5 perl5202delta - what is new for perl v5.20.2
9 This document describes differences between the 5.20.1 release and the 5.20.2
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.20.0, first read
13 L<perl5201delta>, which describes differences between 5.20.0 and 5.20.1.
15 =head1 Incompatible Changes
17 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.20.1. If any exist,
18 they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. See L</Reporting Bugs>
21 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
23 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
29 L<attributes> has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
31 The usage of C<memEQs> in the XS has been corrected.
32 L<[GH #14072]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14072>
36 L<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.151 to 2.151_01.
38 Fixes CVE-2014-4330 by adding a configuration variable/option to limit
39 recursion when dumping deep data structures.
43 L<Errno> has been upgraded from version 1.20_03 to 1.20_05.
45 Warnings when building the XS on Windows with the Visual C++ compiler are now
50 L<feature> has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.36_01.
52 The C<postderef> feature has now been documented. This feature was actually
53 added in Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the feature
54 documentation until now.
58 L<IO::Socket> has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
60 Document the limitations of the connected() method.
61 L<[GH #14199]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14199>
65 L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.020001 to 5.20150214.
67 The list of Perl versions covered has been updated.
71 PathTools has been upgraded from version 3.48 to 3.48_01.
73 A warning from the B<gcc> compiler is now avoided when building the XS.
77 L<PerlIO::scalar> has been upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.18_01.
79 Reading from a position well past the end of the scalar now correctly returns
81 L<[GH #14342]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14342>
83 Seeking to a negative position still fails, but no longer leaves the file
84 position set to a negation location.
86 C<eof()> on a C<PerlIO::scalar> handle now properly returns true when the file
87 position is past the 2GB mark on 32-bit systems.
91 L<Storable> has been upgraded from version 2.49 to 2.49_01.
93 Minor grammatical change to the documentation only.
97 L<VMS::DCLsym> has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.05_01.
99 Minor formatting change to the documentation only.
103 L<VMS::Stdio> has been upgraded from version 2.4 to 2.41.
105 Minor formatting change to the documentation only.
111 =head2 New Documentation
113 =head3 L<perlunicook>
115 This document, by Tom Christiansen, provides examples of handling Unicode in
118 =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation
120 =head3 L<perlexperiment>
126 Added reference to subroutine signatures. This feature was actually added in
127 Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the experimental feature
128 documentation until now.
138 The process whereby features may graduate from experimental status has now been
149 An ambiguity in the documentation of the ellipsis statement has been corrected.
150 L<[GH #14054]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14054>
156 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
157 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
158 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
160 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
166 L<Bad symbol for scalar|perldiag/"Bad symbol for scalar"> is now documented.
167 This error is not new, but was not previously documented here.
171 L<Missing right brace on \N{}|perldiag/"Missing right brace on \N{}"> is now
172 documented. This error is not new, but was not previously documented here.
182 The test script F<re/rt122747.t> has been added to verify that
183 L<[GH #14081]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14081> remains
188 =head1 Platform Support
190 =head2 Regained Platforms
192 IRIX and Tru64 platforms are working again. (Some C<make test> failures
195 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
201 AIX now sets the length in C<< getsockopt >> correctly.
202 L<[GH #13484]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13484>,
203 L<[cpan #91183]|https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=91183>,
204 L<[cpan #85570]|https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=85570>
208 In Perl 5.20.0, C<$^N> accidentally had the internal UTF8 flag turned off if
209 accessed from a code block within a regular expression, effectively
210 UTF8-encoding the value. This has been fixed.
211 L<[GH #14211]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14211>
215 Various cases where the name of a sub is used (autoload, overloading, error
216 messages) used to crash for lexical subs, but have been fixed.
220 An assertion failure when parsing C<sort> with debugging enabled has been
222 L<[GH #14087]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14087>
226 Loading UTF8 tables during a regular expression match could cause assertion
227 failures under debugging builds if the previous match used the very same
229 L<[GH #14081]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14081>
233 Due to a mistake in the string-copying logic, copying the value of a state
234 variable could instead steal the value and undefine the variable. This bug,
235 introduced in Perl 5.20, would happen mostly for long strings (1250 chars or
236 more), but could happen for any strings under builds with copy-on-write
238 L<[GH #14175]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14175>
242 Fixed a bug that could cause perl to execute an infinite loop during
244 L<[GH #14165]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14165>
248 On Win32, restoring in a child pseudo-process a variable that was C<local()>ed
249 in a parent pseudo-process before the C<fork> happened caused memory corruption
250 and a crash in the child pseudo-process (and therefore OS process).
251 L<[GH #8641]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/8641>
255 Tainted constants evaluated at compile time no longer cause unrelated
256 statements to become tainted.
257 L<[GH #14059]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14059>
261 Calling C<write> on a format with a C<^**> field could produce a panic in
262 sv_chop() if there were insufficient arguments or if the variable used to fill
264 L<[GH #14255]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14255>
268 In Perl 5.20.0, C<sort CORE::fake> where 'fake' is anything other than a
269 keyword started chopping of the last 6 characters and treating the result as a
270 sort sub name. The previous behaviour of treating "CORE::fake" as a sort sub
271 name has been restored.
272 L<[GH #14323]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14323>
276 A bug in regular expression patterns that could lead to segfaults and other
277 crashes has been fixed. This occurred only in patterns compiled with C<"/i">,
278 while taking into account the current POSIX locale (this usually means they
279 have to be compiled within the scope of C<S<"use locale">>), and there must be
280 a string of at least 128 consecutive bytes to match.
281 L<[GH #14389]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14389>
285 C<qr/@array(?{block})/> no longer dies with "Bizarre copy of ARRAY".
286 L<[GH #14292]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14292>
290 C<gmtime> no longer crashes with not-a-number values.
291 L<[GH #14365]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14365>
295 Certain syntax errors in substitutions, such as C<< s/${<>{})// >>, would
296 crash, and had done so since Perl 5.10. (In some cases the crash did not start
297 happening until Perl 5.16.) The crash has, of course, been fixed.
298 L<[GH #14391]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14391>
302 A memory leak in some regular expressions, introduced in Perl 5.20.1, has been
304 L<[GH #14236]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14236>
308 C<< formline("@...", "a"); >> would crash. The C<FF_CHECKNL> case in
309 pp_formline() didn't set the pointer used to mark the chop position, which led
310 to the C<FF_MORE> case crashing with a segmentation fault. This has been
312 L<[GH #14388]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14388>
313 L<[GH #14425]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14425>
317 A possible buffer overrun and crash when parsing a literal pattern during
318 regular expression compilation has been fixed.
319 L<[GH #14416]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14416>
323 =head1 Known Problems
329 It is a known bug that lexical subroutines cannot be used as the C<SUBNAME>
330 argument to C<sort>. This will be fixed in a future version of Perl.
334 =head1 Errata From Previous Releases
340 A regression has been fixed that was introduced in Perl 5.20.0 (fixed in Perl
341 5.20.1 as well as here) in which a UTF-8 encoded regular expression pattern
342 that contains a single ASCII lowercase letter does not match its uppercase
344 L<[GH #14051]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14051>
348 =head1 Acknowledgements
350 Perl 5.20.2 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.20.1
351 and contains approximately 6,300 lines of changes across 170 files from 34
354 Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
355 approximately 1,900 lines of changes to 80 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.
357 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
358 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed
359 the improvements that became Perl 5.20.2:
361 Aaron Crane, Abigail, Andreas Voegele, Andy Dougherty, Anthony Heading,
362 Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Daniel Dragan,
363 Doug Bell, Ed J, Father Chrysostomos, Glenn D. Golden, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van
364 der Sanden, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jim Cromie, Karen Etheridge,
365 Karl Williamson, kmx, Matthew Horsfall, Max Maischein, Peter Martini, Rafael
366 Garcia-Suarez, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Müller,
367 Steve Hay, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Tony Cook, Yves Orton, Ævar Arnfjörð
370 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
371 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
372 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
375 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
376 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
377 helping Perl to flourish.
379 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
380 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
382 =head1 Reporting Bugs
384 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently
385 posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at
386 https://rt.perl.org/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ ,
389 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program
390 included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
391 sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>,
392 will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
394 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
395 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it
396 to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
397 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be
398 able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
399 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
400 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
401 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on
406 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
409 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
411 The F<README> file for general stuff.
413 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.