PERL5280DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5280DELTA(1) #
PERL5280DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5280DELTA(1)
NNAAMMEE #
perl5280delta - what is new for perl v5.28.0
DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #
This document describes differences between the 5.26.0 release and the
5.28.0 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.24.0, first read
perl5260delta, which describes differences between 5.24.0 and 5.26.0.
CCoorree EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss UUnniiccooddee 1100..00 iiss ssuuppppoorrtteedd A list of changes is at http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0.
“"ddeelleettee"” oonn kkeeyy//vvaalluuee hhaasshh sslliicceess “delete” can now be used on key/value hash slices, returning the keys along with the deleted values. [GH #15982] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15982
EExxppeerriimmeennttaallllyy,, tthheerree aarree nnooww aallpphhaabbeettiicc ssyynnoonnyymmss ffoorr ssoommee rreegguullaarr eexxpprreessssiioonn aasssseerrttiioonnss If you find it difficult to remember how to write certain of the pattern assertions, there are now alphabetic synonyms.
CURRENT NEW SYNONYMS #
------ ------------
(?=...) (*pla:...) or (*positive_lookahead:...)
(?!...) (*nla:...) or (*negative_lookahead:...)
(?<=...) (*plb:...) or (*positive_lookbehind:...)
(?<!...) (*nlb:...) or (*negative_lookbehind:...)
(?>...) (*atomic:...)
These are considered experimental, so using any of these will raise
(unless turned off) a warning in the "experimental::alpha_assertions"
category.
MMiixxeedd UUnniiccooddee ssccrriippttss aarree nnooww ddeetteeccttaabbllee A mixture of scripts, such as Cyrillic and Latin, in a string is often the sign of a spoofing attack. A new regular expression construct now allows for easy detection of these. For example, you can say
qr/(*script_run: \d+ \b )/x
And the digits matched will all be from the same set of 10. You won't
get a look-alike digit from a different script that has a different value
than what it appears to be.
Or:
qr/(*sr: \b \w+ \b )/x
makes sure that all the characters come from the same script.
You can also combine script runs with "(?>...)" (or "*atomic:...)").
Instead of writing:
(*sr:(?<...))
you can now run:
(*asr:...)
# or
(*atomic_script_run:...)
This is considered experimental, so using it will raise (unless turned
off) a warning in the "experimental::script_run" category.
See "Script Runs" in perlre.
IInn--ppllaaccee eeddiittiinngg wwiitthh “"ppeerrll --ii"” iiss nnooww ssaaffeerr Previously in-place editing (“perl -i”) would delete or rename the input file as soon as you started working on a new file.
Without backups this would result in loss of data if there was an error,
such as a full disk, when writing to the output file.
This has changed so that the input file isn't replaced until the output
file has been completely written and successfully closed.
This works by creating a work file in the same directory, which is
renamed over the input file once the output file is complete.
Incompatibilities:
• Since this renaming needs to only happen once, if you create a thread
or child process, that renaming will only happen in the original
thread or process.
• If you change directories while processing a file, and your operating
system doesn't provide the "unlinkat()", "renameat()" and
"fchmodat()" functions, the final rename step may fail.
[GH #15216] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15216>
IInniittiiaalliissaattiioonn ooff aaggggrreeggaattee ssttaattee vvaarriiaabblleess A persistent lexical array or hash variable can now be initialized, by an expression such as “state @a = qw(x y z)”. Initialization of a list of persistent lexical variables is still not possible.
FFuullll--ssiizzee iinnooddee nnuummbbeerrss On platforms where inode numbers are of a type larger than perl’s native integer numerical types, stat will preserve the full content of large inode numbers by returning them in the form of strings of decimal digits. Exact comparison of inode numbers can thus be achieved by comparing with “eq” rather than “==”. Comparison with “==”, and other numerical operations (which are usually meaningless on inode numbers), work as well as they did before, which is to say they fall back to floating point, and ultimately operate on a fairly useless rounded inode number if the real inode number is too big for the floating point format.
TThhee “"sspprriinnttff"” %%jj ffoorrmmaatt ssiizzee mmooddiiffiieerr iiss nnooww aavvaaiillaabbllee wwiitthh pprree--CC9999 ccoommppiilleerrss The actual size used depends on the platform, so remains unportable.
CClloossee--oonn--eexxeecc ffllaagg sseett aattoommiiccaallllyy When opening a file descriptor, perl now generally opens it with its close-on-exec flag already set, on platforms that support doing so. This improves thread safety, because it means that an “exec” initiated by one thread can no longer cause a file descriptor in the process of being opened by another thread to be accidentally passed to the executed program.
Additionally, perl now sets the close-on-exec flag more reliably, whether
it does so atomically or not. Most file descriptors were getting the
flag set, but some were being missed.
SSttrriinngg-- aanndd nnuummbbeerr--ssppeecciiffiicc bbiittwwiissee ooppss aarree nnoo lloonnggeerr eexxppeerriimmeennttaall The new string-specific ("&. |. ^. ~.") and number-specific ("& | ^ ~") bitwise operators introduced in Perl 5.22 that are available within the scope of “use feature ‘bitwise’” are no longer experimental. Because the number-specific ops are spelled the same way as the existing operators that choose their behaviour based on their operands, these operators must still be enabled via the “bitwise” feature, in either of these two ways:
use feature "bitwise";
use v5.28; # "bitwise" now included
They are also now enabled by the --EE command-line switch.
The "bitwise" feature no longer emits a warning. Existing code that
disables the "experimental::bitwise" warning category that the feature
previously used will continue to work.
One caveat that module authors ought to be aware of is that the numeric
operators now pass a fifth TRUE argument to overload methods. Any
methods that check the number of operands may croak if they do not expect
so many. XS authors in particular should be aware that this:
SV * #
bitop_handler (lobj, robj, swap)
may need to be changed to this:
SV * #
bitop_handler (lobj, robj, swap, ...)
LLooccaalleess aarree nnooww tthhrreeaadd--ssaaffee oonn ssyysstteemmss tthhaatt ssuuppppoorrtt tthheemm These systems include Windows starting with Visual Studio 2005, and in POSIX 2008 systems.
The implication is that you are now free to use locales and change them
in a threaded environment. Your changes affect only your thread. See
"Multi-threaded operation" in perllocale
NNeeww rreeaadd--oonnllyy pprreeddeeffiinneedd vvaarriiaabbllee “”$${{^^SSAAFFEE__LLOOCCAALLEESS}}“” This variable is 1 if the Perl interpreter is operating in an environment where it is safe to use and change locales (see perllocale.) This variable is true when the perl is unthreaded, or compiled in a platform that supports thread-safe locale operation (see previous item).
SSeeccuurriittyy [[CCVVEE--22001177--1122883377]] HHeeaapp bbuuffffeerr oovveerrffllooww iinn rreegguullaarr eexxpprreessssiioonn ccoommppiilleerr Compiling certain regular expression patterns with the case-insensitive modifier could cause a heap buffer overflow and crash perl. This has now been fixed. [GH #16021] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16021
[[CCVVEE--22001177--1122888833]] BBuuffffeerr oovveerr--rreeaadd iinn rreegguullaarr eexxpprreessssiioonn ppaarrsseerr For certain types of syntax error in a regular expression pattern, the error message could either contain the contents of a random, possibly large, chunk of memory, or could crash perl. This has now been fixed. [GH #16025] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16025
[[CCVVEE--22001177--1122881144]] $$EENNVV{{$$kkeeyy}} ssttaacckk bbuuffffeerr oovveerrffllooww oonn WWiinnddoowwss A possible stack buffer overflow in the %ENV code on Windows has been fixed by removing the buffer completely since it was superfluous anyway. [GH #16051] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16051
DDeeffaauulltt HHaasshh FFuunnccttiioonn CChhaannggee Perl 5.28.0 retires various older hash functions which are not viewed as sufficiently secure for use in Perl. We now support four general purpose hash functions, Siphash (2-4 and 1-3 variants), and Zaphod32, and StadtX hash. In addition we support SBOX32 (a form of tabular hashing) for hashing short strings, in conjunction with any of the other hash functions provided.
By default Perl is configured to support SBOX hashing of strings up to 24
characters, in conjunction with StadtX hashing on 64 bit builds, and
Zaphod32 hashing for 32 bit builds.
You may control these settings with the following options to Configure:
-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH #
-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH13 #
-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_STADTX #
-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_ZAPHOD32 #
To disable SBOX hashing you can use
-DPERL_HASH_USE_SBOX32_ALSO=0 #
And to set the maximum length to use SBOX32 hashing on with:
-DSBOX32_MAX_LEN=16 #
The maximum length allowed is 256. There probably isn't much point in
setting it higher than the default.
IInnccoommppaattiibbllee CChhaannggeess SSuubbrroouuttiinnee aattttrriibbuuttee aanndd ssiiggnnaattuurree oorrddeerr The experimental subroutine signatures feature has been changed so that subroutine attributes must now come before the signature rather than after. This is because attributes like “:lvalue” can affect the compilation of code within the signature, for example:
sub f :lvalue ($a = do { $x = "abc"; return substr($x,0,1)}) { ...}
Note that this the second time they have been flipped:
sub f :lvalue ($a, $b) { ... }; # 5.20; 5.28 onwards
sub f ($a, $b) :lvalue { ... }; # 5.22 - 5.26
CCoommmmaa--lleessss vvaarriiaabbllee lliissttss iinn ffoorrmmaattss aarree nnoo lloonnggeerr aalllloowweedd Omitting the commas between variables passed to formats is no longer allowed. This has been deprecated since Perl 5.000.
TThhee “”::lloocckkeedd"" aanndd “”::uunniiqquuee"" aattttrriibbuutteess hhaavvee bbeeeenn rreemmoovveedd These have been no-ops and deprecated since Perl 5.12 and 5.10, respectively.
“”\\NN{{}}“” wwiitthh nnootthhiinngg bbeettwweeeenn tthhee bbrraacceess iiss nnooww iilllleeggaall This has been deprecated since Perl 5.24.
OOppeenniinngg tthhee ssaammee ssyymmbbooll aass bbootthh aa ffiillee aanndd ddiirreeccttoorryy hhaannddllee iiss nnoo lloonnggeerr aalllloowweedd Using “open()” and “opendir()” to associate both a filehandle and a dirhandle to the same symbol (glob or scalar) has been deprecated since Perl 5.10.
UUssee ooff bbaarree “”<«<“” ttoo mmeeaann “”<«<“"“"“” iiss nnoo lloonnggeerr aalllloowweedd Use of a bare terminator has been deprecated since Perl 5.000.
SSeettttiinngg $$// ttoo aa rreeffeerreennccee ttoo aa nnoonn--ppoossiittiivvee iinntteeggeerr nnoo lloonnggeerr aalllloowweedd This used to work like setting it to “undef”, but has been deprecated since Perl 5.20.
UUnniiccooddee ccooddee ppooiinnttss wwiitthh vvaalluueess eexxcceeeeddiinngg “"IIVV__MMAAXX"” aarree nnooww ffaattaall This was deprecated since Perl 5.24.
TThhee “"BB::::OOPP::::tteerrssee"” mmeetthhoodd hhaass bbeeeenn rreemmoovveedd Use “B::Concise::b_terse” instead.
UUssee ooff iinnhheerriitteedd AAUUTTOOLLOOAADD ffoorr nnoonn--mmeetthhooddss iiss nnoo lloonnggeerr aalllloowweedd This was deprecated in Perl 5.004.
UUssee ooff ssttrriinnggss wwiitthh ccooddee ppooiinnttss oovveerr 00xxFFFF iiss nnoott aalllloowweedd ffoorr bbiittwwiissee ssttrriinngg ooppeerraattoorrss Code points over 0xFF do not make sense for bitwise operators and such an operation will now croak, except for a few remaining cases. See perldeprecation.
This was deprecated in Perl 5.24.
SSeettttiinngg “”$${{^^EENNCCOODDIINNGG}}“” ttoo aa ddeeffiinneedd vvaalluuee iiss nnooww iilllleeggaall This has been deprecated since Perl 5.22 and a no-op since Perl 5.26.
BBaacckkssllaasshh nnoo lloonnggeerr eessccaappeess ccoolloonn iinn PPAATTHH ffoorr tthhee “”--SS"” sswwiittcchh Previously the “-S” switch incorrectly treated backslash (”") as an escape for colon when traversing the “PATH” environment variable. [GH #15584] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15584
tthhee --DDHH ((DDEEBBUUGG__HH)) mmiissffeeaattuurree hhaass bbeeeenn rreemmoovveedd On a perl built with debugging support, the “H” flag to the “-D” debugging option has been removed. This was supposed to dump hash values, but has been broken for many years.
YYaaddaa--yyaaddaa iiss nnooww ssttrriiccttllyy aa ssttaatteemmeenntt By the time of its initial stable release in Perl 5.12, the “…” (yada- yada) operator was explicitly intended to serve as a statement, not an expression. However, the original implementation was confused on this point, leading to inconsistent parsing. The operator was accidentally accepted in a few situations where it did not serve as a complete statement, such as
... . "foo";
... if $a < $b;
The parsing has now been made consistent, permitting yada-yada only as a
statement. Affected code can use "do{...}" to put a yada-yada into an
arbitrary expression context.
SSoorrtt aallggoorriitthhmm ccaann nnoo lloonnggeerr bbee ssppeecciiffiieedd Since Perl 5.8, the sort pragma has had subpragmata “_mergesort”, “_quicksort”, and “_qsort” that can be used to specify which algorithm perl should use to implement the sort builtin. This was always considered a dubious feature that might not last, hence the underscore spellings, and they were documented as not being portable beyond Perl 5.8. These subpragmata have now been deleted, and any attempt to use them is an error. The sort pragma otherwise remains, and the algorithm- neutral “stable” subpragma can be used to control sorting behaviour. [GH #13234] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13234
OOvveerr--rraaddiixx ddiiggiittss iinn ffllooaattiinngg ppooiinntt lliitteerraallss Octal and binary floating point literals used to permit any hexadecimal digit to appear after the radix point. The digits are now restricted to those appropriate for the radix, as digits before the radix point always were.
RReettuurrnn ttyyppee ooff “"uunnppaacckkssttrriinngg(())“” The return types of the C API functions “unpackstring()” and “unpack_str()” have changed from “I32” to “SSize_t”, in order to accommodate datasets of more than two billion items.
DDeepprreeccaattiioonnss UUssee ooff “"vveecc"” oonn ssttrriinnggss wwiitthh ccooddee ppooiinnttss aabboovvee 00xxFFFF iiss ddeepprreeccaatteedd Such strings are represented internally in UTF-8, and “vec” is a bit- oriented operation that will likely give unexpected results on those strings.
SSoommee uusseess ooff uunneessccaappeedd “”{{“” iinn rreeggeexxeess aarree nnoo lloonnggeerr ffaattaall Perl 5.26.0 fatalized some uses of an unescaped left brace, but an exception was made at the last minute, specifically crafted to be a minimal change to allow GNU Autoconf to work. That tool is heavily depended upon, and continues to use the deprecated usage. Its use of an unescaped left brace is one where we have no intention of repurposing “{” to be something other than itself.
That exception is now generalized to include various other such cases
where the "{" will not be repurposed.
Note that these uses continue to raise a deprecation message.
UUssee ooff uunneessccaappeedd “”{{“” iimmmmeeddiiaatteellyy aafftteerr aa “”((“” iinn rreegguullaarr eexxpprreessssiioonn ppaatttteerrnnss iiss ddeepprreeccaatteedd Using unescaped left braces is officially deprecated everywhere, but it is not enforced in contexts where their use does not interfere with expected extensions to the language. A deprecation is added in this release when the brace appears immediately after an opening parenthesis. Before this, even if the brace was part of a legal quantifier, it was not interpreted as such, but as the literal characters, unlike other quantifiers that follow a “(” which are considered errors. Now, their use will raise a deprecation message, unless turned off.
AAssssiiggnnmmeenntt ttoo $$[[ wwiillll bbee ffaattaall iinn PPeerrll 55..3300 Assigning a non-zero value to $[ has been deprecated since Perl 5.12, but was never given a deadline for removal. This has now been scheduled for Perl 5.30.
hhoossttnnaammee(()) wwoonn’’tt aacccceepptt aarrgguummeennttss iinn PPeerrll 55..3322 Passing arguments to “Sys::Hostname::hostname()” was already deprecated, but didn’t have a removal date. This has now been scheduled for Perl 5.32. [GH #14662] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14662
MMoodduullee rreemmoovvaallss The following modules will be removed from the core distribution in a future release, and will at that time need to be installed from CPAN. Distributions on CPAN which require these modules will need to list them as prerequisites.
The core versions of these modules will now issue "deprecated"-category
warnings to alert you to this fact. To silence these deprecation
warnings, install the modules in question from CPAN.
Note that these are (with rare exceptions) fine modules that you are
encouraged to continue to use. Their disinclusion from core primarily
hinges on their necessity to bootstrapping a fully functional, CPAN-
capable Perl installation, not usually on concerns over their design.
B::Debug
Locale::Codes and its associated Country, Currency and Language modules
PPeerrffoorrmmaannccee EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss • The start up overhead for creating regular expression patterns with Unicode properties ("\p{…}”) has been greatly reduced in most cases.
• Many string concatenation expressions are now considerably faster,
due to the introduction internally of a "multiconcat" opcode which
combines multiple concatenations, and optionally a "=" or ".=", into
a single action. For example, apart from retrieving $s, $a and $b,
this whole expression is now handled as a single op:
$s .= "a=$a b=$b\n"
As a special case, if the LHS of an assignment is a lexical variable
or "my $s", the op itself handles retrieving the lexical variable,
which is faster.
In general, the more the expression includes a mix of constant
strings and variable expressions, the longer the expression, and the
more it mixes together non-utf8 and utf8 strings, the more marked the
performance improvement. For example on a "x86_64" system, this code
has been benchmarked running four times faster:
my $s;
my $a = "ab\x{100}cde";
my $b = "fghij";
my $c = "\x{101}klmn";
for my $i (1..10_000_000) {
$s = "\x{100}wxyz";
$s .= "foo=$a bar=$b baz=$c";
}
In addition, "sprintf" expressions which have a constant format
containing only %s and "%%" format elements, and which have a fixed
number of arguments, are now also optimised into a "multiconcat" op.
• The "ref()" builtin is now much faster in boolean context, since it
no longer bothers to construct a temporary string like
"Foo=ARRAY(0x134af48)".
• "keys()" in void and scalar contexts is now more efficient.
• The common idiom of comparing the result of iinnddeexx(()) with -1 is now
specifically optimised, e.g.
if (index(...) != -1) { ... }
• "for()" loops and similar constructs are now more efficient in most
cases.
• File::Glob has been modified to remove unnecessary backtracking and
recursion, thanks to Russ Cox. See <https://research.swtch.com/glob>
for more details.
• The XS-level "SvTRUE()" API function is now more efficient.
• Various integer-returning ops are now more efficient in
scalar/boolean context.
• Slightly improved performance when parsing stash names. [GH #15689]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15689>
• Calls to "require" for an already loaded module are now slightly
faster. [GH #16175] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16175>
• The performance of pattern matching "[[:ascii:]]" and "[[:^ascii:]]"
has been improved significantly except on EBCDIC platforms.
• Various optimizations have been applied to matching regular
expression patterns, so under the right circumstances, significant
performance gains may be noticed. But in an application with many
varied patterns, little overall improvement likely will be seen.
• Other optimizations have been applied to UTF-8 handling, but these
are not typically a major factor in most applications.
MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa Key highlights in this release across several modules:
RReemmoovvaall ooff uussee vvaarrss The usage of “use vars” has been discouraged since the introduction of “our” in Perl 5.6.0. Where possible the usage of this pragma has now been removed from the Perl source code.
This had a slight effect (for the better) on the output of WARNING_BITS
in B::Deparse.
UUssee ooff DDyynnaaLLooaaddeerr cchhaannggeedd ttoo XXSSLLooaaddeerr iinn mmaannyy mmoodduulleess XSLoader is more modern, and most modules already require perl 5.6 or greater, so no functionality is lost by switching. In some cases, we have also made changes to the local implementation that may not be reflected in the version on CPAN due to a desire to maintain more backwards compatibility.
UUppddaatteedd MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa • Archive::Tar has been upgraded from version 2.24 to 2.30.
This update also handled CVE-2018-12015: directory traversal
vulnerability. [cpan #125523]
<https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=125523>
• arybase has been upgraded from version 0.12 to 0.15.
• Attribute::Handlers has been upgraded from version 0.99 to 1.01.
• attributes has been upgraded from version 0.29 to 0.33.
• B has been upgraded from version 1.68 to 1.74.
• B::Concise has been upgraded from version 0.999 to 1.003.
• B::Debug has been upgraded from version 1.24 to 1.26.
NOTE: B::Debug is deprecated and may be removed from a future version
of Perl.
• B::Deparse has been upgraded from version 1.40 to 1.48.
It includes many bug fixes, and in particular, it now deparses
variable attributes correctly:
my $x :foo; # used to deparse as
# 'attributes'->import('main', \$x, 'foo'), my $x;
• base has been upgraded from version 2.25 to 2.27.
• bignum has been upgraded from version 0.47 to 0.49.
• blib has been upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
• bytes has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06.
• Carp has been upgraded from version 1.42 to 1.50.
If a package on the call stack contains a constant named "ISA", Carp
no longer throws a "Not a GLOB reference" error.
Carp, when generating stack traces, now attempts to work around
longstanding bugs resulting from Perl's non-reference-counted stack.
[GH #9282] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/9282>
Carp has been modified to avoid assuming that objects cannot be
overloaded without the overload module loaded (this can happen with
objects created by XS modules). Previously, infinite recursion would
result if an XS-defined overload method itself called Carp. [GH
#16407] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16407>
Carp now avoids using "overload::StrVal", partly because older
versions of overload (included with perl 5.14 and earlier) load
Scalar::Util at run time, which will fail if Carp has been invoked
after a syntax error.
• charnames has been upgraded from version 1.44 to 1.45.
• Compress::Raw::Zlib has been upgraded from version 2.074 to 2.076.
This addresses a security vulnerability in older versions of the
'zlib' library (which is bundled with Compress-Raw-Zlib).
• Config::Extensions has been upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
• Config::Perl::V has been upgraded from version 0.28 to 0.29.
• CPAN has been upgraded from version 2.18 to 2.20.
• Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.167 to 2.170.
Quoting of glob names now obeys the Useqq option [GH #13274]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13274>.
Attempts to set an option to "undef" through a combined getter/setter
method are no longer mistaken for getter calls [GH #12135]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12135>.
• Devel::Peek has been upgraded from version 1.26 to 1.27.
• Devel::PPPort has been upgraded from version 3.35 to 3.40.
Devel::PPPort has moved from cpan-first to perl-first maintenance
Primary responsibility for the code in Devel::PPPort has moved into
core perl. In a practical sense there should be no change except
that hopefully it will stay more up to date with changes made to
symbols in perl, rather than needing to be updated after the fact.
• Digest::SHA has been upgraded from version 5.96 to 6.01.
• DirHandle has been upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.05.
• DynaLoader has been upgraded from version 1.42 to 1.45.
Its documentation now shows the use of "__PACKAGE__" and direct
object syntax [GH #16190]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16190>.
• Encode has been upgraded from version 2.88 to 2.97.
• encoding has been upgraded from version 2.19 to 2.22.
• Errno has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.29.
• experimental has been upgraded from version 0.016 to 0.019.
• Exporter has been upgraded from version 5.72 to 5.73.
• ExtUtils::CBuilder has been upgraded from version 0.280225 to
0.280230.
• ExtUtils::Constant has been upgraded from version 0.23 to 0.25.
• ExtUtils::Embed has been upgraded from version 1.34 to 1.35.
• ExtUtils::Install has been upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.14.
• ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been upgraded from version 7.24 to 7.34.
• ExtUtils::Miniperl has been upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.08.
• ExtUtils::ParseXS has been upgraded from version 3.34 to 3.39.
• ExtUtils::Typemaps has been upgraded from version 3.34 to 3.38.
• ExtUtils::XSSymSet has been upgraded from version 1.3 to 1.4.
• feature has been upgraded from version 1.47 to 1.52.
• fields has been upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.24.
• File::Copy has been upgraded from version 2.32 to 2.33.
It will now use the sub-second precision variant of uuttiimmee(()) supplied
by Time::HiRes where available. [GH #16225]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16225>.
• File::Fetch has been upgraded from version 0.52 to 0.56.
• File::Glob has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.31.
• File::Path has been upgraded from version 2.12_01 to 2.15.
• File::Spec and Cwd have been upgraded from version 3.67 to 3.74.
• File::stat has been upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
• FileCache has been upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.10.
• Filter::Simple has been upgraded from version 0.93 to 0.95.
• Filter::Util::Call has been upgraded from version 1.55 to 1.58.
• GDBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.15 to 1.17.
Its documentation now explains that "each" and "delete" don't mix in
hashes tied to this module [GH #12894]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12894>.
It will now retry opening with an acceptable block size if asking
gdbm to default the block size failed [GH #13232]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13232>.
• Getopt::Long has been upgraded from version 2.49 to 2.5.
• Hash::Util::FieldHash has been upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.20.
• I18N::Langinfo has been upgraded from version 0.13 to 0.17.
This module is now available on all platforms, emulating the system
nnll__llaannggiinnffoo(3) on systems that lack it. Some caveats apply, as
detailed in its documentation, the most severe being that, except for
MS Windows, the "CODESET" item is not implemented on those systems,
always returning "".
It now sets the UTF-8 flag in its returned scalar if the string
contains legal non-ASCII UTF-8, and the locale is UTF-8 [GH #15131]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15131>.
This update also fixes a bug in which the underlying locale was
ignored for the "RADIXCHAR" (always was returned as a dot) and the
"THOUSEP" (always empty). Now the locale-appropriate values are
returned.
• I18N::LangTags has been upgraded from version 0.42 to 0.43.
• if has been upgraded from version 0.0606 to 0.0608.
• IO has been upgraded from version 1.38 to 1.39.
• IO::Socket::IP has been upgraded from version 0.38 to 0.39.
• IPC::Cmd has been upgraded from version 0.96 to 1.00.
• JSON::PP has been upgraded from version 2.27400_02 to 2.97001.
• The "libnet" distribution has been upgraded from version 3.10 to
3.11.
• List::Util has been upgraded from version 1.46_02 to 1.49.
• Locale::Codes has been upgraded from version 3.42 to 3.56.
NNOOTTEE: Locale::Codes scheduled to be removed from core in Perl 5.30.
• Locale::Maketext has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.29.
• Math::BigInt has been upgraded from version 1.999806 to 1.999811.
• Math::BigInt::FastCalc has been upgraded from version 0.5005 to
0.5006.
• Math::BigRat has been upgraded from version 0.2611 to 0.2613.
• Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20170530 to
5.20180622.
• mro has been upgraded from version 1.20 to 1.22.
• Net::Ping has been upgraded from version 2.55 to 2.62.
• NEXT has been upgraded from version 0.67 to 0.67_01.
• ODBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.
• Opcode has been upgraded from version 1.39 to 1.43.
• overload has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.30.
• PerlIO::encoding has been upgraded from version 0.25 to 0.26.
• PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.26 to 0.29.
• PerlIO::via has been upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.17.
• Pod::Functions has been upgraded from version 1.11 to 1.13.
• Pod::Html has been upgraded from version 1.2202 to 1.24.
A title for the HTML document will now be automatically generated by
default from a "NAME" section in the POD document, as it used to be
before the module was rewritten to use Pod::Simple::XHTML to do the
core of its job [GH #11954]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/11954>.
• Pod::Perldoc has been upgraded from version 3.28 to 3.2801.
• The "podlators" distribution has been upgraded from version 4.09 to
4.10.
Man page references and function names now follow the Linux man page
formatting standards, instead of the Solaris standard.
• POSIX has been upgraded from version 1.76 to 1.84.
Some more cautions were added about using locale-specific functions
in threaded applications.
• re has been upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.36.
• Scalar::Util has been upgraded from version 1.46_02 to 1.50.
• SelfLoader has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.25.
• Socket has been upgraded from version 2.020_03 to 2.027.
• sort has been upgraded from version 2.02 to 2.04.
• Storable has been upgraded from version 2.62 to 3.08.
• Sub::Util has been upgraded from version 1.48 to 1.49.
• subs has been upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
• Sys::Hostname has been upgraded from version 1.20 to 1.22.
• Term::ReadLine has been upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.
• Test has been upgraded from version 1.30 to 1.31.
• Test::Harness has been upgraded from version 3.38 to 3.42.
• Test::Simple has been upgraded from version 1.302073 to 1.302133.
• threads has been upgraded from version 2.15 to 2.22.
The documentation now better describes the problems that arise when
returning values from threads, and no longer warns about creating
threads in "BEGIN" blocks. [GH #11563]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/11563>
• threads::shared has been upgraded from version 1.56 to 1.58.
• Tie::Array has been upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
• Tie::StdHandle has been upgraded from version 4.4 to 4.5.
• Time::gmtime has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
• Time::HiRes has been upgraded from version 1.9741 to 1.9759.
• Time::localtime has been upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
• Time::Piece has been upgraded from version 1.31 to 1.3204.
• Unicode::Collate has been upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.25.
• Unicode::Normalize has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.26.
• Unicode::UCD has been upgraded from version 0.68 to 0.70.
The function "num" now accepts an optional parameter to help in
diagnosing error returns.
• User::grent has been upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.
• User::pwent has been upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.01.
• utf8 has been upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.21.
• vars has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
• version has been upgraded from version 0.9917 to 0.9923.
• VMS::DCLsym has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
• VMS::Stdio has been upgraded from version 2.41 to 2.44.
• warnings has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.42.
It now includes new functions with names ending in "_at_level",
allowing callers to specify the exact call frame. [GH #16257]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16257>
• XS::Typemap has been upgraded from version 0.15 to 0.16.
• XSLoader has been upgraded from version 0.27 to 0.30.
Its documentation now shows the use of "__PACKAGE__", and direct
object syntax for example "DynaLoader" usage [GH #16190]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16190>.
Platforms that use "mod2fname" to edit the names of loadable
libraries now look for bootstrap (.bs) files under the correct, non-
edited name.
RReemmoovveedd MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa • The “VMS::stdio” compatibility shim has been removed.
DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn We have attempted to update the documentation to reflect the changes listed in this document. If you find any we have missed, send email to perlbug@perl.org mailto:perlbug@perl.org.
Additionally, the following selected changes have been made:
_p_e_r_l_a_p_i
• The API functions "perl_parse()", "perl_run()", and "perl_destruct()"
are now documented comprehensively, where previously the only
documentation was a reference to the perlembed tutorial.
• The documentation of "newGIVENOP()" has been belatedly updated to
account for the removal of lexical $_.
• The API functions "newCONSTSUB()" and "newCONSTSUB_flags()" are
documented much more comprehensively than before.
_p_e_r_l_d_a_t_a
• The section "Truth and Falsehood" in perlsyn has been moved into
perldata.
_p_e_r_l_d_e_b_g_u_t_s
• The description of the conditions under which "DB::sub()" will be
called has been clarified. [GH #16055]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16055>
_p_e_r_l_d_i_a_g
• "Variable length lookbehind not implemented in regex m/%s/" in
perldiag
This now gives more ideas as to workarounds to the issue that was
introduced in Perl 5.18 (but not documented explicitly in its
perldelta) for the fact that some Unicode "/i" rules cause a few
sequences such as
(?<!st)
to be considered variable length, and hence disallowed.
• "Use of state $_ is experimental" in perldiag
This entry has been removed, as the experimental support of this
construct was removed in perl 5.24.0.
• The diagnostic "Initialization of state variables in list context
currently forbidden" has changed to "Initialization of state
variables in list currently forbidden", because list-context
initialization of single aggregate state variables is now permitted.
_p_e_r_l_e_m_b_e_d
• The examples in perlembed have been made more portable in the way
they exit, and the example that gets an exit code from the embedded
Perl interpreter now gets it from the right place. The examples that
pass a constructed argv to Perl now show the mandatory null
"argv[argc]".
• An example in perlembed used the string value of "ERRSV" as a format
string when calling ccrrooaakk(()). If that string contains format codes
such as %s this could crash the program.
This has been changed to a call to ccrrooaakk__ssvv(()).
An alternative could have been to supply a trivial format string:
croak("%s", SvPV_nolen(ERRSV));
or as a special case for "ERRSV" simply:
croak(NULL);
_p_e_r_l_f_u_n_c
• There is now a note that warnings generated by built-in functions are
documented in perldiag and warnings. [GH #12642]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12642>
• The documentation for the "exists" operator no longer says that
autovivification behaviour "may be fixed in a future release". We've
determined that we're not going to change the default behaviour. [GH
#15231] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15231>
• A couple of small details in the documentation for the "bless"
operator have been clarified. [GH #14684]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14684>
• The description of @INC hooks in the documentation for "require" has
been corrected to say that filter subroutines receive a useless first
argument. [GH #12569] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12569>
• The documentation of "ref" has been rewritten for clarity.
• The documentation of "use" now explains what syntactically qualifies
as a version number for its module version checking feature.
• The documentation of "warn" has been updated to reflect that since
Perl 5.14 it has treated complex exception objects in a manner
equivalent to "die". [GH #13641]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13641>
• The documentation of "die" and "warn" has been revised for clarity.
• The documentation of "each" has been improved, with a slightly more
explicit description of the sharing of iterator state, and with
caveats regarding the fragility of while-each loops. [GH #16334]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16334>
• Clarification to "require" was added to explain the differences
between
require Foo::Bar;
require "Foo/Bar.pm";
_p_e_r_l_g_i_t
• The precise rules for identifying "smoke-me" branches are now stated.
_p_e_r_l_g_u_t_s
• The section on reference counting in perlguts has been heavily
revised, to describe references in the way a programmer needs to
think about them rather than in terms of the physical data
structures.
• Improve documentation related to UTF-8 multibytes.
_p_e_r_l_i_n_t_e_r_n
• The internal functions "newXS_len_flags()" and "newATTRSUB_x()" are
now documented.
_p_e_r_l_o_b_j
• The documentation about "DESTROY" methods has been corrected,
updated, and revised, especially in regard to how they interact with
exceptions. [GH #14083] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14083>
_p_e_r_l_o_p
• The description of the "x" operator in perlop has been clarified.
[GH #16253] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16253>
• perlop has been updated to note that "qw"'s whitespace rules differ
from that of "split"'s in that only ASCII whitespace is used.
• The general explanation of operator precedence and associativity has
been corrected and clarified. [GH #15153]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15153>
• The documentation for the "\" referencing operator now explains the
unusual context that it supplies to its operand. [GH #15932]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15932>
_p_e_r_l_r_e_q_u_i_c_k
• Clarifications on metacharacters and character classes
_p_e_r_l_r_e_t_u_t
• Clarify metacharacters.
_p_e_r_l_r_u_n
• Clarify the differences between --MM and --mm. [GH #15998]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15998>
_p_e_r_l_s_e_c
• The documentation about set-id scripts has been updated and revised.
[GH #10289] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/10289>
• A section about using "sudo" to run Perl scripts has been added.
_p_e_r_l_s_y_n
• The section "Truth and Falsehood" in perlsyn has been removed from
that document, where it didn't belong, and merged into the existing
paragraph on the same topic in perldata.
• The means to disambiguate between code blocks and hash constructors,
already documented in perlref, are now documented in perlsyn too.
[GH #15918] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15918>
_p_e_r_l_u_n_i_p_r_o_p_s
• perluniprops has been updated to note that "\p{Word}" now includes
code points matching the "\p{Join_Control}" property. The change to
the property was made in Perl 5.18, but not documented until now.
There are currently only two code points that match this property
U+200C (ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER) and U+200D (ZERO WIDTH JOINER).
• For each binary table or property, the documentation now includes
which characters in the range "\x00-\xFF" it matches, as well as a
list of the first few ranges of code points matched above that.
_p_e_r_l_v_a_r
• The entry for $+ in perlvar has been expanded upon to describe
handling of multiply-named capturing groups.
_p_e_r_l_f_u_n_c_, _p_e_r_l_o_p_, _p_e_r_l_s_y_n
• In various places, improve the documentation of the special cases in
the condition expression of a while loop, such as implicit "defined"
and assignment to $_. [GH #16334]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16334>
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.
NNeeww DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss _N_e_w _E_r_r_o_r_s
• Can't "goto" into a "given" block
(F) A "goto" statement was executed to jump into the middle of a
"given" block. You can't get there from here. See "goto" in
perlfunc.
• Can't "goto" into a binary or list expression
Use of "goto" to jump into the parameter of a binary or list operator
has been prohibited, to prevent crashes and stack corruption. [GH
#15914] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15914>
You may only enter the _f_i_r_s_t argument of an operator that takes a
fixed number of arguments, since this is a case that will not cause
stack corruption. [GH #16415]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16415>
_N_e_w _W_a_r_n_i_n_g_s
• Old package separator used in string
(W syntax) You used the old package separator, "'", in a variable
named inside a double-quoted string; e.g., "In $name's house". This
is equivalent to "In $name::s house". If you meant the former, put a
backslash before the apostrophe ("In $name\'s house").
• "Locale '%s' contains (at least) the following characters which have
unexpected meanings: %s The Perl program will use the expected
meanings" in perldiag
CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss • A false-positive warning that was issued when using a numerically- quantified sub-pattern in a recursive regex has been silenced. [GH #16106] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16106
• The warning about useless use of a concatenation operator in void
context is now generated for expressions with multiple
concatenations, such as "$a.$b.$c", which used to mistakenly not
warn. [GH #3990] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/3990>
• Warnings that a variable or subroutine "masks earlier declaration in
same ...", or that an "our" variable has been redeclared, have been
moved to a new warnings category "shadow". Previously they were in
category "misc".
• The deprecation warning from "Sys::Hostname::hostname()" saying that
it doesn't accept arguments now states the Perl version in which the
warning will be upgraded to an error. [GH #14662]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14662>
• The perldiag entry for the error regarding a set-id script has been
expanded to make clear that the error is reporting a specific
security vulnerability, and to advise how to fix it.
• The "Unable to flush stdout" error message was missing a trailing
newline. [debian #875361]
UUttiilliittyy CChhaannggeess ppeerrllbbuugg • “–help” and “–version” options have been added.
CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonn aanndd CCoommppiillaattiioonn • C89 requirement
Perl has been documented as requiring a C89 compiler to build since
October 1998. A variety of simplifications have now been made to
Perl's internals to rely on the features specified by the C89
standard. We believe that this internal change hasn't altered the set
of platforms that Perl builds on, but please report a bug if Perl now
has new problems building on your platform.
• On GCC, "-Werror=pointer-arith" is now enabled by default,
disallowing arithmetic on void and function pointers.
• Where an HTML version of the documentation is installed, the HTML
documents now use relative links to refer to each other. Links from
the index page of perlipc to the individual section documents are now
correct. [GH #11941] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/11941>
• _l_i_b_/_u_n_i_c_o_r_e_/_m_k_t_a_b_l_e_s now correctly canonicalizes the names of the
dependencies stored in the files it generates.
_r_e_g_e_n_/_m_k___i_n_v_l_i_s_t_s_._p_l, unlike the other _r_e_g_e_n_/_*_._p_l scripts, used $0 to
name itself in the dependencies stored in the files it generates. It
now uses a literal so that the path stored in the generated files
doesn't depend on how _r_e_g_e_n_/_m_k___i_n_v_l_i_s_t_s_._p_l is invoked.
This lack of canonical names could cause test failures in
_t_/_p_o_r_t_i_n_g_/_r_e_g_e_n_._t. [GH #16446]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16446>
• New probes
HAS_BUILTIN_ADD_OVERFLOW #
HAS_BUILTIN_MUL_OVERFLOW #
HAS_BUILTIN_SUB_OVERFLOW #
HAS_THREAD_SAFE_NL_LANGINFO_L #
HAS_LOCALECONV_L #
HAS_MBRLEN #
HAS_MBRTOWC #
HAS_MEMRCHR #
HAS_NANOSLEEP #
HAS_STRNLEN #
HAS_STRTOLD_L #
I_WCHAR #
TTeessttiinngg • Testing of the XS-APItest directory is now done in parallel, where applicable.
• Perl now includes a default _._t_r_a_v_i_s_._y_m_l file for Travis CI testing on
github mirrors. [GH #14558]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14558>
• The watchdog timer count in _r_e_/_p_a_t___p_s_y_c_h_o_._t can now be overridden.
This test can take a long time to run, so there is a timer to keep
this in check (currently, 5 minutes). This commit adds checking the
environment variable "PERL_TEST_TIME_OUT_FACTOR"; if set, the time
out setting is multiplied by its value.
• _h_a_r_n_e_s_s no longer waits for 30 seconds when running _t_/_i_o_/_o_p_e_n_p_i_d_._t.
[GH #13535] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13535> [GH #16420]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16420>
PPaacckkaaggiinngg For the past few years we have released perl using three different archive formats: bzip (".bz2"), LZMA2 (".xz") and gzip (".gz"). Since xz compresses better and decompresses faster, and gzip is more compatible and uses less memory, we have dropped the “.bz2” archive format with this release. (If this poses a problem, do let us know; see “Reporting Bugs”, below.)
PPllaattffoorrmm SSuuppppoorrtt DDiissccoonnttiinnuueedd PPllaattffoorrmmss PowerUX / Power MAX OS Compiler hints and other support for these apparently long-defunct platforms has been removed.
PPllaattffoorrmm--SSppeecciiffiicc NNootteess CentOS Compilation on CentOS 5 is now fixed.
Cygwin
A build with the quadmath library can now be done on Cygwin.
Darwin
Perl now correctly uses reentrant functions, like "asctime_r", on
versions of Darwin that have support for them.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD's _/_u_s_r_/_s_h_a_r_e_/_m_k_/_s_y_s_._m_k specifies "-O2" for architectures
other than ARM and MIPS. By default, perl is now compiled with the
same optimization levels.
VMS Several fix-ups for _c_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e_._c_o_m, marking function VMS has (or
doesn't have).
CRTL features can now be set by embedders before invoking Perl by
using the "decc$feature_set" and "decc$feature_set_value" functions.
Previously any attempt to set features after image initialization
were ignored.
Windows
• Support for compiling perl on Windows using Microsoft Visual
Studio 2017 (containing Visual C++ 14.1) has been added.
• Visual C++ compiler version detection has been improved to work
on non-English language systems.
• We now set $Config{libpth} correctly for 64-bit builds using
Visual C++ versions earlier than 14.1.
IInntteerrnnaall CChhaannggeess • A new optimisation phase has been added to the compiler, “optimize_optree()”, which does a top-down scan of a complete optree just before the peephole optimiser is run. This phase is not currently hookable.
• An "OP_MULTICONCAT" op has been added. At "optimize_optree()" time, a
chain of "OP_CONCAT" and "OP_CONST" ops, together optionally with an
"OP_STRINGIFY" and/or "OP_SASSIGN", are combined into a single
"OP_MULTICONCAT" op. The op is of type "UNOP_AUX", and the aux array
contains the argument count, plus a pointer to a constant string and
a set of segment lengths. For example with
my $x = "foo=$foo, bar=$bar\n";
the constant string would be "foo=, bar=\n" and the segment lengths
would be (4,6,1). If the string contains characters such as "\x80",
whose representation changes under utf8, two sets of strings plus
lengths are precomputed and stored.
• Direct access to "PL_keyword_plugin" is not safe in the presence of
multithreading. A new "wrap_keyword_plugin" function has been added
to allow XS modules to safely define custom keywords even when loaded
from a thread, analogous to "PL_check" / "wrap_op_checker".
• The "PL_statbuf" interpreter variable has been removed.
• The deprecated function "to_utf8_case()", accessible from XS code,
has been removed.
• A new function "is_utf8_invariant_string_loc()" has been added that
is like "is_utf8_invariant_string()" but takes an extra pointer
parameter into which is stored the location of the first variant
character, if any are found.
• A new function, "Perl_langinfo()" has been added. It is an (almost)
drop-in replacement for the system nl_langinfo(3), but works on
platforms that lack that; as well as being more thread-safe, and
hiding some gotchas with locale handling from the caller. Code that
uses this, needn't use localeconv(3) (and be affected by the gotchas)
to find the decimal point, thousands separator, or currency symbol.
See "Perl_langinfo" in perlapi.
• A new API function "sv_rvunweaken()" has been added to complement
"sv_rvweaken()". The implementation was taken from "unweaken" in
Scalar::Util.
• A new flag, "SORTf_UNSTABLE", has been added. This will allow a
future commit to make mergesort unstable when the user specifies ‘no
sort stable’, since it has been decided that mergesort should remain
stable by default.
• XS modules can now automatically get reentrant versions of system
functions on threaded perls.
By adding
#define PERL_REENTRANT
near the beginning of an "XS" file, it will be compiled so that
whatever reentrant functions perl knows about on that system will
automatically and invisibly be used instead of the plain, non-
reentrant versions. For example, if you write "getpwnam()" in your
code, on a system that has "getpwnam_r()" all calls to the former
will be translated invisibly into the latter. This does not happen
except on threaded perls, as they aren't needed otherwise. Be aware
that which functions have reentrant versions varies from system to
system.
• The "PERL_NO_OP_PARENT" build define is no longer supported, which
means that perl is now always built with "PERL_OP_PARENT" enabled.
• The format and content of the non-utf8 transliteration table attached
to the "op_pv" field of "OP_TRANS"/"OP_TRANSR" ops has changed. It's
now a "struct OPtrans_map".
• A new compiler "#define", "dTHX_DEBUGGING". has been added. This is
useful for XS or C code that only need the thread context because
their debugging statements that get compiled only under "-DDEBUGGING"
need one.
• A new API function "Perl_setlocale" in perlapi has been added.
• "sync_locale" in perlapi has been revised to return a boolean as to
whether the system was using the global locale or not.
• A new kind of magic scalar, called a "nonelem" scalar, has been
introduced. It is stored in an array to denote a non-existent
element, whenever such an element is accessed in a potential lvalue
context. It replaces the existing "defelem" (deferred element) magic
wherever this is possible, being significantly more efficient. This
means that "some_sub($sparse_array[$nonelem])" no longer has to
create a new magic defelem scalar each time, as long as the element
is within the array.
It partially fixes the rare bug of deferred elements getting out of
synch with their arrays when the array is shifted or unshifted. [GH
#16364] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16364>
SSeelleecctteedd BBuugg FFiixxeess • List assignment (“aassign”) could in some rare cases allocate an entry on the mortals stack and leave the entry uninitialized, leading to possible crashes. [GH #16017] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16017
• Attempting to apply an attribute to an "our" variable where a
function of that name already exists could result in a NULL pointer
being supplied where an SV was expected, crashing perl. [perl
#131597] <https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=131597>
• "split ' '" now correctly handles the argument being split when in
the scope of the "unicode_strings" feature. Previously, when a string
using the single-byte internal representation contained characters
that are whitespace by Unicode rules but not by ASCII rules, it
treated those characters as part of fields rather than as field
separators. [GH #15904] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15904>
• Several built-in functions previously had bugs that could cause them
to write to the internal stack without allocating room for the item
being written. In rare situations, this could have led to a crash.
These bugs have now been fixed, and if any similar bugs are
introduced in future, they will be detected automatically in
debugging builds.
These internal stack usage checks introduced are also done by the
"entersub" operator when calling XSUBs. This means we can report
which XSUB failed to allocate enough stack space. [GH #16126]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16126>
• Using a symbolic ref with postderef syntax as the key in a hash
lookup was yielding an assertion failure on debugging builds. [GH
#16029] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16029>
• Array and hash variables whose names begin with a caret now admit
indexing inside their curlies when interpolated into strings, as in
"${^CAPTURE[0]}" to index "@{^CAPTURE}". [GH #16050]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16050>
• Fetching the name of a glob that was previously UTF-8 but wasn't any
longer would return that name flagged as UTF-8. [GH #15971]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15971>
• The perl "sprintf()" function (via the underlying C function
"Perl_sv_vcatpvfn_flags()") has been heavily reworked to fix many
minor bugs, including the integer wrapping of large width and
precision specifiers and potential buffer overruns. It has also been
made faster in many cases.
• Exiting from an "eval", whether normally or via an exception, now
always frees temporary values (possibly calling destructors) _b_e_f_o_r_e
setting $@. For example:
sub DESTROY { eval { die "died in DESTROY"; } }
eval { bless []; };
# $@ used to be equal to "died in DESTROY" here; it's now "".
• Fixed a duplicate symbol failure with "-flto -mieee-fp" builds. _p_p_._c
defined "_LIB_VERSION" which "-lieee" already defines. [GH #16086]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16086>
• The tokenizer no longer consumes the exponent part of a floating
point number if it's incomplete. [GH #16073]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16073>
• On non-threaded builds, for "m/$null/" where $null is an empty string
is no longer treated as if the "/o" flag was present when the
previous matching match operator included the "/o" flag. The
rewriting used to implement this behavior could confuse the
interpreter. This matches the behaviour of threaded builds. [GH
#14668] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14668>
• Parsing a "sub" definition could cause a use after free if the "sub"
keyword was followed by whitespace including newlines (and comments.)
[GH #16097] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16097>
• The tokenizer now correctly adjusts a parse pointer when skipping
whitespace in a "${identifier}" construct. [perl #131949]
<https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=131949>
• Accesses to "${^LAST_FH}" no longer assert after using any of a
variety of I/O operations on a non-glob. [GH #15372]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15372>
• The XS-level "Copy()", "Move()", "Zero()" macros and their variants
now assert if the pointers supplied are "NULL". ISO C considers
supplying NULL pointers to the functions these macros are built upon
as undefined behaviour even when their count parameters are zero.
Based on these assertions and the original bug report three macro
calls were made conditional. [GH #16079]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16079> [GH #16112]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16112>
• Only the "=" operator is permitted for defining defaults for
parameters in subroutine signatures. Previously other assignment
operators, e.g. "+=", were also accidentally permitted. [GH #16084]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16084>
• Package names are now always included in ":prototype" warnings [perl
#131833] <https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=131833>
• The "je_old_stack_hwm" field, previously only found in the "jmpenv"
structure on debugging builds, has been added to non-debug builds as
well. This fixes an issue with some CPAN modules caused by the size
of this structure varying between debugging and non-debugging builds.
[GH #16122] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16122>
• The arguments to the "ninstr()" macro are now correctly
parenthesized.
• A NULL pointer dereference in the "S_regmatch()" function has been
fixed. [perl #132017]
<https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=132017>
• Calling exec PROGRAM LIST with an empty "LIST" has been fixed. This
should call "execvp()" with an empty "argv" array (containing only
the terminating "NULL" pointer), but was instead just returning false
(and not setting $!). [GH #16075]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16075>
• The "gv_fetchmeth_sv" C function stopped working properly in Perl
5.22 when fetching a constant with a UTF-8 name if that constant
subroutine was stored in the stash as a simple scalar reference,
rather than a full typeglob. This has been corrected.
• Single-letter debugger commands followed by an argument which starts
with punctuation (e.g. "p$^V" and "x@ARGV") now work again. They
had been wrongly requiring a space between the command and the
argument. [GH #13342] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13342>
• splice now throws an exception ("Modification of a read-only value
attempted") when modifying a read-only array. Until now it had been
silently modifying the array. The new behaviour is consistent with
the behaviour of push and unshift. [GH #15923]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15923>
• "stat()", "lstat()", and file test operators now fail if given a
filename containing a nul character, in the same way that "open()"
already fails.
• "stat()", "lstat()", and file test operators now reliably set $! when
failing due to being applied to a closed or otherwise invalid file
handle.
• File test operators for Unix permission bits that don't exist on a
particular platform, such as "-k" (sticky bit) on Windows, now check
that the file being tested exists before returning the blanket false
result, and yield the appropriate errors if the argument doesn't
refer to a file.
• Fixed a 'read before buffer' overrun when parsing a range starting
with "\N{}" at the beginning of the character set for the
transliteration operator. [GH #16189]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16189>
• Fixed a leaked scalar when parsing an empty "\N{}" at compile-time.
[GH #16189] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16189>
• Calling "do $path" on a directory or block device now yields a
meaningful error code in $!. [GH #14841]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14841>
• Regexp substitution using an overloaded replacement value that
provides a tainted stringification now correctly taints the resulting
string. [GH #12495] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12495>
• Lexical sub declarations in "do" blocks such as "do { my sub lex; 123
}" could corrupt the stack, erasing items already on the stack in the
enclosing statement. This has been fixed. [GH #16243]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16243>
• "pack" and "unpack" can now handle repeat counts and lengths that
exceed two billion. [GH #13179]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13179>
• Digits past the radix point in octal and binary floating point
literals now have the correct weight on platforms where a floating
point significand doesn't fit into an integer type.
• The canonical truth value no longer has a spurious special meaning as
a callable subroutine. It used to be a magic placeholder for a
missing "import" or "unimport" method, but is now treated like any
other string 1. [GH #14902]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14902>
• "system" now reduces its arguments to strings in the parent process,
so any effects of stringifying them (such as overload methods being
called or warnings being emitted) are visible in the way the program
expects. [GH #13561] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13561>
• The "readpipe()" built-in function now checks at compile time that it
has only one parameter expression, and puts it in scalar context,
thus ensuring that it doesn't corrupt the stack at runtime. [GH
#2793] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/2793>
• "sort" now performs correct reference counting when aliasing $a and
$b, thus avoiding premature destruction and leakage of scalars if
they are re-aliased during execution of the sort comparator. [GH
#11422] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/11422>
• "reverse" with no operand, reversing $_ by default, is no longer in
danger of corrupting the stack. [GH #16291]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16291>
• "exec", "system", et al are no longer liable to have their argument
lists corrupted by reentrant calls and by magic such as tied scalars.
[GH #15660] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15660>
• Perl's own "malloc" no longer gets confused by attempts to allocate
more than a gigabyte on a 64-bit platform. [GH #13273]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13273>
• Stacked file test operators in a sort comparator expression no longer
cause a crash. [GH #15626]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15626>
• An identity "tr///" transformation on a reference is no longer
mistaken for that reference for the purposes of deciding whether it
can be assigned to. [GH #15812]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15812>
• Lengthy hexadecimal, octal, or binary floating point literals no
longer cause undefined behaviour when parsing digits that are of such
low significance that they can't affect the floating point value.
[GH #16114] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16114>
• "open $$scalarref..." and similar invocations no longer leak the file
handle. [GH #12593] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12593>
• Some convoluted kinds of regexp no longer cause an arithmetic
overflow when compiled. [GH #16113]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16113>
• The default typemap, by avoiding "newGVgen", now no longer leaks when
XSUBs return file handles ("PerlIO *" or "FILE *"). [GH #12593]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12593>
• Creating a "BEGIN" block as an XS subroutine with a prototype no
longer crashes because of the early freeing of the subroutine.
• The "printf" format specifier "%.0f" no longer rounds incorrectly [GH
#9125] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/9125>, and now shows the
correct sign for a negative zero.
• Fixed an issue where the error "Scalar value @arrayname[0] better
written as $arrayname" would give an error "Cannot printf Inf with
'c'" when arrayname starts with "Inf". [GH #16335]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16335>
• The Perl implementation of "getcwd()" in "Cwd" in the PathTools
distribution now behaves the same as XS implementation on errors: it
returns an error, and sets $!. [GH #16338]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16338>
• Vivify array elements when putting them on the stack. Fixes [GH
#5310] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/5310> (reported in April
2002).
• Fixed parsing of braced subscript after parens. Fixes [GH #4688]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/4688> (reported in December
2001).
• "tr/non_utf8/long_non_utf8/c" could give the wrong results when the
length of the replacement character list was greater than 0x7fff.
• "tr/non_utf8/non_utf8/cd" failed to add the implied
"\x{100}-\x{7fffffff}" to the search character list.
• Compilation failures within "perl-within-perl" constructs, such as
with string interpolation and the right part of "s///e", now cause
compilation to abort earlier.
Previously compilation could continue in order to report other
errors, but the failed sub-parse could leave partly parsed constructs
on the parser shift-reduce stack, confusing the parser, leading to
perl crashes. [GH #14739]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14739>
• On threaded perls where the decimal point (radix) character is not a
dot, it has been possible for a race to occur between threads when
one needs to use the real radix character (such as with "sprintf").
This has now been fixed by use of a mutex on systems without thread-
safe locales, and the problem just doesn't come up on those with
thread-safe locales.
• Errors while compiling a regex character class could sometime trigger
an assertion failure. [GH #16172]
<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16172>
AAcckknnoowwlleeddggeemmeennttss Perl 5.28.0 represents approximately 13 months of development since Perl 5.26.0 and contains approximately 730,000 lines of changes across 2,200 files from 77 authors.
Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there
were approximately 580,000 lines of changes to 1,300 .pm, .t, .c and .h
files.
Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant
community of users and developers. The following people are known to have
contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.28.0:
Aaron Crane, Abigail, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Alberto Simões, Alexandr
Savca, Andrew Fresh, Andy Dougherty, Andy Lester, Aristotle Pagaltzis,
Ask Bjørn Hansen, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari
Mannsåker, Dan Collins, Daniel Dragan, David Cantrell, David Mitchell,
Dmitry Ulanov, Dominic Hargreaves, E. Choroba, Eric Herman, Eugen Konkov,
Father Chrysostomos, Gene Sullivan, George Hartzell, Graham Knop, Harald
Jörg, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van der Sanden, Jacques Germishuys, James E
Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jerry D. Hedden, J. Nick Koston, John
Lightsey, John Peacock, John P. Linderman, John SJ Anderson, Karen
Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Ken Brown, Ken Cotterill, Leon Timmermans,
Lukas Mai, Marco Fontani, Marc-Philip Werner, Matthew Horsfall, Neil
Bowers, Nicholas Clark, Nicolas R., Niko Tyni, Pali, Paul Marquess, Peter
John Acklam, Reini Urban, Renee Baecker, Ricardo Signes, Robin Barker,
Sawyer X, Scott Lanning, Sergey Aleynikov, Shirakata Kentaro, Shoichi
Kaji, Slaven Rezic, Smylers, Steffen Müller, Steve Hay, Sullivan Beck,
Thomas Sibley, Todd Rinaldo, Tomasz Konojacki, Tom Hukins, Tom Wyant,
Tony Cook, Vitali Peil, Yves Orton, Zefram.
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 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 see
"SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of
how to report the issue.
GGiivvee TThhaannkkss If you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5, you can do so by running the “perlthanks” program:
perlthanks
This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of
thanks.
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 PERL5280DELTA(1)