1PERL5202DELTA(1)       Perl Programmers Reference Guide       PERL5202DELTA(1)
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NAME

6       perl5202delta - what is new for perl v5.20.2
7

DESCRIPTION

9       This document describes differences between the 5.20.1 release and the
10       5.20.2 release.
11
12       If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.20.0, first read
13       perl5201delta, which describes differences between 5.20.0 and 5.20.1.
14

Incompatible Changes

16       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.20.1.  If any
17       exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report.  See
18       "Reporting Bugs" below.
19

Modules and Pragmata

21   Updated Modules and Pragmata
22       •   attributes has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
23
24           The usage of "memEQs" in the XS has been corrected.  [GH #14072]
25           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14072>
26
27       •   Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.151 to 2.151_01.
28
29           Fixes CVE-2014-4330 by adding a configuration variable/option to
30           limit recursion when dumping deep data structures.
31
32       •   Errno has been upgraded from version 1.20_03 to 1.20_05.
33
34           Warnings when building the XS on Windows with the Visual C++
35           compiler are now avoided.
36
37       •   feature has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.36_01.
38
39           The "postderef" feature has now been documented.  This feature was
40           actually added in Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the
41           feature documentation until now.
42
43       •   IO::Socket has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
44
45           Document the limitations of the connected() method.  [GH #14199]
46           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14199>
47
48       •   Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.020001 to
49           5.20150214.
50
51           The list of Perl versions covered has been updated.
52
53       •   PathTools has been upgraded from version 3.48 to 3.48_01.
54
55           A warning from the gcc compiler is now avoided when building the
56           XS.
57
58       •   PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.18_01.
59
60           Reading from a position well past the end of the scalar now
61           correctly returns end of file.  [GH #14342]
62           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14342>
63
64           Seeking to a negative position still fails, but no longer leaves
65           the file position set to a negation location.
66
67           eof() on a "PerlIO::scalar" handle now properly returns true when
68           the file position is past the 2GB mark on 32-bit systems.
69
70       •   Storable has been upgraded from version 2.49 to 2.49_01.
71
72           Minor grammatical change to the documentation only.
73
74       •   VMS::DCLsym has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.05_01.
75
76           Minor formatting change to the documentation only.
77
78       •   VMS::Stdio has been upgraded from version 2.4 to 2.41.
79
80           Minor formatting change to the documentation only.
81

Documentation

83   New Documentation
84       perlunicook
85
86       This document, by Tom Christiansen, provides examples of handling
87       Unicode in Perl.
88
89   Changes to Existing Documentation
90       perlexperiment
91
92       •   Added reference to subroutine signatures.  This feature was
93           actually added in Perl 5.20.0 but was accidentally omitted from the
94           experimental feature documentation until now.
95
96       perlpolicy
97
98       •   The process whereby features may graduate from experimental status
99           has now been formally documented.
100
101       perlsyn
102
103       •   An ambiguity in the documentation of the ellipsis statement has
104           been corrected.  [GH #14054]
105           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14054>
106

Diagnostics

108       The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
109       including warnings and fatal error messages.  For the complete list of
110       diagnostic messages, see perldiag.
111
112   Changes to Existing Diagnostics
113       •   Bad symbol for scalar is now documented.  This error is not new,
114           but was not previously documented here.
115
116       •   Missing right brace on \N{} is now documented.  This error is not
117           new, but was not previously documented here.
118

Testing

120       •   The test script re/rt122747.t has been added to verify that [GH
121           #14081] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14081> remains fixed.
122

Platform Support

124   Regained Platforms
125       IRIX and Tru64 platforms are working again.  (Some "make test" failures
126       remain.)
127

