=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and the
-5.8.0 release.
+This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release
+and the 5.8.0 release.
-=head1 Highlights
+Many of the bug fixes in 5.8.0 were already seen in the 5.6.1
+maintenance release since the two releases were kept closely
+coordinated.
+
+=head1 Highlights In 5.8.0
=over 4
=item *
The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
-alphabetically to be csh-compliant. (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
+alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before
+in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
=item *
+Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob()
+caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed.
+
+=item *
+
Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
=item *
Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
+However, the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental.
=item *
=item *
-UNTIE method is now recognised.
+untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
+for details.
=item *
=item *
+DB_File now supports newer Berkeley DB versions, among
+other improvements.
+
+=item *
+
The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
hit by saying
=item *
+File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links.
+
+=item *
+
File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also
correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks
(naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work.
=item *
+Math::Complex handles inf, NaN etc., better.
+
+=item *
+
Net::Ping has been enhanced. There is now "external" protocol which
uses Net::Ping::External module which runs external ping(1) and parses
-the output. An alpha version of Net::Ping::External is available in
-CPAN and in 5.7.2 the Net::Ping::External may be integrated to Perl.
+the output. A version of Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
=item *
=item *
+In SDBM_File on dosish platforms, some keys went missing because of
+lack of support for files with "holes". A workaround for the problem
+has been added.
+
+=item *
+
In Search::Dict one can now have a pre-processing hook for the
lines being searched.
C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is,
command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
+(The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.)
=item *
=item *
-map() that changes the size of the list should now work faster.
+map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates
+is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for
+common scenarios.
=item *
=item *
+Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due
+to obsolescence.
+
+=item *
+
configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them.
=item *
=item *
+NEC SUPER-UX is now supported.
+
+=item *
+
Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
=item *
=item *
+caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was sometimes
+affected by this problem.
+
+=item *
+
chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
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, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output now
-goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
+line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output
+now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
+
+=item *
+
+Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of dl_error()
+when statically building extensions into perl. This has been corrected.
=item *
=item *
C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works.
+=item *
+
+Infinity is now recognized as a number.
=item *
=item *
-Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes.
+Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes
+and into C<eval "...">.
+
+=item *
+
+C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been
+corrected.
+
+=item *
+
+warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller
+isn't using lexical warnings.
=item *
=item *
+Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value
+properly in certain circumstances.
+
+=item *
+
Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our().
=item *
=item *
+"our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks
+resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables.
+The problem has been corrected.
+
+=item *
+
pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0".
=item *
=item *
-C<q(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
+C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
+
+=item *
+
+pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier
+versions. This is now handled correctly.
=item *
sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
(they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
+The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments
+to be sorted are always provided list context.
=item *
=item *
+Some cases of inconsistent taint propagation (such as within hash
+values) have been fixed.
+
+=item *
+
+The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds
+of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better.
+
+=item *
+
+Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'>
+or via C<-Dr>) now looks better.
+
+=item *
+
+Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The
+bug has been fixed.
+
+=item *
+
+Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This
+is now avoided.
+
+=item *
+
The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now
more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
data lying around in them.
=item *
+readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra "" at
+the end in certain situations. This has been corrected.
+
+=item *
+
+Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described
+in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works
+again now.
+
+=item *
+
Sys::Syslog ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant.
=item *
=item *
+Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings.
+This has been corrected.
+
+=item *
+
Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>.
=back
+=item *
+
+Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their
+unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations.
+
=back
=head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
=item *
+Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child
+processes.
+
+=item *
+
$ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
=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.
+fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues
+to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats.
=item *
=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.
+
+=item *
+
HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
=item *
=item *
+%SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely
+unsupported under all configurations.
+
+=item *
+
Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
=item *
-wait() and waitpid() now work much better.
+wait(), waitpid() and backticks now return the correct exit status under
+Windows 9x.
=item *
=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
-The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near
-working order yet.
+The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be
+highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged.
=head2 The Long Double Support is Still Experimental
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / commitdiff