=head1 NAME
-perldelta - what's new for perl v5.7.0
+perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.0
=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and
-the 5.7.0 release.
+This document describes differences between the 5.6.0 release and the
+5.8.0 release.
-=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
+=head1 Incompatible Changes
-A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
-of Perl has been identified. The suidperl is neither built nor
-installed by default. As of August the 20th, 2000, the only known
-vulnerable platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions.
-The CERT and various vendors have been alerted about the vulnerability.
+=head2 64-bit platforms and malloc
-The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security
-exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. In Linux
-platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which gave
-access to a root shell, resulting in a serious compromise, instead of
-reporting the exploit attempt. If you don't have /bin/mail or if you
-have 'safe suid scripts' or if you haven't installed the suidperl, you
-are safe.
+If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no more being
+used because it simply does not work with 8-byte pointers. Also,
+usually the system mallocs on such platforms are much better optimized
+for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. Such platforms
+include 64-bit Alpha, MIPS, HPPA, PPC, and Sparc.
-The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from
-the Perl 5.7.0 release, so that particular vulnerability isn't there
-anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are,
-unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl code is being reviewed
-and if deemed too risky to continue being supported, in the extreme
-case it may be completely removed in future releases. 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.
-A good tool for similar needs is sudo: http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
+=head2 AIX Dynaloading
-=head1 Incompatible Changes
+The AIX dynaloading now uses in AIX releases 4.3 and newer the native
+dlopen interface of AIX instead of the old emulated interface. This
+change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled
+modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other
+applications like modperl which are using the AIX native interface.
+
+=head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS
+
+The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being
+statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient
+TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test
+Perl in such configurations.
+
+=head2 Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes \p{In...}
+
+As suggested by the Unicode consortium, the Unicode character classes
+now prefer I<scripts> as opposed to I<blocks> (as defined by Unicode);
+in Perl, when the C<\p{In....}> and the C<\p{In....}> regular expression
+constructs are used. This has changed the definition of some of those
+character classes.
+
+The difference between scripts and blocks is that scripts are the
+glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while the blocks
+are more artificial groupings of 256 characters based on the Unicode
+numbering.
+
+In general this change results in more inclusive Unicode character
+classes, but changes to the other direction also do take place:
+for example while the script C<Latin> includes all the Latin
+characters and their various diacritic-adorned versions, it
+does not include the various punctuation or digits (since they
+are not solely C<Latin>).
+
+Changes in the character class semantics may have happened if a script
+and a block happen to have the same name, for example C<Hebrew>.
+In such cases the script wins and C<\p{InHebrew}> now means the script
+definition of Hebrew. The block definition in still available,
+though, by appending C<Block> to the name: C<\p{InHebrewBlock}> means
+what C<\p{InHebrew}> meant in perl 5.6.0. For the full list
+of affected character classes, see L<perlunicode/Blocks>.
+
+=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 Deprecations
-=head2 Arrays Now Always Interpolate Into Double-Quoted Strings
+The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
+use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
+and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
+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.
-Constructs like "foo@bar" now always assume the C<@bar> to be an array,
-regardless of whether it is known that C<@bar> is an array.
+The syntaxes C<@a->[...]> and C<@h->{...}> have now been deprecated.
-=head2 bless(REF, REF) is now a fatal error
+After years of trying the suidperl is considered to be too complex to
+ever be considered truly secure. The suidperl functionality is likely
+to be removed in a future release.
+
+The C<package;> syntax (C<package> without an argument has been
+deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its
+implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to
+disallow all but fully qualified variables, C<use strict;> instead.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
The semantics of bless(REF, REF) were unclear and until someone proves
it to make some sense, it is forbidden.
-=head2 The eg/* Directory Removed
+=item *
+
+A reference to a reference now stringify as "REF(0x81485ec)" instead
+of "SCALAR(0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return
+value of ref().
+
+=item *
The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed.
Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that
-the examples need to be documented, tested, and--most importantly--maintained.
+the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly)
+maintained.
-=head2 The lib/chat2.pl
+=item *
The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed
to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned.
-=head2 Unimplemented (But Recognised) POSIX Regex Features Now Fatal
+=item *
The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still
recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of
ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable
since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used.
-=head2 lstat(FILEHANDLE) now warns
+=item *
+
+The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning
+("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \-escape
+any C<\w> character.
+
+=item *
lstat(FILEHANDLE) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense.
In future releases this may become a fatal error.
-=head2 Obsolete String Comparison Operators Removed
+=item *
-The long since deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison
+The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison
operators (EQ, NE, LT, LE, GE, GT) have now been removed.
-=head2 The Regular Expression Submatches Are Now Unset When Backtracking
+=item *
The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now
-consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
+more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false
data lying around in them.
-=head2 tr///CU Removed, Not To Return
+=item *
The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return;
the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar
functionality, see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...).
-=head1 Core Enhancements
-
-=over 4
-
=item *
-C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass
-in multiple arguments.)
+Although "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
+depends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
+algorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
+More details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
=item *
-my __PACKAGE__ now works.
+The list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
+alphabetically to be csh-compliant. (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
+natively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
-=item *
+=back
-no Module; now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.
+=head1 Core Enhancements
-=item *
+=head2 AUTOLOAD Is Now Lvaluable
-The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand
-is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified.
+AUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute
+to AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value.
-=item *
+=head2 PerlIO is Now The Default
-C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8.
+=over 4
=item *
-prototype(\&) is now available.
+IO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio".
+PerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the
+handle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg
+form of open:
-=back
+ open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ...
-=head1 Modules and Pragmata
+or on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>:
-=head2 New Modules
+ binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)');
-=over 4
+The built-in layers are: unix (low level read/write), stdio (as in
+previous Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a
+portable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32,
+but available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if
+platform supports it (mostly UNIXes).
-=item *
+Layers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma.
-File::Temp, version 0.10, allows one to create temporary files
-and directories in an easy, portable, and secure way.
+See L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects
+of PerlIO on your architecture name.
=item *
-The Storable extension, version 0.7.2, released the 14th of August
-2000, has been added to the Perl distribution. Storable gives
-persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the storage and
-retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and compact binary
-format.
-
-=back
+File handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
+(UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
-=head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
+ open($fh,">:utf8","Uni.txt");
-=over 4
+Note for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named
+for you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
+UTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
+http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/ for more information.
+In future releases this naming may change.
=item *
-The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments.
+File handles can translate character encodings from/to Perl's internal
+Unicode form on read/write via the ":encoding()" layer.
=item *
-AutoLoader can now be `stopped' by
+File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via:
- no AutoLoader;
+ open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ...
=item *
-B::Deparse now understands sub attributes.
+Anonymous temporary files are available without need to
+'use FileHandle' or other module via
-=item *
+ open($fh,"+>", undef) || ...
-Data::Dumper now works on negative number on 32-bit platforms where IV
-(the Perl's integer datatype) is greater than 32 bits. Also, large
-unsigned numbers are now dumped as such, not as large negative numbers.
+That is a literal undef, not an undefined value.
=item *
-CGI has been updated to version 2.72, released
-the 20th of August 2000.
+The list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX):
-=item *
+ open($fh,"-|", 'cat', '/etc/motd')
-CPAN has been updated to version 1.57, released
-the 16th of August 2000.
+creates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '/etc/motd') in
+the child process.
=item *
-DB_File has been updated to version 1.73, released the
-27th of April 2000.
+The following builtin functions are now overridable: chop(), chomp(),
+each(), keys(), pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift().
=item *
-The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
-hit by saying
+Formats now support zero-padded decimal fields.
- use English '-no_performance_hit';
+=item *
-(Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables
-C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduce C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and
-C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>.
+Perl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions
+and basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and
+tries also to keep the results stored internally as integers.
+This change leads into often slightly faster and always less lossy
+arithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
+in its math.)
=item *
-File::Find now has pre- and postprocessing callbacks.
-It also correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links.
-Callbacks doing (naughtily) "next;" instead of "return;" now work.
+The printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the
+C<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example
-=item *
+ print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar";
-File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
-prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
+will print "bar foo\n"; This feature helps in writing
+internationalised software.
=item *
-File::Spec has been updated to version 0.82, released the
-1st of July 2000.
+Unicode in general should be now much more usable. Unicode can be
+used in hash keys, Unicode in regular expressions should work now,
+Unicode in tr/// should work now (though tr/// seems to be a
+particularly tricky to get right, so you have been warned)
=item *
-Getopt::Long has been updated to version 2.23_05, released the 2nd of
-August 2000.
+The Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
+to Unicode 3.1. For more information, see http://www.unicode.org/,
+and http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr27/
+
+For developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
+almost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
+the lib/unicode subdirectory. The most notable omission, for space
+considerations, is the Unihan database.
=item *
-IO::Poll has been thoroughly fixed.
+The Unicode character classes \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been
+added. "Blank" is like C isblank(), that is, it contains only
+"horizontal whitespace" (the space character is, the newline isn't),
+and the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space}
+isn't, since that includes the vertical tabulator character, whereas
+C<\s> doesn't.)
-=item *
+=back
-IO::Socket::INET now works when given an unknown service name with
-a port number.
+=head2 Signals Are Now Safe
-=item *
+Perl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments
+could corrupt Perl's internal state.
-IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors.
+=head2 Understanding of Numbers
+
+In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's
+understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in
+many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()>
+and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their
+deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers.
+
+=over 4
=item *
-use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories
-with 'no lib' now works.
+C<perl -d:Module=arg,arg,arg> now works (previously one couldn't pass
+in multiple arguments.)
=item *
-Math::BigFloat now more robust (fewer "uninitialized" warnings).
+END blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a BEGIN block.
+Internally, the execution of END blocks is now controlled by
+PL_exit_flags & PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END. This enables the new
+behaviour for Perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See
+L<perlembed>.
=item *
-Math::Complex now handles extreme values (e.g. cplx(1E20, 1E30)) more
-gracefully.
+Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved
+correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they
+were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code.
=item *
-The podlators bundle has been updated to version 1.02, released the
-25th of April 2000. It contains the modules Pod::Man 1.04, Pod::Text
-2.04, and modules Pod::Text::Color and Pod::Text::Termcap (no version
-numbers).
+Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that
+were declared before the lexicals.
=item *
-Pod::LaTeX has been updated to version 0.52, released the 15th of May
-2000. Note that this is a complete rewrite which translates pod much
-better, has many more options and much better documentation. It also
-now uses the Pod::Parser backend, meaning that Pod::LaTeX will stay
-abreast other pod translators.
+Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
=item *
-Pod::Parser has been updated to version 1.17, released the 25th of
-July 2000. It contains the modules Pod::Checker 1.20, Pod::Find 0.21,
-Pod::InputObjects 1.13, Pod::ParseUtils 0.22, Pod::Parser 1.12,
-Pod::Select 1.13, and Pod::Usage 1.13.
+A new special regular expression variable has been introduced:
+C<$^N>, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch).
=item *
-The 'debug' subpragma the 're' pragma now produces cleaner output.
+C<no Module;> now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.
=item *
-C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that use/require work.
+The numerical comparison operators return C<undef> if either operand
+is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified.
=item *
-SelfLoader no longer loses C<$@> in AUTOLOAD.
+C<pack('U0a*', ...)> can now be used to force a string to UTF8.
=item *
-The Shell module now has an OO interface.
+my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works.
=item *
-Sys::Syslog now works on domain sockets. Also, a forked child
-now exits correctly if it fails to open /dev/console.
+prototype(\&) is now available.
=item *
-Term::ANSIColor has been updated to version 1.03, released the 6th of
-August 2000.
+Right-hand side magic (GMAGIC) could in many cases such as string
+concatenation be invoked too many times.
=item *
-The Test module has been updated to version 1.14, released the 21st of June
-1999. This is for all practical purposes identical to the previous release
-of Test included with the Perl distribution, 1.13, but upgrading the module
-stops the CPAN module from suggesting an upgrade.
+The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants
+have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore
+simply B<between digits>.
=item *
-Test::Harness output now prettier on failed test.
+An UNTIE method is now available.
=item *
-Text::Wrap::wtbrap now handles multiline strings properly.
+L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the
+file timestamps to the current time.
=item *
-UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly.
+C<eval "v200"> now works.
=back
-=head1 Utility Changes
+=head1 Modules and Pragmata
-=head2 cperl-mode version 4.31
+=head2 New Modules
-The Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version 4.31.
+=over 4
-=head2 perlbug
+=item *
-Perlbug is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to perl.org,
-not perl.com.
+C<Attribute::Handlers> allows a class to define attribute handlers.
-=head2 perlcc now more cc-like and more robust
+ package MyPack;
+ use Attribute::Handlers;
+ sub Wolf :ATTR(SCALAR) { print "howl!\n" }
-The perlcc utility has been rewritten and its user interface (that is,
-command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
+ # later, in some package using or inheriting from MyPack...
-=head2 xsubpp now understands embedded pod
+ my MyPack $Fluffy : Wolf; # the attribute handler Wolf will be called
-The xsubpp utility for extension writers now understands POD
-documentation embedded in the *.xs files.
+Both variables and routines can have attribute handlers. Handlers can
+be specific to type (SCALAR, ARRAY, HASH, or CODE), or specific to the
+exact compilation phase (BEGIN, CHECK, INIT, or END).
-=head1 Improved Documentation
+=item *
-=over 4
+B<B::Concise> is a new compiler backend for walking the Perl syntax
+tree, printing concise info about ops, from Stephen McCamant. The
+output is highly customisable. See L<B::Concise>.
=item *
-In many places say "alphanumeric characters" instead of "word
-characters" because that was what was meant.
+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 *
-Eradicate "array context" from the documentation and diagnostics.
+C<Cwd> has now a split personality: if possible, an XS extension is
+used, (this will hopefully be faster, more secure, and more robust)
+but if not possible, the familiar Perl implementation is used.
=item *
-The return values of failing backticks (`, qx{}) are now documented
-in perlop.
+C<Digest>, frontend module for calculating digests (checksums), from
+Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest>.
=item *
-caller() return values now better documented.
+C<Digest::MD5> for calculating MD5 digests (checksums) as defined in
+RFC 1321, from Gisle Aas, has been added. See L<Digest::MD5>.
-=item *
+ use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex';
-SDBM_File, NDBM_File, ODBM_File, now tell about tying instead of
-glossing over.
+ $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel");
-=item *
+ print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1
-Document that the C<$(> special variable does not interpolate
-in regular expressions.
+NOTE: the C<MD5> backward compatibility module is deliberately not
+included since its use is discouraged.
=item *
-The timeout unit of IO::Select is now documented to be identical
-to the timeout unit of the 4-arg select(), that is, (optionally
-fractional) seconds, or an undef to wait indefinitely.
+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>.
+
+Any encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
+":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
=item *
-Document the C<D> and C<d> magic types.
+C<I18N::Langinfo> can be use to query locale information.
+See L<I18N::Langinfo>.
=item *
-The ordering of PODs in perl.pod is now more sensible.
+C<I18N::LangTags> has functions for dealing with RFC3066-style
+language tags, by Sean Burke. See <I18N::LangTags>.
=item *
-perlbook now only mentions the Camel III; all other book references
-have been moved to perlfaq2; some good known books added.
+C<ExtUtils::Constant> is a new tool for extension writers for
+generating XS code to import C header constants, by Nicholas Clark.
+See L<ExtUtils::Constant>.
=item *
-Numerous missing warning/error messages added to perldiag.
+C<Filter::Simple> is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call,
+from Damian Conway. See L<Filter::Simple>.
-=item *
+ # in MyFilter.pm:
-Changed the description of perl6 in perlfaq1.
+ package MyFilter;
-=item *
+ use Filter::Simple sub {
+ while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) {
+ s/$from/$to/g;
+ }
+ };
-perlhack much extended.
+ 1;
-=item *
+ # in user's code:
-perltrap cleaned up.
+ use MyFilter qr/red/ => 'green';
-=item *
+ print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n"
+ print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n"
-Add perlxstut example for passing/returning refs to arrays.
+ no MyFilter;
+
+ print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n"
=item *
-POSIX module documentation embellished.
+C<File::Temp> allows one to create temporary files and directories in
+an easy, portable, and secure way, by Tim Jenness. See L<File::Temp>.
=item *
-Clarified the status of shadow password support.
+C<Filter::Util::Call> provides you with the framework to write
+I<Source Filters> in Perl, from Paul Marquess. For most uses the
+frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred. See L<Filter::Util::Call>.
=item *
-Reminded that preprocessors and source filters can alter
-your code before Perl sees it and therefore debugging
-can be somewhat surprising. ("I didn't write *that*!")
+L<libnet> is a collection of perl5 modules related to network
+programming, from Graham Barr. See L<Net::FTP>, L<Net::NNTP>,
+L<Net::Ping>, L<Net::POP3>, L<Net::SMTP>, and L<Net::Time>.
+
+Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure.
=item *
-Removed incorrect documentation about implicit split to @_
-in list context, which never really worked in Perl 5 anyway.
+C<List::Util> is a selection of general-utility list subroutines, like
+sum(), min(), first(), and shuffle(), by Graham barr. See L<List::Util>.
=item *
-Explain that split /^/ is split /^/m.
+C<Locale::Constants>, C<Locale::Country>, C<Locale::Currency>, and
+C<Locale::Language>, from Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the
+codes for various locale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for
+US Dollar, and "jp" for Japanese.
-=item *
+ use Locale::Country;
+
+ $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan'
+ $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no'
-Added many more sprintf() examples in perlfunc.
+See L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>,
+and L<Locale::Language>.
=item *
-Documented the handling of negative indices to tied arrays.
+C<Locale::Maketext> is localization framework from Sean Burke. See
+L<Locale::Maketext>, and L<Locale::Maketext::TPJ13>. The latter is an
+article about software localization, originally published in The Perl
+Journal #13, republished here with kind permission.
=item *
-The C<$yday> in localtime()/gmtime() is 0..364, not 1..365.
+C<Memoize> can make your functions faster by trading space for time,
+from Mark-Jason Dominus. See L<Memoize>.
=item *
-Documented that tr() is not tr(1): that is, do not expect regular expressions.
+C<MIME::Base64> allows you to encode data in base64, from Gisle Aas,
+as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
+Extensions)>.
-=item *
+ use MIME::Base64;
-Warn about the vagaries of UDP.
+ $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');
+ $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
-=item *
+ print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ=="
-The "uninitialized variable" warnings now say "concat or string" or
-"join or string" instead of just "concat" or "join" since many users
-found the "concat" a bit surprising when they were doing "just"
-variable interpolation.
+See L<MIME::Base64>.
=item *
-Documented that the values() are aliases, not copies.
+C<MIME::QuotedPrint> allows you to encode data in quoted-printable
+encoding, as defined in RFC 2045 - I<MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
+Extensions)>, from Gisle Aas.
-=back
+ use MIME::QuotedPrint;
-=head2 New Documentation
+ $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}");
+ $decoded = decode_qp($encoded);
-=over 4
+ print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A"
-=item *
+MIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods
+necessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in :
-perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the
-5.6.0 release.
+ use MIME::QuotedPrint;
+ open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path)
+
+See L<MIME::QuotedPrint>.
=item *
-perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.
+C<NEXT> is pseudo-class for method redispatch, from Damian Conway.
+See L<NEXT>.
=item *
-perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms.
-Note that unfortunately EBCDIC platforms that used to supported back in
-Perl 5.005 are still unsupported by Perl 5.7.0; the plan, however, is to
-bring them back to the fold.
+C<PerlIO::Scalar> provides the implementation of IO to "in memory"
+Perl scalars as discussed above, from Nick Ing-Simmons. It also
+serves as an example of a loadable PerlIO layer. Other future
+possibilities include PerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code.
+See L<PerlIO::Scalar>.
=item *
-perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.
+C<PerlIO::Via> acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps PerlIO layer
+functionality provided by a class (typically implemented in perl
+code), from Nick Ing-Simmons.
-=item *
+ use MIME::QuotedPrint;
+ open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path)
-perlposix-bc explains using Perl on the POSIX-BC platform
-(a mainframe platform).
+This will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh>
+to Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via>.
=item *
-perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.
+C<Pod::Text::Overstrike>, by Joe Smith, has been added.
+It converts POD data to formatted overstrike text.
+See L<Pod::Text::Overstrike>.
=item *
-perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide.
-Yes, much quicker than perlretut.
+C<Scalar::Util> is a selection of general-utility scalar subroutines,
+like blessed(), reftype(), and tainted(). See L<Scalar::Util>.
=item *
-perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl
-distribution.
+C<Storable> gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the
+storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and
+compact binary format, from Raphael Manfredi. See L<Storable>.
-=back
+=item *
-=head1 Performance Enhancements
+C<Switch>, from Damian Conway, has been added. Just by saying
-map() that changes the size of the list should now work faster.
+ use Switch;
-=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
+you have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl.
-=head2 INSTALL now explains 64-bit configuration.
+ use Switch;
-In some platforms Perl can be configured to use 64-bit integers,
-allowing 4 billion times better... sorry, switched accidentally
-to marketdroid mode for a moment in there. (In platforms which
-are natively 64-bit this makes no difference.)
+ switch ($val) {
-=head2 Policy.sh policy change
+ case 1 { print "number 1" }
+ case "a" { print "string a" }
+ case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" }
+ case (@array) { print "number in list" }
+ case /\w+/ { print "pattern" }
+ case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" }
+ case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
+ case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
+ case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" }
+ else { print "previous case not true" }
+ }
-If you are reusing a Policy.sh file (see INSTALL) and you use
-Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old Policy $prefix eq
-$siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of them will now be
-changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously only $prefix
-changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour, specify prefix,
-siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly.
+See L<Switch>.
-=head2 Additional Library Locations
+=item *
-A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available.
-It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's
-own library directories.
+C<Test::More> is yet another framework for writing test scripts,
+more extensive than Test::Simple, by Michael Schwern. See L<Test::More>.
-=head2 gcc automatically tried if 'cc' does not seem to be working
+=item *
-In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to
-build Perl (basically, the 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems
-to be the case and the 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler
-'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead.
+C<Test::Simple> has the- basic utilities for writing tests, by Michael
+Schwern. See L<Test::Simple>.
-=head2 If gcc seems to be from a different operating system release ...
+=item *
-gcc needs to closely track the operating system release because gcc
-wants to have its own versions of the operating system header files
-fixed to be clean enough for gcc's tastes. Therefore using a gcc
-compiled for a different release of the operating system is often a
-bad idea. If Configure can find out the operating system release that
-was used to compile the gcc and that release is different from the one
-being used now, gcc gives a clearly visible warning that trouble may
-lie ahead.
+C<Text::Balanced> has been added, for extracting delimited text
+sequences from strings, from Damian Conway.
-=head2 If no binary compatibility with 5.005 wanted, no 5.005 modules, either
+ use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited';
-If no binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is wanted, Configure
-does not suggest including the 5.005 modules in the @INC.
+ ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", '');
-=head2 Configuration and Installation Fixes
+$a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'.
-=over 4
+In addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(),
+extract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(),
+extract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and
+gen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced
+parsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced>.
=item *
-Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively
+C<threads> is an interface interpreter threads, by Arthur Bergman.
+Interpreter threads (ithreads) is the new thread model introduced in
+Perl 5.6 but then available only as an internal interface for
+extension writers. See L<threads>.
=item *
-configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them
+C<threads::shared> allows data sharing for interpreter threads, from
+Arthur Bergman. In the ithreads model any data sharing between
+threads must be explicit, as opposed to the old 5.005 thread model
+where data sharing was implicit. See L<threads::shared>.
=item *
-installperl now outputs everything to STDERR
+C<Tie::RefHash::Nestable>, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash
+references (unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained
+within Tie::RefHash, see L<Tie::RefHash>.
=item *
-$Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust
-with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for
-more than one binary platform.)
-
-=back
-
-=head1 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
+C<Time::HiRes> provides high resolution timing (ualarm, usleep,
+and gettimeofday), from Douglas E. Wegscheid. See L<Time::HiRes>.
-=head2 BSDI 4.*
+=item *
-Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes.
+C<Unicode::UCD> offers a querying interface to the Unicode Character
+Database. See L<Unicode::UCD>.
-=head2 All BSDs
+=item *
-Setting the C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see perlvar for details).
+C<Unicode::Collate> implements the UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm)
+for sorting Unicode strings, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Collate>.
-=head2 Cygwin
+=item *
-=over 4
+C<Unicode::Normalize> implements the various Unicode normalization
+forms, by SADAHIRO Tomoyuki. See L<Unicode::Normalize>.
=item *
-Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4.
+C<XS::Typemap>, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
+typemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code
+is worth studying.
=back
-=head2 EPOC
+=head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
-EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. The EPOC port home page is at
-http://members.linuxstart.com/~oflebbe/perl/perl5.html
+=over 4
-=head2 FreeBSD 3.*
+=item *
-Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs.
+The following independently supported modules have been updated to the
+newest versions from CPAN: CGI, CPAN, DB_File, File::Spec, File::Temp,
+Getopt::Long, Math::BigFloat, Math::BigInt, the podlators bundle
+(Pod::Man, Pod::Text), Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Storable,
+Term::ANSIColor, Test, Text-Tabs+Wrap.
-=head2 HP-UX
+=item *
-=over 4
+The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments.
=item *
-Document that the C<perl -P> causes problems if one uses C<s/foo//>
-(because the HP C compiler does funny things to that // thinking it
-to be C++), document also the workaround.
+AutoLoader can now be disabled with C<no AutoLoader;>,
=item *
-C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works (one failing test).
+Data::Dumper has now an option to sort hashes.
-=back
+=item *
-=head2 IRIX
+The English module can now be used without the infamous performance
+hit by saying
-=over 4
+ use English '-no_performance_hit';
+
+(Assuming, of course, that one doesn't need the troublesome variables
+C<$`>, C<$&>, or C<$'>.) Also, introduced C<@LAST_MATCH_START> and
+C<@LAST_MATCH_END> English aliases for C<@-> and C<@+>.
=item *
-Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements.
+File::Find now has pre- and post-processing callbacks. It also
+correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks
+(naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work.
=item *
-Accidental mixing of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt)
-made much harder.
-
-=back
+File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid
+prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().
-=head2 Linux
+=item *
-=over 4
+IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors.
=item *
-Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL).
-
-=back
+use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories
+with 'no lib' now works.
-=head2 MacOS Classic
+=item *
-=over 4
+C<%INC> now localised in a Safe compartment so that use/require work.
=item *
-Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should
-now work--assuming you have the Metrowerks development environment and
-the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits, contact the macperl mailing
-list for details.
-
-=back
+The Shell module now has an OO interface.
-=head2 MPE/iX
+=item *
-MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. The Perl/iX home page is at
-http://www.bixby.org/mark/perlix.html
+B::Deparse has been significantly enhanced. It now can deparse almost
+all of the standard test suite (so that the tests still succeed).
+There is a make target "test.deparse" for trying this out.
-=head2 NetBSD/sparc
+=item *
-Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc.
+Class::Struct can now define the classes in compile time.
-=head2 OS/2
+=item *
-=over 4
+Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor
+is called with an array/hash element as the B<sole> argument.
=item *
-Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL).
-
-=back
+Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the
+new-style constant dispatch section (see L<ExtUtils::Constant>).
-=head2 Solaris
+=item *
-=over 4
+File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made
+more portable.
=item *
-64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works.
-
-=back
+File::Glob now supports C<GLOB_LIMIT> constant to limit the size of
+the returned list of filenames.
-=head2 Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1)
+=item *
-=over 4
+Devel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics
+(this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have
+compiled with debugging).
=item *
-Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling
-with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with
-gcc 2.95.2.
+IO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket
+is positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable
+as a sockatmark() function.
=item *
-The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}.
-
-=back
+IO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform
+supports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity
+you may want to prefer ReuseAddr.
-=head2 Unicos
+=item *
-=over 4
+IO::Socket::INET now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning
+that the operating system will make one up.)
=item *
-Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either
-during build or later.
+Math::BigFloat and Math::BigInt have undergone much fixing,
+they are now magnitudes faster, and they support various
+bignum libraries such as GMP and PARI as their backends.
=item *
-no longer dying on math errors in runtime.
+Net::Ping has been enhanced. There is now "external" protocol which
+uses Net::Ping::External module which runs external ping(1) and parses
+the output. An alpha version of Net::Ping::External is available in
+CPAN and in 5.7.2 the Net::Ping::External may be integrated to Perl.
=item *
-Now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
-only 46 bit integers for speed.
-
-=back
+The C<open> pragma allows layers other than ":raw" and ":crlf" when
+using PerlIO.
-=head2 VMS
+=item *
-=over 4
+POSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust.
+You can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE'
+handlers, installing new handlers was not atomic.
=item *
-chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug.
+The Test module has been significantly enhanced.
=item *
-Now works with MULTIPLICITY (see INSTALL).
+The C<vars> pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
+(Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
=item *
-Now works with Perl's malloc.
+The utf8:: name space (as in the pragma) provides various
+Perl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
+internal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
+has been implemented.
=back
-=head2 Windows
+=head1 Utility Changes
=over 4
=item *
-accept() no longer leaks memory.
+Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl-mode.el) has been updated to version
+4.31.
=item *
-Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
+F<emacs/e2ctags.pl> is now much faster.
=item *
-New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.
+h2xs now produces a template README.
=item *
-$ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
+L<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs.
=item *
-A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
+L<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect
+newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is
+more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a
+prefix of the second one, the first constant B<never> gets defined),
+less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the
+old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants),
+and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your
+extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy).
+L<h2xs> now also supports C trigraphs.
=item *
-Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
+L<libnetcfg> has been added to configure the libnet.
=item *
-Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.
+perlbug is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to
+perl.org, not perl.com.
=item *
-Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
+perlcc has been rewritten and its user interface (that is,
+command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.
=item *
-Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
-concurrently. (still 16M perl thread)
+perlivp is a new utility for doing Installation Verification
+Procedure after installing Perl.
=item *
-C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
-(works better when perl running as service).
+pod2html now allows specifying a cache directory.
=item *
-Better UNC path handling under ithreads.
+s2p has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full
+implementation of sed in Perl.)
=item *
-wait() and waitpid() now work much better.
+xsubpp now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files.
=item *
-winsock handle leak fixed.
+xsubpp now supports OUT keyword.
=back
-=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
+=head1 New Documentation
=over 4
=item *
-Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
-condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
-line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output now
-goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
+perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the
+5.6.0 release.
=item *
-C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works.
+perlclib documents the internal replacements for standard C library
+functions. (Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core
+hackers.)
=item *
-Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes.
+perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.
=item *
-Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works.
+perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms.
+Note that unfortunately EBCDIC platforms that used to supported back in
+Perl 5.005 are still unsupported by Perl 5.7.0; the plan, however, is to
+bring them back to the fold.
=item *
-Module name now mandatory after the C<-M> switch.
+perlintro is a gentle introduction to Perl.
=item *
-Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "".
+perliol documents the internals of PerlIO with layers.
=item *
-Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to
-return 27406, instead of 27047).
+perlmodstyle is a style guide for writing modules.
=item *
-Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be
-more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.
+perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.
+
+=item *
+
+perlpod has been rewritten to be clearer and to record the best
+practices gathered over the years.
+
+=item *
+
+perlpodstyle is a more formal specification of the pod format,
+mainly of interest for writers of pod applications, not to
+people writing in pod.
+
+=item *
+
+perlposix-bc explains using Perl on the POSIX-BC platform
+(an EBCDIC mainframe platform).
+
+=item *
+
+perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.
+
+=item *
+
+perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide.
+Yes, much quicker than perlretut.
+
+=item *
+
+perltodo has been updated.
+
+=item *
+
+perltootc has been renamed as perltooc (to not to conflict
+with perltoot in filesystems restricted to "8.3" names)
+
+=item *
+
+perluniintro is an introduction to using Unicode in Perl
+(perlunicode is more of a reference)
+
+=item *
+
+perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl
+distribution.
+
+=back
+
+The following platform-specific documents are available before
+the installation as README.I<platform>, and after the installation
+as perlI<platform>:
+
+ perlaix perlamiga perlapollo perlbeos perlbs2000
+ perlce perlcygwin perldgux perldos perlepoc perlhpux
+ perlhurd perlmachten perlmacos perlmint perlmpeix
+ perlnetware perlos2 perlos390 perlplan9 perlqnx perlsolaris
+ perltru64 perluts perlvmesa perlvms perlvos perlwin32
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+The documentation for the POSIX-BC platform is called "BS2000", to avoid
+confusion with the Perl POSIX module.
+
+=item *
+
+The documentation for the WinCE platform is called "CE", to avoid
+confusion with the perlwin32 documentation on 8.3-restricted filesystems.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Performance Enhancements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+map() that changes the size of the list should now work faster.
+
+=item *
+
+sort() has been changed to use mergesort internally as opposed to the
+earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may result in slightly
+slower sorting times, but in general the speedup should be at least
+20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case behaviour of sort()
+is now better (in computer science terms it now runs in time O(N log N),
+as opposed to quicksort's Theta(N**2) worst-case run time behaviour),
+and that sort() is now stable (meaning that elements with identical
+keys will stay ordered as they were before the sort).
+
+=item *
+
+Hashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
+(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
+all 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the
+DIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this
+change has not affected the overall speed of Perl.
+
+=item *
+
+unshift() should now be noticeably faster.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
+
+=head2 Generic Improvements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64-bit
+integers even on non-64-bit platforms.
+
+=item *
+
+Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file
+(see INSTALL) and you use Configure -Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old
+Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of
+them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously
+only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour,
+specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly.
+
+=item *
+
+A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available.
+It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl's
+own library directories.
+
+=item *
+
+In many platforms the vendor-supplied 'cc' is too stripped-down to
+build Perl (basically, 'cc' doesn't do ANSI C). If this seems
+to be the case and 'cc' does not seem to be the GNU C compiler
+'gcc', an automatic attempt is made to find and use 'gcc' instead.
+
+=item *
+
+gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid
+build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different
+operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible
+warning that there may be trouble ahead.
+
+=item *
+
+If binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is not wanted, Configure
+no longer suggests including the 5.005 modules in @INC.
+
+=item *
+
+Configure C<-S> can now run non-interactively.
+
+=item *
+
+configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them.
+
+=item *
+
+installperl now outputs everything to STDERR.
+
+=item *
+
+$Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust
+with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for
+more than one binary platform.)
+
+=item *
+
+Because PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't
+get appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore.
+Instead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command
+line option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended.
+
+=item *
+
+Another change related to the architecture name is that "-64all"
+(-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your
+pointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.)
+
+=item *
+
+In AFS installations one can configure the root of the AFS to be
+somewhere else than the default F</afs> by using the Configure
+parameter C<-Dafsroot=/some/where/else>.
+
+=item *
+
+APPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been
+documented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories
+to Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information.
+
+=item *
+
+The version of Berkeley DB used when the Perl (and, presumably, the
+DB_File extension) was built is now available as
+C<@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}>
+from Perl and as C<DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG
+DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG> from C.
+
+=item *
+
+Building Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM
+has been documented in INSTALL.
+
+=item *
+
+If you have CPAN access (either network or a local copy such as a
+CD-ROM) you can during specify extra modules to Configure to build and
+install with Perl using the -Dextras=... option. See INSTALL for
+more details.
+
+=item *
+
+In addition to config.over a new override file, config.arch, is
+available. That is supposed to be used by hints file writers for
+architecture-wide changes (as opposed to config.over which is for
+site-wide changes).
+
+=item *
+
+For Perl developers several new make targets for profiling
+and debugging have been added, see L<perlhack>.
+
+=over 8
+
+=item *
+
+Use of the F<gprof> tool to profile Perl has been documented in
+L<perlhack>. There is a make target called "perl.gprof" for
+generating a gprofiled Perl executable.
+
+=item *
+
+If you have GCC 3, there is a make target called "perl.gcov" for
+creating a gcoved Perl executable for coverage analysis. See
+L<perlhack>.
+
+=item *
+
+If you are on IRIX or Tru64 platforms, new profiling/debugging options
+have been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and
+Third Degree.
+
+=back
+
+=item *
+
+Guidelines of how to construct minimal Perl installations have
+been added to INSTALL.
+
+=item *
+
+The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads
+(C<Configure -Duseithreads>) because it wouldn't work anyway (the
+Thread extension requires being Configured with C<-Duse5005threads>).
+
+But note that the Thread.pm interface is now shared by both
+thread models.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
+
+For the list of platforms known to support Perl,
+see L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+AIX dynamic loading should be now better supported.
+
+=item *
+
+AIX should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64-bitness. Also the
+long doubles support in AIX should be better now. See L<perlaix>.
+
+=item *
+
+After a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
+
+=item *
+
+AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx/) is a new platform.
+
+=item *
+
+DG/UX platform now supports the 5.005-style threads. See L<perldgux>.
+
+=item *
+
+DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2.
+
+=item *
+
+EBCDIC platforms (z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and VM/ESA)
+have been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the
+co-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the
+situation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>,
+L<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information.
+
+=item *
+
+Building perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under
+HP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will
+need a thread library package installed. See README.hpux.
+
+=item *
+
+MacOS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since
+perl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl
+and MacPerl have been synchronised)
+
+=item *
+
+MacOS X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on HFS+
+filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.)
+
+=item *
+
+NCR MP-RAS is now supported.
+
+=item *
+
+NetWare from Novell is now supported. See L<perlnetware>.
+
+=item *
+
+NonStop-UX is now supported.
+
+=item *
+
+Amdahl UTS UNIX mainframe platform is now supported.
+
+=item *
+
+WinCE is now supported. See L<perlce>.
+
+=item *
+
+z/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now
+support for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default,
+however, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
+
+Numerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been hunted down.
+Most importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite a bit.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code,
+condition C<"0"> now treated correctly, the C<d> command now checks
+line number, the C<$.> no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output now
+goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.
+
+=item *
+
+C<*foo{FORMAT}> now works.
+
+=item *
+
+Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes.
+
+=item *
+
+Line renumbering with eval and C<#line> now works.
+
+=item *
+
+Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "".
+
+=item *
+
+Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to
+return 27406, instead of 27047).
+
+=item *
+
+Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be
+more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.
+
+=item *
+
+our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings.
+
+=item *
+
+pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0".
+
+=item *
+
+Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms
+(e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry.
+
+=item *
+
+printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C".
+
+=item *
+
+C<q(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
+
+=item *
+
+Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works
+without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform).
+
+=item *
+
+Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.
+
+=item *
+
+scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context.
+
+=item *
+
+sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
+(they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
+
+=item *
+
+Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very
+rare) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character class
+C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace (currently,
+the space and the tab).
+
+=item *
+
+$AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses
+in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe.
+
+=item *
+
+Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///.
+
+=item *
+
+Several Unicode fixes (but still not perfect).
+
+=over 8
+
+=item *
+
+BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files
+(scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped.
+UTF-16 (UCS-2) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
+
+=item *
+
+The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.0.1.
+
+=item *
+
+chr() for values greater than 127 now create utf8 when under use
+utf8.
+
+=item *
+
+Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data into
+utf8.
+
+=item *
+
+C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase.
+
+=item *
+
+Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation,
+C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator,
+substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work--in
+theory.
+
+=item *
+
+The C<tr///> operator now works I<slightly> better but is still rather
+broken. Note that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed (but
+see pack('U0', ...)).
+
+=item *
+
+vec() now refuses to deal with characters >255.
+
+=item *
+
+Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>.
+
+=item *
+
+chop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
+reverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
+
+=item *
+
+The order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
+
+=item *
+
+mkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name,
+as mandated by POSIX.
+
+=item *
+
+Attributes (like :shared) didn't work with our().
+
+=item *
+
+The PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments
+to Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options.
+
+=item *
+
+The tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does
+not taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the
+behaviour consistent with that of string interpolation.
+
+=item *
+
+All but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional.
+
+=item *
+
+Tie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken.
+
+=item *
+
+vec() now tries to work with characters <= 255 when possible, but it leaves
+higher character values in place. In that case, if vec() was used to modify
+the string, it is no longer considered to be utf8-encoded.
+
+=item *
+
+The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names.
+
+=item *
+
+The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as
+"0x23" was platform-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35,
+in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This
+was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation
+where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now
+Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts.
+
+=item *
+
+L<dprofpp> -R didn't work.
+
+=item *
+
+PERL5OPT with embedded spaces didn't work.
+
+=item *
+
+L<Sys::Syslog> ignored the C<LOG_AUTH> constant.
+
+=item *
+
+Some versions of glibc have a broken modfl(). This affects builds
+with C<-Duselongdouble>. This version of Perl detects this brokenness
+and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have
+fixed the modfl() bug.
+
+=item *
+
+Linux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using
+accept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname().
+
+=item *
+
+Previously DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O.
+
+=item *
+
+Windows
+
+=over 8
+
+=item *
+
+Borland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
+However, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
+generated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++).
+
+=item *
+
+Win32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
+Other bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed.
+
+=item *
+
+Duping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
+
+=item *
+
+HTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
+
+=item *
+
+The makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features
+enabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular Win32 binary distribution).
+
+=back
+
+=back
+
+=item *
+
+UNIVERSAL::isa no longer caches methods incorrectly. (This broke
+the Tk extension with 5.6.0.)
+
+=item *
+
+Configure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
+when building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS 4.x,
+which needs them.
+
+=item *
+
+SOCKS support is now much more robust.
+
+=item *
+
+If your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside
+of the source directory by
+
+ mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
+ cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
+ sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
+
+This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
+pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
+unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
+
+ make all test
+
+and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+BSDI 4.*
+
+Perl now works on post-4.0 BSD/OSes.
=item *
-our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings
+All BSDs
+
+Setting C<$0> now works (as much as possible; see perlvar for details).
=item *
-pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with an "\0".
+Cygwin
+
+Numerous updates; currently synchronised with Cygwin 1.1.4.
=item *
-Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms
-(e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry.
+EPOC
+
+EPOC update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.epoc.
=item *
-printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C".
+FreeBSD 3.*
+
+Perl now works on post-3.0 FreeBSDs.
=item *
-C<q(a\\b)> now parses correctly as C<'a\\b'>.
+HP-UX
+
+README.hpux updated; C<Configure -Duse64bitall> now almost works.
=item *
-Printing quads (64-bit integers) with printf/sprintf works now
-without q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform).
+IRIX
+
+Numerous compilation flag and hint enhancements; accidental mixing
+of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries (a doomed attempt) made much harder.
=item *
-Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.
+Linux
+
+Long doubles should now work (see INSTALL).
=item *
-scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context.
+MacOS Classic
+
+Compilation of the standard Perl distribution in MacOS Classic should
+now work if you have the Metrowerks development environment and
+the missing Mac-specific toolkit bits. Contact the macperl mailing
+list for details.
=item *
-
-sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context
-(they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).
+
+MPE/iX
+
+MPE/iX update after Perl 5.6.0. See README.mpeix.
=item *
-Changed the POSIX character class C<[[:space:]]> to include the (very
-rare) vertical tabulator character. Added a new POSIX-ish character
-class C<[[:blank:]]> which stands for horizontal whitespace (currently,
-the space and the tabulator).
+NetBSD/sparc
+
+Perl now works on NetBSD/sparc.
=item *
-$AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses
-in multiple thread simultaneously are now thread-safe.
+OS/2
+
+Now works with usethreads (see INSTALL).
=item *
-Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///.
+Solaris
+
+64-bitness using the Sun Workshop compiler now works.
=item *
-Several Unicode fixes (but still not perfect).
+Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1)
-BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files
-(scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped.
-UTF16 encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.
+The operating system version letter now recorded in $Config{osvers}.
+Allow compiling with gcc (previously explicitly forbidden). Compiling
+with gcc still not recommended because buggy code results, even with
+gcc 2.95.2.
-The character tables have been updated to new Unicode 3.0 features.
+=item *
-chr() for values greater than 127 now create utf8 when under use
-utf8.
+Unicos
-Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non-utf8 data into
-utf8.
+Fixed various alignment problems that lead into core dumps either
+during build or later; no longer dies on math errors at runtime;
+now using full quad integers (64 bits), previously was using
+only 46 bit integers for speed.
-C<IsAlnum>, C<IsAlpha>, and C<IsWord> now match titlecase.
+=item *
-Concatenation with the C<.> operator or via variable interpolation,
-C<eq>, C<substr>, C<reverse>, C<quotemeta>, the C<x> operator,
-substitution with C<s///>, single-quoted UTF8, should now work--in
-theory.
+VMS
-The C<tr///> operator now works I<slightly> better but is still rather
-broken. Note that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed (but
-see pack('U0', ...)).
+chdir() now works better despite a CRT bug; now works with MULTIPLICITY
+(see INSTALL); now works with Perl's malloc.
-Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like C<IsDigit>.
+=item *
+
+Windows
+
+=over 8
+
+=item *
+
+accept() no longer leaks memory.
+
+=item *
+
+Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.
+
+=item *
+
+New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.
+
+=item *
+
+$ENV{LIB} now used to search for libs under Visual C.
+
+=item *
+
+A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN.
+
+=item *
+
+Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.
+
+=item *
+
+Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.
+
+=item *
+
+Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.
+
+=item *
+
+Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run
+concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)
+
+=item *
+
+C<File::Spec->tmpdir()> now prefers C:/temp over /tmp
+(works better when perl is running as service).
+
+=item *
+
+Better UNC path handling under ithreads.
+
+=item *
+
+wait() and waitpid() now work much better.
+
+=item *
+
+winsock handle leak fixed.
+
+=back
=back
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
All regular expression compilation error messages are now hopefully
easier to understand both because the error message now comes before
the failed regex and because the point of failure is now clearly
-marked.
+marked by a C<E<lt>-- HERE> marker.
+
+=item *
The various "opened only for", "on closed", "never opened" warnings
drop the C<main::> prefix for filehandles in the C<main> package,
-for example C<STDIN> instead of <main::STDIN>.
+for example C<STDIN> instead of <main::STDIN>.
-=over 4
+=item *
+
+The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
+C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
=item *
-(perhaps you forgot to load "%s"?)
+Two new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
+Perl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace
+tokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
+respectively.
+
+=item *
+
+If an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index
+is made, a warning is given.
+
+=item *
-(F) This is an educated guess made in conjunction with the message
-"Can't locate object method \"%s\" via package \"%s\"". It often means
-that a method requires a package that has not been loaded.
+C<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift)
+now give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled
+code.
=item *
-Ambiguous range in transliteration operator
+If you try to L<perlfunc/pack> a number less than 0 or larger than 255
+using the C<"C"> format you will get an optional warning. Similarly
+for the C<"c"> format and a number less than -128 or more than 127.
+
+=item *
-(F) You wrote something like C<tr/a-z-0//> which doesn't mean anything at
-all. To include a C<-> character in a transliteration, put it either
-first or last. (In the past, C<tr/a-z-0//> was synonymous with
-C<tr/a-y//>, which was probably not what you would have expected.)
+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.
=item *
-The "Unrecognized escape" warning has been extended to include C<\8>,
-C<\9>, and C<\_>. There is no need to escape any of the C<\w> characters.
+Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. C<%foo->{bar}> has been
+deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning.
=back
=head1 Changed Internals
-=head2 apidoc
+=over 4
+
+=item *
perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the
internal API.
-=head2 microperl
+=item *
-There is now a way to build a really minimal perl called microperl.
+You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl.
Building microperl does not require even running Configure;
C<make -f Makefile.micro> should be enough. Beware: microperl makes
many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting
-executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. For
-careful hackers only.
+executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways.
+For careful hackers only.
-=head2 Publicise More Functions
+=item *
Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join() to the publicised API.
-=head2 Propagating Exception Objects via Perl_croak() IN XS code
+=item *
Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing.
-=head2 UTF8 Interfaces
+=item *
Added is_utf8_char(), is_utf8_string(), bytes_to_utf8(), and utf8_to_bytes().
-=head2 xsub attributes
+=item *
Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs.
+=item *
+
+Some new APIs: ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv().
+For the full list of the available APIs see L<perlapi>.
+
+=item *
+
+dTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's
+a no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP.
+
+=item *
+
+PERL_OBJECT has been completely removed.
+
+=item *
+
+The MAGIC constants (e.g. C<'P'>) have been macrofied
+(e.g. C<PERL_MAGIC_TIED>) for better source code readability
+and maintainability.
+
+=item *
+
+The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in
+the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the
+original regex expression. The information is attached to the new
+C<offsets> member of the C<struct regexp>. See L<perldebguts> for more
+complete information.
+
+=item *
+
+The C code has been made much more C<gcc -Wall> clean. Some warning
+messages still remain in some platforms, so if you are compiling with
+gcc you may see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings
+are being worked on.
+
+=item *
+
+F<perly.c>, F<sv.c>, and F<sv.h> have now been extensively commented.
+
+=item *
+
+Documentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added
+to F<Porting/repository.pod>.
+
+=item *
+
+There are now several profiling make targets
+
+=item *
+
+The C<op_clear> and C<op_null> are now exported.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
+
+(This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
+
+A potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
+of Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
+installed by default. As of November 2001 the only known vulnerable
+platform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and
+various vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability.
+See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl-2000-08-05/sperl-2000-08-05.txt
+for more information.
+
+The problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security
+exploit attempt using an external program, /bin/mail. On Linux
+platforms the /bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which
+when combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in
+a serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you
+don't have /bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if
+suidperl is not installed, you are safe.
+
+The exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from
+Perl 5.8.0 (and the maintenance release 5.6.1, and it was removed also
+from all the Perl 5.7 releases), so that particular vulnerability
+isn't there anymore. However, further security vulnerabilities are,
+unfortunately, always possible. The suidperl functionality is most
+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/).
+
+=head1 New Tests
+
+Several new tests have been added, especially for the F<lib> subsection.
+
+The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls.
+(This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved
+to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.)
+
=head1 Known Problems
-=head2 Unicode Support Still Far From Perfect
+Note that unlike other sections in this document (which describe
+changes since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known
+problems for all the 5.7 releases.
-We're working on it. Stay tuned.
+=head2 AIX
-=head2 EBCDIC Still A Lost Platform
+=over 4
-The plan is to bring them back.
+=item *
-=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
+In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
+may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
+In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
+the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
+has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
+(such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
+therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
+
+=item *
+
+vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl
+
+The AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code,
+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.
-Certain extensions like mod_perl and BSD::Resource are known to have
-issues with `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in where file
-offsets are by default 64 bits wide (assuming the platform supports
-such large files). Modules may fail to compile at all or compile and
-work incorrectly. Currently there is no good solution for the problem
-but Configure now stores the flags and libraries that affect the
-largefileness to the %Config hash, the extensions that are having
-problems can try configuring themselves without the largefileness.
-This is admittedly not a clean solution.
+=back
+
+=head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery
+
+One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v>
+works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason is
+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
+
+The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work.
+
+=head2 HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured
+
+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).
+
+=head2 HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured
+
+If perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
+subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
+subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the
+subtest 9 failed.
+
+=head2 Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48
+
+No known fix.
+
+=head2 OS/390
+
+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.
+
+ 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.
+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
+
+B<Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains experimental.>
+
+The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in
+the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures--Perl
+5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.
+
+ lib/autouse.t 4
+ t/lib/thr5005.t 19-20
+
+=head2 UNICOS
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail.
+
+=item *
+
+lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed,
+which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests.
+
+=item *
+
+Numerous numerical test failures
+
+ op/numconvert 209,210,217,218
+ op/override 7
+ ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9
+ lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145
+ lib/Math/Trig 25
+
+These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 UTS
+
+There are a few known test failures, see L<perluts>.
+
+=head2 VMS
+
+Rather many tests are failing in VMS but that actually more tests
+succeed in VMS than they used to, it's just that there are many,
+many more tests than there used to be.
+
+Here are the known failures from some compiler/platform combinations.
+
+DEC C V5.3-006 on OpenVMS VAX V6.2
+
+ [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3
+ [-.ext.posix]sigaction..................FAILED on test 7
+ [-.ext.time.hires]hires.................FAILED on test 14
+ [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17
+ [-.lib.math.bigint.t]bigintpm...........FAILED on test 1183
+ [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1
+ [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13
+ [.op]sprintf............................FAILED on test 12
+ Failed 8/399 tests, 91.23% okay.
+
+DEC C V6.0-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.2-1 and
+Compaq C V6.2-008 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.1
+
+ [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3
+ [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17
+ [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1
+ [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13
+ Failed 4/399 tests, 92.48% okay.
-=head1 Obsolete Diagnostics
+Compaq C V6.4-005 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.1
+
+ [-.ext.b]showlex........................FAILED on test 1
+ [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3
+ [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17
+ [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1
+ [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13
+ [.op]misc...............................FAILED on test 49
+ Failed 6/401 tests, 92.77% okay.
+
+=head2 Win32
+
+In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering:
+some output may appear twice.
+
+=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
+
+ use Tie::Hash;
+ tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
+
+ ...
+
+ local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
+
+Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
+is executed.
+
+=head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden
+
+Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
+hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
+frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is
+for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
+
+=head2 Variable Attributes are not Currently Usable for Tieing
+
+This limitation will hopefully be fixed in future. (Subroutine
+attributes work fine for tieing, see L<Attribute::Handlers>).
+
+=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
+
+Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
+`largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
+default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
+at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good
+solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate
+non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config
+hash (e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are
+having problems can try configuring themselves without the
+largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the
+solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether
+one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at
+all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is
+platform-dependent.
+
+=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
+
+The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near
+working order yet.
+
+=head2 The Long Double Support is Still Experimental
+
+The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use "long doubles",
+floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still
+experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet
+widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature
+or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare
+and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset
+by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the
+operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised
+libraries).
=head1 Reporting Bugs
=head1 HISTORY
-Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>, with many contributions
-from The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches.
-
-Send omissions or corrections to <F<perlbug@perl.org>>.
+Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>.
=cut
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff