| 1 | =encoding utf8 |
| 2 | |
| 3 | =head1 NAME |
| 4 | |
| 5 | perl5202delta - what is new for perl v5.20.2 |
| 6 | |
| 7 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 8 | |
| 9 | This document describes differences between the 5.20.1 release and the 5.20.2 |
| 10 | release. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.20.0, first read |
| 13 | L<perl5201delta>, which describes differences between 5.20.0 and 5.20.1. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 16 | |
| 17 | There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.20.1. If any exist, |
| 18 | they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. See L</Reporting Bugs> |
| 19 | below. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 22 | |
| 23 | =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata |
| 24 | |
| 25 | =over 4 |
| 26 | |
| 27 | =item * |
| 28 | |
| 29 | L<attributes> has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | The usage of C<memEQs> in the XS has been corrected. |
| 32 | L<[perl #122701]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122701> |
| 33 | |
| 34 | =item * |
| 35 | |
| 36 | L<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.151 to 2.151_01. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | Fixes CVE-2014-4330 by adding a configuration variable/option to limit |
| 39 | recursion when dumping deep data structures. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | =item * |
| 42 | |
| 43 | L<Errno> has been upgraded from version 1.20_03 to 1.20_05. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | Warnings when building the XS on Windows with the Visual C++ compiler are now |
| 46 | avoided. |
| 47 | |
| 48 | =item * |
| 49 | |
| 50 | L<feature> has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.36_01. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | The C<postderef> feature has now been documented. This feature was actually |
| 53 | added in Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the feature |
| 54 | documentation until now. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | =item * |
| 57 | |
| 58 | L<IO::Socket> has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | Document the limitations of the connected() method. |
| 61 | L<[perl #123096]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123096> |
| 62 | |
| 63 | =item * |
| 64 | |
| 65 | L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.020001 to 5.20150214. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | The list of Perl versions covered has been updated. |
| 68 | |
| 69 | =item * |
| 70 | |
| 71 | PathTools has been upgraded from version 3.48 to 3.48_01. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | A warning from the B<gcc> compiler is now avoided when building the XS. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | =item * |
| 76 | |
| 77 | L<PerlIO::scalar> has been upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.18_01. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | Reading from a position well past the end of the scalar now correctly returns |
| 80 | end of file. |
| 81 | L<[perl #123443]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123443> |
| 82 | |
| 83 | Seeking to a negative position still fails, but no longer leaves the file |
| 84 | position set to a negation location. |
| 85 | |
| 86 | C<eof()> on a C<PerlIO::scalar> handle now properly returns true when the file |
| 87 | position is past the 2GB mark on 32-bit systems. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | =item * |
| 90 | |
| 91 | L<Storable> has been upgraded from version 2.49 to 2.49_01. |
| 92 | |
| 93 | Minor grammatical change to the documentation only. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | =item * |
| 96 | |
| 97 | L<VMS::DCLsym> has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.05_01. |
| 98 | |
| 99 | Minor formatting change to the documentation only. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | =item * |
| 102 | |
| 103 | L<VMS::Stdio> has been upgraded from version 2.4 to 2.41. |
| 104 | |
| 105 | Minor formatting change to the documentation only. |
| 106 | |
| 107 | =back |
| 108 | |
| 109 | =head1 Documentation |
| 110 | |
| 111 | =head2 New Documentation |
| 112 | |
| 113 | =head3 L<perlunicook> |
| 114 | |
| 115 | This document, by Tom Christiansen, provides examples of handling Unicode in |
| 116 | Perl. |
| 117 | |
| 118 | =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation |
| 119 | |
| 120 | =head3 L<perlexperiment> |
| 121 | |
| 122 | =over 4 |
| 123 | |
| 124 | =item * |
| 125 | |
| 126 | Added reference to subroutine signatures. This feature was actually added in |
| 127 | Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the experimental feature |
| 128 | documentation until now. |
| 129 | |
| 130 | =back |
| 131 | |
| 132 | =head3 L<perlpolicy> |
| 133 | |
| 134 | =over 4 |
| 135 | |
| 136 | =item * |
| 137 | |
| 138 | The process whereby features may graduate from experimental status has now been |
| 139 | formally documented. |
| 140 | |
| 141 | =back |
| 142 | |
| 143 | =head3 L<perlsyn> |
| 144 | |
| 145 | =over 4 |
| 146 | |
| 147 | =item * |
| 148 | |
| 149 | An ambiguity in the documentation of the ellipsis statement has been corrected. |
| 150 | L<[perl #122661]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122661> |
| 151 | |
| 152 | =back |
| 153 | |
| 154 | =head1 Diagnostics |
| 155 | |
| 156 | The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output, |
| 157 | including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of |
| 158 | diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>. |
| 159 | |
| 160 | =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics |
| 161 | |
| 162 | =over 4 |
| 163 | |
| 164 | =item * |
| 165 | |
| 166 | L<Bad symbol for scalar|perldiag/"Bad symbol for scalar"> is now documented. |
| 167 | This error is not new, but was not previously documented here. |
| 168 | |
| 169 | =item * |
| 170 | |
| 171 | L<Missing right brace on \N{}|perldiag/"Missing right brace on \N{}"> is now |
| 172 | documented. This error is not new, but was not previously documented here. |
| 173 | |
| 174 | =back |
| 175 | |
| 176 | =head1 Testing |
| 177 | |
| 178 | =over 4 |
| 179 | |
| 180 | =item * |
| 181 | |
| 182 | The test script F<re/rt122747.t> has been added to verify that |
| 183 | L<perl #122747|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122747> remains |
| 184 | fixed. |
| 185 | |
| 186 | =back |
| 187 | |
| 188 | =head1 Platform Support |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =head2 Regained Platforms |
| 191 | |
| 192 | IRIX and Tru64 platforms are working again. (Some C<make test> failures |
| 193 | remain.) |
| 194 | |
| 195 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 196 | |
| 197 | =over 4 |
| 198 | |
| 199 | =item * |
| 200 | |
| 201 | AIX now sets the length in C<< getsockopt >> correctly. |
| 202 | L<[perl #120835]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=120835>, |
| 203 | L<[cpan #91183]|https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=91183>, |
| 204 | L<[cpan #85570]|https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=85570> |
| 205 | |
| 206 | =item * |
| 207 | |
| 208 | In Perl 5.20.0, C<$^N> accidentally had the internal UTF8 flag turned off if |
| 209 | accessed from a code block within a regular expression, effectively |
| 210 | UTF8-encoding the value. This has been fixed. |
| 211 | L<[perl #123135]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123135> |
| 212 | |
| 213 | =item * |
| 214 | |
| 215 | Various cases where the name of a sub is used (autoload, overloading, error |
| 216 | messages) used to crash for lexical subs, but have been fixed. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | =item * |
| 219 | |
| 220 | An assertion failure when parsing C<sort> with debugging enabled has been |
| 221 | fixed. |
| 222 | L<[perl #122771]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122771> |
| 223 | |
| 224 | =item * |
| 225 | |
| 226 | Loading UTF8 tables during a regular expression match could cause assertion |
| 227 | failures under debugging builds if the previous match used the very same |
| 228 | regular expression. |
| 229 | L<[perl #122747]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122747> |
| 230 | |
| 231 | =item * |
| 232 | |
| 233 | Due to a mistake in the string-copying logic, copying the value of a state |
| 234 | variable could instead steal the value and undefine the variable. This bug, |
| 235 | introduced in Perl 5.20, would happen mostly for long strings (1250 chars or |
| 236 | more), but could happen for any strings under builds with copy-on-write |
| 237 | disabled. |
| 238 | L<[perl #123029]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123029> |
| 239 | |
| 240 | =item * |
| 241 | |
| 242 | Fixed a bug that could cause perl to execute an infinite loop during |
| 243 | compilation. |
| 244 | L<[perl #122995]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122995> |
| 245 | |
| 246 | =item * |
| 247 | |
| 248 | On Win32, restoring in a child pseudo-process a variable that was C<local()>ed |
| 249 | in a parent pseudo-process before the C<fork> happened caused memory corruption |
| 250 | and a crash in the child pseudo-process (and therefore OS process). |
| 251 | L<[perl #40565]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=40565> |
| 252 | |
| 253 | =item * |
| 254 | |
| 255 | Tainted constants evaluated at compile time no longer cause unrelated |
| 256 | statements to become tainted. |
| 257 | L<[perl #122669]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122669> |
| 258 | |
| 259 | =item * |
| 260 | |
| 261 | Calling C<write> on a format with a C<^**> field could produce a panic in |
| 262 | sv_chop() if there were insufficient arguments or if the variable used to fill |
| 263 | the field was empty. |
| 264 | L<[perl #123245]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123245> |
| 265 | |
| 266 | =item * |
| 267 | |
| 268 | In Perl 5.20.0, C<sort CORE::fake> where 'fake' is anything other than a |
| 269 | keyword started chopping of the last 6 characters and treating the result as a |
| 270 | sort sub name. The previous behaviour of treating "CORE::fake" as a sort sub |
| 271 | name has been restored. |
| 272 | L<[perl #123410]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123410> |
| 273 | |
| 274 | =item * |
| 275 | |
| 276 | A bug in regular expression patterns that could lead to segfaults and other |
| 277 | crashes has been fixed. This occurred only in patterns compiled with C<"/i">, |
| 278 | while taking into account the current POSIX locale (this usually means they |
| 279 | have to be compiled within the scope of C<S<"use locale">>), and there must be |
| 280 | a string of at least 128 consecutive bytes to match. |
| 281 | L<[perl #123539]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123539> |
| 282 | |
| 283 | =item * |
| 284 | |
| 285 | C<qr/@array(?{block})/> no longer dies with "Bizarre copy of ARRAY". |
| 286 | L<[perl #123344]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123344> |
| 287 | |
| 288 | =item * |
| 289 | |
| 290 | C<gmtime> no longer crashes with not-a-number values. |
| 291 | L<[perl #123495]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123495> |
| 292 | |
| 293 | =item * |
| 294 | |
| 295 | Certain syntax errors in substitutions, such as C<< s/${<>{})// >>, would |
| 296 | crash, and had done so since Perl 5.10. (In some cases the crash did not start |
| 297 | happening until Perl 5.16.) The crash has, of course, been fixed. |
| 298 | L<[perl #123542]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123542> |
| 299 | |
| 300 | =item * |
| 301 | |
| 302 | A memory leak in some regular expressions, introduced in Perl 5.20.1, has been |
| 303 | fixed. |
| 304 | L<[perl #123198]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123198> |
| 305 | |
| 306 | =item * |
| 307 | |
| 308 | C<< formline("@...", "a"); >> would crash. The C<FF_CHECKNL> case in |
| 309 | pp_formline() didn't set the pointer used to mark the chop position, which led |
| 310 | to the C<FF_MORE> case crashing with a segmentation fault. This has been |
| 311 | fixed. |
| 312 | L<[perl #123538]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123538> |
| 313 | L<[perl #123622]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123622> |
| 314 | |
| 315 | =item * |
| 316 | |
| 317 | A possible buffer overrun and crash when parsing a literal pattern during |
| 318 | regular expression compilation has been fixed. |
| 319 | L<[perl #123604]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=123604> |
| 320 | |
| 321 | =back |
| 322 | |
| 323 | =head1 Known Problems |
| 324 | |
| 325 | =over 4 |
| 326 | |
| 327 | =item * |
| 328 | |
| 329 | It is a known bug that lexical subroutines cannot be used as the C<SUBNAME> |
| 330 | argument to C<sort>. This will be fixed in a future version of Perl. |
| 331 | |
| 332 | =back |
| 333 | |
| 334 | =head1 Errata From Previous Releases |
| 335 | |
| 336 | =over 4 |
| 337 | |
| 338 | =item * |
| 339 | |
| 340 | A regression has been fixed that was introduced in Perl 5.20.0 (fixed in Perl |
| 341 | 5.20.1 as well as here) in which a UTF-8 encoded regular expression pattern |
| 342 | that contains a single ASCII lowercase letter does not match its uppercase |
| 343 | counterpart. |
| 344 | L<[perl #122655]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=122655> |
| 345 | |
| 346 | =back |
| 347 | |
| 348 | =head1 Acknowledgements |
| 349 | |
| 350 | Perl 5.20.2 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.20.1 |
| 351 | and contains approximately 6,300 lines of changes across 170 files from 34 |
| 352 | authors. |
| 353 | |
| 354 | Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were |
| 355 | approximately 1,900 lines of changes to 80 .pm, .t, .c and .h files. |
| 356 | |
| 357 | Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community |
| 358 | of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed |
| 359 | the improvements that became Perl 5.20.2: |
| 360 | |
| 361 | Aaron Crane, Abigail, Andreas Voegele, Andy Dougherty, Anthony Heading, |
| 362 | Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Daniel Dragan, |
| 363 | Doug Bell, Ed J, Father Chrysostomos, Glenn D. Golden, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van |
| 364 | der Sanden, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jim Cromie, Karen Etheridge, |
| 365 | Karl Williamson, kmx, Matthew Horsfall, Max Maischein, Peter Martini, Rafael |
| 366 | Garcia-Suarez, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Müller, |
| 367 | Steve Hay, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Tony Cook, Yves Orton, Ævar Arnfjörð |
| 368 | Bjarmason. |
| 369 | |
| 370 | The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated |
| 371 | from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of |
| 372 | the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug |
| 373 | tracker. |
| 374 | |
| 375 | Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules |
| 376 | included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for |
| 377 | helping Perl to flourish. |
| 378 | |
| 379 | For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see |
| 380 | the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution. |
| 381 | |
| 382 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 383 | |
| 384 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently |
| 385 | posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at |
| 386 | https://rt.perl.org/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , |
| 387 | the Perl Home Page. |
| 388 | |
| 389 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program |
| 390 | included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but |
| 391 | sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>, |
| 392 | will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team. |
| 393 | |
| 394 | If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it |
| 395 | inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it |
| 396 | to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription |
| 397 | unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be |
| 398 | able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help |
| 399 | co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all |
| 400 | platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for |
| 401 | security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on |
| 402 | CPAN. |
| 403 | |
| 404 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 405 | |
| 406 | The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on |
| 407 | what changed. |
| 408 | |
| 409 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 410 | |
| 411 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 412 | |
| 413 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 414 | |
| 415 | =cut |