1PERL5122DELTA(1)       Perl Programmers Reference Guide       PERL5122DELTA(1)
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NAME

6       perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2
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DESCRIPTION

9       This document describes differences between the 5.12.1 release and the
10       5.12.2 release.
11
12       If you are upgrading from an earlier major version, such as 5.10.1,
13       first read perl5120delta, which describes differences between 5.10.1
14       and 5.12.0, as well as perl5121delta, which describes earlier changes
15       in the 5.12 stable release series.
16

Incompatible Changes

18       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If any
19       exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
20

Core Enhancements

22       Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible
23       changes to the core language in this release.
24

Modules and Pragmata

26   New Modules and Pragmata
27       This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.
28
29   Pragmata Changes
30       In the previous release, "no VERSION;" statements triggered a bug which
31       could cause feature bundles to be loaded and strict mode to be enabled
32       unintentionally.
33
34   Updated Modules
35       "Carp"
36           Upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.
37
38           Carp now detects incomplete caller() overrides and avoids using
39           bogus @DB::args. To provide backtraces, Carp relies on particular
40           behaviour of the caller built-in. Carp now detects if other code
41           has overridden this with an incomplete implementation, and modifies
42           its backtrace accordingly. Previously incomplete overrides would
43           cause incorrect values in backtraces (best case), or obscure fatal
44           errors (worst case)
45
46           This fixes certain cases of "Bizarre copy of ARRAY" caused by
47           modules overriding "caller()" incorrectly.
48
49       "CPANPLUS"
50           A patch to cpanp-run-perl has been backported from CPANPLUS 0.9004.
51           This resolves RT #55964
52           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55964> and RT #57106
53           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=57106>, both of
54           which related to failures to install distributions that use
55           "Module::Install::DSL".
56
57       "File::Glob"
58           A regression which caused a failure to find "CORE::GLOBAL::glob"
59           after loading "File::Glob" to crash has been fixed.  Now, it
60           correctly falls back to external globbing via "pp_glob".
61
62       "File::Copy"
63           "File::Copy::copy(FILE, DIR)" is now documented.
64
65       "File::Spec"
66           Upgraded from version 3.31 to 3.31_01.
67
68           Several portability fixes were made in "File::Spec::VMS": a colon
69           is now recognized as a delimiter in native filespecs; caret-escaped
70           delimiters are recognized for better handling of extended
71           filespecs; "catpath()" returns an empty directory rather than the
72           current directory if the input directory name is empty; "abs2rel()"
73           properly handles Unix-style input.
74

Utility Changes

76       ·   perlbug now always gives the reporter a chance to change the email
77           address it guesses for them.
78
79       ·   perlbug should no longer warn about uninitialized values when using
80           the "-d" and "-v" options.
81

Changes to Existing Documentation

83       ·   The existing policy on backward-compatibility and deprecation has
84           been added to perlpolicy, along with definitions of terms like
85           deprecation.
86
87       ·   "srand" in perlfunc's usage has been clarified.
88
89       ·   The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its
90           role in the exception mechanism.
91
92       ·   Perl's INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that
93           Perl requires a C89 compliant ANSI C Compiler.
94
95       ·   IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and "setsockopt()" have been
96           documented.
97
98       ·   alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO on Windows has been
99           documented.
100
101       ·   Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been
102           removed as a recommended solution for random number generation.
103
104       ·   perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to
105           perl.
106
107       ·   To ease user confusion, $# and $*, two special variables that were
108           removed in earlier versions of Perl have been documented.
109
110       ·   The version of perlfaq shipped with the Perl core has been updated
111           from the official FAQ version, which is now maintained in the
112           "briandfoy/perlfaq" branch of the Perl repository at
113           <git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git>.
114

Installation and Configuration Improvements

116   Configuration improvements
117       ·   The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.
118
119   Compilation improvements
120       ·   An ""incompatible operand types"" error in ternary expressions when
121           building with "clang" has been fixed.
122
123       ·   Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests on partitions it detects
124           to be mounted as "nosuid".
125

Selected Bug Fixes

127       ·   A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ" default typemap has been
128           fixed.
129
130       ·   A possible memory leak when using caller() to set @DB::args has
131           been fixed.
132
133       ·   Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.
134
135       ·   "unpack()" now handles scalar context correctly for %32H and %32u,
136           fixing a potential crash.  "split()" would crash because the third
137           item on the stack wasn't the regular expression it expected.
138           "unpack("%2H", ...)" would return both the unpacked result and the
139           checksum on the stack, as would "unpack("%2u", ...)".  [perl
140           #73814] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=73814>
141
142       ·   Perl now avoids using memory after calling "free()" in pp_require
143           when there are CODEREFs in @INC.
144
145       ·   A bug that could cause ""Unknown error"" messages when
146           ""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is called from an XS destructor has been
147           fixed.
148
149       ·   The implementation of the "open $fh, '>' \$buffer" feature now
150           supports get/set magic and thus tied buffers correctly.
151
152       ·   The "pp_getc", "pp_tell", and "pp_eof" opcodes now make room on the
153           stack for their return values in cases where no argument was passed
154           in.
155
156       ·   When matching unicode strings under some conditions inappropriate
157           backtracking would result in a "Malformed UTF-8 character (fatal)"
158           error. This should no longer occur.  See  [perl #75680]
159           <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=75680>
160

Platform Specific Notes

162   AIX
163       ·   README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11
164           compiler suite.
165
166   Windows
167       ·   When building Perl with the mingw64 x64 cross-compiler "incpath",
168           "libpth", "ldflags", "lddlflags" and "ldflags_nolargefiles" values
169           in Config.pm and Config_heavy.pl were not previously being set
170           correctly because, with that compiler, the include and lib
171           directories are not immediately below "$(CCHOME)".
172
173   VMS
174       ·   git_version.h is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in
175           v5.12.0 which caused some extensions to fail to build.
176
177       ·   Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.
178
179       ·   A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to a double allocation has
180           been fixed.
181
182       ·   A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()" (used by "realpath()" and
183           "realname()") has been fixed.
184

Acknowledgements

186       Perl 5.12.2 represents approximately three months of development since
187       Perl 5.12.1 and contains approximately 2,000 lines of changes across
188       100 files from 36 authors.
189
190       Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
191       community of users and developers.  The following people are known to
192       have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.2:
193
194       Abigail, AEvar Arnfjoerd` Bjarmason, Ben Morrow, brian d foy, Brian
195       Phillips, Chas. Owens, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Chris Williams, Craig
196       A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, David Golden, David Mitchell,
197       Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, George Greer, H.Merijn Brand, Jan
198       Dubois, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, Karl Williamson, Lars DXXXXXX XXX,
199       Leon Brocard, Maik Hentsche, Matt S Trout, Nicholas Clark, Rafael
200       Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Ricardo Signes, Salvador Ortiz Garcia,
201       Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Tony Cook, Vincent Pit and
202       Yves Orton.
203

Reporting Bugs

205       If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
206       recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug
207       database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .  There may also be
208       information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
209
210       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug
211       program included with your release.  Be sure to trim your bug down to a
212       tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report, along with the output
213       of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
214       the Perl porting team.
215
216       If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
217       inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please
218       send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed
219       subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core
220       committers, who will be able to help assess the impact of issues,
221       figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to
222       mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is
223       supported. Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl
224       core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
225

SEE ALSO

227       The Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
228       on what changed.
229
230       The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
231
232       The README file for general stuff.
233
234       The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.
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238perl v5.26.3                      2018-03-01                  PERL5122DELTA(1)
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