-New things
-----------
- The -w switch is much more informative.
+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.
- References. See t/op/ref.t for examples. All entities in Perl 5 are
- reference counted so that it knows when each item should be destroyed.
-
- Objects. See t/op/ref.t for examples.
-
- => is now a synonym for comma. This is useful as documentation for
- arguments that come in pairs, such as initializers for associative arrays,
- or named arguments to a subroutine.
-
- All functions have been turned into list operators or unary operators,
- meaning the parens are optional. Even subroutines may be called as
- list operators if they've already been declared.
-
- More embeddible. See main.c and embed_h.SH. Multiple interpreters
- in the same process are supported (though not with interleaved
- execution yet).
-
- The interpreter is now flattened out. Compare Perl 4's eval.c with
- the perl 5's pp.c. Compare Perl 4's 900 line interpreter loop in cmd.c
- with Perl 5's 1 line interpreter loop in run.c. Eventually we'll make
- everything non-blocking so we can interface nicely with a scheduler.
-
- eval is now treated more like a subroutine call. Among other things,
- this means you can return from it.
-
- Format value lists may be spread over multiple lines by enclosing in
- curlies.
-
- You may now define BEGIN and END subroutines for each package. The BEGIN
- subroutine executes the moment it's parsed. The END subroutine executes
- just before exiting.
-
- Flags on the #! line are interpreted even if the script wasn't
- executed directly. (And even if the script was located by "perl -x"!)
-
- The ?: operator is now legal as an lvalue.
-
- List context now propagates to the right side of && and ||, as well
- as the 2nd and 3rd arguments to ?:.
-
- The "defined" function can now take a general expression.
-
- Lexical scoping available via "my". eval can see the current lexical
- variables.
-
- Saying "package;" requires explicit package name on global symbols.
-
- The preferred package delimiter is now :: rather than '.
-
- tie/untie are now preferred to dbmopen/dbmclose. Multiple DBM
- implementations are allowed in the same executable, so you can
- write scripts to interchange data among different formats.
-
- New "and" and "or" operators work just like && and || but with
- a precedence lower than comma, so they work better with list operators.
-
- New functions include: abs(), chr(), uc(), ucfirst(), lc(), lcfirst()
-
- require with a bare word now does an immediate require at compile time.
- So "require POSIX" is equivalent to "BEGIN { require 'POSIX.pm' }".
-
- require with a number checks to see that the version of Perl that is
- currently running is at least that number.
-
- Dynamic loading of external modules is now supported.
-
- There is a new quote form qw//, which is equivalent to split(' ', q//).
-
- Assignment of a reference to a glob value now just replaces the
- single element of the glob corresponding to the reference type:
- *foo = \$bar, *foo = \&bletch;
-
- Filehandle methods are now supported:
- output_autoflush STDOUT 1;
-
- There is now an "English" module that provides human readable translations
- for cryptic variable names.
-
- Autoload stubs can now call the replacement subroutine with goto &realsub.
-
- Subroutines can be defined lazily in any package by declaring an AUTOLOAD
- routine, which will be called if a non-existent subroutine is called in
- that package.
-
-Incompatibilities
------------------
- @ now always interpolates an array in double-quotish strings. Some programs
- may now need to use backslash to protect any @ that shouldn't interpolate.
-
- s'$lhs'$rhs' now does no interpolation on either side. It used to
- interplolate $lhs but not $rhs.
-
- The second and third arguments of splice are now evaluated in scalar
- context (like the book says) rather than list context.
-
- Saying "shift @foo + 20" is now a semantic error because of precedence.
-
- "open FOO || die" is now incorrect. You need parens around the filehandle.
-
- The elements of argument lists for formats are now evaluated in list
- context. This means you can interpolate list values now.
-
- You can't do a goto into a block that is optimized away. Darn.
-
- It is no longer syntactically legal to use whitespace as the name
- of a variable.
-
- Some error messages will be different.
-
- The caller function now returns a false value in a scalar context if there
- is no caller. This lets library files determine if they're being required.
-
- m//g now attaches its state to the searched string rather than the
- regular expression.
-
- "reverse" is no longer allowed as the name of a sort subroutine.
-
- taintperl is no longer a separate executable. There is now a -T
- switch to turn on tainting when it isn't turned on automatically.
-
- Symbols starting with _ are no longer forced into package main, except
- for $_ itself (and @_, etc.).
-
- Double-quoted strings may no longer end with an unescaped $ or @.
-
- Negative array subscripts now count from the end of the array.
-
- The comma operator in a scalar context is now guaranteed to give a
- scalar context to its arguments.
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff