The roadmap to 5.10 envisages feature based releases, as various items in this
TODO are completed.
-=head2 Needed for a 5.9.5 release
-
-=over
-
-=item *
-
-Review assertions. Review syntax to combine assertions. Assertions could take
-advantage of the lexical pragmas work. L</What hooks would assertions need?>
-
-=back
-
-=head2 Needed for a 5.9.6 release
-
-Stabilisation. If all goes well, this will be the equivalent of a 5.10-beta.
-
=head2 Needed for the final 5.10.0 release
-=over 4
-
-=item *
-
Review perlguts. Significant changes have occured since 5.8, and we can't
release a new version without making sure these are covered.
-=back
-
=head1 Tasks that only need Perl knowledge
=head2 common test code for timed bail out
It would be good to teach C<embed.pl> to understand the conditional
compilation, and hence remove the duplication, and the mistakes it has caused.
+=head2 use strict; and AutoLoad
+
+Currently if you write
+
+ package Whack;
+ use AutoLoader 'AUTOLOAD';
+ use strict;
+ 1;
+ __END__
+ sub bloop {
+ print join (' ', No, strict, here), "!\n";
+ }
+
+then C<use strict;> isn't in force within the autoloaded subroutines. It would
+be more consistent (and less surprising) to arrange for all lexical pragmas
+in force at the __END__ block to be in force within each autoloaded subroutine.
+
=head1 Tasks that need a little sysadmin-type knowledge
Or if you prefer, tasks that you would learn from, and broaden your skills
identical in both C<win32/wince.c> and C<win32/win32.c> files, which can't
be good.
+=head2 Use secure CRT functions when building with VC8 on Win32
+
+Visual C++ 2005 (VC++ 8.x) deprecated a number of CRT functions on the basis
+that they were "unsafe" and introduced differently named secure versions of
+them as replacements, e.g. instead of writing
+
+ FILE* f = fopen(__FILE__, "r");
+
+one should now write
+
+ FILE* f;
+ errno_t err = fopen_s(&f, __FILE__, "r");
+
+Currently, the warnings about these deprecations have been disabled by adding
+-D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE to the CFLAGS. It would be nice to remove that
+warning suppressant and actually make use of the new secure CRT functions.
+
+There is also a similar issue with POSIX CRT function names like fileno having
+been deprecated in favour of ISO C++ conformant names like _fileno. These
+warnings are also currently suppressed with the compiler option /wd4996. It
+might be nice to do as Microsoft suggest here too, although, unlike the secure
+functions issue, there is presumably little or no benefit in this case.
+
=head1 Tasks that need a knowledge of XS
These tasks would need C knowledge, and roughly the level of knowledge of
the perl API that comes from writing modules that use XS to interface to
C.
-=head2 shrink C<PVBM>s
-
-By removing unused elements and careful re-ordering, the structures for C<AV>s,
-C<HV>s, C<CV>s and C<GV>s have recently been shrunk considerably. C<PVIO>s
-probably aren't worth it, as typical programs don't use more than 8, and
-(at least) C<Filter::Util::Call> uses C<SvPVX>/C<SvCUR>/C<SvLEN> on a C<PVIO>,
-so it would mean code changes to modules on CPAN. C<PVBM>s might have some
-savings to win.
-
=head2 autovivification
Make all autovivification consistent w.r.t LVALUE/RVALUE and strict/no strict;
Currently the %ENV entries are always byte strings.
+=head2 Unicode and glob()
+
+Currently glob patterns and filenames returned from File::Glob::glob()
+are always byte strings.
+
=head2 use less 'memory'
Investigate trade offs to switch out perl's choices on memory usage.
Go through the core and look for similar assumptions that SVs have particular
types, as all bets are off during global destruction.
+=head2 Extend PerlIO and PerlIO::Scalar
+
+PerlIO::Scalar doesn't know how to truncate(). Implementing this
+would require extending the PerlIO vtable.
+
+Similarly the PerlIO vtable doesn't know about formats (write()), or
+about stat(), or chmod()/chown(), utime(), or flock().
+
+(For PerlIO::Scalar it's hard to see what e.g. mode bits or ownership
+would mean.)
+
+PerlIO doesn't do directories or symlinks, either: mkdir(), rmdir(),
+opendir(), closedir(), seekdir(), rewinddir(), glob(); symlink(),
+readlink().
+
+=head2 -C on the #! line
+
+It should be possible to make -C work correctly if found on the #! line,
+given that all perl command line options are strict ASCII, and -C changes
+only the interpretation of non-ASCII characters, and not for the script file
+handle. To make it work needs some investigation of the ordering of function
+calls during startup, and (by implication) a bit of tweaking of that order.
+
+
=head1 Tasks that need a knowledge of the interpreter
These tasks would need C knowledge, and knowledge of how the interpreter works,
Allow to delete functions. One can already undef them, but they're still
in the stash.
+=head2 C</w> regex modifier
+
+That flag would enable to match whole words, and also to interpolate
+arrays as alternations. With it, C</P/w> would be roughly equivalent to:
+
+ do { local $"='|'; /\b(?:P)\b/ }
+
+See L<http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2007-01/msg00400.html>
+for the discussion.
+
=head2 optional optimizer
Make the peephole optimizer optional. Currently it performs two tasks as
tokeniser ignores the UTF-8-ness of C<PL_rsfp>, or any SVs returned from
source filters. All this could be fixed.
+=head2 The yada yada yada operators
+
+Perl 6's Synopsis 3 says:
+
+I<The ... operator is the "yada, yada, yada" list operator, which is used as
+the body in function prototypes. It complains bitterly (by calling fail)
+if it is ever executed. Variant ??? calls warn, and !!! calls die.>
+
+Those would be nice to add to Perl 5. That could be done without new ops.
+
=head1 Big projects
Tasks that will get your name mentioned in the description of the "Highlights
One bit would be to write the missing code in sv.c:Perl_dirp_dup.
+Fix Perl_sv_dup, et al so that threads can return objects.
+
=head2 iCOW
Sarathy and Arthur have a proposal for an improved Copy On Write which
Apparently these are quite useful. Anyway, Jeffery Friedl wants them.
demerphq has this on his todo list, but right at the bottom.
-
-