Commit | Line | Data |
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d4432bb5 | 1 | =head1 NAME |
cc0fca54 | 2 | |
f39f21d8 | 3 | perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.0 |
cc0fca54 GS |
4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION | |
6 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
7 | This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release |
8 | and the 5.8.0 release. | |
f39f21d8 | 9 | |
44da0e71 JH |
10 | Many of the bug fixes in 5.8.0 were already seen in the 5.6.1 |
11 | maintenance release since the two releases were kept closely | |
12 | coordinated. | |
13 | ||
4f8e5944 JH |
14 | If you are upgrading from Perl 5.005_03, you might also want |
15 | to read L<perl56delta>. | |
16 | ||
44da0e71 | 17 | =head1 Highlights In 5.8.0 |
76663d67 JH |
18 | |
19 | =over 4 | |
20 | ||
21 | =item * | |
22 | ||
23 | Better Unicode support | |
24 | ||
25 | =item * | |
26 | ||
27 | New Thread Implementation | |
28 | ||
29 | =item * | |
30 | ||
31 | Many New Modules | |
32 | ||
33 | =item * | |
34 | ||
35 | Better Numeric Accuracy | |
36 | ||
37 | =item * | |
38 | ||
39 | Safe Signals | |
40 | ||
41 | =item * | |
42 | ||
43 | More Extensive Regression Testing | |
44 | ||
45 | =back | |
46 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
47 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
48 | ||
6cc60dfb JH |
49 | =head2 Binary Incompatibility |
50 | ||
764bd7e0 JH |
51 | B<Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier releases of Perl.> |
52 | ||
53 | B<You have to recompile your XS modules.> | |
54 | ||
55 | (Pure Perl modules should continue to work.) | |
56 | ||
c5af7db2 | 57 | The major reason for the discontinuity is the new IO architecture |
8cbf54fa JH |
58 | called PerlIO. PerlIO is the default configuration because without |
59 | it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be used. In other words: | |
60 | you just have to recompile your modules containing XS code, sorry | |
61 | about that. | |
6cc60dfb | 62 | |
365d6a78 | 63 | In future releases of Perl, non-PerlIO aware XS modules may become |
6cc60dfb JH |
64 | completely unsupported. This shouldn't be too difficult for module |
65 | authors, however: PerlIO has been designed as a drop-in replacement | |
66 | (at the source code level) for the stdio interface. | |
67 | ||
764bd7e0 JH |
68 | Depending on your platform, there are also other reasons why |
69 | we decided to break binary compatibility, please read on. | |
70 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
71 | =head2 64-bit platforms and malloc |
72 | ||
057b7f2b | 73 | If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no longer being |
c2e23569 | 74 | used because it does not work well with 8-byte pointers. Also, |
61947107 | 75 | usually the system mallocs on such platforms are much better optimized |
c2e23569 JH |
76 | for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. Some memory-hungry |
77 | Perl applications like the PDL don't work well with Perl's malloc. | |
78 | Finally, other applications than Perl (like modperl) tend to prefer | |
79 | the system malloc. Such platforms include Alpha and 64-bit HPPA, | |
80 | MIPS, PPC, and Sparc. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
81 | |
82 | =head2 AIX Dynaloading | |
83 | ||
84 | The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native | |
85 | dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This | |
86 | change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled | |
87 | modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other | |
88 | applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface. | |
89 | ||
95f0a2f1 SB |
90 | =head2 Attributes for C<my> variables now handled at run-time. |
91 | ||
92 | The C<my EXPR : ATTRS> syntax now applies variable attributes at | |
93 | run-time. (Subroutine and C<our> variables still get attributes applied | |
94 | at compile-time.) See L<attributes> for additional details. In particular, | |
95 | however, this allows variable attributes to be useful for C<tie> interfaces, | |
c4f1ce08 JH |
96 | which was a deficiency of earlier releases. Note that the new semantics |
97 | doesn't work with the Attribute::Handlers module (as of version 0.76). | |
95f0a2f1 | 98 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
99 | =head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS |
100 | ||
101 | The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being | |
102 | statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient | |
103 | TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test | |
104 | Perl in such configurations. | |
105 | ||
00bb525a CB |
106 | =head2 IEEE-format Floating Point Default on OpenVMS Alpha |
107 | ||
108 | Perl now uses IEEE format (T_FLOAT) as the default internal floating | |
109 | point format on OpenVMS Alpha, potentially breaking binary compatibility | |
110 | with external libraries or existing data. G_FLOAT is still available as | |
111 | a configuration option. The default on VAX (D_FLOAT) has not changed. | |
112 | ||
eb0cc9e3 JH |
113 | =head2 New Unicode Properties |
114 | ||
115 | Unicode I<scripts> are now supported. Scripts are similar to (and superior | |
116 | to) Unicode I<blocks>. The difference between scripts and blocks is that | |
117 | scripts are the glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while | |
118 | the blocks are more artificial groupings of (mostly) 256 characters based | |
119 | on the Unicode numbering. | |
120 | ||
121 | In general, scripts are more inclusive, but not universally so. For | |
122 | example, while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin characters and | |
123 | their various diacritic-adorned versions, it does not include the various | |
124 | punctuation or digits (since they are not solely C<Latin>). | |
125 | ||
126 | A number of other properties are now supported, including C<\p{L&}>, | |
127 | C<\p{Any}> C<\p{Assigned}>, C<\p{Unassigned}>, C<\p{Blank}> and | |
128 | C<\p{SpacePerl}> (along with their C<\P{...}> versions, of course). | |
129 | See L<perlunicode> for details, and more additions. | |
130 | ||
131 | The C<In> or C<Is> prefix to names used with the C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}> | |
132 | are now almost always optional. The only exception is that a C<In> prefix | |
133 | is required to signify a Unicode block when a block name conflicts with a | |
134 | script name. For example, C<\p{Tibetan}> refers to the script, while | |
135 | C<\p{InTibetan}> refers to the block. When there is no name conflict, you | |
136 | can omit the C<In> from the block name (e.g. C<\p{BraillePatterns}>), but | |
137 | to be safe, it's probably best to always use the C<In>). | |
77c8cf41 | 138 | |
c2e23569 | 139 | =head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...) |
77c8cf41 | 140 | |
057b7f2b | 141 | A reference to a reference now stringifies as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead |
c2e23569 JH |
142 | of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return |
143 | value of ref(). | |
77c8cf41 | 144 | |
79f69e33 JH |
145 | =head2 pack/unpack D/F recycled |
146 | ||
66023b77 | 147 | The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recycled |
79f69e33 JH |
148 | for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the |
149 | platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used | |
6123004a | 150 | to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.) |
79f69e33 | 151 | |
c2e23569 | 152 | =head2 Deprecations |
77c8cf41 | 153 | |
61947107 | 154 | =over 4 |
77c8cf41 | 155 | |
61947107 | 156 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 157 | |
61947107 JH |
158 | The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves |
159 | it to make some sense, it is forbidden. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
160 | |
161 | =item * | |
162 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
163 | The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed |
164 | to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
165 | |
166 | =item * | |
167 | ||
58175c9b JH |
168 | The builtin dump() function has probably outlived most of its |
169 | usefulness. The core-dumping functionality will remain in future | |
170 | available as an explicit call to C<CORE::dump()>, but in future | |
171 | releases the behaviour of an unqualified C<dump()> call may change. | |
172 | ||
173 | =item * | |
174 | ||
61947107 JH |
175 | The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed. |
176 | Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that | |
177 | the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly) | |
178 | maintained. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
179 | |
180 | =item * | |
181 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
182 | The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning |
183 | ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape | |
184 | any C<\w> character. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
185 | |
186 | =item * | |
187 | ||
c2e23569 | 188 | The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted |
44da0e71 JH |
189 | alphabetically to be csh-compliant (which is what happened before |
190 | in most UNIX platforms). (bsd_glob() does still sort platform | |
c2e23569 | 191 | natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.) |
f39f21d8 JH |
192 | |
193 | =item * | |
194 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
195 | Spurious syntax errors generated in certain situations, when glob() |
196 | caused File::Glob to be loaded for the first time, have been fixed. | |
197 | ||
198 | =item * | |
199 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
200 | Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that |
201 | depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new | |
202 | algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order. | |
203 | More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
204 | |
205 | =item * | |
206 | ||
61947107 JH |
207 | lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense. |
208 | In future releases this may become a fatal error. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
209 | |
210 | =item * | |
211 | ||
057b7f2b | 212 | The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument) has been |
c2e23569 JH |
213 | deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its |
214 | implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to | |
215 | disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead. | |
61947107 JH |
216 | |
217 | =item * | |
218 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
219 | The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still |
220 | recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of | |
221 | ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable | |
222 | since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used. | |
61947107 JH |
223 | |
224 | =item * | |
225 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
226 | The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird |
227 | use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0 | |
228 | and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be | |
229 | implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather | |
230 | ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash | |
231 | use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain | |
a6d3fe4f JH |
232 | available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to |
233 | be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>). | |
61947107 JH |
234 | |
235 | =item * | |
236 | ||
aecce728 | 237 | The syntaxes C<< @a->[...] >> and C<< %h->{...} >> have now been deprecated. |
61947107 JH |
238 | |
239 | =item * | |
240 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
241 | After years of trying the suidperl is considered to be too complex to |
242 | ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely | |
243 | to be removed in a future release. | |
244 | ||
245 | =item * | |
246 | ||
6ba475fe JH |
247 | The 5.005 threads model (module C<Thread>) is deprecated and expected |
248 | to be removed in Perl 5.10. Multithreaded code should be migrated to | |
249 | the new ithreads model (see L<threads> and L<threads::shared>). | |
250 | ||
251 | =item * | |
252 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
253 | The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison |
254 | operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed. | |
255 | ||
256 | =item * | |
257 | ||
258 | The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return; | |
259 | the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar | |
260 | functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...). | |
f39f21d8 | 261 | |
420cdfc1 ST |
262 | =item * |
263 | ||
264 | Earlier Perls treated "sub foo (@bar)" as equivalent to "sub foo (@)". | |
8cbf54fa JH |
265 | The prototypes are now checked better at compile-time for invalid |
266 | syntax. An optional warning is generated ("Illegal character in | |
267 | prototype...") but this may be upgraded to a fatal error in a future | |
268 | release. | |
420cdfc1 | 269 | |
fd5a896a DM |
270 | =item * |
271 | ||
272 | The existing behaviour when localising tied arrays and hashes is wrong, | |
273 | and will be changed in a future release, so do not rely on the existing | |
274 | behaviour. See L<"Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken">. | |
275 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
276 | =back |
277 | ||
61947107 JH |
278 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
279 | ||
77c8cf41 | 280 | =head2 PerlIO is Now The Default |
f39f21d8 JH |
281 | |
282 | =over 4 | |
283 | ||
284 | =item * | |
285 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
286 | IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio". |
287 | PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the | |
288 | handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg | |
289 | form of open: | |
f39f21d8 | 290 | |
77c8cf41 | 291 | open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ... |
f39f21d8 | 292 | |
77c8cf41 | 293 | or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>: |
f39f21d8 | 294 | |
77c8cf41 | 295 | binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)'); |
f39f21d8 | 296 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
297 | The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in |
298 | previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a | |
299 | portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32, | |
300 | but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if | |
301 | platform supports it (mostly UNIXes). | |
f39f21d8 | 302 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
303 | Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma. |
304 | ||
305 | See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects | |
306 | of PerlIO on your architecture name. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
307 | |
308 | =item * | |
309 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
310 | File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode |
311 | (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" : | |
f39f21d8 | 312 | |
77c8cf41 | 313 | open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt"); |
f39f21d8 | 314 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
315 | Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named |
316 | for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead | |
317 | UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and | |
318 | http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information. | |
319 | In future releases this naming may change. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
320 | |
321 | =item * | |
322 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
323 | File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal |
324 | Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
325 | |
326 | =item * | |
327 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
328 | File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via: |
329 | ||
330 | open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ... | |
f39f21d8 JH |
331 | |
332 | =item * | |
333 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
334 | Anonymous temporary files are available without need to |
335 | 'use FileHandle' or other module via | |
f39f21d8 | 336 | |
77c8cf41 | 337 | open($fh,"+>", undef) || ... |
f39f21d8 | 338 | |
77c8cf41 | 339 | That is a literal undef, not an undefined value. |
f39f21d8 JH |
340 | |
341 | =item * | |
342 | ||
77c8cf41 | 343 | The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX): |
f39f21d8 | 344 | |
77c8cf41 | 345 | open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd') |
f39f21d8 | 346 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
347 | creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in |
348 | the child process. | |
f39f21d8 | 349 | |
b310b053 JH |
350 | =item * |
351 | ||
352 | If your locale environment variables (LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG) | |
353 | contain the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching), | |
354 | the default encoding of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of | |
355 | B<any subsequent file open>, is UTF-8. | |
356 | ||
e1f170bd | 357 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 358 | |
02e156f1 JH |
359 | =head2 Restricted Hashes |
360 | ||
361 | A restricted hash is restricted to a certain set of keys, no keys | |
362 | outside the set can be added. Also individual keys can be restricted | |
363 | so that the key cannot be deleted and the value cannot be changed. | |
364 | No new syntax is involved: the Hash::Util module is the interface. | |
365 | ||
3e33716f | 366 | =head2 Safe Signals |
f39f21d8 | 367 | |
e1f170bd JH |
368 | Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments |
369 | could corrupt Perl's internal state. Now Perl postpones handling of | |
3e33716f JH |
370 | signals until it's safe (between opcodes). |
371 | ||
56e5bb57 | 372 | This change may have surprising side effects because signals no longer |
3e33716f JH |
373 | interrupt Perl instantly. Perl will now first finish whatever it was |
374 | doing, like finishing an internal operation (like sort()) or an | |
375 | external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any | |
376 | arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt | |
377 | internal state since the current operation is always finished first, | |
6123004a JH |
378 | but the signal may take more time to get heard. Note that breaking |
379 | out from potentially blocking operations should still work, though. | |
f39f21d8 | 380 | |
e1f170bd | 381 | =head2 Unicode Overhaul |
f39f21d8 | 382 | |
e1f170bd JH |
383 | Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0 |
384 | (or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in | |
385 | regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now, | |
b310b053 JH |
386 | Unicode in I/O should work now. See L<perluniintro> for introduction |
387 | and L<perlunicode> for details. | |
f39f21d8 | 388 | |
e1f170bd | 389 | =over 4 |
f39f21d8 JH |
390 | |
391 | =item * | |
392 | ||
e1f170bd | 393 | The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded |
822ebcc8 | 394 | to Unicode 3.2.0. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/ . |
f39f21d8 JH |
395 | |
396 | =item * | |
397 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
398 | For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities: |
399 | almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in | |
8cbf54fa | 400 | the F<lib/unicore> subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space |
77c8cf41 | 401 | considerations, is the Unihan database. |
f39f21d8 JH |
402 | |
403 | =item * | |
404 | ||
eb0cc9e3 JH |
405 | The properties \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been added. "Blank" is like |
406 | C isblank(), that is, it contains only "horizontal whitespace" (the space | |
407 | character is, the newline isn't), and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode | |
408 | equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space} isn't, since that includes the vertical | |
409 | tabulator character, whereas C<\s> doesn't.) | |
410 | ||
411 | See "New Unicode Properties" earlier in this document for additional | |
412 | information on changes with Unicode properties. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
413 | |
414 | =back | |
415 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
416 | =head2 Understanding of Numbers |
417 | ||
418 | In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's | |
419 | understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in | |
420 | many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()> | |
421 | and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their | |
422 | deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers. | |
f39f21d8 | 423 | |
e1f170bd JH |
424 | Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions |
425 | and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and | |
426 | tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers. | |
057b7f2b | 427 | This change leads to often slightly faster and always less lossy |
e1f170bd JH |
428 | arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers |
429 | in its math.) | |
430 | ||
58175c9b | 431 | =head2 Miscellaneous Changes |
e1f170bd | 432 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
433 | =over 4 |
434 | ||
435 | =item * | |
436 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
437 | AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute |
438 | to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value. | |
439 | ||
440 | =item * | |
441 | ||
ee8706e3 JH |
442 | The $Config{byteorder} (and corresponding BYTEORDER in config.h) was |
443 | previously wrong in platforms if sizeof(long) was 4, but sizeof(IV) | |
444 | was 8. The byteorder was only sizeof(long) bytes long (1234 or 4321), | |
445 | but now it is correctly sizeof(IV) bytes long, (12345678 or 87654321). | |
446 | (This problem didn't affect Windows platforms.) | |
447 | ||
448 | Also, $Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically--this is more | |
449 | robust with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries | |
450 | for more than one binary platform, and when cross-compiling. | |
451 | ||
452 | =item * | |
453 | ||
61947107 JH |
454 | C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass |
455 | in multiple arguments.) | |
f39f21d8 JH |
456 | |
457 | =item * | |
458 | ||
58175c9b | 459 | The builtin dump() now gives an optional warning |
66023b77 | 460 | C<dump() better written as CORE::dump()>, |
58175c9b JH |
461 | meaning that by default C<dump(...)> is resolved as the builtin |
462 | dump() which dumps core and aborts, not as (possibly) user-defined | |
463 | C<sub dump>. To call the latter, qualify the call as C<&dump(...)>. | |
464 | (The whole dump() feature is to considered deprecated, and possibly | |
465 | removed/changed in future releases.) | |
466 | ||
467 | =item * | |
468 | ||
c2d0fb59 RGS |
469 | chomp() and chop() are now overridable. Note, however, that their |
470 | prototype (as given by C<prototype("CORE::chomp")> is undefined, | |
471 | because it cannot be expressed and therefore one cannot really write | |
58175c9b JH |
472 | replacements to override these builtins. |
473 | ||
474 | =item * | |
475 | ||
61947107 JH |
476 | END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block. |
477 | Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by | |
478 | PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new | |
479 | behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See | |
480 | L<perlembed>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
481 | |
482 | =item * | |
483 | ||
e1f170bd | 484 | Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields. |
f39f21d8 JH |
485 | |
486 | =item * | |
487 | ||
77c8cf41 | 488 | Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context. |
44da0e71 | 489 | However, the lvalue subroutine feature still remains experimental. |
f39f21d8 JH |
490 | |
491 | =item * | |
492 | ||
58175c9b JH |
493 | A lost warning "Can't declare ... dereference in my" has been |
494 | restored (Perl had it earlier but it became lost in later releases.) | |
495 | ||
496 | =item * | |
497 | ||
61947107 JH |
498 | A new special regular expression variable has been introduced: |
499 | C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch). | |
f39f21d8 JH |
500 | |
501 | =item * | |
502 | ||
61947107 | 503 | C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module. |
f39f21d8 JH |
504 | |
505 | =item * | |
506 | ||
61947107 JH |
507 | The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand |
508 | is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
509 | |
510 | =item * | |
511 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
512 | The following builtin functions are now overridable: each(), keys(), |
513 | pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift(). | |
514 | ||
515 | =item * | |
516 | ||
a7bac030 JH |
517 | C<pack() / unpack()> now can group template letters with C<()> and then |
518 | apply repetition/count modifiers on the groups. | |
519 | ||
520 | =item * | |
521 | ||
522 | C<pack() / unpack()> can now process the Perl internal numeric types: | |
523 | IVs, UVs, NVs-- and also long doubles, if supported by the platform. | |
79f69e33 | 524 | The template letters are C<j>, C<J>, C<F>, and C<D>. |
a7bac030 JH |
525 | |
526 | =item * | |
527 | ||
61947107 | 528 | C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8. |
f39f21d8 JH |
529 | |
530 | =item * | |
531 | ||
61947107 | 532 | my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works. |
f39f21d8 JH |
533 | |
534 | =item * | |
535 | ||
2ab27a20 | 536 | POSIX::sleep() now returns the number of I<unslept> seconds |
2bad225e | 537 | (as the POSIX standard says), as opposed to CORE::sleep() which |
2ab27a20 A |
538 | returns the number of slept seconds. |
539 | ||
540 | =item * | |
541 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
542 | The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the |
543 | C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example | |
544 | ||
545 | print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar"; | |
546 | ||
da6838c8 JH |
547 | will print "bar foo\n". This feature helps in writing |
548 | internationalised software, and in general when the order | |
549 | of the parameters can vary. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
550 | |
551 | =item * | |
552 | ||
e1f170bd | 553 | prototype(\&) is now available. |
61947107 JH |
554 | |
555 | =item * | |
556 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
557 | prototype(\[$@%&]) is now available to implicitly create references |
558 | (useful for example if you want to emulate the tie() interface). | |
61947107 JH |
559 | |
560 | =item * | |
561 | ||
58175c9b | 562 | A new command-line option, C<-t> is available. It is the |
b0c3fc92 | 563 | little brother of C<-T>: instead of dying on taint violations, |
58175c9b JH |
564 | lexical warnings are given. B<This is only meant as a temporary |
565 | debugging aid while securing the code of old legacy applications. | |
566 | This is not a substitute for -T.> | |
567 | ||
568 | =item * | |
569 | ||
4956848f JH |
570 | In other taint news, the C<exec LIST> and C<system LIST> have now been |
571 | considered too risky (think C<exec @ARGV>: it can start any program | |
572 | with any arguments), and now the said forms cause a warning. | |
573 | You should carefully launder the arguments to guarantee their | |
574 | validity. In future releases of Perl the forms will become fatal | |
575 | errors so consider starting laundering now. | |
576 | ||
577 | =item * | |
578 | ||
159ad915 DM |
579 | Tied hash interfaces are now required to have the EXISTS and DELETE |
580 | methods (either own or inherited). | |
0b2c215a JH |
581 | |
582 | =item * | |
583 | ||
58175c9b JH |
584 | If tr/// is just counting characters, it doesn't attempt to |
585 | modify its target. | |
586 | ||
587 | =item * | |
588 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
589 | untie() will now call an UNTIE() hook if it exists. See L<perltie> |
590 | for details. | |
61947107 JH |
591 | |
592 | =item * | |
593 | ||
594 | L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the | |
595 | file timestamps to the current time. | |
596 | ||
597 | =item * | |
598 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
599 | The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants |
600 | have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore | |
601 | simply B<between digits>. | |
f39f21d8 | 602 | |
ef985a5e NC |
603 | =item * |
604 | ||
605 | Rather than relying on C's argv[0] (which may not contain a full pathname) | |
606 | where possible $^X is now set by asking the operating system. | |
607 | (eg by reading F</proc/self/exe> on Linux, F</proc/curproc/file> on FreeBSD) | |
608 | ||
608dbdb1 RGS |
609 | =item * |
610 | ||
611 | A new variable, C<${^TAINT}>, indicates whether taint mode is enabled. | |
612 | ||
613 | =item * | |
614 | ||
615 | You can now override the readline() builtin, and this overrides also | |
616 | the <FILEHANDLE> angle bracket operator. | |
617 | ||
618 | =item * | |
619 | ||
620 | The command-line options -s and -F are now recognized on the shebang | |
621 | (#!) line. | |
622 | ||
4ac733c9 MJD |
623 | =item * |
624 | ||
625 | Use of the C</c> match modifier without an accompanying C</g> modifier | |
626 | elicits a new warning: C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless without /g>. | |
f34840d8 | 627 | |
64e578a2 | 628 | Use of C</c> in substitutions, even with C</g>, elicits |
f34840d8 MJD |
629 | C<Use of /c modifier is meaningless in s///>. |
630 | ||
476a4411 | 631 | Use of C</g> with C<split> elicits C<Use of /g modifier is meaningless |
f34840d8 | 632 | in split>. |
4ac733c9 | 633 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
634 | =back |
635 | ||
77c8cf41 | 636 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
f39f21d8 | 637 | |
1e13d81f | 638 | =head2 New Modules and Pragmata |
f39f21d8 JH |
639 | |
640 | =over 4 | |
641 | ||
642 | =item * | |
643 | ||
0e9b9e0c JH |
644 | C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers. |
645 | ||
646 | package MyPack; | |
647 | use Attribute::Handlers; | |
648 | sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" } | |
649 | ||
650 | # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack... | |
651 | ||
652 | my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called | |
653 | ||
654 | Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can | |
655 | be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the | |
656 | exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END). | |
657 | ||
658 | =item * | |
659 | ||
61947107 JH |
660 | B<B::Concise> is a new compiler backend for walking the Perl syntax |
661 | tree, printing concise info about ops, from Stephen McCamant. The | |
662 | output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
663 | |
664 | =item * | |
665 | ||
381874f1 JH |
666 | The new bignum, bigint, and bigrat pragmas implement transparent |
667 | bignum support (using the Math::BigInt, Math::BigFloat, and | |
668 | Math::BigRat backends), by Tels. | |
669 | ||
670 | =item * | |
671 | ||
61947107 JH |
672 | C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree, |
673 | by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
674 | |
675 | =item * | |
676 | ||
61947107 JH |
677 | C<Cwd> has now a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is |
678 | used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust) | |
679 | but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
680 | |
681 | =item * | |
682 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
683 | C<Devel::PPPort>, originally from Kenneth Albanowski and now |
684 | maintained by Paul Marquess, has been added. It is primarily used | |
66023b77 | 685 | by C<h2xs> to enhance portability of XS modules between different |
e1f170bd | 686 | versions of Perl. |
1e13d81f JH |
687 | |
688 | =item * | |
689 | ||
61947107 JH |
690 | C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from |
691 | Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
692 | |
693 | =item * | |
694 | ||
61947107 JH |
695 | C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in |
696 | RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
697 | |
698 | use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex'; | |
699 | ||
700 | $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel"); | |
701 | ||
702 | print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1 | |
703 | ||
61947107 | 704 | NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not |
e1f170bd | 705 | included since its further use is discouraged. |
f39f21d8 | 706 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
707 | =item * |
708 | ||
f14caa53 JH |
709 | C<Encode>, orginally by Nick Ing-Simmons and now maintained by Dan |
710 | Kogai, provides a mechanism to translate between different character | |
711 | encodings. Support for Unicode, ISO-8859-1, and ASCII are compiled in | |
712 | to the module. Several other encodings (like the rest of the | |
713 | ISO-8859, CP*/Win*, Mac, KOI8-R, three variants EBCDIC, Chinese, | |
714 | Japanese, and Korean encodings) are included and can be loaded at | |
715 | runtime. (For space considerations, the largest Chinese encodings | |
716 | have been separated into their own CPAN module, Encode::HanExtra, | |
717 | which Encode will use if available). See L<Encode>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
718 | |
719 | Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the | |
720 | ":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used. | |
721 | ||
61947107 JH |
722 | =item * |
723 | ||
a6d3fe4f | 724 | C<Hash::Util> is the interface to the new I<restricted hashes> |
02e156f1 | 725 | feature. (Implemented by Jeffrey Friedl, Nick Ing-Simmons, and |
a6d3fe4f JH |
726 | Michael Schwern.) |
727 | ||
728 | =item * | |
729 | ||
61947107 JH |
730 | C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information. |
731 | See L<I18N::Langinfo>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
732 | |
733 | =item * | |
734 | ||
61947107 | 735 | C<I18N::LangTags> has functions for dealing with RFC3066-style |
bea4d472 | 736 | language tags, by Sean Burke. See L<I18N::LangTags>. |
61947107 JH |
737 | |
738 | =item * | |
739 | ||
740 | C<ExtUtils::Constant> is a new tool for extension writers for | |
741 | generating XS code to import C header constants, by Nicholas Clark. | |
742 | See L<ExtUtils::Constant>. | |
743 | ||
744 | =item * | |
745 | ||
746 | C<Filter::Simple> is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call, | |
747 | from Damian Conway. See L<Filter::Simple>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
748 | |
749 | # in MyFilter.pm: | |
750 | ||
751 | package MyFilter; | |
752 | ||
753 | use Filter::Simple sub { | |
754 | while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) { | |
755 | s/$from/$to/g; | |
756 | } | |
757 | }; | |
758 | ||
759 | 1; | |
760 | ||
761 | # in user's code: | |
762 | ||
763 | use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green'; | |
764 | ||
765 | print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n" | |
766 | print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n" | |
767 | ||
768 | no MyFilter; | |
769 | ||
770 | print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n" | |
771 | ||
61947107 JH |
772 | =item * |
773 | ||
774 | C<File::Temp> allows one to create temporary files and directories in | |
775 | an easy, portable, and secure way, by Tim Jenness. See L<File::Temp>. | |
776 | ||
777 | =item * | |
778 | ||
779 | C<Filter::Util::Call> provides you with the framework to write | |
780 | I<Source Filters> in Perl, from Paul Marquess. For most uses the | |
781 | frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>. | |
782 | ||
783 | =item * | |
784 | ||
79f69e33 JH |
785 | C<if> is a new pragma for conditional inclusion of modules, from |
786 | Ilya Zakharevich. | |
787 | ||
788 | =item * | |
789 | ||
61947107 JH |
790 | L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network |
791 | programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>, | |
b929be1d JH |
792 | L<Net::Ping> (not part of libnet, but related), L<Net::POP3>, |
793 | L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>. | |
61947107 JH |
794 | |
795 | Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
796 | |
797 | =item * | |
798 | ||
61947107 | 799 | C<List::Util> is a selection of general-utility list subroutines, like |
bea4d472 | 800 | sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(), by Graham Barr. See L<List::Util>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
801 | |
802 | =item * | |
803 | ||
f14caa53 JH |
804 | C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency> |
805 | C<Locale::Language>, and L<Locale::Script>, from Neil Bowers, have | |
806 | been added. They provide the codes for various locale standards, such | |
9d81ddc1 | 807 | as "fr" for France, "usd" for US Dollar, and "ja" for Japanese. |
f39f21d8 JH |
808 | |
809 | use Locale::Country; | |
810 | ||
811 | $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan' | |
812 | $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no' | |
813 | ||
814 | See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>, | |
61947107 JH |
815 | and L<Locale::Language>. |
816 | ||
817 | =item * | |
818 | ||
819 | C<Locale::Maketext> is localization framework from Sean Burke. See | |
820 | L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an | |
821 | article about software localization, originally published in The Perl | |
822 | Journal #13, republished here with kind permission. | |
823 | ||
824 | =item * | |
825 | ||
f14caa53 | 826 | C<Math::BigRat> for big rational numbers, to accompany Math::BigInt and |
381874f1 JH |
827 | Math::BigFloat, from Tels. |
828 | ||
829 | =item * | |
830 | ||
61947107 JH |
831 | C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time, |
832 | from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
833 | |
834 | =item * | |
835 | ||
61947107 JH |
836 | C<MIME::Base64> allows you to encode data in base64, from Gisle Aas, |
837 | as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail | |
838 | Extensions)>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
839 | |
840 | use MIME::Base64; | |
841 | ||
842 | $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame'); | |
843 | $decoded = decode_base64($encoded); | |
844 | ||
845 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==" | |
846 | ||
61947107 | 847 | See L<MIME::Base64>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
848 | |
849 | =item * | |
850 | ||
61947107 JH |
851 | C<MIME::QuotedPrint> allows you to encode data in quoted-printable |
852 | encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail | |
853 | Extensions)>, from Gisle Aas. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
854 | |
855 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; | |
856 | ||
857 | $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}"); | |
858 | $decoded = decode_qp($encoded); | |
859 | ||
860 | print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A" | |
861 | ||
862 | MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods | |
863 | necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in : | |
864 | ||
865 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; | |
057b7f2b | 866 | open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path); |
f39f21d8 | 867 | |
61947107 | 868 | See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
869 | |
870 | =item * | |
871 | ||
61947107 JH |
872 | C<NEXT> is pseudo-class for method redispatch, from Damian Conway. |
873 | See L<NEXT>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
874 | |
875 | =item * | |
876 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
877 | C<open> is a new pragma for setting the default I/O disciplines |
878 | for open(). | |
879 | ||
880 | =item * | |
881 | ||
61947107 JH |
882 | C<PerlIO::Scalar> provides the implementation of IO to "in memory" |
883 | Perl scalars as discussed above, from Nick Ing-Simmons. It also | |
884 | serves as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future | |
885 | possibilities include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. | |
886 | See L<PerlIO::Scalar>. | |
887 | ||
888 | =item * | |
889 | ||
890 | C<PerlIO::Via> acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps PerlIO layer | |
891 | functionality provided by a class (typically implemented in perl | |
892 | code), from Nick Ing-Simmons. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
893 | |
894 | use MIME::QuotedPrint; | |
057b7f2b | 895 | open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path); |
f39f21d8 JH |
896 | |
897 | This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh> | |
61947107 | 898 | to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
899 | |
900 | =item * | |
901 | ||
1e13d81f | 902 | C<Pod::ParseLink>, by Russ Allbery, has been added, |
95f0a2f1 | 903 | to parse LZ<><> links in pods as described in the new |
1e13d81f JH |
904 | perlpodspec. |
905 | ||
906 | =item * | |
907 | ||
61947107 | 908 | C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added. |
f39f21d8 | 909 | It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text. |
61947107 | 910 | See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
911 | |
912 | =item * | |
913 | ||
61947107 JH |
914 | C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines, |
915 | like blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>. | |
916 | ||
917 | =item * | |
918 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
919 | C<sort> is a new pragma for controlling the behaviour of sort(). |
920 | ||
921 | =item * | |
922 | ||
61947107 JH |
923 | C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the |
924 | storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and | |
e27159c9 JH |
925 | compact binary format. Because in effect Storable does serialisation |
926 | of Perl data structues, with it you can also clone deep, hierarchical | |
1108aaa7 JH |
927 | datastructures. Storable was originally created by Raphael Manfredi, |
928 | but it is now maintained by Abhijit Menon-Sen. Storable has been | |
e27159c9 JH |
929 | enhanced to understand the two new hash features, Unicode keys and |
930 | restricted hashes. See L<Storable>. | |
61947107 JH |
931 | |
932 | =item * | |
933 | ||
934 | C<Switch>, from Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying | |
f39f21d8 JH |
935 | |
936 | use Switch; | |
937 | ||
938 | you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl. | |
939 | ||
940 | use Switch; | |
941 | ||
942 | switch ($val) { | |
943 | ||
944 | case 1 { print "number 1" } | |
945 | case "a" { print "string a" } | |
946 | case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" } | |
947 | case (@array) { print "number in list" } | |
948 | case /\w+/ { print "pattern" } | |
949 | case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" } | |
950 | case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" } | |
951 | case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" } | |
952 | case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" } | |
953 | else { print "previous case not true" } | |
954 | } | |
955 | ||
61947107 JH |
956 | See L<Switch>. |
957 | ||
958 | =item * | |
959 | ||
960 | C<Test::More> is yet another framework for writing test scripts, | |
961 | more extensive than Test::Simple, by Michael Schwern. See L<Test::More>. | |
962 | ||
963 | =item * | |
964 | ||
aecce728 | 965 | C<Test::Simple> has basic utilities for writing tests, by Michael |
61947107 | 966 | Schwern. See L<Test::Simple>. |
77c8cf41 JH |
967 | |
968 | =item * | |
969 | ||
61947107 JH |
970 | C<Text::Balanced> has been added, for extracting delimited text |
971 | sequences from strings, from Damian Conway. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
972 | |
973 | use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited'; | |
974 | ||
975 | ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", ''); | |
976 | ||
977 | $a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'. | |
978 | ||
979 | In addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(), | |
980 | extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(), | |
981 | extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and | |
982 | gen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced | |
61947107 | 983 | parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>. |
77c8cf41 JH |
984 | |
985 | =item * | |
986 | ||
c2e23569 | 987 | C<threads> is an interface to interpreter threads, by Arthur Bergman. |
61947107 | 988 | Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in |
c2e23569 JH |
989 | Perl 5.6 but only available as an internal interface for extension |
990 | writers (and for Win32 Perl for C<fork()> emulation). See L<threads>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
991 | |
992 | =item * | |
993 | ||
61947107 JH |
994 | C<threads::shared> allows data sharing for interpreter threads, from |
995 | Arthur Bergman. In the ithreads model any data sharing between | |
996 | threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model | |
997 | where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
998 | |
999 | =item * | |
1000 | ||
1f089b22 JH |
1001 | C<Tie::File>, by Mark-Jason Dominus, associates a Perl array with the |
1002 | lines of a file. | |
b3b08c80 JH |
1003 | |
1004 | =item * | |
1005 | ||
79f69e33 JH |
1006 | C<Tie::Memoize>, by Ilya Zakharevich, provides on-demand loaded hashes. |
1007 | ||
1008 | =item * | |
1009 | ||
61947107 | 1010 | C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash |
ba370e9b JH |
1011 | references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained |
1012 | within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1013 | |
1014 | =item * | |
1015 | ||
61947107 JH |
1016 | C<Time::HiRes> provides high resolution timing (ualarm, usleep, |
1017 | and gettimeofday), from Douglas E. Wegscheid. See L<Time::HiRes>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1018 | |
1019 | =item * | |
1020 | ||
61947107 JH |
1021 | C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character |
1022 | Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1023 | |
1024 | =item * | |
1025 | ||
61947107 JH |
1026 | C<Unicode::Collate> implements the UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm) |
1027 | for sorting Unicode strings, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Collate>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1028 | |
1029 | =item * | |
1030 | ||
61947107 JH |
1031 | C<Unicode::Normalize> implements the various Unicode normalization |
1032 | forms, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Normalize>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1033 | |
1034 | =item * | |
1035 | ||
61947107 JH |
1036 | C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS |
1037 | typemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code | |
1038 | is worth studying. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1039 | |
1040 | =back | |
1041 | ||
1042 | =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata | |
1043 | ||
1044 | =over 4 | |
1045 | ||
1046 | =item * | |
1047 | ||
61947107 JH |
1048 | The following independently supported modules have been updated to the |
1049 | newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp, | |
1050 | Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle | |
1051 | (Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable, | |
1052 | Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1053 | |
1054 | =item * | |
1055 | ||
61947107 | 1056 | The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments. |
77c8cf41 JH |
1057 | |
1058 | =item * | |
1059 | ||
057b7f2b | 1060 | AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>. |
77c8cf41 JH |
1061 | |
1062 | =item * | |
1063 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1064 | B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost |
1065 | all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed). | |
1066 | There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1067 | |
1068 | =item * | |
1069 | ||
1e13d81f | 1070 | Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time. |
77c8cf41 JH |
1071 | |
1072 | =item * | |
1073 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1074 | Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor |
1075 | is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1076 | |
1077 | =item * | |
1078 | ||
797ec949 RGS |
1079 | The return value of Cwd::fastcwd() is now tainted. |
1080 | ||
1081 | =item * | |
1082 | ||
1e13d81f | 1083 | Data::Dumper has now an option to sort hashes. |
77c8cf41 JH |
1084 | |
1085 | =item * | |
1086 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1087 | Data::Dumper has now an option to dump code references |
1088 | using B::Deparse. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1089 | |
1090 | =item * | |
1091 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1092 | DB_File now supports newer Berkeley DB versions, among |
1093 | other improvements. | |
1094 | ||
1095 | =item * | |
1096 | ||
797ec949 RGS |
1097 | Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics |
1098 | (this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have | |
1099 | compiled with debugging). | |
1100 | ||
1101 | =item * | |
1102 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1103 | The English module can now be used without the infamous performance |
1104 | hit by saying | |
77c8cf41 | 1105 | |
66023b77 | 1106 | use English '-no_match_vars'; |
77c8cf41 | 1107 | |
1e13d81f JH |
1108 | (Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables |
1109 | C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and | |
1110 | C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1111 | |
1112 | =item * | |
1113 | ||
797ec949 RGS |
1114 | ExtUtils::MakeMaker now uses File::Spec internally, which hopefully |
1115 | leads into better portability. | |
1116 | ||
1117 | =item * | |
1118 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1119 | Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the |
1120 | new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>). | |
1121 | This means that they will be more robust and hopefully faster. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1122 | |
1123 | =item * | |
1124 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1125 | File::Find now chdir()s correctly when chasing symbolic links. |
1126 | ||
1127 | =item * | |
1128 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1129 | File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also |
1130 | correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks | |
1131 | (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work. | |
61947107 JH |
1132 | |
1133 | =item * | |
1134 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1135 | File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made |
1136 | more portable. | |
77c8cf41 | 1137 | |
61947107 JH |
1138 | =item * |
1139 | ||
608dbdb1 RGS |
1140 | The warnings issued by File::Find now belong to their own category. |
1141 | You can enable/disable them with C<use/no warnings 'File::Find';>. | |
1142 | ||
1143 | =item * | |
1144 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1145 | File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid |
1146 | prototype mismatch with CORE::glob(). | |
61947107 JH |
1147 | |
1148 | =item * | |
1149 | ||
1150 | File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of | |
1151 | the returned list of filenames. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1152 | |
1153 | =item * | |
1154 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1155 | IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors. |
1156 | ||
1157 | =item * | |
1158 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1159 | IO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket |
1160 | is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable | |
1161 | as a sockatmark() function. | |
1162 | ||
1163 | =item * | |
1164 | ||
1165 | IO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform | |
1166 | supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity | |
1167 | you may want to prefer ReuseAddr. | |
1168 | ||
1169 | =item * | |
1170 | ||
61947107 JH |
1171 | IO::Socket::INET now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning |
1172 | that the operating system will make one up.) | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1173 | |
1174 | =item * | |
1175 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1176 | use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories |
1177 | with 'no lib' now works. | |
1178 | ||
1179 | =item * | |
1180 | ||
1181 | Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone a full rewrite. | |
1182 | They are now magnitudes faster, and they support various | |
61947107 | 1183 | bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1184 | |
1185 | =item * | |
1186 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1187 | Math::Complex handles inf, NaN etc., better. |
1188 | ||
1189 | =item * | |
1190 | ||
b929be1d JH |
1191 | Net::Ping has been muchly enhanced: multihoming is now supported, |
1192 | Win32 functionality is better, there is now time measuring | |
1193 | functionality (optionally high-resolution using Time::HiRes), | |
1194 | and there is now "external" protocol which uses Net::Ping::External | |
1195 | module which runs your external ping utility and parses the output. | |
1196 | A version of Net::Ping::External is available in CPAN. | |
1197 | ||
1198 | Note that some of the Net::Ping tests are disabled when running | |
1199 | under the Perl distribution since one cannot assume one or more | |
1200 | of the following: enabled echo port at localhost, full Internet | |
1201 | connectivity, or sympathetic firewalls. You can set the environment | |
1202 | variable PERL_TEST_Net_Ping to "1" (one) before running the Perl test | |
1203 | suite to enable all the Net::Ping tests. | |
f39f21d8 | 1204 | |
77c8cf41 | 1205 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1206 | |
da6838c8 | 1207 | POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust. |
61947107 JH |
1208 | You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE' |
1209 | handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1210 | |
1211 | =item * | |
1212 | ||
da6838c8 | 1213 | In Safe the C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that |
76663d67 JH |
1214 | use/require work. |
1215 | ||
1216 | =item * | |
1217 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1218 | In SDBM_File on dosish platforms, some keys went missing because of |
1219 | lack of support for files with "holes". A workaround for the problem | |
1220 | has been added. | |
1221 | ||
1222 | =item * | |
1223 | ||
da6838c8 | 1224 | In Search::Dict one can now have a pre-processing hook for the |
76663d67 | 1225 | lines being searched. |
1e13d81f JH |
1226 | |
1227 | =item * | |
1228 | ||
1229 | The Shell module now has an OO interface. | |
1230 | ||
1231 | =item * | |
1232 | ||
903fdac2 JH |
1233 | In Sys::Syslog there is now a failover mechanism that will go |
1234 | through alternative connection mechanisms until the message | |
1235 | is successfully logged. | |
1236 | ||
1237 | =item * | |
1238 | ||
61947107 | 1239 | The Test module has been significantly enhanced. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1240 | |
1241 | =item * | |
1242 | ||
1cfd00ad SR |
1243 | Time::Local::timelocal() does not handle fractional seconds anymore. |
1244 | The rationale is that neither does localtime(), and timelocal() and | |
1245 | localtime() are supposed to be inverses of each other. | |
1246 | ||
1247 | =item * | |
1248 | ||
da6838c8 | 1249 | The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables. |
77c8cf41 | 1250 | (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.) |
f39f21d8 | 1251 | |
888aee59 JH |
1252 | =item * |
1253 | ||
58175c9b | 1254 | The C<utf8::> name space (as in the pragma) provides various |
61947107 JH |
1255 | Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's |
1256 | internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length() | |
1257 | has been implemented. | |
888aee59 | 1258 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1259 | =back |
1260 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1261 | =head1 Utility Changes |
f39f21d8 JH |
1262 | |
1263 | =over 4 | |
1264 | ||
1265 | =item * | |
1266 | ||
61947107 | 1267 | Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version |
77c8cf41 | 1268 | 4.31. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1269 | |
1270 | =item * | |
1271 | ||
61947107 | 1272 | F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1273 | |
1274 | =item * | |
1275 | ||
54ba6336 JH |
1276 | C<enc2xs> is a tool for people adding their own encodings to the |
1277 | Encode module. | |
1278 | ||
1279 | =item * | |
1280 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1281 | C<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs. |
1282 | ||
1283 | =item * | |
1284 | ||
1285 | C<h2xs> now produces a template README. | |
f39f21d8 | 1286 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1287 | =item * |
1288 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1289 | C<h2xs> now uses C<Devel::PPort> for better portability between |
1290 | different versions of Perl. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1291 | |
1292 | =item * | |
1293 | ||
1e13d81f | 1294 | C<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect |
61947107 JH |
1295 | newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is |
1296 | more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a | |
1297 | prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined), | |
1298 | less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the | |
1299 | old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants), | |
1300 | and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your | |
1301 | extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy). | |
1302 | L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1303 | |
1304 | =item * | |
1305 | ||
1e13d81f | 1306 | C<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1307 | |
1308 | =item * | |
1309 | ||
1e13d81f | 1310 | C<perlbug> is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to |
61947107 | 1311 | perl.org, not perl.com. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1312 | |
1313 | =item * | |
1314 | ||
1e13d81f | 1315 | C<perlcc> has been rewritten and its user interface (that is, |
61947107 | 1316 | command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc. |
44da0e71 | 1317 | (The perlbc tools has been removed. Use C<perlcc -B> instead.) |
8cbf54fa JH |
1318 | B<Note that perlcc is still considered very experimental and |
1319 | unsupported.> | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1320 | |
1321 | =item * | |
1322 | ||
aecce728 JH |
1323 | C<perlivp> is a new Installation Verification Procedure utility |
1324 | for running any time after installing Perl. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1325 | |
1326 | =item * | |
1327 | ||
54ba6336 JH |
1328 | C<piconv> is an implementation of the character conversion utility |
1329 | C<iconv>, demonstrating the new Encode module. | |
1330 | ||
1331 | =item * | |
1332 | ||
1e13d81f | 1333 | C<pod2html> now allows specifying a cache directory. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1334 | |
1335 | =item * | |
1336 | ||
bbed45f6 JH |
1337 | C<pod2html> now produces XHTML 1.0. |
1338 | ||
1339 | =item * | |
1340 | ||
9b856ef5 | 1341 | C<pod2html> now understands POD written using different line endings |
bbed45f6 JH |
1342 | (PC-like CRLF versus UNIX-like LF versus MacClassic-like CR). |
1343 | ||
1344 | =item * | |
1345 | ||
1e13d81f JH |
1346 | C<s2p> has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full |
1347 | implementation of sed in Perl: you can use the sed functionality by | |
1348 | using the C<psed> utility.) | |
61947107 JH |
1349 | |
1350 | =item * | |
1351 | ||
1e13d81f | 1352 | C<xsubpp> now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1353 | |
1354 | =item * | |
1355 | ||
1e13d81f | 1356 | C<xsubpp> now supports OUT keyword. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1357 | |
1358 | =back | |
1359 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1360 | =head1 New Documentation |
f39f21d8 JH |
1361 | |
1362 | =over 4 | |
1363 | ||
1364 | =item * | |
1365 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1366 | perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the |
1367 | 5.6.0 release. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1368 | |
1369 | =item * | |
1370 | ||
61947107 JH |
1371 | perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library |
1372 | functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core | |
1373 | hackers.) | |
1374 | ||
1375 | =item * | |
1376 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1377 | perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial. |
f39f21d8 | 1378 | |
77c8cf41 | 1379 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1380 | |
77c8cf41 | 1381 | perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms. |
f39f21d8 | 1382 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1383 | =item * |
1384 | ||
888aee59 JH |
1385 | perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl. |
1386 | ||
1387 | =item * | |
1388 | ||
61947107 JH |
1389 | perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers. |
1390 | ||
1391 | =item * | |
1392 | ||
888aee59 JH |
1393 | perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules. |
1394 | ||
1395 | =item * | |
1396 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1397 | perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1398 | |
1399 | =item * | |
1400 | ||
34babc16 JH |
1401 | perlpacktut is a pack() tutorial. |
1402 | ||
1403 | =item * | |
1404 | ||
888aee59 JH |
1405 | perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best |
1406 | practices gathered over the years. | |
1407 | ||
1408 | =item * | |
1409 | ||
057b7f2b | 1410 | perlpodspec is a more formal specification of the pod format, |
888aee59 JH |
1411 | mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to |
1412 | people writing in pod. | |
1413 | ||
1414 | =item * | |
1415 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1416 | perlretut is a regular expression tutorial. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1417 | |
1418 | =item * | |
1419 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1420 | perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide. |
1421 | Yes, much quicker than perlretut. | |
f39f21d8 | 1422 | |
77c8cf41 | 1423 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1424 | |
61947107 JH |
1425 | perltodo has been updated. |
1426 | ||
1427 | =item * | |
1428 | ||
888aee59 | 1429 | perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict |
61947107 | 1430 | with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names) |
888aee59 JH |
1431 | |
1432 | =item * | |
1433 | ||
58175c9b JH |
1434 | perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl. |
1435 | (perlunicode is more of a detailed reference and background | |
1436 | information) | |
888aee59 JH |
1437 | |
1438 | =item * | |
1439 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1440 | perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl |
1441 | distribution. | |
1442 | ||
1443 | =back | |
f39f21d8 | 1444 | |
61947107 JH |
1445 | The following platform-specific documents are available before |
1446 | the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation | |
1447 | as perlI<platform>: | |
f39f21d8 | 1448 | |
61947107 JH |
1449 | perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000 |
1450 | perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux | |
1451 | perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix | |
1452 | perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris | |
1453 | perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32 | |
77c8cf41 | 1454 | |
31be200d JH |
1455 | Eastern Asian Perl users are now welcomed in their own languages: |
1456 | README.jp (Japanese), README.ko (Korean), README.cn (simplified | |
1457 | Chinese) and README.tw (traditional Chinese), which are written in | |
1458 | normal pod but encoded in EUC-JP, EUC-KR, EUC-CN and Big5. These | |
1459 | will get installed as | |
1460 | ||
1461 | perljp perlko perlcn perltw | |
1462 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1463 | =over 4 |
1464 | ||
1465 | =item * | |
1466 | ||
61947107 JH |
1467 | The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid |
1468 | confusion with the Perl POSIX module. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1469 | |
1470 | =item * | |
1471 | ||
6cd7d6d6 JH |
1472 | The documentation for the WinCE platform is called perlce (README.ce |
1473 | in the source code kit), to avoid confusion with the perlwin32 | |
1474 | documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1475 | |
1476 | =back | |
1477 | ||
1478 | =head1 Performance Enhancements | |
1479 | ||
1480 | =over 4 | |
1481 | ||
1482 | =item * | |
1483 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1484 | map() could get pathologically slow when the result list it generates |
1485 | is larger than the source list. The performance has been improved for | |
1486 | common scenarios. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1487 | |
1488 | =item * | |
1489 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1490 | sort() has been changed to use primarily mergesort internally as |
1491 | opposed to the earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may | |
1492 | result in slightly slower sorting times, but in general the speedup | |
1493 | should be at least 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case | |
1494 | behaviour of sort() is now better (in computer science terms it now | |
1495 | runs in time O(N log N), as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2) | |
1496 | worst-case run time behaviour), and that sort() is now stable | |
1497 | (meaning that elements with identical keys will stay ordered as they | |
1498 | were before the sort). See the C<sort> pragma for information. | |
77c8cf41 | 1499 | |
05e25c75 JH |
1500 | The story in more detail: suppose you want to serve yourself a little |
1501 | slice of Pi. | |
1502 | ||
1503 | @digits = ( 3,1,4,1,5,9 ); | |
1504 | ||
1505 | A numerical sort of the digits will yield (1,1,3,4,5,9), as expected. | |
1506 | Which C<1> comes first is hard to know, since one C<1> looks pretty | |
1507 | much like any other. You can regard this as totally trivial, | |
1508 | or somewhat profound. However, if you just want to sort the even | |
1509 | digits ahead of the odd ones, then what will | |
1510 | ||
1511 | sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } @digits; | |
1512 | ||
1513 | yield? The only even digit, C<4>, will come first. But how about | |
1514 | the odd numbers, which all compare equal? With the quicksort algorithm | |
1515 | used to implement Perl 5.6 and earlier, the order of ties is left up | |
1516 | to the sort. So, as you add more and more digits of Pi, the order | |
1517 | in which the sorted even and odd digits appear will change. | |
1518 | and, for sufficiently large slices of Pi, the quicksort algorithm | |
1519 | in Perl 5.8 won't return the same results even if reinvoked with the | |
1520 | same input. The justification for this rests with quicksort's | |
1521 | worst case behavior. If you run | |
1522 | ||
1523 | sort { $a <=> $b } ( 1 .. $N , 1 .. $N ); | |
1524 | ||
1525 | (something you might approximate if you wanted to merge two sorted | |
1526 | arrays using sort), doubling $N doesn't just double the quicksort time, | |
1527 | it I<quadruples> it. Quicksort has a worst case run time that can | |
1528 | grow like N**2, so-called I<quadratic> behaviour, and it can happen | |
1529 | on patterns that may well arise in normal use. You won't notice this | |
1530 | for small arrays, but you I<will> notice it with larger arrays, | |
1531 | and you may not live long enough for the sort to complete on arrays | |
1532 | of a million elements. So the 5.8 quicksort scrambles large arrays | |
1533 | before sorting them, as a statistical defence against quadratic behaviour. | |
1534 | But that means if you sort the same large array twice, ties may be | |
1535 | broken in different ways. | |
1536 | ||
1537 | Because of the unpredictability of tie-breaking order, and the quadratic | |
1538 | worst-case behaviour, quicksort was I<almost> replaced completely with | |
1539 | a stable mergesort. I<Stable> means that ties are broken to preserve | |
1540 | the original order of appearance in the input array. So | |
1541 | ||
1542 | sort { ($a % 2) <=> ($b % 2) } (3,1,4,1,5,9); | |
1543 | ||
1544 | will yield (4,3,1,1,5,9), guaranteed. The even and odd numbers | |
1545 | appear in the output in the same order they appeared in the input. | |
1546 | Mergesort has worst case O(NlogN) behaviour, the best value | |
1547 | attainable. And, ironically, this mergesort does particularly | |
1548 | well where quicksort goes quadratic: mergesort sorts (1..$N, 1..$N) | |
1549 | in O(N) time. But quicksort was rescued at the last moment because | |
1550 | it is faster than mergesort on certain inputs and platforms. | |
1551 | For example, if you really I<don't> care about the order of even | |
1552 | and odd digits, quicksort will run in O(N) time; it's very good | |
1553 | at sorting many repetitions of a small number of distinct elements. | |
1554 | The quicksort divide and conquer strategy works well on platforms | |
1555 | with relatively small, very fast, caches. Eventually, the problem gets | |
1556 | whittled down to one that fits in the cache, from which point it | |
1557 | benefits from the increased memory speed. | |
1558 | ||
1559 | Quicksort was rescued by implementing a sort pragma to control aspects | |
1560 | of the sort. The B<stable> subpragma forces stable behaviour, | |
1561 | regardless of algorithm. The B<_quicksort> and B<_mergesort> | |
1562 | subpragmas are heavy-handed ways to select the underlying implementation. | |
1563 | The leading C<_> is a reminder that these subpragmas may not survive | |
1564 | beyond 5.8. More appropriate mechanisms for selecting the implementation | |
1565 | exist, but they wouldn't have arrived in time to save quicksort. | |
1566 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1567 | =item * |
1568 | ||
1569 | Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm | |
f224927c | 1570 | ( http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html ). This algorithm is |
77c8cf41 JH |
1571 | reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than |
1572 | the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by | |
1573 | Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of | |
1574 | all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the | |
1575 | DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this | |
1576 | change has not affected the overall speed of Perl. | |
1577 | ||
1578 | =item * | |
1579 | ||
1580 | unshift() should now be noticeably faster. | |
1581 | ||
1582 | =back | |
1583 | ||
1584 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements | |
1585 | ||
1586 | =head2 Generic Improvements | |
1587 | ||
1588 | =over 4 | |
1589 | ||
1590 | =item * | |
1591 | ||
1592 | INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit | |
1593 | integers even on non-64-bit platforms. | |
1594 | ||
1595 | =item * | |
1596 | ||
1597 | Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file | |
1598 | (see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old | |
1599 | Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of | |
1600 | them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously | |
1601 | only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour, | |
1602 | specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly. | |
1603 | ||
1604 | =item * | |
1605 | ||
1606 | A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available. | |
1607 | It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's | |
1608 | own library directories. | |
1609 | ||
1610 | =item * | |
1611 | ||
1612 | In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to | |
1613 | build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems | |
1614 | to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler | |
1615 | 'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead. | |
1616 | ||
1617 | =item * | |
1618 | ||
1619 | gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid | |
1620 | build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different | |
1621 | operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible | |
1622 | warning that there may be trouble ahead. | |
1623 | ||
1624 | =item * | |
1625 | ||
11d33b1d PG |
1626 | Since Perl 5.8 is not binary-compatible with previous releases |
1627 | of Perl, Configure no longer suggests including the 5.005 | |
1628 | modules in @INC. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1629 | |
1630 | =item * | |
1631 | ||
1632 | Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively. | |
1633 | ||
1634 | =item * | |
1635 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1636 | Configure support for pdp11-style memory models has been removed due |
1637 | to obsolescence. | |
1638 | ||
1639 | =item * | |
1640 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1641 | configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them. |
f39f21d8 | 1642 | |
77c8cf41 | 1643 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1644 | |
77c8cf41 | 1645 | installperl now outputs everything to STDERR. |
f39f21d8 | 1646 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1647 | =item * |
1648 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
1649 | Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't |
1650 | get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore. | |
1651 | Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command | |
1652 | line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended. | |
1653 | ||
1654 | =item * | |
1655 | ||
1656 | Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all" | |
1657 | (-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your | |
1658 | pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.) | |
1659 | ||
1660 | =item * | |
1661 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1662 | In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be |
1663 | somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure | |
1664 | parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>. | |
1665 | ||
1666 | =item * | |
1667 | ||
61947107 JH |
1668 | APPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been |
1669 | documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories | |
1670 | to Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information. | |
1671 | ||
1672 | =item * | |
1673 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1674 | The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the |
1675 | DB_File extension) was built is now available as | |
1676 | C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}> | |
1677 | from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG | |
1678 | DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C. | |
1679 | ||
1680 | =item * | |
1681 | ||
61947107 JH |
1682 | Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM |
1683 | has been documented in INSTALL. | |
77c8cf41 JH |
1684 | |
1685 | =item * | |
1686 | ||
61947107 JH |
1687 | If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a |
1688 | CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and | |
1689 | install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for | |
1690 | more details. | |
f39f21d8 | 1691 | |
61947107 | 1692 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1693 | |
61947107 JH |
1694 | In addition to config.over a new override file, config.arch, is |
1695 | available. That is supposed to be used by hints file writers for | |
1696 | architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is for | |
1697 | site-wide changes). | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1698 | |
1699 | =item * | |
1700 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1701 | If your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside |
1702 | of the source directory by | |
1703 | ||
1704 | mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory | |
1705 | cd /tmp/perl/build/directory | |
1706 | sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ... | |
1707 | ||
1708 | This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links | |
1709 | pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left | |
1710 | unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say | |
1711 | ||
1712 | make all test | |
1713 | ||
1714 | and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory. | |
1715 | ||
1716 | =item * | |
1717 | ||
61947107 JH |
1718 | For Perl developers several new make targets for profiling |
1719 | and debugging have been added, see L<perlhack>. | |
1720 | ||
1721 | =over 8 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1722 | |
1723 | =item * | |
1724 | ||
61947107 JH |
1725 | Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in |
1726 | L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for | |
1727 | generating a gprofiled Perl executable. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1728 | |
1729 | =item * | |
1730 | ||
61947107 JH |
1731 | If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for |
1732 | creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See | |
1733 | L<perlhack>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1734 | |
1735 | =item * | |
1736 | ||
61947107 JH |
1737 | If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options |
1738 | have been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and | |
1739 | Third Degree. | |
1740 | ||
1741 | =back | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1742 | |
1743 | =item * | |
1744 | ||
61947107 JH |
1745 | Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have |
1746 | been added to INSTALL. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1747 | |
1748 | =item * | |
1749 | ||
61947107 JH |
1750 | The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads |
1751 | (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the | |
1752 | Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>). | |
f39f21d8 | 1753 | |
61947107 JH |
1754 | But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both |
1755 | thread models. | |
f39f21d8 | 1756 | |
d1eb8299 YST |
1757 | =item * |
1758 | ||
1759 | The Gconvert macro ($Config{d_Gconvert}) used by perl for stringifying | |
1760 | floating-point numbers is now more picky about using sprintf %.*g | |
1761 | rules for the conversion. Some platforms that used to use gcvt may | |
1762 | now resort to the slower sprintf. | |
1763 | ||
11d33b1d PG |
1764 | =item * |
1765 | ||
1766 | The obsolete method of making a special (e.g., debugging) flavor | |
1767 | of perl by saying | |
1768 | ||
1769 | make LIBPERL=libperld.a | |
1770 | ||
1771 | has been removed. Use -DDEBUGGING instead. | |
1772 | ||
61947107 | 1773 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 1774 | |
61947107 | 1775 | =head2 New Or Improved Platforms |
f39f21d8 | 1776 | |
61947107 JH |
1777 | For the list of platforms known to support Perl, |
1778 | see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">. | |
1779 | ||
1780 | =over 4 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1781 | |
1782 | =item * | |
1783 | ||
61947107 | 1784 | AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported. |
f39f21d8 | 1785 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1786 | =item * |
1787 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
1788 | AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the |
1789 | long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1790 | |
1791 | =item * | |
1792 | ||
f224927c | 1793 | AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform. |
f39f21d8 | 1794 | |
77c8cf41 | 1795 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1796 | |
58175c9b JH |
1797 | BeOS has been reclaimed. |
1798 | ||
1799 | =item * | |
1800 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1801 | DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1802 | |
1803 | =item * | |
1804 | ||
77c8cf41 | 1805 | DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1806 | |
1807 | =item * | |
1808 | ||
61947107 JH |
1809 | EBCDIC platforms (z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA) |
1810 | have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the | |
1811 | co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the | |
1812 | situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>, | |
1813 | L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1814 | |
1815 | =item * | |
1816 | ||
61947107 JH |
1817 | Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under |
1818 | HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will | |
1819 | need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux. | |
f39f21d8 | 1820 | |
77c8cf41 | 1821 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1822 | |
61947107 JH |
1823 | MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since |
1824 | perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl | |
1825 | and MacPerl have been synchronised) | |
f39f21d8 | 1826 | |
77c8cf41 | 1827 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 1828 | |
61947107 JH |
1829 | MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+ |
1830 | filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.) | |
f39f21d8 | 1831 | |
888aee59 JH |
1832 | =item * |
1833 | ||
61947107 | 1834 | NCR MP-RAS is now supported. |
888aee59 JH |
1835 | |
1836 | =item * | |
1837 | ||
58175c9b JH |
1838 | All the NetBSD specific patches (except for the installation |
1839 | specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution. | |
1840 | ||
1841 | =item * | |
1842 | ||
61947107 | 1843 | NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>. |
888aee59 JH |
1844 | |
1845 | =item * | |
1846 | ||
61947107 | 1847 | NonStop-UX is now supported. |
888aee59 JH |
1848 | |
1849 | =item * | |
1850 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1851 | NEC SUPER-UX is now supported. |
1852 | ||
1853 | =item * | |
1854 | ||
58175c9b JH |
1855 | All the OpenBSD specific patches (except for the installation |
1856 | specific ones) have been merged back to the main distribution. | |
1857 | ||
1858 | =item * | |
1859 | ||
1860 | Perl has been tested with the GNU pth userlevel thread package | |
1861 | ( http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/pth.html ) . All but one thread | |
1862 | test worked, and that one failure was because of test results arriving | |
1863 | in unexpected order. | |
1864 | ||
1865 | =item * | |
1866 | ||
11d33b1d PG |
1867 | Stratus VOS is now supported using Perl's native build method |
1868 | (Configure). This is the recommended method to build Perl on | |
1869 | VOS. The older methods, which build miniperl, are still | |
1870 | available. See L<perlvos>. | |
1871 | ||
1872 | =item * | |
1873 | ||
61947107 | 1874 | Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported. |
888aee59 JH |
1875 | |
1876 | =item * | |
1877 | ||
61947107 JH |
1878 | WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>. |
1879 | ||
1880 | =item * | |
1881 | ||
1882 | z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now | |
1883 | support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default, | |
1884 | however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure. | |
888aee59 | 1885 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1886 | =back |
1887 | ||
1888 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes | |
1889 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1890 | Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been |
1891 | hunted down. Most importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite | |
1892 | a bit. | |
ba370e9b | 1893 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1894 | =over 4 |
1895 | ||
1896 | =item * | |
1897 | ||
e1f170bd | 1898 | The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1899 | |
1900 | =item * | |
1901 | ||
44da0e71 | 1902 | caller() could cause core dumps in certain situations. Carp was sometimes |
0fc9dec4 RGS |
1903 | affected by this problem. In particular, caller() now returns a |
1904 | subroutine name of C<(unknown)> for subroutines that have been removed | |
1905 | from the symbol table. | |
44da0e71 JH |
1906 | |
1907 | =item * | |
1908 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1909 | chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in |
1910 | reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1911 | |
1912 | =item * | |
1913 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1914 | Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm) |
1915 | when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x, | |
1916 | which needs them. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1917 | |
1918 | =item * | |
1919 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1920 | The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as |
1921 | "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35, | |
1922 | in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This | |
1923 | was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation | |
1924 | where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now | |
1925 | Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1926 | |
1927 | =item * | |
1928 | ||
e1f170bd | 1929 | The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1930 | |
1931 | =item * | |
1932 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1933 | Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code, |
1934 | condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks | |
44da0e71 JH |
1935 | line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output |
1936 | now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set. | |
1937 | ||
1938 | =item * | |
1939 | ||
1940 | Perl 5.6.0 could emit spurious warnings about redefinition of dl_error() | |
1941 | when statically building extensions into perl. This has been corrected. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1942 | |
1943 | =item * | |
1944 | ||
e1f170bd | 1945 | L<dprofpp> -R didn't work. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1946 | |
1947 | =item * | |
1948 | ||
e1f170bd | 1949 | C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works. |
5746cacd | 1950 | |
44da0e71 JH |
1951 | =item * |
1952 | ||
1953 | Infinity is now recognized as a number. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1954 | |
1955 | =item * | |
1956 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1957 | UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke |
1958 | the Tk extension with 5.6.0.) | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1959 | |
1960 | =item * | |
1961 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1962 | Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved |
1963 | correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they | |
1964 | were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1965 | |
1966 | =item * | |
1967 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
1968 | Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that |
1969 | were declared before the lexicals. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1970 | |
1971 | =item * | |
1972 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
1973 | Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes |
1974 | and into C<eval "...">. | |
1975 | ||
1976 | =item * | |
1977 | ||
1978 | C<use warnings qw(FATAL all)> did not work as intended. This has been | |
1979 | corrected. | |
1980 | ||
1981 | =item * | |
1982 | ||
1983 | warnings::enabled() now reports the state of $^W correctly if the caller | |
1984 | isn't using lexical warnings. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
1985 | |
1986 | =item * | |
1987 | ||
e1f170bd | 1988 | Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works. |
f39f21d8 JH |
1989 | |
1990 | =item * | |
1991 | ||
e1f170bd | 1992 | Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "". |
f39f21d8 JH |
1993 | |
1994 | =item * | |
1995 | ||
0b2c215a JH |
1996 | Localised tied variables no more leak memory |
1997 | ||
1998 | use Tie::Hash; | |
1999 | tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; | |
2000 | ||
2001 | ... | |
2002 | ||
2003 | # Used to leak memory every time local() was called, | |
2004 | # in a loop this added up. | |
2005 | local($tied_hash{Foo}) = 1; | |
2006 | ||
2007 | =item * | |
2008 | ||
159ad915 | 2009 | Localised hash elements (and %ENV) are correctly unlocalised to not to |
136430a4 | 2010 | exist, if that's what they were. |
0b2c215a JH |
2011 | |
2012 | ||
2013 | use Tie::Hash; | |
2014 | tie my %tied_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; | |
2015 | ||
2016 | ... | |
2017 | ||
2018 | # Nothing has set the FOO element so far | |
2019 | ||
2020 | { local $tied_hash{FOO} = 'Bar' } | |
818c4caa | 2021 | |
fd5a896a DM |
2022 | # This used to print, but not now. |
2023 | print "exists!\n" if exists $tied_hash{FOO}; | |
0b2c215a JH |
2024 | |
2025 | As a side effect of this fix, tied hash interfaces B<must> define | |
159ad915 | 2026 | the EXISTS and DELETE methods. |
0b2c215a JH |
2027 | |
2028 | =item * | |
2029 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2030 | mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name, |
2031 | as mandated by POSIX. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2032 | |
2033 | =item * | |
2034 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2035 | Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds |
2036 | with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness | |
2037 | and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have | |
2038 | fixed the modfl() bug. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2039 | |
2040 | =item * | |
2041 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2042 | Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to |
2043 | return 27406, instead of 27047). | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2044 | |
2045 | =item * | |
2046 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2047 | Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be |
2048 | more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number. | |
f39f21d8 | 2049 | |
77c8cf41 | 2050 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2051 | |
44da0e71 JH |
2052 | Numeric conversions did not recognize changes in the string value |
2053 | properly in certain circumstances. | |
2054 | ||
2055 | =item * | |
2056 | ||
e1f170bd | 2057 | Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our(). |
f39f21d8 JH |
2058 | |
2059 | =item * | |
2060 | ||
e1f170bd | 2061 | our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2062 | |
2063 | =item * | |
2064 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2065 | "our" variables of the same name declared in two sibling blocks |
2066 | resulted in bogus warnings about "redeclaration" of the variables. | |
2067 | The problem has been corrected. | |
2068 | ||
2069 | =item * | |
2070 | ||
e1f170bd | 2071 | pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0". |
f39f21d8 JH |
2072 | |
2073 | =item * | |
2074 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2075 | Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms |
2076 | (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry. | |
f39f21d8 | 2077 | |
77c8cf41 | 2078 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2079 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2080 | The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments |
2081 | to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options. | |
f39f21d8 | 2082 | |
77c8cf41 | 2083 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2084 | |
e1f170bd | 2085 | PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work. |
f39f21d8 | 2086 | |
77c8cf41 | 2087 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2088 | |
e1f170bd | 2089 | printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C". |
f39f21d8 | 2090 | |
77c8cf41 | 2091 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2092 | |
44da0e71 JH |
2093 | C<qw(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>. |
2094 | ||
2095 | =item * | |
2096 | ||
2097 | pos() did not return the correct value within s///ge in earlier | |
2098 | versions. This is now handled correctly. | |
f39f21d8 | 2099 | |
77c8cf41 | 2100 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2101 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2102 | Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works |
2103 | without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform). | |
f39f21d8 | 2104 | |
77c8cf41 | 2105 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2106 | |
e1f170bd | 2107 | Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work. |
f39f21d8 | 2108 | |
ba370e9b JH |
2109 | =item * |
2110 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2111 | Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string |
2112 | concatenation be invoked too many times. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2113 | |
2114 | =item * | |
2115 | ||
e1f170bd | 2116 | scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context. |
ba370e9b JH |
2117 | |
2118 | =item * | |
2119 | ||
e1f170bd | 2120 | SOCKS support is now much more robust. |
ba370e9b JH |
2121 | |
2122 | =item * | |
2123 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2124 | sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context |
2125 | (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself). | |
44da0e71 JH |
2126 | The comparison block is now run in scalar context, and the arguments |
2127 | to be sorted are always provided list context. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2128 | |
2129 | =item * | |
2130 | ||
e1f170bd | 2131 | Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very |
c2e23569 JH |
2132 | rarely used) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character |
2133 | class C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace | |
2134 | (currently, the space and the tab). | |
ba370e9b JH |
2135 | |
2136 | =item * | |
2137 | ||
2138 | The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does | |
2139 | not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the | |
2140 | behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation. | |
2141 | ||
2142 | =item * | |
2143 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2144 | Some cases of inconsistent taint propagation (such as within hash |
2145 | values) have been fixed. | |
2146 | ||
2147 | =item * | |
2148 | ||
2149 | The RE engine found in Perl 5.6.0 accidentally pessimised certain kinds | |
2150 | of simple pattern matches. These are now handled better. | |
2151 | ||
2152 | =item * | |
2153 | ||
2154 | Regular expression debug output (whether through C<use re 'debug'> | |
2155 | or via C<-Dr>) now looks better. | |
2156 | ||
2157 | =item * | |
2158 | ||
2159 | Multi-line matches like C<"a\nxb\n" =~ /(?!\A)x/m> were flawed. The | |
2160 | bug has been fixed. | |
2161 | ||
2162 | =item * | |
2163 | ||
2164 | Use of $& could trigger a core dump under some situations. This | |
2165 | is now avoided. | |
2166 | ||
2167 | =item * | |
2168 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
2169 | The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now |
2170 | more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false | |
2171 | data lying around in them. | |
2172 | ||
2173 | =item * | |
2174 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2175 | readline() on files opened in "slurp" mode could return an extra "" at |
2176 | the end in certain situations. This has been corrected. | |
2177 | ||
2178 | =item * | |
2179 | ||
2180 | Autovivification of symbolic references of special variables described | |
2181 | in L<perlvar> (as in C<${$num}>) was accidentally disabled. This works | |
2182 | again now. | |
2183 | ||
2184 | =item * | |
2185 | ||
da6838c8 | 2186 | Sys::Syslog ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant. |
ba370e9b JH |
2187 | |
2188 | =item * | |
2189 | ||
e1f170bd | 2190 | All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional. |
ba370e9b JH |
2191 | |
2192 | =item * | |
2193 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2194 | $AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses |
2195 | in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2196 | |
2197 | =item * | |
2198 | ||
e1f170bd | 2199 | Tie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken. |
ba370e9b JH |
2200 | |
2201 | =item * | |
2202 | ||
e1f170bd | 2203 | Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///. |
ba370e9b JH |
2204 | |
2205 | =item * | |
2206 | ||
ed788108 AT |
2207 | If C<STDERR> is tied, warnings caused by C<warn> and C<die> now |
2208 | correctly pass to it. | |
2209 | ||
2210 | =item * | |
2211 | ||
e1f170bd | 2212 | Several Unicode fixes. |
ba370e9b JH |
2213 | |
2214 | =over 8 | |
2215 | ||
2216 | =item * | |
2217 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2218 | BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files |
2219 | (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped. | |
2220 | UTF-16 (UCS-2) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2221 | |
2222 | =item * | |
2223 | ||
26f08e12 | 2224 | The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.2.0. |
ba370e9b JH |
2225 | |
2226 | =item * | |
2227 | ||
e1f170bd | 2228 | Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data |
58175c9b JH |
2229 | into utf8. (This was a problem for example if you were mixing data |
2230 | from I/O and Unicode data: your output might have got magically encoded | |
2231 | as UTF-8.) | |
2232 | ||
2233 | =item * | |
2234 | ||
2235 | Generating illegal Unicode code points like U+FFFE, or the UTF-16 | |
2236 | surrogates, now also generates an optional warning. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2237 | |
2238 | =item * | |
2239 | ||
e1f170bd | 2240 | C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase. |
f39f21d8 | 2241 | |
77c8cf41 | 2242 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2243 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2244 | Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation, |
2245 | C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator, | |
2246 | substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work. | |
f39f21d8 | 2247 | |
77c8cf41 | 2248 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2249 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2250 | The C<tr///> operator now works. Note that the C<tr///CU> |
2251 | functionality has been removed (but see pack('U0', ...)). | |
f39f21d8 | 2252 | |
77c8cf41 | 2253 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2254 | |
e1f170bd | 2255 | C<eval "v200"> now works. |
f39f21d8 | 2256 | |
77c8cf41 | 2257 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2258 | |
44da0e71 JH |
2259 | Perl 5.6.0 parsed m/\x{ab}/ incorrectly, leading to spurious warnings. |
2260 | This has been corrected. | |
2261 | ||
2262 | =item * | |
2263 | ||
e1f170bd | 2264 | Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>. |
f39f21d8 | 2265 | |
e1f170bd | 2266 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 2267 | |
44da0e71 JH |
2268 | =item * |
2269 | ||
2270 | Large unsigned numbers (those above 2**31) could sometimes lose their | |
2271 | unsignedness, causing bogus results in arithmetic operations. | |
2272 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2273 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 2274 | |
77c8cf41 | 2275 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes |
f39f21d8 JH |
2276 | |
2277 | =over 4 | |
2278 | ||
2279 | =item * | |
2280 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2281 | BSDI 4.* |
f39f21d8 | 2282 | |
77c8cf41 | 2283 | Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2284 | |
2285 | =item * | |
2286 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2287 | All BSDs |
f39f21d8 | 2288 | |
057b7f2b | 2289 | Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see L<perlvar> for details). |
f39f21d8 JH |
2290 | |
2291 | =item * | |
2292 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2293 | Cygwin |
f39f21d8 | 2294 | |
439f2f5c | 2295 | Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.3.10. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2296 | |
2297 | =item * | |
2298 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2299 | Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O. |
2300 | ||
2301 | =item * | |
2302 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2303 | EPOC |
f39f21d8 | 2304 | |
77c8cf41 | 2305 | EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2306 | |
2307 | =item * | |
2308 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2309 | FreeBSD 3.* |
f39f21d8 | 2310 | |
77c8cf41 | 2311 | Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2312 | |
2313 | =item * | |
2314 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2315 | HP-UX |
2316 | ||
8cbf54fa JH |
2317 | README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works; |
2318 | now uses HP-UX malloc instead of Perl malloc. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2319 | |
2320 | =item * | |
2321 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2322 | IRIX |
f39f21d8 | 2323 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2324 | Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing |
2325 | of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder. | |
f39f21d8 | 2326 | |
77c8cf41 | 2327 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2328 | |
77c8cf41 | 2329 | Linux |
f39f21d8 | 2330 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2331 | =over 8 |
2332 | ||
2333 | =item * | |
2334 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2335 | Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL). |
f39f21d8 JH |
2336 | |
2337 | =item * | |
2338 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2339 | Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using |
2340 | accept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname(). | |
2341 | ||
2342 | =back | |
2343 | ||
2344 | =item * | |
2345 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2346 | MacOS Classic |
f39f21d8 | 2347 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2348 | Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should |
2349 | now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and | |
2350 | the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing | |
2351 | list for details. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2352 | |
2353 | =item * | |
2354 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2355 | MPE/iX |
f39f21d8 | 2356 | |
77c8cf41 | 2357 | MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2358 | |
2359 | =item * | |
2360 | ||
27cc4b77 JH |
2361 | NetBSD/threads: try installing the GNU pth (should be in the |
2362 | packages collection, or http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/), | |
2363 | and Configure with -Duseithreads. | |
2364 | ||
2365 | =item * | |
2366 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2367 | NetBSD/sparc |
f39f21d8 | 2368 | |
77c8cf41 | 2369 | Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2370 | |
2371 | =item * | |
2372 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2373 | OS/2 |
f39f21d8 | 2374 | |
77c8cf41 | 2375 | Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL). |
f39f21d8 JH |
2376 | |
2377 | =item * | |
2378 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2379 | Solaris |
f39f21d8 | 2380 | |
77c8cf41 | 2381 | 64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2382 | |
2383 | =item * | |
2384 | ||
11d33b1d PG |
2385 | Stratus VOS |
2386 | ||
2387 | The native build method requires at least VOS Release 14.5.0 | |
2388 | and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1 or later. The Perl pack function | |
2389 | now maps overflowed values to +infinity and underflowed values | |
2390 | to -infinity. | |
2391 | ||
2392 | =item * | |
2393 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2394 | Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1) |
f39f21d8 | 2395 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2396 | The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}. |
2397 | Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling | |
2398 | with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with | |
2399 | gcc 2.95.2. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2400 | |
2401 | =item * | |
2402 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2403 | Unicos |
2404 | ||
2405 | Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either | |
2406 | during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime; | |
2407 | now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using | |
2408 | only 46 bit integers for speed. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2409 | |
2410 | =item * | |
2411 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2412 | VMS |
2413 | ||
2414 | chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY | |
2415 | (see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc. | |
f39f21d8 | 2416 | |
00bb525a CB |
2417 | The tainting of C<%ENV> elements via C<keys> or C<values> was previously |
2418 | unimplemented. It now works as documented. | |
2419 | ||
2420 | The C<waitpid> emulation has been improved. The worst bug (now fixed) | |
2421 | was that a pid of -1 would cause a wildcard search of all processes on | |
2d9f3838 | 2422 | the system. |
00bb525a CB |
2423 | |
2424 | POSIX-style signals are now emulated much better on VMS versions prior | |
2425 | to 7.0. | |
2426 | ||
2427 | The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved | |
2428 | functionality and better error handling. | |
2429 | ||
161720b2 CB |
2430 | File access tests now use current process privileges rather than the |
2431 | user's default privileges, which could sometimes result in a mismatch | |
2432 | between reported access and actual access. | |
2433 | ||
2d9f3838 CB |
2434 | There is a new C<kill> implementation based on C<sys$sigprc> that allows |
2435 | older VMS systems (pre-7.0) to use C<kill> to send signals rather than | |
2436 | simply force exit. This implementation also allows later systems to | |
2437 | call C<kill> from within a signal handler. | |
2438 | ||
2439 | Iterative logical name translations are now limited to 10 iterations in | |
2440 | imitation of SHOW LOGICAL and other OpenVMS facilities. | |
2441 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2442 | =item * |
2443 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2444 | Windows |
f39f21d8 | 2445 | |
77c8cf41 | 2446 | =over 8 |
f39f21d8 JH |
2447 | |
2448 | =item * | |
2449 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2450 | accept() no longer leaks memory. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2451 | |
2452 | =item * | |
2453 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2454 | Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl. |
2455 | However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those | |
2456 | generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++). | |
2457 | ||
2458 | =item * | |
2459 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2460 | Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory. |
f39f21d8 | 2461 | |
77c8cf41 | 2462 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2463 | |
e1f170bd JH |
2464 | Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x. |
2465 | ||
2466 | =item * | |
2467 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2468 | New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2469 | |
2470 | =item * | |
2471 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2472 | Current directory entries in %ENV are now correctly propagated to child |
2473 | processes. | |
2474 | ||
2475 | =item * | |
2476 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2477 | $ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C. |
2478 | ||
2479 | =item * | |
2480 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2481 | fork() emulation has been improved in various ways, but still continues |
2482 | to be experimental. See L<perlfork> for known bugs and caveats. | |
e1f170bd JH |
2483 | |
2484 | =item * | |
2485 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2486 | A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2487 | |
2488 | =item * | |
2489 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2490 | Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root. |
2491 | Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed. | |
2492 | ||
2493 | =item * | |
2494 | ||
e1f170bd JH |
2495 | HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html |
2496 | ||
2497 | =item * | |
2498 | ||
2499 | The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features | |
2500 | enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution). | |
2501 | ||
2502 | =item * | |
2503 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2504 | Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2505 | |
2506 | =item * | |
2507 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2508 | Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2509 | |
2510 | =item * | |
2511 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2512 | Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2513 | |
2514 | =item * | |
2515 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2516 | %SIG has been enabled under USE_ITHREADS, but its use is completely |
2517 | unsupported under all configurations. | |
2518 | ||
2519 | =item * | |
2520 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2521 | Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run |
2522 | concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.) | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2523 | |
2524 | =item * | |
2525 | ||
8cbf54fa | 2526 | C<< File::Spec->tmpdir() >> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp |
77c8cf41 | 2527 | (works better when perl is running as service). |
f39f21d8 JH |
2528 | |
2529 | =item * | |
2530 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2531 | Better UNC path handling under ithreads. |
f39f21d8 JH |
2532 | |
2533 | =item * | |
2534 | ||
44da0e71 JH |
2535 | wait(), waitpid() and backticks now return the correct exit status under |
2536 | Windows 9x. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2537 | |
2538 | =item * | |
2539 | ||
fa1a788e JH |
2540 | Win64 compilation is now supported. |
2541 | ||
2542 | =item * | |
2543 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2544 | winsock handle leak fixed. |
f39f21d8 | 2545 | |
d1eb8299 YST |
2546 | =item * |
2547 | ||
2548 | The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and | |
2549 | Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been | |
2550 | fixed. | |
2551 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2552 | =back |
2553 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2554 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 2555 | |
77c8cf41 | 2556 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
f39f21d8 | 2557 | |
ba370e9b JH |
2558 | =over 4 |
2559 | ||
2560 | =item * | |
2561 | ||
12bcd1a6 PM |
2562 | The lexical warnings category "deprecated" is no longer a sub-category |
2563 | of the "syntax" category. It is now a top-level category in its own | |
2564 | right. | |
2565 | ||
2566 | =item * | |
2567 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2568 | All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully |
2569 | easier to understand both because the error message now comes before | |
2570 | the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly | |
ba370e9b JH |
2571 | marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker. |
2572 | ||
2573 | =item * | |
f39f21d8 | 2574 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2575 | The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings |
2576 | drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package, | |
bea4d472 | 2577 | for example C<STDIN> instead of C<main::STDIN>. |
f39f21d8 | 2578 | |
ba370e9b JH |
2579 | =item * |
2580 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2581 | The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>, |
2582 | C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters. | |
f39f21d8 | 2583 | |
ba370e9b | 2584 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2585 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2586 | Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your |
2587 | Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace | |
2588 | tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables, | |
2589 | respectively. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2590 | |
2591 | =item * | |
2592 | ||
2bcb0b45 JH |
2593 | The debugger (perl5db.pl) has been modified to present a more |
2594 | consistent commands interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was | |
2595 | also added to test the changes, and as a placeholder for further tests. | |
492652be | 2596 | |
2bcb0b45 | 2597 | See L<perldebug>. |
492652be RF |
2598 | |
2599 | =item * | |
2600 | ||
9000bd02 MJD |
2601 | The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum |
2602 | depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has | |
2603 | been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a | |
2604 | depth of at most I<N> levels. | |
2605 | ||
2606 | =item * | |
2607 | ||
2bcb0b45 JH |
2608 | The debugger can now show lexical variables if you have the CPAN |
2609 | module PadWalker installed. | |
2610 | ||
2611 | =item * | |
2612 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2613 | If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index |
2614 | is made, a warning is given. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2615 | |
2616 | =item * | |
2617 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2618 | C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift) |
6e6372ba | 2619 | now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled |
77c8cf41 | 2620 | code. |
f39f21d8 | 2621 | |
ba370e9b JH |
2622 | =item * |
2623 | ||
2624 | If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255 | |
2625 | using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly | |
2626 | for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127. | |
2627 | ||
2628 | =item * | |
2629 | ||
2630 | Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to | |
0d4213c3 MJD |
2631 | the entire regex. You will get an optional warning if you try to do |
2632 | otherwise. | |
ba370e9b JH |
2633 | |
2634 | =item * | |
2635 | ||
0d4213c3 | 2636 | Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >> |
c2e23569 | 2637 | has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning. |
ba370e9b | 2638 | |
608dbdb1 RGS |
2639 | =item * |
2640 | ||
2641 | Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning. | |
2642 | This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed. | |
2643 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2644 | =back |
2645 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2646 | =head1 Changed Internals |
f39f21d8 JH |
2647 | |
2648 | =over 4 | |
2649 | ||
2650 | =item * | |
2651 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2652 | perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the |
2653 | internal API. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2654 | |
2655 | =item * | |
2656 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2657 | You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl. |
2658 | Building microperl does not require even running Configure; | |
2659 | C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes | |
2660 | many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting | |
2661 | executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. | |
2662 | For careful hackers only. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2663 | |
2664 | =item * | |
2665 | ||
c2e23569 JH |
2666 | Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join(), op_clear, op_null, |
2667 | ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv(), and several UTF-8 | |
2668 | interfaces to the publicised API. For the full list of the available | |
2669 | APIs see L<perlapi>. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2670 | |
2671 | =item * | |
2672 | ||
77c8cf41 | 2673 | Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing. |
f39f21d8 | 2674 | |
77c8cf41 | 2675 | =item * |
f39f21d8 | 2676 | |
95f0a2f1 SB |
2677 | Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs. (Well, at least the |
2678 | built-in attributes.) | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2679 | |
2680 | =item * | |
2681 | ||
77c8cf41 JH |
2682 | dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's |
2683 | a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP. | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2684 | |
2685 | =item * | |
2686 | ||
61947107 JH |
2687 | PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed. |
2688 | ||
2689 | =item * | |
2690 | ||
ba370e9b JH |
2691 | The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied |
2692 | (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability | |
2693 | and maintainability. | |
2694 | ||
2695 | =item * | |
2696 | ||
2697 | The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in | |
2698 | the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the | |
2699 | original regex expression. The information is attached to the new | |
2700 | C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more | |
2701 | complete information. | |
2702 | ||
2703 | =item * | |
2704 | ||
2705 | The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning | |
2706 | messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with | |
2707 | gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings | |
2708 | are being worked on. | |
2709 | ||
2710 | =item * | |
2711 | ||
2712 | F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented. | |
2713 | ||
2714 | =item * | |
2715 | ||
61947107 JH |
2716 | Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added |
2717 | to F<Porting/repository.pod>. | |
f39f21d8 | 2718 | |
888aee59 JH |
2719 | =item * |
2720 | ||
c2e23569 | 2721 | There are now several profiling make targets. |
888aee59 | 2722 | |
77c8cf41 | 2723 | =back |
f39f21d8 | 2724 | |
77c8cf41 | 2725 | =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed |
f39f21d8 | 2726 | |
77c8cf41 | 2727 | (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.) |
f39f21d8 | 2728 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2729 | A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component |
2730 | of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor | |
2731 | installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable | |
2732 | platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and | |
2733 | various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability. | |
2734 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt | |
2735 | for more information. | |
f39f21d8 | 2736 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2737 | The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security |
2738 | exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux | |
2739 | platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which | |
2740 | when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in | |
2741 | a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you | |
2742 | don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if | |
2743 | suidperl is not installed, you are safe. | |
f39f21d8 | 2744 | |
77c8cf41 JH |
2745 | The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from |
2746 | Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also | |
2747 | from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability | |
2748 | isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are, | |
ba370e9b JH |
2749 | unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most |
2750 | probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl | |
2751 | should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are | |
2752 | doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution | |
1577cd80 | 2753 | such as sudo ( see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ ). |
77c8cf41 JH |
2754 | |
2755 | =head1 New Tests | |
2756 | ||
5fb8b090 JH |
2757 | Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> and F<ext> |
2758 | subsections. There are now about 65 000 individual tests (spread over | |
2759 | about 700 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about | |
2760 | 11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are of course | |
2761 | introduced by the new modules, but still in general Perl is now more | |
2762 | thoroughly tested. | |
76663d67 JH |
2763 | |
2764 | Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite | |
2765 | will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite | |
2766 | to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. In a really | |
d1eb8299 | 2767 | fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 6-8 minutes |
76663d67 | 2768 | (wallclock time). |
77c8cf41 JH |
2769 | |
2770 | The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls. | |
2771 | (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved | |
2772 | to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.) | |
2773 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2774 | =head1 Known Problems |
2775 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2776 | =head2 AIX |
2777 | ||
2778 | =over 4 | |
2779 | ||
2780 | =item * | |
2781 | ||
2782 | In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics | |
2783 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. | |
2784 | In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with | |
2785 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library | |
2786 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time | |
2787 | (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and | |
2788 | therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. | |
2789 | ||
2790 | =item * | |
2791 | ||
2792 | vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl | |
2793 | ||
2794 | The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code, | |
2795 | resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests | |
2796 | are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least | |
2797 | vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly. | |
439f2f5c | 2798 | "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. See README.aix. |
f39f21d8 | 2799 | |
0ea5284e JH |
2800 | =item * |
2801 | ||
2802 | If building threaded Perl, you may get compilation warning from pp_sys.c: | |
2803 | ||
2804 | "pp_sys.c", line 4651.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed. | |
2805 | ||
2806 | This is harmless; it is caused by the getnetbyaddr() and getnetbyaddr_r() | |
2807 | having slightly different types for their first argument. | |
2808 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2809 | =back |
2810 | ||
8de75127 JH |
2811 | =head2 Alpha systems with old gccs fail several tests |
2812 | ||
2813 | If you see op/pack, op/pat, op/regexp, or ext/Storable tests failing | |
2814 | in a Linux/alpha or *BSD/Alpha, it's probably time to upgrade your gcc. | |
2815 | gccs prior to 2.95.3 are definitely not good enough, and gcc 3.1 may | |
27940aee JH |
2816 | be even better. (RedHat Linux/alpha with gcc 3.1 reported no problems, |
2817 | as did Linux 2.4.18 with gcc 2.95.4.) (In Tru64, it is preferable to | |
2818 | use the bundled C compiler.) | |
8de75127 | 2819 | |
d4432bb5 JH |
2820 | =head2 AmigaOS |
2821 | ||
2822 | Perl 5.8.0 doesn't build in AmigaOS. It broke at some point | |
2823 | during the ithreads work and we could not find Amiga experts | |
2824 | to unbreak the problems. | |
2825 | ||
8c1bea16 JH |
2826 | =head2 BeOS |
2827 | ||
2828 | The following tests fail on 5.8.0 Perl in BeOS Personal 5.03: | |
2829 | ||
2830 | t/op/lfs............................FAILED at test 17 | |
2831 | t/op/magic..........................FAILED at test 24 | |
8c1bea16 JH |
2832 | ext/POSIX/t/sigaction...............FAILED at test 13 |
2833 | ext/POSIX/t/waitpid.................FAILED at test 1 | |
8c1bea16 JH |
2834 | |
2835 | See L<perlbeos> (README.beos) for more details. | |
2836 | ||
d4432bb5 JH |
2837 | =head2 Cygwin "unable to remap" |
2838 | ||
2839 | For example when building the Tk extension for Cygwin, | |
2840 | you may get an error message saying "unable to remap". | |
2841 | This is known problem with Cygwin, and a workaround is | |
2842 | detailed in here: http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-12/msg00894.html | |
2843 | ||
bdcfa4c7 JH |
2844 | =head2 ext/threads/t/libc |
2845 | ||
2846 | If this test fails, it indicates that your libc (C library) is not | |
2847 | threadsafe. This particular test stress tests the localtime() call to | |
2848 | find out whether it is threadsafe. See L<perlthrtut> for more information. | |
2849 | ||
9ffc0d0c JH |
2850 | =head2 FreeBSD Failing locale Test 117 For ISO8859-15 Locales |
2851 | ||
2852 | The ISO8859-15 locales may fail the locale test 117 in FreeBSD. | |
2853 | This is caused by the characters \xFF (y with diaeresis) and \xBE | |
2854 | (Y with diaeresis) not behaving correctly when being matched | |
2855 | case-insensitively. | |
2856 | ||
be61827f JH |
2857 | =head2 Modifying $_ Inside for(..) |
2858 | ||
2859 | for (1..5) { $_++ } | |
2860 | ||
2861 | works without complaint. It shouldn't. (You should be able to | |
2862 | modify only lvalue elements inside the loops.) You can see the | |
2863 | correct behaviour by replacing the 1..5 with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. | |
2864 | ||
696235b6 JH |
2865 | =head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl |
2866 | ||
2867 | Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher. | |
a08f42e9 | 2868 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2869 | =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure' |
2870 | ||
2871 | Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead. | |
2872 | ||
be61827f | 2873 | =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured |
f39f21d8 JH |
2874 | |
2875 | If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the | |
2876 | subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the | |
2877 | subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the | |
2878 | subtest 9 failed. | |
2879 | ||
a95a6141 JH |
2880 | =head2 Linux with glibc 2.2.5 fails t/op/int subtest #6 with -Duse64bitint |
2881 | ||
2882 | This is a known bug in the glibc 2.2.5 with long long integers. | |
2883 | ( http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=65612 ) | |
2884 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
2885 | =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48 |
2886 | ||
2887 | No known fix. | |
2888 | ||
83943eac JH |
2889 | =head2 libwww-perl (LWP) fails base/date #51 |
2890 | ||
2891 | Use libwww-perl 5.65 or later. | |
2892 | ||
a0aae13b JH |
2893 | =head2 Mac OS X |
2894 | ||
6aaad45d JH |
2895 | Please remember to set your environment variable LC_ALL to "C" |
2896 | (setenv LC_ALL C) before running "make test" to avoid a lot of | |
2897 | warnings about the broken locales of Mac OS X. | |
2898 | ||
a0aae13b JH |
2899 | The following tests are known to fail: |
2900 | ||
2901 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed | |
2902 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
2903 | ../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ?? | |
2904 | ../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65 | |
a0aae13b | 2905 | |
3f1f789b | 2906 | If you are building on a UFS partition, you will also probably see |
f5dcdc4e JH |
2907 | t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not |
2908 | supporting inode change time. | |
3f1f789b | 2909 | |
7830a95b JH |
2910 | Also the ext/POSIX/t/posix.t subtest #10 fails but it is skipped for |
2911 | now because the failure is Apple's fault, not Perl's (blocked signals | |
2912 | are lost). | |
2913 | ||
2914 | If you Configure with ithreads, ext/threads/t/libc.t will fail, again | |
2915 | not Perl's fault-- the libc of Mac OS X is not threadsafe (in this | |
2916 | particular test the localtime() call is found to be threadunsafe.) | |
2917 | ||
7fc79a86 | 2918 | =head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 |
f39f21d8 | 2919 | |
7fc79a86 JH |
2920 | The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms. |
2921 | Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX. | |
f39f21d8 | 2922 | |
7fc79a86 JH |
2923 | The test 91 is known to fail at QNX6 (nto), because C<sprintf '%e',0> |
2924 | incorrectly produces C<0.000000e+0> instead of C<0.000000e+00>. | |
f39f21d8 | 2925 | |
7fc79a86 JH |
2926 | For the tests 129 and 130 the failing platforms do not comply with |
2927 | the ANSI C Standard, line 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to | |
2928 | be exact. (They produce something other than "1" and "-1" when | |
2929 | formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using the printf format "%.0f", most often | |
2930 | they produce "0" and "-0".) | |
f39f21d8 | 2931 | |
0646842f JH |
2932 | =head2 Solaris 2.5 |
2933 | ||
2934 | In case you are still using Solaris 2.5 (aka SunOS 5.5), you may | |
2935 | experience failures (the test core dumping) in lib/locale.t. | |
2936 | The suggested cure is to upgrade your Solaris. | |
2937 | ||
11d33b1d PG |
2938 | =head2 Stratus VOS |
2939 | ||
2940 | When Perl is built using the native build process on VOS Release | |
2941 | 14.5.0 and GNU C++/GNU Tools 2.0.1, all attempted tests either | |
2942 | pass or result in TODO (ignored) failures. | |
2943 | ||
8cbf54fa | 2944 | =head2 Term::ReadKey not working on Win32 |
19d05054 JH |
2945 | |
2946 | Use Term::ReadKey 2.20 or later. | |
2947 | ||
7fc79a86 | 2948 | =head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests |
f39f21d8 | 2949 | |
6ba475fe JH |
2950 | B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading is deprecated, |
2951 | experimental and practically unsupported. In 5.10 it is expected | |
2952 | to be removed.> | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2953 | |
2954 | The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in | |
2955 | the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl | |
2956 | 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests. | |
2957 | ||
6123004a JH |
2958 | ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7 |
2959 | ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3 | |
2960 | ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3 | |
2961 | ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_onl 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5 | |
2962 | ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4 | |
2963 | op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15 | |
fedd8cf1 | 2964 | |
9972c7af JH |
2965 | These failures are unlikely to get fixed as the 5.005-style threads |
2966 | are considered fundamentally broken. (Basically what happens is that | |
2967 | competing threads can corrupt shared global state.) | |
f39f21d8 JH |
2968 | |
2969 | =head2 UNICOS | |
2970 | ||
d334a774 JH |
2971 | ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25 |
2972 | ../lib/warnings.t 470 1 0.21% 429 | |
f39f21d8 | 2973 | |
8939dedc JH |
2974 | The Trig.t failure is caused by the slighly differing (from IEEE) |
2975 | floating point implementation of UNICOS. The warnings.t failure is | |
2976 | also related: the test assumes a certain floating point output format, | |
2977 | this assumption fails in UNICOS. | |
9972c7af | 2978 | |
cb3f5972 JH |
2979 | =head2 UNICOS/mk |
2980 | ||
3d7e8424 JH |
2981 | =over 4 |
2982 | ||
2983 | =item * | |
2984 | ||
cb3f5972 JH |
2985 | During Configure the test |
2986 | ||
2987 | Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define... | |
2988 | ||
2989 | will probably fail with error messages like | |
2990 | ||
2991 | CC-20 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3 | |
2992 | The identifier "bad" is undefined. | |
2993 | ||
2994 | bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79#ifdef A29K | |
2995 | ^ | |
2996 | ||
2997 | CC-65 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3 | |
2998 | A semicolon is expected at this point. | |
2999 | ||
3000 | This is caused by a bug in awk utility of UNICOS/mk. You can ignore | |
3001 | the error, but it does cause a slight problem: you cannot fully | |
3002 | benefit from the h2ph utility (see L<h2ph>) that can be used to | |
3003 | convert C headers to Perl libraries, mainly used to be able to access | |
3004 | from Perl the constants defined using C preprocessor, cpp. Because of | |
3005 | the above error parts of the converted headers will be invisible. | |
3006 | Luckily, these days the need for h2ph is rare. | |
3007 | ||
3d7e8424 JH |
3008 | =item * |
3009 | ||
3010 | If building Perl with the interpreter threads (ithreads), the | |
3011 | getgrent(), getgrnam(), and getgrgid() functions cannot return the | |
3012 | list of the group members due to a bug in the multithreaded support of | |
3013 | UNICOS/mk. What this means that in list context the functions will | |
3014 | return only three values, not four. | |
3015 | ||
3016 | =back | |
3017 | ||
f39f21d8 JH |
3018 | =head2 UTS |
3019 | ||
3020 | There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>. | |
3021 | ||
3022 | =head2 VMS | |
3023 | ||
161720b2 CB |
3024 | There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration, |
3025 | though there are a number of tests marked TODO that point to areas | |
3026 | needing further debugging and/or porting work. | |
7207e29d | 3027 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
3028 | =head2 Win32 |
3029 | ||
3030 | In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering: | |
cd34865e | 3031 | some output may appear twice. |
f39f21d8 | 3032 | |
d34c32a4 JH |
3033 | =head2 XML::Parser not working |
3034 | ||
3035 | Use XML::Parser 2.31 or later. | |
3036 | ||
7fc79a86 JH |
3037 | =head2 z/OS (OS/390) |
3038 | ||
3039 | z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually | |
3040 | better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and | |
3041 | tests have been added. | |
3042 | ||
dad95037 | 3043 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
c151f1b7 JH |
3044 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
3045 | ../ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.t 357 8 2.24% 311 314 325 327 | |
84fad863 | 3046 | 331 333 337 339 |
7fc79a86 | 3047 | ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5 |
e363f566 | 3048 | ../ext/Storable/t/downgrade.t 12 3072 169 12 7.10% 14-15 46-47 78-79 |
60d6f83c | 3049 | 110-111 150 161 |
84fad863 | 3050 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant.t 121 30976 48 48 100.00% 1-48 |
7fc79a86 | 3051 | ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9 |
e363f566 JH |
3052 | op/pat.t 910 7 0.77% 665 776 785 832- |
3053 | 834 845 | |
7fc79a86 JH |
3054 | op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136 |
3055 | op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74 | |
dcdcee7d JH |
3056 | uni/fold.t 780 6 0.77% 61 169 196 661 |
3057 | 710-711 | |
7fc79a86 | 3058 | |
9972c7af JH |
3059 | The dumper.t and downgrade.t are problems in the tests, the io_unix |
3060 | and sprintf are problems in the USS (UDP sockets and printf formats). | |
3061 | The pat, tr, and fold are genuine Perl problems caused by EBCDIC (and | |
3062 | in the pat and fold cases, combining that with Unicode). The Constant | |
3063 | and Embed are probably problems in the tests (since they test Perl's | |
3064 | ability to build extensions, and that seems to be working reasonably well.) | |
3065 | ||
aecce728 JH |
3066 | =head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken |
3067 | ||
3068 | local %tied_array; | |
3069 | ||
8602d933 JH |
3070 | doesn't work as one would expect: the old value is restored |
3071 | incorrectly. This will be changed in a future release, but we don't | |
3072 | know yet which the new semantics will exactly be. In any case the | |
3073 | change will break existing code that relies on the current | |
3074 | (ill-defined) semantics, so just avoid doing this in general. | |
aecce728 | 3075 | |
9903068f | 3076 | =head2 Self-tying Problems |
f39f21d8 JH |
3077 | |
3078 | Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and | |
3079 | hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting | |
3080 | frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is | |
3081 | for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt). | |
3082 | ||
bd301675 YST |
3083 | A change to self-tying of globs has caused them to be recursively |
3084 | referenced (see: L<perlobj/"Two-Phased Garbage Collection">). You | |
3085 | will now need an explicit untie to destroy a self-tied glob. This | |
3086 | behaviour may be fixed at a later date. | |
9903068f | 3087 | |
bd301675 | 3088 | Self-tying of scalars and IO thingies works. |
9903068f | 3089 | |
f39f21d8 JH |
3090 | =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles |
3091 | ||
3092 | Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with | |
3093 | `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets | |
3094 | default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile | |
3095 | at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good | |
3096 | solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate | |
3097 | non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config | |
3098 | hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are | |
3099 | having problems can try configuring themselves without the | |
3100 | largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the | |
3101 | solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether | |
3102 | one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at | |
3103 | all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is | |
3104 | platform-dependent. | |
3105 | ||
aecce728 JH |
3106 | =head2 Unicode Support on EBCDIC Still Spotty |
3107 | ||
3108 | Though mostly working, Unicode support still has problem spots on | |
3109 | EBCDIC platforms. One such known spot are the C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> | |
3110 | regular expression constructs for code points less than 256: the | |
c5af7db2 | 3111 | C<pP> are testing for Unicode code points, not knowing about EBCDIC. |
aecce728 | 3112 | |
c5af7db2 | 3113 | =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Very Experimental |
f39f21d8 | 3114 | |
44da0e71 JH |
3115 | The compiler suite is slowly getting better but it continues to be |
3116 | highly experimental. Use in production environments is discouraged. | |
f39f21d8 | 3117 | |
c4f1ce08 | 3118 | =head2 The Long Double Support Is Still Experimental |
f39f21d8 JH |
3119 | |
3120 | The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles", | |
3121 | floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still | |
3122 | experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet | |
3123 | widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature | |
3124 | or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare | |
3125 | and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset | |
3126 | by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the | |
3127 | operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised | |
3128 | libraries). | |
33a87e58 | 3129 | |
c4f1ce08 JH |
3130 | =head2 Seen In Perl 5.7 But Gone Now |
3131 | ||
c4f1ce08 JH |
3132 | C<Time::Piece> (previously known as C<Time::Object>) was removed |
3133 | because it was felt that it didn't have enough value in it to be a | |
3134 | core module. It is still a useful module, though, and is available | |
3135 | from the CPAN. | |
3136 | ||
e5f9105d | 3137 | Perl 5.8 unfortunately does not build anymore on AmigaOS, |
c5af7db2 JH |
3138 | this broke at some point accidentally. Since there are not that many |
3139 | Amiga developers available, we could not get this fixed and tested in | |
3140 | time for 5.8.0. | |
3141 | ||
cc0fca54 GS |
3142 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
3143 | ||
d4ad863d JH |
3144 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
3145 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl | |
f224927c JH |
3146 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ There may also be |
3147 | information at http://www.perl.com/ , the Perl Home Page. | |
cc0fca54 GS |
3148 | |
3149 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> | |
3150 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down | |
3151 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the | |
d4ad863d | 3152 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
cc0fca54 GS |
3153 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
3154 | ||
3155 | =head1 SEE ALSO | |
3156 | ||
3157 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. | |
3158 | ||
3159 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. | |
3160 | ||
3161 | The F<README> file for general stuff. | |
3162 | ||
3163 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. | |
3164 | ||
3165 | =head1 HISTORY | |
3166 | ||
d468ca04 | 3167 | Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>. |
cc0fca54 GS |
3168 | |
3169 | =cut |