5 perl5121delta - what is new for perl v5.12.1
9 This document describes differences between the 5.12.0 release and
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.10.1, first read
13 L<perl5120delta>, which describes differences between 5.10.1 and
16 =head1 Incompatible Changes
18 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.0. If any
19 incompatibilities with 5.12.0 exist, they are bugs. Please report them.
21 =head1 Core Enhancements
23 Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible
24 changes to the core language in this release.
26 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
28 =head2 Pragmata Changes
34 We fixed exporting of C<is_strict> and C<is_lax> from L<version>.
36 These were being exported with a wrapper that treated them as method
37 calls, which caused them to fail. They are just functions, are
38 documented as such, and should never be subclassed, so this patch
39 just exports them directly as functions without the wrapper.
43 =head2 Updated Modules
49 We upgraded L<CGI.pm> to version 3.49 to incorporate fixes for regressions
50 introduced in the release we shipped with Perl 5.12.0.
54 We upgraded L<Pod::Simple> to version 3.14 to get an improvement to \C\<\< \>\>
59 We made a small fix to the L<CPANPLUS> test suite to fix an occasional spurious test failure.
63 We upgraded L<Safe> to version 2.27 to wrap coderefs returned by C<reval()> and C<rdo()>.
67 =head1 Changes to Existing Documentation
73 We added the new maintenance release policy to L<perlpolicy.pod>
77 We've clarified the multiple-angle-bracket construct in the spec for POD
82 We added a missing explanation for a warning about C<:=> to L<perldiag.pod>
86 We removed a false claim in L<perlunitut> that all text strings are Unicode strings in Perl.
90 We updated the Github mirror link in L<perlrepository> to mirrors/perl, not github/perl
94 We fixed a a minor error in L<perl5114delta.pod>.
98 We replaced a mention of the now-obsolete L<Switch.pm> with F<given>/F<when>.
102 We improved documentation about F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> in L<perlrun>.
106 We corrected L<perlmodlib.pod> which had unintentionally omitted a number of modules.
110 We updated the documentation for 'require' in L<perlfunc.pod> relating to putting Perl code in @INC.
114 We reinstated some erroneously-removed documentation about quotemeta in L<perlfunc>.
118 We fixed an F<a2p> example in L<perlutil.pod>.
122 We filled in a blank in L<perlport.pod> with the release date of Perl 5.12.
126 We fixed broken links in a number of perldelta files.
130 The documentation for L<Carp.pm> incorrectly stated that the $Carp::Verbose
131 variable makes cluck generate stack backtraces.
135 We fixed a number of typos in L<Pod::Functions>
139 We improved documentation of case-changing functions in L<perlfunc.pod>
143 We corrected L<perlgpl.pod> to contain the correct version of the GNU
144 General Public License.
152 =head2 Testing Improvements
158 F<t/op/sselect.t> is now less prone to clock jitter during timing checks
161 sleep() time on Win32 may be rounded down to multiple of
162 the clock tick interval.
166 F<lib/blib.t> and F<lib/locale.t>: Fixes for test failures on Darwin/PPC
170 F<perl5db.t>: Fix for test failures when C<Term::ReadLine::Gnu> is installed.
174 =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
176 =head2 Configuration improvements
182 We updated F<INSTALL> with notes about how to deal with broken F<dbm.h>
183 on OpenSUSE (and possibly other platforms)
193 A bug in how we process filetest operations could cause a segfault.
194 Filetests don't always expect an op on the stack, so we now use
195 TOPs only if we're sure that we're not stat'ing the _ filehandle.
196 This is indicated by OPf_KIDS (as checked in ck_ftst).
198 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74542>
202 When deparsing a nextstate op that has both a change of package (relative
203 to the previous nextstate) and a label, the package declaration is now
204 emitted first, because it is syntactically impermissible for a label to
205 prefix a package declaration.
209 XSUB.h now correctly redefines fgets under PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS
211 See also: L<http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55049>
216 utf8::is_utf8 now respects GMAGIC (e.g. $1)
221 XS code using C<fputc()> or C<fputs()>: on Windows could cause an error
222 due to their arguments being swapped.
224 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=72704>
228 We fixed a small bug in lex_stuff_pvn() that caused spurious syntax errors
229 in an obscure situation. It happened when stuffing was performed on the
230 last line of a file and the line ended with a statement that lacked a
231 terminating semicolon.
233 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74006>
237 We fixed a bug that could cause \N{} constructs followed by a single . to
238 be parsed incorrectly.
240 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74978>
245 We fixed a bug that caused when(scalar) without an argument not to be
246 treated as a syntax error.
248 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74114>
252 We fixed a regression in the handling of labels immediately before string
253 evals that was introduced in Perl 5.12.0.
255 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74290>
259 We fixed a regression in case-insensitive matching of folded characters
260 in regular expressions introduced in Perl 5.12.0.
262 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=72998>
266 =head1 Platform Specific Notes
274 Perl now allows -Duse64bitint without promoting to use64bitall on HP-UX
284 Perl now builds on AIX 4.2
286 The changes required work around AIX 4.2s' lack of support for IPv6,
287 and limited support for POSIX C<sigaction()>.
297 FreeBSD 7 no longer contains F</usr/bin/objformat>. At build time,
298 Perl now skips the F<objformat> check for versions 7 and higher and
309 It's now possible to build extensions on older (pre 7.3-2) VMS systems.
311 DCL symbol length was limited to 1K up until about seven years or
312 so ago, but there was no particularly deep reason to prevent those
313 older systems from configuring and building Perl.
317 We fixed the previously-broken C<-Uuseperlio> build on VMS.
319 We were checking a variable that doesn't exist in the non-default
320 case of disabling perlio. Now we only look at it when it exists.
324 We fixed the -Uuseperlio command-line option in configure.com.
326 Formerly it only worked if you went through all the questions
327 interactively and explicitly answered no.
331 =head1 Known Problems
337 C<List::Util::first> misbehaves in the presence of a lexical C<$_>
338 (typically introduced by C<my $_> or implicitly by C<given>). The variable
339 which gets set for each iteration is the package variable C<$_>, not the
342 A similar issue may occur in other modules that provide functions which
343 take a block as their first argument, like
345 foo { ... $_ ...} list
347 See also: L<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=67694>
351 C<Module::Load::Conditional> and C<version> have an unfortunate
352 interaction which can cause C<CPANPLUS> to crash when it encounters
353 an unparseable version string. Upgrading to C<CPANPLUS> 0.9004 or
354 C<Module::Load::Conditional> 0.38 from CPAN will resolve this issue.
359 =head1 Acknowledgements
361 Perl 5.12.1 represents approximately four weeks of development since
362 Perl 5.12.0 and contains approximately 4,000 lines of changes
363 across 142 files from 28 authors.
365 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
366 community of users and developers. The following people are known to
367 have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.1:
369 Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Chris Williams, chromatic, Craig A. Berry,
370 David Golden, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, Frank Wiegand,
371 Gene Sullivan, Goro Fuji, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jan Dubois,
372 Jesse Vincent, Josh ben Jore, Karl Williamson, Leon Brocard, Michael
373 Schwern, Nga Tang Chan, Nicholas Clark, Niko Tyni, Philippe Bruhat,
374 Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Ricardo Signes, Steffen Mueller, Todd Rinaldo,
375 Vincent Pit and Zefram.
377 =head1 Reporting Bugs
379 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
380 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
381 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
382 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
384 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
385 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
386 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
387 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
388 analysed by the Perl porting team.
390 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
391 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
392 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
393 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
394 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
395 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
396 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
397 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
402 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
405 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
407 The F<README> file for general stuff.
409 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.