5 [ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as
6 XXX needs to be processed before release. ]
8 perldelta - what is new for perl v5.13.3
12 This document describes differences between the 5.13.3 release and
15 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.13.1, first read
16 L<perl5132delta>, which describes differences between 5.13.1 and
21 XXX Any important notices here
23 =head1 Core Enhancements
25 XXX New core language features go here. Summarise user-visible core language
26 enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go
27 here, but most should go in the L</Performance Enhancements> section.
29 [ List each enhancement as a =head2 entry ]
31 =head2 C<\N{I<name>}> and C<charnames> enhancements
33 C<\N{}> and C<charnames::vianame> now know about the abbreviated character
34 names listed by Unicode, such as NBSP, SHY, LRO, ZWJ, etc., as well as all the
35 customary abbreviations for the C0 and C1 control characters (such as ACK, BEL,
36 CAN, etc.), as well as a few new variants in common usage of some C1 full
39 In the past, it was ineffective to override one of Perl's abbreviations with
40 your own custom alias. Now it works.
42 And you can create a custom alias directly to the ordinal of a character, known
43 by C<\N{...}>, C<charnames::vianame()>, and C<charnames::viacode()>.
44 Previously, an alias had to be to an official Unicode character name. This
45 made it impossible to create an alias for a code point that had no name,
46 such as the ones reserved for private use. So this change allows you to make
47 more effective use of private use characters. Only if there is no official
48 name will C<charnames::viacode()> return your custom one.
50 See L<charnames> for details on all these changes.
52 =head2 Other enhancements
58 Uppercase X/B allowed in hexadecimal/binary literals (RT#76296) (a674e8d)
64 XXX Any security-related notices go here. In particular, any security
65 vulnerabilities closed should be noted here rather than in the
66 L</Selected Bug Fixes> section.
68 [ List each security issue as a =head2 entry ]
70 =head1 Incompatible Changes
72 XXX For a release on a stable branch, this section aspires to be:
74 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.XXX.XXX. If any
75 exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
77 [ List each incompatible change as a =head2 entry ]
81 XXX Any deprecated features, syntax, modules etc. should be listed here.
82 In particular, deprecated modules should be listed here even if they are
83 listed as an updated module in the L</Modules and Pragmata> section.
85 [ List each deprecation as a =head2 entry ]
87 =head2 Omitting a space between regular expression and subsequent word
89 Omitting a space between a regex pattern or pattern modifiers and the
90 following word is deprecated. Deprecation for regular expression matches
91 was added in Perl 5.13.2. In this release, the deprecation is extended
92 to regular expression substitutions. For example,
93 C<< s/foo/bar/sand $bar >> will still be parsed as
94 C<< s/foo/bar/s and $bar >> but will issue a warning.
96 =head2 Deprecation warning added for deprecated-in-core .pl libs
98 This is a mandatory warning, not obeying -X or lexical warning bits.
99 The warning is modelled on that supplied by deprecate.pm for
100 deprecated-in-core .pm libraries. It points to the specific CPAN
101 distribution that contains the .pl libraries. The CPAN version, of
102 course, does not generate the warning. (0111154)
104 =head1 Performance Enhancements
106 XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There
107 may well be none in a stable release.
109 [ List each enhancement as a =item entry ]
115 There are several small optimizations to improve CPU cache performance
119 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
121 XXX All changes to installed files in F<cpan/>, F<dist/>, F<ext/> and F<lib/>
122 go here. If Module::CoreList is updated, generate an initial draft of the
123 following sections using F<Porting/corelist-perldelta.pl>, which prints stub
124 entries to STDOUT. Results can be pasted in place of the '=head2' entries
125 below. A paragraph summary for important changes should then be added by hand.
126 In an ideal world, dual-life modules would have a F<Changes> file that could be
129 [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ]
131 =head2 New Modules and Pragmata
141 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
143 XXX Make sure these get sorted, are phrased similarly and all version
150 autodie updated to CPAN version 2.10 (a009834)
154 charnames -- viacode() is now significantly faster (f3227b7)
158 version now prevents object methods from being called as class methods
163 warnings updated to 1.10. Calling C<use warnings> without
164 arguments is now significantly more efficient. (8452af9)
168 Archive-Extract updated to CPAN version 0.42 (d7f8799)
170 Updates since 0.38 include: a safe print method that Michael Schwern
171 contributed, that guards Archive::Extract from changes to $\; a
172 fix to the tests when run in core perl from Robin Barker; and
173 support for TZ files contributed by Paul Marquess, who also supplied a
174 modification for the lzma logic to favour IO::Uncompress::Unlzma
178 Archive-Tar updated to version 1.64 (afabe0e)
180 Important changes since 1.54 include: compatibility with busybox
181 implementations of tar which was added by Mark Swayne; a fix so
182 that write() and create_archive() close only handles
183 they opened by Darrell K.; and a bug was fixed regarding the exit code
184 of extract_archive which was spotted by and upstreamed from RedHat by
189 Attribute-Handlers updated to CPAN version 0.88 (f2ea78b)
193 Compress-Raw-Bzip2 updated to CPAN version 2.027 (9e09409)
197 Compress-Raw-Zlib updated to CPAN version 2.027 (f02c02e)
201 CPANPLUS updated to version 0.9007 (d4e225a)
203 Fix the shell test to skip if test is not being run under a
204 terminal; resolved the issue where a prereq on Config would not be
205 recognised as a core module
209 Digest-MD5 updated to CPAN version 2.40 (326fafa)
213 Digest-SHA updated to CPAN version 5.48 (dfe1edc)
217 Exporter no longer overrides C<$SIG{__WARN__}> (RT #74472) (9b86bb5)
221 ExtUtils-CBuilder updated to CPAN version 0.2703 (7b0eef9)
225 ExtUtils-Manifest updated to CPAN version 1.58 (49c6bc4)
229 ExtUtil-ParseXS updated to version 2.2206 (494e8c4)
233 File::Copy skips suid tests on a nosuid partition (cae9400)
237 IO-Compress upated to CPAN version 2.027 (e8796d6)
241 IPC-Cmd updated to CPAN version 0.60 (e667e1e)
245 IPC-SysV updated to CPAN version 2.03 (10613b6)
249 Locale::Maketext guts have been merged back into the main module (87d86da)
250 and adds external cache support (ace47d6)
254 Module-Build updated to CPAN version 0.3607 (40c9afb)
258 Module-Load updated to CPAN version 0.18 (93eaa32)
262 Time-HiRes updated to CPAN version 1.9721 (68c5b4d)
266 Time-Piece updated to CPAN version 1.20 (90d55c2)
270 Unicode-Collate updated to CPAN version 0.53. Includes Unicode Collation
271 Algorithm 18 (74b94a7)
275 Unicode-Normalize updated to CPAN release 1.06 (a96160d)
279 =head2 Removed Modules and Pragmata
291 XXX Changes to files in F<pod/> go here. Consider grouping entries by
292 file and be sure to link to the appropriate page, e.g. L<perlfunc>.
294 [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ]
296 =head2 New Documentation
298 XXX Changes which create B<new> files in F<pod/> go here.
300 =head3 L<perl5121delta>
302 The Perl 5.12.1 perldelta file was added from the Perl maintenance branch
304 =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation
306 XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F<pod/> go here.
307 However, any changes to F<pod/perldiag.pod> should go in the L</Diagnostics>
310 =head3 General changes
316 Octal character escapes in documentation now prefer either the C<\gDIGIT>
317 escape or else a three-digit octal escape as they have less ambiguity than
318 other forms of octal escapes. (ce7b6f0) (d8b950d)
322 Documentation now standardizes on the term 'capture group' over 'buffer'
323 in regular expression documentation(c27a5cf)
333 Added cautionary note about "no VERSION" (e0de7c2)
337 Add additional notes regarding srand and forking (d460397)
347 Improved documentation of unusual character escapes (bf82ca4)
357 Clarifies the behavior of the C<-0NNN> switch for C<-0400> or higher (7ba31cb)
367 Added the policy on compatibility and deprecation along with definitions of
368 terms like "deprecation" (70e4a83)
378 Some examples updated for modern Perl style (67d00dd)
384 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
385 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
386 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
388 XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C<C> code go here. Also
389 include any changes in L<perldiag> that reconcile it to the C<C> code.
391 [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ]
393 =head2 New Diagnostics
395 XXX Newly added diagnostic messages go here
405 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
407 XXX Changes (i.e. rewording) of diagnostic messages go here
417 =head1 Utility Changes
419 XXX Changes to installed programs such as F<perlbug> and F<xsubpp> go
420 here. Most of these are built within the directories F<utils> and F<x2p>.
428 The remote terminal works after forking and spawns new sessions - one
429 for each forked process.
433 Uses the less pager path from Config instead of searching for it (bf320d6)
438 =head1 Configuration and Compilation
440 XXX Changes to F<Configure>, F<installperl>, F<installman>, and analogous tools
441 go here. Any other changes to the Perl build process should be listed here.
442 However, any platform-specific changes should be listed in the
443 L</Platform Support> section, instead.
445 [ List changes as a =item entry ].
451 Adjusts 'make test.valgrind' to account for cpan/dist/ext separation. (e07ce2e)
457 XXX Any significant changes to the testing of a freshly built perl should be
458 listed here. Changes which create B<new> files in F<t/> go here as do any
459 large changes to the testing harness (e.g. when parallel testing was added).
