=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release
-and the 5.8.0 release.
+This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and
+the 5.8.0 release.
Many of the bug fixes in 5.8.0 were already seen in the 5.6.1
maintenance release since the two releases were kept closely
-coordinated.
+coordinated (while 5.8.0 was still called 5.7.something).
-If you are upgrading from Perl 5.005_03, you might also want
-to read L<perl56delta>.
+Changes that were integrated into the 5.6.1 release are marked C<[561]>.
+Many of these changes have been further developed since 5.6.1 was released,
+those are marked C<[561+]>.
+
+You can see the list of changes in the 5.6.1 release (both from the
+5.005_03 release and the 5.6.0 release) by reading L<perl561delta>.
=head1 Highlights In 5.8.0
=item *
-New Thread Implementation
+New IO Implementation
=item *
-Many New Modules
+New Thread Implementation
=item *
=item *
+Many New Modules
+
+=item *
+
More Extensive Regression Testing
=back
(at the source code level) for the stdio interface.
Depending on your platform, there are also other reasons why
-we decided to break binary compatibility, please read on.
+we decided to break binary compatibility, please read on.
=head2 64-bit platforms and malloc
dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This
change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled
modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other
-applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface.
+applications like mod_perl which are using the AIX native interface.
-=head2 Attributes for C<my> variables now handled at run-time.
+=head2 Attributes for C<my> variables now handled at run-time
The C<my EXPR : ATTRS> syntax now applies variable attributes at
run-time. (Subroutine and C<our> variables still get attributes applied
with external libraries or existing data. G_FLOAT is still available as
a configuration option. The default on VAX (D_FLOAT) has not changed.
+=head2 New Unicode Semantics (no more C<use utf8>, almost)
+
+Previously in Perl 5.6 to use Unicode one would say "use utf8" and
+then the operations (like string concatenation) were Unicode-aware
+in that lexical scope.
+
+This was found to be an inconvenient interface, and in Perl 5.8 the
+Unicode model has completely changed: now the "Unicodeness" is bound
+to the data itself, and for most of the time "use utf8" is not needed
+at all. The only remaining use of "use utf8" is when the Perl script
+itself has been written in the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode. (UTF-8 has
+not been made the default since there are many Perl scripts out there
+that are using various national eight-bit character sets, which would
+be illegal in UTF-8.)
+
+See L<perluniintro> for the explanation of the current model,
+and L<utf8> for the current use of the utf8 pragma.
+
=head2 New Unicode Properties
Unicode I<scripts> are now supported. Scripts are similar to (and superior
punctuation or digits (since they are not solely C<Latin>).
A number of other properties are now supported, including C<\p{L&}>,
-C<\p{Any}> C<\p{Assigned}>, C<\p{Unassigned}>, C<\p{Blank}> and
-C<\p{SpacePerl}> (along with their C<\P{...}> versions, of course).
+C<\p{Any}> C<\p{Assigned}>, C<\p{Unassigned}>, C<\p{Blank}> [561] and
+C<\p{SpacePerl}> [561] (along with their C<\P{...}> versions, of course).
See L<perlunicode> for details, and more additions.
The C<In> or C<Is> prefix to names used with the C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>
platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used
to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.)
+=head2 glob() now returns filenames in alphabetical order
+
+The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
+alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before
+in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
+natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.) [561]
+
=head2 Deprecations
=over 4
=item *
-The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
-alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before
-in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
-natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
-
-=item *
-
-Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob()
-caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed.
-
-=item *
-
-Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
-depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
-algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
-More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
-
-=item *
-
-lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
-In future releases this may become a fatal error.
+The *glob{FILEHANDLE} is deprecated, use *glob{IO} instead.
=item *
=item *
+In future releases, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become completely
+unsupported. Since PerlIO is a drop-in replacement for stdio at the
+source code level, this shouldn't be that drastic a change.
+
+=item *
+
+Previous versions of perl and some readings of some sections of Camel
+III implied that the C<:raw> "discipline" was the inverse of C<:crlf>.
+Turning off "clrfness" is no longer enough to make a stream truly
+binary. So the PerlIO C<:raw> layer (or "discipline", to use the Camel
+book's older terminology) is now formally defined as being equivalent
+to binmode(FH) - which is in turn defined as doing whatever is
+necessary to pass each byte as-is without any translation. In
+particular binmode(FH) - and hence C<:raw> - will now turn off both
+CRLF and UTF-8 translation and remove other layers (e.g. :encoding())
+which would modify byte stream.
+
+=item *
+
The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to
-be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>).
+be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>). If your existing
+programs depends on the underlying implementation, consider using
+L<Class::PseudoHash> from CPAN.
=item *
The 5.005 threads model (module C<Thread>) is deprecated and expected
to be removed in Perl 5.10. Multithreaded code should be migrated to
-the new ithreads model (see L<threads> and L<threads::shared>).
+the new ithreads model (see L<threads>, L<threads::shared> and
+L<perlthrtut>).
=item *
The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return;
the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar
-functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
+functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...). [561]
=item *
=item *
+The C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> operations now produce warnings on
+tainted data and in some future release they will produce fatal errors.
+
+=item *
+
The existing behaviour when localising tied arrays and hashes is wrong,
and will be changed in a future release, so do not rely on the existing
behaviour. See L<"Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken">.
=head1 Core Enhancements
+=head2 Unicode Overhaul
+
+Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0
+(or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in
+regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now,
+Unicode in I/O should work now. See L<perluniintro> for introduction
+and L<perlunicode> for details.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
+to Unicode 3.2.0. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/ .
+[561+] (5.6.1 has UCD 3.0.1.)
+
+=item *
+
+For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
+almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
+the F<lib/unicore> subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space
+considerations, is the Unihan database.
+
+=item *
+
+The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like
+C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space
+character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode
+equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical
+tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.)
+
+See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional
+information on changes with Unicode properties.
+
+=back
+
=head2 PerlIO is Now The Default
=over 4
=item *
+If your platform supports fork(), you can use the list form of C<open>
+for pipes. For example:
+
+ open KID_PS, "-|", "ps", "aux" or die $!;
+
+forks the ps(1) command (without spawning a shell, as there are more
+than three arguments to open()), and reads its standard output via the
+C<KID_PS> filehandle. See L<perlipc>.
+
+=item *
+
File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
(UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information.
-In future releases this naming may change.
+In future releases this naming may change. See L<perluniintro>
+for more information about UTF-8.
+
+=item *
+
+If your environment variables (LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG, LANGUAGE) look
+like you want to use UTF-8 (any of the the variables match C</utf-?8/i>),
+your STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR handles and the default open layer
+(see L<open>) are marked as UTF-8. (This feature, like other new
+features that combine Unicode and I/O, work only if you are using
+PerlIO, but that's the default.)
+
+Note that after this Perl really does assume that everything is UTF-8:
+for example if some input handle is not, Perl will probably very soon
+complain about the input data like this "Malformed UTF-8 ..." since
+any old eight-bit data is not legal UTF-8.
+
+Note for code authors: if you want to enable your users to use UTF-8
+as their default encoding but in your code still have eight-bit I/O streams
+(such as images or zip files), you need to explicitly open() or binmode()
+with C<:bytes> (see L<perlfunc/open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>), or you
+can just use C<binmode(FH)> (nice for pre-5.8.0 backward compatibility).
=item *
That is a literal undef, not an undefined value.
-=item *
-
-The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX):
-
- open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd')
-
-creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
-the child process.
+=back
-=item *
+=head2 ithreads
-If your locale environment variables (LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG)
-contain the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching),
-the default encoding of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of
-B<any subsequent file open>, is UTF-8.
+The new interpreter threads ("ithreads" for short) implementation of
+multithreading, by Arthur Bergman, replaces the old "5.005 threads"
+implementation. In the ithreads model any data sharing between
+threads must be explicit, as opposed to the model where data sharing
+was implicit. See L<threads> and L<threads::shared>, and
+L<perlthrtut>.
-=back
+As a part of the ithreads implementation Perl will also use
+any necessary and detectable reentrant libc interfaces.
=head2 Restricted Hashes
but the signal may take more time to get heard. Note that breaking
out from potentially blocking operations should still work, though.
-=head2 Unicode Overhaul
-
-Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0
-(or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in
-regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now,
-Unicode in I/O should work now. See L<perluniintro> for introduction
-and L<perlunicode> for details.
-
-=over 4
-
-=item *
-
-The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
-to Unicode 3.2.0. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/ .
-
-=item *
-
-For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
-almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
-the F<lib/unicore> subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space
-considerations, is the Unihan database.
-
-=item *
-
-The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like
-C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space
-character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode
-equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical
-tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.)
-
-See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional
-information on changes with Unicode properties.
-
-=back
-
=head2 Understanding of Numbers
In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's
arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
in its math.)
+=head2 Arrays now always interpolate into double-quoted strings [561]
+
+In double-quoted strings, arrays now interpolate, no matter what. The
+behavior in earlier versions of perl 5 was that arrays would interpolate
+into strings if the array had been mentioned before the string was
+compiled, and otherwise Perl would raise a fatal compile-time error.
+In versions 5.000 through 5.003, the error was
+
+ Literal @example now requires backslash
+
+In versions 5.004_01 through 5.6.0, the error was
+
+ In string, @example now must be written as \@example
+
+The idea here was to get people into the habit of writing
+C<"fred\@example.com"> when they wanted a literal C<@> sign, just as
+they have always written C<"Give me back my \$5"> when they wanted a
+literal C<$> sign.
+
+Starting with 5.6.1, when Perl now sees an C<@> sign in a
+double-quoted string, it I<always> attempts to interpolate an array,
+regardless of whether or not the array has been used or declared
+already. The fatal error has been downgraded to an optional warning:
+
+ Possible unintended interpolation of @example in string
+
+This warns you that C<"fred@example.com"> is going to turn into
+C<fred.com> if you don't backslash the C<@>.
+See http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/at-error.html for more details
+about the history here.
+
=head2 Miscellaneous Changes
=over 4
=item *
+C<do> followed by a bareword now ensures that this bareword isn't
+a keyword (to avoid a bug where C<do q(foo.pl)> tried to call a
+subroutine called C<q>). This means that for example instead of
+C<do format()> you must write C<do &format()>.
+
+=item *
+
The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning
C<dump() better written as CORE::dump()>,
-meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin
+meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin
dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined
C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>.
(The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly
=item *
END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block.
-Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
+Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See
L<perlembed>.
=item *
-Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
-However, the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental.
+Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
+depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
+algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
+More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
+
+=item *
+
+lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
+In future releases this may become a fatal error.
+
+=item *
+
+Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob()
+caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed. [561]
+
+=item *
+
+Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context. However,
+the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental. [561+]
=item *
=item *
-C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.
+C<no Module;> does not produce an error even if Module does not have an
+unimport() method. This parallels the behavior of C<use> vis-a-vis
+C<import>. [561]
=item *
=item *
+C<our> can now have an experimental optional attribute C<unique> that
+affects how global variables are shared among multiple interpreters,
+see L<perlfunc/our>.
+
+=item *
+
The following builtin functions are now overridable: each(), keys(),
-pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift().
+pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift(). [561]
=item *
-C<pack() / unpack()> now can group template letters with C<()> and then
+C<pack() / unpack()> can now group template letters with C<()> and then
apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups.
=item *
=item *
-my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works.
+my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works. [561]
=item *
=item *
-prototype(\&) is now available.
+The (\&) prototype now works properly. [561]
=item *
In other taint news, the C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> have now been
considered too risky (think C<exec @ARGV>: it can start any program
-with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning.
-You should carefully launder the arguments to guarantee their
-validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will become fatal
-errors so consider starting laundering now.
+with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning under
+lexical warnings. You should carefully launder the arguments to
+guarantee their validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will
+become fatal errors so consider starting laundering now.
=item *
=item *
untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
-for details.
+for details. [561]
=item *
Use of the C</c> match modifier without an accompanying C</g> modifier
elicits a new warning: C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g>.
-Use of C</c> in substitutions, even with C</g>, elicits
-C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///>.
+Use of C</c> in substitutions, even with C</g>, elicits
+C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///>.
Use of C</g> with C<split> elicits C<Use of /g modifier is meaningless
in split>.
+=item *
+
+Support for the C<CLONE> special subroutine had been added.
+With ithreads, when a new thread is created, all Perl data is cloned,
+however non-Perl data cannot be cloned automatically. In C<CLONE> you
+can do whatever you need to do, like for example handle the cloning of
+non-Perl data, if necessary. C<CLONE> will be executed once for every
+package that has it defined or inherited. It will be called in the
+context of the new thread, so all modifications are made in the new area.
+
+See L<perlmod>
+
=back
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
=item *
-C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers.
+C<Attribute::Handlers>, originally by Damian Conway and now maintained
+by Arthur Bergman, allows a class to define attribute handlers.
package MyPack;
use Attribute::Handlers;
C<B::Concise>, by Stephen McCamant, is a new compiler backend for
walking the Perl syntax tree, printing concise info about ops.
-The output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>.
+The output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>. [561+]
=item *
NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not
included since its further use is discouraged.
+See also L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>.
+
=item *
C<Encode>, originally by Nick Ing-Simmons and now maintained by Dan
=item *
-C<File::Temp>, by Tim Jenness, allows one to create temporary files and
-directories in an easy, portable, and secure way. See L<File::Temp>.
+C<File::Temp>, by Tim Jenness, allows one to create temporary files
+and directories in an easy, portable, and secure way. See L<File::Temp>.
+[561+]
=item *
print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A"
-MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods
-necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in :
-
- use MIME::QuotedPrint;
- open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
-
-See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>.
+See also L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>.
=item *
=item *
-C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O disciplines
+C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O layers
for open().
=item *
-C<PerlIO::Scalar>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides the implementation
+C<PerlIO::scalar>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides the implementation
of IO to "in memory" Perl scalars as discussed above. It also serves
as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future possibilities
-include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. See L<PerlIO::Scalar>.
+include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. See L<PerlIO::scalar>.
=item *
-C<PerlIO::Via>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps
+C<PerlIO::via>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps
PerlIO layer functionality provided by a class (typically implemented
-in perl code).
+in Perl code).
- use MIME::QuotedPrint;
- open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path);
+=item *
+
+C<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>, by Elizabeth Mattijsen, is an example
+of a C<PerlIO::via> class:
+
+ use PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint;
+ open($fh,">:via(QuotedPrint)",$path);
-This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh>
-to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>.
+This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh> to
+Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::via> and L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>.
=item *
C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added.
It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text.
-See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>.
+See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>. [561+]
=item *
C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the
storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and
compact binary format. Because in effect Storable does serialisation
-of Perl data structues, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical
+of Perl data structures, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical
datastructures. Storable was originally created by Raphael Manfredi,
but it is now maintained by Abhijit Menon-Sen. Storable has been
enhanced to understand the two new hash features, Unicode keys and
C<threads>, by Arthur Bergman, is an interface to interpreter threads.
Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in
Perl 5.6 but only available as an internal interface for extension
-writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>.
+writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>,
+L<threads::shared>, and L<perlthrtut>.
=item *
C<threads::shared>, by Arthur Bergman, allows data sharing for
-interpreter threads. In the ithreads model any data sharing between
-threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model
-where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>.
+interpreter threads. See L<threads::shared>.
=item *
=item *
+C<XS::APItest>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
+APIs. Currently only C<printf()> is tested: how to output various
+basic data types from XS.
+
+=item *
+
C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises
XS typemaps. Nothing gets installed, but the code is worth studying
for extension writers.
The following independently supported modules have been updated to the
newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp,
Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle
-(Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable,
+(Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX [561+], Pod::Parser, Storable,
Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap.
=item *
=item *
-B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost
-all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed).
-There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out.
+B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced by Robin Houston. It can
+now deparse almost all of the standard test suite (so that the tests
+still succeed). There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this
+out.
+
+=item *
+
+Carp now has better interface documentation, and the @CARP_NOT
+interface has been added to get optional control over where errors
+are reported independently of @ISA, by Ben Tilly.
=item *
=item *
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been significantly cleaned up and fixed.
+The enhanced version has also been backported to earlier releases
+of Perl and submitted to CPAN so that the earlier releases can
+enjoy the fixes.
+
+=item *
+
+The arguments of WriteMakefile() in Makefile.PL are now checked
+for sanity much more carefully than before. This may cause new
+warnings when modules are being installed. See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>
+for more details.
+
+=item *
+
ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
leads to better portability.
=item *
-Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the
-new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>).
+Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten by Nicholas Clark
+to use the new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>).
This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster.
=item *
-File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links.
+File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links. [561]
=item *
=item *
-File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
-prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
+File::Glob::glob() has been renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob()
+because the name clashes with the builtin glob(). The older
+name is still available for compatibility, but is deprecated. [561]
=item *
=item *
+IO::Socket::INET failed to open the specified port if the service name
+was not known. It now correctly uses the supplied port number as is. [561]
+
+=item *
+
IO::Socket::INET has support for the ReusePort option (if your
platform supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr.
For clarity, you may want to prefer ReuseAddr.
=item *
-Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite.
-They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various
-bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
+Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite by Tels.
+They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various bignum
+libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
=item *
=item *
-Net::Ping has been considerably enhanced: multihoming is now supported,
-Win32 functionality is better, there is now time measuring
-functionality (optionally high-resolution using Time::HiRes),
-and there is now "external" protocol which uses Net::Ping::External
-module which runs your external ping utility and parses the output.
-A version of Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
+Net::Ping has been considerably enhanced by Rob Brown: multihoming is
+now supported, Win32 functionality is better, there is now time
+measuring functionality (optionally high-resolution using
+Time::HiRes), and there is now "external" protocol which uses
+Net::Ping::External module which runs your external ping utility and
+parses the output. A version of Net::Ping::External is available in
+CPAN.
Note that some of the Net::Ping tests are disabled when running
under the Perl distribution since one cannot assume one or more
command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
(The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.)
B<Note that perlcc is still considered very experimental and
-unsupported.>
+unsupported.> [561]
=item *
=item *
-C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files.
+C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs
+files. [561]
=item *
perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library
functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core
-hackers.)
+hackers.) [561+]
=item *
-perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.
+perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial. [561+]
=item *
-perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms.
+perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC
+platforms. [561+]
=item *
=item *
-perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.
+perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module. [561+]
=item *
=item *
-perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.
+perlretut is a regular expression tutorial. [561+]
=item *
perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide.
-Yes, much quicker than perlretut.
+Yes, much quicker than perlretut. [561]
=item *
=item *
perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl
-distribution.
+distribution. [561+]
=back
as perlI<platform>:
perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000
- perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux
- perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix
+ perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlfreebsd perlhpux
+ perlhurd perlirix perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix
perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris
perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32
+These documents usually detail one or more of the following subjects:
+configuring, building, testing, installing, and sometimes also using
+Perl on the said platform.
+
Eastern Asian Perl users are now welcomed in their own languages:
README.jp (Japanese), README.ko (Korean), README.cn (simplified
Chinese) and README.tw (traditional Chinese), which are written in
map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates
is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for
-common scenarios.
+common scenarios. [561]
+
+=item *
+
+sort() is also fully reentrant, in the sense that the sort function
+can itself call sort(). This did not work reliably in previous
+releases. [561]
=item *
=item *
-Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively.
+Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively. [561]
=item *
Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due
-to obsolescence.
+to obsolescence. [561]
=item *
make all test
and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
+[561]
=item *
(C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the
Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>).
-But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
-thread models.
