5 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.15.9
9 This document describes differences between the 5.15.8 release and
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.15.7, first read
13 L<perl5158delta>, which describes differences between 5.15.7 and
18 This space intentionally left blank.
20 =head1 Core Enhancements
22 =head2 C<< no feature; >> now means reset to default
24 C<< no feature >> now resets to the default feature set. To disable all
25 features (which is likely to be a pretty special-purpose request, since
26 it presumably won't match any named set of semantics) you can now
27 write C<< no feature ':all' >>.
31 =head2 Malformed UTF-8 input could cause attempts to read beyond the end of the buffer
33 Two new XS-accessible functions, C<utf8_to_uvchr_buf()> and
34 C<utf8_to_uvuni_buf()> are now available to prevent this, and the Perl
35 core has been converted to use them.
36 See L</Internal Changes>.
38 =head1 Incompatible Changes
40 =head2 C<< no feature; >>
42 C<no feature;> now means reset to default.
46 =head2 Literal C<< "{" >> characters in regular expressions.
48 It has been documented that the current plans include requiring a
49 literal C<< "{" >> to be escaped: 5.18 will emit deprecation warnings,
50 and it will be required in 5.20.
52 =head2 XS functions C<utf8_to_uvchr()> and C<utf8_to_uvuni()>
54 Use C<utf8_to_uvchr_buf()> and C<utf8_to_uvuni_buf()> instead.
55 See L</Internal Changes>.
57 =head1 Performance Enhancements
63 Fix a slowdown in freeing nested hashes. This may speedup the exit of
68 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
70 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
76 C<attributes> has been upgraded from version 0.17 to 0.18.
80 C<feature> has been upgraded from version 1.26 to 1.27.
82 C<no feature;> now means reset to default. The code has been refactored
83 to reduce duplication.
87 C<B::Deparse> has been upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
91 C<B::Lint> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
95 C<CPAN::Meta> has been upgraded from version 2.120351 to 2.120630.
99 C<CPANPLUS> has been upgraded from version 0.9118 to 0.9121.
103 C<Digest::SHA> has been upgraded from version 5.70 to 5.71.
107 C<ExtUtils::CBuilder> has been upgraded from version 0.280205 to 0.280206.
111 C<HTTP::Tiny> has been upgraded from version 0.016 to 0.017.
115 C<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 2.60 to 2.63.
119 C<Pod::Html> has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.1501.
123 C<Pod::Perldoc> has been upgraded from version 3.15_15 to 3.17.
127 C<Pod::Simple> has been upgraded from version 3.19 to 3.20.
131 C<Socket> has been upgraded from version 1.98 to 2.000.
135 C<Term::ReadLine> has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
139 C<Unicode::Collate> has been upgraded from version 0.87 to 0.89.
143 C<Unicode::Normalize> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
147 C<Unicode::UCD> has been upgraded from version 0.41 to 0.42.
154 There has been no significant change in the documentation between
159 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
160 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
161 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
163 =head2 New Diagnostics
167 Compared to 5.15.8, 5.15.9 does not introduce new errors.
171 Compared to 5.15.8, 5.15.9 does not introduce new errors, but see
172 L</Changes to Existing Diagnostics>
174 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
180 L<lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine|perldiag/"lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine">, which replaces
181 C<< lvalue attribute cannot be removed after the subroutine has been defined >>.
185 =head1 Utility Changes
187 No utilities changed between 5.15.8 and 5.15.9.
189 =head1 Configuration and Compilation
195 C<< perlfunc.html >> is now being generated again. [perl #107870]
205 F<< t/op/require_37033.t >> has been added, to test that C<require>
206 always closes the file handle that it opens. Previously, it had been
207 leaking the file handle if it happened to have file descriptor 0, which
208 would happen if C<require> was called (explicitly or implicitly) when
209 C<STDIN> had been closed.
213 =head1 Platform Support
215 There have been no changes to Perl's support of various platforms between
218 =head1 Internal Changes
224 Two new functions C<utf8_to_uvchr_buf()> and C<utf8_to_uvuni_buf()> have
225 been added. These are the same as C<utf8_to_uvchr> and
226 C<utf8_to_uvuni> (which are now deprecated), but take an extra parameter
227 that is used to guard against reading beyond the end of the input
229 See L<perlapi/utf8_to_uvchr_buf> and L<perlapi/utf8_to_uvuni_buf>.
233 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
239 I<Takri> now matches two more characters under the C<Script_Extensions>
240 property. This corrects a Unicode 6.1 omission.
244 C<< perlfunc.html >> is now being generated again. [perl #107870]
248 C<< $$ >> is no longer tainted. Since this value comes directly from
249 C<< getpid() >>, it is always safe.
253 Fix leaking a file handle. [perl #37033]
257 An off-by-one error caused C<< /[:upper:]/ >> and C<< /[:punct:]/ >> to
258 unexepectly match characters with code points above 255. This has been
259 rectified. [perl 111400].
263 C<< (?foo: ...) >> no longer loses passed in character set.
267 Allow attributes to set C<< :lvalue >> on a defined sub. [perl 107366].
271 C<< die; >> with a non-reference, non-string value in $@ now properly
272 propgates that value [perl #111654].
276 C<< Term::ReadLine >> now uses AnyEvent instead of Tk for an event loop.
280 =head1 Known Problems
282 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
283 from either 5.14.0 or 5.15.8.
287 =item C<eval { 'fork()' }> is broken on Windows [perl #109718]
289 This is a known test failure to be fixed before 5.16.0.
291 =item C<< Pod-Html >> test failures on Windows.
293 A number of tests for C<< Pod::Html >> fail under Windows, due to an
294 incorrect assumption by the test scripts about capitalization of the
299 =head1 Acknowledgements
301 XXX Redo this on 2012-03-20
303 Perl 5.15.9 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.15.8
304 and contains approximately 74,000 lines of changes across 470 files from 23
307 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
308 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
309 improvements that became Perl 5.15.9:
311 Aaron Crane, Abigail, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dave Rolsky,
312 David Cantrell, David Golden, David Mitchell, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos,
313 Florian Ragwitz, James E Keenan, Jesse Vincent, Karl Williamson, Marc Green,
314 Max Maischein, Nicholas Clark, Pau Amma, Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Tony
315 Cook, Yves Orton, Zefram.
317 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
318 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
319 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
322 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
323 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
324 helping Perl to flourish.
326 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
327 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
329 =head1 Reporting Bugs
331 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
332 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
333 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
334 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
336 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug>
337 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
338 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
339 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
340 analysed by the Perl porting team.
342 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
343 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
344 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
345 unarchived mailing list, which includes
346 all the core committers, who will be able
347 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
348 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
349 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
350 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
355 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
358 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
360 The F<README> file for general stuff.
362 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.