PERL5201DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5201DELTA(1) #
PERL5201DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5201DELTA(1)
NNAAMMEE #
perl5201delta - what is new for perl v5.20.1
DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #
This document describes differences between the 5.20.0 release and the
5.20.1 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.18.0, first read
perl5200delta, which describes differences between 5.18.0 and 5.20.0.
IInnccoommppaattiibbllee CChhaannggeess There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.20.0. If any exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. See “Reporting Bugs” below.
PPeerrffoorrmmaannccee EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss • An optimization to avoid problems with COW and deliberately overallocated PVs has been disabled because it interfered with another, more important, optimization, causing a slowdown on some platforms. [GH #13878] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13878
• Returning a string from a lexical variable could be slow in some
cases. This has now been fixed. [GH #13880]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13880>
MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa UUppddaatteedd MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa • Config::Perl::V has been upgraded from version 0.20 to 0.22.
The list of Perl versions covered has been updated and some flaws in
the parsing have been fixed.
• Exporter has been upgraded from version 5.70 to 5.71.
Illegal POD syntax in the documentation has been corrected.
• ExtUtils::CBuilder has been upgraded from version 0.280216 to
0.280217.
Android builds now link to both --llppeerrll and $Config::Config{perllibs}.
• File::Copy has been upgraded from version 2.29 to 2.30.
The documentation now notes that "copy" will not overwrite read-only
files.
• Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 3.11 to 5.020001.
The list of Perl versions covered has been updated.
• The PathTools module collection has been upgraded from version 3.47
to 3.48.
Fallbacks are now in place when cross-compiling for Android and
$Config::Config{sh} is not yet defined. [GH #13872]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13872>
• PerlIO::via has been upgraded from version 0.14 to 0.15.
A minor portability improvement has been made to the XS
implementation.
• Unicode::UCD has been upgraded from version 0.57 to 0.58.
The documentation includes many clarifications and fixes.
• utf8 has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.13_01.
The documentation has some minor formatting improvements.
• version has been upgraded from version 0.9908 to 0.9909.
External libraries and Perl may have different ideas of what the
locale is. This is problematic when parsing version strings if the
locale's numeric separator has been changed. Version parsing has
been patched to ensure it handles the locales correctly. [GH #13863]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13863>
DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn _p_e_r_l_a_p_i
• "av_len" - Emphasize that this returns the highest index in the
array, not the size of the array. [GH #13377]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13377>
• Note that "SvSetSV" doesn't do set magic.
• "sv_usepvn_flags" - Fix documentation to mention the use of "NewX"
instead of "malloc". [GH #13835]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13835>
• Clarify where "NUL" may be embedded or is required to terminate a
string.
_p_e_r_l_f_u_n_c
• Clarify the meaning of "-B" and "-T".
• "-l" now notes that it will return false if symlinks aren't supported
by the file system. [GH #13695]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13695>
• Note that "each", "keys" and "values" may produce different orderings
for tied hashes compared to other perl hashes. [GH #13650]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13650>
• Note that "exec LIST" and "system LIST" may fall back to the shell on
Win32. Only "exec PROGRAM LIST" and "system PROGRAM LIST" indirect
object syntax will reliably avoid using the shell. This has also
been noted in perlport. [GH #13907]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13907>
• Clarify the meaning of "our". [GH #13938]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13938>
_p_e_r_l_g_u_t_s
• Explain various ways of modifying an existing SV's buffer. [GH
#12813] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12813>
_p_e_r_l_p_o_l_i_c_y
• We now have a code of conduct for the _p_5_p mailing list, as documented
in "STANDARDS OF CONDUCT" in perlpolicy.
_p_e_r_l_r_e
• The "/x" modifier has been clarified to note that comments cannot be
continued onto the next line by escaping them.
_p_e_r_l_s_y_n
• Mention the use of empty conditionals in "for"/"while" loops for
infinite loops.
_p_e_r_l_x_s
• Added a discussion of locale issues in XS code.
DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output, including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of diagnostic messages, see perldiag.
CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss • Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/
Information about Unicode behaviour has been added.
CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonn aanndd CCoommppiillaattiioonn • Building Perl no longer writes to the source tree when configured with _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e’s --DDmmkkssyymmlliinnkkss option. [GH #13712] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13712
PPllaattffoorrmm SSuuppppoorrtt PPllaattffoorrmm--SSppeecciiffiicc NNootteess Android Build support has been improved for cross-compiling in general and for Android in particular.
OpenBSD
Corrected architectures and version numbers used in configuration
hints when building Perl.
Solaris
cc9999 options have been cleaned up, hints look for ssoollssttuuddiioo as well as
SSUUNNWWsspprroo, and support for native "setenv" has been added.
VMS An old bug in feature checking, mainly affecting pre-7.3 systems, has
been fixed.
Windows
%I64d is now being used instead of %lld for MinGW.
IInntteerrnnaall CChhaannggeess • Added “sync_locale” in perlapi. Changing the program’s locale should be avoided by XS code. Nevertheless, certain non-Perl libraries called from XS, such as “Gtk” do so. When this happens, Perl needs to be told that the locale has changed. Use this function to do so, before returning to Perl.
SSeelleecctteedd BBuugg FFiixxeess • A bug has been fixed where zero-length assertions and code blocks inside of a regex could cause “pos” to see an incorrect value. [GH #14016] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14016
• Using "s///e" on tainted utf8 strings could issue bogus "Malformed
UTF-8 character (unexpected end of string)" warnings. This has now
been fixed. [GH #13948] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13948>
• "system" and friends should now work properly on more Android builds.
Due to an oversight, the value specified through --DDttaarrggeettsshh to
_C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e would end up being ignored by some of the build process.
This caused perls cross-compiled for Android to end up with defective
versions of "system", "exec" and backticks: the commands would end up
looking for _/_b_i_n_/_s_h instead of _/_s_y_s_t_e_m_/_b_i_n_/_s_h, and so would fail for
the vast majority of devices, leaving $! as "ENOENT".
• Many issues have been detected by Coverity <http://www.coverity.com/>
and fixed.
AAcckknnoowwlleeddggeemmeennttss Perl 5.20.1 represents approximately 4 months of development since Perl 5.20.0 and contains approximately 12,000 lines of changes across 170 files from 36 authors.
Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there
were approximately 2,600 lines of changes to 110 .pm, .t, .c and .h
files.
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 5.20.1:
Aaron Crane, Abigail, Alberto Simões, Alexandr Ciornii, Alexandre
(Midnite) Jousset, Andrew Fresh, Andy Dougherty, Brian Fraser, Chris
'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Daniel Dragan, David Golden, David
Mitchell, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jan Dubois, Jarkko Hietaniemi,
John Peacock, kafka, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Matthew
Horsfall, Michael Bunk, Peter Martini, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Reini Urban,
Ricardo Signes, Shirakata Kentaro, Smylers, Steve Hay, Thomas Sibley,
Todd Rinaldo, Tony Cook, Vladimir Marek, Yves Orton.
The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically
generated from version control history. In particular, it does not
include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who
reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.
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.
For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please
see the _A_U_T_H_O_R_S file in the Perl source distribution.
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 https://rt.perl.org/ . 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 perlbug 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 analysed 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.
perl v5.36.3 2023-02-15 PERL5201DELTA(1)