Fix two broken links in perldelta.

[perl5.git] / pod / perl5251delta.pod

=encoding utf8

=head1 NAME

perl5251delta - what is new for perl v5.25.1

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.25.0 release and the 5.25.1
release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.24.0, first read
L<perl5250delta>, which describes differences between 5.24.0 and 5.25.0.

=head1 Core Enhancements

=head2 POSIX::tmpnam() has been removed

The fundamentally unsafe C<tmpnam()> interface was deprecated in
Perl 5.22.0 and has now been removed.  In its place you can use
for example the L<File::Temp> interfaces.

=head2 require ::Foo::Bar is now illegal.

Formerly, C<require ::Foo::Bar> would try to read F</Foo/Bar.pm>. Now any
bareword require which starts with a double colon dies instead.

=head2 Unescaped literal C<"{"> characters in regular expression
patterns are no longer permissible

You have to now say something like C<"\{"> or C<"[{]"> to specify to
match a LEFT CURLY BRACKET.  This will allow future extensions to the
language.  This restriction is not enforced, nor are there current plans
to enforce it, if the C<"{"> is the first character in the pattern.

These have been deprecated since v5.16, with a deprecation message
displayed starting in v5.22.

=head2 Literal control character variable names are no longer permissible

A variable name may no longer contain a literal control character under
any circumstances.  These previously were allowed in single-character
names on ASCII platforms, but have been deprecated there since Perl
v5.20.  This affects things like C<$I<\cT>>, where I<\cT> is a literal
control (such as a C<NAK> or C<NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE> character) in the
source code.

=head2 C<qr//xx> is no longer permissible

Using more than one C</x> regular expression pattern modifier on a
single pattern is now forbidden.  This is to allow a future enhancement
to the language.  This usage has been deprecated since v5.22.

=head2 C<NBSP> is no longer permissible in C<\N{...}>

The name of a character may no longer contain non-breaking spaces.  It
has been deprecated to do so since Perl v5.22.

=head1 Performance Enhancements

=over 4

=item *

Bareword constant strings are now permitted to take part in constant
folding. They were originally exempted from constant folding in August 1999,
during the development of Perl 5.6, to ensure that C<use strict "subs">
would still apply to bareword constants. That has now been accomplished a
different way, so barewords, like other constants, now gain the performance
benefits of constant folding.

This also means that void-context warnings on constant expressions of
barewords now report the folded constant operand, rather than the operation;
this matches the behaviour for non-bareword constants.

=back

=head1 Modules and Pragmata

=head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata

=over 4

=item *

L<Archive::Tar> has been upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.08.

=item *

L<Carp> has been upgraded from version 1.40 to 1.41.

=item *

L<charnames> has been upgraded from version 1.43 to 1.44.

=item *

L<Config::Perl::V> has been upgraded from version 0.25 to 0.26.

=item *

L<DB_File> has been upgraded from version 1.835 to 1.838.

=item *

L<Digest::MD5> has been upgraded from version 2.54 to 2.55.

=item *

L<IPC::Cmd> has been upgraded from version 0.92 to 0.94.

=item *

L<IPC::SysV> has been upgraded from version 2.06_01 to 2.07.

=item *

L<List::Util> has been upgraded from version 1.42_02 to 1.45_01.

=item *

L<Locale::Codes> has been upgraded from version 3.37 to 3.38.

=item *

L<Locale::Maketext> has been upgraded from version 1.26 to 1.27.

=item *

L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.20160507 to 5.20160520.

=item *

L<Module::Metadata> has been upgraded from version 1.000031 to 1.000032.

=item *

L<perlfaq> has been upgraded from version 5.021010 to 5.021011.

=item *

L<POSIX> has been upgraded from version 1.65 to 1.69. This remedies several
defects in making its symbols exportable. [perl #127821]
The C<POSIX::tmpnam()> interface has been removed,
see L</"POSIX::tmpnam() has been removed">.
Trying to import POSIX subs that have no real implementations
(like C<POSIX::atend()>) now fails at import time, instead of
waiting until runtime.

=item *

L<re> has been upgraded from version 0.32 to 0.33.

=item *

L<Scalar::Util> has been upgraded from version 1.42_02 to 1.45_01.

=item *

L<Sys::Syslog> has been upgraded from version 0.33 to 0.34.

=item *

L<Term::ANSIColor> has been upgraded from version 4.04 to 4.05.

=item *

L<Test::Simple> has been upgraded from version 1.001014 to 1.302015.

=item *

L<threads> has been upgraded from version 2.07 to 2.08. Compatibility
with 5.8 has been restored.

=item *

L<threads::shared> has been upgraded from version 1.51 to 1.52.
Compatibility with 5.8 has been restored.

=back

=head1 Documentation

=head2 Changes to Existing Documentation

=over 4

=item *

Fixed link to Crosby paper on hash complexity attack in L<perlsec>.

=back

=head1 Diagnostics

=head2 New Diagnostics

=head3 New Errors

=over 4

=item *

L<Bareword in require contains "%s"|perldiag/"Bareword in require contains "%s"">

=item *

L<Bareword in require maps to empty filename|perldiag/"Bareword in require maps to empty filename">

=item *

L<Bareword in require maps to disallowed filename "%s"|perldiag/"Bareword in require maps to disallowed filename "%s"">

=item *

L<Bareword in require must not start with a double-colon: "%s"|perldiag/"Bareword in require must not start with a double-colon: "%s"">

=back

=head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics

=over 4

=item *

Code like C<$x = $x . "a"> was incorrectly failing to yield a
L<use of uninitialized value|perldiag/"Use of uninitialized value%s">
warning when C<$x> was a lexical variable with an undefined value. That has
now been fixed. [perl #127877]

=item *

When the error "Experimental push on scalar is now forbidden" is raised for
the hash functions C<keys>, C<each>, and C<values>, it is now followed by
the more helpful message, "Type of arg 1 to whatever must be hash or
array". [perl #127976]

=item *

C<undef *_; shift> or C<undef *_; pop> inside a subroutine, with no
argument to C<shift> or C<pop>, began crashing in Perl 5.14.0, but has now
been fixed.

=item *

C<< "string$scalar-E<gt>$*" >> now correctly prefers concat overloading to
string overloading if C<< $scalar-E<gt>$* >> returns an overloaded object,
bringing it into consistency with C<$$scalar>.

=item *

C<< /@0{0*-E<gt>@*/*0 >> and similar contortions used to crash, but no longer
do, but merely produce a syntax error. [perl #128171]

=item *

C<do> or C<require> with a reference or typeglob which, when stringified,
contains a null character started crashing in Perl 5.20.0, but has now been
fixed. [perl #128182]

=back

=head1 Utility Changes

=head2 L<perlbug>

=over 4

=item *

Long lines in the message body are now wrapped at 900 characters, to stay
well within the 1000-character limit imposed by SMTP mail transfer agents.
This is particularly likely to be important for the list of arguments to
C<Configure>, which can readily exceed the limit if, for example, it names
several non-default installation paths. This change also adds the first unit
tests for perlbug. [perl #128020]

=back

=head1 Configuration and Compilation

=over 4

=item *

C<Configure> now builds C<miniperl> and C<generate_uudmap> if you
invoke it with C<-Dusecrosscompiler> but not C<-Dtargethost=somehost>.
This means you can supply your target platform C<config.sh>, generate
the headers and proceed to build your cross-target perl.  [perl #127234]

=item *

Builds with C<-Accflags=-DPERL_TRACE_OPS> now only dump the operator
counts when the environment variable C<PERL_TRACE_OPS> to be set to a
non-zero integer.  This allows C<make test> to pass on such a build.

=item *

When building with GCC 6 and link-time optimization (the C<-flto> option to
C<gcc>), C<Configure> was treating all probed symbols as present on the
system, regardless of whether they actually exist. This has been fixed.
[perl #128131]

=item *

The F<t/test.pl> library is used for internal testing of Perl itself, and
also copied by several CPAN modules. Some of those modules must work on
older versions of Perl, so F<t/test.pl> must in turn avoid newer Perl
features. Compatibility with Perl 5.8 was inadvertently removed some time
ago; it has now been restored. [perl #128052]

=item *

The build process no longer emits an extra blank line before building each
"simple" extension (those with only F<*.pm> and F<*.pod> files).

=back

=head1 Internal Changes

=over 4

=item *

Perl is now built with the C<PERL_OP_PARENT> compiler define enabled by
default. To disable it, use the C<PERL_NO_OP_PARENT> compiler define.
This flag alters how the C<op_sibling> field is used in C<OP> structures,
and has been available optionally since perl 5.22.0.

See L<perl5220delta/"Internal Changes"> for more details of what this
build option does.

=back

=head1 Selected Bug Fixes

=over 4

=item *

Expressions containing an C<&&> or C<||> operator (or their synonyms C<and>
and C<or>) were being compiled incorrectly in some cases. If the left-hand
side consisted of either a negated bareword constant or a negated C<do {}>
block containing a constant expression, and the right-hand side consisted of
a negated non-foldable expression, one of the negations was effectively
ignored. The same was true of C<if> and C<unless> statement modifiers,
though with the left-hand and right-hand sides swapped. This long-standing
bug has now been fixed. [perl #127952]

=item *

C<reset> with an argument no longer crashes when encountering stash entries
other than globs. [perl #128106]

=item *

Assignment of hashes to, and deletion of, typeglobs named C<*::::::> no
longer causes crashes. [perl #128086]

=back

=head1 Acknowledgements

Perl 5.25.1 represents approximately 2 weeks of development since Perl 5.25.0
and contains approximately 46,000 lines of changes across 630 files from 24
authors.

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
approximately 40,000 lines of changes to 510 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
improvements that became Perl 5.25.1:

Aaron Crane, Andreas Voegele, Chad Granum, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A.
Berry, David Mitchell, Doug Bell, Father Chrysostomos, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van
der Sanden, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jerry D. Hedden, Jim Cromie, John Lightsey,
Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Maxwell Carey, Nicholas Clark,
Niko Tyni, Ricardo Signes, Sawyer X, Tony Cook, Yves Orton.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
tracker.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
helping Perl to flourish.

For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.

=head1 Reporting Bugs

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
L<https://rt.perl.org/> .  There may also be information at
L<http://www.perl.org/> , the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<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 C<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
L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>
for details of how to report the issue.

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
what changed.

The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.

The F<README> file for general stuff.

The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.

=cut