1PERL588DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL588DELTA(1)
2
6 perl588delta - what is new for perl v5.8.8
7
9 This document describes differences between the 5.8.7 release and the
10 5.8.8 release.
11
13 There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.8.7. If any
14 exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
15
17 · "chdir", "chmod" and "chown" can now work on filehandles as well as
18 filenames, if the system supports respectively "fchdir", "fchmod"
19 and "fchown", thanks to a patch provided by Gisle Aas.
20
22 · "Attribute::Handlers" upgraded to version 0.78_02
23 · Documentation typo fix
25 · "attrs" upgraded to version 1.02
27 · Internal cleanup only
29 · "autouse" upgraded to version 1.05
31 · Simplified implementation
33 · "B" upgraded to version 1.09_01
35 · The inheritance hierarchy of the "B::" modules has been
37 corrected; "B::NV" now inherits from "B::SV" (instead of
38 "B::IV").
39 · "blib" upgraded to version 1.03
41 · Documentation typo fix
43 · "ByteLoader" upgraded to version 0.06
45 · Internal cleanup
47 · "CGI" upgraded to version 3.15
49 · Extraneous "?" from "self_url()" removed
51 · "scrolling_list()" select attribute fixed
53 · "virtual_port" now works properly with the https protocol
55 · "upload_hook()" and "append()" now works in function-oriented
57 mode
58 · "POST_MAX" doesn't cause the client to hang any more
60 · Automatic tab indexes are now disabled and new "-tabindex"
62 pragma has been added to turn automatic indexes back on
63 · "end_form()" doesn't emit empty (and non-validating) "<div>"
65 · "CGI::Carp" works better in certain mod_perl configurations
67 · Setting $CGI::TMPDIRECTORY is now effective
69 · Enhanced documentation
71 · "charnames" upgraded to version 1.05
73 · "viacode()" now accept hex strings and has been optimized.
75 · "CPAN" upgraded to version 1.76_02
77 · 1 minor bug fix for Win32
79 · "Cwd" upgraded to version 3.12
81 · "canonpath()" on Win32 now collapses foo\.. sections correctly.
83 · Improved behaviour on Symbian OS.
85 · Enhanced documentation and typo fixes
87 · Internal cleanup
89 · "Data::Dumper" upgraded to version 2.121_08
91 · A problem where "Data::Dumper" would sometimes update the
93 iterator state of hashes has been fixed
94 · Numeric labels now work
96 · Internal cleanup
98 · "DB" upgraded to version 1.01
100 · A problem where the state of the regexp engine would sometimes
102 get clobbered when running under the debugger has been fixed.
103 · "DB_File" upgraded to version 1.814
105 · Adds support for Berkeley DB 4.4.
107 · "Devel::DProf" upgraded to version 20050603.00
109 · Internal cleanup
111 · "Devel::Peek" upgraded to version 1.03
113 · Internal cleanup
115 · "Devel::PPPort" upgraded to version 3.06_01
117 · "--compat-version" argument checking has been improved
119 · Files passed on the command line are filtered by default
121 · "--nofilter" option to override the filtering has been added
123 · Enhanced documentation
125 · "diagnostics" upgraded to version 1.15
127 · Documentation typo fix
129 · "Digest" upgraded to version 1.14
131 · The constructor now knows which module implements SHA-224
133 · Documentation tweaks and typo fixes
135 · "Digest::MD5" upgraded to version 2.36
137 · "XSLoader" is now used for faster loading
139 · Enhanced documentation including MD5 weaknesses discovered
141 lately
142 · "Dumpvalue" upgraded to version 1.12
144 · Documentation fix
146 · "DynaLoader" upgraded but unfortunately we're not able to increment
148 its version number :-(
149 · Implements "dl_unload_file" on Win32
151 · Internal cleanup
153 · "XSLoader" 0.06 incorporated; small optimisation for calling
155 "bootstrap_inherit()" and documentation enhancements.
156 · "Encode" upgraded to version 2.12
158 · A coderef is now acceptable for "CHECK"!
160 · 3 new characters added to the ISO-8859-7 encoding
162 · New encoding "MIME-Header-ISO_2022_JP" added
164 · Problem with partial characters and "encoding(utf-8-strict)"
166 fixed.
167 · Documentation enhancements and typo fixes
169 · "English" upgraded to version 1.02
171 · the $COMPILING variable has been added
173 · "ExtUtils::Constant" upgraded to version 0.17
175 · Improved compatibility with older versions of perl
177 · "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" upgraded to version 6.30 (was 6.17)
179 · Too much to list here; see
181 http://search.cpan.org/dist/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/Changes
182 <http://search.cpan.org/dist/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/Changes>
183 · "File::Basename" upgraded to version 2.74, with changes contributed
185 by Michael Schwern.
186 · Documentation clarified and errors corrected.
188 · "basename" now strips trailing path separators before
190 processing the name.
191 · "basename" now returns "/" for parameter "/", to make
193 "basename" consistent with the shell utility of the same name.
194 · The suffix is no longer stripped if it is identical to the
196 remaining characters in the name, again for consistency with
197 the shell utility.
198 · Some internal code cleanup.
200 · "File::Copy" upgraded to version 2.09
202 · Copying a file onto itself used to fail.
204 · Moving a file between file systems now preserves the access and
206 modification time stamps
207 · "File::Find" upgraded to version 1.10
209 · Win32 portability fixes
211 · Enhanced documentation
213 · "File::Glob" upgraded to version 1.05
215 · Internal cleanup
217 · "File::Path" upgraded to version 1.08
219 · "mkpath" now preserves "errno" when "mkdir" fails
221 · "File::Spec" upgraded to version 3.12
223 · "File::Spec-"rootdir()> now returns "\" on Win32, instead of
225 "/"
226 · $^O could sometimes become tainted. This has been fixed.
228 · "canonpath" on Win32 now collapses "foo/.." (or "foo\..")
230 sections correctly, rather than doing the "misguided" work it
231 was previously doing. Note that "canonpath" on Unix still does
232 not collapse these sections, as doing so would be incorrect.
233 · Some documentation improvements
235 · Some internal code cleanup
237 · "FileCache" upgraded to version 1.06
239 · POD formatting errors in the documentation fixed
241 · "Filter::Simple" upgraded to version 0.82
243 · "FindBin" upgraded to version 1.47
245 · Now works better with directories where access rights are more
247 restrictive than usual.
248 · "GDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.08
250 · Internal cleanup
252 · "Getopt::Long" upgraded to version 2.35
254 · "prefix_pattern" has now been complemented by a new
256 configuration option "long_prefix_pattern" that allows the user
257 to specify what prefix patterns should have long option style
258 semantics applied.
259 · Options can now take multiple values at once (experimental)
261 · Various bug fixes
263 · "if" upgraded to version 0.05
265 · Give more meaningful error messages from "if" when invoked with
267 a condition in list context.
268 · Restore backwards compatibility with earlier versions of perl
270 · "IO" upgraded to version 1.22
272 · Enhanced documentation
274 · Internal cleanup
276 · "IPC::Open2" upgraded to version 1.02
278 · Enhanced documentation
280 · "IPC::Open3" upgraded to version 1.02
282 · Enhanced documentation
284 · "List::Util" upgraded to version 1.18 (was 1.14)
286 · Fix pure-perl version of "refaddr" to avoid blessing an un-
288 blessed reference
289 · Use "XSLoader" for faster loading
291 · Fixed various memory leaks
293 · Internal cleanup and portability fixes
295 · "Math::Complex" upgraded to version 1.35
297 · "atan2(0, i)" now works, as do all the (computable) complex
299 argument cases
300 · Fixes for certain bugs in "make" and "emake"
302 · Support returning the kth root directly
304 · Support "[2,-3pi/8]" in "emake"
306 · Support "inf" for "make"/"emake"
308 · Document "make"/"emake" more visibly
310 · "Math::Trig" upgraded to version 1.03
312 · Add more great circle routines: "great_circle_waypoint" and
314 "great_circle_destination"
315 · "MIME::Base64" upgraded to version 3.07
317 · Use "XSLoader" for faster loading
319 · Enhanced documentation
321 · Internal cleanup
323 · "NDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06
325 · Enhanced documentation
327 · "ODBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06
329 · Documentation typo fixed
331 · Internal cleanup
333 · "Opcode" upgraded to version 1.06
335 · Enhanced documentation
337 · Internal cleanup
339 · "open" upgraded to version 1.05
341 · Enhanced documentation
343 · "overload" upgraded to version 1.04
345 · Enhanced documentation
347 · "PerlIO" upgraded to version 1.04
349 · "PerlIO::via" iterate over layers properly now
351 · "PerlIO::scalar" understands "$/ = """ now
353 · "encoding(utf-8-strict)" with partial characters now works
355 · Enhanced documentation
357 · Internal cleanup
359 · "Pod::Functions" upgraded to version 1.03
361 · Documentation typos fixed
363 · "Pod::Html" upgraded to version 1.0504
365 · HTML output will now correctly link to "=item"s on the same
367 page, and should be valid XHTML.
368 · Variable names are recognized as intended
370 · Documentation typos fixed
372 · "Pod::Parser" upgraded to version 1.32
374 · Allow files that start with "=head" on the first line
376 · Win32 portability fix
378 · Exit status of "pod2usage" fixed
380 · New "-noperldoc" switch for "pod2usage"
382 · Arbitrary URL schemes now allowed
384 · Documentation typos fixed
386 · "POSIX" upgraded to version 1.09
388 · Documentation typos fixed
390 · Internal cleanup
392 · "re" upgraded to version 0.05
394 · Documentation typo fixed
396 · "Safe" upgraded to version 2.12
398 · Minor documentation enhancement
400 · "SDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.05
402 · Documentation typo fixed
404 · Internal cleanup
406 · "Socket" upgraded to version 1.78
408 · Internal cleanup
410 · "Storable" upgraded to version 2.15
412 · This includes the "STORABLE_attach" hook functionality added by
414 Adam Kennedy, and more frugal memory requirements when storing
415 under "ithreads", by using the "ithreads" cloning tracking
416 code.
417 · "Switch" upgraded to version 2.10_01
419 · Documentation typos fixed
421 · "Sys::Syslog" upgraded to version 0.13
423 · Now provides numeric macros and meaningful "Exporter" tags.
425 · No longer uses "Sys::Hostname" as it may provide useless values
427 in unconfigured network environments, so instead uses
428 "INADDR_LOOPBACK" directly.
429 · "syslog()" now uses local timestamp.
431 · "setlogmask()" now behaves like its C counterpart.
433 · "setlogsock()" will now "croak()" as documented.
435 · Improved error and warnings messages.
437 · Improved documentation.
439 · "Term::ANSIColor" upgraded to version 1.10
441 · Fixes a bug in "colored" when $EACHLINE is set that caused it
443 to not color lines consisting solely of 0 (literal zero).
444 · Improved tests.
446 · "Term::ReadLine" upgraded to version 1.02
448 · Documentation tweaks
450 · "Test::Harness" upgraded to version 2.56 (was 2.48)
452 · The "Test::Harness" timer is now off by default.
454 · Now shows elapsed time in milliseconds.
456 · Various bug fixes
458 · "Test::Simple" upgraded to version 0.62 (was 0.54)
460 · "is_deeply()" no longer fails to work for many cases
462 · Various minor bug fixes
464 · Documentation enhancements
466 · "Text::Tabs" upgraded to version 2005.0824
468 · Provides a faster implementation of "expand"
470 · "Text::Wrap" upgraded to version 2005.082401
472 · Adds $Text::Wrap::separator2, which allows you to preserve
474 existing newlines but add line-breaks with some other string.
475 · "threads" upgraded to version 1.07
477 · "threads" will now honour "no warnings 'threads'"
479 · A thread's interpreter is now freed after "$t->join()" rather
481 than after "undef $t", which should fix some "ithreads" memory
482 leaks. (Fixed by Dave Mitchell)
483 · Some documentation typo fixes.
485 · "threads::shared" upgraded to version 0.94
487 · Documentation changes only
489 · Note: An improved implementation of "threads::shared" is
491 available on CPAN - this will be merged into 5.8.9 if it proves
492 stable.
493 · "Tie::Hash" upgraded to version 1.02
495 · Documentation typo fixed
497 · "Time::HiRes" upgraded to version 1.86 (was 1.66)
499 · "clock_nanosleep()" and "clock()" functions added
501 · Support for the POSIX "clock_gettime()" and "clock_getres()"
503 has been added
504 · Return "undef" or an empty list if the C "gettimeofday()"
506 function fails
507 · Improved "nanosleep" detection
509 · Internal cleanup
511 · Enhanced documentation
513 · "Unicode::Collate" upgraded to version 0.52
515 · Now implements UCA Revision 14 (based on Unicode 4.1.0).
517 · "Unicode::Collate-"new> method no longer overwrites user's $_
519 · Enhanced documentation
521 · "Unicode::UCD" upgraded to version 0.24
523 · Documentation typos fixed
525 · "User::grent" upgraded to version 1.01
527 · Documentation typo fixed
529 · "utf8" upgraded to version 1.06
531 · Documentation typos fixed
533 · "vmsish" upgraded to version 1.02
535 · Documentation typos fixed
537 · "warnings" upgraded to version 1.05
539 · Gentler messing with "Carp::" internals
541 · Internal cleanup
543 · Documentation update
545 · "Win32" upgraded to version 0.2601
547 · Provides Windows Vista support to "Win32::GetOSName"
549 · Documentation enhancements
551 · "XS::Typemap" upgraded to version 0.02
553 · Internal cleanup
555
557 "h2xs" enhancements
558 "h2xs" implements new option "--use-xsloader" to force use of
559 "XSLoader" even in backwards compatible modules.
560 The handling of authors' names that had apostrophes has been fixed.
562 Any enums with negative values are now skipped.
564 "perlivp" enhancements
566 "perlivp" implements new option "-a" and will not check for *.ph files
567 by default any more. Use the "-a" option to run all tests.
568
570 The perlglossary manpage is a glossary of terms used in the Perl
571 documentation, technical and otherwise, kindly provided by O'Reilly
572 Media, inc.
573
575 · Weak reference creation is now O(1) rather than O(n), courtesy of
576 Nicholas Clark. Weak reference deletion remains O(n), but if
577 deletion only happens at program exit, it may be skipped
578 completely.
579 · Salvador FandiA~Xo provided improvements to reduce the memory usage
581 of "sort" and to speed up some cases.
582 · Jarkko Hietaniemi and Andy Lester worked to mark as much data as
584 possible in the C source files as "static", to increase the
585 proportion of the executable file that the operating system can
586 share between process, and thus reduce real memory usage on multi-
587 user systems.
588
590 Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be
591 problems if "make test" is instructed to run in parallel.
592 Building with Borland's compilers on Win32 should work more smoothly.
594 In particular Steve Hay has worked to side step many warnings emitted
595 by their compilers and at least one C compiler internal error.
596 "Configure" will now detect "clearenv" and "unsetenv", thanks to a
598 patch from Alan Burlison. It will also probe for "futimes" and whether
599 "sprintf" correctly returns the length of the formatted string, which
600 will both be used in perl 5.8.9.
601 There are improved hints for next-3.0, vmesa, IX, Darwin, Solaris,
603 Linux, DEC/OSF, HP-UX and MPE/iX
604 Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into the Perl
606 DLL, thanks to a work by Vadim Konovalov. (This improvement was
607 actually in 5.8.7, but was accidentally omitted from perl587delta).
608
610 no warnings 'category' works correctly with -w
611 Previously when running with warnings enabled globally via "-w",
612 selective disabling of specific warning categories would actually turn
613 off all warnings. This is now fixed; now "no warnings 'io';" will only
614 turn off warnings in the "io" class. Previously it would erroneously
615 turn off all warnings.
616 This bug fix may cause some programs to start correctly issuing
618 warnings.
619 Remove over-optimisation
621 Perl 5.8.4 introduced a change so that assignments of "undef" to a
622 scalar, or of an empty list to an array or a hash, were optimised away.
623 As this could cause problems when "goto" jumps were involved, this
624 change has been backed out.
625 sprintf() fixes
627 Using the sprintf() function with some formats could lead to a buffer
628 overflow in some specific cases. This has been fixed, along with
629 several other bugs, notably in bounds checking.
630 In related fixes, it was possible for badly written code that did not
632 follow the documentation of "Sys::Syslog" to have formatting
633 vulnerabilities. "Sys::Syslog" has been changed to protect people from
634 poor quality third party code.
635 Debugger and Unicode slowdown
637 It had been reported that running under perl's debugger when processing
638 Unicode data could cause unexpectedly large slowdowns. The most likely
639 cause of this was identified and fixed by Nicholas Clark.
640 Smaller fixes
642 · "FindBin" now works better with directories where access rights are
643 more restrictive than usual.
644 · Several memory leaks in ithreads were closed. An improved
646 implementation of "threads::shared" is available on CPAN - this
647 will be merged into 5.8.9 if it proves stable.
648 · Trailing spaces are now trimmed from $! and $^E.
650 · Operations that require perl to read a process's list of groups,
652 such as reads of $( and $), now dynamically allocate memory rather
653 than using a fixed sized array. The fixed size array could cause C
654 stack exhaustion on systems configured to use large numbers of
655 groups.
656 · "PerlIO::scalar" now works better with non-default $/ settings.
