(Pure Perl modules should continue to work.)
The major reason for the discontinuity is the new IO architecture
-called PerlIO. PerlIO is the default configuration because
-without it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be used. In other
-words: you just have to recompile your modules, sorry about that.
+called PerlIO. PerlIO is the default configuration because without
+it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be used. In other words:
+you just have to recompile your modules containing XS code, sorry
+about that.
In future releases of Perl, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become
completely unsupported. This shouldn't be too difficult for module
=item *
Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)".
-The prototypes are now checked at compile-time for invalid characters.
-An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in prototype...")
-but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future release.
+The prototypes are now checked better at compile-time for invalid
+syntax. An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in
+prototype...") but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future
+release.
=back
For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
-the F<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 *
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.)
+B<Note that perlcc is still considered very experimental and
+unsupported.>
=item *
HP-UX
-README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works.
+README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works;
+now uses HP-UX malloc instead of Perl malloc.
=item *
=item *
-C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
+C<< File::Spec->tmpdir() >> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
(works better when perl is running as service).
=item *
14.5.0 and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1, all attempted tests either
pass or result in TODO (ignored) failures.
-=head Term::ReadKey not working on Win32
+=head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32
Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later.