| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perl572delta - what's new for perl v5.7.2 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This document describes differences between the 5.7.1 release and the |
| 8 | 5.7.2 release. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | (To view the differences between the 5.6.0 release and the 5.7.0 |
| 11 | release, see L<perl570delta>. To view the differences between the |
| 12 | 5.7.0 release and the 5.7.1 release, see L<perl571delta>.) |
| 13 | |
| 14 | =head1 Security Vulnerability Closed |
| 15 | |
| 16 | (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.) |
| 17 | |
| 18 | A security vulnerability affecting all Perl versions prior to 5.6.1 |
| 19 | was found in August 2000. The vulnerability does not affect default |
| 20 | installations and as far as is known affects only the Linux platform. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | You should upgrade your Perl to 5.6.1 as soon as possible. Patches |
| 23 | for earlier releases exist but using the patches require full |
| 24 | recompilation from the source code anyway, so 5.6.1 is your best |
| 25 | choice. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt |
| 28 | for more information. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 31 | |
| 32 | =head2 64-bit platforms and malloc |
| 33 | |
| 34 | If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no more being |
| 35 | used because it simply does not work with 8-byte pointers. Also, |
| 36 | usually the system malloc on such platforms are much better optimized |
| 37 | for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | =head2 AIX Dynaloading |
| 40 | |
| 41 | The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native |
| 42 | dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This |
| 43 | change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled |
| 44 | modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other |
| 45 | applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface. |
| 46 | |
| 47 | =head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS |
| 48 | |
| 49 | The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being |
| 50 | statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient |
| 51 | TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test |
| 52 | Perl in such configurations. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | =head2 Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes \p{In...} |
| 55 | |
| 56 | As suggested by the Unicode consortium, the Unicode character classes |
| 57 | now prefer I<scripts> as opposed to I<blocks> (as defined by Unicode); |
| 58 | in Perl, when the C<\p{In....}> and the C<\p{In....}> regular expression |
| 59 | constructs are used. This has changed the definition of some of those |
| 60 | character classes. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | The difference between scripts and blocks is that scripts are the |
| 63 | glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while the blocks |
| 64 | are more artificial groupings of 256 characters based on the Unicode |
| 65 | numbering. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | In general this change results in more inclusive Unicode character |
| 68 | classes, but changes to the other direction also do take place: |
| 69 | for example while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin |
| 70 | characters and their various diacritic-adorned versions, it |
| 71 | does not include the various punctuation or digits (since they |
| 72 | are not solely C<Latin>). |
| 73 | |
| 74 | Changes in the character class semantics may have happened if a script |
| 75 | and a block happen to have the same name, for example C<Hebrew>. |
| 76 | In such cases the script wins and C<\p{InHebrew}> now means the script |
| 77 | definition of Hebrew. The block definition in still available, |
| 78 | though, by appending C<Block> to the name: C<\p{InHebrewBlock}> means |
| 79 | what C<\p{InHebrew}> meant in perl 5.6.0. For the full list |
| 80 | of affected character classes, see L<perlunicode/Blocks>. |
| 81 | |
| 82 | =head2 Deprecations |
| 83 | |
| 84 | The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird |
| 85 | use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0 |
| 86 | and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be |
| 87 | implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather |
| 88 | ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash |
| 89 | use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain |
| 90 | available. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | The syntaxes C<@a->[...]> and C<@h->{...}> have now been deprecated. |
| 93 | |
| 94 | The suidperl is also considered to be too much a risk to continue |
| 95 | maintaining and the suidperl code is likely to be removed in a future |
| 96 | release. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument has been |
| 99 | deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its |
| 100 | implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to |
| 101 | disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead. |
| 102 | |
| 103 | The chdir(undef) and chdir('') behaviors to match chdir() has been |
| 104 | deprecated. In future versions, chdir(undef) and chdir('') will |
| 105 | simply fail. |
| 106 | |
| 107 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
| 108 | |
| 109 | In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's |
| 110 | understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in |
| 111 | many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()> |
| 112 | and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their |
| 113 | deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers. |
| 114 | |
| 115 | =over 4 |
| 116 | |
| 117 | =item * |
| 118 | |
| 119 | The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants |
| 120 | have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore |
| 121 | B<between digits>. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | =item * |
| 124 | |
| 125 | GMAGIC (right-hand side magic) could in many cases such as string |
| 126 | concatenation be invoked too many times. |
| 127 | |
| 128 | =item * |
| 129 | |
| 130 | Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved |
| 131 | correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they |
| 132 | were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code. |
| 133 | |
| 134 | =item * |
| 135 | |
| 136 | Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that |
| 137 | were declared before the lexicals. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | =item * |
| 140 | |
| 141 | Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context. |
| 142 | |
| 143 | =item * |
| 144 | |
| 145 | The C<op_clear> and C<op_null> are now exported. |
| 146 | |
| 147 | =item * |
| 148 | |
| 149 | A new special regular expression variable has been introduced: |
| 150 | C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch). |
| 151 | |
| 152 | =item * |
| 153 | |
| 154 | L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the |
| 155 | file timestamps to the current time. |
| 156 | |
| 157 | =item * |
| 158 | |
| 159 | The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and |
| 160 | Markov chain input. |
| 161 | |
| 162 | =item * |
| 163 | |
| 164 | C<eval "v200"> now works. |
| 165 | |
| 166 | =item * |
| 167 | |
| 168 | VMS now works under PerlIO. |
| 169 | |
| 170 | =item * |
| 171 | |
| 172 | END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block. |
| 173 | The execution of END blocks is now controlled by |
| 174 | PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new |
| 175 | behaviour for perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See |
| 176 | L<perlembed>. |
| 177 | |
| 178 | =back |
| 179 | |
| 180 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 181 | |
| 182 | =head2 New Modules and Distributions |
| 183 | |
| 184 | =over 4 |
| 185 | |
| 186 | =item * |
| 187 | |
| 188 | L<Attribute::Handlers> - Simpler definition of attribute handlers |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =item * |
| 191 | |
| 192 | L<ExtUtils::Constant> - generate XS code to import C header constants |
| 193 | |
| 194 | =item * |
| 195 | |
| 196 | L<I18N::Langinfo> - query locale information |
| 197 | |
| 198 | =item * |
| 199 | |
| 200 | L<I18N::LangTags> - functions for dealing with RFC3066-style language tags |
| 201 | |
| 202 | =item * |
| 203 | |
| 204 | L<libnet> - a collection of perl5 modules related to network programming |
| 205 | |
| 206 | Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure. |
| 207 | |
| 208 | =item * |
| 209 | |
| 210 | L<List::Util> - selection of general-utility list subroutines |
| 211 | |
| 212 | =item * |
| 213 | |
| 214 | L<Locale::Maketext> - framework for localization |
| 215 | |
| 216 | =item * |
| 217 | |
| 218 | L<Memoize> - Make your functions faster by trading space for time |
| 219 | |
| 220 | =item * |
| 221 | |
| 222 | L<NEXT> - pseudo-class for method redispatch |
| 223 | |
| 224 | =item * |
| 225 | |
| 226 | L<Scalar::Util> - selection of general-utility scalar subroutines |
| 227 | |
| 228 | =item * |
| 229 | |
| 230 | L<Test::More> - yet another framework for writing test scripts |
| 231 | |
| 232 | =item * |
| 233 | |
| 234 | L<Test::Simple> - Basic utilities for writing tests |
| 235 | |
| 236 | =item * |
| 237 | |
| 238 | L<Time::HiRes> - high resolution ualarm, usleep, and gettimeofday |
| 239 | |
| 240 | =item * |
| 241 | |
| 242 | L<Time::Piece> - Object Oriented time objects |
| 243 | |
| 244 | (Previously known as L<Time::Object>.) |
| 245 | |
| 246 | =item * |
| 247 | |
| 248 | L<Time::Seconds> - a simple API to convert seconds to other date values |
| 249 | |
| 250 | =item * |
| 251 | |
| 252 | L<UnicodeCD> - Unicode Character Database |
| 253 | |
| 254 | =back |
| 255 | |
| 256 | =head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata |
| 257 | |
| 258 | =over 4 |
| 259 | |
| 260 | =item * |
| 261 | |
| 262 | L<B::Deparse> module has been significantly enhanced. It now |
| 263 | can deparse almost all of the standard test suite (so that the |
| 264 | tests still succeed). There is a make target "test.deparse" |
| 265 | for trying this out. |
| 266 | |
| 267 | =item * |
| 268 | |
| 269 | L<Class::Struct> now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor |
| 270 | is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | =item * |
| 273 | |
| 274 | L<Cwd> extension is now (even) faster. |
| 275 | |
| 276 | =item * |
| 277 | |
| 278 | L<DB_File> extension has been updated to version 1.77. |
| 279 | |
| 280 | =item * |
| 281 | |
| 282 | L<Fcntl>, L<Socket>, and L<Sys::Syslog> have been rewritten to use the |
| 283 | new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>). |
| 284 | |
| 285 | =item * |
| 286 | |
| 287 | L<File::Find> is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made |
| 288 | more portable. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | =item * |
| 291 | |
| 292 | L<File::Glob> now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the |
| 293 | size of the returned list of filenames. |
| 294 | |
| 295 | =item * |
| 296 | |
| 297 | L<IO::Socket::INET> now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning |
| 298 | that the operating system will make one up.) |
| 299 | |
| 300 | =item * |
| 301 | |
| 302 | The L<vars> pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables. |
| 303 | (Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.) |
| 304 | |
| 305 | =back |
| 306 | |
| 307 | =head1 Utility Changes |
| 308 | |
| 309 | =over 4 |
| 310 | |
| 311 | =item * |
| 312 | |
| 313 | The F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | =item * |
| 316 | |
| 317 | L<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs. |
| 318 | |
| 319 | =item * |
| 320 | |
| 321 | L<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect |
| 322 | newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is |
| 323 | more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a |
| 324 | prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined), |
| 325 | less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the |
| 326 | old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants), |
| 327 | and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your |
| 328 | extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy). |
| 329 | L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs. |
| 330 | |
| 331 | =item * |
| 332 | |
| 333 | L<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet. |
| 334 | |
| 335 | =item * |
| 336 | |
| 337 | The F<Pod::Html> (and thusly L<pod2html>) now allows specifying |
| 338 | a cache directory. |
| 339 | |
| 340 | =back |
| 341 | |
| 342 | =head1 New Documentation |
| 343 | |
| 344 | =over 4 |
| 345 | |
| 346 | =item * |
| 347 | |
| 348 | L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13> is an article about software localization, |
| 349 | originally published in The Perl Journal #13, republished here with |
| 350 | kind permission. |
| 351 | |
| 352 | =item * |
| 353 | |
| 354 | More README.$PLATFORM files have been converted into pod, which also |
| 355 | means that they also be installed as perl$PLATFORM documentation |
| 356 | files. The new files are L<perlapollo>, L<perlbeos>, L<perldgux>, |
| 357 | L<perlhurd>, L<perlmint>, L<perlnetware>, L<perlplan9>, L<perlqnx>, |
| 358 | and L<perltru64>. |
| 359 | |
| 360 | =item * |
| 361 | |
| 362 | The F<Todo> and F<Todo-5.6> files have been merged into L<perltodo>. |
| 363 | |
| 364 | =item * |
| 365 | |
| 366 | Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in |
| 367 | L<perlhack>. There is a make target "perl.gprof" for generating a |
| 368 | gprofiled Perl executable. |
| 369 | |
| 370 | =back |
| 371 | |
| 372 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
| 373 | |
| 374 | =head2 New Or Improved Platforms |
| 375 | |
| 376 | =over 4 |
| 377 | |
| 378 | =item * |
| 379 | |
| 380 | AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the |
| 381 | long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>. |
| 382 | |
| 383 | =item * |
| 384 | |
| 385 | AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform. |
| 386 | |
| 387 | =item * |
| 388 | |
| 389 | DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>. |
| 390 | |
| 391 | =item * |
| 392 | |
| 393 | DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2. |
| 394 | |
| 395 | =item * |
| 396 | |
| 397 | Several MacOS (Classic) portability patches have been applied. We |
| 398 | hope to get a fully working port by 5.8.0. (The remaining problems |
| 399 | relate to the changed IO model of Perl.) See L<perlmacos>. |
| 400 | |
| 401 | =item * |
| 402 | |
| 403 | MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+ |
| 404 | filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.) |
| 405 | |
| 406 | =item * |
| 407 | |
| 408 | NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>. |
| 409 | |
| 410 | =item * |
| 411 | |
| 412 | The Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported. |
| 413 | |
| 414 | =back |
| 415 | |
| 416 | =head2 Generic Improvements |
| 417 | |
| 418 | =over 4 |
| 419 | |
| 420 | =item * |
| 421 | |
| 422 | In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be |
| 423 | somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure |
| 424 | parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>. |
| 425 | |
| 426 | =item * |
| 427 | |
| 428 | The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the |
| 429 | DB_File extension) was built is now available as |
| 430 | C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}> |
| 431 | from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG |
| 432 | DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C. |
| 433 | |
| 434 | =item * |
| 435 | |
| 436 | The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads |
| 437 | (C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the |
| 438 | Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>). |
| 439 | |
| 440 | =item * |
| 441 | |
| 442 | The C<B::Deparse> compiler backend has been so significantly improved |
| 443 | that almost the whole Perl test suite passes after being deparsed. A |
| 444 | make target has been added to help in further testing: C<make test.deparse>. |
| 445 | |
| 446 | =back |
| 447 | |
| 448 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 449 | |
| 450 | =over 5 |
| 451 | |
| 452 | =item * |
| 453 | |
| 454 | The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names. |
| 455 | |
| 456 | =item * |
| 457 | |
| 458 | The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as |
| 459 | "0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35, |
| 460 | in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This |
| 461 | was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation |
| 462 | where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now |
| 463 | Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts. |
| 464 | |
| 465 | =item * |
| 466 | |
| 467 | L<dprofpp> -R didn't work. |
| 468 | |
| 469 | =item * |
| 470 | |
| 471 | PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work. |
| 472 | |
| 473 | =item * |
| 474 | |
| 475 | L<Sys::Syslog> ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant. |
| 476 | |
| 477 | =back |
| 478 | |
| 479 | =head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes |
| 480 | |
| 481 | =over 4 |
| 482 | |
| 483 | =item * |
| 484 | |
| 485 | Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds |
| 486 | with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness |
| 487 | and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have |
| 488 | fixed the modfl() bug. |
| 489 | |
| 490 | =back |
| 491 | |
| 492 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
| 493 | |
| 494 | =over 4 |
| 495 | |
| 496 | =item * |
| 497 | |
| 498 | In the regular expression diagnostics the C<E<lt>E<lt> HERE> marker |
| 499 | introduced in 5.7.0 has been changed to be C<E<lt>-- HERE> since too |
| 500 | many people found the C<E<lt>E<lt>> to be too similar to here-document |
| 501 | starters. |
| 502 | |
| 503 | =item * |
| 504 | |
| 505 | If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255 |
| 506 | using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly |
| 507 | for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127. |
| 508 | |
| 509 | =item * |
| 510 | |
| 511 | Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to |
| 512 | the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise. |
| 513 | |
| 514 | =item * |
| 515 | |
| 516 | Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<%foo->{bar}> has been |
| 517 | deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning. |
| 518 | |
| 519 | =back |
| 520 | |
| 521 | =head1 Source Code Enhancements |
| 522 | |
| 523 | =head2 MAGIC constants |
| 524 | |
| 525 | The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied |
| 526 | (e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability |
| 527 | and maintainability. |
| 528 | |
| 529 | =head2 Better commented code |
| 530 | |
| 531 | F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented. |
| 532 | |
| 533 | =head2 Regex pre-/post-compilation items matched up |
| 534 | |
| 535 | The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in |
| 536 | the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the |
| 537 | original regex expression. The information is attached to the new |
| 538 | C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more |
| 539 | complete information. |
| 540 | |
| 541 | =head2 gcc -Wall |
| 542 | |
| 543 | The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning |
| 544 | messages still remain, though, so if you are compiling with gcc you |
| 545 | will see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings are |
| 546 | being worked on. |
| 547 | |
| 548 | =head1 New Tests |
| 549 | |
| 550 | Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> subsection. |
| 551 | |
| 552 | The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls. |
| 553 | (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved |
| 554 | to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.) |
| 555 | |
| 556 | =head1 Known Problems |
| 557 | |
| 558 | Note that unlike other sections in this document (which describe |
| 559 | changes since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known |
| 560 | problems for all the 5.7 releases. |
| 561 | |
| 562 | =head2 AIX |
| 563 | |
| 564 | =over 4 |
| 565 | |
| 566 | =item * |
| 567 | |
| 568 | In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics |
| 569 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
| 570 | In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with |
| 571 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library |
| 572 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
| 573 | (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and |
| 574 | therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. |
| 575 | |
| 576 | =item * |
| 577 | |
| 578 | vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl |
| 579 | |
| 580 | The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code, |
| 581 | resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests |
| 582 | are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least |
| 583 | vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly. |
| 584 | "lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. |
| 585 | |
| 586 | =back |
| 587 | |
| 588 | =head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery |
| 589 | |
| 590 | One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v> |
| 591 | works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason is |
| 592 | known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library. |
| 593 | |
| 594 | =head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure' |
| 595 | |
| 596 | Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead. |
| 597 | |
| 598 | =head2 Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12 |
| 599 | |
| 600 | The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work. |
| 601 | |
| 602 | =head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured |
| 603 | |
| 604 | The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been |
| 605 | configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in |
| 606 | this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The |
| 607 | test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets |
| 608 | which have multiple IP addresses). |
| 609 | |
| 610 | =head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured |
| 611 | |
| 612 | If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the |
| 613 | subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the |
| 614 | subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the |
| 615 | subtest 9 failed. |
| 616 | |
| 617 | =head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48 |
| 618 | |
| 619 | No known fix. |
| 620 | |
| 621 | =head2 OS/390 |
| 622 | |
| 623 | OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually |
| 624 | better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and |
| 625 | tests have been added. |
| 626 | |
| 627 | Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
| 628 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 629 | ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14 |
| 630 | ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1 |
| 631 | ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598 |
| 632 | 600 602 604-610 |
| 633 | ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
| 634 | ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14 |
| 635 | ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
| 636 | ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117 |
| 637 | ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75 |
| 638 | ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25 |
| 639 | ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145 |
| 640 | ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81 |
| 641 | ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4 |
| 642 | op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425 |
| 643 | 626-627 |
| 644 | op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ?? |
| 645 | op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168 |
| 646 | op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59 |
| 647 | Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay. |
| 648 | |
| 649 | =head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 |
| 650 | |
| 651 | The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms. |
| 652 | Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX. |
| 653 | The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line |
| 654 | 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce |
| 655 | something other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using |
| 656 | the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".) |
| 657 | |
| 658 | =head2 Failure of Thread tests |
| 659 | |
| 660 | B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental.> |
| 661 | |
| 662 | The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in |
| 663 | the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl |
| 664 | 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests. |
| 665 | |
| 666 | lib/autouse.t 4 |
| 667 | t/lib/thr5005.t 19-20 |
| 668 | |
| 669 | =head2 UNICOS |
| 670 | |
| 671 | =over 4 |
| 672 | |
| 673 | =item * |
| 674 | |
| 675 | ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail. |
| 676 | |
| 677 | =item * |
| 678 | |
| 679 | lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed, |
| 680 | which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests. |
| 681 | |
| 682 | =item * |
| 683 | |
| 684 | Numerous numerical test failures |
| 685 | |
| 686 | op/numconvert 209,210,217,218 |
| 687 | op/override 7 |
| 688 | ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9 |
| 689 | lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145 |
| 690 | lib/Math/Trig 25 |
| 691 | |
| 692 | These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies. |
| 693 | |
| 694 | =back |
| 695 | |
| 696 | =head2 UTS |
| 697 | |
| 698 | There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>. |
| 699 | |
| 700 | =head2 VMS |
| 701 | |
| 702 | Rather many tests are failing in VMS but that actually more tests |
| 703 | succeed in VMS than they used to, it's just that there are many, |
| 704 | many more tests than there used to be. |
| 705 | |
| 706 | Here are the known failures from some compiler/platform combinations. |
| 707 | |
| 708 | DEC C V5.3-006 on OpenVMS VAX V6.2 |
| 709 | |
| 710 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 711 | [-.ext.posix]sigaction..................FAILED on test 7 |
| 712 | [-.ext.time.hires]hires.................FAILED on test 14 |
| 713 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 714 | [-.lib.math.bigint.t]bigintpm...........FAILED on test 1183 |
| 715 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 716 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 717 | [.op]sprintf............................FAILED on test 12 |
| 718 | Failed 8/399 tests, 91.23% okay. |
| 719 | |
| 720 | DEC C V6.0-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-1 and |
| 721 | Compaq C V6.2-008 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.1 |
| 722 | |
| 723 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 724 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 725 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 726 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 727 | Failed 4/399 tests, 92.48% okay. |
| 728 | |
| 729 | Compaq C V6.4-005 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.1 |
| 730 | |
| 731 | [-.ext.b]showlex........................FAILED on test 1 |
| 732 | [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 733 | [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 734 | [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 735 | [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 736 | [.op]misc...............................FAILED on test 49 |
| 737 | Failed 6/401 tests, 92.77% okay. |
| 738 | |
| 739 | =head2 Win32 |
| 740 | |
| 741 | In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering: |
| 742 | some output may appear twice. |
| 743 | |
| 744 | =head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory |
| 745 | |
| 746 | use Tie::Hash; |
| 747 | tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; |
| 748 | |
| 749 | ... |
| 750 | |
| 751 | local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks |
| 752 | |
| 753 | Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local() |
| 754 | is executed. |
| 755 | |
| 756 | =head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden |
| 757 | |
| 758 | Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and |
| 759 | hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting |
| 760 | frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is |
| 761 | for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt). |
| 762 | |
| 763 | =head2 Variable Attributes are not Currently Usable for Tieing |
| 764 | |
| 765 | This limitation will hopefully be fixed in future. (Subroutine |
| 766 | attributes work fine for tieing, see L<Attribute::Handlers>). |
| 767 | |
| 768 | =head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles |
| 769 | |
| 770 | Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with |
| 771 | `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets |
| 772 | default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile |
| 773 | at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good |
| 774 | solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate |
| 775 | non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config |
| 776 | hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are |
| 777 | having problems can try configuring themselves without the |
| 778 | largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the |
| 779 | solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether |
| 780 | one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at |
| 781 | all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is |
| 782 | platform-dependent. |
| 783 | |
| 784 | =head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental |
| 785 | |
| 786 | The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near |
| 787 | working order yet. |
| 788 | |
| 789 | =head2 The Long Double Support is Still Experimental |
| 790 | |
| 791 | The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles", |
| 792 | floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still |
| 793 | experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet |
| 794 | widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature |
| 795 | or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare |
| 796 | and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset |
| 797 | by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the |
| 798 | operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised |
| 799 | libraries). |
| 800 | |
| 801 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 802 | |
| 803 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 804 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 805 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be |
| 806 | information at http://www.perl.com/perl/, the Perl Home Page. |
| 807 | |
| 808 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
| 809 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 810 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 811 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 812 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
| 813 | |
| 814 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 815 | |
| 816 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 817 | |
| 818 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 819 | |
| 820 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 821 | |
| 822 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 823 | |
| 824 | =head1 HISTORY |
| 825 | |
| 826 | Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>, with many contributions |
| 827 | from The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches. |
| 828 | |
| 829 | Send omissions or corrections to <F<perlbug@perl.org>>. |
| 830 | |
| 831 | =cut |