=head1 NAME
-perldelta - what is new for perl v5.9.4
+perl594delta - what is new for perl v5.9.4
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head2 MAD
MAD, which stands for I<Misc Attribute Decoration>, is a
-still-in-development work leading to a Perl 5 to Perl 6 convertor. To
+still-in-development work leading to a Perl 5 to Perl 6 converter. To
enable it, it's necessary to pass the argument C<-Dmad> to Configure. The
obtained perl isn't binary compatible with a regular perl 5.9.4, and has
space and speed penalties; moreover not all regression tests still pass
with it. (Larry Wall, Nicholas Clark)
-=head1 Modules and Pragmata
+=head1 Modules and Pragmas
=over 4
C<Hash::Util::FieldHash>, by Anno Siegel, has been added. This module
provides support for I<field hashes>: hashes that maintain an association
of a reference with a value, in a thread-safe garbage-collected way.
+Such hashes are useful to implement inside-out objects.
=item *
C<config_data> is a new utility that comes with C<Module::Build>. It
provides a command-line interface to the configuration of Perl modules
that use Module::Build's framework of configurability (that is,
-C<*::ConfigData> modules, that contain local configuration information for
+C<*::ConfigData> modules that contain local configuration information for
their parent modules.)
=head1 Documentation
=over 4
-=item Engine de-recursiveised
+=item Engine de-recursivised
The regular expression engine is no longer recursive, meaning that
patterns that used to overflow the stack will either die with useful
=back
+=head2 Sloppy stat on Windows
+
+On Windows, perl's stat() function normally opens the file to determine
+the link count and update attributes that may have been changed through
+hard links. Setting ${^WIN32_SLOPPY_STAT} to a true value speeds up
+stat() by not performing this operation. (Jan Dubois)
+
=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
=head2 Relocatable installations
Russ Allbery's public domain implementation). Various places in the perl
interpreter now use them. (Steve Peters)
+=head2 Windows build improvements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Building XS extensions
+
+Support for building XS extension modules with the free MinGW compiler has
+been improved in the case where perl itself was built with the Microsoft
+VC++ compiler. (ActiveState)
+
+=item Support for 64-bit compiler
+
+Support for building perl with Microsoft's 64-bit compiler has been
+improved. (ActiveState)
+
+=back
+
=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
=head2 PERL5SHELL and tainting
-On Windows, PERL5SHELL is now checked for taintedness. (Rafael
-Garcia-Suarez)
+On Windows, the PERL5SHELL environment variable is now checked for
+taintedness. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 Using *FILE{IO}
A few bugs related to UTF-8 handling with objects that have
stringification overloaded have been fixed. (Nicholas Clark)
+=head2 eval memory leaks fixed
+
+Traditionally, C<eval 'syntax error'> has leaked badly. Many (but not all)
+of these leaks have now been eliminated or reduced. (Dave Mitchell)
+
+=head2 Random device on Windows
+
+In previous versions, perl would read the file F</dev/urandom> if it
+existed when seeding its random number generator. That file is unlikely
+to exist on Windows, and if it did would probably not contain appropriate
+data, so perl no longer tries to read it on Windows. (Alex Davies)
+
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
=over 4
=head1 Changed Internals
A new file, F<mathoms.c>, contains functions that aren't used anymore in
-the perl core, but that remain around because modules out there might
+the perl core, but remain around because modules out there might
still use them. They come from a factorization effort: for example, many
PP functions are now shared for several ops.
Bytecode tests fail under several platforms. We are considering removing
support for byteloader and compiler before the 5.10.0 release.
-=head2 Platform-specific Problems
-
-The test F<ext/Socket/t/socketpair.t> crashes after completing all tests
-successfully when built with USE_ITHREADS and PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS on Win32.
-
=head1 Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles