5 perl5254delta - what is new for perl v5.25.4
9 This document describes differences between the 5.25.3 release and the 5.25.4
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.25.2, first read
13 L<perl5253delta>, which describes differences between 5.25.2 and 5.25.3.
15 =head1 Performance Enhancements
21 The rather slow implementation for the experimental subroutine signatures
22 feature has been made much faster; it is now comparable in speed with the
23 old-style C<my ($a, $b, @c) = @_>.
29 =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation
37 Removed redundant C<dSP> from an example.
41 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
43 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
49 L<Archive::Tar> has been upgraded from version 2.08 to 2.10.
53 L<arybase> has been upgraded from version 0.11 to 0.12.
57 L<B> has been upgraded from version 1.62 to 1.63.
61 L<B::Concise> has been upgraded from version 0.996 to 0.998.
65 L<B::Deparse> has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
69 L<base> has been upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.24.
73 L<bignum> has been upgraded from version 0.43 to 0.43_01.
77 L<Carp> has been upgraded from version 1.41 to 1.42.
81 L<Config::Perl::V> has been upgraded from version 0.26 to 0.27.
85 L<CPAN> has been upgraded from version 2.14 to 2.14_01.
89 L<CPAN::Meta> has been upgraded from version 2.150005 to 2.150010.
93 L<Digest> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.17_01.
97 L<Digest::SHA> has been upgraded from version 5.95 to 5.96.
101 L<Encode> has been upgraded from version 2.84 to 2.86.
105 L<encoding> has been upgraded from version 2.17_01 to 2.18.
109 L<Errno> has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.26.
113 L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> has been upgraded from version 7.18 to 7.24.
117 L<File::Fetch> has been upgraded from version 0.48 to 0.52.
121 L<File::Spec> has been upgraded from version 3.64 to 3.65.
125 L<Hash::Util> has been upgraded from version 0.20 to 0.21.
129 L<HTTP::Tiny> has been upgraded from version 0.058 to 0.064.
133 L<I18N::LangTags> has been upgraded from version 0.40 to 0.41.
137 L<IO> has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.37.
141 L<IO-Compress> has been upgraded from version 2.069 to 2.069_01.
145 L<IO::Socket::IP> has been upgraded from version 0.37 to 0.38.
149 L<IPC::Cmd> has been upgraded from version 0.94 to 0.96.
153 L<JSON::PP> has been upgraded from version 2.27400 to 2.27400_01.
157 L<Locale::Maketext> has been upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
161 L<Locale::Maketext::Simple> has been upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.21_01.
165 L<Memoize> has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.03_01.
169 L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.20160720 to 5.20160820.
173 L<Module::Load::Conditional> has been upgraded from version 0.64 to 0.68.
177 L<Module::Metadata> has been upgraded from version 1.000032 to 1.000033.
181 L<Net::Ping> has been upgraded from version 2.43 to 2.44.
185 L<NEXT> has been upgraded from version 0.65 to 0.67.
189 L<Opcode> has been upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.37.
193 L<Pod::Html> has been upgraded from version 1.22 to 1.2201.
197 L<Pod::Perldoc> has been upgraded from version 3.25_02 to 3.27.
201 L<POSIX> has been upgraded from version 1.70 to 1.71.
205 L<Storable> has been upgraded from version 2.56 to 2.57.
209 L<Sys::Syslog> has been upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.34_01.
213 L<Test> has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.29.
217 L<Test::Harness> has been upgraded from version 3.36 to 3.36_01.
221 L<Test::Simple> has been upgraded from version 1.302045 to 1.302052.
225 L<Tie::Hash::NamedCapture> has been upgraded from version 0.09 to 0.10.
229 L<Time::Local> has been upgraded from version 1.2300 to 1.24.
233 =head1 Configuration and Compilation
239 A probe for C<gai_strerror> was added to F<Configure> that checks if the
240 the gai_strerror() routine is available and can be used to
241 translate error codes returned by getaddrinfo() into human
246 =head1 Platform Support
248 =head2 Platform-Specific Notes
254 The hints for Hurd have been improved enabling malloc wrap and reporting the
255 GNU libc used (previously it was an empty string when reported).
259 =head1 Internal Changes
265 Three new ops, C<OP_ARGELEM>, C<OP_ARGDEFELEM> and C<OP_ARGCHECK> have
266 been added. These are intended principally to implement the individual
267 elements of a subroutine signature, plus any overall checking required.
271 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
277 Problems with in-place array sorts: code like C<@a = sort { ... } @a>,
278 where the source and destination of the sort are the same plain array, are
279 optimised to do less copying around. Two side-effects of this optimisation
280 were that the contents of C<@a> as visible to to sort routine were
281 partially sorted, and under some circumstances accessing C<@a> during the
282 sort could crash the interpreter. Both these issues have been fixed, and
283 Sort functions see the original value of C<@a>.
287 Non-ASCII string delimiters are now reported correctly in error messages
288 for unterminated strings. [perl #128701]
292 C<pack("p", ...)> used to emit its warning ("Attempt to pack pointer to
293 temporary value") erroneously in some cases, but has been fixed.
297 C<@DB::args> is now exempt from "used once" warnings. The warnings only
298 occurred under B<-w>, because F<warnings.pm> itself uses C<@DB::args>
303 The use of built-in arrays or hash slices in a double-quoted string no
304 longer issues a warning ("Possible unintended interpolation...") if the
305 variable has not been mentioned before. This affected code like
306 C<qq|@DB::args|> and C<qq|@SIG{'CHLD', 'HUP'}|>. (The special variables
307 C<@-> and C<@+> were already exempt from the warning.)
311 C<gethostent> and similar functions now perform a null check internally, to
312 avoid crashing with torsocks. This was a regression from 5.22. [perl
317 C<defined *{'!'}>, C<defined *{'['}>, and C<defined *{'-'}> no longer leak
318 memory if the typeglob in question has never been accessed before.
322 In 5.25.4 fchown() was changed not to accept negative one as an argument
323 because in some platforms that is an error. However, in some other platforms
324 that is an acceptable argument. This change has been reverted [perl #128967].
328 Mentioning the same constant twice in a row (which is a syntax error) no
329 longer fails an assertion under debugging builds. This was a regression
330 from 5.20. [perl #126482]
334 Many issues relating to C<printf "%a"> of hexadecimal floating point
335 were fixed. In addition, the "subnormals" (formerly known as "denormals")
336 floating point anumbers are now supported both with the plain IEEE 754
337 floating point numbers (64-bit or 128-bit) and the x86 80-bit
338 "extended precision". Note that subnormal hexadecimal floating
339 point literals will give a warning about "exponent underflow".
340 [perl #128843, #128889, #128890, #128893, #128909, #128919]
344 A regression in 5.24 with C<tr/\N{U+...}/foo/> when the code point was between
345 128 and 255 has been fixed. [perl #128734].
349 A regression from the previous development release, 5.23.3, where
350 compiling a regular expression could crash the interpreter has been
351 fixed. [perl #128686].
355 Use of a string delimiter whose code point is above 2**31 now works
356 correctly on platforms that allow this. Previously, certain characters,
357 due to truncation, would be confused with other delimiter characters
358 with special meaning (such as C<?> in C<m?...?>), resulting
359 in inconsistent behaviour. Note that this is non-portable,
360 and is based on Perl's extension to UTF-8, and is probably not
361 displayable nor enterable by any editor. [perl #128738]
365 C<@{x> followed by a newline where C<x> represents a control or non-ASCII
366 character no longer produces a garbled syntax error message or a crash.
371 =head1 Acknowledgements
373 Perl 5.25.4 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.25.3
374 and contains approximately 18,000 lines of changes across 820 files from 23
377 Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
378 approximately 9,200 lines of changes to 660 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.
380 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
381 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
382 improvements that became Perl 5.25.4:
384 Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Dan
385 Collins, Daniel Dragan, David Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos, H.Merijn Brand,
386 James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai,
387 Neil Bowers, Nicolas R., Pino Toscano, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Richard Levitte,
388 Shlomi Fish, Smylers, Steve Hay, Tony Cook, Yves Orton.
390 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
391 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
392 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
395 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
396 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
397 helping Perl to flourish.
399 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
400 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
402 =head1 Reporting Bugs
404 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database
405 at L<https://rt.perl.org/> . There may also be information at
406 L<http://www.perl.org/> , the Perl Home Page.
408 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program
409 included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
410 sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>,
411 will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
413 If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it
414 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then see
415 L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>
416 for details of how to report the issue.
420 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
423 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
425 The F<README> file for general stuff.
427 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.