+B<Note that the 5.005 threads are unsupported and deprecated: if you
+have code written for the old threads you should migrate it to the
+new ithreads model.>
=item *
=item *
-The DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near
-osvers 4.5.2.
+The DYNIX/ptx platform (also known as dynixptx) is supported at or
+near osvers 4.5.2.
=item *
Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under
HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will
-need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux.
+need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux. [561]
=item *
-MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since
-perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl
-and MacPerl have been synchronised)
+Mac OS Classic is now supported in the mainstream source package
+(MacPerl has of course been available since perl 5.004 but now the
+source code bases of standard Perl and MacPerl have been synchronised)
+[561]
=item *
-MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+
+Mac OS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+
filesystems. (The case-insensitivity used to confuse the Perl build
process.)
=item *
-NCR MP-RAS is now supported.
+NCR MP-RAS is now supported. [561]
=item *
=item *
-NonStop-UX is now supported.
+NonStop-UX is now supported. [561]
=item *
=item *
Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package
-( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ) . All but one thread
-test worked, and that one failure was because of test results arriving
-in unexpected order.
+( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ). All thread tests
+of Perl now work, but not without adding some yield()s to the tests,
+so while pth (and other userlevel thread implementations) can be
+considered to be "working" with Perl ithreads, keep in mind the
+possible non-preemptability of the underlying thread implementation.
=item *
Stratus VOS is now supported using Perl's native build method
(Configure). This is the recommended method to build Perl on
VOS. The older methods, which build miniperl, are still
-available. See L<perlvos>.
+available. See L<perlvos>. [561+]
=item *
-The Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
+The Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported. [561]
=item *
z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) now has
support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default,
-however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure.
+however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure. [561]
=back
Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been
hunted down. Most importantly, anonymous subs used to leak quite
-a bit.
+a bit. [561]
=over 4
=item *
-caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was sometimes
-affected by this problem. In particular, caller() now returns a
-subroutine name of C<(unknown)> for subroutines that have been removed
-from the symbol table.
+caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was
+sometimes affected by this problem. In particular, caller() now
+returns a subroutine name of C<(unknown)> for subroutines that have
+been removed from the symbol table.
=item *
chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
-reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
+reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order. [561]
=item *
Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x,
-which needs them.
+which needs them. [561]
=item *
=item *
-The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
-
-=item *
-
Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
line number, C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, and all debugger output
-now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
+now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. [561]
+
+=item *
+
+The debugger (perl5db.pl) has been modified to present a more
+consistent commands interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was
+also added to test the changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
+
+See L<perldebug>.
+
+=item *
+
+The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum
+depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has
+been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a
+depth of at most I<N> levels.
+
+=item *
+
+The debugger can now show lexical variables if you have the CPAN
+module PadWalker installed.
+
+=item *
+
+The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
=item *
-Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of dl_error()
-when statically building extensions into perl. This has been corrected.
+Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of
+dl_error() when statically building extensions into perl.
+This has been corrected. [561]
=item *
=item *
UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke
-the Tk extension with 5.6.0.)
+the Tk extension with 5.6.0.) [561]
=item *
=item *
C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been
-corrected.
+corrected. [561]
=item *
warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller
-isn't using lexical warnings.
+isn't using lexical warnings. [561]
=item *
-Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works.
+Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works. [561]
=item *
=item *
Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to
-return 27406, instead of 27047).
+return 27406, instead of 27047). [561]
=item *
Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be
-more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.
+more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number. [561]
=item *
Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value
-properly in certain circumstances.
+properly in certain circumstances. [561]
=item *
=item *
-our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings.
+our() variables will not cause bogus "Variable will not stay shared"
+warnings. [561]
=item *
"our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks
resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables.
-The problem has been corrected.
+The problem has been corrected. [561]
=item *
=item *
The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments
-to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options.
+to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options. [561]
=item *
=item *
C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>: that is, as three
-characters, not four.
+characters, not four. [561]
=item *
pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier
-versions. This is now handled correctly.
+versions. This is now handled correctly. [561]
=item *
=item *
-Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.
+Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work. [561+]
=item *
sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
(they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments
-to be sorted are always provided list context.
+to be sorted are always provided list context. [561]
=item *
The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does
not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the
-behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation.
+behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation. [561]
=item *
=item *
The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds
-of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better.
+of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better. [561]
=item *
Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'>
-or via C<-Dr>) now looks better.
+or via C<-Dr>) now looks better. [561]
=item *
Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The
-bug has been fixed.
+bug has been fixed. [561]
=item *
Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This
-is now avoided.
+is now avoided. [561]
=item *
The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now
more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
-data lying around in them.
+data lying around in them. [561]
=item *
readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra
"" (blank line) at the end in certain situations. This has been
-corrected.
+corrected. [561]
=item *
Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described
in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works
-again now.
+again now. [561]
=item *
=item *
-All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional.
-
-=item *
-
$AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses
in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe.
=item *
Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings.
-This has been corrected.
+This has been corrected. [561]
=item *
=item *
Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their
-unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations.
+unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations. [561]
=item *
EPOC
-EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc.
+EPOC now better supported. See README.epoc. [561]
=item *
=item *
-Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL).
+Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL). [561]
=item *
=item *
-MacOS Classic
+Mac OS Classic
-Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should
-now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and
-the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing
-list for details.
+Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in Mac OS Classic should
+now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and the
+missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing list
+for details.
=item *
MPE/iX
-MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix.
+MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix. [561]
=item *
NetBSD/threads: try installing the GNU pth (should be in the
packages collection, or http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/),
-and Configure with -Duseithreads.
+and Configure with -Duseithreads.
=item *
OS/2
-Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL).
+Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL). [561]
=item *
Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either
during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime;
-now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
+now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
only 46 bit integers for speed.
=item *
VMS
+See L</"Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS"> and L</"IEEE-format Floating Point
+Default on OpenVMS Alpha"> for important changes not otherwise listed here.
+
chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY
(see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc.
The C<waitpid> emulation has been improved. The worst bug (now fixed)
was that a pid of -1 would cause a wildcard search of all processes on
-the system.
+the system.
POSIX-style signals are now emulated much better on VMS versions prior
to 7.0.
The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved
-functionality and better error handling.
+functionality and better error handling. [561]
File access tests now use current process privileges rather than the
user's default privileges, which could sometimes result in a mismatch
-between reported access and actual access.
+between reported access and actual access. This improvement is only
+available on VMS v6.0 and later.
-There is a new C<kill> implementation based on C<sys$sigprc> that allows
+There is a new C<kill> implementation based on C<sys$sigprc> that allows
older VMS systems (pre-7.0) to use C<kill> to send signals rather than
simply force exit. This implementation also allows later systems to
call C<kill> from within a signal handler.
