| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perldelta - what is new for perl v5.11.3 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This document describes differences between the 5.11.2 release and |
| 8 | the 5.11.3 release. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.11.1, first read |
| 11 | the L<perl5112delta>, which describes differences between 5.11.1 and |
| 12 | 5.11.2 |
| 13 | |
| 14 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 15 | |
| 16 | =over |
| 17 | |
| 18 | =item Filehandles are blessed directly into C<IO::Handle::>, as C<FileHandle> is merely a wrapper around C<IO::Handle>. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | The previous behaviour was to bless Filehandles into L<FileHandle/> |
| 21 | (an empty proxy class) if it was loaded into memory and otherwise |
| 22 | to bless them into C<IO::Handle::>. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | =back |
| 26 | |
| 27 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
| 28 | |
| 29 | =head2 Unicode version |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Perl is shipped with the latest Unicode version, 5.2, October 2009. See |
| 32 | L<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0> for details about this release |
| 33 | of Unicode. See L<perlunicode> for instructions on installing and using |
| 34 | older versions of Unicode. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | =head2 Unicode properties |
| 37 | |
| 38 | Perl can now handle every Unicode character property. A new pod, |
| 39 | L<perluniprops>, lists all available non-Unihan character properties. By |
| 40 | default the Unihan properties and certain others (deprecated and Unicode |
| 41 | internal-only ones) are not exposed. See below for more details on |
| 42 | these; there is also a section in the pod listing them, and why they are |
| 43 | not exposed. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | Perl now fully supports the Unicode compound-style of using C<=> and C<:> |
| 46 | in writing regular expressions: C<\p{property=value}> and |
| 47 | C<\p{property:value}> (both of which mean the same thing). |
| 48 | |
| 49 | Perl now fully supports the Unicode loose matching rules for text |
| 50 | between the braces in C<\p{...}> constructs. In addition, Perl also allows |
| 51 | underscores between digits of numbers. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | All the Unicode-defined synonyms for properties and property values are |
| 54 | now accepted. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | C<qr/\X/>, which matches a Unicode logical character, has been expanded to work |
| 57 | better with various Asian languages. It now is defined as an C<extended |
| 58 | grapheme cluster>. (See L<http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>). One change |
| 59 | due to this is that C<\X> will match the whole sequence C<S<CR LF>>. Another |
| 60 | change is that C<\X> will match an isolated mark. Marks generally come after a |
| 61 | base character, but it is possible in Unicode to have them in isolation, and |
| 62 | C<\X> will now handle that case. Otherwise, this change should be transparent |
| 63 | for non-affected languages. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | C<\p{...}> matches using the Canonical_Combining_Class property were |
| 66 | completely broken in previous Perls. This is now fixed. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | In previous Perls, the Unicode Decomposition_Type=Compat property and a |
| 69 | Perl extension had the same name, which led to neither matching all the |
| 70 | correct values (with more than 100 mistakes in one, and several thousand |
| 71 | in the other). The Perl extension has now been renamed to be |
| 72 | Decomposition_Type=Noncanonical (short: dt=noncanon). It has the same |
| 73 | meaning as was previously intended, namely the union of all the |
| 74 | non-canonical Decomposition types, with Unicode Compat being just one of |
| 75 | those. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | C<\p{Uppercase}> and C<\p{Lowercase}> have been brought into line with the |
| 78 | Unicode definitions. This means they each match a few more characters |
| 79 | than previously. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | C<\p{Cntrl}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Control}>. This means it |
| 82 | no longer will match Private Use (gc=co), Surrogates (gc=cs), nor Format |
| 83 | (gc=cf) code points. The Format code points represent the biggest |
| 84 | possible problem. All but 36 of them are either officially deprecated |
| 85 | or strongly discouraged from being used. Of those 36, likely the most |
| 86 | widely used are the soft hyphen (U+00AD), and BOM, ZWSP, ZWNJ, WJ, and |
| 87 | similar, plus Bi-directional controls. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | C<\p{Alpha}> now matches the same characters as C<\p{Alphabetic}>. The Perl |
| 90 | definition included a number of things that aren't really alpha (all |
| 91 | marks), while omitting many that were. The Unicode definition is |
| 92 | clearly better, so we are switching to it. As a direct consequence, the |
| 93 | definitions of C<\p{Alnum}> and C<\p{Word}> which depend on Alpha also change. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | C<\p{Word}> also now doesn't match certain characters it wasn't supposed |
| 96 | to, such as fractions. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | C<\p{Print}> no longer matches the line control characters: tab, lf, cr, |
| 99 | ff, vt, and nel. This brings it in line with the documentation. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | C<\p{Decomposition_Type=Canonical}> now includes the Hangul syllables |
| 102 | |
| 103 | The Numeric type property has been extended to include the Unihan |
| 104 | characters. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | There is a new Perl extension, the 'Present_In', or simply 'In' |
| 107 | property. This is an extension of the Unicode Age property, but |
| 108 | C<\p{In=5.0}> matches any code point whose usage has been determined as of |
| 109 | Unicode version 5.0. The C<\p{Age=5.0}> only matches code points added in 5.0. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | A number of properties did not have the correct values for unassigned |
| 112 | code points. This is now fixed. The affected properties are |
| 113 | Bidi_Class, East_Asian_Width, Joining_Type, Decomposition_Type, |
| 114 | Hangul_Syllable_Type, Numeric_Type, and Line_Break. |
| 115 | |
| 116 | The Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, ID_Continue, and ID_Start properties |
| 117 | have been updated to their current definitions. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | Certain properties that are supposed to be Unicode internal-only were |
| 120 | erroneously exposed by previous Perls. Use of these in regular |
| 121 | expressions will now generate a deprecated warning message, if those |
| 122 | warnings are enabled. The properties are: Other_Alphabetic, |
| 123 | Other_Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, Other_Grapheme_Extend, |
| 124 | Other_ID_Continue, Other_ID_Start, Other_Lowercase, Other_Math, and |
| 125 | Other_Uppercase. |
| 126 | |
| 127 | An installation can now fairly easily change which Unicode properties |
| 128 | Perl understands. As mentioned above, certain properties are by default |
| 129 | turned off. These include all the Unihan properties (which should be |
| 130 | accessible via the CPAN module Unicode::Unihan) and any deprecated or |
| 131 | Unicode internal-only property that Perl has never exposed. |
| 132 | |
| 133 | XXX what does "files in the To directory" mean? -- dagolden, 2009-12-20 |
| 134 | |
| 135 | The files in the To directory are now more clearly marked as being |
| 136 | stable, directly usable by applications. New hash entries in them give |
| 137 | the format of the normal entries which allows for easier machine |
| 138 | parsing. Perl can generate files in this directory for any property, |
| 139 | though most are suppressed. An installation can choose to change which |
| 140 | get written. Instructions are in L<perluniprops>. |
| 141 | |
| 142 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 143 | |
| 144 | =head2 Pragmata Changes |
| 145 | |
| 146 | =over 4 |
| 147 | |
| 148 | =item C<constant> |
| 149 | |
| 150 | Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.20. |
| 151 | |
| 152 | =item C<diagnostics> |
| 153 | |
| 154 | This pragma no longer suppresses C<Use of uninitialized value in range (or flip)> warnings. [perl #71204] |
| 155 | |
| 156 | =item C<feature> |
| 157 | |
| 158 | Upgraded from 1.13 to 1.14. Added the C<unicode_strings> feature: |
| 159 | |
| 160 | use feature "unicode_strings"; |
| 161 | |
| 162 | This pragma turns on Unicode semantics for the case-changing operations |
| 163 | (uc/lc/ucfirst/lcfirst) on strings that don't have the internal UTF-8 flag set, |
| 164 | but that contain single-byte characters between 128 and 255. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | =item C<legacy> |
| 167 | |
| 168 | The experimental C<legacy> pragma, introduced in 5.11.2, has been removed, |
| 169 | and its functionality replaced by the new feature pragma, C<use feature |
| 170 | "unicode_strings">. |
| 171 | |
| 172 | =item C<threads> |
| 173 | |
| 174 | Upgraded from version 1.74 to 1.75. |
| 175 | |
| 176 | =item C<warnings> |
| 177 | |
| 178 | Upgraded from 1.07 to 1.08. Added new C<warnings::fatal_enabled()> function. |
| 179 | |
| 180 | =back |
| 181 | |
| 182 | =head2 Updated Modules |
| 183 | |
| 184 | =over 4 |
| 185 | |
| 186 | =item C<Archive::Extract> |
| 187 | |
| 188 | Upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.36. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =item C<CPAN> |
| 191 | |
| 192 | Upgraded from version 1.94_51 to 1.94_53. Includes better bzip2 support, |
| 193 | improved FirstTime experience with auto-selection of CPAN mirrors, proper |
| 194 | handling of modules removed from the Perl core, and an updated 'cpan' |
| 195 | utility script |
| 196 | |
| 197 | =item C<CPANPLUS> |
| 198 | |
| 199 | Upgraded from version 0.89_09 to 0.90. |
| 200 | |
| 201 | =item C<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> |
| 202 | |
| 203 | Upgraded from version 6.55_02 to 6.56. Adds new BUILD_REQUIRES key to |
| 204 | indicate build-only prerequisites. Also adds support for |
| 205 | mingw64 and the new "package NAME VERSION" syntax. |
| 206 | |
| 207 | =item C<File::Path> |
| 208 | |
| 209 | Upgraded from version 2.08 to 2.08_01. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | =item C<Module::Build> |
| 212 | |
| 213 | Upgraded from version 0.35_09 to 0.36. Compared to 0.35, this version has a |
| 214 | new 'installdeps' action, supports the PERL_MB_OPT environment variable, adds a |
| 215 | 'share_dir' property for L<File::ShareDir> support, support the "package NAME |
| 216 | VERSION" syntax and has many other enhancements and bug fixes. The |
| 217 | 'passthrough' style of Module::Build::Compat has been deprecated. |
| 218 | |
| 219 | =item C<Module::CoreList> |
| 220 | |
| 221 | Upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.24. |
| 222 | |
| 223 | =item C<POSIX> |
| 224 | |
| 225 | Upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19. Error codes for C<getaddrinfo()> and C<getnameinfo()> are now |
| 226 | available. |
| 227 | |
| 228 | =item C<Pod::Simple> |
| 229 | |
| 230 | Upgraded from version 3.10 to 3.13. |
| 231 | |
| 232 | =item C<Safe> |
| 233 | |
| 234 | Upgraded from version 2.19 to 2.20. |
| 235 | |
| 236 | =back |
| 237 | |
| 238 | =head1 Utility Changes |
| 239 | |
| 240 | =over 4 |
| 241 | |
| 242 | =item F<perlbug> |
| 243 | |
| 244 | No longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent the message |
| 245 | |
| 246 | =back |
| 247 | |
| 248 | =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation |
| 249 | |
| 250 | The Pod specification (L<perlpodspec>) has been updated to bring the |
| 251 | specification in line with modern usage already supported by most Pod systems. |
| 252 | A parameter string may now follow the format name in a "begin/end" region. |
| 253 | Links to URIs with a text description are now allowed. The usage of |
| 254 | C<LE<lt>"section"E<gt>> has been marked as deprecated. |
| 255 | |
| 256 | L<if.pm|if> has been documented in L<perlfunc/use> as a means to get |
| 257 | conditional loading of modules despite the implicit BEGIN block around C<use>. |
| 258 | |
| 259 | |
| 260 | |
| 261 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
| 262 | |
| 263 | XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools |
| 264 | go here. |
| 265 | |
| 266 | =head2 Configuration improvements |
| 267 | |
| 268 | XXX |
| 269 | |
| 270 | =head2 Compilation improvements |
| 271 | |
| 272 | Make distclean work again |
| 273 | XXX |
| 274 | |
| 275 | =head2 Testing improvements |
| 276 | |
| 277 | =over 4 |
| 278 | |
| 279 | =item It's now possible to override C<PERL5OPT> and friends in F<t/TEST> |
| 280 | |
| 281 | =back |
| 282 | |
| 283 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes |
| 284 | |
| 285 | =over 4 |
| 286 | |
| 287 | =item Win32 |
| 288 | |
| 289 | =over 4 |
| 290 | |
| 291 | =item * |
| 292 | |
| 293 | Always add a manifest resource to C<perl.exe> to specify the <trustInfo> |
| 294 | settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this setting Windows |
| 295 | will treat C<perl.exe> as a legacy application and apply various |
| 296 | heuristics like redirecting access to protected file system areas |
| 297 | (like the "Program Files" folder) to the users "VirtualStore" |
| 298 | instead of generating a proper "permission denied" error. |
| 299 | |
| 300 | For VC8 and VC9 this manifest setting is automatically generated by |
| 301 | the compiler/linker (together with the binding information for their |
| 302 | respective runtime libraries); for all other compilers we need to |
| 303 | embed the manifest resource explicitly in the external resource file. |
| 304 | |
| 305 | This change also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls version 6.0 |
| 306 | (themed controls introduced in Windows XP) via the dependency list |
| 307 | in the assembly manifest. For VC8 and VC9 this is specified using the |
| 308 | C</manifestdependency> linker commandline option instead. |
| 309 | |
| 310 | =back |
| 311 | |
| 312 | =item cygwin |
| 313 | |
| 314 | =over 4 |
| 315 | |
| 316 | =item Enable IPv6 support on cygwin 1.7 and newer |
| 317 | |
| 318 | =back |
| 319 | |
| 320 | =item OpenVMS |
| 321 | |
| 322 | =over 4 |
| 323 | |
| 324 | =item Make -UDEBUGGING the default on VMS for 5.12.0. |
| 325 | |
| 326 | Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make |
| 327 | command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in |
| 328 | configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying |
| 329 | no in answer to the interactive question. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | =back |
| 332 | |
| 333 | =back |
| 334 | |
| 335 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 336 | |
| 337 | XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here. |
| 338 | Bug fixes in files in F<ext/> and F<lib/> are best summarised in |
| 339 | L</Modules and Pragmata>. |
| 340 | |
| 341 | =over 4 |
| 342 | |
| 343 | =item * |
| 344 | |
| 345 | Ensure that pp_qr returns a new regexp SV each time. Resolves RT #69852. |
| 346 | |
| 347 | Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled) regexp in the |
| 348 | optree, use reg_temp_copy() to create a copy of it, and return a reference to |
| 349 | that. This resolves issues about Regexp::DESTROY not being called in a timely |
| 350 | fashion (the original bug tracked by RT #69852), as well as bugs related to |
| 351 | blessing regexps, and of assigning to regexps, as described in correspondence |
| 352 | added to the ticket. |
| 353 | |
| 354 | It transpires that we also need to undo the SvPVX() sharing when ithreads |
| 355 | cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL, instead of a cloned |
| 356 | copy of the mother_re. This change might fix bugs with regexps and threads in |
| 357 | certain other situations, but as yet neither tests nor bug reports have |
| 358 | indicated any problems, so it might not actually be an edge case that it's |
| 359 | possible to reach. |
| 360 | |
| 361 | =item * |
| 362 | |
| 363 | Several compilation errors and segfaults when perl was built with C<-Dmad> were fixed. |
| 364 | |
| 365 | =item * |
| 366 | |
| 367 | Fixes for lexer API changes in 5.11.2 which broke NYTProf's savesrc option. |
| 368 | |
| 369 | =item * |
| 370 | |
| 371 | F<-t> should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY |
| 372 | |
| 373 | The Microsoft C version of isatty() returns TRUE for all |
| 374 | character mode devices, including the /dev/null style "nul" |
| 375 | device and printers like "lpt1". |
| 376 | |
| 377 | =item * |
| 378 | |
| 379 | Fixed a regression caused by commit fafafbaf which caused a panic during parameter passing [perl #70171] |
| 380 | |
| 381 | |
| 382 | =item * |
| 383 | |
| 384 | On systems which in-place edits without backup files, -i'*' now works as the documentation says it does [perl #70802] |
| 385 | |
| 386 | =item * |
| 387 | |
| 388 | Saving and restoring magic flags no longer loses readonly flag. |
| 389 | |
| 390 | =item * |
| 391 | |
| 392 | The malformed syntax C<grep EXPR LIST> (note the missing comma) no longer |
| 393 | causes abrupt and total failure. |
| 394 | |
| 395 | =item * |
| 396 | |
| 397 | Regular expressions compiled with C<qr{}> literals properly set C<$'> when |
| 398 | matching again. |
| 399 | |
| 400 | =item * |
| 401 | |
| 402 | Using named subroutines with C<sort> should no longer lead to bus errors [perl |
| 403 | #71076] |
| 404 | |
| 405 | =item * |
| 406 | |
| 407 | Numerous bugfixes catch small issues caused by the recently-added Lexer API. |
| 408 | |
| 409 | =item * |
| 410 | |
| 411 | Smart match against C<@_> sometimes gave false negatives negatives. [perl #71078] |
| 412 | |
| 413 | =item * |
| 414 | |
| 415 | C<$@> may now be assigned a read-only value (without error or busting the stack). |
| 416 | |
| 417 | =item * |
| 418 | |
| 419 | C<sort> called recursively from within an active comparison subroutine no longer causes a bus error if run multiple times. [perl #71076] |
| 420 | |
| 421 | =back |
| 422 | |
| 423 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
| 424 | |
| 425 | =over 4 |
| 426 | |
| 427 | =item * |
| 428 | |
| 429 | C<split> now warns when called in void context |
| 430 | |
| 431 | |
| 432 | =item * |
| 433 | |
| 434 | C<printf>-style functions called with too few arguments will now issue the warning C<"Missing argument in %s"> [perl #71000] |
| 435 | |
| 436 | |
| 437 | =back |
| 438 | |
| 439 | =head1 New Tests |
| 440 | |
| 441 | Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests. |
| 442 | |
| 443 | =over 4 |
| 444 | |
| 445 | =item t/comp/final_line_num.t |
| 446 | |
| 447 | See if line numbers are correct at EOF |
| 448 | |
| 449 | =item t/comp/form_scope.t |
| 450 | |
| 451 | See if format scoping works |
| 452 | |
| 453 | =item t/comp/line_debug.t |
| 454 | |
| 455 | See if @{"_<$file"} works |
| 456 | |
| 457 | =item t/op/filetest_t.t |
| 458 | |
| 459 | See if -t file test works |
| 460 | |
| 461 | =item t/op/qr.t |
| 462 | |
| 463 | See if qr works |
| 464 | |
| 465 | =item t/op/utf8cache.t |
| 466 | |
| 467 | Tests malfunctions of utf8 cache |
| 468 | |
| 469 | =item t/re/uniprops.t |
| 470 | |
| 471 | Test unicode \p{} regex constructs |
| 472 | |
| 473 | =back |
| 474 | |
| 475 | =head1 Deprecations |
| 476 | |
| 477 | The following items are now deprecated. |
| 478 | |
| 479 | =over 4 |
| 480 | |
| 481 | =item Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated |
| 482 | |
| 483 | Using C<goto> to jump from an outer scope into an inner |
| 484 | scope is now deprecated. This rare use case was causing |
| 485 | problems in the implementation of scopes. |
| 486 | |
| 487 | =back |
| 488 | |
| 489 | =head1 Acknowledgements |
| 490 | |
| 491 | XXX The list of people to thank goes here. |
| 492 | |
| 493 | |
| 494 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 495 | |
| 496 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 497 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 498 | bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be |
| 499 | information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page. |
| 500 | |
| 501 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
| 502 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 503 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 504 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 505 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
| 506 | |
| 507 | If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it |
| 508 | inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send |
| 509 | it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription |
| 510 | unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able |
| 511 | to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help |
| 512 | co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all |
| 513 | platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for |
| 514 | security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently |
| 515 | distributed on CPAN. |
| 516 | |
| 517 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 518 | |
| 519 | The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details |
| 520 | on what changed. |
| 521 | |
| 522 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 523 | |
| 524 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 525 | |
| 526 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 527 | |
| 528 | =cut |
| 529 | |
| 530 | |
| 531 | |
| 532 | |
| 533 | All changes through commit b4178430270dbe109e7609d0b50d6d54bf9e95d8 |