5 perl5235delta - what is new for perl v5.23.5
9 This document describes differences between the 5.23.4 release and the 5.23.5
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.23.3, first read
13 L<perl5234delta>, which describes differences between 5.23.3 and 5.23.4.
15 =head1 Performance Enhancements
21 Faster addition, subtraction and multiplication.
23 Since 5.8.0, arithmetic became slower due to the need to support
24 64-bit integers. To deal with 64-bit integers, a lot more corner
25 cases need to be checked, which adds time. We now detect common
26 cases where there is no need to check for those corner cases,
27 and special-case them.
31 Faster preincrement, predecrement, postincrement, postdecrement.
33 By internally splitting the functions which handled multiple
34 cases into different functions.
38 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
40 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
46 L<arybase> has been upgraded from version 0.10 to 0.11.
50 L<B> has been upgraded from version 1.60 to 1.61.
54 L<base> has been upgraded from version 2.22 to 2.22_01.
56 Better handling of attempts to load non-existent modules.
57 Improvements to fields.pm documentation. L<base> now requires v5.8.0.
61 L<Carp> has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
63 Improvements when working with older perls.
67 L<Config::Perl::V> has been upgraded from version 0.24 to 0.25.
71 L<Devel::Peek> has been upgraded from version 1.22 to 1.23.
75 L<Dumpvalue> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.
79 L<DynaLoader> has been upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.36.
83 L<fields> has been upgraded from version 2.17 to 2.22_01.
87 L<File::Find> has been upgraded from version 1.31 to 1.32.
89 Handles empty directory lists.
93 L<File::Spec> has been upgraded from version 3.58 to 3.59.
97 L<Getopt::Long> has been upgraded from version 2.47 to 2.48.
99 Fixes an issue with C<< gnu_compat >>
103 L<Hash::Util::FieldHash> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.
107 L<IPC::Open3> has been upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.20.
109 Include the error message on C<< exec() >> failure.
113 L<Math::BigInt> has been upgraded from version 1.999704 to 1.999710.
117 L<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> has been upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.37.
121 L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.20151020 to 5.20151120.
125 L<Module::Metadata> has been upgraded from version 1.000029 to 1.000030.
127 Temp dirs cleaned up during tests. More accurately mark tests as TODO, so as to have a quieter and less confusing test run without passing TODO tests.
131 L<PerlIO::encoding> has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
135 L<PerlIO::mmap> has been upgraded from version 0.014 to 0.015.
139 L<PerlIO::scalar> has been upgraded from version 0.23 to 0.24.
143 L<PerlIO::via> has been upgraded from version 0.15 to 0.16.
147 L<Pod::Simple> has been upgraded from version 3.30 to 3.32.
149 Switched debugging output from C<< STDOUT >> to C<< STDERR >>.
151 Added C<< errata_seen() >> to make POD errors easily accessible.
153 Simplified the detection of case-insensitivity in Pod::Simple::Search.
155 Fixed C<< Use of uninitialized value $1 in lc >> warning in
158 If C<< @INC >> includes the current directory symbol, C<.>, the
159 C<< survey() >> method of C<< Pod::Simple::Search >> no longer excludes
160 it from its list of directories to search. Instead, The C<< survey() >> and
161 C<< find() >> methods now both exclude duplicate directories from C<< @INC >>
164 Moved source repository and updated links to new perl-pod GitHub
165 organization: L<https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple>.
167 Improved repository links and added GitHub issue tracking link to
168 the distribution metadata.
170 Switched from C<< File::Spec >>'s C<< catdir >> to C<< catfile >>
171 for path names, to fix failures on VMS. Also now use Unix path semantics
172 where they're not required to be platform-specific. (RT #105511).
174 Improved the example use of the C<< html_encode_chars() >> method in
175 the C<< Pod::Simple::XHTML >> documentation.
179 L<POSIX> has been upgraded from version 1.58 to 1.59.
183 L<Thread::Queue> has been upgraded from version 3.06 to 3.07.
187 L<threads> has been upgraded from version 2.03 to 2.04.
191 L<threads::shared> has been upgraded from version 1.48 to 1.49.
195 L<Tie::Scalar> has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
199 L<Time::HiRes> has been upgraded from version 1.9727_02 to 1.9728.
203 L<Time::Piece> has been upgraded from version 1.30 to 1.31.
207 L<Unicode::Normalize> has been upgraded from version 1.21 to 1.23.
211 L<XSLoader> has been upgraded from version 0.20 to 0.21.
217 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
218 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
219 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
221 =head2 New Diagnostics
229 L<<< Sequence (?... not terminated in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in mE<sol>%sE<sol>|perldiag/"Sequence (?... not terminated in regex; marked by <-- HERE in mE<sol>%sE<sol>" >>>
233 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
239 When running out of memory during an attempt the increase the stack
240 size, previously, perl would die using the cryptic message
241 C<< panic: av_extend_guts() negative count (-9223372036854775681) >>.
242 This has been fixed to show the prettier message:
243 L<< Out of memory during stack extend|perldiag/"Out of memory during %s extend" >>
247 =head1 Configuration and Compilation
253 C<Configure> now acts as if the C<-O> option is always passed, allowing command
254 line options to override saved configuration. This should eliminate confusion
255 when command line options are ignored for no obvious reason. C<-O> is now
256 permitted, but ignored.
260 Some filesystem stat symbols which were not used by the Perl core
261 were removed in an earlier commit. However, since these symbols
262 turned out to be used by at least one CPAN module, these symbols
267 C<< PPPort.so/PPPort.dll >> no longer get installed, as they are
268 not used by C<< PPPort.pm >>, only by its test files.
272 It is now possible to specify which compilation date to show on
273 C<< perl -V >> output, by setting the macro C<< PERL_BUILD_DATE >>.
277 =head1 Platform Support
279 =head2 Platform-Specific Notes
285 Win32 does now a parallel build with C++.
289 Workaround where Tru64 balks when prototypes are listed as
290 C<< PERL_STATIC_INLINE >>, but where the test is build with
291 C<< -DPERL_NO_INLINE_FUNCTIONS >>.
295 =head1 Internal Changes
301 C<< sv_ref() >> is now part of the API.
305 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
311 C<\b{sb}> works much better. In Perl v5.22.0, this new construct didn't
312 seem to give the expected results, yet passed all the tests in the
313 extensive suite furnished by Unicode. It turns out that it was because
314 these were short input strings, and the failures had to do with longer
315 inputs. This was fixed in Perl 5.23.4, but the improvement was not
316 noticed until after that was released, so is included here now.
320 Certain syntax errors in
321 L<perlrecharclass/Extended Bracketed Character Classes> caused panics
322 instead of the proper error message. This has now been fixed. [perl
327 An earlier commit added a message when a quantifier in a regular
328 expression was useless, but then caused the parser to skip it;
329 this caused the surplus quantifier to be silently ignored, instead
330 of throwing an error. This is now fixed. [perl #126253]
334 The switch to building non-XS modules last in win32/makefile.mk (introduced
335 by design as part of the changes to enable parallel building) caused the
336 build of POSIX to break due to problems with the version module. This
341 Improved parsing of hex float constants.
345 Fixed an issue with C<< pack >> where C<< pack "H" >> (and C<< pack "h" >>)
346 could read past the source when given a non-utf8 source, and a utf8 target.
351 Fixed several cases where perl would abort due to a segmentation fault,
352 or a C-level assert. [perl #126615], [perl #126602], [perl #126193].
356 =head1 Acknowledgements
358 Perl 5.23.5 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.23.4
359 and contains approximately 12,000 lines of changes across 290 files from 23
362 Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
363 approximately 6,400 lines of changes to 180 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.
365 Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
366 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
367 improvements that became Perl 5.23.5:
369 Aaron Crane, Abigail, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari
370 Mannsåker, Daniel Dragan, David Mitchell, Dr.Ruud, H.Merijn Brand, Ivan
371 Pozdeev, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jerry D. Hedden, Karen Etheridge,
372 Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Mohammed El-Afifi, Niko Tyni, Peter Rabbitson,
373 Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Steve Hay, Tony Cook.
375 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
376 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
377 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
380 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
381 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
382 helping Perl to flourish.
384 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
385 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
387 =head1 Reporting Bugs
389 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently
390 posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at
391 L<https://rt.perl.org/> . There may also be information at
392 L<http://www.perl.org/> , the Perl Home Page.
394 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program
395 included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
396 sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>,
397 will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
399 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
400 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it
401 to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
402 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be
403 able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
404 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
405 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for
406 security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on
411 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
414 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
416 The F<README> file for general stuff.
418 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.