=head1 NAME
-perldelta - what's new for perl5.006 (as of 5.005_56)
+perldelta - what's new for perl v5.6 (as of v5.005_58)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
+This is an unsupported alpha release, meant for intrepid Perl developers
+only. The included sources may not even build correctly on some platforms.
+Subscribing to perl5-porters is the best way to monitor and contribute
+to the progress of development releases (see www.perl.org for info).
+
This document describes differences between the 5.005 release and this one.
=head1 Incompatible Changes
=head2 Perl Source Incompatibilities
-None known at this time.
+TODO
=head2 C Source Incompatibilities
=item C<PERL_POLLUTE>
Release 5.005 grandfathered old global symbol names by providing preprocessor
-macros for extension source compatibility. As of release 5.006, these
+macros for extension source compatibility. As of release 5.6, these
preprocessor definitions are not available by default. You need to explicitly
compile perl with C<-DPERL_POLLUTE> to get these definitions. For
extensions still using the old symbols, this option can be
perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
+=item C<PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT>
+
+This new build option provides a set of macros for all API functions
+such that an implicit interpreter/thread context argument is passed to
+every API function. As a result of this, something like C<sv_setsv(foo,bar)>
+amounts to a macro invocation that actually translates to something like
+C<Perl_sv_setsv(my_perl,foo,bar)>. While this is generally expected
+to not have any significant source compatibility issues, the difference
+between a macro and a real function call will need to be considered.
+
+This means that there B<is> a source compatibility issue as a result of
+this if your extensions attempt to use pointers to any of the Perl API
+functions.
+
+Note that the above issue is not relevant to the default build of
+Perl, whose interfaces continue to match those of prior versions
+(but subject to the other options described here).
+
+For testing purposes, the 5.005_58 release automatically enables
+PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT whenever Perl is built with -Dusethreads or
+-Dusemultiplicity.
+
+See L<perlguts/"The Perl API"> for detailed information on the
+ramifications of building Perl using this option.
+
=item C<PERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC>
Enabling Perl's malloc in release 5.005 and earlier caused
have allowed this behaviour to be suppressed with the HIDEMYMALLOC and
EMBEDMYMALLOC preprocessor definitions.
-As of release 5.006, Perl's malloc family of functions have default names
+As of release 5.6, Perl's malloc family of functions have default names
distinct from the system versions. You need to explicitly compile perl with
C<-DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC> to get the older behaviour. HIDEMYMALLOC
and EMBEDMYMALLOC have no effect, since the behaviour they enabled is now
=head2 Binary Incompatibilities
-This release is not binary compatible with the 5.005 release or its
-maintenance versions.
+The default build of this release can be made binary compatible with the
+5.005 release or its maintenance versions. Add -DPERL_BINCOMPAT_5005
+to ccflags in config.sh to achieve this. See INSTALL for further
+information about adding build flags to config.sh.
+
+The usethreads or usemultiplicity builds are B<not> binary compatible
+with the corresponding builds in 5.005.
=head1 Core Changes
=head2 Lexically scoped warning categories
You can now control the granularity of warnings emitted by perl at a finer
-level using the C<use warning> pragma. See L<warning> for details.
+level using the C<use warning> pragma. See L<warning> and L<perllexwarn>
+for details.
=head2 Binary numbers supported
remains unchanged. See L<perlop>.
+=head2 POSIX character class syntax [: :] supported
+
+For example to match alphabetic characters use /[[:alpha:]]/.
+See L<perlre> for details.
+
=head2 Improved C<qw//> operator
The C<qw//> operator is now evaluated at compile time into a true list
The new format type modifier '!' is useful for packing and unpacking
native shorts, ints, and longs. See L<perlfunc/"pack">.
+=head2 pack() and unpack() support counted strings
+
+The template character '#' can be used to specify a counted string
+type to be packed or unpacked. See L<perlfunc/"pack">.
+
=head2 $^X variables may now have names longer than one character
Formerly, $^X was synonymous with ${"\cX"}, but $^XY was a syntax
buffering mishaps suffered by users unaware of how Perl internally
handles I/O.
+=head2 Better diagnostics on meaningless filehandle operations
+
+Constructs such as C<open(E<lt>FHE<gt>)> and C<close(E<lt>FHE<gt>)>
+are compile time errors. Attempting to read from filehandles that
+were opened only for writing will now produce warnings (just as
+writing to read-only filehandles does).
+
=head1 Supported Platforms
=over 4
Rhapsody is now supported.
+=item *
+
+EPOC is is now supported (on Psion 5).
+
=back
=head1 New tests
=over 4
+=item ByteLoader
+
+The ByteLoader is a dedication extension to generate and run
+Perl bytecode. See L<ByteLoader>.
+
+=item B
+
+The Perl Compiler suite has been extensively reworked for this
+release.
+
+=item Devel::DProf
+
+Devel::DProf, a Perl source code profiler has been added.
+
=item Dumpvalue
Added Dumpvalue module provides screen dumps of Perl data.
by Perl. This combination appears in an interpolated variable or a
C<'>-delimited regular expression.
-=item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
+=item Filehandle %s opened only for output
-(W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
-by Perl.
+(W) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only for writing. If you
+intended it to be a read-write filehandle, you needed to open it with
+"+E<lt>" or "+E<gt>" or "+E<gt>E<gt>" instead of with "E<lt>" or nothing. If
+you intended only to read from the file, use "E<lt>". See
+L<perlfunc/open>.
=item Missing command in piped open
(W) You used the C<open(FH, "| command")> or C<open(FH, "command |")>
construction, but the command was missing or blank.
+=item Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
+
+(W) You used a backslash-character combination which is not recognized
+by Perl.
+
=item defined(@array) is deprecated
(D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an
=head1 Configuration Changes
+=head2 installusrbinperl
+
You can use "Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl" which causes installperl
to skip installing perl also as /usr/bin/perl. This is useful if you
prefer not to modify /usr/bin for some reason or another but harmful
because many scripts assume to find Perl in /usr/bin/perl.
-=head1 Configuration Changes
+=head2 SOCKS support
-You can use "Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl" which causes installperl
-to skip installing perl also as /usr/bin/perl. This is useful if you
-prefer not to modify /usr/bin for some reason or another but harmful
-because many scripts assume to find Perl in /usr/bin/perl.
+You can use "Configure -Dusesocks" which causes Perl to probe
+for the SOCKS proxy protocol library, http://www.socks.nec.com/
=head1 BUGS
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff