5 perl5181delta - what is new for perl v5.18.1
9 This document describes differences between the 5.18.0 release and the 5.18.1
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.16.0, first read
13 L<perl5180delta>, which describes differences between 5.16.0 and 5.18.0.
15 =head1 Incompatible Changes
17 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.18.0
18 If any exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a
19 report. See L</Reporting Bugs> below.
21 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
23 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
29 B has been upgraded from 1.42 to 1.42_01, fixing bugs related to lexical
34 Digest::SHA has been upgraded from 5.84 to 5.84_01, fixing a crashing bug.
39 Module::CoreList has been upgraded from 2.89 to 2.96.
43 =head1 Platform Support
45 =head2 Platform-Specific Notes
51 A rarely-encounted configuration bug in the AIX hints file has been corrected.
55 After a patch to the relevant hints file, perl should now build correctly on
56 MidnightBSD 0.4-RELEASE.
60 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
66 Starting in v5.18.0, a construct like C</[#](?{})/x> would have its C<#>
67 incorrectly interpreted as a comment. The code block would be skipped,
68 unparsed. This has been corrected.
72 A number of memory leaks related to the new, experimental regexp bracketed
73 character class feature have been plugged.
77 The OP allocation code now returns correctly aligned memory in all cases
78 for C<struct pmop>. Previously it could return memory only aligned to a
79 4-byte boundary, which is not correct for an ithreads build with 64 bit IVs
80 on some 32 bit platforms. Notably, this caused the build to fail completely
81 on sparc GNU/Linux. [RT #118055]
85 The debugger's C<man> command been fixed. It was broken in the v5.18.0
86 release. The C<man> command is aliased to the names C<doc> and C<perldoc> -
91 C<@_> is now correctly visible in the debugger, fixing a regression
92 introduced in v5.18.0's debugger. [RT #118169]
96 Fixed a small number of regexp constructions that could either fail to
97 match or crash perl when the string being matched against was
98 allocated above the 2GB line on 32-bit systems. [RT #118175]
102 Perl v5.16 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby calls to XSUBs that were
103 not visible at compile time were treated as lvalues and could be assigned
104 to, even when the subroutine was not an lvalue sub. This has been fixed.
109 Perl v5.18 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby dual-vars (i.e.
110 variables with both string and numeric values, such as C<$!> ) where the
111 truthness of the variable was determined by the numeric value rather than
112 the string value. [RT #118159]
116 Perl v5.18 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby interpolating mixed up-
117 and down-graded UTF-8 strings in a regex could result in malformed UTF-8
118 in the pattern: specifically if a downgraded character in the range
119 C<\x80..\xff> followed a UTF-8 string, e.g.
121 utf8::upgrade( my $u = "\x{e5}");
122 utf8::downgrade(my $d = "\x{e5}");
129 Lexical constants (C<my sub a() { 42 }>) no longer crash when inlined.
133 Parameter prototypes attached to lexical subroutines are now respected when
134 compiling sub calls without parentheses. Previously, the prototypes were
135 honoured only for calls I<with> parentheses. [RT #116735]
139 Syntax errors in lexical subroutines in combination with calls to the same
140 subroutines no longer cause crashes at compile time.
144 The dtrace sub-entry probe now works with lexical subs, instead of
145 crashing [perl #118305].
149 Undefining an inlinable lexical subroutine (C<my sub foo() { 42 } undef
150 &foo>) would result in a crash if warnings were turned on.
154 Deep recursion warnings no longer crash lexical subroutines. [RT #118521]
158 =head1 Acknowledgements
160 Perl 5.18.1 represents approximately 2 months of development since Perl 5.18.0
161 and contains approximately 8,400 lines of changes across 60 files from 12
164 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
165 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
166 improvements that became Perl 5.18.1:
168 Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, David
169 Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Nicholas Clark,
170 Peter Martini, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Tony Cook.
172 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
173 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
174 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
177 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
178 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
179 helping Perl to flourish.
181 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
182 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
184 =head1 Reporting Bugs
186 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently
187 posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at
188 http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at
189 http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
191 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program
192 included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
193 sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>,
194 will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
196 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
197 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it
198 to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
199 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be
200 able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
201 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
202 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
203 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on
208 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
211 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
213 The F<README> file for general stuff.
215 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.