=head1 NAME [ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as XXX needs to be processed before release. ] perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.3 =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes differences between the 5.11.2 release and the 5.11.3 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.11.3, first read the L, which describes differences between 5.11.3 and 5.10.0 =head1 Notice XXX Any important notices here =head1 Incompatible Changes =item Filehandles are blessed directly into C, as L is merely a wrapper around L. =head1 Core Enhancements XXX New core language features go here. Summarise user-visible core language enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go here, but most should go in the L section. =head2 Unicode version Perl is shipped with the latest Unicode version, 5.2, October 2009. See L for details about this release of Unicode. But, an installation can now fairly easily change Perl to operate on any Unicode release. Perl is shipped with the latest official release, but an installation can download and install any prior release from Unicode, and cause Perl to work with that (or even multiple releases). Instructions are in L. =head2 Unicode properties Perl can now handle every Unicode character property. A new pod, L, lists all available non-Unihan character properties. By default the Unihan properties and certain others (deprecated and Unicode internal-only ones) are not exposed. See below for more details on these; there is also a section in the pod listing them, and why they are not exposed. Perl now fully supports the Unicode compound-style of using C<=> and C<:> in writing regular expressions: C<\p{property=value}> and C<\p{property:value}> (both of which mean the same thing). Perl now supports fully the Unicode loose matching rules for text between the braces in C<\p{...}> constructs. In addition, Perl also allows underscores between digits of numbers. All the Unicode-defined synonyms for properties and property values are now accepted. C, which matches a Unicode logical character, has been expanded to work better with various Asian languages. It now is defined as an C. (See L). One change due to this is that C<\X> will match the whole sequence C>. Another change is that C<\X> will match an isolated mark. Marks generally come after a base character, but it is possible in Unicode to have them in isolation, and C<\X> will now handle that case. Otherwise, this change should be transparent for the non-affected languages. C<\p{...}> matches using the Canonical_Combining_Class property were completely broken in previous Perls. This is now fixed. In previous Perls, the Unicode Decomposition_Type=Compat property and a Perl extension had the same name, which led to neither matching all the correct values (with more than 100 mistakes in one, and several thousand in the other). The Perl extension has now been renamed to be Decomposition_Type=Noncanonical (short: dt=noncanon). It has the same meaning as was previously intended, namely the union of all the non-canonical Decomposition types, with Unicode Compat being just one of those. C<\p{Uppercase}> and C<\p{Lowercase}> have been brought into line with the Unicode definitions. This means they each match a few more characters than previously. C<\p{Cntrl}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Control}>. This means it no longer will match Private Use (gc=co), Surrogates (gc=cs), nor Format (gc=cf) code points. The Format code points represent the biggest possible problem. All but 36 of them are either officially deprecated or strongly discouraged from being used. Of those 36, likely the most widely used are the soft hyphen (U+00AD), and BOM, ZWSP, ZWNJ, WJ, and similar, plus Bi-directional controls. C<\p{Alpha}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Alphabetic}>. The Perl definition included a number of things that aren't really alpha (all marks), while omitting many that were. The Unicode definition is clearly better, so we are switching to it. As a direct consequence, the definitions of C<\p{Alnum}> and C<\p{Word}> which depend on Alpha also change. C<\p{Word}> also now doesn't match certain characters it wasn't supposed to, such as fractions. C<\p{Print}> no longer matches the line control characters: tab, lf, cr, ff, vt, and nel. This brings it in line with the documentation. \p{Decomposition_Type=Canonical} now includes the Hangul syllables The Numeric type property has been extended to include the Unihan characters. There is a new Perl extension, the 'Present_In', or simply 'In' property. This is an extension of the Unicode Age property, but C<\p{In=5.0}> matches