460 Changes to existing files in F<t/> aren't worth summarising, although the bugs
461 that they represent may be covered elsewhere.
463 [ List each test improvement as a =item entry ]
469 F<t/harness> clears PERL5LIB, PERLLIB, PERL5OPT as t/TEST does (a2d3de1)
473 Many common testing routines were refactored into t/lib/common.pl
477 Several test files have been modernized to use Test::More
481 =head1 Platform Support
483 XXX Any changes to platform support should be listed in the sections below.
485 [ Within the sections, list each platform as a =item entry with specific
486 changes as paragraphs below it. ]
490 XXX List any platforms that this version of perl compiles on, that previous
491 versions did not. These will either be enabled by new files in the F<hints/>
492 directories, or new subdirectories and F<README> files at the top level of the
497 =item XXX-some-platform
503 =head2 Discontinued Platforms
505 XXX List any platforms that this version of perl no longer compiles on.
511 Support for MacOS Classic within ExtUtils::MakeMaker was removed from Perl in
512 December 2004. Vestigial MacOS Classic specific code has now been removed
513 from other core modules as well.
517 =head2 Platform-Specific Notes
519 XXX List any changes for specific platforms. This could include configuration
520 and compilation changes or changes in portability/compatibility. However,
521 changes within modules for platforms should generally be listed in the
522 L</Modules and Pragmata> section.
528 t/io/openpid.t now uses the alarm() watchdog strategy for more
529 robustness. (5732108)
533 =head1 Internal Changes
535 XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C<XS> code go here.
536 Other significant internal changes for future core maintainers should
539 [ List each improvement as a =item entry ]
545 XXX Lots of block hook changes (PL_blockhooks) -- needs an overall summary
549 Added C<BhkENABLE> and C<BhkDISABLE> macros to en/disable blockhook entries.
550 This allows the individual callbacks to be switched on and off as
551 necessary, without removing the entry from PL_blockhooks. (a3e07c8)
555 Added C<Perl_croak_no_modify()> to implement
556 C<Perl_croak("%s", PL_no_modify)>. (6ad8f25)
560 Added prototypes for C<tie()> and C<untie()> to allow overloading. (RT#75902)
565 Adds C<my_[l]stat_flags()> to replace C<my_[l]stat()>. C<my_stat()> and
566 C<my_lstat()> call get magic on the stack arg, so create C<_flags()>
567 variants that allow us to control this. (0d7d409)
571 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
573 XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here.
574 Bug fixes in files in F<ext/> and F<lib/> are best summarised in
575 L</Modules and Pragmata>.
577 [ List each fix as a =item entry ]
583 Fixed readline() when interrupted by signals so it no longer returns
584 the "same thing" as before or random memory.
588 Fixed a regression of kill() when a match variable is used for the
589 process ID to kill. (RT#75812) (8af710e)
593 Fixed several subtle bugs in sort() when @_ is accessed within a subroutine
594 used for sorting. (RT#72334) (8f443ca)
598 Catch yyparse() exceptions in C<< (?{...}) >> (RT#2353) (634d691)
602 Avoid UTF-8 cache panics with offsets beyond a string (RT #75898) (3e2d381)
606 Fixed POSIX::strftime memory leak (RT#73520) (c4bc4aa)
610 Doesn't set strict with C<no VERSION> if C<VERSION> is greater than 5.12.
615 Avoids multiple FETCH/stringify on filetest ops (40c852d)
619 Fixed issue with string C<eval> not detecting taint of overloaded/tied
620 arguments (RT #75716) (895b760)
624 Fix potential crashes of string C<eval> when evaluating a object with
625 overloaded stringification by creating a stringified copy when necessary
630 Fixed bug where overloaded stringification could remove tainting
631 (RT #75716) (a02ec77)
635 Plugs more memory leaks in vms.c. (9e2bec0)
639 Fix pthread include error for Time::Piece (e9f284c)
643 =head1 Known Problems
645 XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any
646 tests that had to be C<TODO>ed for the release would be noted here, unless
647 they were specific to a particular platform (see below).
649 This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
650 from either 5.XXX.XXX or 5.XXX.XXX.
652 [ List each fix as a =item entry ]
658 readline() returns an empty string instead of undef when it is
659 interrupted by a signal.
669 Retroactively added the Acknowledgements list to L<perl5132delta>,
670 which was excluded in the original release (d1e2db0)
676 XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary
679 =head1 Acknowledgements
681 XXX The list of people to thank goes here.
683 =head1 Reporting Bugs
685 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
686 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
687 bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
688 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
690 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
691 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
692 to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
693 output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
694 analysed by the Perl porting team.
696 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
697 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
698 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
699 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
700 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
701 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
702 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
703 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently
708 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
711 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
713 The F<README> file for general stuff.
715 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.