=item *
+The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its
+usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future
+available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future
+releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change.
+
+=item *
+
The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed.
Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that
the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly)
For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
-the lib/unicore subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space
+the F<lib/unicore subdirectory>. The most notable omission, for space
considerations, is the Unihan database.
=item *
arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
in its math.)
-=head2 Miscellaneous Enhancements
+=head2 Miscellaneous Changes
=over 4
=item *
+The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning
+C<Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::dump(), qualify as such or use &>
+meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin
+dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined
+C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>.
+(The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly
+removed/changed in future releases.)
+
+=item *
+
+chomp() and chop() have been demoted back to I<not> being overrideable
+because they cannot really be overridden-- the problem is that their
+prototype cannot be expressed and therefore one really cannot write
+replacements to override these builtins.
+
+=item *
+
END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block.
Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
=item *
+A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been
+restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.)
+
+=item *
+
A new special regular expression variable has been introduced:
C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch).
=item *
+A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the
+little brother of C<-T>: instead of dieing on taint violations,
+lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary
+debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications.
+This is not a substitute for -T.>
+
+=item *
+
+If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to
+modify its target.
+
+=item *
+
untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie>
for details.
=item *
+ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully
+leads into better portability.
+
+=item *
+
Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite.
They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various
bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
=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. A version of Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
+Net::Ping has been muchly enhanced. Multihoming is now supported.
+There is now "external" protocol which uses Net::Ping::External module
+which runs external ping(1) and parses the output. A version of
+Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN.
=item *
=item *
-The utf8:: name space (as in the pragma) provides various
+The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various
Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
has been implemented.
=item *
-perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl
-(perlunicode is more of a reference)
+perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl.
+(perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background
+information)
=item *
=item *
+BeOS has been reclaimed.
+
+=item *
+
DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>.
=item *
=item *
+All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation
+specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
+
+=item *
+
NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>.
=item *
=item *
+All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation
+specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution.
+
+=item *
+
+Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package
+( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ) . All but one thread
+test worked, and that one failure was because of test results arriving
+in unexpected order.
+
+=item *
+
Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
=item *
=item *
Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data
-into utf8.
+into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data
+from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded
+as UTF-8.)
+
+=item *
+
+Generating illegal Unicode code points like U+FFFE, or the UTF-16
+surrogates, now also generates an optional warning.
=item *
=head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now
-Some modules were seen in the Perl 5.7 development releases
-but are not present in 5.8.0.
-
-=over 4
-
-=item *
-
-C<Attribute::Handlers> was removed because the implementation of C<my>
-variable attributes changed so much that the Attribute::Handlers will
-require a major rewrite. (This means that you can't use
-Attribute::Handler 0.76 with Perl 5.8.0.)
-
-=item *
-
C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed
because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a
core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available
from the CPAN.
-=back
-
=head1 Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / commitdiff