(Pure Perl modules should continue to work.)
The major reason for the discontinity is the new IO architecture
-called PerlIO. The PerlIO is the default configuration because
+called PerlIO. PerlIO is the default configuration because
without it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be used. In other
words: you just have to recompile your modules, sorry about that.
-In future releases of Perl non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become
+In future releases of Perl, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become
completely unsupported. This shouldn't be too difficult for module
authors, however: PerlIO has been designed as a drop-in replacement
(at the source code level) for the stdio interface.
=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>).
+
+=item *
+
The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison
operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed.
=item *
+Tied hash interfaces are now required to have the EXISTS and DELETE
+methods (either own or inherited).
+
+=item *
+
If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to
modify its target.
=item *
-After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
-
-=item *
-
AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform.
=item *
=item *
+Localised tied variables no more leak memory
+
+ use Tie::Hash;
+ tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
+
+ ...
+
+ # Used to leak memory every time local() was called,
+ # in a loop this added up.
+ local($tied_hash{Foo}) = 1;
+
+=item *
+
+Localised hash elements (and %ENV) are correctly unlocalised to not to
+exist, if that's what they were.
+
+
+ use Tie::Hash;
+ tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
+
+ ...
+
+ # Nothing has set the FOO element so far
+
+ { local $tied_hash{FOO} = 'Bar' }
+
+ # Here the FOO element would have been C<undef>,
+ # but no more so.
+
+As a side effect of this fix, tied hash interfaces B<must> define
+the EXISTS and DELETE methods.
+
+=item *
+
mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name,
as mandated by POSIX.
=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.
+
+=item *
+
NetBSD/sparc
Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc.
(Y with diaeresis) not behaving correctly when being matched
case-insensitively.
+=head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..)
+
+ for (1..5) { $_++ }
+
+works without complaint. It shouldn't. (You should be able to
+modify only lvalue elements inside the loops.) You can see the
+correct behaviour by replacing the 1..5 with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
+
=head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl
Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher.
Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
-=head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
+=head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
=head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests
-B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental
-and practically unsupported.>
+B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading is deprecated,
+experimental and practically unsupported. In 5.10 it is expected
+to be removed.>
The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
op/numconvert.t 1440 13 0.90% 208 509-510
657-658 665-666 829-830 989-990 1149-1150
-=head2 UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
-
-The io/fs test #31 is failing because in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk the Perl
-truncate() cannot be used to grow the size of filehandles, only to
-reduce the size. The workaround is to truncate files instead of
-filehandles.
-
=head2 UNICOS/mk
=over 4
Use XML::Parser 2.31 or later.
-=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
-
- use Tie::Hash;
- tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
-
- ...
-
- local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
-
-Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
-is executed.
-
=head2 z/OS (OS/390)
z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually