[ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as XXX needs
to be processed before release. ]
-perldelta - what is new for perl v5.17.7
+perldelta - what is new for perl v5.17.9
=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This document describes differences between the 5.17.6 release and the 5.17.7
+This document describes differences between the 5.17.8 release and the 5.17.9
release.
-If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.17.5, first read
-L<perl5176delta>, which describes differences between 5.17.5 and 5.17.6.
+If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.17.7, first read
+L<perl5178delta>, which describes differences between 5.17.7 and 5.17.8.
=head1 Notice
[ List each enhancement as a =head2 entry ]
+=head2 Interpolations now Accepted in Regular Expression Set Operations
+
+Perl v5.17.8 introduced L<regular expression set operations|perlre/(?[ ])>.
+They have now been expanded to allow the interpolation of a
+previously-compiled set into a bigger set, like this:
+
+ my $thai_or_lao = qr/\p{Thai} + \p{Lao}/;
+ ...
+ qr/(?[ \p{Digit} & $thai_or_lao ])/;
+
=head1 Security
XXX Any security-related notices go here. In particular, any security
=head1 Incompatible Changes
-=head2 readline() with C<$/ = \N> now reads N characters, not N bytes
-
-Previously, when reading from a stream with I/O layers such as
-C<encoding>, the readline() function, otherwise known as the C<< <> >>
-operator, would read I<N> bytes from the top-most layer. [perl #79960]
-
-Now, I<N> characters are read instead.
-
-There is no change in behaviour when reading from streams with no
-extra layers, since bytes map exactly to characters.
-
XXX For a release on a stable branch, this section aspires to be:
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.XXX.XXX
[ List each deprecation as a =head2 entry ]
-=head2 Various XS-callable functions are now deprecated
-
-The following functions will be removed from a future version of Perl,
-and should not be used. With participating C compilers (e.g., gcc),
-compiling any file that uses any of these will generate a warning.
-These were not intended for public use; there are equivalent, faster,
-macros for most of them. See L<perlapi/Character classes>:
-C<is_uni_ascii>,
-C<is_uni_ascii_lc>,
-C<is_uni_blank>,
-C<is_uni_blank_lc>,
-C<is_uni_cntrl>,
-C<is_uni_cntrl_lc>,
-C<is_uni_idfirst_lc>,
-C<is_uni_space>,
-C<is_uni_space_lc>,
-C<is_uni_xdigit>,
-C<is_uni_xdigit_lc>,
-C<is_utf8_ascii>,
-C<is_utf8_blank>,
-C<is_utf8_cntrl>,
-C<is_utf8_idcont>,
-C<is_utf8_idfirst>,
-C<is_utf8_perl_space>,
-C<is_utf8_perl_word>,
-C<is_utf8_posix_digit>,
-C<is_utf8_space>,
-C<is_utf8_xdigit>.
-C<is_utf8_xidcont>,
-C<is_utf8_xidfirst>,
-C<to_uni_lower_lc>,
-C<to_uni_title_lc>,
+=head2 Deprecated Modules
+
+The following modules will be removed from the core distribution in a
+future release, and should be installed from CPAN instead. Distributions
+on CPAN which require these should add them to their prerequisites. The
+core versions of these modules C<warnings> will issue a deprecation warning.
+
+You can silence these deprecation warnings by installing the modules
+in question from CPAN.
+
+=over
+
+=item L<Archive::Extract>
+
+=item L<B::Lint>
+
+=item L<B::Lint::Debug>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Backend>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Backend::RV>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Config>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Config::HomeEnv>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Configure>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Configure::Setup>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::Autobundle>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::Base>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::Build>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::Build::Constants>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::MM>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Dist::Sample>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Error>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Internals::Constants>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Internals::Constants::Report>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Extract>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Fetch>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Report>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Search>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Source>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Source::Memory>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Source::SQLite>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Internals::Source::SQLite::Tie>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Internals::Utils>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Internals::Utils::Autoflush>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Module>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Module::Author>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Module::Author::Fake>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Module::Checksums>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Module::Fake>
+
+=item C<CPANPLUS::Module::Signature>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Selfupdate>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell::Classic>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell::Default>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::CustomSource>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::Remote>
+
+=item L<CPANPLUS::Shell::Default::Plugins::Source>
+
+=item L<Devel::InnerPackage>
+
+=item L<Log::Message>
+
+=item L<Log::Message::Config>
+
+=item L<Log::Message::Handlers>
+
+=item L<Log::Message::Item>
+
+=item L<Log::Message::Simple>
+
+=item L<Module::Pluggable>
+
+=item L<Module::Pluggable::Object>
+
+=item L<Object::Accessor>
+
+=item L<Term::UI>
+
+=item L<Term::UI::History>
+
+=back
+
+=head3 Deprecated Utilities
+
+The following utilities will be removed from the core distribution in a
+future release as their associated modules have been deprecated. They
+will remain available with the applicable CPAN distribution.
+
+=over
+
+=item L<cpanp>
+
+Included with L<CPANPLUS>.
+
+=item C<cpanp-run-perl>
+
+Included with L<CPANPLUS>.
+
+=item L<cpan2dist>
+
+Included with L<CPANPLUS>.
+
+=item L<pod2latex>
+
+The L<Pod::LaTeX> module was deprecated with 5.17.8.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Five additional characters should be escaped in patterns with C</x>
+
+When a regular expression pattern is compiled with C</x>, Perl treats 6
+characters as white space to ignore, such as SPACE and TAB. However,
+Unicode recommends 11 characters be treated thusly. In preparation to
+conforming with this in a future Perl version, in the meantime, use of
+any of the missing characters will raise a deprecation warning, unless
+turned off. The five characters are:
+U+0085 NEXT LINE,
+U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK,
+U+200F RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK,
+U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR,
and
-C<to_uni_upper_lc>.
+U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR.
=head1 Performance Enhancements
=item *
-XXX
+L<Config::Perl::V> version 0.16 has been added as a dual-lifed module.
+It provides structured data retrieval of C<perl -V> output including
+information only known to the C<perl> binary and not available via L<Config>.
=back
=item *
-L<GDBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15. The undocumented
-optional fifth parameter to C<TIEHASH> has been removed. This was intended
-to provide control of the callback used by C<gdbm*> functions in case of
-fatal errors (such as filesystem problems), but did not work (and could
-never have worked). No code on CPAN even attempted to use it. The callback
-is now always the previous default, C<croak>. Problems on some platforms with
-how the C<C> C<croak> function is called have also been resolved.
+L<Benchmark> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
+
+The "too few iterations" message is now a warning on STDERR
+instead of being output on STDOUT.
+
+=item *
+
+L<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.141 to 2.142.
+
+Additional tests were added in order to improve statement, branch, condition
+and subroutine coverage. On the basis of the coverage analysis, some of the
+internals of Dumper.pm were refactored. Almost all methods are now
+documented.
+
+=item *
+
+L<File::Temp> has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.22_90
+
+Fixes various bugs involving directory removal. Defers unlinking tempfiles if
+the initial unlink fails, which fixes problems on NFS.
+
+=item *
+
+L<PerlIO::scalar> has been upgraded from version 0.15 to 0.16.
+
+The buffer scalar supplied may now only contain code pounts 0xFF or
+lower. [perl #109828]
=back
However, any changes to F<pod/perldiag.pod> should go in the L</Diagnostics>
section.
-=head3 L<perlapi/Character classes>
+=head3 L<perlsec>
=over 4
=item *
-There are quite a few macros callable from XS modules that classify
-characters into things like alphabetic, punctuation, etc. More of these
-are now documented, including ones which work on characters whose code
-points are outside the Latin-1 range.
+A syntax error was fixed in one of illustrative examples.
=back
=item *
-XXX L<message|perldiag/"message">
+Strings with code points over 0xFF may not be mapped into in-memory file handles
=back
=item *
-XXX Describe change here
+The warnings for \b{ and \B{ were added in the 5.17 series; they are a
+deprecation warning which should be turned off by that category. One
+should not have to turn off regular regexp warnings as well to get rid
+of these.
=back
entries for each change
Use L<XXX> with program names to get proper documentation linking. ]
-=head3 L<XXX>
+=head3 L<corelist>
=over 4
=item *
-XXX
+Added C<--feature> switch which lists the first version bundle of each
+named feature given.
=back
=item *
-XXX
+Added C<useversionedarchname> option to Configure
+
+When set, it includes 'api_versionstring' in 'archname'. E.g.
+x86_64-linux-5.13.6-thread-multi. It is unset by default.
+
+This feature was requested by Tim Bunce, who observed that
+INSTALL_BASE creates a library structure that does not
+differentiate by perl version. Instead, it places architecture
+specific files in "$install_base/lib/perl5/$archname". This makes
+it difficult to use a common INSTALL_BASE library path with
+multiple versions of perl.
+
+By setting -Duseversionedarchname, the $archname will be
+distinct for architecture *and* API version, allowing mixed use of
+INSTALL_BASE.
+
+=item *
+
+Configure will honour the external C<MAILDOMAIN> environment variable, if set.
+
+=item *
+
+Both C<META.yml> and C<META.json> files are now included in the distribution.
=back
=item *
-XXX
+Enable perl core tests to pass when locale support is not available.
+
+use L<locale> - this will now die if $Config{d_setlocale} is not true.
+All tests that use L<locale> will skip if $Config{d_setlocale} is not true.
+This enables us to pass tests on Android which uses ICU instead of locales.
=back
=over 4
-=item XXX-some-platform
+=item VMS
-XXX
+The character set for Extended Filename Syntax (EFS) is now enabled by default on
+VMS. Among other things, this provides better handling of dots in directory names,
+multiple dots in filenames,and spaces in filenames. To obtain the old behavior,
+set the logical name C<DECC$EFS_CHARSET> to C<DISABLE>.
=back
=item *
+Synonyms for the misleadingly named C<av_len()> has been created:
+C<av_top_index()> and C<av_tindex>. All three of these return the
+number of the highest index in the array, not the number of elements it
+contains. (The name C<av_top> which was introduced in Perl v.5.17.8 has
+been removed.)
+
XXX
=back
=item *
-XXX
+-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT builds now free the global struct B<after>
+they've finished using it.
+
+=item *
+
+A trailing '/' on a path in @INC will no longer have an additional '/' appended.
=back
XXX Generate this with:
- perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.17.6..HEAD
+ perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.17.8..HEAD
=head1 Reporting Bugs