| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perl586delta - what is new for perl v5.8.6 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This document describes differences between the 5.8.5 release and |
| 8 | the 5.8.6 release. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 11 | |
| 12 | There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.5. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
| 15 | |
| 16 | The perl interpreter is now more tolerant of UTF-16-encoded scripts. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | On Win32, Perl can now use non-IFS compatible LSPs, which allows Perl to |
| 19 | work in conjunction with firewalls such as McAfee Guardian. For full details |
| 20 | see the file F<README.win32>, particularly if you're running Win95. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 23 | |
| 24 | =over 4 |
| 25 | |
| 26 | =item * |
| 27 | |
| 28 | With the C<base> pragma, an intermediate class with no fields used to messes |
| 29 | up private fields in the base class. This has been fixed. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | =item * |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Cwd upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools distribution) |
| 34 | |
| 35 | =item * |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.03 |
| 38 | |
| 39 | =item * |
| 40 | |
| 41 | File::Spec upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools distribution) |
| 42 | |
| 43 | =item * |
| 44 | |
| 45 | Encode upgraded to version 2.08 |
| 46 | |
| 47 | =item * |
| 48 | |
| 49 | ExtUtils::MakeMaker remains at version 6.17, as later stable releases currently |
| 50 | available on CPAN have some issues with core modules on some core platforms. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | =item * |
| 53 | |
| 54 | I18N::LangTags upgraded to version 0.35 |
| 55 | |
| 56 | =item * |
| 57 | |
| 58 | Math::BigInt upgraded to version 1.73 |
| 59 | |
| 60 | =item * |
| 61 | |
| 62 | Math::BigRat upgraded to version 0.13 |
| 63 | |
| 64 | =item * |
| 65 | |
| 66 | MIME::Base64 upgraded to version 3.05 |
| 67 | |
| 68 | =item * |
| 69 | |
| 70 | POSIX::sigprocmask function can now retrieve the current signal mask without |
| 71 | also setting it. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | =item * |
| 74 | |
| 75 | Time::HiRes upgraded to version 1.65 |
| 76 | |
| 77 | =back |
| 78 | |
| 79 | =head1 Utility Changes |
| 80 | |
| 81 | Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in the |
| 82 | debugger. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | =head1 Performance Enhancements |
| 85 | |
| 86 | C<reverse sort ...> is now optimized to sort in reverse, avoiding the |
| 87 | generation of a temporary intermediate list. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | C<for (reverse @foo)> now iterates in reverse, avoiding the generation of a |
| 90 | temporary reversed list. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 93 | |
| 94 | The regexp engine is now more robust when given invalid utf8 input, as is |
| 95 | sometimes generated by buggy XS modules. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | C<foreach> on threads::shared array used to be able to crash Perl. This bug |
| 98 | has now been fixed. |
| 99 | |
| 100 | A regexp in C<STDOUT>'s destructor used to coredump, because the regexp pad |
| 101 | was already freed. This has been fixed. |
| 102 | |
| 103 | C<goto &> is now more robust - bugs in deep recursion and chained C<goto &> |
| 104 | have been fixed. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | Using C<delete> on an array no longer leaks memory. A C<pop> of an item from a |
| 107 | shared array reference no longer causes a leak. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | C<eval_sv()> failing a taint test could corrupt the stack - this has been |
| 110 | fixed. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | On platforms with 64 bit pointers numeric comparison operators used to |
| 113 | erroneously compare the addresses of references that are overloaded, rather |
| 114 | than using the overloaded values. This has been fixed. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | C<read> into a UTF8-encoded buffer with an offset off the end of the buffer |
| 117 | no longer mis-calculates buffer lengths. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | Although Perl has promised since version 5.8 that C<sort()> would be |
| 120 | stable, the two cases C<sort {$b cmp $a}> and C<< sort {$b <=> $a} >> could |
| 121 | produce non-stable sorts. This is corrected in perl5.8.6. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | Localising C<$^D> no longer generates a diagnostic message about valid -D |
| 124 | flags. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
| 127 | |
| 128 | For -t and -T, |
| 129 | Too late for "-T" option |
| 130 | has been changed to the more informative |
| 131 | "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line |
| 132 | |
| 133 | =head1 Changed Internals |
| 134 | |
| 135 | From now on all applications embedding perl will behave as if perl |
| 136 | were compiled with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. See "Environment access" in |
| 137 | the F<INSTALL> file for details. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | Most C<C> source files now have comments at the top explaining their purpose, |
| 140 | which should help anyone wishing to get an overview of the implementation. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | =head1 New Tests |
| 143 | |
| 144 | There are significantly more tests for the C<B> suite of modules. |
| 145 | |
| 146 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 147 | |
| 148 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 149 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 150 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be |
| 151 | information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page. |
| 152 | |
| 153 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
| 154 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 155 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 156 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 157 | analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search |
| 158 | the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ |
| 159 | |
| 160 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 161 | |
| 162 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 163 | |
| 164 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 167 | |
| 168 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 169 | |
| 170 | =cut |