can omit the C<In> from the block name (e.g. C<\p{BraillePatterns}>), but
to be safe, it's probably best to always use the C<In>).
-=head2 Perl Parser Stress Tested
-
-The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
-Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
-fixed.
-
=head2 REF(...) Instead Of SCALAR(...)
A reference to a reference now stringifies as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead
The undocumented pack/unpack template letters D/F have been recycled
for better use: now they stand for long double (if supported by the
platform) and NV (Perl internal floating point type). (They used
-to be aliases for f/d, but you never knew that.)
+to be aliases for d/f, but you never knew that.)
=head2 Deprecations
implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather
ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
use quite noticeably. The C<fields> pragma interface will remain
-available.
+available. The I<restricted hashes> interface is expected to
+be the replacement interface (see L<Hash::Util>).
=item *
creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
the child process.
+=item *
+
+If your locale environment variables (LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG)
+contain the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching),
+the default encoding of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of
+B<any subsequent file open>, is UTF-8.
+
=back
=head2 Safe Signals
external operation (like an I/O operation), and only then look at any
arrived signals (and before starting the next operation). No more corrupt
internal state since the current operation is always finished first,
-but the signal may take more time to get heard.
+but the signal may take more time to get heard. Note that breaking
+out from potentially blocking operations should still work, though.
=head2 Unicode Overhaul
Unicode in general should be now much more usable than in Perl 5.6.0
(or even in 5.6.1). Unicode can be used in hash keys, Unicode in
regular expressions should work now, Unicode in tr/// should work now,
-Unicode in I/O should work now.
+Unicode in I/O should work now. See L<perluniintro> for introduction
+and L<perlunicode> for details.
=over 4
=item *
The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
-to Unicode 3.1.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/.
+to Unicode 3.2.0. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/ .
=item *
=item *
-chomp() and chop() have been demoted back to I<not> being overridable
-because they cannot really be overridden-- the problem is that their
-prototype cannot be expressed and therefore one really cannot write
+chomp() and chop() are now overridable. Note, however, that their
+prototype (as given by C<prototype("CORE::chomp")> is undefined,
+because it cannot be expressed and therefore one cannot really write
replacements to override these builtins.
=item *
have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore
simply B<between digits>.
+=item *
+
+Rather than relying on C's argv[0] (which may not contain a full pathname)
+where possible $^X is now set by asking the operating system.
+(eg by reading F</proc/self/exe> on Linux, F</proc/curproc/file> on FreeBSD)
+
+=item *
+
+A new variable, C<${^TAINT}>, indicates whether taint mode is enabled.
+
+=item *
+
+You can now override the readline() builtin, and this overrides also
+the <FILEHANDLE> angle bracket operator.
+
+=item *
+
+The command-line options -s and -F are now recognized on the shebang
+(#!) line.
+
=back
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
=item *
+The new bignum, bigint, and bigrat pragmas implement transparent
+bignum support (using the Math::BigInt, Math::BigFloat, and
+Math::BigRat backends), by Tels.
+
+=item *
+
C<Class::ISA> for reporting the search path for a class's ISA tree,
by Sean Burke, has been added. See L<Class::ISA>.
=item *
-C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate
-between different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
-ISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are
-compiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese,
-Chinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at
-runtime. See L<Encode>.
+C<Encode>, by Nick Ing-Simmons and Dan Kogai, provides a mechanism to
+translate between different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
+ISO-8859-1, and ASCII are compiled in to the module. Several other
+encodings (like the rest of the ISO-8859, CP*/Win*, Mac, KOI8-R, three
+variants EBCDIC, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean encodings) are included
+and can be loaded at runtime. (For space considerations, the largest
+Chinese encodings have been separated into their own CPAN module,
+Encode::HanExtra, which Encode will use if available). See L<Encode>.
Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
=item *
+C<Hash::Util> is the interface to the new I<restricted hashes>
+feature. A restricted hash is restricted to a certain set of keys,
+no keys outside the set can be added. Also individual keys can be
+restricted so that the key cannot be deleted and the value cannot be
+changed. (Implemented by Jeffrey Friedl, Nick Ing-Simmons, and
+Michael Schwern.)
+
+=item *
+
C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information.
See L<I18N::Langinfo>.
=item *
+Math::BigRat for big rational numbers, to accompany Math::BigInt and
+Math::BigFloat, from Tels.
+
+=item *
+
C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time,
from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>.
=item *
+The warnings issued by File::Find now belong to their own category.
+You can enable/disable them with C<use/no warnings 'File::Find';>.
+
+=item *
+
File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
=item *
+In Sys::Syslog there is now a failover mechanism that will go
+through alternative connection mechanisms until the message
+is successfully logged.
+
+=item *
+
The Test module has been significantly enhanced.
=item *
+Time::Local::timelocal() does not handle fractional seconds anymore.
+The rationale is that neither does localtime(), and timelocal() and
+localtime() are supposed to be inverses of each other.
+
+=item *
+
The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
(Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
=item *
Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
-(http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html). This algorithm is
+( http://burtleburtle.net/bob/hash/doobs.html ). This algorithm is
reasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than
the old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by
Ilya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of
But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
thread models.
+=item *
+
+The Gconvert macro ($Config{d_Gconvert}) used by perl for stringifying
+floating-point numbers is now more picky about using sprintf %.*g
+rules for the conversion. Some platforms that used to use gcvt may
+now resort to the slower sprintf.
+
=back
=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
=item *
-AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform.
+AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform.
=item *
=item *
+If C<STDERR> is tied, warnings caused by C<warn> and C<die> now
+correctly pass to it.
+
+=item *
+
Several Unicode fixes.
=over 8
Cygwin
-Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4.
+Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.3.10.
=item *
HP-UX
-README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works.
+README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now works.
=item *
The C<system> function and backticks operator have improved
functionality and better error handling.
+File access tests now use current process privileges rather than the
+user's default privileges, which could sometimes result in a mismatch
+between reported access and actual access.
+
=item *
Windows
winsock handle leak fixed.
+=item *
+
+The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
+Markov chain input and the few found crashes and lockups have been
+fixed.
+
=back
=back
=item *
-perl5db.pl has been modified to present a more consistent commands
-interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was also added to test the
-changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
+The debugger (perl5db.pl) has been modified to present a more
+consistent commands interface, via (CommandSet=580). perl5db.t was
+also added to test the changes, and as a placeholder for further tests.
+
+See L<perldebug>.
+
+=item *
+
+The debugger has a new C<dumpDepth> option to control the maximum
+depth to which nested structures are dumped. The C<x> command has
+been extended so that C<x N EXPR> dumps out the value of I<EXPR> to a
+depth of at most I<N> levels.
+
+=item *
-See L<perldebug>
+The debugger can now show lexical variables if you have the CPAN
+module PadWalker installed.
=item *
=item *
Certain regex modifiers such as C<(?o)> make sense only if applied to
-the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise.
+the entire regex. You will get an optional warning if you try to do
+otherwise.
=item *
-Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
+Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<< %foo->{bar} >>
has been deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning.
+=item *
+
+Using C<sort> in scalar context now issues an optional warning.
+This didn't do anything useful, as the sort was not performed.
+
=back
=head1 Changed Internals
probably going to be removed in Perl 5.10. In any case, suidperl
should only be used by security experts who know exactly what they are
doing and why they are using suidperl instead of some other solution
-such as sudo (see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/).
+such as sudo ( see http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ ).
=head1 New Tests
Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib>
-subsection. There are now about 34 000 individual tests (spread over
-about 530 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
+subsection. There are now about 56 000 individual tests (spread over
+about 620 test scripts), in the regression suite (5.6.1 has about
11700 tests, in 258 test scripts) Many of the new tests are introduced
by the new modules, but still in general Perl is now more thoroughly
tested.
Because of the large number of tests, running the regression suite
will take considerably longer time than it used to: expect the suite
to take up to 4-5 times longer to run than in perl 5.6. In a really
-fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 5 minutes
+fast machine you can hope to finish the suite in about 6-8 minutes
(wallclock time).
The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls.
resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least
vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
-"lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version.
+"lslpp -L|grep vac.C" will tell you the vac version. See README.aix.
+
+=item *
+
+If building threaded Perl, you may get compilation warning from pp_sys.c:
+
+ "pp_sys.c", line 4651.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
+
+This is harmless; it is caused by the getnetbyaddr() and getnetbyaddr_r()
+having slightly different types for their first argument.
=back
works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason isn't
known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library.
-=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
-
-Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
-
-=head2 Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12
+=head2 mod_perl 1.26 Doesn't Build With Threaded Perl
-The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work.
+Use mod_perl 1.27 or higher.
-=head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured
+=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
-The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been
-configured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in
-this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The
-test attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets
-which have multiple IP addresses).
+Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
=head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
../ext/DB_File/t/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ??
../ext/DB_File/t/db-recno.t 149 3 2.01% 61 63 65
../ext/POSIX/t/posix.t 31 1 3.23% 10
- ../lib/warnings.t 450 1 0.22% 316
-=head2 OS/390
+If you are building on a UFS partition, you will also probably see
+t/op/stat.t subtest #9 fail. This is caused by Darwin's UFS not
+supporting inode change time.
-OS/390 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
-better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
-tests have been added.
+=head2 op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130
- Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14
- ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1
- ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598
- 600 602 604-610
- ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5
- ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14
- ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5
- ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117
- ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75
- ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25
- ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145
- ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81
- ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4
- op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425
- 626-627
- op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ??
- op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168
- op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59
- Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay.
-
-=head2 op/sprintf tests 129 and 130
-
-The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
+The op/sprintf tests 91, 129, and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop-UX.
-The failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
-19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce
-something other than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
-the printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
-=head2 Failure of Thread tests
+The test 91 is known to fail at QNX6 (nto), because C<sprintf '%e',0>
+incorrectly produces C<0.000000e+0> instead of C<0.000000e+00>.
+
+For the tests 129 and 130 the failing platforms do not comply with
+the ANSI C Standard, line 19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to
+be exact. (They produce something other than "1" and "-1" when
+formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using the printf format "%.0f", most often
+they produce "0" and "-0".)
+
+=head2 Failure of Thread (5.005-style) tests
B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental
and practically unsupported.>
the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
- ext/List/Util/t/first 2
- lib/autouse 4
- ext/Thread/thr5005 19-20
+ ../ext/List/Util/t/first.t 255 65280 7 4 57.14% 2 5-7
+ ../lib/English.t 2 512 54 2 3.70% 2-3
+ ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/data.t 6 3 50.00% 1-3
+ ../lib/Filter/Simple/t/filter_onl 9 3 33.33% 1-2 5
+ ../lib/autouse.t 10 1 10.00% 4
+ op/flip.t 15 1 6.67% 15
-These failures are unlikely to get fixed.
+These failures are unlikely to get fixed as the 5.005-style
+threads are considered fundamentally broken.
=head2 UNICOS
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ../ext/Socket/socketpair.t 1 256 45 1 2.22% 12
+ ../lib/Math/Trig.t 26 1 3.85% 25
+ ../lib/warnings.t 460 1 0.22% 425
+ io/fs.t 36 1 2.78% 31
+ op/numconvert.t 1440 13 0.90% 208 509-510
+ 657-658 665-666 829-830 989-990 1149-1150
+
+=head2 UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
+
+The io/fs test #31 is failing because in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk the Perl
+truncate() cannot be used to grow the size of filehandles, only to
+reduce the size. The workaround is to truncate files instead of
+filehandles.
+
+=head2 UNICOS/mk
+
=over 4
=item *
-ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail.
+During Configure the test
-=item *
+ Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
-lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed,
-which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests.
+will probably fail with error messages like
-=item *
+ CC-20 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3
+ The identifier "bad" is undefined.
-Numerous numerical test failures
+ bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79#ifdef A29K
+ ^
- op/numconvert 209,210,217,218
- op/override 7
- ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9
- lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145
- lib/Math/Trig 25
+ CC-65 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3
+ A semicolon is expected at this point.
-These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies.
+This is caused by a bug in awk utility of UNICOS/mk. You can ignore
+the error, but it does cause a slight problem: you cannot fully
+benefit from the h2ph utility (see L<h2ph>) that can be used to
+convert C headers to Perl libraries, mainly used to be able to access
+from Perl the constants defined using C preprocessor, cpp. Because of
+the above error parts of the converted headers will be invisible.
+Luckily, these days the need for h2ph is rare.
-=back
+=item *
-=head2 UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
+If building Perl with the interpreter threads (ithreads), the
+getgrent(), getgrnam(), and getgrgid() functions cannot return the
+list of the group members due to a bug in the multithreaded support of
+UNICOS/mk. What this means that in list context the functions will
+return only three values, not four.
-The io/fs test #31 is failing because in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk
-truncate() cannot be used to grow the size of filehandles, only
-to reduce the size. The workaround is to truncate files instead
-of filehandles.
+=back
=head2 UTS
=head2 VMS
-There is one known test failure with a default configuration:
-
- [.run]switches..........................FAILED on test 1
+There should be no reported test failures with a default configuration,
+though there are a number of tests marked TODO that point to areas
+needing further debugging and/or porting work.
=head2 Win32
In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
-some output may appear twice.
+some output may appear twice. The following Win32 failures are known
+as of 5.7.3:
+
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ..\ext/threads/t/end.t 6 4 66.67% 3-6
=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
is executed.
+=head2 z/OS (OS/390)
+
+z/OS has rather many test failures but the situation is actually
+better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and
+tests have been added.
+
+ Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ ../ext/Data/Dumper/t/dumper.t 321 2 0.62% 311 314
+ ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 5 4 80.00% 2-5
+ ../lib/utf8.t 94 13 13.83% 27 30-31 43 46 73
+ 76 79 82 85 88 91
+ 94
+ ../lib/Benchmark.t 1 256 159 1 0.63% 75
+ ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Constant.t 27 19 70.37% 5-23
+ ../lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t 9 9 100.00% 1-9
+ op/pat.t 864 9 1.04% 242-243 665 776
+ 785 832-834 845
+ op/sprintf.t 224 3 1.34% 98 100 136
+ op/tr.t 97 5 5.15% 63 71-74
+ uni/fold.t 767 8 1.04% 25-26 62 169 196
+ 648 697-698
+ 60 tests and 384 subtests skipped.
+
=head2 Localising Tied Arrays and Hashes Is Broken
local %tied_array;
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
-bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be
-information at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.
+bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ There may also be
+information at http://www.perl.com/ , the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff