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 Safe Signals
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
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>.
+compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Chinese,
+Japanese, Korean, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be
+loaded at runtime. (For space considerations, the largest Chinese
+encodings have been separated into their own CPAN module,
+Encode::HanExtra). See L<Encode>.
Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
=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 *
-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.
+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>
+See L<perldebug>.
=item *
=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 *
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 mod_perl 1.3 Doesn't Build With -D_GNU_SOURCE
+
+In Linux, building mod_perl with B<threaded> Perl 5.8.0 does not work
+because starting from 5.8.0 building a threaded Perl uses the
+-D_GNU_SOURCE flag. The Apache 1.3 sources that are built alongside
+the mod_perl don't like that flag and the compilation dies because of
+function prototype conflicts. This may or may not get fixed in later
+releases of mod_perl 1.3 or Apache 1.3 (fixing the problem in Perl is
+less likely since threaded Perl now needs the -D_GNU_SOURCE>).
+Workarounds include using non-threaded Perl and using Apache 2.0.
+An obvious workaround would be to stop the -D_GNU_SOURCE from reaching
+the Apache 1.3 sources, but as of Perl 5.8.0, the complex build system
+of mod_perl has foiled this idea.
+
=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not
supporting inode change time.
-=head2 OS/390
+=head2 z/OS (OS/390)
-OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
+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.
- ../ext/B/t/deparse.t 17 1 5.88% 14
- ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5
- ../lib/utf8.t 94 13 13.83% 27 30-31 43 46 73
- 76 79 82 85 88 91
- 94
- ../lib/Benchmark.t 1 256 159 1 0.63% 75
- ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9
- ../lib/ExtUtils/t/ExtUtils.t 27 19 70.37% 5-23
- op/pat.t 858 9 1.05% 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
- uni/fold.t 767 8 1.04% 25-26 62 169 196
- 648 697-698
-57 tests and 377 subtests skipped.
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ../ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.t 321 2 0.62% 311 314
+ ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5
+ ../lib/utf8.t 94 13 13.83% 27 30-31 43 46 73
+ 76 79 82 85 88 91
+ 94
+ ../lib/Benchmark.t 1 256 159 1 0.63% 75
+ ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant.t 27 19 70.37% 5-23
+ ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9
+ op/pat.t 864 9 1.04% 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
+ uni/fold.t 767 8 1.04% 25-26 62 169 196
+ 648 697-698
+ 60 tests and 384 subtests skipped.
=head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130
=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
=head2 Win32
In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
-some output may appear twice. The Win32 following failures are known
+some output may appear twice. The following Win32 failures are known
as of 5.7.3:
- ..\ext/Encode/t/JP.t 4 1024 22 4 18.18% 9 14 18 21
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
..\ext/threads/t/end.t 6 4 66.67% 3-6
- ..\lib/blib.t 3 768 7 3 42.86% 1 4-5
=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory