PERL5120DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5120DELTA(1) #
PERL5120DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5120DELTA(1)
NNAAMMEE #
perl5120delta - what is new for perl v5.12.0
DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #
This document describes differences between the 5.10.0 release and the
5.12.0 release.
Many of the bug fixes in 5.12.0 are already included in the 5.10.1
maintenance release.
You can see the list of those changes in the 5.10.1 release notes
(perl5101delta).
CCoorree EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss NNeeww “"ppaacckkaaggee NNAAMMEE VVEERRSSIIOONN"” ssyynnttaaxx This new syntax allows a module author to set the $VERSION of a namespace when the namespace is declared with ‘package’. It eliminates the need for “our $VERSION = …” and similar constructs. E.g.
package Foo::Bar 1.23;
# $Foo::Bar::VERSION == 1.23
There are several advantages to this:
• $VERSION is parsed in exactly the same way as "use NAME VERSION"
• $VERSION is set at compile time
• $VERSION is a version object that provides proper overloading of
comparison operators so comparing $VERSION to decimal (1.23) or
dotted-decimal (v1.2.3) version numbers works correctly.
• Eliminates "$VERSION = ..." and "eval $VERSION" clutter
• As it requires VERSION to be a numeric literal or v-string literal,
it can be statically parsed by toolchain modules without "eval" the
way MM->parse_version does for "$VERSION = ..."
It does not break old code with only "package NAME", but code that uses
"package NAME VERSION" will need to be restricted to perl 5.12.0 or newer
This is analogous to the change to "open" from two-args to three-args.
Users requiring the latest Perl will benefit, and perhaps after several
years, it will become a standard practice.
However, "package NAME VERSION" requires a new, 'strict' version number
format. See "Version number formats" for details.
TThhee “”......“” ooppeerraattoorr A new operator, “…”, nicknamed the Yada Yada operator, has been added. It is intended to mark placeholder code that is not yet implemented. See “Yada Yada Operator” in perlop.
IImmpplliicciitt ssttrriiccttuurreess Using the “use VERSION” syntax with a version number greater or equal to 5.11.0 will lexically enable strictures just like “use strict” would do (in addition to enabling features.) The following:
use 5.12.0;
means:
use strict;
use feature ':5.12';
UUnniiccooddee iimmpprroovveemmeennttss Perl 5.12 comes with Unicode 5.2, the latest version available to us at the time of release. This version of Unicode was released in October 2009. See http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0 for further details about what’s changed in this version of the standard. See perlunicode for instructions on installing and using other versions of Unicode.
Additionally, Perl's developers have significantly improved Perl's
Unicode implementation. For full details, see "Unicode overhaul" below.
YY22003388 ccoommpplliiaannccee Perl’s core time-related functions are now Y2038 compliant. (It may not mean much to you, but your kids will love it!)
qqrr oovveerrllooaaddiinngg It is now possible to overload the “qr//” operator, that is, conversion to regexp, like it was already possible to overload conversion to boolean, string or number of objects. It is invoked when an object appears on the right hand side of the “=~” operator or when it is interpolated into a regexp. See overload.
PPlluuggggaabbllee kkeeyywwoorrddss Extension modules can now cleanly hook into the Perl parser to define new kinds of keyword-headed expression and compound statement. The syntax following the keyword is defined entirely by the extension. This allows a completely non-Perl sublanguage to be parsed inline, with the correct ops cleanly generated.
See "PL_keyword_plugin" in perlapi for the mechanism. The Perl core
source distribution also includes a new module XS::APItest::KeywordRPN,
which implements reverse Polish notation arithmetic via pluggable
keywords. This module is mainly used for test purposes, and is not
normally installed, but also serves as an example of how to use the new
mechanism.
Perl's developers consider this feature to be experimental. We may remove
it or change it in a backwards-incompatible way in Perl 5.14.
AAPPIIss ffoorr mmoorree iinntteerrnnaallss The lowest layers of the lexer and parts of the pad system now have C APIs available to XS extensions. These are necessary to support proper use of pluggable keywords, but have other uses too. The new APIs are experimental, and only cover a small proportion of what would be necessary to take full advantage of the core’s facilities in these areas. It is intended that the Perl 5.13 development cycle will see the addition of a full range of clean, supported interfaces.
Perl's developers consider this feature to be experimental. We may remove
it or change it in a backwards-incompatible way in Perl 5.14.
OOvveerrrriiddaabbllee ffuunnccttiioonn llooookkuupp Where an extension module hooks the creation of rv2cv ops to modify the subroutine lookup process, this now works correctly for bareword subroutine calls. This means that prototypes on subroutines referenced this way will be processed correctly. (Previously bareword subroutine names were initially looked up, for parsing purposes, by an unhookable mechanism, so extensions could only properly influence subroutine names that appeared with an “&” sigil.)
AA pprrooppeerr iinntteerrffaaccee ffoorr pplluuggggaabbllee MMeetthhoodd RReessoolluuttiioonn OOrrddeerrss As of Perl 5.12.0 there is a new interface for plugging and using method resolution orders other than the default linear depth first search. The C3 method resolution order added in 5.10.0 has been re-implemented as a plugin, without changing its Perl-space interface. See perlmroapi for more information.
“”\\NN"" eexxppeerriimmeennttaall rreeggeexx eessccaappee Perl now supports “\N”, a new regex escape which you can think of as the inverse of “\n”. It will match any character that is not a newline, independently from the presence or absence of the single line match modifier “/s”. It is not usable within a character class. “\N{3}” means to match 3 non-newlines; “\N{5,}” means to match at least 5. “\N{NAME}” still means the character or sequence named “NAME”, but “NAME” no longer can be things like 3, or “5,”.
This will break a custom charnames translator which allows numbers for
character names, as "\N{3}" will now mean to match 3 non-newline
characters, and not the character whose name is 3. (No name defined by
the Unicode standard is a number, so only custom translators might be
affected.)
Perl's developers are somewhat concerned about possible user confusion
with the existing "\N{...}" construct which matches characters by their
Unicode name. Consequently, this feature is experimental. We may remove
it or change it in a backwards-incompatible way in Perl 5.14.
DDTTrraaccee ssuuppppoorrtt Perl now has some support for DTrace. See “DTrace support” in _I_N_S_T_A_L_L.
SSuuppppoorrtt ffoorr “"ccoonnffiigguurree__rreeqquuiirreess"” iinn CCPPAANN mmoodduullee mmeettaaddaattaa Both “CPAN” and “CPANPLUS” now support the “configure_requires” keyword in the _M_E_T_A_._y_m_l metadata file included in most recent CPAN distributions. This allows distribution authors to specify configuration prerequisites that must be installed before running _M_a_k_e_f_i_l_e_._P_L or _B_u_i_l_d_._P_L.
See the documentation for "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" or "Module::Build" for
more on how to specify "configure_requires" when creating a distribution
for CPAN.
“"eeaacchh"”,, “"kkeeyyss"”,, “"vvaalluueess"” aarree nnooww mmoorree fflleexxiibbllee The “each”, “keys”, “values” function can now operate on arrays.
“"wwhheenn"” aass aa ssttaatteemmeenntt mmooddiiffiieerr “when” is now allowed to be used as a statement modifier.
$$,, fflleexxiibbiilliittyy The variable $, may now be tied.
//// iinn wwhheenn ccllaauusseess // now behaves like || in when clauses
EEnnaabblliinngg wwaarrnniinnggss ffrroomm yyoouurr sshheellll eennvviirroonnmmeenntt You can now set “-W” from the “PERL5OPT” environment variable
“"ddeelleettee llooccaall"” “delete local” now allows you to locally delete a hash entry.
NNeeww ssuuppppoorrtt ffoorr AAbbssttrraacctt nnaammeessppaaccee ssoocckkeettss Abstract namespace sockets are Linux-specific socket type that live in AF_UNIX family, slightly abusing it to be able to use arbitrary character arrays as addresses: They start with nul byte and are not terminated by nul byte, but with the length passed to the ssoocckkeett(()) system call.
3322--bbiitt lliimmiitt oonn ssuubbssttrr aarrgguummeennttss rreemmoovveedd The 32-bit limit on “substr” arguments has now been removed. The full range of the system’s signed and unsigned integers is now available for the “pos” and “len” arguments.
PPootteennttiiaallllyy IInnccoommppaattiibbllee CChhaannggeess DDeepprreeccaattiioonnss wwaarrnn bbyy ddeeffaauulltt Over the years, Perl’s developers have deprecated a number of language features for a variety of reasons. Perl now defaults to issuing a warning if a deprecated language feature is used. Many of the deprecations Perl now warns you about have been deprecated for many years. You can find a list of what was deprecated in a given release of Perl in the “perl5xxdelta.pod” file for that release.
To disable this feature in a given lexical scope, you should use "no
warnings 'deprecated';" For information about which language features are
deprecated and explanations of various deprecation warnings, please see
perldiag. See "Deprecations" below for the list of features and modules
Perl's developers have deprecated as part of this release.
VVeerrssiioonn nnuummbbeerr ffoorrmmaattss Acceptable version number formats have been formalized into “strict” and “lax” rules. “package NAME VERSION” takes a strict version number. “UNIVERSAL::VERSION” and the version object constructors take lax version numbers. Providing an invalid version will result in a fatal error. The version argument in “use NAME VERSION” is first parsed as a numeric literal or v-string and then passed to “UNIVERSAL::VERSION” (and must then pass the “lax” format test).
These formats are documented fully in the version module. To a first
approximation, a "strict" version number is a positive decimal number
(integer or decimal-fraction) without exponentiation or else a dotted-
decimal v-string with a leading 'v' character and at least three
components. A "lax" version number allows v-strings with fewer than three
components or without a leading 'v'. Under "lax" rules, both decimal and
dotted-decimal versions may have a trailing "alpha" component separated
by an underscore character after a fractional or dotted-decimal
component.
The version module adds "version::is_strict" and "version::is_lax"
functions to check a scalar against these rules.
@@IINNCC rreeoorrggaanniizzaattiioonn In @INC, “ARCHLIB” and “PRIVLIB” now occur after the current version’s “site_perl” and “vendor_perl”. Modules installed into “site_perl” and “vendor_perl” will now be loaded in preference to those installed in “ARCHLIB” and “PRIVLIB”.
RREEGGEEXXPPss aarree nnooww ffiirrsstt ccllaassss Internally, Perl now treats compiled regular expressions (such as those created with “qr//”) as first class entities. Perl modules which serialize, deserialize or otherwise have deep interaction with Perl’s internal data structures need to be updated for this change. Most affected CPAN modules have already been updated as of this writing.
SSwwiittcchh ssttaatteemmeenntt cchhaannggeess The “given”/“when” switch statement handles complex statements better than Perl 5.10.0 did (These enhancements are also available in 5.10.1 and subsequent 5.10 releases.) There are two new cases where “when” now interprets its argument as a boolean, instead of an expression to be used in a smart match:
flip-flop operators
The ".." and "..." flip-flop operators are now evaluated in boolean
context, following their usual semantics; see "Range Operators" in
perlop.
Note that, as in perl 5.10.0, "when (1..10)" will not work to test
whether a given value is an integer between 1 and 10; you should use
"when ([1..10])" instead (note the array reference).
However, contrary to 5.10.0, evaluating the flip-flop operators in
boolean context ensures it can now be useful in a "when()", notably
for implementing bistable conditions, like in:
when (/^=begin/ .. /^=end/) {
# do something
}
defined-or operator
A compound expression involving the defined-or operator, as in "when
(expr1 // expr2)", will be treated as boolean if the first expression
is boolean. (This just extends the existing rule that applies to the
regular or operator, as in "when (expr1 || expr2)".)
SSmmaarrtt mmaattcchh cchhaannggeess Since Perl 5.10.0, Perl’s developers have made a number of changes to the smart match operator. These, of course, also alter the behaviour of the switch statements where smart matching is implicitly used. These changes were also made for the 5.10.1 release, and will remain in subsequent 5.10 releases.
_C_h_a_n_g_e_s _t_o _t_y_p_e_-_b_a_s_e_d _d_i_s_p_a_t_c_h
The smart match operator "~~" is no longer commutative. The behaviour of
a smart match now depends primarily on the type of its right hand
argument. Moreover, its semantics have been adjusted for greater
consistency or usefulness in several cases. While the general backwards
compatibility is maintained, several changes must be noted:
• Code references with an empty prototype are no longer treated
specially. They are passed an argument like the other code
references (even if they choose to ignore it).
• "%hash ~~ sub {}" and "@array ~~ sub {}" now test that the subroutine
returns a true value for each key of the hash (or element of the
array), instead of passing the whole hash or array as a reference to
the subroutine.
• Due to the commutativity breakage, code references are no longer
treated specially when appearing on the left of the "~~" operator,
but like any vulgar scalar.
• "undef ~~ %hash" is always false (since "undef" can't be a key in a
hash). No implicit conversion to "" is done (as was the case in perl
5.10.0).
• "$scalar ~~ @array" now always distributes the smart match across the
elements of the array. It's true if one element in @array verifies
"$scalar ~~ $element". This is a generalization of the old behaviour
that tested whether the array contained the scalar.
The full dispatch table for the smart match operator is given in "Smart
matching in detail" in perlsyn.
_S_m_a_r_t _m_a_t_c_h _a_n_d _o_v_e_r_l_o_a_d_i_n_g
According to the rule of dispatch based on the rightmost argument type,
when an object overloading "~~" appears on the right side of the
operator, the overload routine will always be called (with a 3rd argument
set to a true value, see overload.) However, when the object will appear
on the left, the overload routine will be called only when the rightmost
argument is a simple scalar. This way, distributivity of smart match
across arrays is not broken, as well as the other behaviours with complex
types (coderefs, hashes, regexes). Thus, writers of overloading routines
for smart match mostly need to worry only with comparing against a
scalar, and possibly with stringification overloading; the other common
cases will be automatically handled consistently.
"~~" will now refuse to work on objects that do not overload it (in order
to avoid relying on the object's underlying structure). (However, if the
object overloads the stringification or the numification operators, and
if overload fallback is active, it will be used instead, as usual.)
OOtthheerr ppootteennttiiaallllyy iinnccoommppaattiibbllee cchhaannggeess • The definitions of a number of Unicode properties have changed to match those of the current Unicode standard. These are listed above under “Unicode overhaul”. This change may break code that expects the old definitions.
• The boolkeys op has moved to the group of hash ops. This breaks
binary compatibility.
• Filehandles are now always blessed into "IO::File".
The previous behaviour was to bless Filehandles into FileHandle (an
empty proxy class) if it was loaded into memory and otherwise to
bless them into "IO::Handle".
• The semantics of "use feature :5.10*" have changed slightly. See
"Modules and Pragmata" for more information.
• Perl's developers now use git, rather than Perforce. This should be
a purely internal change only relevant to people actively working on
the core. However, you may see minor difference in perl as a
consequence of the change. For example in some of details of the
output of "perl -V". See perlrepository for more information.
• As part of the "Test::Harness" 2.x to 3.x upgrade, the experimental
"Test::Harness::Straps" module has been removed. See "Modules and
Pragmata" for more details.
• As part of the "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" upgrade, the
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes" and "ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsish"
modules have been removed from this distribution.
• "Module::CoreList" no longer contains the %:patchlevel hash.
• "length undef" now returns undef.
• Unsupported private C API functions are now declared "static" to
prevent leakage to Perl's public API.
• To support the bootstrapping process, _m_i_n_i_p_e_r_l no longer builds with
UTF-8 support in the regexp engine.
This allows a build to complete with PERL_UNICODE set and a UTF-8
locale. Without this there's a bootstrapping problem, as miniperl
can't load the UTF-8 components of the regexp engine, because they're
not yet built.
• _m_i_n_i_p_e_r_l's @INC is now restricted to just "-I...", the split of
$ENV{PERL5LIB}, and "".""
• A space or a newline is now required after a "#line XXX" directive.
• Tied filehandles now have an additional method EOF which provides the
EOF type.
• To better match all other flow control statements, "foreach" may no
longer be used as an attribute.
• Perl's command-line switch "-P", which was deprecated in version
5.10.0, has now been removed. The CPAN module "Filter::cpp" can be
used as an alternative.
DDeepprreeccaattiioonnss From time to time, Perl’s developers find it necessary to deprecate features or modules we’ve previously shipped as part of the core distribution. We are well aware of the pain and frustration that a backwards-incompatible change to Perl can cause for developers building or maintaining software in Perl. You can be sure that when we deprecate a functionality or syntax, it isn’t a choice we make lightly. Sometimes, we choose to deprecate functionality or syntax because it was found to be poorly designed or implemented. Sometimes, this is because they’re holding back other features or causing performance problems. Sometimes, the reasons are more complex. Wherever possible, we try to keep deprecated functionality available to developers in its previous form for at least one major release. So long as a deprecated feature isn’t actively disrupting our ability to maintain and extend Perl, we’ll try to leave it in place as long as possible.
The following items are now deprecated:
suidperl
"suidperl" is no longer part of Perl. It used to provide a mechanism
to emulate setuid permission bits on systems that don't support it
properly.
Use of ":=" to mean an empty attribute list
An accident of Perl's parser meant that these constructions were all
equivalent:
my $pi := 4;
my $pi : = 4;
my $pi : = 4;
with the ":" being treated as the start of an attribute list, which
ends before the "=". As whitespace is not significant here, all are
parsed as an empty attribute list, hence all the above are equivalent
to, and better written as
my $pi = 4;
because no attribute processing is done for an empty list.
As is, this meant that ":=" cannot be used as a new token, without
silently changing the meaning of existing code. Hence that particular
form is now deprecated, and will become a syntax error. If it is
absolutely necessary to have empty attribute lists (for example,
because of a code generator) then avoid the warning by adding a space
before the "=".
"UNIVERSAL->import()"
The method "UNIVERSAL->import()" is now deprecated. Attempting to
pass import arguments to a "use UNIVERSAL" statement will result in a
deprecation warning.
Use of "goto" to jump into a construct
Using "goto" to jump from an outer scope into an inner scope is now
deprecated. This rare use case was causing problems in the
implementation of scopes.
Custom character names in \N{name} that don't look like names
In "\N{_n_a_m_e}", _n_a_m_e can be just about anything. The standard Unicode
names have a very limited domain, but a custom name translator could
create names that are, for example, made up entirely of punctuation
symbols. It is now deprecated to make names that don't begin with an
alphabetic character, and aren't alphanumeric or contain other than a
very few other characters, namely spaces, dashes, parentheses and
colons. Because of the added meaning of "\N" (See ""\N" experimental
regex escape"), names that look like curly brace -enclosed
quantifiers won't work. For example, "\N{3,4}" now means to match 3
to 4 non-newlines; before a custom name "3,4" could have been
created.
Deprecated Modules
The following modules will be removed from the core distribution in a
future release, and should be installed from CPAN instead.
Distributions on CPAN which require these should add them to their
prerequisites. The core versions of these modules warnings will issue
a deprecation warning.
If you ship a packaged version of Perl, either alone or as part of a
larger system, then you should carefully consider the repercussions
of core module deprecations. You may want to consider shipping your
default build of Perl with packages for some or all deprecated
modules which install into "vendor" or "site" perl library
directories. This will inhibit the deprecation warnings.
Alternatively, you may want to consider patching _l_i_b_/_d_e_p_r_e_c_a_t_e_._p_m to
provide deprecation warnings specific to your packaging system or
distribution of Perl, consistent with how your packaging system or
distribution manages a staged transition from a release where the
installation of a single package provides the given functionality, to
a later release where the system administrator needs to know to
install multiple packages to get that same functionality.
You can silence these deprecation warnings by installing the modules
in question from CPAN. To install the latest version of all of them,
just install "Task::Deprecations::5_12".
Class::ISA
Pod::Plainer
Shell
Switch
Switch is buggy and should be avoided. You may find Perl's new
"given"/"when" feature a suitable replacement. See "Switch
statements" in perlsyn for more information.
Assignment to $[
Use of the attribute :locked on subroutines
Use of "locked" with the attributes pragma
Use of "unique" with the attributes pragma
Perl_pmflag
"Perl_pmflag" is no longer part of Perl's public API. Calling it now
generates a deprecation warning, and it will be removed in a future
release. Although listed as part of the API, it was never documented,
and only ever used in _t_o_k_e_._c, and prior to 5.10, _r_e_g_c_o_m_p_._c. In core,
it has been replaced by a static function.
Numerous Perl 4-era libraries
_t_e_r_m_c_a_p_._p_l, _t_a_i_n_t_e_d_._p_l, _s_t_a_t_._p_l, _s_h_e_l_l_w_o_r_d_s_._p_l, _p_w_d_._p_l, _o_p_e_n_3_._p_l,
_o_p_e_n_2_._p_l, _n_e_w_g_e_t_o_p_t_._p_l, _l_o_o_k_._p_l, _f_i_n_d_._p_l, _f_i_n_d_d_e_p_t_h_._p_l, _i_m_p_o_r_t_e_n_v_._p_l,
_h_o_s_t_n_a_m_e_._p_l, _g_e_t_o_p_t_s_._p_l, _g_e_t_o_p_t_._p_l, _g_e_t_c_w_d_._p_l, _f_l_u_s_h_._p_l, _f_a_s_t_c_w_d_._p_l,
_e_x_c_e_p_t_i_o_n_s_._p_l, _c_t_i_m_e_._p_l, _c_o_m_p_l_e_t_e_._p_l, _c_a_c_h_e_o_u_t_._p_l, _b_i_g_r_a_t_._p_l,
_b_i_g_i_n_t_._p_l, _b_i_g_f_l_o_a_t_._p_l, _a_s_s_e_r_t_._p_l, _a_b_b_r_e_v_._p_l, _d_o_t_s_h_._p_l, and
_t_i_m_e_l_o_c_a_l_._p_l are all now deprecated. Earlier, Perl's developers
intended to remove these libraries from Perl's core for the 5.14.0
release.
During final testing before the release of 5.12.0, several developers
discovered current production code using these ancient libraries,
some inside the Perl core itself. Accordingly, the pumpking granted
them a stay of execution. They will begin to warn about their
deprecation in the 5.14.0 release and will be removed in the 5.16.0
release.
UUnniiccooddee oovveerrhhaauull Perl’s developers have made a concerted effort to update Perl to be in sync with the latest Unicode standard. Changes for this include:
Perl can now handle every Unicode character property. New documentation,
perluniprops, lists all available non-Unihan character properties. By
default, perl does not expose Unihan, deprecated or Unicode-internal
properties. See below for more details on these; there is also a section
in the pod listing them, and explaining why they are not exposed.
Perl now fully supports the Unicode compound-style of using "=" and ":"
in writing regular expressions: "\p{property=value}" and
"\p{property:value}" (both of which mean the same thing).
Perl now fully supports the Unicode loose matching rules for text between
the braces in "\p{...}" constructs. In addition, Perl allows underscores
between digits of numbers.
Perl now accepts all the Unicode-defined synonyms for properties and
property values.
"qr/\X/", which matches a Unicode logical character, has been expanded to
work better with various Asian languages. It now is defined as an
_e_x_t_e_n_d_e_d _g_r_a_p_h_e_m_e _c_l_u_s_t_e_r. (See <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>).
Anything matched previously and that made sense will continue to be
accepted. Additionally:
• "\X" will not break apart a "CR LF" sequence.
• "\X" will now match a sequence which includes the "ZWJ" and "ZWNJ"
characters.
• "\X" will now always match at least one character, including an
initial mark. Marks generally come after a base character, but it is
possible in Unicode to have them in isolation, and "\X" will now
handle that case, for example at the beginning of a line, or after a
"ZWSP". And this is the part where "\X" doesn't match the things that
it used to that don't make sense. Formerly, for example, you could
have the nonsensical case of an accented LF.
• "\X" will now match a (Korean) Hangul syllable sequence, and the Thai
and Lao exception cases.
Otherwise, this change should be transparent for the non-affected
languages.
"\p{...}" matches using the Canonical_Combining_Class property were
completely broken in previous releases of Perl. They should now work
correctly.
Before Perl 5.12, the Unicode "Decomposition_Type=Compat" property and a
Perl extension had the same name, which led to neither matching all the
correct values (with more than 100 mistakes in one, and several thousand
in the other). The Perl extension has now been renamed to be
"Decomposition_Type=Noncanonical" (short: "dt=noncanon"). It has the same
meaning as was previously intended, namely the union of all the non-
canonical Decomposition types, with Unicode "Compat" being just one of
those.
"\p{Decomposition_Type=Canonical}" now includes the Hangul syllables.
"\p{Uppercase}" and "\p{Lowercase}" now work as the Unicode standard says
they should. This means they each match a few more characters than they
used to.
"\p{Cntrl}" now matches the same characters as "\p{Control}". This means
it no longer will match Private Use (gc=co), Surrogates (gc=cs), nor
Format (gc=cf) code points. The Format code points represent the biggest
possible problem. All but 36 of them are either officially deprecated or
strongly discouraged from being used. Of those 36, likely the most widely
used are the soft hyphen (U+00AD), and BOM, ZWSP, ZWNJ, WJ, and similar
characters, plus bidirectional controls.
"\p{Alpha}" now matches the same characters as "\p{Alphabetic}". Before
5.12, Perl's definition included a number of things that aren't really
alpha (all marks) while omitting many that were. The definitions of
"\p{Alnum}" and "\p{Word}" depend on Alpha's definition and have changed
accordingly.
"\p{Word}" no longer incorrectly matches non-word characters such as
fractions.
"\p{Print}" no longer matches the line control characters: Tab, LF, CR,
FF, VT, and NEL. This brings it in line with standards and the
documentation.
"\p{XDigit}" now matches the same characters as "\p{Hex_Digit}". This
means that in addition to the characters it currently matches,
"[A-Fa-f0-9]", it will also match the 22 fullwidth equivalents, for
example U+FF10: FULLWIDTH DIGIT ZERO.
The Numeric type property has been extended to include the Unihan
characters.
There is a new Perl extension, the 'Present_In', or simply 'In',
property. This is an extension of the Unicode Age property, but
"\p{In=5.0}" matches any code point whose usage has been determined _a_s _o_f
Unicode version 5.0. The "\p{Age=5.0}" only matches code points added in
_p_r_e_c_i_s_e_l_y version 5.0.
A number of properties now have the correct values for unassigned code
points. The affected properties are Bidi_Class, East_Asian_Width,
Joining_Type, Decomposition_Type, Hangul_Syllable_Type, Numeric_Type, and
Line_Break.
The Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, ID_Continue, and ID_Start properties
are now up to date with current Unicode definitions.
Earlier versions of Perl erroneously exposed certain properties that are
supposed to be Unicode internal-only. Use of these in regular
expressions will now generate, if enabled, a deprecation warning message.
The properties are: Other_Alphabetic, Other_Default_Ignorable_Code_Point,
Other_Grapheme_Extend, Other_ID_Continue, Other_ID_Start,
Other_Lowercase, Other_Math, and Other_Uppercase.
It is now possible to change which Unicode properties Perl understands on
a per-installation basis. As mentioned above, certain properties are
turned off by default. These include all the Unihan properties (which
should be accessible via the CPAN module Unicode::Unihan) and any
deprecated or Unicode internal-only property that Perl has never exposed.
The generated files in the "lib/unicore/To" directory are now more
clearly marked as being stable, directly usable by applications. New
hash entries in them give the format of the normal entries, which allows
for easier machine parsing. Perl can generate files in this directory for
any property, though most are suppressed. You can find instructions for
changing which are written in perluniprops.
MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa NNeeww MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa “autodie” “autodie” is a new lexically-scoped alternative for the “Fatal” module. The bundled version is 2.06_01. Note that in this release, using a string eval when “autodie” is in effect can cause the autodie behaviour to leak into the surrounding scope. See “BUGS” in autodie for more details.
Version 2.06_01 has been added to the Perl core.
"Compress::Raw::Bzip2"
Version 2.024 has been added to the Perl core.
"overloading"
"overloading" allows you to lexically disable or enable overloading
for some or all operations.
Version 0.001 has been added to the Perl core.
"parent"
"parent" establishes an ISA relationship with base classes at compile
time. It provides the key feature of "base" without further unwanted
behaviors.
Version 0.223 has been added to the Perl core.
"Parse::CPAN::Meta"
Version 1.40 has been added to the Perl core.
"VMS::DCLsym"
Version 1.03 has been added to the Perl core.
"VMS::Stdio"
Version 2.4 has been added to the Perl core.
"XS::APItest::KeywordRPN"
Version 0.003 has been added to the Perl core.
UUppddaatteedd PPrraaggmmaattaa “base” Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.15.
"bignum"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
"charnames"
"charnames" now contains the Unicode _N_a_m_e_A_l_i_a_s_e_s_._t_x_t database file.
This has the effect of adding some extra "\N" character names that
formerly wouldn't have been recognised; for example, "\N{LATIN
CAPITAL LETTER GHA}". #
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
"constant"
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.20.
"diagnostics"
"diagnostics" now supports %.0f formatting internally.
"diagnostics" no longer suppresses "Use of uninitialized value in
range (or flip)" warnings. [perl #71204]
Upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.19.
"feature"
In "feature", the meaning of the ":5.10" and ":5.10.X" feature
bundles has changed slightly. The last component, if any (i.e. "X")
is simply ignored. This is predicated on the assumption that new
features will not, in general, be added to maintenance releases. So
":5.10" and ":5.10.X" have identical effect. This is a change to the
behaviour documented for 5.10.0.
"feature" now includes the "unicode_strings" feature:
use feature "unicode_strings";
This pragma turns on Unicode semantics for the case-changing
operations ("uc", "lc", "ucfirst", "lcfirst") on strings that don't
have the internal UTF-8 flag set, but that contain single-byte
characters between 128 and 255.
Upgraded from version 1.11 to 1.16.
"less"
"less" now includes the "stash_name" method to allow subclasses of
"less" to pick where in %^H to store their stash.
Upgraded from version 0.02 to 0.03.
"lib"
Upgraded from version 0.5565 to 0.62.
"mro"
"mro" is now implemented as an XS extension. The documented interface
has not changed. Code relying on the implementation detail that some
"mro::" methods happened to be available at all times gets to "keep
both pieces".
Upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.02.
"overload"
"overload" now allow overloading of 'qr'.
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.10.
"threads"
Upgraded from version 1.67 to 1.75.
"threads::shared"
Upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.32.
"version"
"version" now has support for "Version number formats" as described
earlier in this document and in its own documentation.
Upgraded from version 0.74 to 0.82.
"warnings"
"warnings" has a new "warnings::fatal_enabled()" function. It also
includes a new "illegalproto" warning category. See also "New or
Changed Diagnostics" for this change.
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.09.
UUppddaatteedd MMoodduulleess “Archive::Extract” Upgraded from version 0.24 to 0.38.
"Archive::Tar"
Upgraded from version 1.38 to 1.54.
"Attribute::Handlers"
Upgraded from version 0.79 to 0.87.
"AutoLoader"
Upgraded from version 5.63 to 5.70.
"B::Concise"
Upgraded from version 0.74 to 0.78.
"B::Debug"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.12.
"B::Deparse"
Upgraded from version 0.83 to 0.96.
"B::Lint"
Upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.11_01.
“CGI” #
Upgraded from version 3.29 to 3.48.
"Class::ISA"
Upgraded from version 0.33 to 0.36.
NOTE: "Class::ISA" is deprecated and may be removed from a future
version of Perl.
"Compress::Raw::Zlib"
Upgraded from version 2.008 to 2.024.
“CPAN” #
Upgraded from version 1.9205 to 1.94_56.
“CPANPLUS” #
Upgraded from version 0.84 to 0.90.
"CPANPLUS::Dist::Build"
Upgraded from version 0.06_02 to 0.46.
"Data::Dumper"
Upgraded from version 2.121_14 to 2.125.
"DB_File"
Upgraded from version 1.816_1 to 1.820.
"Devel::PPPort"
Upgraded from version 3.13 to 3.19.
"Digest"
Upgraded from version 1.15 to 1.16.
"Digest::MD5"
Upgraded from version 2.36_01 to 2.39.
"Digest::SHA"
Upgraded from version 5.45 to 5.47.
"Encode"
Upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.39.
"Exporter"
Upgraded from version 5.62 to 5.64_01.
"ExtUtils::CBuilder"
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.27.
"ExtUtils::Command"
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.16.
"ExtUtils::Constant"
Upgraded from version 0.2 to 0.22.
"ExtUtils::Install"
Upgraded from version 1.44 to 1.55.
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker"
Upgraded from version 6.42 to 6.56.
"ExtUtils::Manifest"
Upgraded from version 1.51_01 to 1.57.
"ExtUtils::ParseXS"
Upgraded from version 2.18_02 to 2.21.
"File::Fetch"
Upgraded from version 0.14 to 0.24.
"File::Path"
Upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.08_01.
"File::Temp"
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.22.
"Filter::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.82 to 0.84.
"Filter::Util::Call"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
"Getopt::Long"
Upgraded from version 2.37 to 2.38.
“IO” #
Upgraded from version 1.23_01 to 1.25_02.
"IO::Zlib"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.10.
"IPC::Cmd"
Upgraded from version 0.40_1 to 0.54.
"IPC::SysV"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 2.01.
"Locale::Maketext"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.14.
"Locale::Maketext::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.21.
"Log::Message"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
"Log::Message::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.04 to 0.06.
"Math::BigInt"
Upgraded from version 1.88 to 1.89_01.
"Math::BigInt::FastCalc"
Upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.19.
"Math::BigRat"
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.24.
"Math::Complex"
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.56.
"Memoize"
Upgraded from version 1.01_02 to 1.01_03.
"MIME::Base64"
Upgraded from version 3.07_01 to 3.08.
"Module::Build"
Upgraded from version 0.2808_01 to 0.3603.
"Module::CoreList"
Upgraded from version 2.12 to 2.29.
"Module::Load"
Upgraded from version 0.12 to 0.16.
"Module::Load::Conditional"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.34.
"Module::Loaded"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.06.
"Module::Pluggable"
Upgraded from version 3.6 to 3.9.
"Net::Ping"
Upgraded from version 2.33 to 2.36.
“NEXT” #
Upgraded from version 0.60_01 to 0.64.
"Object::Accessor"
Upgraded from version 0.32 to 0.36.
"Package::Constants"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
"PerlIO"
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.06.
"Pod::Parser"
Upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.37.
"Pod::Perldoc"
Upgraded from version 3.14_02 to 3.15_02.
"Pod::Plainer"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 1.02.
NOTE: "Pod::Plainer" is deprecated and may be removed from a future
version of Perl.
"Pod::Simple"
Upgraded from version 3.05 to 3.13.
"Safe"
Upgraded from version 2.12 to 2.22.
"SelfLoader"
Upgraded from version 1.11 to 1.17.
"Storable"
Upgraded from version 2.18 to 2.22.
"Switch"
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.16.
NOTE: "Switch" is deprecated and may be removed from a future version
of Perl.
"Sys::Syslog"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.27.
"Term::ANSIColor"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 2.02.
"Term::UI"
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.20.
"Test"
Upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.25_02.
"Test::Harness"
Upgraded from version 2.64 to 3.17.
"Test::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.72 to 0.94.
"Text::Balanced"
Upgraded from version 2.0.0 to 2.02.
"Text::ParseWords"
Upgraded from version 3.26 to 3.27.
"Text::Soundex"
Upgraded from version 3.03 to 3.03_01.
"Thread::Queue"
Upgraded from version 2.00 to 2.11.
"Thread::Semaphore"
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.09.
"Tie::RefHash"
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
"Time::HiRes"
Upgraded from version 1.9711 to 1.9719.
"Time::Local"
Upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.1901_01.
"Time::Piece"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.15.
"Unicode::Collate"
Upgraded from version 0.52 to 0.52_01.
"Unicode::Normalize"
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
"Win32"
Upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.39.
"Win32API::File"
Upgraded from version 0.1001_01 to 0.1101.
"XSLoader"
Upgraded from version 0.08 to 0.10.
RReemmoovveedd MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa “attrs” Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 1.02.
“CPAN::API::HOWTO” #
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 'undef'.
"CPAN::DeferedCode"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 5.50.
"CPANPLUS::inc"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 'undef'.
"DCLsym"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 1.03.
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 6.42.
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsish"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 6.42.
"Stdio"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 2.3.
"Test::Harness::Assert"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.02.
"Test::Harness::Iterator"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.02.
"Test::Harness::Point"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.01.
"Test::Harness::Results"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.01.
"Test::Harness::Straps"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.26_01.
"Test::Harness::Util"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 0.01.
"XSSymSet"
Removed from the Perl core. Prior version was 1.1.
DDeepprreeccaatteedd MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa See “Deprecated Modules” above.
DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn NNeeww DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn • perlhaiku contains instructions on how to build perl for the Haiku platform.
• perlmroapi describes the new interface for pluggable Method
Resolution Orders.
• perlperf, by Richard Foley, provides an introduction to the use of
performance and optimization techniques which can be used with
particular reference to perl programs.
• perlrepository describes how to access the perl source using the _g_i_t
version control system.
• perlpolicy extends the "Social contract about contributed modules"
into the beginnings of a document on Perl porting policies.
CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn • The various large _C_h_a_n_g_e_s_* files (which listed every change made to perl over the last 18 years) have been removed, and replaced by a small file, also called _C_h_a_n_g_e_s, which just explains how that same information may be extracted from the git version control system.
• _P_o_r_t_i_n_g_/_p_a_t_c_h_i_n_g_._p_o_d has been deleted, as it mainly described
interacting with the old Perforce-based repository, which is now
obsolete. Information still relevant has been moved to
perlrepository.
• The syntax "unless (EXPR) BLOCK else BLOCK" is now documented as
valid, as is the syntax "unless (EXPR) BLOCK elsif (EXPR) BLOCK ...
else BLOCK", although actually using the latter may not be the best
idea for the readability of your source code.
• Documented -X overloading.
• Documented that "when()" treats specially most of the filetest
operators
• Documented "when" as a syntax modifier.
• Eliminated "Old Perl threads tutorial", which described 5005 threads.
_p_o_d_/_p_e_r_l_t_h_r_t_u_t_._p_o_d is the same material reworked for ithreads.
• Correct previous documentation: v-strings are not deprecated
With version objects, we need them to use MODULE VERSION syntax. This
patch removes the deprecation notice.
• Security contact information is now part of perlsec.
• A significant fraction of the core documentation has been updated to
clarify the behavior of Perl's Unicode handling.
Much of the remaining core documentation has been reviewed and edited
for clarity, consistent use of language, and to fix the spelling of
Tom Christiansen's name.
• The Pod specification (perlpodspec) has been updated to bring the
specification in line with modern usage already supported by most Pod
systems. A parameter string may now follow the format name in a
"begin/end" region. Links to URIs with a text description are now
allowed. The usage of "L<"section">" has been marked as deprecated.
• if.pm has been documented in "use" in perlfunc as a means to get
conditional loading of modules despite the implicit BEGIN block
around "use".
• The documentation for $1 in perlvar.pod has been clarified.
• "\N{U+_c_o_d_e _p_o_i_n_t}" is now documented.
SSeelleecctteedd PPeerrffoorrmmaannccee EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss • A new internal cache means that “isa()” will often be faster.
• The implementation of "C3" Method Resolution Order has been optimised
- linearisation for classes with single inheritance is 40% faster.
Performance for multiple inheritance is unchanged.
• Under "use locale", the locale-relevant information is now cached on
read-only values, such as the list returned by "keys %hash". This
makes operations such as "sort keys %hash" in the scope of "use
locale" much faster.
• Empty "DESTROY" methods are no longer called.
• "Perl_sv_utf8_upgrade()" is now faster.
• "keys" on empty hash is now faster.
• "if (%foo)" has been optimized to be faster than "if (keys %foo)".
• The string repetition operator ("$str x $num") is now several times
faster when $str has length one or $num is large.
• Reversing an array to itself (as in "@a = reverse @a") in void
context now happens in-place and is several orders of magnitude
faster than it used to be. It will also preserve non-existent
elements whenever possible, i.e. for non magical arrays or tied
arrays with "EXISTS" and "DELETE" methods.
IInnssttaallllaattiioonn aanndd CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonn IImmpprroovveemmeennttss • perlapi, perlintern, perlmodlib and perltoc are now all generated at build time, rather than being shipped as part of the release.
• If "vendorlib" and "vendorarch" are the same, then they are only
added to @INC once.
• $Config{usedevel} and the C-level "PERL_USE_DEVEL" are now defined if
perl is built with "-Dusedevel".
• _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e will enable use of "-fstack-protector", to provide
protection against stack-smashing attacks, if the compiler supports
it.
• _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e will now determine the correct prototypes for re-entrant
functions and for "gconvert" if you are using a C++ compiler rather
than a C compiler.
• On Unix, if you build from a tree containing a git repository, the
configuration process will note the commit hash you have checked out,
for display in the output of "perl -v" and "perl -V". Unpushed local
commits are automatically added to the list of local patches
displayed by "perl -V".
• Perl now supports SystemTap's "dtrace" compatibility layer and an
issue with linking "miniperl" has been fixed in the process.
• perldoc now uses "less -R" instead of "less" for improved behaviour
in the face of "groff"'s new usage of ANSI escape codes.
• "perl -V" now reports use of the compile-time options "USE_PERL_ATOF"
and "USE_ATTRIBUTES_FOR_PERLIO".
• As part of the flattening of _e_x_t, all extensions on all platforms are
built by _m_a_k_e___e_x_t_._p_l. This replaces the Unix-specific
_e_x_t_/_u_t_i_l_/_m_a_k_e___e_x_t, VMS-specific _m_a_k_e___e_x_t_._c_o_m and Win32-specific
_w_i_n_3_2_/_b_u_i_l_d_e_x_t_._p_l.
IInntteerrnnaall CChhaannggeess Each release of Perl sees numerous internal changes which shouldn’t affect day to day usage but may still be notable for developers working with Perl’s source code.
• The J.R.R. Tolkien quotes at the head of C source file have been
checked and proper citations added, thanks to a patch from Tom
Christiansen.
• The internal structure of the dual-life modules traditionally found
in the _l_i_b_/ and _e_x_t_/ directories in the perl source has changed
significantly. Where possible, dual-lifed modules have been extracted
from _l_i_b_/ and _e_x_t_/.
Dual-lifed modules maintained by Perl's developers as part of the
Perl core now live in _d_i_s_t_/. Dual-lifed modules maintained primarily
on CPAN now live in _c_p_a_n_/. When reporting a bug in a module located
under _c_p_a_n_/, please send your bug report directly to the module's bug
tracker or author, rather than Perl's bug tracker.
• "\N{...}" now compiles better, always forces UTF-8 internal
representation
Perl's developers have fixed several problems with the recognition of
"\N{...}" constructs. As part of this, perl will store any scalar or
regex containing "\N{_n_a_m_e}" or "\N{U+_c_o_d_e _p_o_i_n_t}" in its definition
in UTF-8 format. (This was true previously for all occurrences of
"\N{_n_a_m_e}" that did not use a custom translator, but now it's always
true.)
• Perl_magic_setmglob now knows about globs, fixing RT #71254.
• "SVt_RV" no longer exists. RVs are now stored in IVs.
• "Perl_vcroak()" now accepts a null first argument. In addition, a
full audit was made of the "not NULL" compiler annotations, and those
for several other internal functions were corrected.
• New macros "dSAVEDERRNO", "dSAVE_ERRNO", "SAVE_ERRNO",
"RESTORE_ERRNO" have been added to formalise the temporary saving of
the "errno" variable.
• The function "Perl_sv_insert_flags" has been added to augment
"Perl_sv_insert".
• The function "Perl_newSV_type(type)" has been added, equivalent to
"Perl_newSV()" followed by "Perl_sv_upgrade(type)".
• The function "Perl_newSVpvn_flags()" has been added, equivalent to
"Perl_newSVpvn()" and then performing the action relevant to the
flag.
Two flag bits are currently supported.
• "SVf_UTF8" will call "SvUTF8_on()" for you. (Note that this does
not convert a sequence of ISO 8859-1 characters to UTF-8). A
wrapper, "newSVpvn_utf8()" is available for this.
• "SVs_TEMP" now calls "Perl_sv_2mortal()" on the new SV.
There is also a wrapper that takes constant strings,
"newSVpvs_flags()".
• The function "Perl_croak_xs_usage" has been added as a wrapper to
"Perl_croak".
• Perl now exports the functions "PerlIO_find_layer" and
"PerlIO_list_alloc".
• "PL_na" has been exterminated from the core code, replaced by local
STRLEN temporaries, or "*_nolen()" calls. Either approach is faster
than "PL_na", which is a pointer dereference into the interpreter
structure under ithreads, and a global variable otherwise.
• "Perl_mg_free()" used to leave freed memory accessible via
"SvMAGIC()" on the scalar. It now updates the linked list to remove
each piece of magic as it is freed.
• Under ithreads, the regex in "PL_reg_curpm" is now reference counted.
This eliminates a lot of hackish workarounds to cope with it not
being reference counted.
• "Perl_mg_magical()" would sometimes incorrectly turn on
"SvRMAGICAL()". This has been fixed.
• The _p_u_b_l_i_c IV and NV flags are now not set if the string value has
trailing "garbage". This behaviour is consistent with not setting the
public IV or NV flags if the value is out of range for the type.
• Uses of "Nullav", "Nullcv", "Nullhv", "Nullop", "Nullsv" etc have
been replaced by "NULL" in the core code, and non-dual-life modules,
as "NULL" is clearer to those unfamiliar with the core code.
• A macro MUTABLE_PTR(p) has been added, which on (non-pedantic) gcc
will not cast away "const", returning a "void *". Macros
"MUTABLE_SV(av)", "MUTABLE_SV(cv)" etc build on this, casting to "AV
*" etc without casting away "const". This allows proper compile-time
auditing of "const" correctness in the core, and helped picked up
some errors (now fixed).
• Macros "mPUSHs()" and "mXPUSHs()" have been added, for pushing SVs on
the stack and mortalizing them.
• Use of the private structure "mro_meta" has changed slightly. Nothing
outside the core should be accessing this directly anyway.
• A new tool, _P_o_r_t_i_n_g_/_e_x_p_a_n_d_-_m_a_c_r_o_._p_l has been added, that allows you
to view how a C preprocessor macro would be expanded when compiled.
This is handy when trying to decode the macro hell that is the perl
guts.
TTeessttiinngg TTeessttiinngg iimmpprroovveemmeennttss Parallel tests The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on Unix-like platforms. Instead of running “make test”, set “TEST_JOBS” in your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run “make test_harness”. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself,
because TAP::Harness needs to be able to schedule individual non-
conflicting test scripts itself, and there is no standard interface
to "make" utilities to interact with their job schedulers.
Note that currently some test scripts may fail when run in parallel
(most notably "ext/IO/t/io_dir.t"). If necessary run just the failing
scripts again sequentially and see if the failures go away.
Test harness flexibility
It's now possible to override "PERL5OPT" and friends in _t_/_T_E_S_T
Test watchdog
Several tests that have the potential to hang forever if they fail
now incorporate a "watchdog" functionality that will kill them after
a timeout, which helps ensure that "make test" and "make
test_harness" run to completion automatically.
NNeeww TTeessttss Perl’s developers have added a number of new tests to the core. In addition to the items listed below, many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests.
• Significant cleanups to core tests to ensure that language and
interpreter features are not used before they're tested.
• "make test_porting" now runs a number of important pre-commit checks
which might be of use to anyone working on the Perl core.
• _t_/_p_o_r_t_i_n_g_/_p_o_d_c_h_e_c_k_._t automatically checks the well-formedness of POD
found in all .pl, .pm and .pod files in the _M_A_N_I_F_E_S_T, other than in
dual-lifed modules which are primarily maintained outside the Perl
core.
• _t_/_p_o_r_t_i_n_g_/_m_a_n_i_f_e_s_t_._t now tests that all files listed in MANIFEST are
present.
• _t_/_o_p_/_w_h_i_l_e___r_e_a_d_d_i_r_._t tests that a bare readdir in while loop sets $_.
• _t_/_c_o_m_p_/_r_e_t_a_i_n_e_d_l_i_n_e_s_._t checks that the debugger can retain source
lines from "eval".
• _t_/_i_o_/_p_e_r_l_i_o___f_a_i_l_._t checks that bad layers fail.
• _t_/_i_o_/_p_e_r_l_i_o___l_e_a_k_s_._t checks that PerlIO layers are not leaking.
• _t_/_i_o_/_p_e_r_l_i_o___o_p_e_n_._t checks that certain special forms of open work.
• _t_/_i_o_/_p_e_r_l_i_o_._t includes general PerlIO tests.
• _t_/_i_o_/_p_v_b_m_._t checks that there is no unexpected interaction between
the internal types "PVBM" and "PVGV".
• _t_/_m_r_o_/_p_a_c_k_a_g_e___a_l_i_a_s_e_s_._t checks that mro works properly in the
presence of aliased packages.
• _t_/_o_p_/_d_b_m_._t tests "dbmopen" and "dbmclose".
• _t_/_o_p_/_i_n_d_e_x___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of "index" and threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_p_a_t___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of esoteric patterns and
threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_q_r___g_c_._t tests that "qr" doesn't leak.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g___e_m_a_i_l___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of regex recursion and
threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g_e_x_p___q_r___e_m_b_e_d___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of patterns with
embedded "qr//" and threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g_e_x_p___u_n_i_c_o_d_e___p_r_o_p_._t tests Unicode properties in regular
expressions.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g_e_x_p___u_n_i_c_o_d_e___p_r_o_p___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of Unicode
properties and threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g___n_c___t_i_e_._t tests the tied methods of
"Tie::Hash::NamedCapture".
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_g___p_o_s_i_x_c_c_._t checks that POSIX character classes behave
consistently.
• _t_/_o_p_/_r_e_._t checks that exportable "re" functions in _u_n_i_v_e_r_s_a_l_._c work.
• _t_/_o_p_/_s_e_t_p_g_r_p_s_t_a_c_k_._t checks that "setpgrp" works.
• _t_/_o_p_/_s_u_b_s_t_r___t_h_r_._t tests the interaction of "substr" and threads.
• _t_/_o_p_/_u_p_g_r_a_d_e_._t checks that upgrading and assigning scalars works.
• _t_/_u_n_i_/_l_e_x___u_t_f_8_._t checks that Unicode in the lexer works.
• _t_/_u_n_i_/_t_i_e_._t checks that Unicode and "tie" work.
• _t_/_c_o_m_p_/_f_i_n_a_l___l_i_n_e___n_u_m_._t tests whether line numbers are correct at EOF
• _t_/_c_o_m_p_/_f_o_r_m___s_c_o_p_e_._t tests format scoping.
• _t_/_c_o_m_p_/_l_i_n_e___d_e_b_u_g_._t tests whether "@{"_<$file"}" works.
• _t_/_o_p_/_f_i_l_e_t_e_s_t___t_._t tests if -t file test works.
• _t_/_o_p_/_q_r_._t tests "qr".
• _t_/_o_p_/_u_t_f_8_c_a_c_h_e_._t tests malfunctions of the utf8 cache.
• _t_/_r_e_/_u_n_i_p_r_o_p_s_._t test unicodes "\p{}" regex constructs.
• _t_/_o_p_/_f_i_l_e_h_a_n_d_l_e_._t tests some suitably portable filetest operators to
check that they work as expected, particularly in the light of some
internal changes made in how filehandles are blessed.
• _t_/_o_p_/_t_i_m_e___l_o_o_p_._t tests that unix times greater than "2**63", which
can now be handed to "gmtime" and "localtime", do not cause an
internal overflow or an excessively long loop.
NNeeww oorr CChhaannggeedd DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss NNeeww DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss • SV allocation tracing has been added to the diagnostics enabled by “-Dm”. The tracing can alternatively output via the “PERL_MEM_LOG” mechanism, if that was enabled when the _p_e_r_l binary was compiled.
• Smartmatch resolution tracing has been added as a new diagnostic. Use
"-DM" to enable it.
• A new debugging flag "-DB" now dumps subroutine definitions, leaving
"-Dx" for its original purpose of dumping syntax trees.
• Perl 5.12 provides a number of new diagnostic messages to help you
write better code. See perldiag for details of these new messages.
• "Bad plugin affecting keyword '%s'"
• "gmtime(%.0f) too large"
• "Lexing code attempted to stuff non-Latin-1 character into
Latin-1 input"
• "Lexing code internal error (%s)"
• "localtime(%.0f) too large"
• "Overloaded dereference did not return a reference"
• "Overloaded qr did not return a REGEXP"
• "Perl_pmflag() is deprecated, and will be removed from the XS
API" #
• "lvalue attribute ignored after the subroutine has been defined"
This new warning is issued when one attempts to mark a subroutine
as lvalue after it has been defined.
• Perl now warns you if "++" or "--" are unable to change the value
because it's beyond the limit of representation.
This uses a new warnings category: "imprecision".
• "lc", "uc", "lcfirst", and "ucfirst" warn when passed undef.
• "Show constant in "Useless use of a constant in void context""
• "Prototype after '%s'"
• "panic: sv_chop %s"
This new fatal error occurs when the C routine "Perl_sv_chop()"
was passed a position that is not within the scalar's string
buffer. This could be caused by buggy XS code, and at this point
recovery is not possible.
• The fatal error "Malformed UTF-8 returned by \N" is now produced
if the "charnames" handler returns malformed UTF-8.
• If an unresolved named character or sequence was encountered when
compiling a regex pattern then the fatal error "\N{NAME} must be
resolved by the lexer" is now produced. This can happen, for
example, when using a single-quotish context like "$re =
'\N{SPACE}'; /$re/;". See perldiag for more examples of how the
lexer can get bypassed.
• "Invalid hexadecimal number in \N{U+...}" is a new fatal error
triggered when the character constant represented by "..." is not
a valid hexadecimal number.
• The new meaning of "\N" as "[^\n]" is not valid in a bracketed
character class, just like "." in a character class loses its
special meaning, and will cause the fatal error "\N in a
character class must be a named character: \N{...}".
• The rules on what is legal for the "..." in "\N{...}" have been
tightened up so that unless the "..." begins with an alphabetic
character and continues with a combination of alphanumerics,
dashes, spaces, parentheses or colons then the warning
"Deprecated character(s) in \N{...} starting at '%s'" is now
issued.
• The warning "Using just the first characters returned by \N{}"
will be issued if the "charnames" handler returns a sequence of
characters which exceeds the limit of the number of characters
that can be used. The message will indicate which characters were
used and which were discarded.
CChhaannggeedd DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss A number of existing diagnostic messages have been improved or corrected:
• A new warning category "illegalproto" allows finer-grained control of
warnings around function prototypes.
The two warnings:
"Illegal character in prototype for %s : %s"
"Prototype after '%c' for %s : %s"
have been moved from the "syntax" top-level warnings category into a
new first-level category, "illegalproto". These two warnings are
currently the only ones emitted during parsing of an invalid/illegal
prototype, so one can now use
no warnings 'illegalproto';
to suppress only those, but not other syntax-related warnings.
Warnings where prototypes are changed, ignored, or not met are still
in the "prototype" category as before.
• "Deep recursion on subroutine "%s""
It is now possible to change the depth threshold for this warning
from the default of 100, by recompiling the _p_e_r_l binary, setting the
C pre-processor macro "PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN" to the desired value.
• "Illegal character in prototype" warning is now more precise when
reporting illegal characters after _
• mro merging error messages are now very similar to those produced by
Algorithm::C3.
• Amelioration of the error message "Unrecognized character %s in
column %d"
Changes the error message to "Unrecognized character %s; marked by
<-- HERE after %s<-- HERE near column %d". This should make it a
little simpler to spot and correct the suspicious character.
• Perl now explicitly points to $. when it causes an uninitialized
warning for ranges in scalar context.
• "split" now warns when called in void context.
• "printf"-style functions called with too few arguments will now issue
the warning "Missing argument in %s" [perl #71000]
• Perl now properly returns a syntax error instead of segfaulting if
"each", "keys", or "values" is used without an argument.
• "tell()" now fails properly if called without an argument and when no
previous file was read.
"tell()" now returns "-1", and sets errno to "EBADF", thus restoring
the 5.8.x behaviour.
• "overload" no longer implicitly unsets fallback on repeated 'use
overload' lines.
• PPOOSSIIXX::::ssttrrffttiimmee(()) can now handle Unicode characters in the format
string.
• The "syntax" category was removed from 5 warnings that should only be
in "deprecated".
• Three fatal "pack"/"unpack" error messages have been normalized to
"panic: %s"
• "Unicode character is illegal" has been rephrased to be more accurate
It now reads "Unicode non-character is illegal in interchange" and
the perldiag documentation has been expanded a bit.
• Currently, all but the first of the several characters that the
"charnames" handler may return are discarded when used in a regular
expression pattern bracketed character class. If this happens then
the warning "Using just the first character returned by \N{} in
character class" will be issued.
• The warning "Missing right brace on \N{} or unescaped left brace
after \N. Assuming the latter" will be issued if Perl encounters a
"\N{" but doesn't find a matching "}". In this case Perl doesn't know
if it was mistakenly omitted, or if "match non-newline" followed by
"match a "{"" was desired. It assumes the latter because that is
actually a valid interpretation as written, unlike the other case.
If you meant the former, you need to add the matching right brace.
If you did mean the latter, you can silence this warning by writing
instead "\N\{".
• "gmtime" and "localtime" called with numbers smaller than they can
reliably handle will now issue the warnings "gmtime(%.0f) too small"
and "localtime(%.0f) too small".
The following diagnostic messages have been removed:
• "Runaway format"
• "Can't locate package %s for the parents of %s"
In general this warning it only got produced in conjunction with
other warnings, and removing it allowed an ISA lookup optimisation to
be added.
• "v-string in use/require is non-portable"
UUttiilliittyy CChhaannggeess • _h_2_p_h now looks in “include-fixed” too, which is a recent addition to gcc’s search path.
• _h_2_x_s no longer incorrectly treats enum values like macros. It also
now handles C++ style comments ("//") properly in enums.
• _p_e_r_l_5_d_b_._p_l now supports "LVALUE" subroutines. Additionally, the
debugger now correctly handles proxy constant subroutines, and
subroutine stubs.
• _p_e_r_l_b_u_g now uses %Module::CoreList::bug_tracker to print out upstream
bug tracker URLs. If a user identifies a particular module as the
topic of their bug report and we're able to divine the URL for its
upstream bug tracker, perlbug now provide a message to the user
explaining that the core copies the CPAN version directly, and
provide the URL for reporting the bug directly to the upstream
author.
_p_e_r_l_b_u_g no longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent
the message
• _p_e_r_l_t_h_a_n_k_s is a new utility for sending non-bug-reports to the
authors and maintainers of Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can
become a bit demoralising. If Perl 5.12 works well for you, please
try out _p_e_r_l_t_h_a_n_k_s. It will make the developers smile.
• Perl's developers have fixed bugs in _a_2_p having to do with the
"match()" operator in list context. Additionally, _a_2_p no longer
generates code that uses the $[ variable.
SSeelleecctteedd BBuugg FFiixxeess • U+0FFFF is now a legal character in regular expressions.
• pp_qr now always returns a new regexp SV. Resolves RT #69852.
Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled) regexp
in the optree, use rreegg__tteemmpp__ccooppyy(()) to create a copy of it, and return
a reference to that. This resolves issues about Regexp::DESTROY not
being called in a timely fashion (the original bug tracked by RT
#69852), as well as bugs related to blessing regexps, and of
assigning to regexps, as described in correspondence added to the
ticket.
It transpires that we also need to undo the SSvvPPVVXX(()) sharing when
ithreads cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL,
instead of a cloned copy of the mother_re. This change might fix bugs
with regexps and threads in certain other situations, but as yet
neither tests nor bug reports have indicated any problems, so it
might not actually be an edge case that it's possible to reach.
• Several compilation errors and segfaults when perl was built with
"-Dmad" were fixed.
• Fixes for lexer API changes in 5.11.2 which broke NYTProf's savesrc
option.
• "-t" should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY
The Microsoft C version of "isatty()" returns TRUE for all character
mode devices, including the _/_d_e_v_/_n_u_l_l-style "nul" device and printers
like "lpt1".
• Fixed a regression caused by commit fafafbaf which caused a panic
during parameter passing [perl #70171]
• On systems which in-place edits without backup files, -i'*' now works
as the documentation says it does [perl #70802]
• Saving and restoring magic flags no longer loses readonly flag.
• The malformed syntax "grep EXPR LIST" (note the missing comma) no
longer causes abrupt and total failure.
• Regular expressions compiled with "qr{}" literals properly set "$'"
when matching again.
• Using named subroutines with "sort" should no longer lead to bus
errors [perl #71076]
• Numerous bugfixes catch small issues caused by the recently-added
Lexer API.
• Smart match against @_ sometimes gave false negatives. [perl #71078]
• $@ may now be assigned a read-only value (without error or busting
the stack).
• "sort" called recursively from within an active comparison subroutine
no longer causes a bus error if run multiple times. [perl #71076]
• Tie::Hash::NamedCapture::* will not abort if passed bad input (RT
#71828)
• @_ and $_ no longer leak under threads (RT #34342 and #41138, also
#70602, #70974)
• "-I" on shebang line now adds directories in front of @INC as
documented, and as does "-I" when specified on the command-line.
• "kill" is now fatal when called on non-numeric process identifiers.
Previously, an "undef" process identifier would be interpreted as a
request to kill process 0, which would terminate the current process
group on POSIX systems. Since process identifiers are always
integers, killing a non-numeric process is now fatal.
• 5.10.0 inadvertently disabled an optimisation, which caused a
measurable performance drop in list assignment, such as is often used
to assign function parameters from @_. The optimisation has been re-
instated, and the performance regression fixed. (This fix is also
present in 5.10.1)
• Fixed memory leak on "while (1) { map 1, 1 }" [RT #53038].
• Some potential coredumps in PerlIO fixed [RT #57322,54828].
• The debugger now works with lvalue subroutines.
• The debugger's "m" command was broken on modules that defined
constants [RT #61222].
• "crypt" and string complement could return tainted values for
untainted arguments [RT #59998].
• The "-i"_._s_u_f_f_i_x command-line switch now recreates the file using
restricted permissions, before changing its mode to match the
original file. This eliminates a potential race condition [RT
#60904].
• On some Unix systems, the value in $? would not have the top bit set
("$? & 128") even if the child core dumped.
• Under some circumstances, $^R could incorrectly become undefined [RT
#57042].
• In the XS API, various hash functions, when passed a pre-computed
hash where the key is UTF-8, might result in an incorrect lookup.
• XS code including _X_S_U_B_._h before _p_e_r_l_._h gave a compile-time error [RT
#57176].
• "$object->isa('Foo')" would report false if the package "Foo" didn't
exist, even if the object's @ISA contained "Foo".
• Various bugs in the new-to 5.10.0 mro code, triggered by manipulating
@ISA, have been found and fixed.
• Bitwise operations on references could crash the interpreter, e.g.
"$x=\$y; $x |= "foo"" [RT #54956].
• Patterns including alternation might be sensitive to the internal
UTF-8 representation, e.g.
my $byte = chr(192);
my $utf8 = chr(192); utf8::upgrade($utf8);
$utf8 =~ /$byte|X}/i; # failed in 5.10.0
• Within UTF8-encoded Perl source files (i.e. where "use utf8" is in
effect), double-quoted literal strings could be corrupted where a
"\xNN", "\0NNN" or "\N{}" is followed by a literal character with
ordinal value greater than 255 [RT #59908].
• "B::Deparse" failed to correctly deparse various constructs:
"readpipe STRING" [RT #62428], "CORE::require(STRING)" [RT #62488],
"sub foo(_)" [RT #62484].
• Using "setpgrp" with no arguments could corrupt the perl stack.
• The block form of "eval" is now specifically trappable by "Safe" and
"ops". Previously it was erroneously treated like string "eval".
• In 5.10.0, the two characters "[~" were sometimes parsed as the smart
match operator ("~~") [RT #63854].
• In 5.10.0, the "*" quantifier in patterns was sometimes treated as
"{0,32767}" [RT #60034, #60464]. For example, this match would fail:
("ab" x 32768) =~ /^(ab)*$/
• "shmget" was limited to a 32 bit segment size on a 64 bit OS [RT
#63924].
• Using "next" or "last" to exit a "given" block no longer produces a
spurious warning like the following:
Exiting given via last at foo.pl line 123
• Assigning a format to a glob could corrupt the format; e.g.:
*bar=*foo{FORMAT}; # foo format now bad
• Attempting to coerce a typeglob to a string or number could cause an
assertion failure. The correct error message is now generated, "Can't
coerce GLOB to _$_t_y_p_e".
• Under "use filetest 'access'", "-x" was using the wrong access mode.
This has been fixed [RT #49003].
• "length" on a tied scalar that returned a Unicode value would not be
correct the first time. This has been fixed.
• Using an array "tie" inside in array "tie" could SEGV. This has been
fixed. [RT #51636]
• A race condition inside "PerlIOStdio_close()" has been identified and
fixed. This used to cause various threading issues, including SEGVs.
• In "unpack", the use of "()" groups in scalar context was internally
placing a list on the interpreter's stack, which manifested in
various ways, including SEGVs. This is now fixed [RT #50256].
• Magic was called twice in "substr", "\&$x", "tie $x, $m" and "chop".
These have all been fixed.
• A 5.10.0 optimisation to clear the temporary stack within the
implicit loop of "s///ge" has been reverted, as it turned out to be
the cause of obscure bugs in seemingly unrelated parts of the
interpreter [commit ef0d4e17921ee3de].
• The line numbers for warnings inside "elsif" are now correct.
• The ".." operator now works correctly with ranges whose ends are at
or close to the values of the smallest and largest integers.
• "binmode STDIN, ':raw'" could lead to segmentation faults on some
platforms. This has been fixed [RT #54828].
• An off-by-one error meant that "index $str, ..." was effectively
being executed as "index "$str\0", ...". This has been fixed [RT
#53746].
• Various leaks associated with named captures in regexes have been
fixed [RT #57024].
• A weak reference to a hash would leak. This was affecting "DBI" [RT
#56908].
• Using (?|) in a regex could cause a segfault [RT #59734].
• Use of a UTF-8 "tr//" within a closure could cause a segfault [RT
#61520].
• Calling "Perl_sv_chop()" or otherwise upgrading an SV could result in
an unaligned 64-bit access on the SPARC architecture [RT #60574].
• In the 5.10.0 release, "inc_version_list" would incorrectly list
"5.10.*" after "5.8.*"; this affected the @INC search order [RT
#67628].
• In 5.10.0, "pack "a*", $tainted_value" returned a non-tainted value
[RT #52552]. #
• In 5.10.0, "printf" and "sprintf" could produce the fatal error
"panic: utf8_mg_pos_cache_update" when printing UTF-8 strings [RT
#62666].
• In the 5.10.0 release, a dynamically created "AUTOLOAD" method might
be missed (method cache issue) [RT #60220,60232].
• In the 5.10.0 release, a combination of "use feature" and "//ee"
could cause a memory leak [RT #63110].
• "-C" on the shebang ("#!") line is once more permitted if it is also
specified on the command line. "-C" on the shebang line used to be a
silent no-op _i_f it was not also on the command line, so perl 5.10.0
disallowed it, which broke some scripts. Now perl checks whether it
is also on the command line and only dies if it is not [RT #67880].
• In 5.10.0, certain types of re-entrant regular expression could
crash, or cause the following assertion failure [RT #60508]:
Assertion rx->sublen >= (s - rx->subbeg) + i failed
• Perl now includes previously missing files from the Unicode Character
Database.
• Perl now honors "TMPDIR" when opening an anonymous temporary file.
PPllaattffoorrmm SSppeecciiffiicc CChhaannggeess Perl is incredibly portable. In general, if a platform has a C compiler, someone has ported Perl to it (or will soon). We’re happy to announce that Perl 5.12 includes support for several new platforms. At the same time, it’s time to bid farewell to some (very) old friends.
NNeeww PPllaattffoorrmmss Haiku Perl’s developers have merged patches from Haiku’s maintainers. Perl should now build on Haiku.
MirOS BSD
Perl should now build on MirOS BSD.
DDiissccoonnttiinnuueedd PPllaattffoorrmmss Domain/OS MiNT Tenon MachTen
UUppddaatteedd PPllaattffoorrmmss
AIX #
• Removed _l_i_b_b_s_d for AIX 5L and 6.1. Only "flock()" was used from
_l_i_b_b_s_d.
• Removed _l_i_b_g_d_b_m for AIX 5L and 6.1 if _l_i_b_g_d_b_m < 1.8.3-5 is
installed. The _l_i_b_g_d_b_m is delivered as an optional package with
the AIX Toolbox. Unfortunately the versions below 1.8.3-5 are
broken.
• Hints changes mean that AIX 4.2 should work again.
Cygwin
• Perl now supports IPv6 on Cygwin 1.7 and newer.
• On Cygwin we now strip the last number from the DLL. This has
been the behaviour in the cygwin.com build for years. The hints
files have been updated.
Darwin (Mac OS X)
• Skip testing the be_BY.CP1131 locale on Darwin 10 (Mac OS X
10.6), as it's still buggy.
• Correct infelicities in the regexp used to identify buggy locales
on Darwin 8 and 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, respectively).
DragonFly BSD
• Fix thread library selection [perl #69686]
FreeBSD
• The hints files now identify the correct threading libraries on
FreeBSD 7 and later.
Irix
• We now work around a bizarre preprocessor bug in the Irix 6.5
compiler: "cc -E -" unfortunately goes into K&R mode, but "cc -E
file.c" doesn't.
NetBSD
• Hints now supports versions 5.*.
