=head1 Incompatible Changes
+=head2 Binary Incompatibility
+
+B<Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier releases of Perl.>
+
+B<You have to recompile your XS modules.>
+
+(Pure Perl modules should continue to work.)
+
+The major reason for the discontinity is the new IO architecture
+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
+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.
+
+Depending on your platform, there are also other reasons why
+we decided to break binary compatibility, please read on.
+
=head2 64-bit platforms and malloc
If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no longer being
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 Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes \p{In...}
+=head2 New Unicode Properties
-As suggested by the Unicode consortium, the Unicode character classes
-now prefer I<scripts> as opposed to I<blocks> (as defined by Unicode);
-in Perl, when the C<\p{In....}> and the C<\p{In....}> regular expression
-constructs are used. This has changed the definition of some of those
-character classes.
+Unicode I<scripts> are now supported. Scripts are similar to (and superior
+to) Unicode I<blocks>. The difference between scripts and blocks is that
+scripts are the glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while
+the blocks are more artificial groupings of (mostly) 256 characters based
+on the Unicode numbering.
-The difference between scripts and blocks is that scripts are the
-glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while the blocks
-are more artificial groupings of 256 characters based on the Unicode
-numbering.
+In general, scripts are more inclusive, but not universally so. For
+example, while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin characters and
+their various diacritic-adorned versions, it does not include the various
+punctuation or digits (since they are not solely C<Latin>).
-In general this change results in more inclusive Unicode character
-classes, but changes to the other direction also do take place:
-for example while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin
-characters and their various diacritic-adorned versions, it
-does not include the various 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).
+See L<perlunicode> for details, and more additions.
-Changes in the character class semantics may have happened if a script
-and a block happen to have the same name, for example C<Hebrew>.
-In such cases the script wins and C<\p{InHebrew}> now means the script
-definition of Hebrew. The block definition in still available,
-though, by appending C<Block> to the name: C<\p{InHebrewBlock}> means
-what C<\p{InHebrew}> meant in perl 5.6.0. For the full list
-of affected character classes, see L<perlunicode/Blocks>.
-
-=head2 Perl Parser Stress Tested
-
-The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
-Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
-fixed.
+The C<In> or C<Is> prefix to names used with the C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>
+are now almost always optional. The only exception is that a C<In> prefix
+is required to signify a Unicode block when a block name conflicts with a
+script name. For example, C<\p{Tibetan}> refers to the script, while
+C<\p{InTibetan}> refers to the block. When there is no name conflict, you
+can omit the C<In> from the block name (e.g. C<\p{BraillePatterns}>), but
+to be safe, it's probably best to always use the C<In>).
=head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...)
of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return
value of ref().
+=head2 pack/unpack D/F recycled
+
+The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recycled
+for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the
+platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used
+to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.)
+
=head2 Deprecations
=over 4
=item *
+The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its
+usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future
+available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future
+releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change.
+
+=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)
implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather
ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
-available.
+available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to
+be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>).
=item *
=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.
the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar
functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
+=item *
+
+Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)".
+The prototypes are now checked at compile-time for invalid characters.
+An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in prototype...")
+but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future release.
+
=back
=head1 Core Enhancements
creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
the child process.
+=item *
+
+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.
+
=back
+=head2 Restricted Hashes
+
+A restricted hash is restricted to a certain set of keys, no keys
+outside the set can be added. Also individual keys can be restricted
+so that the key cannot be deleted and the value cannot be changed.
+No new syntax is involved: the Hash::Util module is the interface.
+
=head2 Safe Signals
Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments
could corrupt Perl's internal state. Now Perl postpones handling of
signals until it's safe (between opcodes).
-This change may have surprising side effects because signals no more
+This change may have surprising side effects because signals no longer
interrupt Perl instantly. Perl will now first finish whatever it was
doing, like finishing an internal operation (like sort()) or an
external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any
arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt
internal state since the current operation is always finished first,
-but the signal may take more time to get heard.
+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.
+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 3.1.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/.
+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 lib/unicore subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space
+the F<lib/unicore subdirectory>. The most notable omission, for space
considerations, is the Unihan database.
=item *
-The Unicode character classes \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.)
+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
arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
in its math.)
-=head2 Miscellaneous Enhancements
+=head2 Miscellaneous Changes
=over 4
=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
+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
+removed/changed in future releases.)
+
+=item *
+
+chomp() and chop() are now overridable. Note, however, that their
+prototype (as given by C<prototype("CORE::chomp")> is undefined,
+because it cannot be expressed and therefore one cannot really write
+replacements to override these builtins.
+
+=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
PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
=item *
+A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been
+restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.)
+
+=item *
+
A new special regular expression variable has been introduced:
C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch).
=item *
+C<pack() / unpack()> now can group template letters with C<()> and then
+apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups.
+
+=item *
+
+C<pack() / unpack()> can now process the Perl internal numeric types:
+IVs, UVs, NVs-- and also long doubles, if supported by the platform.
+The template letters are C<j>, C<J>, C<F>, and C<D>.
+
+=item *
+
C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8.
=item *
=item *
+A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the
+little brother of C<-T>: instead of dying on taint violations,
+lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary
+debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications.
+This is not a substitute for -T.>
+
+=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.
+
+=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 *
+
untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
for details.
have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore
simply B<between digits>.
+=item *
+
+Rather than relying on C's argv[0] (which may not contain a full pathname)
+where possible $^X is now set by asking the operating system.
+(eg by reading F</proc/self/exe> on Linux, F</proc/curproc/file> on FreeBSD)
+
+=item *
+
+A new variable, C<${^TAINT}>, indicates whether taint mode is enabled.
+
+=item *
+
+You can now override the readline() builtin, and this overrides also
+the <FILEHANDLE> angle bracket operator.
+
+=item *
+
+The command-line options -s and -F are now recognized on the shebang
+(#!) line.
+
+=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</g> with C<split> elicits C<Use of /g modifier is meaningless
+in split>.
+
=back
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
=item *
+The new bignum, bigint, and bigrat pragmas implement transparent
+bignum support (using the Math::BigInt, Math::BigFloat, and
+Math::BigRat backends), by Tels.
+
+=item *
+
C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree,
by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>.
C<Devel::PPPort>, originally from Kenneth Albanowski and now
maintained by Paul Marquess, has been added. It is primarily used
-by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of of XS modules between different
+by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of XS modules between different
versions of Perl.
=item *
=item *
-C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate
-between different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
-ISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are
-compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese,
-Chinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at
-runtime. See L<Encode>.
+C<Encode>, orginally by Nick Ing-Simmons and now maintained by Dan
+Kogai, provides a mechanism to translate between different character
+encodings. Support for Unicode, ISO-8859-1, and ASCII are compiled in
+to the module. Several other encodings (like the rest of the
+ISO-8859, CP*/Win*, Mac, KOI8-R, three variants EBCDIC, Chinese,
+Japanese, and Korean encodings) are included and can be loaded at
+runtime. (For space considerations, the largest Chinese encodings
+have been separated into their own CPAN module, Encode::HanExtra,
+which Encode will use if available). See L<Encode>.
Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
=item *
+C<Hash::Util> is the interface to the new I<restricted hashes>
+feature. (Implemented by Jeffrey Friedl, Nick Ing-Simmons, and
+Michael Schwern.)
+
+=item *
+
C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information.
See L<I18N::Langinfo>.
=item *
+C<if> is a new pragma for conditional inclusion of modules, from
+Ilya Zakharevich.
+
+=item *
+
L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network
programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>,
-L<Net::Ping>, L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>.
+L<Net::Ping> (not part of libnet, but related), L<Net::POP3>,
+L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>.
Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure.
=item *
-C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>, and
-C<Locale::Language>, from Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the
-codes for various locale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for
-US Dollar, and "jp" for Japanese.
+C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>
+C<Locale::Language>, and L<Locale::Script>, from Neil Bowers, have
+been added. They provide the codes for various locale standards, such
+as "fr" for France, "usd" for US Dollar, and "ja" for Japanese.
use Locale::Country;
=item *
+C<Math::BigRat> for big rational numbers, to accompany Math::BigInt and
+Math::BigFloat, from Tels.
+
+=item *
+
C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time,
from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>.
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, from Raphael Manfredi. See L<Storable>.
+compact binary format. Because in effect Storable does serialisation
+of Perl data structues, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical
+datastructures. Storable was created by Raphael Manfredi but it is
+now maintained by the Perl development team. Storable has been
+enhanced to understand the two new hash features, Unicode keys and
+restricted hashes. See L<Storable>.
=item *
=item *
+C<Tie::File>, by Mark-Jason Dominus, associates a Perl array with the
+lines of a file.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Tie::Memoize>, by Ilya Zakharevich, provides on-demand loaded hashes.
+
+=item *
+
C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash
references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained
within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>.
The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
hit by saying
- use English '-no_performance_hit';
+ use English '-no_match_vars';
(Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables
C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and
=item *
+The warnings issued by File::Find now belong to their own category.
+You can enable/disable them with C<use/no warnings 'File::Find';>.
+
+=item *
+
File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
=item *
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
+leads into better portability.
+
+=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.
=item *
-Net::Ping has been enhanced. There is now "external" protocol which
-uses Net::Ping::External module which runs external ping(1) and parses
-the output. A version of Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
+Net::Ping has been muchly 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.
+
+Note that some of the Net::Ping tests are disabled when running
+under the Perl distribution since one cannot assume one or more
+of the following: enabled echo port at localhost, full Internet
+connectivity, or sympathetic firewalls. You can set the environment
+variable PERL_TEST_Net_Ping to "1" (one) before running the Perl test
+suite to enable all the Net::Ping tests.
=item *
=item *
+In Sys::Syslog there is now a failover mechanism that will go
+through alternative connection mechanisms until the message
+is successfully logged.
+
+=item *
+
The Test module has been significantly enhanced.
=item *
+Time::Local::timelocal() does not handle fractional seconds anymore.
+The rationale is that neither does localtime(), and timelocal() and
+localtime() are supposed to be inverses of each other.
+
+=item *
+
The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
(Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
=item *
-The utf8:: name space (as in the pragma) provides various
+The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various
Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
has been implemented.
=item *
+C<enc2xs> is a tool for people adding their own encodings to the
+Encode module.
+
+=item *
+
C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs.
=item *
=item *
+C<piconv> is an implementation of the character conversion utility
+C<iconv>, demonstrating the new Encode module.
+
+=item *
+
C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory.
=item *
+C<pod2html> now produces XHTML 1.0.
+
+=item *
+
+C<pod2html> now understands POD written using different line endings
+(PC-like CRLF versus UNIX-like LF versus MacClassic-like CR).
+
+=item *
+
C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full
implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by
using the C<psed> utility.)
=item *
-perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl
-(perlunicode is more of a reference)
+perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl.
+(perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background
+information)
=item *
=item *
-The documentation for the WinCE platform is called "CE", to avoid
-confusion with the perlwin32 documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems.
+The documentation for the WinCE platform is called perlce (README.ce
+in the source code kit), to avoid confusion with the perlwin32
+documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems.
=back
=item *
Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
-(http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html). This algorithm is
+( http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html ). This algorithm is
reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than
the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by
Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of
But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
thread models.
+=item *
+
+The Gconvert macro ($Config{d_Gconvert}) used by perl for stringifying
+floating-point numbers is now more picky about using sprintf %.*g
+rules for the conversion. Some platforms that used to use gcvt may
+now resort to the slower sprintf.
+
=back
=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
=item *
-After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
+AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform.
=item *
-AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform.
+BeOS has been reclaimed.
=item *
=item *
+All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation
+specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
+
+=item *
+
NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>.
=item *
=item *
+All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation
+specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
+
+=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.
+
+=item *
+
Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
=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 *
+If C<STDERR> is tied, warnings caused by C<warn> and C<die> now
+correctly pass to it.
+
+=item *
+
Several Unicode fixes.
=over 8
=item *
-The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.1.1.
+The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.2.0.
=item *
Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data
-into utf8.
+into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data
+from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded
+as UTF-8.)
+
+=item *
+
+Generating illegal Unicode code points like U+FFFE, or the UTF-16
+surrogates, now also generates an optional warning.
=item *
Cygwin
-Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4.
+Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.3.10.
=item *
HP-UX
-README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works.
+README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works.
=item *
=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.
The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved
functionality and better error handling.
+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.
+
=item *
Windows
winsock handle leak fixed.
+=item *
+
+The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
+Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
+fixed.
+
=back
=back
=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 *
+
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 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 *
+
If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index
is made, a warning is given.
=item *
Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to
-the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise.
+the entire regex. You will get an optional warning if you try to do
+otherwise.
=item *
-Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
+Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning.
+=item *
+
+Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning.
+This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed.
+
=back
=head1 Changed Internals
probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl
should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are
doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution
-such as sudo (see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/).
+such as sudo ( see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ ).
=head1 New Tests
Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib>
-subsection. There are now about 34 000 individual tests (spread over
-about 530 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
+subsection. There are now about 56 000 individual tests (spread over
+about 620 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are 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
to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. In a really
-fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 5 minutes
+fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 6-8 minutes
(wallclock time).
The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls.
resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least
vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
-"lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version.
+"lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. See README.aix.
+
+=item *
+
+If building threaded Perl, you may get compilation warning from pp_sys.c:
+
+ "pp_sys.c", line 4651.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
+
+This is harmless; it is caused by the getnetbyaddr() and getnetbyaddr_r()
+having slightly different types for their first argument.
=back
works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason isn't
known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library.
-=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
+=head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO8859-15 Locales
-Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
+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.
+
+=head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..)
+
+ for (1..5) { $_++ }
-=head2 Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12
+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 subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work.
+=head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl
-=head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured
+Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher.
-The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been
-configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in
-this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The
-test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets
-which have multiple IP addresses).
+=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
+
+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 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:
Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ??
../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65
../ext/POSIX/t/posix.t 31 1 3.23% 10
- ../lib/warnings.t 450 1 0.22% 316
-=head2 OS/390
+If you are building on a UFS partition, you will also probably see
+t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not
+supporting inode change time.
-OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
-better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
-tests have been added.
+=head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130
- Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14
- ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1
- ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598
- 600 602 604-610
- ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5
- ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14
- ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5
- ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117
- ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75
- ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25
- ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145
- ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81
- ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4
- op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425
- 626-627
- op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ??
- op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168
- op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59
- Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay.
-
-=head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130
-
-The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
+The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/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 other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
-the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
-=head2 Failure of Thread tests
+The test 91 is known to fail at QNX6 (nto), because C<sprintf '%e',0>
+incorrectly produces C<0.000000e+0> instead of C<0.000000e+00>.
+
+For the tests 129 and 130 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 other than "1" and "-1" when
+formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using the printf format "%.0f", most often
+they produce "0" and "-0".)
-B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental
-and practically unsupported.>
+=head2 Solaris 2.5
+
+In case you are still using Solaris 2.5 (aka SunOS 5.5), you may
+experience failures (the test core dumping) in lib/locale.t.
+The suggested cure is to upgrade your Solaris.
+
+=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 2
- lib/autouse 4
- ext/Thread/thr5005 19-20
+ ../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_onl 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.
+These failures are unlikely to get fixed as the 5.005-style
+threads are considered fundamentally broken.
=head2 UNICOS
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ../ext/Socket/socketpair.t 1 256 45 1 2.22% 12
+ ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25
+ ../lib/warnings.t 460 1 0.22% 425
+ io/fs.t 36 1 2.78% 31
+ op/numconvert.t 1440 13 0.90% 208 509-510
+ 657-658 665-666 829-830 989-990 1149-1150
+
+=head2 UNICOS/mk
+
=over 4
=item *
-ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail.
+During Configure the test
-=item *
+ Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
-lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed,
-which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests.
+will probably fail with error messages like
-=item *
+ CC-20 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3
+ The identifier "bad" is undefined.
-Numerous numerical test failures
+ bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79#ifdef A29K
+ ^
- op/numconvert 209,210,217,218
- op/override 7
- ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9
- lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145
- lib/Math/Trig 25
+ CC-65 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3
+ A semicolon is expected at this point.
-These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies.
+This is caused by a bug in awk utility of UNICOS/mk. You can ignore
+the error, but it does cause a slight problem: you cannot fully
+benefit from the h2ph utility (see L<h2ph>) that can be used to
+convert C headers to Perl libraries, mainly used to be able to access
+from Perl the constants defined using C preprocessor, cpp. Because of
+the above error parts of the converted headers will be invisible.
+Luckily, these days the need for h2ph is rare.
+
+=item *
+
+If building Perl with the interpreter threads (ithreads), the
+getgrent(), getgrnam(), and getgrgid() functions cannot return the
+list of the group members due to a bug in the multithreaded support of
+UNICOS/mk. What this means that in list context the functions will
+return only three values, not four.
=back
=head2 VMS
-There is one known test failure with a default configuration:
-
- [.run]switches..........................FAILED on test 1
+There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration,
+though there are a number of tests marked TODO that point to areas
+needing further debugging and/or porting work.
=head2 Win32
In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
some output may appear twice.
-=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
+=head2 XML::Parser not working
- use Tie::Hash;
- tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
+Use XML::Parser 2.31 or later.
- ...
+=head2 z/OS (OS/390)
- local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
+z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
+better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
+tests have been added.
-Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
-is executed.
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ../ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.t 339 8 2.36% 311 314 325 327
+ 331 333 337 339
+ ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5
+ ../ext/Storable/t/utf8hash.t 10 2560 148 10 6.76% 1 5 72 76 143-148
+ ../lib/utf8.t 94 13 13.83% 27 30-31 43 46 73
+ 76 79 82 85 88 91
+ 94
+ ../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 900 9 1.00% 242-243 665 776
+ 785 832-834 845
+ op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136
+ op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74
+ run/fresh_perl.t 94 3 3.19% 92-94
+ uni/fold.t 780 6 0.77% 61 169 196 661
+ 710-711
=head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
=head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now
-Some modules were seen in the Perl 5.7 development releases
-but are not present in 5.8.0.
-
-=over 4
-
-=item *
-
-C<Attribute::Handlers> was removed because the implementation of C<my>
-variable attributes changed so much that the Attribute::Handlers will
-require a major rewrite. (This means that you can't use
-Attribute::Handler 0.76 with Perl 5.8.0.)
-
-=item *
-
C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed
because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a
core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available
from the CPAN.
-=back
-
=head1 Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
-bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be
-information at http://www.perl.com/perl/, the Perl Home Page.
+bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ There may also be
+information at http://www.perl.com/ , the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff