=item *
-New Thread Implementation
+New IO Implementation
=item *
-Many New Modules
+New Thread Implementation
=item *
=item *
+Many New Modules
+
+=item *
+
More Extensive Regression Testing
=back
=item *
+Previous versions of perl and some readings of some sections of Camel III
+implied that C<:raw> "discipline" was the inverse of C<:crlf>.
+Turning off "clrfness" is no longer enough to make a stream truly
+binary. So the PerlIO C<:raw> discipline is now formally defined as being
+equivalent to binmode(FH) - which is in turn defined as doing whatever
+is necessary to pass each byte as-is without any translation.
+In particular binmode(FH) - and hence C<:raw> - will now turn off both CRLF
+and UTF-8 translation and remove other "layers" (e.g. :encoding()) which
+would modify byte stream.
+
+=item *
+
The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to
-be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>).
+be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>). If your existing
+programs depends on the underlying implementation, consider using
+L<Class::PseudoHash> from CPAN.
=item *
=item *
+If your platform supports fork(), you can use the list form of C<open>
+for pipes. For example:
+
+ open KID_PS, "-|", "ps", "aux" or die $!;
+
+forks the ps(1) command (without spawning a shell, as there are more
+than three arguments to open()), and reads its standard output via the
+C<KID_PS> filehandle. See L<perlipc>.
+
+=item *
+
File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
(UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information.
-In future releases this naming may change.
+In future releases this naming may change. See L<perluniintro>
+for more information about UTF-8.
+
+=item *
+
+If your environment variables (LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG, LANGUAGE) look
+like you want to use UTF-8 (any of the the variables match C</utf-?8/i>),
+your STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR handles and the default open discipline
+(see L<open>) are marked as UTF-8. (This feature, like other new
+features that combine Unicode and I/O, work only if you are using
+PerlIO, but that's is the default.)
+
+Note that after this Perl really does assume that everything is UTF-8:
+for example if some input handle is not, Perl will probably very soon
+complain about the input data like this "Malformed UTF-8 ..." since
+any old eight-bit data is not legal UTF-8.
+
+Note for code authors: if you want to enable your users to use UTF-8
+as their default encoding but in your code still have eight-bit I/O streams
+(such as images or zip files), you need to explicitly open() or binmode()
+with C<:bytes> (see L<perlfunc/open> and L<perlfunc/binmode>), or you
+can just use C<binmode(FH)> (nice for pre-5.8.0 backward compatibility).
=item *
=item *
-C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers.
+C<Attribute::Handlers>, originally by Damian Conway and now maintained
+by Arthur Bergman, allows a class to define attribute handlers.
package MyPack;
use Attribute::Handlers;
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. Because in effect Storable does serialisation
-of Perl data structues, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical
+of Perl data structures, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical
datastructures. Storable was originally created by Raphael Manfredi,
but it is now maintained by Abhijit Menon-Sen. Storable has been
enhanced to understand the two new hash features, Unicode keys and
=item *
+C<XS::APItest>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
+APIs. Currently only C<printf()> is tested: how to output various
+basic data types from XS.
+
+=item *
+
C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises
XS typemaps. Nothing gets installed, but the code is worth studying
for extension writers.
=item *
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been significantly cleaned up and fixed.
+The enhanced version has also been backported to earlier releases
+of Perl and submitted to CPAN so that the earlier releases can
+enjoy the fixes.
+
+=item *
+
+The arguments of WriteMakefile() in Makefile.PL are now checked
+for sanity much more carefully than before. This may cause new
+warnings when modules are being installed. See L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>
+for more details.
+
+=item *
+
ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
leads to better portability.
=item *
-The DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near
-osvers 4.5.2.
+The DYNIX/ptx platform (also known as dynixptx) is supported at or
+near osvers 4.5.2.
=item *
=item *
-Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
-condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
-line number, C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, and all debugger output
-now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. [561]
-
-=item *
-
Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of
dl_error() when statically building extensions into perl.
This has been corrected. [561]
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.
+between reported access and actual access. This improvement is only
+available on VMS v6.0 and later.
There is a new C<kill> implementation based on C<sys$sigprc> that allows
older VMS systems (pre-7.0) to use C<kill> to send signals rather than
=item *
-accept() no longer leaks memory. [561]
+Signal handling now works better than it used to. It is now implemented
+using a Windows message loop, and is therefore less prone to random
+crashes.
=item *
-Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
-However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
-generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). [561]
+fork() emulation is now more robust, but still continues to have a few
+esoteric bugs and caveats. See L<perlfork> for details. [561+]
+
+=item *
+
+A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN. [561]
+
+=item *
+
+The following modules now work on Windows:
+
+ ExtUtils::Embed [561]
+ IO::Pipe
+ IO::Poll
+ Net::Ping
+
+=item *
+
+IO::File::new_tmpfile() is no longer limited to 32767 invocations
+per-process.
=item *
=item *
-Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows
-9x. [561]
+Compiling perl using the 64-bit Platform SDK tools is now supported.
=item *
-New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. [561]
+The Win32::SetChildShowWindow() builtin can be used to control the
+visibility of windows created by child processes. See L<Win32> for
+details.
=item *
-Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
-processes. [561]
+Non-blocking waits for child processes (or pseudo-processes) are
+supported via C<waitpid($pid, &POSIX::WNOHANG)>.
=item *
-$ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
+The behavior of system() with multiple arguments has been rationalized.
+Each unquoted argument will be automatically quoted to protect whitespace,
+and any existing whitespace in the arguments will be preserved. This
+improves the portability of system(@args) by avoiding the need for
+Windows C<cmd> shell specific quoting in perl programs.
+
+Note that this means that some scripts that may have relied on earlier
+buggy behavior may no longer work correctly. For example,
+C<system("nmake /nologo", @args)> will now attempt to run the file
+C<nmake /nologo> and will fail when such a file isn't found.
+On the other hand, perl will now execute code such as
+C<system("c:/Program Files/MyApp/foo.exe", @args)> correctly.
=item *
-fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues
-to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats. [561+]
+The perl header files no longer suppress common warnings from the
+Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. This means that additional warnings may
+now show up when compiling XS code.
=item *
-A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
+Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
+However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
+generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). [561]
=item *
-Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
-Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. [561]
+Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
+[561]
+
+=item *
+
+Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
+processes. [561]
=item *
-HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
+New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. [561]
=item *
-The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the
-features enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary
-distribution). [561]
+Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
+Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. [561]
=item *
-Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
+The makefiles now default to the features enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl
+(a popular Win32 binary distribution). [561]
=item *
-Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. [561]
+HTML files will now be installed in c:\perl\html instead of
+c:\perl\lib\pod\html
=item *
-ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses $ENV{LIB} to search for libraries.
+REG_EXPAND_SZ keys are now allowed in registry settings used by perl. [561]
=item *
-Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
+Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. [561]
=item *
-%SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely
-unsupported under all configurations. [561]
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses $ENV{LIB} to search for libraries. [561]
=item *
Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
-concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
+concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.) [561]
=item *
=item *
-Non-blocking waits for child processes (or pseudo-processes) are
-supported via C<waitpid($pid, &POSIX::WNOHANG)>.
-
-=item *
-
-Win64 compilation is now supported.
-
-=item *
-
-winsock handle leak fixed. [561]
+A socket handle leak in accept() has been fixed. [561]
=back
=item *
+Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
+condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
+line number, C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, and all debugger output
+now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. [561]
+
+=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.
=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed [561]
(This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
+(5.7.0 came out before 5.6.1: the development branch 5.7 released
+sooner than the maintenance branch 5.6)
A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
This is a known bug in FreeBSD's readdir_r() (see L<perlfreebsd>
(README.freebsd)), which hopefully will be fixed in FreeBSD 4.6.
-=head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO8859-15 Locales
+=head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO 8859-15 Locales
-The ISO8859-15 locales may fail the locale test 117 in FreeBSD.
+The ISO 8859-15 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.
+case-insensitively. Apparently this problem has been fixed in
+the latest FreeBSD releases.
+( http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=34308 )
=head2 IRIX fails ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t
(in this particular test, the localtime() call is found to be
threadunsafe.)
+=head2 OS/2 Test Failures
+
+The following tests are known to fail on OS/2 (for clarity
+only the failures are shown, not the full error messages):
+
+t/io/utf8............................FAILED at test 19
+t/op/grent...........................FAILED at test 2
+t/op/pwent...........................FAILED at test 1
+t/lib/os2_base.......................FAILED at test 13
+t/lib/os2_process....................FAILED at test 10
+t/lib/os2_process_kid................FAILED at test 10
+t/lib/rx_cmprt.......................FAILED at test 16
+ext/DB_File/t/db-btree...............FAILED at test 0
+ext/DB_File/t/db-hash................FAILED at test 0
+ext/DB_File/t/db-recno...............FAILED at test 0
+lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.................FAILED at test 14
+lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant..............FAILED at test 4
+lib/Memoize/t/errors.................FAILED at test 4
+
=head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130
The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
experience failures (the test core dumping) in lib/locale.t.
The suggested cure is to upgrade your Solaris.
+=head2 Solaris x86 Fails Tests With -Duse64bitint
+
+The following tests are known to fail in Solaris x86 with Perl
+configured to use 64 bit integers:
+
+ ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.............FAILED at test 268
+ ext/Devel/Peek/Peek..................FAILED at test 7
+
=head2 SUPER-UX (NEC SX)
The following tests are known to fail on SUPER-UX:
signedness handling of the C compiler, as do the 64bitint, arith, and pow
failures. Most of the rest point at problems with SysV IPC.
+=head2 PDL failing some tests
+
+Use PDL 2.3.4 or later.
+
=head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32
Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later.
./perl -Ilib ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t
-=head2 UNICOS
+=head2 Unicode in package/class and subroutine names does not work
- ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25
- ../lib/warnings.t 470 1 0.21% 429
+One can have Unicode in identifier names, but not in package/class or
+subroutine names. While some limited functionality towards this does
+exist as of Perl 5.8.0, that is more accidental than designed; use of
+Unicode for the said purposes is unsupported.
-The Trig.t failure is caused by the slighly differing (from IEEE)
-floating point implementation of UNICOS. The warnings.t failure is
-also related: the test assumes a certain floating point output format;
-this assumption fails in UNICOS.
+One reason of this unfinishedness is its (currently) inherent
+unportability: since both package names and subroutine names may
+need to be mapped to file and directory names, the Unicode capability
+of the filesystem becomes important-- and there unfortunately aren't
+portable answers.
=head2 UNICOS/mk
Self-tying of scalars and IO thingies works.
+=head2 Tied/Magical Array/Hash Elements Do Not Autovivify
+
+For normal arrays C<$foo = \$bar[1]> will assign C<undef> to
+C<$bar[1]> (assuming that it didn't exist before), but for
+tied/magical arrays and hashes such autovivification does not happen
+because there is currently no way to catch the reference creation.
+The same problem affects slicing over non-existent indices/keys of
+a tied/magical array/hash.
+
=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with