releases; they are not duplicated here and are documented in the set of
man pages named perl58[1-8]?delta.
-=head1 Incompatible Changes
-
-=head2 Packing and UTF-8 strings
-
-=for XXX update this
-
-The semantics of pack() and unpack() regarding UTF-8-encoded data has been
-changed. Processing is now by default character per character instead of
-byte per byte on the underlying encoding. Notably, code that used things
-like C<pack("a*", $string)> to see through the encoding of string will now
-simply get back the original $string. Packed strings can also get upgraded
-during processing when you store upgraded characters. You can get the old
-behaviour by using C<use bytes>.
-
-To be consistent with pack(), the C<C0> in unpack() templates indicates
-that the data is to be processed in character mode, i.e. character by
-character; on the contrary, C<U0> in unpack() indicates UTF-8 mode, where
-the packed string is processed in its UTF-8-encoded Unicode form on a byte
-by byte basis. This is reversed with regard to perl 5.8.X.
-
-Moreover, C<C0> and C<U0> can also be used in pack() templates to specify
-respectively character and byte modes.
-
-C<C0> and C<U0> in the middle of a pack or unpack format now switch to the
-specified encoding mode, honoring parens grouping. Previously, parens were
-ignored.
-
-Also, there is a new pack() character format, C<W>, which is intended to
-replace the old C<C>. C<C> is kept for unsigned chars coded as bytes in
-the strings internal representation. C<W> represents unsigned (logical)
-character values, which can be greater than 255. It is therefore more
-robust when dealing with potentially UTF-8-encoded data (as C<C> will wrap
-values outside the range 0..255, and not respect the string encoding).
-
-In practice, that means that pack formats are now encoding-neutral, except
-C<C>.
-
-For consistency, C<A> in unpack() format now trims all Unicode whitespace
-from the end of the string. Before perl 5.9.2, it used to strip only the
-classical ASCII space characters.
-
-=head2 Byte/character count feature in unpack()
-
-A new unpack() template character, C<".">, returns the number of bytes or
-characters (depending on the selected encoding mode, see above) read so far.
-
-=head2 The C<$*> and C<$#> variables have been removed
-
-C<$*>, which was deprecated in favor of the C</s> and C</m> regexp
-modifiers, has been removed.
-
-The deprecated C<$#> variable (output format for numbers) has been
-removed.
-
-Two new warnings, C<$#/$* is no longer supported>, have been added.
-
-=head2 substr() lvalues are no longer fixed-length
-
-The lvalues returned by the three argument form of substr() used to be a
-"fixed length window" on the original string. In some cases this could
-cause surprising action at distance or other undefined behaviour. Now the
-length of the window adjusts itself to the length of the string assigned to
-it.
-
-=head2 Parsing of C<-f _>
-
-The identifier C<_> is now forced to be a bareword after a filetest
-operator. This solves a number of misparsing issues when a global C<_>
-subroutine is defined.
-
-=head2 C<:unique>
-
-The C<:unique> attribute has been made a no-op, since its current
-implementation was fundamentally flawed and not threadsafe.
-
-=head2 Scoping of the C<sort> pragma
-
-The C<sort> pragma is now lexically scoped. Its effect used to be global.
-
-=head2 Scoping of C<bignum>, C<bigint>, C<bigrat>
-
-The three numeric pragmas C<bignum>, C<bigint> and C<bigrat> are now
-lexically scoped. (Tels)
-
-=head2 Effect of pragmas in eval
-
-The compile-time value of the C<%^H> hint variable can now propagate into
-eval("")uated code. This makes it more useful to implement lexical
-pragmas.
-
-As a side-effect of this, the overloaded-ness of constants now propagates
-into eval("").
-
-=head2 chdir FOO
-
-A bareword argument to chdir() is now recognized as a file handle.
-Earlier releases interpreted the bareword as a directory name.
-(Gisle Aas)
-
-=head2 Handling of .pmc files
-
-An old feature of perl was that before C<require> or C<use> look for a
-file with a F<.pm> extension, they will first look for a similar filename
-with a F<.pmc> extension. If this file is found, it will be loaded in
-place of any potentially existing file ending in a F<.pm> extension.
-
-Previously, F<.pmc> files were loaded only if more recent than the
-matching F<.pm> file. Starting with 5.9.4, they'll be always loaded if
-they exist.
-
-=head2 @- and @+ in patterns
-
-The special arrays C<@-> and C<@+> are no longer interpolated in regular
-expressions. (Sadahiro Tomoyuki)
-
-=head2 $AUTOLOAD can now be tainted
-
-If you call a subroutine by a tainted name, and if it defers to an
-AUTOLOAD function, then $AUTOLOAD will be (correctly) tainted.
-(Rick Delaney)
-
-=head2 Tainting and printf
-
-When perl is run under taint mode, C<printf()> and C<sprintf()> will now
-reject any tainted format argument. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
-
-=head2 undef and signal handlers
-
-Undefining or deleting a signal handler via C<undef $SIG{FOO}> is now
-equivalent to setting it to C<'DEFAULT'>. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
-
-=head2 strictures and array/hash dereferencing in defined()
-
-C<defined @$foo> and C<defined %$bar> are now subject to C<strict 'refs'>
-(that is, C<$foo> and C<$bar> shall be proper references there.)
-(Nicholas Clark)
-
-(However, C<defined(@foo)> and C<defined(%bar)> are discouraged constructs
-anyway.)
-
-=head2 C<(?p{})> has been removed
-
-The regular expression construct C<(?p{})>, which was deprecated in perl
-5.8, has been removed. Use C<(??{})> instead. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
-
-=head2 Pseudo-hashes have been removed
-
-Support for pseudo-hashes has been removed from Perl 5.9. (The C<fields>
-pragma remains here, but uses an alternate implementation.)
