PERL589DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL589DELTA(1)

PERL589DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL589DELTA(1) #

PERL589DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL589DELTA(1)

NNAAMMEE #

 perl589delta - what is new for perl v5.8.9

DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #

 This document describes differences between the 5.8.8 release and the
 5.8.9 release.

NNoottiiccee The 5.8.9 release will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with security issues, and platform build failures. Hence you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already. See “Known Problems” for more information.

IInnccoommppaattiibbllee CChhaannggeess A particular construction in the source code of extensions written in C++ may need changing. See “Changed Internals” for more details. All extensions written in C, most written in C++, and all existing compiled extensions are unaffected. This was necessary to improve C++ support.

 Other than this, there are no changes intentionally incompatible with
 5.8.8.  If any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.

CCoorree EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss UUnniiccooddee CChhaarraacctteerr DDaattaabbaassee 55..11..00.. The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has been updated to 5.1.0 from 4.1.0. See http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#NotableChanges for the notable changes.

ssttaatt aanndd --XX oonn ddiirreeccttoorryy hhaannddlleess It is now possible to call “stat” and the “-X” filestat operators on directory handles. As both directory and file handles are barewords, there can be ambiguities over which was intended. In these situations the file handle semantics are preferred. Both also treat *FILE{IO} filehandles like *FILE filehandles.

SSoouurrccee ffiilltteerrss iinn @@IINNCC It’s possible to enhance the mechanism of subroutine hooks in @INC by adding a source filter on top of the filehandle opened and returned by the hook. This feature was planned a long time ago, but wasn’t quite working until now. See “require” in perlfunc for details. (Nicholas Clark)

EExxcceeppttiioonnss iinn ccoonnssttaanntt ffoollddiinngg The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and if folding throws an exception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl now retains the current optree, rather than aborting the whole program. Without this change, programs would not compile if they had expressions that happened to generate exceptions, even though those expressions were in code that could never be reached at runtime. (Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)

“"nnoo VVEERRSSIIOONN"” You can now use “no” followed by a version number to specify that you want to use a version of perl older than the specified one.

IImmpprroovveedd iinntteerrnnaall UUTTFF--88 ccaacchhiinngg ccooddee The code that caches calculated UTF-8 byte offsets for character offsets for a string has been re-written. Several bugs have been located and eliminated, and the code now makes better use of the information it has, so should be faster. In particular, it doesn’t scan to the end of a string before calculating an offset within the string, which should speed up some operations on long strings. It is now possible to disable the caching code at run time, to verify that it is not the cause of suspected problems.

RRuunnttiimmee rreellooccaattaabbllee iinnssttaallllaattiioonnss There is now _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e support for creating a perl tree that is relocatable at run time. see “Relocatable installations”.

NNeeww iinntteerrnnaall vvaarriiaabblleess

“${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}” #

     This variable gives the native status returned by the last pipe
     close, backtick command, successful call to "wait" or "waitpid", or
     from the "system" operator. See perlvar for details. (Contributed by
     Gisle Aas.)

“${^UTF8CACHE}” #

     This variable controls the state of the internal UTF-8 offset caching
     code.  1 for on (the default), 0 for off, -1 to debug the caching
     code by checking all its results against linear scans, and panicking
     on any discrepancy.

“"rreeaaddppiippee"” iiss nnooww oovveerrrriiddaabbllee The built-in function “readpipe” is now overridable. Overriding it permits also to override its operator counterpart, “qx//” (also known as “``”).

ssiimmppllee eexxcceeppttiioonn hhaannddlliinngg mmaaccrrooss Perl 5.8.9 (and 5.10.0 onwards) now provides a couple of macros to do very basic exception handling in XS modules. You can use these macros if you call code that may “croak”, but you need to do some cleanup before giving control back to Perl. See “Exception Handling” in perlguts for more details.

--DD ooppttiioonn eennhhaanncceemmeennttss • “-Dq” suppresses the _E_X_E_C_U_T_I_N_G_._._. message when running under “-D”

 •   "-Dl" logs runops loop entry and exit, and jump level popping.

 •   "-Dv" displays the process id as part of the trace output.

XXSS--aassssiisstteedd SSWWAASSHHGGEETT Some pure-perl code that the regexp engine was using to retrieve Unicode properties and transliteration mappings has been reimplemented in XS for faster execution. (SADAHIRO Tomoyuki)

CCoonnssttaanntt ssuubbrroouuttiinneess The interpreter internals now support a far more memory efficient form of inlineable constants. Storing a reference to a constant value in a symbol table is equivalent to a full typeglob referencing a constant subroutine, but using about 400 bytes less memory. This proxy constant subroutine is automatically upgraded to a real typeglob with subroutine if necessary. The approach taken is analogous to the existing space optimisation for subroutine stub declarations, which are stored as plain scalars in place of the full typeglob.

 However, to aid backwards compatibility of existing code, which (wrongly)
 does not expect anything other than typeglobs in symbol tables, nothing
 in core uses this feature, other than the regression tests.

 Stubs for prototyped subroutines have been stored in symbol tables as
 plain strings, and stubs for unprototyped subroutines as the number -1,
 since 5.005, so code which assumes that the core only places typeglobs in
 symbol tables has been making incorrect assumptions for over 10 years.

NNeeww PPllaattffoorrmmss Compile support added for:

 •   DragonFlyBSD

 •   MidnightBSD

 •   MirOS BSD

• RISC OS #

 •   Cray XT4/Catamount

MMoodduulleess aanndd PPrraaggmmaattaa NNeeww MMoodduulleess • “Module::Pluggable” is a simple framework to create modules that accept pluggable sub-modules. The bundled version is 3.8

 •   "Module::CoreList" is a hash of hashes that is keyed on perl version
     as indicated in $]. The bundled version is 2.17

 •   "Win32API::File" now available in core on Microsoft Windows. The
     bundled version is 0.1001_01

 •   "Devel::InnerPackage" finds all the packages defined by a single
     file. It is part of the "Module::Pluggable" distribution. The bundled
     version is 0.3

UUppddaatteedd MMoodduulleess • “attributes” upgraded to version 0.09

 •   "AutoLoader" upgraded to version 5.67

 •   "AutoSplit" upgraded to 1.06

 •   "autouse" upgraded to version 1.06

 •   "B" upgraded from 1.09_01 to 1.19

     •   provides new pad related abstraction macros

“B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_LOW”, “B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_HIGH”, #

         "B::NV::PARENT_PAD_INDEX", "B::NV::PARENT_FAKELEX_FLAGS", which
         hides the difference in storage in 5.10.0 and later.

     •   provides "B::sub_generation", which exposes "PL_sub_generation"

     •   provides "B::GV::isGV_with_GP", which on pre-5.10 perls always
         returns true.

     •   New type "B::HE" added with methods "VAL", "HASH" and
         "SVKEY_force"

     •   The "B::GVf_IMPORTED_CV" flag is now set correctly when a proxy
         constant subroutine is imported.

     •   bugs fixed in the handling of "PMOP"s.

     •   "B::BM::PREVIOUS" returns now "U32", not "U16".  "B::CV::START"
         and "B:CV::ROOT" return now "NULL" on an XSUB, "B::CV::XSUB" and
         "B::CV::XSUBANY" return 0 on a non-XSUB.

 •   "B::C" upgraded to 1.05

 •   "B::Concise" upgraded to 0.76

     •   new option "-src" causes the rendering of each statement
         (starting with the nextstate OP) to be preceded by the first line
         of source code that generates it.

     •   new option "-stash="somepackage"", "require"s "somepackage", and
         then renders each function defined in its namespace.

     •   now has documentation of detailed hint symbols.

 •   "B::Debug" upgraded to version 1.05

 •   "B::Deparse" upgraded to version 0.87

     •   properly deparse "print readpipe $x, $y".

     •   now handles "''->()", "::()", "sub :: {}", _e_t_c_. correctly [RT
         #43010].  All bugs in parsing these kinds of syntax are now
         fixed:

             perl -MO=Deparse -e '"my %h = "->()'
             perl -MO=Deparse -e '::->()'
             perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub :: {}'
             perl -MO=Deparse -e 'package a; sub a::b::c {}'
             perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub the::main::road {}'

     •   does nnoott deparse $^H{v_string}, which is automatically set by the
         internals.

 •   "B::Lint" upgraded to version 1.11

 •   "B::Terse" upgraded to version 1.05

 •   "base" upgraded to version 2.13

     •   loading a module via base.pm would mask a global $SIG{__DIE__} in
         that module.

     •   push all classes at once in @ISA

 •   "Benchmark" upgraded to version 1.10

 •   "bigint" upgraded to 0.23

 •   "bignum" upgraded to 0.23

 •   "bigrat" upgraded to 0.23

 •   "blib" upgraded to 0.04

 •   "Carp" upgraded to version 1.10

     The argument backtrace code now shows "undef" as "undef", instead of
     a string _"_u_n_d_e_f_".

 •   "CGI" upgraded to version 3.42

 •   "charnames" upgraded to 1.06

 •   "constant" upgraded to version 1.17

 •   "CPAN" upgraded to version 1.9301

 •   "Cwd" upgraded to version 3.29 with some platform specific
     improvements (including for VMS).

 •   "Data::Dumper" upgraded to version 2.121_17

     •   Fixes hash iterator current position with the pure Perl version

[RT #40668] #

     •   Performance enhancements, which will be most evident on platforms
         where repeated calls to C's "realloc()" are slow, such as Win32.

 •   "DB_File" upgraded to version 1.817

 •   "DB_Filter" upgraded to version 0.02

 •   "Devel::DProf" upgraded to version 20080331.00

 •   "Devel::Peek" upgraded to version 1.04

 •   "Devel::PPPort" upgraded to version 3.14

 •   "diagnostics" upgraded to version 1.16

 •   "Digest" upgraded to version 1.15

 •   "Digest::MD5" upgraded to version 2.37

 •   "DirHandle" upgraded to version 1.02

     •   now localises $., $@, $!, $^E, and $? before closing the
         directory handle to suppress leaking any side effects of warnings
         about it already being closed.

 •   "DynaLoader" upgraded to version 1.09

     "DynaLoader" can now dynamically load a loadable object from a file
     with a non-default file extension.

 •   "Encode" upgraded to version 2.26

     "Encode::Alias" includes a fix for encoding "646" on Solaris (better
     known as ASCII).

 •   "English" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "Errno" upgraded to version 1.10

 •   "Exporter" upgraded to version 5.63

 •   "ExtUtils::Command" upgraded to version 1.15

 •   "ExtUtils::Constant" upgraded to version 0.21

 •   "ExtUtils::Embed" upgraded to version 1.28

 •   "ExtUtils::Install" upgraded to version 1.50_01

 •   "ExtUtils::Installed" upgraded to version 1.43

 •   "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" upgraded to version 6.48

     •   support for "INSTALLSITESCRIPT" and "INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT"
         configuration.

 •   "ExtUtils::Manifest" upgraded to version 1.55

 •   "ExtUtils::ParseXS" upgraded to version 2.19

 •   "Fatal" upgraded to version 1.06

     •   allows built-ins in "CORE::GLOBAL" to be made fatal.

 •   "Fcntl" upgraded to version 1.06

 •   "fields" upgraded to version 2.12

 •   "File::Basename" upgraded to version 2.77

 •   "FileCache" upgraded to version 1.07

 •   "File::Compare" upgraded to 1.1005

 •   "File::Copy" upgraded to 2.13

     •   now uses 3-arg open.

 •   "File::DosGlob" upgraded to 1.01

 •   "File::Find" upgraded to version 1.13

 •   "File::Glob" upgraded to version 1.06

     •   fixes spurious results with brackets inside braces.

 •   "File::Path" upgraded to version 2.07_02

 •   "File::Spec" upgraded to version 3.29

     •   improved handling of bad arguments.

     •   some platform specific improvements (including for VMS and
         Cygwin), with an optimisation on "abs2rel" when handling both
         relative arguments.

 •   "File::stat" upgraded to version 1.01

 •   "File::Temp" upgraded to version 0.20

 •   "filetest" upgraded to version 1.02

 •   "Filter::Util::Call" upgraded to version 1.07

 •   "Filter::Simple" upgraded to version 0.83

 •   "FindBin" upgraded to version 1.49

 •   "GDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.09

 •   "Getopt::Long" upgraded to version 2.37

 •   "Getopt::Std" upgraded to version 1.06

 •   "Hash::Util" upgraded to version 0.06

 •   "if" upgraded to version 0.05

 •   "IO" upgraded to version 1.23

     Reduced number of calls to "getpeername" in "IO::Socket"

 •   "IPC::Open" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "IPC::Open3" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "IPC::SysV" upgraded to version 2.00

 •   "lib" upgraded to version 0.61

     •   avoid warning about loading _._p_a_r files.

 •   "libnet" upgraded to version 1.22

 •   "List::Util" upgraded to 1.19

 •   "Locale::Maketext" upgraded to 1.13

 •   "Math::BigFloat" upgraded to version 1.60

 •   "Math::BigInt" upgraded to version 1.89

 •   "Math::BigRat" upgraded to version 0.22

     •   implements new "as_float" method.

 •   "Math::Complex" upgraded to version 1.54.

 •   "Math::Trig" upgraded to version 1.18.

 •   "NDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.07

     •   improve _g_+_+ handling for systems using GDBM compatibility
         headers.

 •   "Net::Ping" upgraded to version 2.35

 •   "NEXT" upgraded to version 0.61

     •   fix several bugs with "NEXT" when working with "AUTOLOAD", "eval"
         block, and within overloaded stringification.

 •   "ODBM_File" upgraded to 1.07

 •   "open" upgraded to 1.06

 •   "ops" upgraded to 1.02

 •   "PerlIO::encoding" upgraded to version 0.11

 •   "PerlIO::scalar" upgraded to version 0.06

     •   [RT #40267] "PerlIO::scalar" doesn't respect readonly-ness.

 •   "PerlIO::via" upgraded to version 0.05

 •   "Pod::Html" upgraded to version 1.09

 •   "Pod::Parser" upgraded to version 1.35

 •   "Pod::Usage" upgraded to version 1.35

 •   "POSIX" upgraded to version 1.15

     •   "POSIX" constants that duplicate those in "Fcntl" are now
         imported from "Fcntl" and re-exported, rather than being
         duplicated by "POSIX"

     •   "POSIX::remove" can remove empty directories.

     •   "POSIX::setlocale" safer to call multiple times.

     •   "POSIX::SigRt" added, which provides access to POSIX realtime
         signal functionality on systems that support it.

 •   "re" upgraded to version 0.06_01

 •   "Safe" upgraded to version 2.16

 •   "Scalar::Util" upgraded to 1.19

 •   "SDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06

 •   "SelfLoader" upgraded to version 1.17

 •   "Shell" upgraded to version 0.72

 •   "sigtrap" upgraded to version 1.04

 •   "Socket" upgraded to version 1.81

     •   this fixes an optimistic use of "gethostbyname"

 •   "Storable" upgraded to 2.19

 •   "Switch" upgraded to version 2.13

 •   "Sys::Syslog" upgraded to version 0.27

 •   "Term::ANSIColor" upgraded to version 1.12

 •   "Term::Cap" upgraded to version 1.12

 •   "Term::ReadLine" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "Test::Builder" upgraded to version 0.80

 •   "Test::Harness" upgraded version to 2.64

     •   this makes it able to handle newlines.

 •   "Test::More" upgraded to version 0.80

 •   "Test::Simple" upgraded to version 0.80

 •   "Text::Balanced" upgraded to version 1.98

 •   "Text::ParseWords" upgraded to version 3.27

 •   "Text::Soundex" upgraded to version 3.03

 •   "Text::Tabs" upgraded to version 2007.1117

 •   "Text::Wrap" upgraded to version 2006.1117

 •   "Thread" upgraded to version 2.01

 •   "Thread::Semaphore" upgraded to version 2.09

 •   "Thread::Queue" upgraded to version 2.11

     •   added capability to add complex structures (e.g., hash of hashes)
         to queues.

     •   added capability to dequeue multiple items at once.

     •   added new methods to inspect and manipulate queues:  "peek",
         "insert" and "extract"

 •   "Tie::Handle" upgraded to version 4.2

 •   "Tie::Hash" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "Tie::Memoize" upgraded to version 1.1

     •   "Tie::Memoize::EXISTS" now correctly caches its results.

 •   "Tie::RefHash" upgraded to version 1.38

 •   "Tie::Scalar" upgraded to version 1.01

 •   "Tie::StdHandle" upgraded to version 4.2

 •   "Time::gmtime" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "Time::Local" upgraded to version 1.1901

 •   "Time::HiRes" upgraded to version 1.9715 with various build
     improvements (including VMS) and minor platform-specific bug fixes
     (including for HP-UX 11 ia64).

 •   "threads" upgraded to 1.71

     •   new thread state information methods: "is_running", "is_detached"
         and "is_joinable".  "list" method enhanced to return running or
         joinable threads.

     •   new thread signal method: "kill"

     •   added capability to specify thread stack size.

     •   added capability to control thread exiting behavior.  Added a new
         "exit" method.

 •   "threads::shared" upgraded to version 1.27

     •   smaller and faster implementation that eliminates one internal
         structure and the consequent level of indirection.

     •   user locks are now stored in a safer manner.

     •   new function "shared_clone" creates a copy of an object leaving
         shared elements as-is and deep-cloning non-shared elements.

     •   added new "is_shared" method.

 •   "Unicode::Normalize" upgraded to version 1.02

 •   "Unicode::UCD" upgraded to version 0.25

 •   "warnings" upgraded to version 1.05_01

 •   "Win32" upgraded to version 0.38

     •   added new function "GetCurrentProcessId" which returns the
         regular Windows process identifier of the current process, even
         when called from within a fork.

 •   "XSLoader" upgraded to version 0.10

 •   "XS::APItest" and "XS::Typemap" are for internal use only and hence
     no longer installed. Many more tests have been added to
     "XS::APItest".

UUttiilliittyy CChhaannggeess ddeebbuuggggeerr uuppggrraaddeedd ttoo vveerrssiioonn 11..3311 • Andreas König contributed two functions to save and load the debugger history.

 •   "NEXT::AUTOLOAD" no longer emits warnings under the debugger.

 •   The debugger should now correctly find tty the device on OS X 10.5
     and VMS when the program "fork"s.

 •   LVALUE subs now work inside the debugger.

_p_e_r_l_t_h_a_n_k_s Perl 5.8.9 adds a new utility _p_e_r_l_t_h_a_n_k_s, which is a variant of _p_e_r_l_b_u_g, but for sending non-bug-reports to the authors and maintainers of Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can become a bit demoralising - we’ll see if this changes things.

_p_e_r_l_b_u_g _p_e_r_l_b_u_g now checks if you’re reporting about a non-core module and suggests you report it to the CPAN author instead.

_h_2_x_s • won’t define an empty string as a constant [RT #25366]

 •   has examples for "h2xs -X"

_h_2_p_h • now attempts to deal sensibly with the difference in path implications between "" and “<>” quoting in “#include” statements.