any code point whose usage has been determined as of Unicode version 5.0. The C<\p{Age=5.0}> only matches code points added in 5.0. A number of properties did not have the correct values for unassigned code points. This is now fixed. The affected properties are Bidi_Class, East_Asian_Width, Joining_Type, Decomposition_Type, Hangul_Syllable_Type, Numeric_Type, and Line_Break. The Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, ID_Continue, and ID_Start properties have been updated to their current definitions. Certain properties that are supposed to be Unicode internal-only were erroneously exposed by previous Perls. Use of these in regular expressions will now generate a deprecated warning message, if those warnings are enabled. The properties are: Other_Alphabetic, Other_Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, Other_Grapheme_Extend, Other_ID_Continue, Other_ID_Start, Other_Lowercase, Other_Math, and Other_Uppercase. An installation can now fairly easily change which Unicode properties Perl understands. As mentioned above, certain properties are by default turned off. These include all the Unihan properties (which should be accessible via the CPAN module Unicode::Unihan) and any deprecated or Unicode internal-only property that Perl has never exposed. The files in the To directory are now more clearly marked as being stable, directly usable by applications. New hash entries in them give the format of the normal entries which allows for easier machine parsing. Perl can generate files in this directory for any property, though most are suppressed. An installation can choose to change which get written. Instructions are in L. =head1 New Platforms XXX List any platforms that this version of perl compiles on, that previous versions did not. These will either be enabled by new files in the F directories, or new subdirectories and F files at the top level of the source tree. =head1 Modules and Pragmata XXX All changes to installed files in F, F, F and F go here, in a list ordered by distribution name. Minimally it should be the module version, but it's more useful to the end user to give a paragraph's summary of the module's changes. In an ideal world, dual-life modules would have a F file that could be cribbed. =head2 New Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item C Add code and starting perldoc for warnings::fatal_enabled. This is an analog for warnings::enabled, except it tests whether the given category has been set fatal using "use warnings FATAL => foo". This is mostly for symmetry. Assumes that the fatal bit for a category will have an offset one higher than the regular bit for the category, because otherwise much rewriting of __chk would be required. XXX =back =head2 Pragmata Changes =over 4 =item Don't make C die on unknown legacy names So we can use C to avoid the new "qubit" behaviour, without worrying about perls that didn't have qubit support at all. :) NOTE: C> will be removed before 5.12.0. =back =head2 Updated Modules =over 4 =item C Updated CPANPLUS to cpan release 0.90 Bring up ExtUtils::MakeMaker to 6.56 - no functional changes from 6.55_03 Upgrade to threads 1.75 Import CPAN.pm 1.94_53 from CPAN Updated Module::Build to 0.35_15 Update Cwd / PathTools to 3.31 to get us a non-devel version number based on a chat with Steffen. No code changes. Updated to Pod::Simple 3.11 from CPAN [perl #71004] Update Archive::Extract to cpan version 0.36 XXX =item File::Find was not resolving paths of the form "/..////../" correctly. Fixed by adding a quantifier to the substitution parameter in contract_name(). =back =head1 Utility Changes XXX Changes to installed programs such as F and F go here. Most of these are built within the directories F and F. =over 4 =item F XXX Perlbug no longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent the message =back =head1 New Documentation XXX Changes which create B files in F go here. =over 4 =item L XXX =back =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F go here. Any changes to F should go in L. The Pod specification (L) has been updated to bring the specification in line with modern usage already supported by most Pod systems. A parameter string may now follow the format name in a "begin/end" region. Links to URIs with a text description are now allowed. The usage of C<< L<"section"> >> has been marked as deprecated. L has been documented in L as a means to get conditional loading of modules despite the implicit BEGIN block around C. =head1 Performance Enhancements XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There may well be none in a stable release. =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements XXX Changes to F, F, F, and analogous tools go here. =head2 Configuration improvements XXX =head2 Compilation improvements Make distclean work again XXX =head2 Testing improvements =over 4 =item It's now possible to override C and friends in F =back =head2 Platform Specific Changes =over 4 =item Win32 =over 4 =item * Always add a manifest resource to C to specify the settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this setting Windows will treat C as a legacy application and apply various heuristics like redirecting access to protected file system areas (like the "Program Files" folder) to the users "VirtualStore" instead of generating a proper "permission denied" error. For VC8 and VC9 this manifest setting is automatically generated by the compiler/linker (together with the binding information for their respective runtime libraries); for all other compilers we need to embed the manifest resource explicitly in the external resource file. This change also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls version 6.0 (themed controls introduced in Windows XP) via the dependency list in the assembly manifest. For VC8 and VC9 this is specified using the C linker commandline option instead. =back =item cygwin =over 4 =item Enable IPv6 support on cygwin 1.7 and newer =back =item OpenVMS =over 4 =item Make -UDEBUGGING the default on VMS for 5.12.0. Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying no in answer to the interactive question. =back =head1 Selected Bug Fixes XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here. Bug fixes in files in F and F are best summarised in L. =over 4 =item * Ensure that pp_qr returns a new regexp SV each time. Resolves RT #69852. Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled) regexp in the optree, use reg_temp_copy() to create a copy of it, and return a reference to that. This resolves issues about Regexp::DESTROY not being called in a timely fashion (the original bug tracked by RT #69852), as well as bugs related to blessing regexps, and of assigning to regexps, as described in correspondence added to the ticket. It transpires that we also need to undo the SvPVX() sharing when ithreads cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL, instead of a cloned copy of the mother_re. This change might fix bugs with regexps and threads in certain other situations, but as yet neither tests nor bug reports have indicated any problems, so it might not actually be an edge case that it's possible to reach. =item * Several compilation errors and segfaults when perl was built with C<-Dmad> were fixed. =item * Fixes for lexer API changes in 5.11.2 which broke NYTProf's savesrc option. =back =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C code go here. =over 4 =item C Make split warn in void context XXX =back =head1 Changed Internals XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C code go here. =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 New Tests XXX Changes which create B files in F go here. Changes to existing files in F aren't worth summarising, although the bugs that they represent may be. =over 4 =item F XXX =back =head1 Known Problems XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any tests that had to be Ced for the release would be noted here, unless they were specific to a particular platform (see below). This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from either 5.11.3 or 5.11.3. =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Deprecations XXX Add any new known deprecations here. The following items are now deprecated. =over 4 =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated Using C to jump from an outer scope into an inner scope is now deprecated. This rare use case was causing problems in the implementation of scopes. =back =head1 Platform Specific Notes XXX Any changes specific to a particular platform. VMS and Win32 are the usual stars here. It's probably best to group changes under the same section layout as the main perldelta =head1 Obituary XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary here. =head1 Acknowledgements XXX The list of people to thank goes here. =head1 Reporting Bugs If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page. If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team. If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN. =head1 SEE ALSO The F file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. The F file for how to build Perl. The F file for general stuff. The F and F files for copyright information. =cut All changes through commit b4178430270dbe109e7609d0b50d6d54bf9e95d8 One "triage" pass done. A second triage pass is still needed to remove unimportant changes commit 9307c420fad2f6f5bd314f9ed66dd53288703e09 Author: Jan Dubois Date: Thu Dec 17 18:28:16 2009 -0800 Export PL_curinterp symbol for MULTIPLICITY without USE_ITHREADS This is necessary for XS extensions that define PERL_CORE. In that situation PERL_GET_CONTEXT will resolve to PL_curinterp, which is normally not exported (extensions call Perl_Gcurinterp_ptr() to get a pointer to PL_curinterp instead). With USE_ITHREADS defined PERL_GET_CONTEXT will expand to Perl_get_context() even inside the core because the context needs to be fetched from threadlocal storage. commit 8703a9a4fd75723318bc4ba1afc42a215806f2d1 Correct some #ifdef USE_ITHREADS / USE_MULTI Author: Jan Dubois Date: Wed Dec 16 15:42:19 2009 -0800 -t should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY The Microsoft C version of isatty() returns TRUE for all character mode devices, including the /dev/null style "nul" device and printers like "lpt1". The included test has only been tested on Windows and Linux; the device names for OS/2 and VMS are just best guesses... commit 0f907b96d618c97cd2e020841a70ae037954a616 [perl #70171] 5.10.0 -> 5.10.1 Regression in fafafbaf70 (Big slowdown in 5.10 @_ parameter passing) commit 2ab54efd6265713df5cd4bd0927024245675c1c2 fix bug 67156: overload: nomethod(..., '!') return value inverted commit 412147f664b7f5805591ad996d7e5a9e70b3d80f [perl #71204] diagnostics.pm suppresses 'Use of uninitialized value in range (or flip)' warning commit 69dc4b30f4725ad5f212d45d3c856ac1caaacf17 Author: Father Chrysostomos Date: Mon Dec 14 12:19:35 2009 +0100 [perl #70764] $' fails to initialized for pre-compiled regular expression matches The match vars are associated with the regexp that last matched successfully. In the case of $str =~ $qr or /$qr/, since the $qr could be used in multiple scopes that need their own sets of match vars, the $qr is cloned by Perl_reg_temp_copy as of change 30677/28d8d7f. This happens in pp_regcomp before pp_match has stringified the LHS, hence the bug. In short, /$gror/ is not equivalent to ($which = !$which) ? /$gror/ : /$gror/, which is weird. Author: Reini Urban Date: Sun Dec 13 08:06:43 2009 +0100 Eliminate OP_SETSTATE from cop.h header It had been added with change 3728 to track linenumbers in optimized else, disabled by change 4309, and removed with change 33072. Bump copyright, latest change was "Fix MULTICALL in List-Util" 2009-03-07 with commit 1bbbfc50 Fix for [perl #70910] wrong line number in syntax error message Document config_args limitations reported in [perl #70912] proper error on "grep $x (1,2,3)". Solves [perl #37314] commit 8a27a13e89107aaf68c0748b68ee71fbd86d774b [perl #71076] sort with active sub (5.10 regression) One of the tests in sort.t causes a bus error (or sometimes ‘Undefined subroutine called’) if run multiple times. This is because sort decreases the refcount of an active sub used as a comparison routine. commit 69c3dccf5322a59cb855347c04712ba11b65328f Fix [perl #71078] Smart match against @_ gives false negatives @_ can contain NULLs for undefined elements [perl #71000] Wrong variable name in warning ; Add a new warning "Missing argument in %s" preserve readonly flag when saving and restoring magic flags commit c9930541bfa04399c3b648e83c9b750cee1154fb [perl #70802] -i'*' refuses to work commit adab996997d7ef1b54d382f5ab4304f438cd1dd0 Cleanup all scopes before exiting a pseudo-forked process. perl_destruct() contains an assertion that the scope stack is empty. The remaining scopes are due to fork() being called from within a BEGIN block. =item * commit 576b33a19ccaf98d4dfe201d529c55c3747f0cb6 [rt.cpan.org #51574] Safe.pm sort {} bug accessing $a and $b with -Dusethreads commit ee6ba15dedda3e88eb66891eaf387c00a4c0a2fb Fix -DPERL_NO_UTF16_FILTER commit dfd167e94af611f6248e804cb228b35ca4123bd6 Handle $@ being assigned a read-only value (without error or busting the stack). Discovered whilst investigating RT #70862. commit f5fa9033b8c1fdcbd7710850b3b0380d6b937853 Fix RT #70862 by converting ERRSV to GvSVn() to ensure a non-NULL GvSV(). commit ff868e665bf85a829dc47bfa1243b26d4367cacd Add error codes for getaddrinfo() and getnameinfo() commit 61fc5122f0d8a509834282b8ecb3252d2e4c9f5d Make unicode semantics the default ***************** commit 021f53de09926928546378b3552f9240c9241dde Author: Gerard Goossen Date: Mon Nov 16 13:58:24 2009 +0100 Force OP_REQUIRE to scalar context at the end of ck_require and don't let it become void context. Fixes problem with require not always being in scalar context. commit 6a0e50422a84b53e998825128c56791913cd03aa Author: Craig A. Berry Date: Sat Nov 21 11:17:38 2009 -0600