=item *
-accept() no longer leaks memory.
+Signal handling now works better than it used to. It is now implemented
+using a Windows message loop, and is therefore less prone to random
+crashes.
=item *
-Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
-However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
-generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++).
+fork() emulation is now more robust, but still continues to have a few
+esoteric bugs and caveats. See L<perlfork> for details. [561+]
=item *
-Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
+A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN. [561]
=item *
-Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
+The following modules now work on Windows:
+
+ ExtUtils::Embed [561]
+ IO::Pipe
+ IO::Poll
+ Net::Ping
=item *
-New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.
+IO::File::new_tmpfile() is no longer limited to 32767 invocations
+per-process.
=item *
-Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
-processes.
+Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
=item *
-$ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
+Compiling perl using the 64-bit Platform SDK tools is now supported.
=item *
-fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues
-to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats.
+The Win32::SetChildShowWindow() builtin can be used to control the
+visibility of windows created by child processes. See L<Win32> for
+details.
=item *
-A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
+Non-blocking waits for child processes (or pseudo-processes) are
+supported via C<waitpid($pid, &POSIX::WNOHANG)>.
=item *
-Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
-Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed.
+The behavior of system() with multiple arguments has been rationalized.
+Each unquoted argument will be automatically quoted to protect whitespace,
+and any existing whitespace in the arguments will be preserved. This
+improves the portability of system(@args) by avoiding the need for
+Windows C<cmd> shell specific quoting in perl programs.
+
+Note that this means that some scripts that may have relied on earlier
+buggy behavior may no longer work correctly. For example,
+C<system("nmake /nologo", @args)> will now attempt to run the file
+C<nmake /nologo> and will fail when such a file isn't found.
+On the other hand, perl will now execute code such as
+C<system("c:/Program Files/MyApp/foo.exe", @args)> correctly.
=item *
-HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
+The perl header files no longer suppress common warnings from the
+Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. This means that additional warnings may
+now show up when compiling XS code.
=item *
-The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features
-enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution).
+Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
+However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
+generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). [561]
=item *
-Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
+Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
+[561]
=item *
-Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.
+Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
+processes. [561]
=item *
-Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
+New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. [561]
=item *
-%SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely
-unsupported under all configurations.
+Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
+Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. [561]
=item *
-Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
-concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
+The makefiles now default to the features enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl
+(a popular Win32 binary distribution). [561]
=item *
-C<< File::Spec->tmpdir() >> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
-(works better when perl is running as service).
+HTML files will now be installed in c:\perl\html instead of
+c:\perl\lib\pod\html
=item *
-Better UNC path handling under ithreads.
+REG_EXPAND_SZ keys are now allowed in registry settings used by perl. [561]
=item *
-wait(), waitpid(), and backticks now return the correct exit status
-under Windows 9x.
+Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. [561]
=item *
-Win64 compilation is now supported.
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses $ENV{LIB} to search for libraries. [561]
=item *
-winsock handle leak fixed.
+Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
+concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.) [561]
-=back
+=item *
-=back
+C<< File::Spec->tmpdir() >> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
+(works better when perl is running as service).
-=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
+=item *
-=over 4
+Better UNC path handling under ithreads. [561]
=item *
-The lexical warnings category "deprecated" is no longer a sub-category
+wait(), waitpid(), and backticks now return the correct exit status
+under Windows 9x. [561]
+
+=item *
+
+A socket handle leak in accept() has been fixed. [561]
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
+
+Please see L<perldiag> for more details.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Ambiguous range in the transliteration operator (like a-z-9) now
+gives a warning.
+
+=item *
+
+Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
+Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT [561] and -DR options to trace
+tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
+respectively.
+
+=item *
+
+The lexical warnings category "deprecated" is no longer a sub-category
of the "syntax" category. It is now a top-level category in its own
right.
=item *
+Unadorned dump() will now give a warning suggesting to
+use explicit CORE::dump() if that's what really is meant.
+
+=item *
+
+The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
+C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
+
+=item *
+
All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
easier to understand both because the error message now comes before
the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly
=item *
-The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings
-drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package,
-for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>.
+Various I/O (and socket) functions like binmode(), close(), and so
+forth now more consistently warn if they are used illogically either
+on a yet unopened or on an already closed filehandle (or socket).
=item *
-The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
-C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
+Using lstat() on a filehandle now gives a warning. (It's a non-sensical
+thing to do.)
=item *
-Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
-Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace
-tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
-respectively.
+The C<-M> and C<-m> options now warn if you didn't supply the module name.
=item *
-The debugger (perl5db.pl) has been modified to present a more
-consistent commands interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was
-also added to test the changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
+If you in C<use> specify a required minimum version, modules matching
+the name and but not defining a $VERSION will cause a fatal failure.
-See L<perldebug>.
+=item *
+
+Using negative offset for vec() in lvalue context is now a warnable offense.
=item *
-The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum
-depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has
-been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a
-depth of at most I<N> levels.
+Odd number of arguments to oveload::constant now elicits a warning.
=item *
-The debugger can now show lexical variables if you have the CPAN
-module PadWalker installed.
+Odd number of elements to in anonymous hash now elicits a warning.
+
+=item *
+
+The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings
+drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package,
+for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>.
+
+=item *
+
+Subroutine prototypes are now checked more carefully, you may
+get warnings for example if you have used non-prototype characters.
=item *
=item *
+pack C<P> format now demands an explicit size.
+
+=item *
+
+unpack C<w> now warns of unterminated compressed integers.
+
+=item *
+
+Warnings relating to the use of PerlIO have been added.
+
+=item *
+
Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to
the entire regex. You will get an optional warning if you try to do
-otherwise.
+otherwise.
+
+=item *
+
+Variable length lookbehind has not yet been implemented, trying to
+use it will tell that.
=item *
=item *
+Warnings relating to the use of the new restricted hashes feature
+have been added.
+
+=item *
+
+Self-ties of arrays and hashes are not supported and fatal errors
+will happen even at an attempt to do so.
+
+=item *
+
Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning.
This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed.
+=item *
+
+Using the /g modifier in split() is meaningless and will cause a warning.
+
+=item *
+
+Using splice() past the end of an array now causes a warning.
+
+=item *
+
+Malformed Unicode encodings (UTF-8 and UTF-16) cause a lot of warnings,
+ad doestrying to use UTF-16 surrogates (which are unimplemented).
+
+=item *
+
+Trying to use Unicode characters on an I/O stream without marking the
+stream's encoding (using open() or binmode()) will cause "Wide character"
+warnings.
+
+=item *
+
+Use of v-strings in use/require causes a (backward) portability warning.
+
+=item *
+
+Warnings relating to the use interpreter threads and their shared data
+have been added.
+
=back
=head1 Changed Internals
=item *
+PerlIO is now the default.
+
+=item *
+
perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the
internal API.
=back
-=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
+=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed [561]
(This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
+(5.7.0 came out before 5.6.1: the development branch 5.7 released
+earlier than the maintenance branch 5.6)
A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
=head1 New Tests
-Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> and F<ext>
-subsections. There are now about 65 000 individual tests (spread over
-about 700 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
-11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are of course
-introduced by the new modules, but still in general Perl is now more
-thoroughly tested.
+Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> and
+F<ext> subsections. There are now about 69 000 individual tests
+(spread over about 700 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1
+has about 11 700 tests, in 258 test scripts) The exact numbers depend
+on the platform and Perl configuration used. Many of the new tests
+are of course introduced by the new modules, but still in general Perl
+is now more thoroughly tested.
Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite
will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite
=head1 Known Problems
+=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Very Experimental
+
+The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be
+highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged.
+
+=head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
+
+ local %tied_array;
+
+doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored
+incorrectly. This will be changed in a future release, but we don't
+know yet what the new semantics will exactly be. In any case, the
+change will break existing code that relies on the current
+(ill-defined) semantics, so just avoid doing this in general.
+
+=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
+
+Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
+`largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
+default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
+at all, or they may compile and work incorrectly. Currently, there
+is no good solution for the problem, but Configure now provides
+appropriate non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs
+in the %Config hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the
+extensions that are having problems can try configuring themselves
+without the largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution,
+and the solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is
+whether one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea to) link
+together at all binaries with different ideas about file offsets;
+all this is platform-dependent.
+
+=head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..)
+
+ for (1..5) { $_++ }
+
+works without complaint. It shouldn't. (You should be able to
+modify only lvalue elements inside the loops.) You can see the
+correct behaviour by replacing the 1..5 with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
+
+=head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl
+
+Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher.
+
+=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
+
+Don't panic. Read the 'make test' section of INSTALL instead.
+
+=head2 libwww-perl (LWP) fails base/date #51
+
+Use libwww-perl 5.65 or later.
+
+=head2 PDL failing some tests
+
+Use PDL 2.3.4 or later.
+
+=head2 Perl_get_sv
+
+You may get errors like 'Undefined symbol "Perl_get_sv"' or "can't
+resolve symbol 'Perl_get_sv'", or the symbol may be "Perl_sv_2pv".
+This probably means that you are trying to use an older shared Perl
+library (or extensions linked with such) with Perl 5.8.0 executable.
+Perl used to have such a subroutine, but that is no more the case.
+Check your shared library path, and any shared Perl libraries in those
+directories.
+
+Sometimes this problem may also indicate a partial Perl 5.8.0
+installation, see L</"Mac OS X dyld undefined symbols"> for an
+example and how to deal with it.
+
+=head2 Self-tying Problems
+
+Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
+hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
+frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often), it is
+forbidden for now (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
+
+A change to self-tying of globs has caused them to be recursively
+referenced (see: L<perlobj/"Two-Phased Garbage Collection">). You
+will now need an explicit untie to destroy a self-tied glob. This
+behaviour may be fixed at a later date.
+
+Self-tying of scalars and IO thingies works.
+
+=head2 ext/threads/t/libc
+
+If this test fails, it indicates that your libc (C library) is not
+threadsafe. This particular test stress tests the localtime() call to
+find out whether it is threadsafe. See L<perlthrtut> for more information.
+
+=head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests
+
+B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading is deprecated,
+experimental and practically unsupported. In 5.10, it is expected
+to be removed. You should migrate your code to ithreads.>
+
+The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
+the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
+5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
+
+ ../ext/B/t/xref.t 255 65280 14 12 85.71% 3-14
+ ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7
+ ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3
+ ../lib/FileCache.t 5 1 20.00% 5
+ ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3
+ ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_only. 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5
+ ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bare_mbf.t 1627 4 0.25% 8 11 1626-1627
+ ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigfltpm.t 1629 4 0.25% 10 13 1628-
+ 1629
+ ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/sub_mbf.t 1633 4 0.24% 8 11 1632-1633
+ ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/with_sub.t 1628 4 0.25% 9 12 1627-1628
+ ../lib/Tie/File/t/31_autodefer.t 255 65280 65 32 49.23% 34-65
+ ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4
+ op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15
+
+These failures are unlikely to get fixed as 5.005-style threads
+are considered fundamentally broken. (Basically what happens is that
+competing threads can corrupt shared global state, one good example
+being regular expression engine's state.)
+
+=head2 Timing problems
+
+The following tests may fail intermittently because of timing
+problems, for example if the system is heavily loaded.
+
+ t/op/alarm.t
+ ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t
+ lib/Benchmark.t
+ lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t
+ lib/Memoize/t/speed.t
+
+In case of failure please try running them manually, for example
+
+ ./perl -Ilib ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t
+
+=head2 Tied/Magical Array/Hash Elements Do Not Autovivify
+
+For normal arrays C<$foo = \$bar[1]> will assign C<undef> to
+C<$bar[1]> (assuming that it didn't exist before), but for
+tied/magical arrays and hashes such autovivification does not happen
+because there is currently no way to catch the reference creation.
+The same problem affects slicing over non-existent indices/keys of
+a tied/magical array/hash.
+
+=head2 Unicode in package/class and subroutine names does not work
+
+One can have Unicode in identifier names, but not in package/class or
+subroutine names. While some limited functionality towards this does
+exist as of Perl 5.8.0, that is more accidental than designed; use of
+Unicode for the said purposes is unsupported.
+
+One reason of this unfinishedness is its (currently) inherent
+unportability: since both package names and subroutine names may
+need to be mapped to file and directory names, the Unicode capability
+of the filesystem becomes important-- and there unfortunately aren't
+portable answers.
+
+=head1 Platform Specific Problems
+
=head2 AIX
=over 4
=item *
+If using the AIX native make command, instead of just "make" issue
+"make all". In some setups the former has been known to spuriously
+also try to run "make install". Alternatively, you may want to use
+GNU make.
+
+=item *
+
In AIX 4.2, Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
In newer AIX releases, this has been solved by linking Perl with
=head2 AmigaOS
-Perl 5.8.0 doesn't build in AmigaOS. It broke at some point
-during the ithreads work and we could not find Amiga experts
-to unbreak the problems.
+Perl 5.8.0 doesn't build in AmigaOS. It broke at some point during
+the ithreads work and we could not find Amiga experts to unbreak the
+problems. Perl 5.6.1 still works for AmigaOS (as does the the 5.7.2
+development release).
=head2 BeOS
t/op/lfs............................FAILED at test 17
t/op/magic..........................FAILED at test 24
+ ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs..................FAILED at test 17
+ ext/File/Glob/t/basic...............FAILED at test 3
ext/POSIX/t/sigaction...............FAILED at test 13
ext/POSIX/t/waitpid.................FAILED at test 1
This is known problem with Cygwin, and a workaround is
detailed in here: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html
-=head2 ext/threads/t/libc
+=head2 Cygwin ndbm tests fail on FAT
-If this test fails, it indicates that your libc (C library) is not
-threadsafe. This particular test stress tests the localtime() call to
-find out whether it is threadsafe. See L<perlthrtut> for more information.
+One can build but not install (or test the build of) the NDBM_File
+on FAT filesystems. Installation (or build) on NTFS works fine.
+If one attempts the test on a FAT install (or build) the following
+failures are expected:
-=head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO8859-15 Locales
+ ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t 13 3328 71 59 83.10% 1-2 4 16-71
+ ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t 255 65280 ?? ?? % ??
+ ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t 2 512 12 2 16.67% 1 4
+ ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t 0 139 11 5 45.45% 7-11
+ ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t 13 3328 4 4 100.00% 1-4
+ run/fresh_perl.t 97 1 1.03% 91
-The ISO8859-15 locales may fail the locale test 117 in FreeBSD.
-This is caused by the characters \xFF (y with diaeresis) and \xBE
-(Y with diaeresis) not behaving correctly when being matched
-case-insensitively.
+NDBM_File fails and ODBM_File just coredumps.
-=head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..)
+=head2 DJGPP Failures
- for (1..5) { $_++ }
+ t/op/stat............................FAILED at test 29
+ lib/File/Find/t/find.................FAILED at test 1
+ lib/File/Find/t/taint................FAILED at test 1
+ lib/h2xs.............................FAILED at test 15
+ lib/Pod/t/eol........................FAILED at test 1
+ lib/Test/Harness/t/strap-analyze.....FAILED at test 8
+ lib/Test/Harness/t/test-harness......FAILED at test 23
+ lib/Test/Simple/t/exit...............FAILED at test 1
-works without complaint. It shouldn't. (You should be able to
-modify only lvalue elements inside the loops.) You can see the
-correct behaviour by replacing the 1..5 with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
+The above failures are known as of 5.8.0 with native builds with long
+filenames, but there are a few more if running under dosemu because of
+limitations (and maybe bugs) of dosemu:
-=head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl
+ t/comp/cpp...........................FAILED at test 3
+ t/op/inccode.........................(crash)
-Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher.
+and a few lib/ExtUtils tests, and several hundred Encode/t/Aliases.t
+failures that work fine with long filenames. So you really might
+prefer native builds and long filenames.
-=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
+=head2 FreeBSD built with ithreads coredumps reading large directories
-Don't panic. Read the 'make test' section of INSTALL instead.
+This is a known bug in FreeBSD 4.5's readdir_r(), it has been fixed in
+FreeBSD 4.6 (see L<perlfreebsd> (README.freebsd)).
+
+=head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO 8859-15 Locales
+
+The ISO 8859-15 locales may fail the locale test 117 in FreeBSD.
+This is caused by the characters \xFF (y with diaeresis) and \xBE
+(Y with diaeresis) not behaving correctly when being matched
+case-insensitively. Apparently this problem has been fixed in
+the latest FreeBSD releases.
+( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=34308 )
+
+=head2 IRIX fails ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t or Digest::MD5
+
+IRIX with MIPSpro 7.3.1.2m or 7.3.1.3m compiler may fail the List::Util
+test ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t by dumping core. This seems to be
+a compiler error since if compiled with gcc no core dump ensues, and
+no failures have been seen on the said test on any other platform.
+
+Similarly, building the Digest::MD5 extension has been
+known to fail with "*** Termination code 139 (bu21)".
+
+The cure is to drop optimization level (Configure -Doptimize=-O2).
=head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
No known fix.
-=head2 libwww-perl (LWP) fails base/date #51
-
-Use libwww-perl 5.65 or later.
-
=head2 Mac OS X
Please remember to set your environment variable LC_ALL to "C"
(setenv LC_ALL C) before running "make test" to avoid a lot of
warnings about the broken locales of Mac OS X.
-The following tests are known to fail in Mac OS X 10.1.4 because of
+The following tests are known to fail in Mac OS X 10.1.5 because of
buggy (old) implementations of Berkeley DB included in Mac OS X:
Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
(in this particular test, the localtime() call is found to be
threadunsafe.)
+=head2 Mac OS X dyld undefined symbols
+
+If after installing Perl 5.8.0 you are getting warnings about missing
+symbols, for example
+
+ dyld: perl Undefined symbols
+ _perl_sv_2pv
+ _perl_get_sv
+
+you probably have an old pre-Perl-5.8.0 installation (or parts of one)
+in /Library/Perl (the undefined symbols used to exist in pre-5.8.0 Perls).
+It seems that for some reason "make install" doesn't always completely
+overwrite the files in /Library/Perl. You can move the old Perl
+shared library out of the way like this:
+
+ cd /Library/Perl/darwin/CORE
+ mv libperl.dylib libperlold.dylib
+
+and then reissue "make install". Note that the above of course is
+extremely disruptive for anything using the /usr/local/bin/perl.
+If that doesn't help, you may have to try removing all the .bundle
+files from beneath /Library/Perl, and again "make install"-ing.
+
+=head2 OS/2 Test Failures
+
+The following tests are known to fail on OS/2 (for clarity
+only the failures are shown, not the full error messages):
+
+ t/io/utf8............................FAILED at test 19
+ t/op/grent...........................FAILED at test 2
+ t/op/pwent...........................FAILED at test 1
+ t/lib/os2_base.......................FAILED at test 13
+ t/lib/os2_process....................FAILED at test 10
+ t/lib/os2_process_kid................FAILED at test 10
+ t/lib/rx_cmprt.......................FAILED at test 16
+ ext/DB_File/t/db-btree...............FAILED at test 0
+ ext/DB_File/t/db-hash................FAILED at test 0
+ ext/DB_File/t/db-recno...............FAILED at test 0
+ lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.................FAILED at test 14
+ lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant..............FAILED at test 4
+ lib/Memoize/t/errors.................FAILED at test 4
+
=head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130
The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
experience failures (the test core dumping) in lib/locale.t.
The suggested cure is to upgrade your Solaris.
-=head2 Stratus VOS
+=head2 Solaris x86 Fails Tests With -Duse64bitint
-When Perl is built using the native build process on VOS Release
-14.5.0 and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1, all attempted tests either
-pass or result in TODO (ignored) failures.
-
-=head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32
+The following tests are known to fail in Solaris x86 with Perl
+configured to use 64 bit integers:
-Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later.
-
-=head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests
-
-B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading is deprecated,
-experimental and practically unsupported. In 5.10, it is expected
-to be removed.>
-
-The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
-the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
-5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
-
- ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7
- ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3
- ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3
- ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_only 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5
- ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4
- op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15
-
-These failures are unlikely to get fixed as 5.005-style threads
-are considered fundamentally broken. (Basically what happens is that
-competing threads can corrupt shared global state.)
-
-=head2 Timing problems
-
-The following tests may fail intermittently because of timing
-problems, for example if the system is heavily loaded.
+ ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.............FAILED at test 268
+ ext/Devel/Peek/Peek..................FAILED at test 7
- t/op/alarm.t
- ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t
- lib/Benchmark.t
- lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t
- lib/Memoize/t/speed.t
+=head2 SUPER-UX (NEC SX)
-In case of failure please try running them manually, for example
+The following tests are known to fail on SUPER-UX:
- ./perl -Ilib ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t
+ op/64bitint...........................FAILED tests 29-30, 32-33, 35-36
+ op/arith..............................FAILED tests 128-130
+ op/pack...............................FAILED tests 25-5625
+ op/pow................................
+ op/taint..............................# msgsnd failed
+ ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_poll............FAILED tests 3-4
+ ../ext/IPC/SysV/ipcsysv...............FAILED tests 2, 5-6
+ ../ext/IPC/SysV/t/msg.................FAILED tests 2, 4-6
+ ../ext/Socket/socketpair..............FAILED tests 12
+ ../lib/IPC/SysV.......................FAILED tests 2, 5-6
+ ../lib/warnings.......................FAILED tests 115-116, 118-119
-=head2 UNICOS
+The op/pack failure ("Cannot compress negative numbers at op/pack.t line 126")
+is serious but as of yet unsolved. It points at some problems with the
+signedness handling of the C compiler, as do the 64bitint, arith, and pow
+failures. Most of the rest point at problems with SysV IPC.
- ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25
- ../lib/warnings.t 470 1 0.21% 429
+=head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32
-The Trig.t failure is caused by the slighly differing (from IEEE)
-floating point implementation of UNICOS. The warnings.t failure is
-also related: the test assumes a certain floating point output format;
-this assumption fails in UNICOS.
+Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later.
=head2 UNICOS/mk
There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts> (README.uts).
+=head2 VOS (Stratus)
+
+When Perl is built using the native build process on VOS Release
+14.5.0 and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1, all attempted tests either
+pass or result in TODO (ignored) failures.
+
=head2 VMS
There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration,
=head2 z/OS (OS/390)
-z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
+z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually much
better than it was in 5.6.0; it's just that so many new modules and
tests have been added.
110-111 150 161
../lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant.t 121 30976 48 48 100.00% 1-48
../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9
- op/pat.t 910 7 0.77% 665 776 785 832-
+ op/pat.t 922 7 0.76% 665 776 785 832-
834 845
op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136
op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74
710-711
The failures in dumper.t and downgrade.t are problems in the tests,
-those in io_unix and sprintf are problems in the USS (UDP sockets
-and printf formats). The pat, tr, and fold failures are genuine Perl
+those in io_unix and sprintf are problems in the USS (UDP sockets and
+printf formats). The pat, tr, and fold failures are genuine Perl
problems caused by EBCDIC (and in the pat and fold cases, combining
-that with Unicode). The Constant and Embed are probably problems
-in the tests (since they test Perl's ability to build extensions,
-and that seems to be working reasonably well.)
-
-=head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
-
- local %tied_array;
-
-doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored
-incorrectly. This will be changed in a future release, but we don't
-know yet what the new semantics will exactly be. In any case, the
-change will break existing code that relies on the current
-(ill-defined) semantics, so just avoid doing this in general.
-
-=head2 Self-tying Problems
-
-Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
-hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
-frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often), it is
-forbidden for now (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
-
-A change to self-tying of globs has caused them to be recursively
-referenced (see: L<perlobj/"Two-Phased Garbage Collection">). You
-will now need an explicit untie to destroy a self-tied glob. This
-behaviour may be fixed at a later date.
-
-Self-tying of scalars and IO thingies works.
-
-=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
-
-Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
-`largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
-default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
-at all, or they may compile and work incorrectly. Currently, there
-is no good solution for the problem, but Configure now provides
-appropriate non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs
-in the %Config hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the
-extensions that are having problems can try configuring themselves
-without the largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution,
-and the solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is
-whether one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea to) link
-together at all binaries with different ideas about file offsets;
-all this is platform-dependent.
+that with Unicode). The Constant and Embed are probably problems in
+the tests (since they test Perl's ability to build extensions, and
+that seems to be working reasonably well.)
=head2 Unicode Support on EBCDIC Still Spotty
regular expression constructs for code points less than 256: the
C<pP> are testing for Unicode code points, not knowing about EBCDIC.
-=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Very Experimental
-
-The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be
-highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged.
-
-=head2 The Long Double Support Is Still Experimental
-
-The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles",
-floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still
-experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet
-widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature
-or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare
-and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset
-by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the
-operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised
-libraries).
-
=head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now
C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed
core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available
from the CPAN.
-Perl 5.8 unfortunately does not build anymore on AmigaOS;
-this broke accidentally at some point. Since there are not that many
-Amiga developers available, we could not get this fixed and tested in
-time for 5.8.0.
+Perl 5.8 unfortunately does not build anymore on AmigaOS; this broke
+accidentally at some point. Since there are not that many Amiga
+developers available, we could not get this fixed and tested in time
+for 5.8.0. Perl 5.6.1 still works for AmigaOS (as does the the 5.7.2
+development release).
+
+The C<PerlIO::Scalar> and C<PerlIO::Via> (capitalised) were renamed as
+C<PerlIO::scalar> and C<PerlIO::via> (all lowercase) just before 5.8.0.
+The main rationale was to have all core PerlIO layers to have all
+lowercase names. The "plugins" are named as usual, for example
+C<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint>.
+
+The C<threads::shared::queue> and C<threads::shared::semaphore> were
+renamed as C<Thread::Queue> and C<Thread::Semaphore> just before 5.8.0.
+The main rationale was to have thread modules to obey normal naming,
+C<Thread::> (the C<threads> and C<threads::shared> themselves are
+more pragma-like, they affect compile-time, so they stay lowercase).
=head1 Reporting Bugs
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff