=item *
+The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning
+("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape
+any C<\w> character.
+
+=item *
+
lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
In future releases this may become a fatal error.
=item *
+Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields.
+
+=item *
+
C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass
in multiple arguments.)
=item *
+The printf and sprintf now support parameter reordering using the
+C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes.
+
+=item *
+
prototype(\&) is now available.
=item *
The Shell module now has an OO interface.
-=item *
-
=back
=head1 Utility Changes
with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for
more than one binary platform.)
+=item *
+
+Configure no longer included the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
+when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x,
+which needs them.
+
=back
=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
=item *
-vec() now refuses to deal with characters >255.
+vec() now tries to work with characters <= 255 when possible, but it leaves
+higher character values in place. In that case, if vec() was used to modify
+the string, it is no longer considered to be utf8-encoded.
=item *
=back
+=back
+
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
No known fix.
+=head2 sprintf tests 129 and 130
+
+The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail in some platforms.
+Examples include any platform using sfio, and Tandem's NonStop-UX.
+The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
+19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce
+something else than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
+the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
+
=head2 Storable tests fail in some platforms
If any Storable tests fail the use of Storable is not advisable.
st-store.t and st-retrieve may fail with Compaq C 6.2 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.
+=back
+
=head2 Threads Are Still Experimental
Multithreading is still an experimental feature. Some platforms
working order yet. The backend part that has seen perhaps the most
progress is the bytecode compiler.
-=back
-
=head1 Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles