1PERL5113DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5113DELTA(1)
2
6 perl5113delta - what is new for perl v5.11.3
7
9 This document describes differences between the 5.11.2 release and the
10 5.11.3 release.
11 If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.11.1, first read
13 the perl5112delta, which describes differences between 5.11.1 and
14 5.11.2
15
17 Filehandles are blessed directly into "IO::Handle", as "FileHandle" is
18 merely a wrapper around "IO::Handle".
19 The previous behaviour was to bless Filehandles into FileHandle (an
20 empty proxy class) if it was loaded into memory and otherwise to bless
21 them into "IO::Handle".
22
24 Unicode version
25 Perl is shipped with the latest Unicode version, 5.2, dated October
26 2009. See <http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0> for details
27 about this release of Unicode. See perlunicode for instructions on
28 installing and using older versions of Unicode.
29 Unicode properties
31 Perl can now handle every Unicode character property. A new pod,
32 perluniprops, lists all available non-Unihan character properties. By
33 default the Unihan properties and certain others (deprecated and
34 Unicode internal-only ones) are not exposed. See below for more
35 details on these; there is also a section in the pod listing them, and
36 why they are not exposed.
37 Perl now fully supports the Unicode compound-style of using "=" and ":"
39 in writing regular expressions: "\p{property=value}" and
40 "\p{property:value}" (both of which mean the same thing).
41 Perl now fully supports the Unicode loose matching rules for text
43 between the braces in "\p{...}" constructs. In addition, Perl also
44 allows underscores between digits of numbers.
45 All the Unicode-defined synonyms for properties and property values are
47 now accepted.
48 "qr/\X/", which matches a Unicode logical character, has been expanded
50 to work better with various Asian languages. It now is defined as an
51 "extended grapheme cluster". (See
52 <http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr29/>). Anything matched previously
53 that made sense will continue to be matched. But in addition:
54 · "\X" will now not break apart a "CR LF" sequence.
56 · "\X" will now match a sequence including the "ZWJ" and "ZWNJ"
58 characters.
59 · "\X" will now always match at least one character, including an
61 initial mark. Marks generally come after a base character, but it
62 is possible in Unicode to have them in isolation, and "\X" will now
63 handle that case, for example at the beginning of a line or after a
64 "ZWSP". And this is the part where "\X" doesn't match the things
65 that it used to that don't make sense. Formerly, for example, you
66 could have the nonsensical case of an accented LF.
67 · "\X" will now match a (Korean) Hangul syllable sequence, and the
69 Thai and Lao exception cases.
70 Otherwise, this change should be transparent for the non-affected
72 languages.
73 "\p{...}" matches using the Canonical_Combining_Class property were
75 completely broken in previous Perls. This is now fixed.
76 In previous Perls, the Unicode "Decomposition_Type=Compat" property and
78 a Perl extension had the same name, which led to neither matching all
79 the correct values (with more than 100 mistakes in one, and several
80 thousand in the other). The Perl extension has now been renamed to be
81 "Decomposition_Type=Noncanonical" (short: "dt=noncanon"). It has the
82 same meaning as was previously intended, namely the union of all the
83 non-canonical Decomposition types, with Unicode "Compat" being just one
84 of those.
85 "\p{Uppercase}" and "\p{Lowercase}" have been brought into line with
87 the Unicode definitions. This means they each match a few more
88 characters than previously.
89 "\p{Cntrl}" now matches the same characters as "\p{Control}". This
91 means it no longer will match Private Use (gc=co), Surrogates (gc=cs),
92 nor Format (gc=cf) code points. The Format code points represent the
93 biggest possible problem. All but 36 of them are either officially
94 deprecated or strongly discouraged from being used. Of those 36,
95 likely the most widely used are the soft hyphen (U+00AD), and BOM,
96 ZWSP, ZWNJ, WJ, and similar, plus Bi-directional controls.
97 "\p{Alpha}" now matches the same characters as "\p{Alphabetic}". The
99 Perl definition included a number of things that aren't really alpha
100 (all marks), while omitting many that were. As a direct consequence,
101 the definitions of "\p{Alnum}" and "\p{Word}" which depend on Alpha
102 also change.
103 "\p{Word}" also now doesn't match certain characters it wasn't supposed
105 to, such as fractions.
106 "\p{Print}" no longer matches the line control characters: Tab, LF, CR,
108 FF, VT, and NEL. This brings it in line with the documentation.
109 "\p{Decomposition_Type=Canonical}" now includes the Hangul syllables.
111 The Numeric type property has been extended to include the Unihan
113 characters.
114 There is a new Perl extension, the 'Present_In', or simply 'In',
116 property. This is an extension of the Unicode Age property, but
117 "\p{In=5.0}" matches any code point whose usage has been determined as
118 of Unicode version 5.0. The "\p{Age=5.0}" only matches code points
119 added in precisely version 5.0.
120 A number of properties did not have the correct values for unassigned
122 code points. This is now fixed. The affected properties are
123 Bidi_Class, East_Asian_Width, Joining_Type, Decomposition_Type,
124 Hangul_Syllable_Type, Numeric_Type, and Line_Break.
125 The Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, ID_Continue, and ID_Start properties
127 have been updated to their current Unicode definitions.
128 Certain properties that are supposed to be Unicode internal-only were
130 erroneously exposed by previous Perls. Use of these in regular
131 expressions will now generate, if enabled, a deprecated warning
132 message. The properties are: Other_Alphabetic,
133 Other_Default_Ignorable_Code_Point, Other_Grapheme_Extend,
134 Other_ID_Continue, Other_ID_Start, Other_Lowercase, Other_Math, and
135 Other_Uppercase.
136 An installation can now fairly easily change which Unicode properties
138 Perl understands. As mentioned above, certain properties are by
139 default turned off. These include all the Unihan properties (which
140 should be accessible via the CPAN module Unicode::Unihan) and any
141 deprecated or Unicode internal-only property that Perl has never
142 exposed.
143 The generated files in the "lib/unicore/To" directory are now more
145 clearly marked as being stable, directly usable by applications. New
146 hash entries in them give the format of the normal entries, which
147 allows for easier machine parsing. Perl can generate files in this
148 directory for any property, though most are suppressed. An
149 installation can choose to change which get written. Instructions are
150 in perluniprops.
151 Regular Expressions
153 U+0FFFF is now a legal character in regular expressions.
154
156 Pragmata Changes
157 "constant"
158 Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.20.
159 "diagnostics"
161 This pragma no longer suppresses "Use of uninitialized value in
162 range (or flip)" warnings. [perl #71204]
163 "feature"
165 Upgraded from 1.13 to 1.14. Added the "unicode_strings" feature:
166 use feature "unicode_strings";
168 This pragma turns on Unicode semantics for the case-changing
170 operations (uc/lc/ucfirst/lcfirst) on strings that don't have the
171 internal UTF-8 flag set, but that contain single-byte characters
172 between 128 and 255.
173 "legacy"
175 The experimental "legacy" pragma, introduced in 5.11.2, has been
176 removed, and its functionality replaced by the new feature pragma,
177 "use feature "unicode_strings"".
178 "threads"
180 Upgraded from version 1.74 to 1.75.
181 "warnings"
183 Upgraded from 1.07 to 1.08. Added new "warnings::fatal_enabled()"
184 function.
185 Updated Modules
187 "Archive::Extract"
188 Upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.36.
189 "CPAN"
191 Upgraded from version 1.94_51 to 1.94_5301, which is 1.94_53 on
192 CPAN plus some local fixes for bleadperl.
193 Includes better bzip2 support, improved FirstTime experience with
195 auto-selection of CPAN mirrors, proper handling of modules removed
196 from the Perl core, and an updated 'cpan' utility script
197 "CPANPLUS"
199 Upgraded from version 0.89_09 to 0.90.
200 "Encode"
202 Upgraded from version 2.38 to 2.39.
203 "ExtUtils::MakeMaker"
205 Upgraded from version 6.55_02 to 6.56. Adds new BUILD_REQUIRES key
206 to indicate build-only prerequisites. Also adds support for
207 mingw64 and the new "package NAME VERSION" syntax.
208 "File::Path"
210 Upgraded from version 2.08 to 2.08_01.
211 "Module::Build"
213 Upgraded from version 0.35_09 to 0.36. Compared to 0.35, this
214 version has a new 'installdeps' action, supports the PERL_MB_OPT
215 environment variable, adds a 'share_dir' property for
216 File::ShareDir support, support the "package NAME VERSION" syntax
217 and has many other enhancements and bug fixes. The 'passthrough'
218 style of Module::Build::Compat has been deprecated.
219 "Module::CoreList"
221 Upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.24.
222 "POSIX"
224 Upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19. Error codes for "getaddrinfo()"
225 and "getnameinfo()" are now available.
226 "Pod::Simple"
228 Upgraded from version 3.10 to 3.13.
229 "Safe"
231 Upgraded from version 2.19 to 2.20.
232
234 perlbug
235 No longer reports "Message sent" when it hasn't actually sent the
236 message
237
239 The Pod specification (perlpodspec) has been updated to bring the
240 specification in line with modern usage already supported by most Pod
241 systems. A parameter string may now follow the format name in a
242 "begin/end" region. Links to URIs with a text description are now
243 allowed. The usage of "L<"section">" has been marked as deprecated.
244 if.pm has been documented in "use" in perlfunc as a means to get
246 conditional loading of modules despite the implicit BEGIN block around
247 "use".
248
250 Testing improvements
251 It's now possible to override "PERL5OPT" and friends in t/TEST
252 Platform Specific Changes
254 Win32
255 · Always add a manifest resource to "perl.exe" to specify the
256 "trustInfo" settings for Windows Vista and later. Without this
257 setting Windows will treat "perl.exe" as a legacy application
258 and apply various heuristics like redirecting access to
259 protected file system areas (like the "Program Files" folder)
260 to the users "VirtualStore" instead of generating a proper
261 "permission denied" error.
262 For VC8 and VC9 this manifest setting is automatically
264 generated by the compiler/linker (together with the binding
265 information for their respective runtime libraries); for all
266 other compilers we need to embed the manifest resource
267 explicitly in the external resource file.
268 This change also requests the Microsoft Common-Controls version
270 6.0 (themed controls introduced in Windows XP) via the
271 dependency list in the assembly manifest. For VC8 and VC9 this
272 is specified using the "/manifestdependency" linker commandline
273 option instead.
274 cygwin
276 Enable IPv6 support on cygwin 1.7 and newer
277 OpenVMS
278 Make -UDEBUGGING the default on VMS for 5.12.0.
279 Like it has been everywhere else for ages and ages. Also make
280 command-line selection of -UDEBUGGING and -DDEBUGGING work in
281 configure.com; before the only way to turn it off was by saying
282 no in answer to the interactive question.
283
285 · Ensure that pp_qr returns a new regexp SV each time. Resolves RT
286 #69852.
287 Instead of returning a(nother) reference to the (pre-compiled)
289 regexp in the optree, use reg_temp_copy() to create a copy of it,
290 and return a reference to that. This resolves issues about
291 Regexp::DESTROY not being called in a timely fashion (the original
292 bug tracked by RT #69852), as well as bugs related to blessing
293 regexps, and of assigning to regexps, as described in
294 correspondence added to the ticket.
295 It transpires that we also need to undo the SvPVX() sharing when
297 ithreads cloning a Regexp SV, because mother_re is set to NULL,
298 instead of a cloned copy of the mother_re. This change might fix
299 bugs with regexps and threads in certain other situations, but as
300 yet neither tests nor bug reports have indicated any problems, so
301 it might not actually be an edge case that it's possible to reach.
302 · Several compilation errors and segfaults when perl was built with
304 "-Dmad" were fixed.
305 · Fixes for lexer API changes in 5.11.2 which broke NYTProf's savesrc
307 option.
308 · -t should only return TRUE for file handles connected to a TTY
310 The Microsoft C version of isatty() returns TRUE for all character
312 mode devices, including the /dev/null style "nul" device and
313 printers like "lpt1".
314 · Fixed a regression caused by commit fafafbaf which caused a panic
316 during parameter passing [perl #70171]
317 · On systems which in-place edits without backup files, -i'*' now
319 works as the documentation says it does [perl #70802]
320 · Saving and restoring magic flags no longer loses readonly flag.
322 · The malformed syntax "grep EXPR LIST" (note the missing comma) no
324 longer causes abrupt and total failure.
325 · Regular expressions compiled with "qr{}" literals properly set "$'"
327 when matching again.
328 · Using named subroutines with "sort" should no longer lead to bus
330 errors [perl #71076]
331 · Numerous bugfixes catch small issues caused by the recently-added
333 Lexer API.
334 · Smart match against @_ sometimes gave false negatives. [perl
336 #71078]
337 · $@ may now be assigned a read-only value (without error or busting
339 the stack).
340 · "sort" called recursively from within an active comparison
342 subroutine no longer causes a bus error if run multiple times.
343 [perl #71076]
344
346 · "split" now warns when called in void context
347 · "printf"-style functions called with too few arguments will now
349 issue the warning "Missing argument in %s" [perl #71000]
350
352 Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests.
353 t/comp/final_line_num.t
355 See if line numbers are correct at EOF
356 t/comp/form_scope.t
358 See if format scoping works
359 t/comp/line_debug.t
361 See if @{"_<$file"} works
362 t/op/filetest_t.t
364 See if -t file test works
365 t/op/qr.t
367 See if qr works
368 t/op/utf8cache.t
370 Tests malfunctions of utf8 cache
371 t/re/uniprops.t
373 Test unicode \p{} regex constructs
374
376 The following items are now deprecated.
377 Use of "goto" to jump into a construct is deprecated
379 Using "goto" to jump from an outer scope into an inner scope is now
380 deprecated. This rare use case was causing problems in the
381 implementation of scopes.
382
384 Perl 5.11.3 represents approximately one month of development since
385 Perl 5.11.2 and contains 61407 lines of changes across 396 files from
386 40 authors and committers:
387 Abigail, Alex Davies, Alexandr Ciornii, Andrew Rodland, Andy Dougherty,
389 Bram, brian d foy, Chip Salzenberg, Chris Williams, Craig A. Berry,
390 Daniel Frederick Crisman, David Golden, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Eric Brine,
391 Father Chrysostomos, Gene Sullivan, Gerard Goossen, H. Merijn Brand,
392 Hugo van der Sanden, Jan Dubois, Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Vincent, Jim
393 Cromie, Karl Williamson, Leon Brocard, Max Maischein, Michael Breen,
394 Moritz Lenz, Nicholas Clark, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Reini Urban, Ricardo
395 Signes, Stepan Kasal, Steve Hay, Steve Peters, Tim Bunce, Tony Cook,
396 Vincent Pit and Zefram.
397 Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
399 modules included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN
400 community for helping Perl to flourish.
401
403 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
404 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug
405 database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be
406 information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
407 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug
409 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a
410 tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output
411 of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
412 the Perl porting team.
413 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
415 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please
416 send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed
417 subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core
418 committers, who be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out
419 a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate
420 or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported.
421 Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not
422 for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
423
425 The Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
426 on what changed.
427 The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
429 The README file for general stuff.
431 The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.
433perl v5.12.4 2011-06-01 PERL5113DELTA(1)