1PERL588DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL588DELTA(1)
2
6 perldelta - 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 cor‐
37 rected; "B::NV" now inherits from "B::SV" (instead of "B::IV").
38 · "blib" upgraded to version 1.03
40 · Documentation typo fix
42 · "ByteLoader" upgraded to version 0.06
44 · Internal cleanup
46 · "CGI" upgraded to version 3.15
48 · Extraneous "?" from "self_url()" removed
50 · "scrolling_list()" select attribute fixed
52 · "virtual_port" now works properly with the https protocol
54 · "upload_hook()" and "append()" now works in function-oriented
56 mode
57 · "POST_MAX" doesn't cause the client to hang any more
59 · Automatic tab indexes are now disabled and new "-tabindex"
61 pragma has been added to turn automatic indexes back on
62 · "end_form()" doesn't emit empty (and non-validating) "<div>"
64 · "CGI::Carp" works better in certain mod_perl configurations
66 · Setting $CGI::TMPDIRECTORY is now effective
68 · Enhanced documentation
70 · "charnames" upgraded to version 1.05
72 · "viacode()" now accept hex strings and has been optimized.
74 · "CPAN" upgraded to version 1.76_02
76 · 1 minor bug fix for Win32
78 · "Cwd" upgraded to version 3.12
80 · "canonpath()" on Win32 now collapses foo\.. sections correctly.
82 · Improved behaviour on Symbian OS.
84 · Enhanced documentation and typo fixes
86 · Internal cleanup
88 · "Data::Dumper" upgraded to version 2.121_08
90 · A problem where "Data::Dumper" would sometimes update the iter‐
92 ator state of hashes has been fixed
93 · Numeric labels now work
95 · Internal cleanup
97 · "DB" upgraded to version 1.01
99 · A problem where the state of the regexp engine would sometimes
101 get clobbered when running under the debugger has been fixed.
102 · "DB_File" upgraded to version 1.814
104 · Adds support for Berkeley DB 4.4.
106 · "Devel::DProf" upgraded to version 20050603.00
108 · Internal cleanup
110 · "Devel::Peek" upgraded to version 1.03
112 · Internal cleanup
114 · "Devel::PPPort" upgraded to version 3.06_01
116 · "--compat-version" argument checking has been improved
118 · Files passed on the command line are filtered by default
120 · "--nofilter" option to override the filtering has been added
122 · Enhanced documentation
124 · "diagnostics" upgraded to version 1.15
126 · Documentation typo fix
128 · "Digest" upgraded to version 1.14
130 · The constructor now knows which module implements SHA-224
132 · Documentation tweaks and typo fixes
134 · "Digest::MD5" upgraded to version 2.36
136 · "XSLoader" is now used for faster loading
138 · Enhanced documentation including MD5 weaknesses discovered
140 lately
141 · "Dumpvalue" upgraded to version 1.12
143 · Documentation fix
145 · "DynaLoader" upgraded but unfortunately we're not able to increment
147 its version number :-(
148 · Implements "dl_unload_file" on Win32
150 · Internal cleanup
152 · "XSLoader" 0.06 incorporated; small optimisation for calling
154 "bootstrap_inherit()" and documentation enhancements.
155 · "Encode" upgraded to version 2.12
157 · A coderef is now acceptable for "CHECK"!
159 · 3 new characters added to the ISO-8859-7 encoding
161 · New encoding "MIME-Header-ISO_2022_JP" added
163 · Problem with partial characters and "encoding(utf-8-strict)"
165 fixed.
166 · Documentation enhancements and typo fixes
168 · "English" upgraded to version 1.02
170 · the $COMPILING variable has been added
172 · "ExtUtils::Constant" upgraded to version 0.17
174 · Improved compatibility with older versions of perl
176 · "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" upgraded to version 6.30 (was 6.17)
178 · Too much to list here; see <http://search.cpan.org/src/MSCHW‐
180 ERN/ExtUtils-MakeMaker-6.30/Changes>
181 · "File::Basename" upgraded to version 2.74, with changes contributed
183 by Michael Schwern.
184 · Documentation clarified and errors corrected.
186 · "basename" now strips trailing path separators before process‐
188 ing the name.
189 · "basename" now returns "/" for parameter "/", to make "base‐
191 name" consistent with the shell utility of the same name.
192 · The suffix is no longer stripped if it is identical to the
194 remaining characters in the name, again for consistency with
195 the shell utility.
196 · Some internal code cleanup.
198 · "File::Copy" upgraded to version 2.09
200 · Copying a file onto itself used to fail.
202 · Moving a file between file systems now preserves the access and
204 modification time stamps
205 · "File::Find" upgraded to version 1.10
207 · Win32 portability fixes
209 · Enhanced documentation
211 · "File::Glob" upgraded to version 1.05
213 · Internal cleanup
215 · "File::Path" upgraded to version 1.08
217 · "mkpath" now preserves "errno" when "mkdir" fails
219 · "File::Spec" upgraded to version 3.12
221 · "File::Spec-"rootdir()> now returns "\" on Win32, instead of
223 "/"
224 · $^O could sometimes become tainted. This has been fixed.
226 · "canonpath" on Win32 now collapses "foo/.." (or "foo\..") sec‐
228 tions correctly, rather than doing the "misguided" work it was
229 previously doing. Note that "canonpath" on Unix still does not
230 collapse these sections, as doing so would be incorrect.
231 · Some documentation improvements
233 · Some internal code cleanup
235 · "FileCache" upgraded to version 1.06
237 · POD formatting errors in the documentation fixed
239 · "Filter::Simple" upgraded to version 0.82
241 · "FindBin" upgraded to version 1.47
243 · Now works better with directories where access rights are more
245 restrictive than usual.
246 · "GDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.08
248 · Internal cleanup
250 · "Getopt::Long" upgraded to version 2.35
252 · "prefix_pattern" has now been complemented by a new configura‐
254 tion option "long_prefix_pattern" that allows the user to spec‐
255 ify what prefix patterns should have long option style seman‐
256 tics applied.
257 · Options can now take multiple values at once (experimental)
259 · Various bug fixes
261 · "if" upgraded to version 0.05
263 · Give more meaningful error messages from "if" when invoked with
265 a condition in list context.
266 · Restore backwards compatibility with earlier versions of perl
268 · "IO" upgraded to version 1.22
270 · Enhanced documentation
272 · Internal cleanup
274 · "IPC::Open2" upgraded to version 1.02
276 · Enhanced documentation
278 · "IPC::Open3" upgraded to version 1.02
280 · Enhanced documentation
282 · "List::Util" upgraded to version 1.18 (was 1.14)
284 · Fix pure-perl version of "refaddr" to avoid blessing an un-
286 blessed reference
287 · Use "XSLoader" for faster loading
289 · Fixed various memory leaks
291 · Internal cleanup and portability fixes
293 · "Math::Complex" upgraded to version 1.35
295 · "atan2(0, i)" now works, as do all the (computable) complex
297 argument cases
298 · Fixes for certain bugs in "make" and "emake"
300 · Support returning the kth root directly
302 · Support "[2,-3pi/8]" in "emake"
304 · Support "inf" for "make"/"emake"
306 · Document "make"/"emake" more visibly
308 · "Math::Trig" upgraded to version 1.03
310 · Add more great circle routines: "great_circle_waypoint" and
312 "great_circle_destination"
313 · "MIME::Base64" upgraded to version 3.07
315 · Use "XSLoader" for faster loading
317 · Enhanced documentation
319 · Internal cleanup
321 · "NDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06
323 · Enhanced documentation
325 · "ODBM_File" upgraded to version 1.06
327 · Documentation typo fixed
329 · Internal cleanup
331 · "Opcode" upgraded to version 1.06
333 · Enhanced documentation
335 · Internal cleanup
337 · "open" upgraded to version 1.05
339 · Enhanced documentation
341 · "overload" upgraded to version 1.04
343 · Enhanced documentation
345 · "PerlIO" upgraded to version 1.04
347 · "PerlIO::via" iterate over layers properly now
349 · "PerlIO::scalar" understands "$/ = """ now
351 · "encoding(utf-8-strict)" with partial characters now works
353 · Enhanced documentation
355 · Internal cleanup
357 · "Pod::Functions" upgraded to version 1.03
359 · Documentation typos fixed
361 · "Pod::Html" upgraded to version 1.0504
363 · HTML output will now correctly link to "=item"s on the same
365 page, and should be valid XHTML.
366 · Variable names are recognized as intended
368 · Documentation typos fixed
370 · "Pod::Parser" upgraded to version 1.32
372 · Allow files that start with "=head" on the first line
374 · Win32 portability fix
376 · Exit status of "pod2usage" fixed
378 · New "-noperldoc" switch for "pod2usage"
380 · Arbitrary URL schemes now allowed
382 · Documentation typos fixed
384 · "POSIX" upgraded to version 1.09
386 · Documentation typos fixed
388 · Internal cleanup
390 · "re" upgraded to version 0.05
392 · Documentation typo fixed
394 · "Safe" upgraded to version 2.12
396 · Minor documentation enhancement
398 · "SDBM_File" upgraded to version 1.05
400 · Documentation typo fixed
402 · Internal cleanup
404 · "Socket" upgraded to version 1.78
406 · Internal cleanup
408 · "Storable" upgraded to version 2.15
410 · This includes the "STORABLE_attach" hook functionality added by
412 Adam Kennedy, and more frugal memory requirements when storing
413 under "ithreads", by using the "ithreads" cloning tracking
414 code.
415 · "Switch" upgraded to version 2.10_01
417 · Documentation typos fixed
419 · "Sys::Syslog" upgraded to version 0.13
421 · Now provides numeric macros and meaningful "Exporter" tags.
423 · No longer uses "Sys::Hostname" as it may provide useless values
425 in unconfigured network environments, so instead uses
426 "INADDR_LOOPBACK" directly.
427 · "syslog()" now uses local timestamp.
429 · "setlogmask()" now behaves like its C counterpart.
431 · "setlogsock()" will now "croak()" as documented.
433 · Improved error and warnings messages.
435 · Improved documentation.
437 · "Term::ANSIColor" upgraded to version 1.10
439 · Fixes a bug in "colored" when $EACHLINE is set that caused it
441 to not color lines consisting solely of 0 (literal zero).
442 · Improved tests.
444 · "Term::ReadLine" upgraded to version 1.02
446 · Documentation tweaks
448 · "Test::Harness" upgraded to version 2.56 (was 2.48)
450 · The "Test::Harness" timer is now off by default.
452 · Now shows elapsed time in milliseconds.
454 · Various bug fixes
456 · "Test::Simple" upgraded to version 0.62 (was 0.54)
458 · "is_deeply()" no longer fails to work for many cases
460 · Various minor bug fixes
462 · Documentation enhancements
464 · "Text::Tabs" upgraded to version 2005.0824
466 · Provides a faster implementation of "expand"
468 · "Text::Wrap" upgraded to version 2005.082401
470 · Adds $Text::Wrap::separator2, which allows you to preserve
472 existing newlines but add line-breaks with some other string.
473 · "threads" upgraded to version 1.07
475 · "threads" will now honour "no warnings 'threads'"
477 · A thread's interpreter is now freed after "$t->join()" rather
479 than after "undef $t", which should fix some "ithreads" memory
480 leaks. (Fixed by Dave Mitchell)
481 · Some documentation typo fixes.
483 · "threads::shared" upgraded to version 0.94
485 · Documentation changes only
487 · Note: An improved implementation of "threads::shared" is avail‐
489 able on CPAN - this will be merged into 5.8.9 if it proves sta‐
490 ble.
491 · "Tie::Hash" upgraded to version 1.02
493 · Documentation typo fixed
495 · "Time::HiRes" upgraded to version 1.86 (was 1.66)
497 · "clock_nanosleep()" and "clock()" functions added
499 · Support for the POSIX "clock_gettime()" and "clock_getres()"
501 has been added
502 · Return "undef" or an empty list if the C "gettimeofday()" func‐
504 tion fails
505 · Improved "nanosleep" detection
507 · Internal cleanup
509 · Enhanced documentation
511 · "Unicode::Collate" upgraded to version 0.52
513 · Now implements UCA Revision 14 (based on Unicode 4.1.0).
515 · "Unicode::Collate-"new> method no longer overwrites user's $_
517 · Enhanced documentation
519 · "Unicode::UCD" upgraded to version 0.24
521 · Documentation typos fixed
523 · "User::grent" upgraded to version 1.01
525 · Documentation typo fixed
527 · "utf8" upgraded to version 1.06
529 · Documentation typos fixed
531 · "vmsish" upgraded to version 1.02
533 · Documentation typos fixed
535 · "warnings" upgraded to version 1.05
537 · Gentler messing with "Carp::" internals
539 · Internal cleanup
541 · Documentation update
543 · "Win32" upgraded to version 0.2601
545 · Provides Windows Vista support to "Win32::GetOSName"
547 · Documentation enhancements
549 · "XS::Typemap" upgraded to version 0.02
551 · Internal cleanup
553
555 "h2xs" enhancements
556 "h2xs" implements new option "--use-xsloader" to force use of
558 "XSLoader" even in backwards compatible modules.
559 The handling of authors' names that had apostrophes has been fixed.
561 Any enums with negative values are now skipped.
563 "perlivp" enhancements
565 "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 docu‐
571 mentation, technical and otherwise, kindly provided by O'Reilly Media,
572 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 dele‐
577 tion only happens at program exit, it may be skipped completely.
578 · Salvador Fandiño provided improvements to reduce the memory usage
580 of "sort" and to speed up some cases.
581 · Jarkko Hietaniemi and Andy Lester worked to mark as much data as
583 possible in the C source files as "static", to increase the propor‐
584 tion of the executable file that the operating system can share
585 between process, and thus reduce real memory usage on multi-user
586 systems.
587
589 Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be
590 problems if "make test" is instructed to run in parallel.
591 Building with Borland's compilers on Win32 should work more smoothly.
593 In particular Steve Hay has worked to side step many warnings emitted
594 by their compilers and at least one C compiler internal error.
595 "Configure" will now detect "clearenv" and "unsetenv", thanks to a
597 patch from Alan Burlison. It will also probe for "futimes" and whether
598 "sprintf" correctly returns the length of the formatted string, which
599 will both be used in perl 5.8.9.
600 There are improved hints for next-3.0, vmesa, IX, Darwin, Solaris,
602 Linux, DEC/OSF, HP-UX and MPE/iX
603 Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into the Perl
605 DLL, thanks to a work by Vadim Konovalov. (This improvement was actu‐
606 ally in 5.8.7, but was accidentally omitted from perl587delta).
607
609 no warnings 'category' works correctly with -w
610 Previously when running with warnings enabled globally via "-w", selec‐
612 tive disabling of specific warning categories would actually turn off
613 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 warn‐
618 ings.
619 Remove over-optimisation
621 Perl 5.8.4 introduced a change so that assignments of "undef" to a
623 scalar, or of an empty list to an array or a hash, were optimised away.
624 As this could cause problems when "goto" jumps were involved, this
625 change has been backed out.
626 sprintf() fixes
628 Using the sprintf() function with some formats could lead to a buffer
630 overflow in some specific cases. This has been fixed, along with sev‐
631 eral other bugs, notably in bounds checking.
632 In related fixes, it was possible for badly written code that did not
634 follow the documentation of "Sys::Syslog" to have formatting vulnera‐
635 bilities. "Sys::Syslog" has been changed to protect people from poor
636 quality third party code.
637 Debugger and Unicode slowdown
639 It had been reported that running under perl's debugger when processing
641 Unicode data could cause unexpectedly large slowdowns. The most likely
642 cause of this was identified and fixed by Nicholas Clark.
643 Smaller fixes
645 · "FindBin" now works better with directories where access rights are
647 more restrictive than usual.
648 · Several memory leaks in ithreads were closed. An improved implemen‐
650 tation of "threads::shared" is available on CPAN - this will be
651 merged into 5.8.9 if it proves stable.
652 · Trailing spaces are now trimmed from $! and $^E.
654 · Operations that require perl to read a process' list of groups,
656 such as reads of $( and $), now dynamically allocate memory rather
657 than using a fixed sized array. The fixed size array could cause C
658 stack exhaustion on systems configured to use large numbers of
659 groups.
660 · "PerlIO::scalar" now works better with non-default $/ settings.
662 · You can now use the "x" operator to repeat a "qw//" list. This used
664 to raise a syntax error.
665 · The debugger now traces correctly execution in eval("")uated code
667 that contains #line directives.
668 · The value of the "open" pragma is no longer ignored for three-argu‐
670 ment opens.
671 · The optimisation of "for (reverse @a)" introduced in perl 5.8.6
673 could misbehave when the array had undefined elements and was used
674 in LVALUE context. Dave Mitchell provided a fix.
675 · Some case insensitive matches between UTF-8 encoded data and 8 bit
677 regexps, and vice versa, could give malformed character warnings.
678 These have been fixed by Dave Mitchell and Yves Orton.
679 · "lcfirst" and "ucfirst" could corrupt the string for certain cases
681 where the length UTF-8 encoding of the string in lower case, upper
682 case or title case differed. This was fixed by Nicholas Clark.
683 · Perl will now use the C library calls "unsetenv" and "clearenv" if
685 present to delete keys from %ENV and delete %ENV entirely, thanks
686 to a patch from Alan Burlison.
687
689 Attempt to set length of freed array
690 This is a new warning, produced in situations such as this:
692 $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
694 $$r = 503;
695 Non-string passed as bitmask
697 This is a new warning, produced when number has been passed as a argu‐
699 ment to select(), instead of a bitmask.
700 # Wrong, will now warn
702 $rin = fileno(STDIN);
703 ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);
704 # Should be
706 $rin = '';
707 vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
708 ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);
709 Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as search pat‐
711 tern
712 This syntax error indicates that the lexer couldn't find the final
714 delimiter of a "?PATTERN?" construct. Mentioning the ternary operator
715 in this error message makes it easier to diagnose syntax errors.
716
718 There has been a fair amount of refactoring of the "C" source code,
719 partly to make it tidier and more maintainable. The resulting object
720 code and the "perl" binary may well be smaller than 5.8.7, in particu‐
721 lar due to a change contributed by Dave Mitchell which reworked the
722 warnings code to be significantly smaller. Apart from being smaller and
723 possibly faster, there should be no user-detectable changes.
724 Andy Lester supplied many improvements to determine which function
726 parameters and local variables could actually be declared "const" to
727 the C compiler. Steve Peters provided new *_set macros and reworked the
728 core to use these rather than assigning to macros in LVALUE context.
729 Dave Mitchell improved the lexer debugging output under "-DT"
731 Nicholas Clark changed the string buffer allocation so that it is now
733 rounded up to the next multiple of 4 (or 8 on platforms with 64 bit
734 pointers). This should reduce the number of calls to "realloc" without
735 actually using any extra memory.
736 The "HV"'s array of "HE*"s is now allocated at the correct (minimal)
738 size, thanks to another change by Nicholas Clark. Compile with
739 "-DPERL_USE_LARGE_HV_ALLOC" to use the old, sloppier, default.
740 For XS or embedding debugging purposes, if perl is compiled with "-DDE‐
742 BUG_LEAKING_SCALARS_FORK_DUMP" in addition to "-DDEBUG_LEAKING_SCALARS"
743 then a child process is "fork"ed just before global destruction, which
744 is used to display the values of any scalars found to have leaked at
745 the end of global destruction. Without this, the scalars have already
746 been freed sufficiently at the point of detection that it is impossible
747 to produce any meaningful dump of their contents. This feature was
748 implemented by the indefatigable Nicholas Clark, based on an idea by
749 Mike Giroux.
750
752 The optimiser on HP-UX 11.23 (Itanium 2) is currently partly disabled
753 (scaled down to +O1) when using HP C-ANSI-C; the cause of problems at
754 higher optimisation levels is still unclear.
755 There are a handful of remaining test failures on VMS, mostly due to
757 test fixes and minor module tweaks with too many dependencies to inte‐
758 grate into this release from the development stream, where they have
759 all been corrected. The following is a list of expected failures with
760 the patch number of the fix where that is known:
761 ext/Devel/PPPort/t/ppphtest.t #26913
763 ext/List/Util/t/p_tainted.t #26912
764 lib/ExtUtils/t/PL_FILES.t #26813
765 lib/ExtUtils/t/basic.t #26813
766 t/io/fs.t
767 t/op/cmp.t
768
770 If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
771 recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug
772 database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be information at
773 http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page.
774 If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug pro‐
776 gram included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a
777 tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output
778 of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
779 the Perl porting team. You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
780 http://bugs.perl.org/
781
783 The Changes file for exhaustive details on what changed.
784 The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
786 The README file for general stuff.
788 The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.
790perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERL588DELTA(1)