658 · You can now use the "x" operator to repeat a "qw//" list. This used
660 to raise a syntax error.
661 · The debugger now traces correctly execution in eval("")uated code
663 that contains #line directives.
664 · The value of the "open" pragma is no longer ignored for three-
666 argument opens.
667 · The optimisation of "for (reverse @a)" introduced in perl 5.8.6
669 could misbehave when the array had undefined elements and was used
670 in LVALUE context. Dave Mitchell provided a fix.
671 · Some case insensitive matches between UTF-8 encoded data and 8 bit
673 regexps, and vice versa, could give malformed character warnings.
674 These have been fixed by Dave Mitchell and Yves Orton.
675 · "lcfirst" and "ucfirst" could corrupt the string for certain cases
677 where the length UTF-8 encoding of the string in lower case, upper
678 case or title case differed. This was fixed by Nicholas Clark.
679 · Perl will now use the C library calls "unsetenv" and "clearenv" if
681 present to delete keys from %ENV and delete %ENV entirely, thanks
682 to a patch from Alan Burlison.
683
685 Attempt to set length of freed array
686 This is a new warning, produced in situations such as this:
687 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
689 $$r = 503;
690 Non-string passed as bitmask
692 This is a new warning, produced when number has been passed as a
693 argument to select(), instead of a bitmask.
694 # Wrong, will now warn
696 $rin = fileno(STDIN);
697 ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);
698 # Should be
700 $rin = '';
701 vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
702 ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);
703 Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pattern
705 This syntax error indicates that the lexer couldn't find the final
706 delimiter of a "?PATTERN?" construct. Mentioning the ternary operator
707 in this error message makes it easier to diagnose syntax errors.
708
710 There has been a fair amount of refactoring of the "C" source code,
711 partly to make it tidier and more maintainable. The resulting object
712 code and the "perl" binary may well be smaller than 5.8.7, in
713 particular due to a change contributed by Dave Mitchell which reworked
714 the warnings code to be significantly smaller. Apart from being smaller
715 and possibly faster, there should be no user-detectable changes.
716 Andy Lester supplied many improvements to determine which function
718 parameters and local variables could actually be declared "const" to
719 the C compiler. Steve Peters provided new *_set macros and reworked the
720 core to use these rather than assigning to macros in LVALUE context.
721 Dave Mitchell improved the lexer debugging output under "-DT"
723 Nicholas Clark changed the string buffer allocation so that it is now
725 rounded up to the next multiple of 4 (or 8 on platforms with 64 bit
726 pointers). This should reduce the number of calls to "realloc" without
727 actually using any extra memory.
728 The "HV"'s array of "HE*"s is now allocated at the correct (minimal)
730 size, thanks to another change by Nicholas Clark. Compile with
731 "-DPERL_USE_LARGE_HV_ALLOC" to use the old, sloppier, default.
732 For XS or embedding debugging purposes, if perl is compiled with
734 "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS_FORK_DUMP" in addition to
735 "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS" then a child process is "fork"ed just before
736 global destruction, which is used to display the values of any scalars
737 found to have leaked at the end of global destruction. Without this,
738 the scalars have already been freed sufficiently at the point of
739 detection that it is impossible to produce any meaningful dump of their
740 contents. This feature was implemented by the indefatigable Nicholas
741 Clark, based on an idea by Mike Giroux.
742
744 The optimiser on HP-UX 11.23 (Itanium 2) is currently partly disabled
745 (scaled down to +O1) when using HP C-ANSI-C; the cause of problems at
746 higher optimisation levels is still unclear.
747 There are a handful of remaining test failures on VMS, mostly due to
749 test fixes and minor module tweaks with too many dependencies to
750 integrate into this release from the development stream, where they
751 have all been corrected. The following is a list of expected failures
752 with the patch number of the fix where that is known:
753 ext/Devel/PPPort/t/ppphtest.t #26913
755 ext/List/Util/t/p_tainted.t #26912
756 lib/ExtUtils/t/PL_FILES.t #26813
757 lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.t #26813
758 t/io/fs.t
759 t/op/cmp.t
760
762 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
763 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug
764 database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be information at
765 http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page.
766 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug
768 program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a
769 tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output
770 of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
771 the Perl porting team. You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
772 http://bugs.perl.org/
773
775 The Changes file for exhaustive details on what changed.
776 The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
778 The README file for general stuff.
780 The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.
782perl v5.12.4 2011-06-07 PERL588DELTA(1)