=head1 Incompatible Changes
+=head2 substr() lvalues are no longer fixed-length
+
+The lvalues returned by the three argument form of substr() used to be a
+"fixed length window" on the original string. In some cases this could
+cause surprising action at distance or other undefined behaviour. Now the
+length of the window adjusts iself to the length of the string assigned to
+it.
+
+=head2 The C<:unique> attribute is only meaningful for globals
+
+Now applying C<:unique> to lexical variables and to subroutines will
+result in a compilation error.
+
=head1 Core Enhancements
=head2 Lexical C<$_>
produce a compile-time error, as those format fields are incompatible.
L<perlform> has been improved, and miscellaneous bugs fixed.
-=head2 The C<:unique> attribute is only meaningful for globals
-
-Now applying C<:unique> to lexical variables and to subroutines will
-result in a compilation error.
-
=head2 Stacked filetest operators
As a new form of syntactic sugar, it's now possible to stack up filetest
The long-existing feature of C</(?{...})/> regexps setting C<$_> and pos()
is now documented.
+Sorting arrays in place (C<@a = sort @a>) is now optimized to avoid
+making a temporary copy of the array.
+
=head1 Performance Enhancements
The operations involving case mapping on UTF-8 strings (uc(), lc(),
C<//i>, etc.) have been greatly speeded up.
-=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
+Access to elements of lexical arrays via a numeric constant between 0 and
+255 is now faster. (This used to be only the case for global arrays.)
=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
-=head2 UTF8 bugs
+=head2 UTF-8 bugs
-Using substr() on a UTF8 string could cause subsequent accesses on that
-string to return garbage. This was due to incorrect UTF8 offsets being
+Using substr() on a UTF-8 string could cause subsequent accesses on that
+string to return garbage. This was due to incorrect UTF-8 offsets being
cached, and is now fixed.
join() could return garbage when the same join() statement was used to
-process 8 bit data having earlier processed UTF8 data, due to the flags
+process 8 bit data having earlier processed UTF-8 data, due to the flags
on that statement's temporary workspace not being reset correctly. This
is now fixed.
Using Unicode keys with tied hashes should now work correctly.
-chop() and chomp() used to mangle UTF8 strings. This has been fixed.
+chop() and chomp() used to mangle UTF-8 strings. This has been fixed.
+
+sprintf() used to misbehave when the format string was in UTF-8. This is
+now fixed.
=head2 Threading bugs
=head2 More bugs
-C<$a .. $b> will now work as expected when either $a or $b is C<undef>
+C<$a .. $b> will now work as expected when either $a or $b is C<undef>.
Reading $^E now preserves $!. Previously, the C code implementing $^E
did not preserve C<errno>, so reading $^E could cause C<errno> and therefore
See L<perldiag>.
-The fatal error "DESTROY created new reference to dead object" is now
+The fatal error I<DESTROY created new reference to dead object> is now
documented in L<perldiag>.
-A new error, "%ENV is aliased to %s", is produced when taint checks are
-enabled and when *ENV has been aliased (and thus doesn't reflect the
+A new error, I<%ENV is aliased to %s>, is produced when taint checks are
+enabled and when C<*ENV> has been aliased (and thus doesn't reflect the
program's environment anymore.)
=head1 Changed Internals
C<opt_type> is now 9 bits long. (Consequently, the C<B::OP> class doesn't
provide an C<seq> method anymore.)
+=head2 New parser
+
+perl's parser is now generated by bison (it used to be generated by
+byacc.) As a result, it seems to be a bit more robust.
+
=head1 Configuration and Building
C<Configure> now invokes callbacks regardless of the value of the variable
C<case $variable $define)> branch. This change should only affect platform
maintainers writing configuration hints files.
-=head1 New Tests
+The portability and clealiness of the Win32 makefiles has been improved.
=head1 Known Problems
-=head1 Platform Specific Problems
+There are still a couple of problems in the implementation of the lexical
+C<$_>: it doesn't work inside C</(?{...})/> blocks and with regard to the
+reverse() built-in used without arguments. (See the TODO tests in
+F<t/op/mydef.t>.)
+
+=head2 Platform Specific Problems
+
+The test F<ext/IPC/SysV/t/ipcsysv.t> may fail on OpenBSD. This hasn't been
+diagnosed yet.
+
+On some configurations on AIX 5, one test in F<lib/Time/Local.t> fails.
+When configured with long doubles, perl may fail tests 224-236 in
+F<t/op/pow.t> on the same platform.
+
+=head1 To-do for perl 5.10.0
+
+This is a non-exhaustive, non-ordered, non-contractual and non-definitive
+list of things to do (or nice to have) for perl 5.10.0 :
+
+Clean up and finish support for assertions. See L<assertions>.
+
+Reimplement the mechanism of lexical pragmas to be more extensible. Fix
+current pragmas that don't work well with lexical scopes (C<sort>, for
+example). MJD has ideas on this.
+
+Conversions from byte strings to UTF-8 currently map high bit characters
+to Unicode without translation (or, depending on how you look at it, by
+implicitly assuming the byte strings are in Latin-1). This is wrong,
+because perl assumes the C locale by default. Thus upgrading a string to
+UTF-8 (esp. in place) may change the meaning of its contents regarding
+character classes, case mapping, etc. Try to find a way to fix it without
+breaking all the legacy code out there (and without making the life of the
+XS coders miserable.)
+
+Introduce a new special block, UNITCHECK, which is run at the end of a
+compilation unit (module, file, eval(STRING) block). This will correspond to
+the Perl 6 CHECK. Perl 5's CHECK cannot be changed or removed because the
+O/B framework depends on it.
+
+Study the possibility of adding a new prototype character, C<_>, meaning
+"this argument defaults to $_".
+
+Make the peephole optimizer optional.
+
+Allow lexical aliases (maybe via the syntax C<my \$alias = \$foo>.
+
+Fix the bugs revealed by running the test suite with the C<-t> switch (via
+C<make test.taintwarn>).
+
+Make threads more robust.
+
+Make C<no 6> and C<no v6> work.
+
+A test suite for the B module would be nice.
+
+A ponie.
=head1 Reporting Bugs
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / commitdiff