 •   now generates correct code for "#if defined A || defined B" [RT
     #39130]

NNeeww DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn As usual, the documentation received its share of corrections, clarifications and other nitfixes. More "" tags were added for indexing.

 perlunitut is a tutorial written by Juerd Waalboer on Unicode-related
 terminology and how to correctly handle Unicode in Perl scripts.

 perlunicode is updated in section user defined properties.

 perluniintro has been updated in the example of detecting data that is
 not valid in particular encoding.

 perlcommunity provides an overview of the Perl Community along with
 further resources.

 CORE documents the pseudo-namespace for Perl's core routines.

CChhaannggeess ttoo EExxiissttiinngg DDooccuummeennttaattiioonn perlglossary adds _d_e_p_r_e_c_a_t_e_d _m_o_d_u_l_e_s _a_n_d _f_e_a_t_u_r_e_s and _t_o _b_e _d_r_o_p_p_e_d _m_o_d_u_l_e_s.

 perlhack has been updated and added resources on smoke testing.

 The Perl FAQs (_p_e_r_l_f_a_q_1.._p_e_r_l_f_a_q_9) have been updated.

 perlcheat is updated with better details on "\w", "\d", and "\s".

 perldebug is updated with information on how to call the debugger.

 perldiag documentation updated with _s_u_b_r_o_u_t_i_n_e _w_i_t_h _a_n _a_m_p_e_r_s_a_n_d on the
 argument to "exists" and "delete" and also several terminology updates on
 warnings.

 perlfork documents the limitation of "exec" inside pseudo-processes.

 perlfunc:

 •   Documentation is fixed in section "caller" and "pop".

 •   Function "alarm" now mentions "Time::HiRes::ualarm" in preference to
     "select".

 •   Regarding precedence in "-X", filetest operators are the same as
     unary operators, but not regarding parsing and parentheses (spotted
     by Eirik Berg Hanssen).

 •   "reverse" function documentation received scalar context examples.

 perllocale documentation is adjusted for number localization and
 "POSIX::setlocale" to fix Debian bug #379463.

 perlmodlib is updated with "CPAN::API::HOWTO" and
 "Sys::Syslog::win32::Win32"

 perlre documentation updated to reflect the differences between
 "[[:xxxxx:]]" and "\p{IsXxxxx}" matches. Also added section on "/g" and
 "/c" modifiers.

 perlreguts describe the internals of the regular expressions engine. It
 has been contributed by Yves Orton.

 perlrebackslash describes all perl regular expression backslash and
 escape sequences.

 perlrecharclass describes the syntax and use of character classes in Perl
 Regular Expressions.

 perlrun is updated to clarify on the hash seed _P_E_R_L___H_A_S_H___S_E_E_D. Also more
 information in options "-x" and "-u".

 perlsub example is updated to use a lexical variable for "opendir"
 syntax.

 perlvar fixes confusion about real GID $( and effective GID $).

 Perl thread tutorial example is fixed in section "Queues: Passing Data
 Around" in perlthrtut and perlthrtut.

 perlhack documentation extensively improved by Jarkko Hietaniemi and
 others.

 perltoot provides information on modifying @UNIVERSAL::ISA.

 perlport documentation extended to include different "kill(-9, ...)"
 semantics on Windows. It also clearly states "dump" is not supported on
 Win32 and cygwin.

 _I_N_S_T_A_L_L has been updated and modernised.

PPeerrffoorrmmaannccee EEnnhhaanncceemmeennttss • The default since perl 5.000 has been for perl to create an empty scalar with every new typeglob. The increased use of lexical variables means that most are now unused. Thanks to Nicholas Clark’s efforts, Perl can now be compiled with “-DPERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV” to avoid creating these empty scalars. This will significantly decrease the number of scalars allocated for all configurations, and the number of scalars that need to be copied for ithread creation. Whilst this option is binary compatible with existing perl installations, it does change a long-standing assumption about the internals, hence it is not enabled by default, as some third party code may rely on the old behaviour.

     We would recommend testing with this configuration on new deployments
     of perl, particularly for multi-threaded servers, to see whether all
     third party code is compatible with it, as this configuration may
     give useful performance improvements. For existing installations we
     would not recommend changing to this configuration unless thorough
     testing is performed before deployment.

 •   "diagnostics" no longer uses $&, which results in large speedups for
     regexp matching in all code using it.

 •   Regular expressions classes of a single character are now treated the
     same as if the character had been used as a literal, meaning that
     code that uses char-classes as an escaping mechanism will see a
     speedup. (Yves Orton)

 •   Creating anonymous array and hash references (ie. "[]" and "{}") now
     incurs no more overhead than creating an anonymous list or hash.
     Nicholas Clark provided changes with a saving of two ops and one
     stack push, which was measured as a slightly better than 5%
     improvement for these operations.

 •   Many calls to "strlen()" have been eliminated, either because the
     length was already known, or by adopting or enhancing APIs that pass
     lengths. This has been aided by the adoption of a "my_sprintf()"
     wrapper, which returns the correct C89 value - the length of the
     formatted string. Previously we could not rely on the return value of
     "sprintf()", because on some ancient but extant platforms it still
     returns "char *".

 •   "index" is now faster if the search string is stored in UTF-8 but
     only contains characters in the Latin-1 range.

 •   The Unicode swatch cache inside the regexp engine is now used. (the
     lookup had a key mismatch, present since the initial implementation).

[RT #42839] #

IInnssttaallllaattiioonn aanndd CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonn IImmpprroovveemmeennttss RReellooccaattaabbllee iinnssttaallllaattiioonnss There is now _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e support for creating a relocatable perl tree. If you _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e with “-Duserelocatableinc”, then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be optionally located via the path of the _p_e_r_l executable.

 At start time, if any paths in @INC or "Config" that _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e marked as
 relocatable (by starting them with ".../"), then they are prefixed the
 directory of $^X. This allows the relocation can be configured on a per-
 directory basis, although the default with "-Duserelocatableinc" is that
 everything is relocated. The initial install is done to the original
 configured prefix.

CCoonnffiigguurraattiioonn iimmpprroovveemmeennttss _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e is now better at removing temporary files. Tom Callaway (from RedHat) also contributed patches that complete the set of flags passed to the compiler and the linker, in particular that “-fPIC” is now enabled on Linux. It will also croak when your _/_d_e_v_/_n_u_l_l isn’t a device.

 A new configuration variable "d_pseudofork" has been to _C_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e, and is
 available as  $Config{d_pseudofork} in the "Config" module. This
 distinguishes real "fork" support from the pseudofork emulation used on
 Windows platforms.

 _C_o_n_f_i_g_._p_o_d and _c_o_n_f_i_g_._s_h are now placed correctly for cross-compilation.

 $Config{useshrplib} is now 'true' rather than 'yes' when using a shared
 perl library.

CCoommppiillaattiioonn iimmpprroovveemmeennttss Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems if “make test” is instructed to run in parallel.

 Many compilation warnings have been cleaned up. A very stubborn compiler
 warning in "S_emulate_eaccess()" was killed after six attempts.  _g_+_+
 support has been tuned, especially for FreeBSD.

 _m_k_p_p_p_o_r_t has been integrated, and all _p_p_p_o_r_t_._h files in the core will now
 be autogenerated at build time (and removed during cleanup).

IInnssttaallllaattiioonn iimmpprroovveemmeennttss.. _i_n_s_t_a_l_l_m_a_n now works with “-Duserelocatableinc” and “DESTDIR”.

 _i_n_s_t_a_l_l_p_e_r_l no longer installs:

 •   static library files of statically linked extensions when a shared
     perl library is being used. (They are not needed. See "Windows"
     below).

 •   _S_I_G_N_A_T_U_R_E and _P_A_U_S_E_*_._p_u_b (CPAN files)

 •   _N_O_T_E_S and _P_A_T_C_H_I_N_G (ExtUtils files)

 •   _p_e_r_l_l_d and _l_d_2 (Cygwin files)

PPllaattffoorrmm SSppeecciiffiicc CChhaannggeess There are improved hints for AIX, Cygwin, DEC/OSF, FreeBSD, HP/UX, Irix 6 Linux, MachTen, NetBSD, OS/390, QNX, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, System V Release 5.x (UnixWare 7, OpenUNIX 8), Ultrix, UMIPS, uts and VOS.

 _F_r_e_e_B_S_D

 •   Drop "-std=c89" and "-ansi" if using "long long" as the main integral
     type, else in FreeBSD 6.2 (and perhaps other releases), system
     headers do not declare some functions required by perl.

 _S_o_l_a_r_i_s

 •   Starting with Solaris 10, we do not want versioned shared libraries,
     because those often indicate a private use only library. These
     problems could often be triggered when SUNWbdb (Berkeley DB) was
     installed. Hence if Solaris 10 is detected set
     "ignore_versioned_solibs=y".

_V_M_S #

 •   Allow IEEE math to be deselected on OpenVMS I64 (but it remains the
     default).

 •   Record IEEE usage in "config.h"

 •   Help older VMS compilers by using "ccflags" when building
     "munchconfig.exe".

 •   Don't try to build old "Thread" extension on VMS when "-Duseithreads"
     has been chosen.

 •   Passing a raw string of "NaN" to _n_a_w_k causes a core dump - so the
     string has been changed to "*NaN*"

 •   _t_/_o_p_/_s_t_a_t_._t tests will now test hard links on VMS if they are
     supported.

 _W_i_n_d_o_w_s

 •   When using a shared perl library _i_n_s_t_a_l_l_p_e_r_l no longer installs
     static library files, import library files and export library files
     (of statically linked extensions) and empty bootstrap files (of
     dynamically linked extensions). This fixes a problem building PAR-
     Packer on Win32 with a debug build of perl.

 •   Various improvements to the win32 build process, including support
     for Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition (aka Visual C++ 8.x).

 •   _p_e_r_l_._e_x_e will now have an icon if built with MinGW or Borland.

 •   Improvements to the perl-static.exe build process.

 •   Add Win32 makefile option to link all extensions statically.

 •   The _W_i_n_C_E directory has been merged into the _W_i_n_3_2 directory.

 •   "setlocale" tests have been re-enabled for Windows XP onwards.

SSeelleecctteedd BBuugg FFiixxeess UUnniiccooddee Many many bugs related to the internal Unicode implementation (UTF-8) have been fixed. In particular, long standing bugs related to returning Unicode via “tie”, overloading or $@ are now gone, some of which were never reported.

 "unpack" will internally convert the string back from UTF-8 on numeric
 types.  This is a compromise between the full consistency now in 5.10,
 and the current behaviour, which is often used as a "feature" on string
 types.

 Using ":crlf" and "UTF-16" IO layers together will now work.

 Fixed problems with "split", Unicode "/\s+/" and "/ \0/".

 Fixed bug RT #40641 - encoding of Unicode characters in regular
 expressions.

 Fixed a bug where using certain patterns in a regexp led to a panic.  [RT
 #45337]

 Perl no longer segfaults (due to infinite internal recursion) if the
 locale's character is not UTF-8 [RT #41442]:

     use open ':locale';
     print STDERR "\x{201e}"; # &bdquo;

PPeerrllIIOO Inconsistencies have been fixed in the reference counting PerlIO uses to keep track of Unix file descriptors, and the API used by XS code to manage getting and releasing “FILE *“s

MMaaggiicc Several bugs have been fixed in Magic, the internal system used to implement features such as “tie”, tainting and threads sharing.

 "undef @array" on a tied array now correctly calls the "CLEAR" method.

 Some of the bitwise ops were not checking whether their arguments were
 magical before using them. [RT #24816]

 Magic is no longer invoked twice by the expression "\&$x"

 A bug with assigning large numbers and tainting has been resolved.  [RT
 #40708]

 A new entry has been added to the MAGIC vtable - "svt_local". This is
 used when copying magic to the new value during "local", allowing certain
 problems with localising shared variables to be resolved.

 For the implementation details, see "Magic Virtual Tables" in perlguts.

RReebblleessssiinngg oovveerrllooaaddeedd oobbjjeeccttss nnooww wwoorrkkss Internally, perl object-ness is on the referent, not the reference, even though methods can only be called via a reference. However, the original implementation of overloading stored flags related to overloading on the reference, relying on the flags being copied when the reference was copied, or set at the creation of a new reference. This manifests in a bug - if you rebless an object from a class that has overloading, into one that does not, then any other existing references think that they (still) point to an overloaded object, choose these C code paths, and then throw errors. Analogously, blessing into an overloaded class when other references exist will result in them not using overloading.

 The implementation has been fixed for 5.10, but this fix changes the
 semantics of flag bits, so is not binary compatible, so can't be applied
 to 5.8.9.  However, 5.8.9 has a work-around that implements the same bug
 fix. If the referent has multiple references, then all the other
 references are located and corrected. A full search is avoided whenever
 possible by scanning lexicals outwards from the current subroutine, and
 the argument stack.

 A certain well known Linux vendor applied incomplete versions of this bug
 fix to their _/_u_s_r_/_b_i_n_/_p_e_r_l and then prematurely closed bug reports about
 performance issues without consulting back upstream. This not being
 enough, they then proceeded to ignore the necessary fixes to these
 unreleased changes for 11 months, until massive pressure was applied by
 their long-suffering paying customers, catalysed by the failings being
 featured on a prominent blog and Slashdot.

“"ssttrriicctt"” nnooww pprrooppaaggaatteess ccoorrrreeccttllyy iinnttoo ssttrriinngg eevvaallss Under 5.8.8 and earlier:

     $ perl5.8.8 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@'
     Can't locate foo.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ... .) at (eval 1) line 2.
     BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 2.

 Under 5.8.9 and later:

     $ perl5.8.9 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@'
     Bareword "bar" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1.

 This may cause problems with programs that parse the error message and
 rely on the buggy behaviour.

OOtthheerr ffiixxeess • The tokenizer no longer treats “=cute” (and other words beginning with “=cut”) as a synonym for “=cut”.

 •   Calling "CORE::require"

     "CORE::require" and "CORE::do" were always parsed as "require" and
     "do" when they were overridden. This is now fixed.

 •   Stopped memory leak on long _/_e_t_c_/_g_r_o_u_p_s entries.

 •   "while (my $x ...) { ...; redo }" shouldn't "undef $x".

     In the presence of "my" in the conditional of a "while()", "until()",
     or "for(;;)" loop, we now add an extra scope to the body so that
     "redo" doesn't "undef" the lexical.

 •   The "encoding" pragma now correctly ignores anything following an "@"
     character in the "LC_ALL" and "LANG" environment variables. [RT #
     49646]

 •   A segfault observed with some _g_c_c 3.3 optimisations is resolved.

 •   A possible segfault when "unpack" used in scalar context with "()"
     groups is resolved. [RT #50256]

 •   Resolved issue where $! could be changed by a signal handler
     interrupting a "system" call.

 •   Fixed bug RT #37886, symbolic dereferencing was allowed in the
     argument of "defined" even under the influence of "use strict
     'refs'".

 •   Fixed bug RT #43207, where "lc"/"uc" inside "sort" affected the
     return value.

 •   Fixed bug RT #45607, where "*{"BONK"} = \&{"BONK"}" didn't work
     correctly.

 •   Fixed bug RT #35878, croaking from a XSUB called via "goto &xsub"
     corrupts perl internals.

 •   Fixed bug RT #32539, _D_y_n_a_L_o_a_d_e_r_._o is moved into _l_i_b_p_e_r_l_._s_o to avoid
     the need to statically link DynaLoader into the stub perl executable.
     With this _l_i_b_p_e_r_l_._s_o provides everything needed to get a functional
     embedded perl interpreter to run.

 •   Fix bug RT #36267 so that assigning to a tied hash doesn't change the
     underlying hash.

 •   Fix bug RT #6006, regexp replaces using large replacement variables
     fail some of the time, _i_._e_. when substitution contains something like
     "${10}" (note the bracket) instead of just $10.

 •   Fix bug RT #45053, "Perl_newCONSTSUB()" is now thread safe.

PPllaattffoorrmm SSppeecciiffiicc FFiixxeess _D_a_r_w_i_n _/ _M_a_c_O_S _X

 •   Various improvements to 64 bit builds.

 •   Mutex protection added in "PerlIOStdio_close()" to avoid race
     conditions.  Hopefully this fixes failures in the threads tests
     _f_r_e_e_._t and _b_l_o_c_k_s_._t.

 •   Added forked terminal support to the debugger, with the ability to
     update the window title.

_O_S_/_2 #

 •   A build problem with specifying "USE_MULTI" and "USE_ITHREADS" but
     without "USE_IMP_SYS" has been fixed.

 •   "OS2::REXX" upgraded to version 1.04

 _T_r_u_6_4

 •   Aligned floating point build policies for _c_c and _g_c_c.

 _R_e_d_H_a_t _L_i_n_u_x

 •   Revisited a patch from 5.6.1 for RH7.2 for Intel's _i_c_c [RT #7916],
     added an additional check for $Config{gccversion}.

 _S_o_l_a_r_i_s_/_i_3_8_6

 •   Use "-DPTR_IS_LONG" when using 64 bit integers

_V_M_S #

 •   Fixed "PerlIO::Scalar" in-memory file record-style reads.

 •   pipe shutdown at process exit should now be more robust.

 •   Bugs in VMS exit handling tickled by "Test::Harness" 2.64 have been
     fixed.

 •   Fix "fcntl()" locking capability test in _c_o_n_f_i_g_u_r_e_._c_o_m.

 •   Replaced "shrplib='define'" with "useshrplib='true'" on VMS.

 _W_i_n_d_o_w_s

 •   "File::Find" used to fail when the target directory is a bare drive
     letter and "no_chdir" is 1 (the default is 0). [RT #41555]

 •   A build problem with specifying "USE_MULTI" and "USE_ITHREADS" but
     without "USE_IMP_SYS" has been fixed.

 •   The process id is no longer truncated to 16 bits on some Windows
     platforms ( http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=72443 )

 •   Fixed bug RT #54828 in _p_e_r_l_i_o_._c where calling "binmode" on Win32 and
     Cygwin may cause a segmentation fault.

SSmmaalllleerr ffiixxeess • It is now possible to overload “eq” when using “nomethod”.

 •   Various problems using "overload" with 64 bit integers corrected.

 •   The reference count of "PerlIO" file descriptors is now correctly
     handled.

 •   On VMS, escaped dots will be preserved when converted to Unix syntax.

 •   "keys %+" no longer throws an 'ambiguous' warning.

 •   Using "#!perl -d" could trigger an assertion, which has been fixed.

 •   Don't stringify tied code references in @INC when calling "require".

 •   Code references in @INC report the correct file name when "__FILE__"
     is used.

 •   Width and precision in sprintf didn't handle characters above 255
     correctly.  [RT #40473]

 •   List slices with indices out of range now work more consistently.

[RT #39882] #

 •   A change introduced with perl 5.8.1 broke the parsing of arguments of
     the form "-foo=bar" with the "-s" on the <#!> line. This has been
     fixed. See http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=43483

 •   "tr///" is now threadsafe. Previously it was storing a swash inside
     its OP, rather than in a pad.

 •   _p_o_d_2_h_t_m_l labels anchors more consistently and handles nested
     definition lists better.

 •   "threads" cleanup veto has been extended to include "perl_free()" and
     "perl_destruct()"

 •   On some systems, changes to $ENV{TZ} would not always be respected by
     the underlying calls to "localtime_r()".  Perl now forces the
     inspection of the environment on these systems.