OpenVMS
• "-UDEBUGGING" is now the default on VMS.
Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make
command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in
configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying
no in answer to the interactive question.
• The default pipe buffer size on VMS has been updated to 8192 on
64-bit systems.
• Reads from the in-memory temporary files of "PerlIO::scalar" used
to fail if $/ was set to a numeric reference (to indicate record-
style reads). This is now fixed.
• VMS now supports "getgrgid".
• Many improvements and cleanups have been made to the VMS file
name handling and conversion code.
• Enabling the "PERL_VMS_POSIX_EXIT" logical name now encodes a
POSIX exit status in a VMS condition value for better interaction
with GNV's bash shell and other utilities that depend on POSIX
exit values. See "$?" in perlvms for details.
• "File::Copy" now detects Unix compatibility mode on VMS.
Stratus VOS
• Various changes from Stratus have been merged in.
Symbian
• There is now support for Symbian S60 3.2 SDK and S60 5.0 SDK.
Windows
• Perl 5.12 supports Windows 2000 and later. The supporting code
for legacy versions of Windows is still included, but will be
removed during the next development cycle.
• Initial support for building Perl with MinGW-w64 is now
available.
• _p_e_r_l_._e_x_e now includes a manifest resource to specify the
"trustInfo" settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this
setting Windows would treat _p_e_r_l_._e_x_e as a legacy application and
apply various heuristics like redirecting access to protected
file system areas (like the "Program Files" folder) to the users
"VirtualStore" instead of generating a proper "permission denied"
error.
The manifest resource also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls
version 6.0 (themed controls introduced in Windows XP). Check
out the Win32::VisualStyles module on CPAN to switch back to old
style unthemed controls for legacy applications.
• The "-t" filetest operator now only returns true if the
filehandle is connected to a console window. In previous
versions of Perl it would return true for all character mode
devices, including _N_U_L and _L_P_T_1.
• The "-p" filetest operator now works correctly, and the
Fcntl::S_IFIFO constant is defined when Perl is compiled with
Microsoft Visual C. In previous Perl versions "-p" always
returned a false value, and the Fcntl::S_IFIFO constant was not
defined.
This bug is specific to Microsoft Visual C and never affected
Perl binaries built with MinGW.
• The socket error codes are now more widely supported: The POSIX
module will define the symbolic names, like POSIX::EWOULDBLOCK,
and stringification of socket error codes in $! works as well
now;
C:\>perl -MPOSIX -E "$!=POSIX::EWOULDBLOCK; say $!"
A non-blocking socket operation could not be completed immediately.
• fflloocckk(()) will now set sensible error codes in $!. Previous Perl
versions copied the value of $^E into $!, which caused much
confusion.
• sseelleecctt(()) now supports all empty "fd_set"s more correctly.
• '.\foo' and '..\foo' were treated differently than './foo' and
'../foo' by "do" and "require" [RT #63492].
• Improved message window handling means that "alarm" and "kill"
messages will no longer be dropped under race conditions.
• Various bits of Perl's build infrastructure are no longer
converted to win32 line endings at release time. If this hurts
you, please report the problem with the perlbug program included
with perl.
KKnnoowwnn PPrroobblleemmss This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from either 5.10.x or 5.8.x.
• Some CPANPLUS tests may fail if there is a functioning file
_._._/_._._/_c_p_a_n_p_-_r_u_n_-_p_e_r_l outside your build directory. The failure
shouldn't imply there's a problem with the actual functional
software. The bug is already fixed in [RT #74188] and is scheduled
for inclusion in perl-v5.12.1.
• "List::Util::first" misbehaves in the presence of a lexical $_
(typically introduced by "my $_" or implicitly by "given"). The
variable which gets set for each iteration is the package variable
$_, not the lexical $_ [RT #67694].
A similar issue may occur in other modules that provide functions
which take a block as their first argument, like
foo { ... $_ ...} list
• Some regexes may run much more slowly when run in a child thread
compared with the thread the pattern was compiled into [RT #55600].
• Things like ""\N{LATIN SMALL LIGATURE FF}" =~ /\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER
F}+/" will appear to hang as they get into a very long running loop
[RT #72998]. #
• Several porters have reported mysterious crashes when Perl's entire
test suite is run after a build on certain Windows 2000 systems. When
run by hand, the individual tests reportedly work fine.
EErrrraattaa • This one is actually a change introduced in 5.10.0, but it was missed from that release’s perldelta, so it is mentioned here instead.
A bugfix related to the handling of the "/m" modifier and "qr"
resulted in a change of behaviour between 5.8.x and 5.10.0:
# matches in 5.8.x, doesn't match in 5.10.0
$re = qr/^bar/; "foo\nbar" =~ /$re/m;
AAcckknnoowwlleeddggeemmeennttss Perl 5.12.0 represents approximately two years of development since Perl 5.10.0 and contains over 750,000 lines of changes across over 3,000 files from over 200 authors and committers.
Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
community of users and developers. The following people are known to
have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.0:
Aaron Crane, Abe Timmerman, Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Adam Russell,
Adriano Ferreira, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Alan Grover, Alexandr Ciornii,
Alex Davies, Alex Vandiver, Andreas Koenig, Andrew Rodland,
andrew@sundale.net, Andy Armstrong, Andy Dougherty, Jose AUGUSTE-ETIENNE,
Benjamin Smith, Ben Morrow, bharanee rathna, Bo Borgerson, Bo Lindbergh,
Brad Gilbert, Bram, Brendan O'Dea, brian d foy, Charles Bailey, Chip
Salzenberg, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Christoph Lamprecht, Chris Williams,
chromatic, Claes Jakobsson, Craig A. Berry, Dan Dascalescu, Daniel
Frederick Crisman, Daniel M. Quinlan, Dan Jacobson, Dan Kogai, Dave
Mitchell, Dave Rolsky, David Cantrell, David Dick, David Golden, David
Mitchell, David M. Syzdek, David Nicol, David Wheeler, Dennis
Kaarsemaker, Dintelmann, Peter, Dominic Dunlop, Dr.Ruud, Duke Leto,
Enrico Sorcinelli, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz,
Frank Wiegand, Gabor Szabo, Gene Sullivan, Geoffrey T. Dairiki, George
Greer, Gerard Goossen, Gisle Aas, Goro Fuji, Graham Barr, Green, Paul,
Hans Dieter Pearcey, Harmen, H. Merijn Brand, Hugo van der Sanden, Ian
Goodacre, Igor Sutton, Ingo Weinhold, James Bence, James Mastros, Jan
Dubois, Jari Aalto, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jay Hannah, Jerry Hedden, Jesse
Vincent, Jim Cromie, Jody Belka, John E. Malmberg, John Malmberg, John
Peacock, John Peacock via RT, John P. Linderman, John Wright, Josh ben
Jore, Jos I. Boumans, Karl Williamson, Kenichi Ishigaki, Ken Williams,
Kevin Brintnall, Kevin Ryde, Kurt Starsinic, Leon Brocard, Lubomir
Rintel, Luke Ross, Marcel Grünauer, Marcus Holland-Moritz, Mark Jason
Dominus, Marko Asplund, Martin Hasch, Mashrab Kuvatov, Matt Kraai, Matt S
Trout, Max Maischein, Michael Breen, Michael Cartmell, Michael G Schwern,
Michael Witten, Mike Giroux, Milosz Tanski, Moritz Lenz, Nicholas Clark,
Nick Cleaton, Niko Tyni, Offer Kaye, Osvaldo Villalon, Paul Fenwick, Paul
Gaborit, Paul Green, Paul Johnson, Paul Marquess, Philip Hazel, Philippe
Bruhat, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Rajesh Mandalemula, Reini
Urban, Renée Bäcker, Ricardo Signes, Ricardo SIGNES, Richard Foley, Rich
Rauenzahn, Rick Delaney, Risto Kankkunen, Robert May, Roberto C. Sanchez,
Robin Barker, SADAHIRO Tomoyuki, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Sam Vilain, Scott
Lanning, Sébastien Aperghis-Tramoni, Sérgio Durigan Júnior, Shlomi Fish,
Simon 'corecode' Schubert, Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Smylers, Steffen
Müller, Steffen Ullrich, Stepan Kasal, Steve Hay, Steven Schubiger, Steve
Peters, Tels, The Doctor, Tim Bunce, Tim Jenness, Todd Rinaldo, Tom
Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tom Wyant, Tony Cook, Torsten Schoenfeld, Tye
McQueen, Vadim Konovalov, Vincent Pit, Hio YAMASHINA, Yasuhiro Matsumoto,
Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes, Yuval Kogman, Yves Orton, Zefram, Zsban Ambrus
This is woefully incomplete as it's automatically generated from version
control history. In particular, it doesn't include the names of the
(very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues in previous
versions of Perl that helped make Perl 5.12.0 better. For a more complete
list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the "AUTHORS"
file in the Perl 5.12.0 distribution.
Our "retired" pumpkings Nicholas Clark and Rafael Garcia-Suarez deserve
special thanks for their brilliant and substantive ongoing contributions.
Nicholas personally authored over 30% of the patches since 5.10.0. Rafael
comes in second in patch authorship with 11%, but is first by a long shot
in committing patches authored by others, pushing 44% of the commits
since 5.10.0 in this category, often after providing considerable
coaching to the patch authors. These statistics in no way comprise all of
their contributions, but express in shorthand that we couldn't have done
it without them.
Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
modules included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN
community for helping Perl to flourish.
RReeppoorrttiinngg BBuuggss If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/. There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the ppeerrllbbuugg program
included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of "perl
-V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analyzed by the Perl
porting team.
If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please
send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed
subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core
committers, who will be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure
out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate
or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported.
Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not
for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
SSEEEE AALLSSOO #
The _C_h_a_n_g_e_s file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
what changed.
The _I_N_S_T_A_L_L file for how to build Perl.
The _R_E_A_D_M_E file for general stuff.
The _A_r_t_i_s_t_i_c and _C_o_p_y_i_n_g files for copyright information.
<http://dev.perl.org/perl5/errata.html> for a list of issues found after
this release, as well as a list of CPAN modules known to be incompatible
with this release.
perl v5.36.3 2023-02-15 PERL5120DELTA(1)