5 perl5291delta - what is new for perl v5.29.1
9 This document describes differences between the 5.29.0 release and the 5.29.1
12 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.28.0, first read
13 L<perl5290delta>, which describes differences between 5.28.0 and 5.29.0.
15 =head1 Incompatible Changes
17 =head2 Delimiters must now be graphemes
19 See L<perldeprecation/Use of unassigned code point or non-standalone grapheme
22 =head2 Some formerly deprecated uses of an unescaped left brace C<"{"> in
23 regular expression patterns are now illegal
25 But to avoid breaking code unnecessarily, most instances that issued a
26 deprecation warning, remain legal and now have a non-deprecation warning
27 raised. See L<perldeprecation/Unescaped left braces in regular expressions>.
29 =head1 Performance Enhancements
35 Translating from UTF-8 into the code point it represents now is done via a
36 deterministic finite automaton, speeding it up. As a typical example,
37 C<ord("\x7fff")> now requires 12% fewer instructions than before. The
38 performance of checking that a sequence of bytes is valid UTF-8 is similarly
39 improved, again by using a dfa.
43 =head1 Modules and Pragmata
45 =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
51 L<bignum> has been upgraded from version 0.49 to 0.50.
55 L<Compress::Raw::Bzip2> has been upgraded from version 2.074 to 2.081.
59 L<Compress::Raw::Zlib> has been upgraded from version 2.076 to 2.081.
63 L<Config::Perl::V> has been upgraded from version 0.29 to 0.30.
67 L<DB_File> has been upgraded from version 1.840 to 1.842.
71 L<Devel::PPPort> has been upgraded from version 3.40 to 3.42.
75 L<Digest::SHA> has been upgraded from version 6.01 to 6.02.
79 L<experimental> has been upgraded from version 0.019 to 0.020.
83 L<ExtUtils::Manifest> has been upgraded from version 1.70 to 1.71.
87 L<File::Temp> has been upgraded from version 0.2304 to 0.2308.
91 IO-Compress has been upgraded from version 2.074 to 2.081.
95 L<IPC::Cmd> has been upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.02.
99 L<Locale::Codes> has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.57.
103 L<Math::BigInt> has been upgraded from version 1.999811 to 1.999813.
107 L<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> has been upgraded from version 0.5006 to 0.5007.
111 L<Math::BigRat> has been upgraded from version 0.2613 to 0.2614.
115 L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.20180626 to 5.20180720.
119 L<parent> has been upgraded from version 0.236 to 0.237.
123 L<perlfaq> has been upgraded from version 5.021011 to 5.20180605.
127 podlators has been upgraded from version 4.10 to 4.11.
131 L<Storable> has been upgraded from version 3.08 to 3.11.
135 L<Test::Simple> has been upgraded from version 1.302133 to 1.302138.
139 L<Thread::Queue> has been upgraded from version 3.12 to 3.13.
143 L<Time::Local> has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.28.
147 L<version> has been upgraded from version 0.9923 to 0.9924.
153 =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation
155 We have attempted to update the documentation to reflect the changes listed in
156 this document. If you find any we have missed, send email to
157 L<perlbug@perl.org|mailto:perlbug@perl.org>.
159 Additionally, the following selected changes have been made:
167 C<AvFILL()> was wrongly listed as deprecated. This has been corrected.
168 L<[perl #133278]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=133278>
178 The behaviour of C<tr> when the delimiter is an apostrophe has been clarified.
179 In particular, hyphens aren't special, and C<\x{}> isn't interpolated.
180 L<[perl #130679]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=130679>
186 The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
187 including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
188 diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
190 =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics
196 As noted under L<Incompatible Changes> above, the deprecation warning
197 "Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated here (and will be fatal in Perl
198 5.30), passed through in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/" has been
199 changed to the non-deprecation warning "Unescaped left brace in regex is passed
200 through in regex; marked by S<<-- HERE> in m/%s/".
206 Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this
209 =head1 Platform Support
211 =head2 Platform-Specific Notes
217 An obscure problem in C<pack()> when compiling with HP C-ANSI-C has been fixed
218 by disabling optimizations in F<pp_pack.c>.
226 The C<USE_CPLUSPLUS> build option which has long been available in
227 F<win32/Makefile> (for B<nmake>) and F<win32/makefile.mk> (for B<dmake>) is now
228 also available in F<win32/GNUmakefile> (for B<gmake>).
232 The B<nmake> makefile no longer defaults to Visual C++ 6.0 (a very old version
233 which is unlikely to be widely used today). As a result, it is now a
234 requirement to specify the C<CCTYPE> since there is no obvious choice of which
235 modern version to default to instead. Failure to specify C<CCTYPE> will result
236 in an error being output and the build will stop.
238 (The B<dmake> and B<gmake> makefiles will automatically detect which compiler
239 is being used, so do not require C<CCTYPE> to be set. This feature has not yet
240 been added to the B<nmake> makefile.)
246 =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
252 Compilation under C<-DPERL_MEM_LOG> and C<-DNO_LOCALE> have been fixed.
256 Perl 5.28 introduced an C<index()> optimization when comparing to -1 (or
257 indirectly, e.g. >= 0). When this optimization was triggered inside a C<when>
258 clause it caused a warning ("Argument %s isn't numeric in smart match"). This
260 L<[perl #133368]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=133368>
264 =head1 Acknowledgements
266 Perl 5.29.1 represents approximately 3 weeks of development since Perl 5.29.0
267 and contains approximately 68,000 lines of changes across 510 files from 18
270 Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
271 approximately 62,000 lines of changes to 320 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.
273 Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community
274 of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the
275 improvements that became Perl 5.29.1:
277 Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Daniel
278 Dragan, David Mitchell, François Perrad, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van der Sanden,
279 James E Keenan, Jerry D. Hedden, Jim Cromie, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson,
280 Nicholas Clark, Sawyer X, Steve Hay, Tina Müller, Yves Orton.
282 The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated
283 from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of
284 the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug
287 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
288 included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
289 helping Perl to flourish.
291 For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see
292 the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
294 =head1 Reporting Bugs
296 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at
297 L<https://rt.perl.org/> . There may also be information at
298 L<http://www.perl.org/> , the Perl Home Page.
300 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program
301 included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but
302 sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>,
303 will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
305 If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it
306 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then see
307 L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION> for details of how to
312 If you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5, you
313 can do so by running the C<perlthanks> program:
317 This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.
321 The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
324 The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
326 The F<README> file for general stuff.
328 The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.