-
-=head2 Removal of the bytecode compiler and of perlcc
-
-C<perlcc>, the byteloader and the supporting modules (B::C, B::CC,
-B::Bytecode, etc.) are no longer distributed with the perl sources. Those
-experimental tools have never worked reliably, and, due to the lack of
-volunteers to keep them in line with the perl interpreter developments, it
-was decided to remove them instead of shipping a broken version of those.
-The last version of those modules can be found with perl 5.9.4.
-
-However the B compiler framework stays supported in the perl core, as with
-the more useful modules it has permitted (among others, B::Deparse and
-B::Concise).
-
-=head2 Removal of the JPL
-
-The JPL (Java-Perl Linguo) has been removed from the perl sources tarball.
-
-=head2 Recursive inheritance detected earlier
-
-Perl will now immediately throw an exception if you modify any package's
-C<@ISA> in such a way that it would cause recursive inheritance.
-
-Previously, the exception would not occur until Perl attempted to make
-use of the recursive inheritance while resolving a method or doing a
-C<$foo-E<gt>isa($bar)> lookup.
-
=head1 Core Enhancements
=head2 The C<feature> pragma
=head2 Defined-or operator
A new operator C<//> (defined-or) has been implemented.
-The following statement:
+The following expression:
$a // $b
defined $a ? $a : $b
-and
+and the statement
$c //= $d;
$ # end of line
/x
-Note, users experienced with PCRE will find that the Perl implementation
-of this feature differs from the PCRE one in that it is possible to
-backtrack into a recursed pattern, whereas in PCRE the recursion is
-atomic or "possessive" in nature. (Yves Orton)
+PCRE users should note that Perl's recursive regex feature allows
+backtracking into a recursed pattern, whereas in PCRE the recursion is
+atomic or "possessive" in nature. As in the example above, you can
+add (?>) to control this selectively. (Yves Orton)
=item Named Capture Buffers
syntax. In code, the new magical hashes C<%+> and C<%-> can be used to
access the contents of the capture buffers.
-Thus, to replace all doubled chars, one could write
+Thus, to replace all doubled chars with a single copy, one could write
s/(?<letter>.)\k<letter>/$+{letter}/g
=item C<\K> escape
The functionality of Jeff Pinyan's module Regexp::Keep has been added to
-the core. You can now use in regular expressions the special escape C<\K>
+the core. In regular expressions you can now use the special escape C<\K>
as a way to do something like floating length positive lookbehind. It is
also useful in substitutions like:
C<\R> matches a generic linebreak, that is, vertical whitespace, plus
the multi-character sequence C<"\x0D\x0A">.
-=item Unicode Character Classes
-
-Perl's regular expression engine now contains support for matching on the
-intersection of two Unicode character classes. You can also now refer to
-user-defined character classes from within other user defined character
-classes.
-
=back
=head2 C<say()>
In a scope where C<$_> has been lexicalized, you can still have access to
the global version of C<$_> by using C<$::_>, or, more simply, by
-overriding the lexical declaration with C<our $_>.
+overriding the lexical declaration with C<our $_>. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 The C<_> prototype
-A new prototype character has been added. C<_> is equivalent to C<$> (it
-denotes a scalar), but defaults to C<$_> if the corresponding argument
-isn't supplied. Due to the optional nature of the argument, you can only
-use it at the end of a prototype, or before a semicolon.
+A new prototype character has been added. C<_> is equivalent to C<$> but
+defaults to C<$_> if the corresponding argument isn't supplied. (both C<$>
+and C<_> denote a scalar). Due to the optional nature of the argument, you
+can only use it at the end of a prototype, or before a semicolon.
This has a small incompatible consequence: the prototype() function has
been adjusted to return C<_> for some built-ins in appropriate cases (for
A new pragma, C<mro> (for Method Resolution Order) has been added. It
permits to switch, on a per-class basis, the algorithm that perl uses to
-find inherited methods in case of a mutiple inheritance hierachy. The
+find inherited methods in case of a multiple inheritance hierarchy. The
default MRO hasn't changed (DFS, for Depth First Search). Another MRO is
available: the C3 algorithm. See L<mro> for more information.
(Brandon Black)
-Note that, due to changes in the implentation of class hierarchy search,
+Note that, due to changes in the implementation of class hierarchy search,
code that used to undef the C<*ISA> glob will most probably break. Anyway,
undef'ing C<*ISA> had the side-effect of removing the magic on the @ISA
array and should not have been done in the first place.
Moreover, it now defaults to C<$_> if no argument is provided. (Rafael
Garcia-Suarez)
-=head2 default argument for readline()
+=head2 Default argument for readline()
readline() now defaults to C<*ARGV> if no argument is provided. (Rafael
Garcia-Suarez)
To use state variables, one needs to enable them by using
- use feature "state";
+ use feature 'state';
or by using the C<-E> command-line switch in one-liners.
See L<perlsub/"Persistent variables via state()">.
See L<< UNIVERSAL/"$obj->DOES( ROLE )" >>.
-=head2 C<CLONE_SKIP()>
-
-Perl has now support for the C<CLONE_SKIP> special subroutine. Like
-C<CLONE>, C<CLONE_SKIP> is called once per package; however, it is called
-just before cloning starts, and in the context of the parent thread. If it
-returns a true value, then no objects of that class will be cloned. See
-L<perlmod> for details. (Contributed by Dave Mitchell.)
-
=head2 Formats
Formats were improved in several ways. A new field, C<^*>, can be used for
The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and
if folding throws an exception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl
now retains the current optree, rather than aborting the whole program.
-(Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)
+Without this change, programs would not compile if they had expressions that
+happened to generate exceptions, even though those expressions were in code
+that could never be reached at runtime. (Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)
=head2 Source filters in @INC
backtick command, successful call to wait() or waitpid(), or from the
system() operator. See L<perlrun> for details. (Contributed by Gisle Aas.)
+=item C<${^RE_TRIE_MAXBUF}>
+
+See L</"Trie optimisation of literal string alternations">.
+
+=item C<${^WIN32_SLOPPY_STAT}>
+
+See L</"Sloppy stat on Windows">.
+
=back
=head2 Miscellaneous
The B<-C> option can no longer be used on the C<#!> line. It wasn't
working there anyway.
-=head2 PERLIO_DEBUG
-
-The C<PERLIO_DEBUG> environment variable has no longer any effect for
-setuid scripts and for scripts run with B<-T>.
-
-Moreover, with a thread-enabled perl, using C<PERLIO_DEBUG> could lead to
-an internal buffer overflow. This has been fixed.
-
=head2 UCD 5.0.0
The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5 has
=head2 MAD
-MAD, which stands for I<Misc Attribute Decoration>, is a
+MAD, which stands for I<Miscellaneous Attribute Decoration>, is a
still-in-development work leading to a Perl 5 to Perl 6 converter. To
enable it, it's necessary to pass the argument C<-Dmad> to Configure. The
-obtained perl isn't binary compatible with a regular perl 5.9.4, and has
+obtained perl isn't binary compatible with a regular perl 5.10, and has
space and speed penalties; moreover not all regression tests still pass
with it. (Larry Wall, Nicholas Clark)
-=head1 Modules and Pragmata
-
-=head2 New modules
+=head2 kill() on Windows
-=over 4
+On Windows platforms, C<kill(-9, $pid)> now kills a process tree.
+(On UNIX, this delivers the signal to all processes in the same process
+group.)
-=item *
+=head1 Incompatible Changes
-C<encoding::warnings>, by Audrey Tang, is a module to emit warnings
-whenever an ASCII character string containing high-bit bytes is implicitly
-converted into UTF-8.
+=head2 Packing and UTF-8 strings
-=item *
+=for XXX update this
-C<Module::CoreList>, by Richard Clamp, is a small handy module that tells
-you what versions of core modules ship with any versions of Perl 5. It
-comes with a command-line frontend, C<corelist>.
+The semantics of pack() and unpack() regarding UTF-8-encoded data has been
+changed. Processing is now by default character per character instead of
+byte per byte on the underlying encoding. Notably, code that used things
+like C<pack("a*", $string)> to see through the encoding of string will now
+simply get back the original $string. Packed strings can also get upgraded
+during processing when you store upgraded characters. You can get the old
+behaviour by using C<use bytes>.
-=item *
+To be consistent with pack(), the C<C0> in unpack() templates indicates
+that the data is to be processed in character mode, i.e. character by
+character; on the contrary, C<U0> in unpack() indicates UTF-8 mode, where
+the packed string is processed in its UTF-8-encoded Unicode form on a byte
+by byte basis. This is reversed with regard to perl 5.8.X, but now consistent
+between pack() and unpack().
-C<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> is an XS-enabled, and thus faster, version of
-C<Math::BigInt::Calc>.
+Moreover, C<C0> and C<U0> can also be used in pack() templates to specify
+respectively character and byte modes.
-=item *
+C<C0> and C<U0> in the middle of a pack or unpack format now switch to the
+specified encoding mode, honoring parens grouping. Previously, parens were
+ignored.
-C<Compress::Zlib> is an interface to the zlib compression library. It
-comes with a bundled version of zlib, so having a working zlib is not a
-prerequisite to install it. It's used by C<Archive::Tar> (see below).
+Also, there is a new pack() character format, C<W>, which is intended to
+replace the old C<C>. C<C> is kept for unsigned chars coded as bytes in
+the strings internal representation. C<W> represents unsigned (logical)
+character values, which can be greater than 255. It is therefore more
+robust when dealing with potentially UTF-8-encoded data (as C<C> will wrap
+values outside the range 0..255, and not respect the string encoding).
-=item *
+In practice, that means that pack formats are now encoding-neutral, except
+C<C>.
-C<IO::Zlib> is an C<IO::>-style interface to C<Compress::Zlib>.
+For consistency, C<A> in unpack() format now trims all Unicode whitespace
+from the end of the string. Before perl 5.9.2, it used to strip only the
+classical ASCII space characters.
-=item *
+=head2 Byte/character count feature in unpack()
-C<Archive::Tar> is a module to manipulate C<tar> archives.
+A new unpack() template character, C<".">, returns the number of bytes or
+characters (depending on the selected encoding mode, see above) read so far.
-=item *
+=head2 The C<$*> and C<$#> variables have been removed
-C<Digest::SHA> is a module used to calculate many types of SHA digests,
-has been included for SHA support in the CPAN module.
+C<$*>, which was deprecated in favor of the C</s> and C</m> regexp
+modifiers, has been removed.
-=item *
+The deprecated C<$#> variable (output format for numbers) has been
+removed.
-C<ExtUtils::CBuilder> and C<ExtUtils::ParseXS> have been added.
+Two new severe warnings, C<$#/$* is no longer supported>, have been added.
-=back
+=head2 substr() lvalues are no longer fixed-length
-=head1 Utility Changes
+The lvalues returned by the three argument form of substr() used to be a
+"fixed length window" on the original string. In some cases this could
+cause surprising action at distance or other undefined behaviour. Now the
+length of the window adjusts itself to the length of the string assigned to
+it.
-=over 4
+=head2 Parsing of C<-f _>
-=item perl -d
+The identifier C<_> is now forced to be a bareword after a filetest
+operator. This solves a number of misparsing issues when a global C<_>
+subroutine is defined.
+
+=head2 C<:unique>
+
+The C<:unique> attribute has been made a no-op, since its current
+implementation was fundamentally flawed and not threadsafe.
+
+=head2 Effect of pragmas in eval
+
+The compile-time value of the C<%^H> hint variable can now propagate into
+eval("")uated code. This makes it more useful to implement lexical
+pragmas.
+
+As a side-effect of this, the overloaded-ness of constants now propagates
+into eval("").
+
+=head2 chdir FOO
+
+A bareword argument to chdir() is now recognized as a file handle.
+Earlier releases interpreted the bareword as a directory name.
+(Gisle Aas)
+
+=head2 Handling of .pmc files
+
+An old feature of perl was that before C<require> or C<use> look for a
+file with a F<.pm> extension, they will first look for a similar filename
+with a F<.pmc> extension. If this file is found, it will be loaded in
+place of any potentially existing file ending in a F<.pm> extension.
+
+Previously, F<.pmc> files were loaded only if more recent than the
+matching F<.pm> file. Starting with 5.9.4, they'll be always loaded if
+they exist.
+
+=head2 @- and @+ in patterns
+
+The special arrays C<@-> and C<@+> are no longer interpolated in regular
+expressions. (Sadahiro Tomoyuki)
+
+=head2 $AUTOLOAD can now be tainted
+
+If you call a subroutine by a tainted name, and if it defers to an
+AUTOLOAD function, then $AUTOLOAD will be (correctly) tainted.
+(Rick Delaney)
+
+=head2 Tainting and printf
+
+When perl is run under taint mode, C<printf()> and C<sprintf()> will now
+reject any tainted format argument. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
+
+=head2 undef and signal handlers
+
+Undefining or deleting a signal handler via C<undef $SIG{FOO}> is now
+equivalent to setting it to C<'DEFAULT'>. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
+
+=head2 strictures and dereferencing in defined()
+
+C<use strict 'refs'> was ignoring taking a hard reference in an argument
+to defined(), as in :
+
+ use strict 'refs';
+ my $x = 'foo';
+ if (defined $$x) {...}
+
+This now correctly produces the run-time error C<Can't use string as a
+SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use>.
+
+C<defined @$foo> and C<defined %$bar> are now also subject to C<strict
+'refs'> (that is, C<$foo> and C<$bar> shall be proper references there.)
+(C<defined(@foo)> and C<defined(%bar)> are discouraged constructs anyway.)
+(Nicholas Clark)
+
+=head2 C<(?p{})> has been removed
+
+The regular expression construct C<(?p{})>, which was deprecated in perl
+5.8, has been removed. Use C<(??{})> instead. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
+
+=head2 Pseudo-hashes have been removed
+
+Support for pseudo-hashes has been removed from Perl 5.9. (The C<fields>
+pragma remains here, but uses an alternate implementation.)
+
+=head2 Removal of the bytecode compiler and of perlcc
+
+C<perlcc>, the byteloader and the supporting modules (B::C, B::CC,
+B::Bytecode, etc.) are no longer distributed with the perl sources. Those
+experimental tools have never worked reliably, and, due to the lack of
+volunteers to keep them in line with the perl interpreter developments, it
+was decided to remove them instead of shipping a broken version of those.
+The last version of those modules can be found with perl 5.9.4.
+
+However the B compiler framework stays supported in the perl core, as with
+the more useful modules it has permitted (among others, B::Deparse and
+B::Concise).
+
+=head2 Removal of the JPL
+
+The JPL (Java-Perl Lingo) has been removed from the perl sources tarball.
+
+=head2 Recursive inheritance detected earlier
+
+Perl will now immediately throw an exception if you modify any package's
+C<@ISA> in such a way that it would cause recursive inheritance.
+
+Previously, the exception would not occur until Perl attempted to make
+use of the recursive inheritance while resolving a method or doing a
+C<$foo-E<gt>isa($bar)> lookup.
+
+=head1 Modules and Pragmata
+
+=head2 Pragmata Changes
+
+=over 4
+
+=item C<feature>
+
+The new pragma C<feature> is used to enable new features that might break
+old code. See L</"The C<feature> pragma"> above.
+
+=item C<mro>
+
+This new pragma enables to change the algorithm used to resolve inherited
+methods. See L</"New Pragma, C<mro>"> above.
+
+=item Scoping of the C<sort> pragma
+
+The C<sort> pragma is now lexically scoped. Its effect used to be global.
+
+=item Scoping of C<bignum>, C<bigint>, C<bigrat>
+
+The three numeric pragmas C<bignum>, C<bigint> and C<bigrat> are now
+lexically scoped. (Tels)
+
+=item C<base>
+
+The C<base> pragma now warns if a class tries to inherit from itself.
+(Curtis "Ovid" Poe)
+
+=item C<strict> and C<warnings>
+
+C<strict> and C<warnings> will now complain loudly if they are loaded via
+incorrect casing (as in C<use Strict;>). (Johan Vromans)
+
+=item C<version>
+
+The C<version> module provides support for version objects.
+
+=item C<warnings>
+
+The C<warnings> pragma doesn't load C<Carp> anymore. That means that code
+that used C<Carp> routines without having loaded it at compile time might
+need to be adjusted; typically, the following (faulty) code won't work
+anymore, and will require parentheses to be added after the function name:
+
+ use warnings;
+ require Carp;
+ Carp::confess 'argh';
+
+=item C<less>
+
+C<less> now does something useful (or at least it tries to). In fact, it
+has been turned into a lexical pragma. So, in your modules, you can now
+test whether your users have requested to use less CPU, or less memory,
+less magic, or maybe even less fat. See L<less> for more. (Joshua ben
+Jore)
+
+=back
+
+=head2 New modules
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+C<encoding::warnings>, by Audrey Tang, is a module to emit warnings
+whenever an ASCII character string containing high-bit bytes is implicitly
+converted into UTF-8. It's a lexical pragma since Perl 5.9.4; on older
+perls, its effect is global.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::CoreList>, by Richard Clamp, is a small handy module that tells
+you what versions of core modules ship with any versions of Perl 5. It
+comes with a command-line frontend, C<corelist>.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> is an XS-enabled, and thus faster, version of
+C<Math::BigInt::Calc>.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Compress::Zlib> is an interface to the zlib compression library. It
+comes with a bundled version of zlib, so having a working zlib is not a
+prerequisite to install it. It's used by C<Archive::Tar> (see below).
+
+=item *
+
+C<IO::Zlib> is an C<IO::>-style interface to C<Compress::Zlib>.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Archive::Tar> is a module to manipulate C<tar> archives.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Digest::SHA> is a module used to calculate many types of SHA digests,
+has been included for SHA support in the CPAN module.
+
+=item *
+
+C<ExtUtils::CBuilder> and C<ExtUtils::ParseXS> have been added.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Hash::Util::FieldHash>, by Anno Siegel, has been added. This module
+provides support for I<field hashes>: hashes that maintain an association
+of a reference with a value, in a thread-safe garbage-collected way.
+Such hashes are useful to implement inside-out objects.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::Build>, by Ken Williams, has been added. It's an alternative to
+C<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> to build and install perl modules.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::Load>, by Jos Boumans, has been added. It provides a single
+interface to load Perl modules and F<.pl> files.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::Loaded>, by Jos Boumans, has been added. It's used to mark
+modules as loaded or unloaded.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Package::Constants>, by Jos Boumans, has been added. It's a simple
+helper to list all constants declared in a given package.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Win32API::File>, by Tye McQueen, has been added (for Windows builds).
+This module provides low-level access to Win32 system API calls for
+files/dirs.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Locale::Maketext::Simple>, needed by CPANPLUS, is a simple wrapper around
+C<Locale::Maketext::Lexicon>. Note that C<Locale::Maketext::Lexicon> isn't
+included in the perl core; the behaviour of C<Locale::Maketext::Simple>
+gracefully degrades when the later isn't present.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Params::Check> implements a generic input parsing/checking mechanism. It
+is used by CPANPLUS.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Term::UI> simplifies the task to ask questions at a terminal prompt.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Object::Accessor> provides an interface to create per-object accessors.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::Pluggable> is a simple framework to create modules that accept
+pluggable sub-modules.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Module::Load::Conditional> provides simple ways to query and possibly
+load installed modules.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Time::Piece> provides an object oriented interface to time functions,
+overriding the built-ins localtime() and gmtime().
+
+=item *
+
+C<IPC::Cmd> helps to find and run external commands, possibly
+interactively.
+
+=item *
+
+C<File::Fetch> provide a simple generic file fetching mechanism.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Log::Message> and C<Log::Message::Simple> are used by the log facility
+of C<CPANPLUS>.
+
+=item *
+
+C<Archive::Extract> is a generic archive extraction mechanism
+for F<.tar> (plain, gziped or bzipped) or F<.zip> files.
+
+=item *
+
+C<CPANPLUS> provides an API and a command-line tool to access the CPAN
+mirrors.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Selected Changes to Core Modules
+
+=over 4
+
+=item C<Attribute::Handlers>
+
+C<Attribute::Handlers> can now report the caller's file and line number.
+(David Feldman)
+
+=item C<B::Lint>
+
+C<B::Lint> is now based on C<Module::Pluggable>, and so can be extended
+with plugins. (Joshua ben Jore)
+
+=item C<B>
+
+It's now possible to access the lexical pragma hints (C<%^H>) by using the
+method B::COP::hints_hash(). It returns a C<B::RHE> object, which in turn
+can be used to get a hash reference via the method B::RHE::HASH(). (Joshua
+ben Jore)
+
+=item C<Thread>
+
+As the old 5005thread threading model has been removed, in favor of the
+ithreads scheme, the C<Thread> module is now a compatibility wrapper, to
+be used in old code only. It has been removed from the default list of
+dynamic extensions.
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Utility Changes
+
+=over 4
+
+=item perl -d
The Perl debugger can now save all debugger commands for sourcing later;
notably, it can now emulate stepping backwards, by restarting and
It can also display the parent inheritance tree of a given class, with the
C<i> command.
-Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in the
-debugger.
-
=item ptar
C<ptar> is a pure perl implementation of C<tar>, that comes with
=item ptardiff
-C<ptardiff> is a small script used to generate a diff between the contents
+C<ptardiff> is a small utility used to generate a diff between the contents
of a tar archive and a directory tree. Like C<ptar>, it comes with
C<Archive::Tar>.
=item h2ph and h2xs
-C<h2ph> and C<h2xs> have been made a bit more robust with regard to
+C<h2ph> and C<h2xs> have been made more robust with regard to
"modern" C code.
C<h2xs> implements a new option C<--use-xsloader> to force use of
C<-eval>. Also the options C<-path>, C<-ipath> and C<-iname> have been
added.
+=item config_data
+
+C<config_data> is a new utility that comes with C<Module::Build>. It
+provides a command-line interface to the configuration of Perl modules
+that use Module::Build's framework of configurability (that is,
+C<*::ConfigData> modules that contain local configuration information for
+their parent modules.)
+
+=item cpanp
+
+C<cpanp>, the CPANPLUS shell, has been added. (C<cpanp-run-perl>, a
+helper for CPANPLUS operation, has been added too, but isn't intended for
+direct use).
+
+=item cpan2dist
+
+C<cpan2dist> is a new utility, that comes with CPANPLUS. It's a tool to
+create distributions (or packages) from CPAN modules.
+
+=item pod2html
+
+The output of C<pod2html> has been enhanced to be more customizable via
+CSS. Some formatting problems were also corrected. (Jari Aalto)
+
=back
=head1 New Documentation
+The L<perlpragma> manpage documents how to write one's own lexical
+pragmas in pure Perl (something that is possible starting with 5.9.4).
+
The new L<perlglossary> manpage is a glossary of terms used in the Perl
documentation, technical and otherwise, kindly provided by O'Reilly Media,
Inc.
+The L<perlreguts> manpage, courtesy of Yves Orton, describes internals of the
+Perl regular expression engine.
+
+The L<perlreapi> manpage describes the interface to the perl interpreter
+used to write pluggable regular expression engines (by Ævar Arnfjörð
+Bjarmason).
+
+The L<perlunitut> manpage is an tutorial for programming with Unicode and
+string encodings in Perl, courtesy of Juerd Waalboer.
+
+A new manual page, L<perlunifaq> (the Perl Unicode FAQ), has been added
+(Juerd Waalboer).
+
+The L<perlcommunity> manpage gives a description of the Perl community
+on the Internet and in real life. (Edgar "Trizor" Bering)
+
+The L<CORE> manual page documents the C<CORE::> namespace. (Tels)
+
The long-existing feature of C</(?{...})/> regexps setting C<$_> and pos()
is now documented.
=head1 Performance Enhancements
-=over 4
-
-=item In-place sorting
+=head2 In-place sorting
Sorting arrays in place (C<@a = sort @a>) is now optimized to avoid
making a temporary copy of the array.
Likewise, C<reverse sort ...> is now optimized to sort in reverse,
avoiding the generation of a temporary intermediate list.
-=item Lexical array access
+=head2 Lexical array access
Access to elements of lexical arrays via a numeric constant between 0 and
255 is now faster. (This used to be only the case for global arrays.)
-=item Trie optimization
-
-The regexp engine now implements the trie optimization : it's able to
-factorize common prefixes and suffixes in regular expressions. A new
-special variable, ${^RE_TRIE_MAXBUF}, has been added to fine-tune this
-optimization.
-
-=item XS-assisted SWASHGET
+=head2 XS-assisted SWASHGET
Some pure-perl code that perl was using to retrieve Unicode properties and
transliteration mappings has been reimplemented in XS.
-=item Constant subroutines
+=head2 Constant subroutines
The interpreter internals now support a far more memory efficient form of
inlineable constants. Storing a reference to a constant value in a symbol
their system dependent constants - as a result C<use POSIX;> now takes about
200K less memory.
-=
item C<PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV>
+=
head2 C<PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV>
The new compilation flag C<PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV>, introduced as an option
in perl 5.8.8, is turned on by default in perl 5.9.3. It prevents perl
from creating an empty scalar with every new typeglob. See L<perl588delta>
for details.
-=item Weak references are cheaper
+=head2 Weak references are cheaper
Weak reference creation is now I<O(1)> rather than I<O(n)>, courtesy of
Nicholas Clark. Weak reference deletion remains I<O(n)>, but if deletion only
happens at program exit, it may be skipped completely.
-=item sort() enhancements
+=head2 sort() enhancements
Salvador Fandiño provided improvements to reduce the memory usage of C<sort>
and to speed up some cases.
+=head2 Memory optimisations
+
+Several internal data structures (typeglobs, GVs, CVs, formats) have been
+restructured to use less memory. (Nicholas Clark)
+
+=head2 UTF-8 cache optimisation
+
+The UTF-8 caching code is now more efficient, and used more often.
+(Nicholas Clark)
+
+=head2 Sloppy stat on Windows
+
+On Windows, perl's stat() function normally opens the file to determine
+the link count and update attributes that may have been changed through
+hard links. Setting ${^WIN32_SLOPPY_STAT} to a true value speeds up
+stat() by not performing this operation. (Jan Dubois)
+
+=head2 Regular expressions optimisations
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Engine de-recursivised
+
+The regular expression engine is no longer recursive, meaning that
+patterns that used to overflow the stack will either die with useful
+explanations, or run to completion, which, since they were able to blow
+the stack before, will likely take a very long time to happen. If you were
+experiencing the occasional stack overflow (or segfault) and upgrade to
+discover that now perl apparently hangs instead, look for a degenerate
+regex. (Dave Mitchell)
+
+=item Single char char-classes treated as literals
+
+Classes of a single character are now treated the same as if the character
+had been used as a literal, meaning that code that uses char-classes as an
+escaping mechanism will see a speedup. (Yves Orton)
+
+=item Trie optimisation of literal string alternations
+
+Alternations, where possible, are optimised into more efficient matching
+structures. String literal alternations are merged into a trie and are
+matched simultaneously. This means that instead of O(N) time for matching
+N alternations at a given point, the new code performs in O(1) time.
+A new special variable, ${^RE_TRIE_MAXBUF}, has been added to fine-tune
+this optimization. (Yves Orton)
+
+B<Note:> Much code exists that works around perl's historic poor
+performance on alternations. Often the tricks used to do so will disable
+the new optimisations. Hopefully the utility modules used for this purpose
+will be educated about these new optimisations.
+
+=item Aho-Corasick start-point optimisation
+
+When a pattern starts with a trie-able alternation and there aren't
+better optimisations available, the regex engine will use Aho-Corasick
+matching to find the start point. (Yves Orton)
+
=back
=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
-=head2 Compilation improvements
+=head2 Configuration improvements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item C<-Dusesitecustomize>
Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled by passing the
-C<-Dusesitecustomize> flag to configure. When enabled, this will make perl
+C<-Dusesitecustomize> flag to Configure. When enabled, this will make perl
run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before anything else. This script can
then be set up to add additional entries to @INC.
-There is alpha support for relocatable @INC entries.
+=item Relocatable installations
+
+There is now Configure support for creating a relocatable perl tree. If
+you Configure with C<-Duserelocatableinc>, then the paths in @INC (and
+everything else in %Config) can be optionally located via the path of the
+perl executable.
+
+That means that, if the string C<".../"> is found at the start of any
+path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation can
+be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
+C<-Duserelocatableinc> is that everything is relocated. The initial
+install is done to the original configured prefix.
+
+=item strlcat() and strlcpy()
+
+The configuration process now detects whether strlcat() and strlcpy() are
+available. When they are not available, perl's own version is used (from
+Russ Allbery's public domain implementation). Various places in the perl
+interpreter now use them. (Steve Peters)
+
+=item C<d_pseudofork> and C<d_printf_format_null>
+
+A new configuration variable, available as C<$Config{d_pseudofork}> in
+the L<Config> module, has been added, to distinguish real fork() support
+from fake pseudofork used on Windows platforms.
+
+A new configuration variable, C<d_printf_format_null>, has been added,
+to see if printf-like formats are allowed to be NULL.
+
+=item Configure help
+
+C<Configure -h> has been extended with the most commonly used options.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Compilation improvements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Parallel build
Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems
if C<make test> is instructed to run in parallel.
+=item Borland's compilers support
+
Building with Borland's compilers on Win32 should work more smoothly. In
particular Steve Hay has worked to side step many warnings emitted by their
compilers and at least one C compiler internal error.
-Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into the Perl DLL,
-thanks to a work by Vadim Konovalov.
+=item Static build on Windows
-=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
+Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into the Perl DLL.
-Perl is being ported to Symbian OS. See L<perlsymbian> for more
-information.
+Also, it's now possible to build a C<perl-static.exe> that doesn't depend
+on the Perl DLL on Win32. See the Win32 makefiles for details.
+(Vadim Konovalov)
-The VMS port has been improved. See L<perlvms>.
+=item ppport.h files
-DynaLoader::dl_unload_file() now works on Windows.
+All F<ppport.h> files in the XS modules bundled with perl are now
+autogenerated at build time. (Marcus Holland-Moritz)
-Portability of Perl on various recent compilers on Windows has been
-improved (Borland C++, Visual C++ 7.0).
+=item C++ compatibility
+
+Efforts have been made to make perl and the core XS modules compilable
+with various C++ compilers (although the situation is not perfect with
+some of the compilers on some of the platforms tested.)
+
+=item Support for Microsoft 64-bit compiler
+
+Support for building perl with Microsoft's 64-bit compiler has been
+improved. (ActiveState)
+
+=item Visual C++
+
+Perl can now be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (and 2008 Beta 2).
+
+=item Win32 builds
+
+All win32 builds (MS-Win, WinCE) have been merged and cleaned up.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Installation improvements
+
+=over 4
-=head2 Module auxiliary files
+=item Module auxiliary files
README files and changelogs for CPAN modules bundled with perl are no
longer installed.
-=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
+=back
-=over 4
+=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
-=item strictures in regexp-eval blocks
+Perl has been reported to work on Symbian OS. See L<perlsymbian> for more
+information.
-C<strict> wasn't in effect in regexp-eval blocks (C</(?{...})/>).
+Many improvements have been made towards making Perl work correctly on
+z/OS.
-=item C<defined $$x>
+Perl has been reported to work on DragonFlyBSD and MidnightBSD.
-C<use strict "refs"> was ignoring taking a hard reference in an argument
-to defined(), as in :
+The VMS port has been improved. See L<perlvms>.
- use strict "refs";
- my $x = "foo";
- if (defined $$x) {...}
+Support for Cray XT4 Catamount/Qk has been added. See
+F<hints/catamount.sh> in the source code distribution for more
+information.
-This now correctly produces the run-time error C<Can't use string as a
-SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use>.
+Vendor patches have been merged for RedHat and Gentoo.
+
+DynaLoader::dl_unload_file() now works on Windows.
+
+=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
+
+=over 4
+
+=item strictures in regexp-eval blocks
+
+C<strict> wasn't in effect in regexp-eval blocks (C</(?{...})/>).
=item Calling CORE::require()
This is now fixed; now C<no warnings 'io';> will only turn off warnings in the
C<io> class. Previously it would erroneously turn off all warnings.
-=item threads and memory usage
+=item threads improvements
Several memory leaks in ithreads were closed. Also, ithreads were made
less memory-intensive.
+C<threads> is now a dual-life module, also available on CPAN. It has been
+expanded in many ways. A kill() method is available for thread signalling.
+One can get thread status, or the list of running or joinable threads.
+
+A new C<< threads->exit() >> method is used to exit from the application
+(this is the default for the main thread) or from the current thread only
+(this is the default for all other threads). On the other hand, the exit()
+built-in now always causes the whole application to terminate. (Jerry
+D. Hedden)
+
=item chr() and negative values
chr() on a negative value now gives C<\x{FFFD}>, the Unicode replacement
character, unless when the C<bytes> pragma is in effect, where the low
eight bytes of the value are used.
+=item PERL5SHELL and tainting
+
+On Windows, the PERL5SHELL environment variable is now checked for
+taintedness. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
+
+=item Using *FILE{IO}
+
+C<stat()> and C<-X> filetests now treat *FILE{IO} filehandles like *FILE
+filehandles. (Steve Peters)
+
+=item Overloading and reblessing
+
+Overloading now works when references are reblessed into another class.
+Internally, this has been implemented by moving the flag for "overloading"
+from the reference to the referent, which logically is where it should
+always have been. (Nicholas Clark)
+
+=item Overloading and UTF-8
+
+A few bugs related to UTF-8 handling with objects that have
+stringification overloaded have been fixed. (Nicholas Clark)
+
+=item eval memory leaks fixed
+
+Traditionally, C<eval 'syntax error'> has leaked badly. Many (but not all)
+of these leaks have now been eliminated or reduced. (Dave Mitchell)
+
+=item Random device on Windows
+
+In previous versions, perl would read the file F</dev/urandom> if it
+existed when seeding its random number generator. That file is unlikely
+to exist on Windows, and if it did would probably not contain appropriate
+data, so perl no longer tries to read it on Windows. (Alex Davies)
+
+=item PERLIO_DEBUG
+
+The C<PERLIO_DEBUG> environment variable no longer has any effect for
+setuid scripts and for scripts run with B<-T>.
+
+Moreover, with a thread-enabled perl, using C<PERLIO_DEBUG> could lead to
+an internal buffer overflow. This has been fixed.
+
+=item PerlIO::scalar and read-only scalars
+
+PerlIO::scalar will now prevent writing to read-only scalars. Moreover,
+seek() is now supported with PerlIO::scalar-based filehandles, the
+underlying string being zero-filled as needed. (Rafael, Jarkko Hietaniemi)
+
+=item study() and UTF-8
+
+study() never worked for UTF-8 strings, but could lead to false results.
+It's now a no-op on UTF-8 data. (Yves Orton)
+
+=item Critical signals
+
+The signals SIGILL, SIGBUS and SIGSEGV are now always delivered in an
+"unsafe" manner (contrary to other signals, that are deferred until the
+perl interpreter reaches a reasonably stable state; see
+L<perlipc/"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)">). (Rafael)
+
+=item @INC-hook fix
+
+When a module or a file is loaded through an @INC-hook, and when this hook
+has set a filename entry in %INC, __FILE__ is now set for this module
+accordingly to the contents of that %INC entry. (Rafael)
+
+=item C<-t> switch fix
+
+The C<-w> and C<-t> switches can now be used together without messing
+up which categories of warnings are activated. (Rafael)
+
+=item Duping UTF-8 filehandles
+
+Duping a filehandle which has the C<:utf8> PerlIO layer set will now
+properly carry that layer on the duped filehandle. (Rafael)
+
+=item Localisation of hash elements
+
+Localizing an hash element whose key was given as a variable didn't work
+correctly if the variable was changed while the local() was in effect (as
+in C<local $h{$x}; ++$x>). (Bo Lindbergh)
+
=back
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
=over 4
+=item Use of uninitialized value
+
+Perl will now try to tell you the name of the variable (if any) that was
+undefined.
+
=item Deprecated use of my() in false conditional
A new deprecation warning, I<Deprecated use of my() in false conditional>,
These new warnings are now emitted when a dirhandle is used but is
either closed or not really a dirhandle.
+=item Opening dirhandle/filehandle %s also as a file/directory
+
+Two deprecation warnings have been added: (Rafael)
+
+ Opening dirhandle %s also as a file
+ Opening filehandle %s also as a directory
+
+=item Use of -P is deprecated
+
+Perl's command-line switch C<-P> is now deprecated.
+
+=item v-string in use/require is non-portable
+
+Perl will warn you against potential backwards compatibility problems with
+the C<use VERSION> syntax.
+
=item perl -V
C<perl -V> has several improvements, making it more useable from shell
=head1 Changed Internals
-In general, the source code of perl has been refactored, tied up, and
-optimized in many places. Also, memory management and allocation has been
-improved in a couple of points.
+In general, the source code of perl has been refactored, tidied up,
+and optimized in many places. Also, memory management and allocation
+has been improved in several points.
+
+When compiling the perl core with gcc, as many gcc warning flags are
+turned on as is possible on the platform. (This quest for cleanliness
+doesn't extend to XS code because we cannot guarantee the tidiness of
+code we didn't write.) Similar strictness flags have been added or
+tightened for various other C compilers.
=head2 Reordering of SVt_* constants
ordering. (The inheritance hierarchy of C<B::*> objects has been changed
to reflect this.)
+=head2 Elimination of SVt_PVBM
+
+Related to this, the internal type C<SVt_PVBM> has been been removed. This
+dedicated type of C<SV> was used by the C<index> operator and parts of the
+regexp engine to facilitate fast Boyer-Moore matches. Its use internally has
+been replaced by C<SV>s of type C<SVt_PVGV>.
+
+=head2 New type SVt_BIND
+
+A new type C<SVt_BIND> has been added, in readiness for the project to
+implement Perl 6 on 5. There deliberately is no implementation yet, and
+they cannot yet be created or destroyed.
+
=head2 Removal of CPP symbols
The C preprocessor symbols C<PERL_PM_APIVERSION> and
=head2 Less space is used by ops
The C<BASEOP> structure now uses less space. The C<op_seq> field has been
-removed and replaced by the one-bit fields C<op_opt>. C<op_type> is now 9
+removed and replaced by a single bit bit-field C<op_opt>. C<op_type> is now 9
bits long. (Consequently, the C<B::OP> class doesn't provide an C<seq>
method anymore.)
The C<av_*()> functions, used to manipulate arrays, no longer accept null
C<AV*> parameters.
+=head2 $^H and %^H
+
+The implementation of the special variables $^H and %^H has changed, to
+allow implementing lexical pragmas in pure Perl.
+
=head2 B:: modules inheritance changed
The inheritance hierarchy of C<B::> modules has changed; C<B::NV> now
inherits from C<B::SV> (it used to inherit from C<B::IV>).
-=head1 New Tests
+=head2 Anonymous hash and array constructors
+
+The anonymous hash and array constructors now take 1 op in the optree
+instead of 3, now that pp_anonhash and pp_anonlist return a reference to
+an hash/array when the op is flagged with OPf_SPECIAL (Nicholas Clark).
=head1 Known Problems
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff