PERL586DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL586DELTA(1)

PERL586DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL586DELTA(1) #

PERL586DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL586DELTA(1)

NNAAMMEE #

 perl586delta - what is new for perl v5.8.6

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #

 This document describes differences between the 5.8.5 release and the
 5.8.6 release.

IInnccoommppaattiibbllee CChhaannggeess There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.5.

CCoorree EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss The perl interpreter is now more tolerant of UTF-16-encoded scripts.

 On Win32, Perl can now use non-IFS compatible LSPs, which allows Perl to
 work in conjunction with firewalls such as McAfee Guardian. For full
 details see the file _R_E_A_D_M_E_._w_i_n_3_2, particularly if you're running Win95.

MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa • With the “base” pragma, an intermediate class with no fields used to messes up private fields in the base class. This has been fixed.

 •   Cwd upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools
     distribution)

 •   Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.03

 •   File::Spec upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools
     distribution)

 •   Encode upgraded to version 2.08

 •   ExtUtils::MakeMaker remains at version 6.17, as later stable releases
     currently available on CPAN have some issues with core modules on
     some core platforms.

 •   I18N::LangTags upgraded to version 0.35

 •   Math::BigInt upgraded to version 1.73

 •   Math::BigRat upgraded to version 0.13

 •   MIME::Base64 upgraded to version 3.05

 •   POSIX::sigprocmask function can now retrieve the current signal mask
     without also setting it.

 •   Time::HiRes upgraded to version 1.65

UUttiilliittyy CChhaannggeess Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in the debugger.

PPeerrffoorrmmaannccee EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss “reverse sort …” is now optimized to sort in reverse, avoiding the generation of a temporary intermediate list.

 "for (reverse @foo)" now iterates in reverse, avoiding the generation of
 a temporary reversed list.

SSeelleecctteedd BBuugg FFiixxeess The regexp engine is now more robust when given invalid utf8 input, as is sometimes generated by buggy XS modules.

 "foreach" on threads::shared array used to be able to crash Perl. This
 bug has now been fixed.

 A regexp in "STDOUT"'s destructor used to coredump, because the regexp
 pad was already freed. This has been fixed.

 "goto &" is now more robust - bugs in deep recursion and chained "goto &"
 have been fixed.

 Using "delete" on an array no longer leaks memory. A "pop" of an item
 from a shared array reference no longer causes a leak.

 "eval_sv()" failing a taint test could corrupt the stack - this has been
 fixed.

 On platforms with 64 bit pointers numeric comparison operators used to
 erroneously compare the addresses of references that are overloaded,
 rather than using the overloaded values. This has been fixed.

 "read" into a UTF8-encoded buffer with an offset off the end of the
 buffer no longer mis-calculates buffer lengths.

 Although Perl has promised since version 5.8 that "sort()" would be
 stable, the two cases "sort {$b cmp $a}" and "sort {$b <=> $a}" could
 produce non-stable sorts.   This is corrected in perl5.8.6.

 Localising $^D no longer generates a diagnostic message about valid -D
 flags.

NNeeww oorr CChhaannggeedd DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss For -t and -T, Too late for “-T” option has been changed to the more informative “-T” is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line

CChhaannggeedd IInntteerrnnaallss From now on all applications embedding perl will behave as if perl were compiled with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. See “Environment access” in the _I_N_S_T_A_L_L file for details.

 Most "C" source files now have comments at the top explaining their
 purpose, which should help anyone wishing to get an overview of the
 implementation.

NNeeww TTeessttss There are significantly more tests for the “B” suite of modules.

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://bugs.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 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 analysed by the Perl
 porting team.  You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
 http://bugs.perl.org/

SSEEEE AALLSSOO #

 The _C_h_a_n_g_e_s file for 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 2006-03-28 PERL586DELTA(1)