-New regexp routines derived from Henry Spencer's.
- Support for /(foo|bar)/.
- Support for /(foo)*/ and /(foo)+/.
- \s for whitespace, \S nonwhitespace
- \d for digit, \D nondigit
+Please note: This file provides a summary of significant changes
+between versions and sub-versions of Perl, not necessarily a complete
+list of each modification. If you'd like more detailed information,
+please consult the comments in the patches on which the relevant
+release of Perl is based. (Patches can be found on any CPAN
+site, in the .../src/5.0 directory for full version releases,
+or in the .../src/5/0/unsupported directory for sub-version
+releases.)
+
+
+ ---------------
+ CAST AND CREW
+ ---------------
+
+To give due honor to those who have made Perl what is is today,
+here are some of the more common names in the Changes file, and their
+current addresses (as of March 1997):
+
+ Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>
+ Kenneth Albanowski <kjahds@kjahds.com>
+ Graham Barr <gbarr@ti.com>
+ Spider Boardman <spider@orb.nashua.nh.us>
+ Tom Christiansen <tchrist@perl.com>
+ Hallvard B Furuseth <h.b.furuseth@usit.uio.no>
+ M. J. T. Guy <mjtg@cus.cam.ac.uk>
+ Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@engin.umich.edu>
+ Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>
+ Nick Ing-Simmons <nik@tiuk.ti.com>
+ Andreas Koenig <a.koenig@mind.de>
+ Doug MacEachern <dougm@opengroup.org>
+ Paul Marquess <pmarquess@bfsec.bt.co.uk>
+ Hans Mulder <hansm@euronet.nl>
+ Jeff Okamoto <okamoto@hpcc123.corp.hp.com>
+ Ulrich Pfeifer <pfeifer@charly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
+ Tom Phoenix <rootbeer@teleport.com>
+ Norbert Pueschel <pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de>
+ Dean Roehrich <roehrich@cray.com>
+ Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>
+ Larry W. Virden <lvirden@cas.org>
+ Ilya Zakharevich <ilya@math.ohio-state.edu>
+
+And the Keepers of the Patch Pumpkin:
+
+ Charles Bailey <bailey@hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu>
+ Tim Bunce <Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>
+ Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>
+ Chip Salzenberg <chip@perl.com>
+ Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk>
+
+And, of course, the Author of Perl:
+
+ Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>
+
+----------------
+Version 5.004_64 Developer release working toward 5.005
+----------------
+
+[Put changes here. Should we go back and put in changes for
+_51 onwards?]
+
+----------------
+Version 5.004_50 First developer release towards 5.005
+----------------
+
+Maintenance of the 5.004 version of perl continues with the 5.004_xx
+series, where 'xx' is <= 49. Development of the next version, 5.005,
+starts with 5.004_50.
-Local variables in blocks, subroutines and evals.
-
-Recursive subroutine calls are now supported.
-
-Array values may now be interpolated into lists:
- unlink 'foo', 'bar', @trashcan, 'tmp';
-
-File globbing via <*.foo>.
-
-Use of <> in array contexts returns the whole file or glob list:
- unlink <*.foo>;
-
-New iterator for normal arrays, foreach, that allows both read and write:
- foreach $elem ($array) {
- $elem =~ s/foo/bar/;
- }
-
-Ability to open pipe to a forked off script for secure pipes in setuid scripts.
-
-File inclusion via
- do 'foo.pl';
-
-More file tests, including -t to see if, for instance, stdin is
-a terminal. File tests now behave in a more correct manner. You can do
-file tests on filehandles as well as filenames. The special filetests
--T and -B test a file to see if it's text or binary.
-
-An eof can now be used on each file of the <> input for such purposes
-as resetting the line numbers or appending to each file of an inplace edit.
-
-Assignments can now function as lvalues, so you can say things like
- ($HOST = $host) =~ tr/a-z/A-Z/;
- ($obj = $src) =~ s/\.c$/.o/;
-
-You can now do certain file operations with a variable which holds the name
-of a filehandle, e.g. open(++$incl,$includefilename); $foo = <$incl>;
-
-You can now a subroutine indirectly through a scalar variable:
- $which = 'xyz';
- do $which('foo'); # calls xyz
-
-Warnings are now available (with -w) on use of uninitialized variables and on
-identifiers that are mentioned only once, and on reference to various
-undefined things.
-
-The -S switch causes perl to search the PATH for the script so that you can say
- eval "exec /usr/bin/perl -S $0 $*"
- if $running_under_some_shell;
-
-Reset now resets arrays and associative arrays as well as string variables.
-
-Assigning off the end of an array now nulls out any intervening values.
-
-$#foo is now an lvalue. You can preallocate or truncate arrays, or recover
-values lost to prior truncation.
-
-$#foo is now indexed to $[ properly.
-
-s/foo/bar/i optimization bug fixed.
-
-The $x = "...$x..."; bug is fixed.
-
-The @ary = (1); bug is now fixed. You can even say @ary = 1;
-
-$= now returns the correct value.
-
-Several of the larger files are now split into smaller pieces for easier
-compilation.
-
-Pattern matches evaluated in an array context now return ($1, $2...).
-
-There is now a wait operator.
-
-There is now a sort operator.
-
-The requirement of parens around certain expressions when taking their value
-has been lifted. In particular, you can say
- $x = print "foo","bar";
- $x = unlink "foo","bar";
- chdir "foo" || die "Can't chdir to foo\n";
-
-The manual is now not lying when it says that perl is generally faster than
-sed. I hope.