 •   The special variable $^R is now more consistently set when executing
     regexps using the "(?{...})" construct.  In particular, it will still
     be set even if backreferences or optional sub-patterns "(?:...)?" are
     used.

NNeeww oorr CChhaannggeedd DDiiaaggnnoossttiiccss ppaanniicc:: ssvv__cchhoopp %%ss 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 is caused by buggy XS code, and at this point recovery is not possible.

MMaaxxiimmaall ccoouunntt ooff ppeennddiinngg ssiiggnnaallss ((%%ss)) eexxcceeeeddeedd This new fatal error occurs when the perl process has to abort due to too many pending signals, which is bound to prevent perl from being able to handle further incoming signals safely.

ppaanniicc:: aatttteemmpptt ttoo ccaallll %%ss iinn %%ss This new fatal error occurs when the ACL version file test operator is used where it is not available on the current platform. Earlier checks mean that it should never be possible to get this.

FFEETTCCHHSSIIZZEE rreettuurrnneedd aa nneeggaattiivvee vvaalluuee New error indicating that a tied array has claimed to have a negative number of elements.

CCaann’’tt uuppggrraaddee %%ss ((%%dd)) ttoo %%dd Previously the internal error from the SV upgrade code was the less informative _C_a_n_’_t _u_p_g_r_a_d_e _t_h_a_t _k_i_n_d _o_f _s_c_a_l_a_r. It now reports the current internal type, and the new type requested.

%%ss aarrgguummeenntt iiss nnoott aa HHAASSHH oorr AARRRRAAYY eelleemmeenntt oorr aa ssuubbrroouuttiinnee This error, thrown if an invalid argument is provided to “exists” now correctly includes “or a subroutine”. [RT #38955]

CCaannnnoott mmaakkee tthhee nnoonn--oovveerrrriiddaabbllee bbuuiillttiinn %%ss ffaattaall This error in “Fatal” previously did not show the name of the builtin in question (now represented by %s above).

UUnnrreeccooggnniizzeedd cchhaarraacctteerr ‘’%%ss’’ iinn ccoolluummnn %%dd This error previously did not state the column.

OOffffsseett oouuttssiiddee ssttrriinngg This can now also be generated by a “seek” on a file handle using “PerlIO::scalar”.

IInnvvaalliidd eessccaappee iinn tthhee ssppeecciiffiieedd eennccooddiinngg iinn rreeggeexxpp;; mmaarrkkeedd bbyy <<-–- HHEERREE iinn mm//%%ss// New error, introduced as part of the fix to RT #40641 to handle encoding of Unicode characters in regular expression comments.

YYoouurr mmaacchhiinnee ddooeessnn’’tt ssuuppppoorrtt dduummpp//uunndduummpp.. A more informative fatal error issued when calling “dump” on Win32 and Cygwin. (Given that the purpose of “dump” is to abort with a core dump, and core dumps can’t be produced on these platforms, this is more useful than silently exiting.)

CChhaannggeedd IInntteerrnnaallss The perl sources can now be compiled with a C++ compiler instead of a C compiler. A necessary implementation details is that under C++, the macro “XS” used to define XSUBs now includes an “extern “C”” definition. A side effect of this is that CC++++ code that used the construction

     typedef XS(SwigPerlWrapper);

 now needs to be written

     typedef XSPROTO(SwigPerlWrapper);

 using the new "XSPROTO" macro, in order to compile. C extensions are
 unaffected, although C extensions are encouraged to use "XSPROTO" too.
 This change was present in the 5.10.0 release of perl, so any actively
 maintained code that happened to use this construction should already
 have been adapted. Code that needs changing will fail with a compilation
 error.

 "set" magic on localizing/assigning to a magic variable will now only
 trigger for _c_o_n_t_a_i_n_e_r _m_a_g_i_c_s, i.e. it will for %ENV or %SIG but not for
 $#array.

 The new API macro "newSVpvs()" can be used in place of constructions such
 as "newSVpvn("ISA", 3)". It takes a single string constant, and at C
 compile time determines its length.

 The new API function "Perl_newSV_type()" can be used as a more efficient
 replacement of the common idiom

     sv = newSV(0);
     sv_upgrade(sv, type);

 Similarly "Perl_newSVpvn_flags()" can be used to combine "Perl_newSVpv()"
 with "Perl_sv_2mortal()" or the equivalent "Perl_sv_newmortal()" with
 "Perl_sv_setpvn()"

 Two new macros "mPUSHs()" and "mXPUSHs()" are added, to make it easier to
 push mortal SVs onto the stack. They were then used to fix several bugs
 where values on the stack had not been mortalised.

 A "Perl_signbit()" function was added to test the sign of an "NV". It
 maps to the system one when available.

 "Perl_av_reify()", "Perl_lex_end()", "Perl_mod()", "Perl_op_clear()",
 "Perl_pop_return()", "Perl_qerror()", "Perl_setdefout()",
 "Perl_vivify_defelem()" and "Perl_yylex()" are now visible to extensions.
 This was required to allow "Data::Alias" to work on Windows.

 "Perl_find_runcv()" is now visible to perl core extensions. This was
 required to allow "Sub::Current" to work on Windows.

 "ptr_table*" functions are now available in unthreaded perl. "Storable"
 takes advantage of this.

 There have been many small cleanups made to the internals. In particular,
 "Perl_sv_upgrade()" has been simplified considerably, with a straight-
 through code path that uses "memset()" and "memcpy()" to initialise the
 new body, rather than assignment via multiple temporary variables. It has
 also benefited from simplification and de-duplication of the arena
 management code.

 A lot of small improvements in the code base were made due to reports
 from the Coverity static code analyzer.

 Corrected use and documentation of "Perl_gv_stashpv()",
 "Perl_gv_stashpvn()", "Perl_gv_stashsv()" functions (last parameter is a
 bitmask, not boolean).

 "PERL_SYS_INIT", "PERL_SYS_INIT3" and "PERL_SYS_TERM" macros have been
 changed into functions.

 "PERLSYS_TERM" no longer requires a context. "PerlIO_teardown()" is now
 called without a context, and debugging output in this function has been
 disabled because that required that an interpreter was present, an
 invalid assumption at termination time.

 All compile time options which affect binary compatibility have been
 grouped together into a global variable ("PL_bincompat_options").

 The values of "PERL_REVISION", "PERL_VERSION" and "PERL_SUBVERSION" are
 now baked into global variables (and hence into any shared perl library).
 Additionally under "MULTIPLICITY", the perl executable now records the
 size of the interpreter structure (total, and for this version). Coupled
 with "PL_bincompat_options" this will allow 5.8.10 (and later), when
 compiled with a shared perl library, to perform sanity checks in "main()"
 to verify that the shared library is indeed binary compatible.

 Symbolic references can now have embedded NULs. The new public function
 "Perl_get_cvn_flags()" can be used in extensions if you have to handle
 them.

MMaaccrroo cclleeaannuuppss The core code, and XS code in _e_x_t that is not dual-lived on CPAN, no longer uses the macros “PL_na”, “NEWSV()”, “Null()”, “Nullav”, “Nullcv”, “Nullhv”, “Nullhv” _e_t_c. Their use is discouraged in new code, particularly “PL_na”, which is a small performance hit.

NNeeww TTeessttss Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests. Some core specific tests have been added:

 ext/DynaLoader/t/DynaLoader.t
     Tests for the "DynaLoader" module.

 t/comp/fold.t
     Tests for compile-time constant folding.

 t/io/pvbm.t
     Tests incorporated from 5.10.0 which check that there is no
     unexpected interaction between the internal types "PVBM" and "PVGV".

 t/lib/proxy_constant_subs.t
     Tests for the new form of constant subroutines.

 t/op/attrhand.t
     Tests for "Attribute::Handlers".

 t/op/dbm.t
     Tests for "dbmopen".

 t/op/inccode-tie.t
     Calls all tests in _t_/_o_p_/_i_n_c_c_o_d_e_._t after first tying @INC.

 t/op/incfilter.t
     Tests for source filters returned from code references in @INC.

 t/op/kill0.t
     Tests for RT #30970.

 t/op/qrstack.t
     Tests for RT #41484.

 t/op/qr.t
     Tests for the "qr//" construct.

 t/op/regexp_qr_embed.t
     Tests for the "qr//" construct within another regexp.

 t/op/regexp_qr.t
     Tests for the "qr//" construct.

 t/op/rxcode.t
     Tests for RT #32840.

 t/op/studytied.t
     Tests for "study" on tied scalars.

 t/op/substT.t
     Tests for "subst" run under "-T" mode.

 t/op/symbolcache.t
     Tests for "undef" and "delete" on stash entries that are bound to
     subroutines or methods.

 t/op/upgrade.t
     Tests for "Perl_sv_upgrade()".

 t/mro/package_aliases.t
     MRO tests for "isa" and package aliases.

 t/pod/twice.t
     Tests for calling "Pod::Parser" twice.

 t/run/cloexec.t
     Tests for inheriting file descriptors across "exec" (close-on-exec).

 t/uni/cache.t
     Tests for the UTF-8 caching code.

 t/uni/chr.t
     Test that strange encodings do not upset "Perl_pp_chr()".

 t/uni/greek.t
     Tests for RT #40641.

 t/uni/latin2.t
     Tests for RT #40641.

 t/uni/overload.t
     Tests for returning Unicode from overloaded values.

 t/uni/tie.t
     Tests for returning Unicode from tied variables.

KKnnoowwnn PPrroobblleemmss There are no known new bugs.

 However, programs that rely on bugs that have been fixed will have
 problems.  Also, many bug fixes present in 5.10.0 can't be back-ported to
 the 5.8.x branch, because they require changes that are binary
 incompatible, or because the code changes are too large and hence too
 risky to incorporate.

 We have only limited volunteer labour, and the maintenance burden is
 getting increasingly complex. Hence this will be the last significant
 release of the 5.8.x series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely
 only be to deal with security issues, and platform build failures. Hence
 you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already.
 Alternatively, if business requirements constrain you to continue to use
 5.8.x, you may wish to consider commercial support from firms such as
 ActiveState.

PPllaattffoorrmm SSppeecciiffiicc NNootteess WWiinn3322 “readdir()”, “cwd()”, $^X and @INC now use the alternate (short) filename if the long name is outside the current codepage (Jan Dubois).

 _U_p_d_a_t_e_d _M_o_d_u_l_e_s

 •   "Win32" upgraded to version 0.38. Now has a documented 'WinVista'
     response from "GetOSName" and support for Vista's privilege elevation
     in "IsAdminUser".  Support for Unicode characters in path names.
     Improved cygwin and Win64 compatibility.

 •   "Win32API" updated to 0.1001_01

 •   "killpg()" support added to "MSWin32" (Jan Dubois).

 •   "File::Spec::Win32" upgraded to version 3.2701

OOSS//22 #

 _U_p_d_a_t_e_d _M_o_d_u_l_e_s

 •   "OS2::Process" upgraded to 1.03

     Ilya Zakharevich has added and documented several "Window*" and
     "Clipbrd*" functions.

 •   "OS2::REXX::DLL", "OS2::REXX" updated to version 1.03

VVMMSS #

 _U_p_d_a_t_e_d _M_o_d_u_l_e_s

 •   "DCLsym" upgraded to version 1.03

 •   "Stdio" upgraded to version 2.4

 •   "VMS::XSSymSet" upgraded to 1.1.

OObbiittuuaarryy Nick Ing-Simmons, long time Perl hacker, author of the “Tk” and “Encode” modules, _p_e_r_l_i_o_._c in the core, and 5.003_02 pumpking, died of a heart attack on 25th September 2006. He will be missed.

AAcckknnoowwlleeddggeemmeennttss Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant.

 Steve Hay worked behind the scenes working out the causes of the
 differences between core modules, their CPAN releases, and previous core
 releases, and the best way to rectify them. He doesn't want to do it
 again. I know this feeling, and I'm very glad he did it this time,
 instead of me.

 Paul Fenwick assembled a team of 18 volunteers, who broke the back of
 writing this document. In particular, Bradley Dean, Eddy Tan, and Vincent
 Pit provided half the team's contribution.

 Schwern verified the list of updated module versions, correcting quite a
 few errors that I (and everyone else) had missed, both wrongly stated
 module versions, and changed modules that had not been listed.

 The crack Berlin-based QA team of Andreas König and Slaven Rezic
 tirelessly re-built snapshots, tested most everything CPAN against them,
 and then identified the changes responsible for any module regressions,
 ensuring that several show-stopper bugs were stomped before the first
 release candidate was cut.

 The other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied
 most of the patches sent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in

_A_U_T_H_O_R_S. #

 And obviously, Larry Wall, without whom we wouldn't have Perl.

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/

 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 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 2019-02-13 PERL589DELTA(1)