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<charnames> has been upgraded from version 1.29 to 1.30.
84 C<feature> has been upgraded from version 1.26 to 1.27.
86 C<no feature;> now means reset to default. The code has been refactored
87 to reduce duplication.
91 C<B::Deparse> has been upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
95 C<B::Lint> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
99 C<CPAN::Meta> has been upgraded from version 2.120351 to 2.120630.
103 C<CPANPLUS> has been upgraded from version 0.9118 to 0.9121.
107 C<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.135_05 to 2.135_06.
111 C<Digest::SHA> has been upgraded from version 5.70 to 5.71.
115 C<ExtUtils::CBuilder> has been upgraded from version 0.280205 to 0.280206.
119 C<HTTP::Tiny> has been upgraded from version 0.016 to 0.017.
123 C<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 2.60 to 2.63.
127 C<Pod::Html> has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.1501.
131 C<Pod::Perldoc> has been upgraded from version 3.15_15 to 3.17.
135 C<Pod::Simple> has been upgraded from version 3.19 to 3.20.
139 C<Socket> has been upgraded from version 1.98 to 2.000.
143 C<Term::ReadLine> has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
145 C<< Term::ReadLine >> now optionally integrates with event loops
146 other than C<< Tk >>.
150 C<Unicode::Collate> has been upgraded from version 0.87 to 0.89.
154 C<Unicode::Normalize> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
158 C<Unicode::UCD> has been upgraded from version 0.41 to 0.42.
162 C<XS::APItest> has been upgraded from version 0.36 to 0.37.
169 There has been no significant change in the documentation between
174 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
175 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
176 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
178 =head2 New Diagnostics
182 Compared to 5.15.8, 5.15.9 does not introduce new errors.
186 Compared to 5.15.8, 5.15.9 does not introduce new errors, but see
187 L</Changes to Existing Diagnostics>
189 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
195 L<lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine|perldiag/"lvalue attribute %s already-defined subroutine">, which replaces
196 C<< lvalue attribute cannot be removed after the subroutine has been defined >>.
200 =head1 Utility Changes
202 No utilities changed between 5.15.8 and 5.15.9.
204 =head1 Configuration and Compilation
210 C<< perlfunc.html >> is now being generated again. [perl #107870]
220 F<< t/op/require_37033.t >> has been added, to test that C<require>
221 always closes the file handle that it opens. Previously, it had been
222 leaking the file handle if it happened to have file descriptor 0, which
223 would happen if C<require> was called (explicitly or implicitly) when
224 C<STDIN> had been closed.
228 =head1 Platform Support
230 There have been no changes to Perl's support of various platforms between
233 =head1 Internal Changes
239 Two new functions C<utf8_to_uvchr_buf()> and C<utf8_to_uvuni_buf()> have
240 been added. These are the same as C<utf8_to_uvchr> and
241 C<utf8_to_uvuni> (which are now deprecated), but take an extra parameter
242 that is used to guard against reading beyond the end of the input
244 See L<perlapi/utf8_to_uvchr_buf> and L<perlapi/utf8_to_uvuni_buf>.
248 The regular expression engine now does TRIE case insensitive matches
249 under Unicode. This may change the output of C<< use re 'debug'; >>,
250 and will speed up various things.
254 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
260 I<Takri> now matches two more characters under the C<Script_Extensions>
261 property. This corrects a Unicode 6.1 omission.
265 C<< perlfunc.html >> is now being generated again. [perl #107870]
269 C<< $$ >> is no longer tainted. Since this value comes directly from
270 C<< getpid() >>, it is always safe.
274 Fix leaking a file handle. [perl #37033]
278 An off-by-one error caused C<< /[:upper:]/ >> and C<< /[:punct:]/ >> to
279 unexpectedly match characters with code points above 255. This has been
280 rectified. [perl 111400].
284 C<< (?foo: ...) >> no longer loses passed in character set.
288 Allow attributes to set C<< :lvalue >> on a defined sub. [perl 107366].
292 C<< die; >> with a non-reference, non-string value in $@ now properly
293 propagates that value [perl #111654].
297 =head1 Known Problems
299 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which need to be
300 resolved before 5.16.0
304 =item F<< op/sigdispatch.t >> fails alarm test 14 and gets killed [perl #89718]
306 =item Perl crash due to wrong delimiter in C<< PATH >> environment [perl #94846]
308 It's possible to crash Win32 if the wrong delimiter is used.
310 =item Corrupt UTF8 [perl #79960, #100058]
312 It is possible to read an invalid UTF8 character, but have it marked valid,
313 or to incorrectly read UTF8 characters if C<< $/ >> is set to read fixed
316 =item UTF8 patches for 5.16 [perl #107008]
318 Brian Fraser's work on UTF8 needs further integration.
320 =item C<eval { 'fork()' }> is broken on Windows [perl #109718]
322 This is a known test failure to be fixed before 5.16.0.
324 =item Warnings from cpan/IO-Compress [perl #110736]
326 Some tests in F<< cpan/IO-Compress/t/cz-03zlib-v1.t >> issues a
327 "isn't numeric" warning in blead, but not in maint.
329 =item C<< Pod-Html >> test failures on Windows.
331 A number of tests for C<< Pod::Html >> fail under Windows, due to an
332 incorrect assumption by the test scripts about capitalization of the
337 =head1 Acknowledgements
339 Perl 5.15.9 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.15.8
340 and contains approximately 79,000 lines of changes across 530 files from 23
343 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
344 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
345 improvements that became Perl 5.15.9:
347 Aaron Crane, Abigail, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dave Rolsky,
348 David Cantrell, David Golden, David Mitchell, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos,
349 Florian Ragwitz, James E Keenan, Jesse Vincent, Karl Williamson, Marc Green,
350 Max Maischein, Nicholas Clark, Pau Amma, Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Tony
351 Cook, Yves Orton, Zefram.
353 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
354 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
355 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
358 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
359 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
360 helping Perl to flourish.
362 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
363 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
365 =head1 Reporting Bugs
367 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
368 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
369 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
370 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
372 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug>
373 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
374 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
375 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
376 analysed by the Perl porting team.
378 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
379 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
380 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
381 unarchived mailing list, which includes
382 all the core committers, who will be able
383 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
384 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
385 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
386 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
391 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
394 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
396 The F<README> file for general stuff.
398 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.