=item *
+A reference to a reference now stringify as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead
+of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return
+value of ref().
+
+=item *
+
The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed.
Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that
the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly)
=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
=item *
-INSTALL now explains how you can configure perl to use 64-bit
+INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit
integers even on non-64-bit platforms.
=item *
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
BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files
(scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped.
-UTF16 encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
+UTF-16 (UCS-2)encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
=item *
=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 *
=item *
Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
-concurrently. (still 16M perl thread)
+concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
=item *
C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
-(works better when perl running as service).
+(works better when perl is running as service).
=item *
=back
+=back
+
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
Building microperl does not require even running Configure;
C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes
many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting
-executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. For
-careful hackers only.
+executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways.
+For careful hackers only.
=item *
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
# from deploying threads in production. ;-)
#
-and another known warning is
+and another known thread-related warning is
pragma/overload......Unbalanced saves: 3 more saves than restores
panic: magic_mutexfree during global destruction.
=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
-The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near yet.
-The backend part that has seen perhaps the most progress is the
-bytecode compiler.
-
-=back
+The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near
+working order yet. The backend part that has seen perhaps the most
+progress is the bytecode compiler.
=head1 Reporting Bugs