[ 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 v5.17.8
+perldelta - what is new for perl v5.17.9
=head1 DESCRIPTION
-This document describes differences between the 5.17.7 release and the 5.17.8
+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 5.17.6, first read
-L<perl5177delta>, which describes differences between 5.17.6 and 5.17.7.
+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 Regular Expression Set Operations
+=head2 Interpolations now Accepted in Regular Expression Set Operations
-This is an experimental feature to allow matching against the the union,
-intersection, etc., of sets of code points, similar to
-L<Unicode::Regex::Set>. It can also be used to extend C</x> processing
-to [bracketed] character classes, and as a replacement of user-defined
-properties, allowing more complex expressions than they do. See
-L<perlre/(?[ ])>.
+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
[ List each deprecation as a =head2 entry ]
-=head2 Various XS-callable functions are now deprecated
-
-All the functions used to classify characters 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>. The complete list (including some
-that were deprecated in 5.17.7) is:
-C<is_uni_alnum>, C<is_uni_alnumc>, C<is_uni_alnumc_lc>,
-C<is_uni_alnum_lc>, C<is_uni_alpha>, C<is_uni_alpha_lc>,
-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_digit>, C<is_uni_digit_lc>, C<is_uni_graph>,
-C<is_uni_graph_lc>, C<is_uni_idfirst>, C<is_uni_idfirst_lc>,
-C<is_uni_lower>, C<is_uni_lower_lc>, C<is_uni_print>,
-C<is_uni_print_lc>, C<is_uni_punct>, C<is_uni_punct_lc>,
-C<is_uni_space>, C<is_uni_space_lc>, C<is_uni_upper>,
-C<is_uni_upper_lc>, C<is_uni_xdigit>, C<is_uni_xdigit_lc>,
-C<is_utf8_alnum>, C<is_utf8_alnumc>, C<is_utf8_alpha>,
-C<is_utf8_ascii>, C<is_utf8_blank>, C<is_utf8_char>,
-C<is_utf8_cntrl>, C<is_utf8_digit>, C<is_utf8_graph>,
-C<is_utf8_idcont>, C<is_utf8_idfirst>, C<is_utf8_lower>,
-C<is_utf8_mark>, C<is_utf8_perl_space>, C<is_utf8_perl_word>,
-C<is_utf8_posix_digit>, C<is_utf8_print>, C<is_utf8_punct>,
-C<is_utf8_space>, C<is_utf8_upper>, C<is_utf8_xdigit>,
-C<is_utf8_xidcont>, C<is_utf8_xidfirst>.
-
-In addition these three functions that have never worked properly are
-deprecated:
-C<to_uni_lower_lc>, C<to_uni_title_lc>, and C<to_uni_upper_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
+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<XXX> has been upgraded from version A.xx to B.yy.
+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<XXX>
+=head3 L<perlsec>
=over 4
=item *
-XXX Description of the change here
+A syntax error was fixed in one of illustrative examples.
=back
=item *
-L<'%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'|perldiag/"'%s' resolved to '\o{%s}%d'">
-
-=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 $Config{d_setlocale} is not true.
+This enables us to pass tests on Android which uses ICU instead of locales.
=back
=head2 Discontinued Platforms
+XXX List any platforms that this version of perl no longer compiles on.
+
=over 4
-=item Rhapsody
+=item XXX-some-platform
-Support for Rhapsody has been removed.
+XXX
=back
=over 4
-=item Windows
+=item VMS
-Perl can now be built using Microsoft's Visual C++ 2012 compiler by specifying
-CCTYPE=MSVC110 (or MSVC110FREE if you are using the free Express edition for
-Windows Desktop) in F<win32/Makefile>.
+The character set for Extended Filename Syntax (EFS) is now enabled by default on
+VMS. Among other things, this provides better handling of dots in directory names,
+multiple dots in filenames,and spaces in filenames. To obtain the old behavior,
+set the logical name C<DECC$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 *
-A bug in the core typemap caused any C types that map to the T_BOOL core
-typemap entry to not be set, updated, or modified when the T_BOOL variable was
-used in an OUTPUT: section with an exception for RETVAL. T_BOOL in an INPUT:
-section was not affected. Using a T_BOOL return type for an XSUB (RETVAL)
-was not affected. A side effect of fixing this bug is, if a T_BOOL is specified
-in the OUTPUT: section (which previous did nothing to the SV), and a read only
-SV (literal) is passed to the XSUB, croaks like "Modification of a read-only
-value attempted" will happen. [perl #115796]
+-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT builds now free the global struct B<after>
+they've finished using it.
=item *
-On many platforms, providing a directory name as the script name caused perl
-to do nothing and report success. It should now universally report an error
-and exit nonzero. [perl #61362]
+A trailing '/' on a path in @INC will no longer have an additional '/' appended.
=back
XXX Generate this with:
- perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.17.7..HEAD
+ perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.17.8..HEAD
=head1 Reporting Bugs