable
899 =head2 "or" tests defined, not truth
901 Suggesting this on P5P B<will> cause a boring and interminable flamewar.
903 =head2 "class"-based lexicals
905 Use flyweight objects, secure hashes or, dare I say it, pseudo-hashes instead.
906 (Or whatever will replace pseudohashes in 5.10.)
910 C<ByteLoader> covers this.
912 =head2 Lazy evaluation / tail recursion removal
914 C<List::Util> gives first() (a short-circuiting grep); tail recursion
915 removal is done manually, with C<goto &whoami;>. (However, MJD has
916 found that C<goto &whoami> introduces a performance penalty, so maybe
917 there should be a way to do this after all: C<sub foo {START: ... goto
920 =head2 Make "use utf8" the default
922 Because of backward compatibility this is difficult: scripts could not
923 contain B<any legacy eight-bit data> (like Latin-1) anymore, even in
924 string literals or pod. Also would introduce a measurable slowdown of
925 at least few percentages since all regular expression operations would
926 be done in full UTF-8. But if you want to try this, add
927 -DUSE_UTF8_SCRIPTS to your compilation flags.
929 =head2 Unicode collation and normalization
931 The Unicode::Collate and Unicode::Normalize modules
932 by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki have been included since 5.8.0.
934 Collation? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr10/
935 Normalization? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr15/
937 =head2 pack/unpack tutorial
939 Wolfgang Laun finished what Simon Cozens started.