Selected Bug Fixes

129       •   AIX now sets the length in "getsockopt" correctly.  [GH #13484]
130           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13484>, [cpan #91183]
131           <https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=91183>, [cpan #85570]
132           <https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=85570>
133
134       •   In Perl 5.20.0, $^N accidentally had the internal UTF8 flag turned
135           off if accessed from a code block within a regular expression,
136           effectively UTF8-encoding the value.  This has been fixed.  [GH
137           #14211] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14211>
138
139       •   Various cases where the name of a sub is used (autoload,
140           overloading, error messages) used to crash for lexical subs, but
141           have been fixed.
142
143       •   An assertion failure when parsing "sort" with debugging enabled has
144           been fixed.  [GH #14087]
145           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14087>
146
147       •   Loading UTF8 tables during a regular expression match could cause
148           assertion failures under debugging builds if the previous match
149           used the very same regular expression.  [GH #14081]
150           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14081>
151
152       •   Due to a mistake in the string-copying logic, copying the value of
153           a state variable could instead steal the value and undefine the
154           variable.  This bug, introduced in Perl 5.20, would happen mostly
155           for long strings (1250 chars or more), but could happen for any
156           strings under builds with copy-on-write disabled.  [GH #14175]
157           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14175>
158
159       •   Fixed a bug that could cause perl to execute an infinite loop
160           during compilation.  [GH #14165]
161           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14165>
162
163       •   On Win32, restoring in a child pseudo-process a variable that was
164           local()ed in a parent pseudo-process before the "fork" happened
165           caused memory corruption and a crash in the child pseudo-process
166           (and therefore OS process).  [GH #8641]
167           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/8641>
168
169       •   Tainted constants evaluated at compile time no longer cause
170           unrelated statements to become tainted.  [GH #14059]
171           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14059>
172
173       •   Calling "write" on a format with a "^**" field could produce a
174           panic in sv_chop() if there were insufficient arguments or if the
175           variable used to fill the field was empty.  [GH #14255]
176           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14255>
177
178       •   In Perl 5.20.0, "sort CORE::fake" where 'fake' is anything other
179           than a keyword started chopping of the last 6 characters and
180           treating the result as a sort sub name.  The previous behaviour of
181           treating "CORE::fake" as a sort sub name has been restored.  [GH
182           #14323] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14323>
183
184       •   A bug in regular expression patterns that could lead to segfaults
185           and other crashes has been fixed.  This occurred only in patterns
186           compiled with "/i", while taking into account the current POSIX
187           locale (this usually means they have to be compiled within the
188           scope of "use locale"), and there must be a string of at least 128
189           consecutive bytes to match.  [GH #14389]
190           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14389>
191
192       •   "qr/@array(?{block})/" no longer dies with "Bizarre copy of ARRAY".
193           [GH #14292] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14292>
194
195       •   "gmtime" no longer crashes with not-a-number values.  [GH #14365]
196           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14365>
197
198       •   Certain syntax errors in substitutions, such as "s/${<>{})//",
199           would crash, and had done so since Perl 5.10.  (In some cases the
200           crash did not start happening until Perl 5.16.)  The crash has, of
201           course, been fixed.  [GH #14391]
202           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14391>
203
204       •   A memory leak in some regular expressions, introduced in Perl
205           5.20.1, has been fixed.  [GH #14236]
206           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14236>
207
208       •   "formline("@...", "a");" would crash.  The "FF_CHECKNL" case in
209           pp_formline() didn't set the pointer used to mark the chop
210           position, which led to the "FF_MORE" case crashing with a
211           segmentation fault.  This has been fixed.  [GH #14388]
212           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14388> [GH #14425]
213           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14425>
214
215       •   A possible buffer overrun and crash when parsing a literal pattern
216           during regular expression compilation has been fixed.  [GH #14416]
217           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14416>
218

Known Problems

220       •   It is a known bug that lexical subroutines cannot be used as the
221           "SUBNAME" argument to "sort".  This will be fixed in a future
222           version of Perl.
223

Errata From Previous Releases

225       •   A regression has been fixed that was introduced in Perl 5.20.0
226           (fixed in Perl 5.20.1 as well as here) in which a UTF-8 encoded
227           regular expression pattern that contains a single ASCII lowercase
228           letter does not match its uppercase counterpart.  [GH #14051]
229           <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14051>
230

Acknowledgements

232       Perl 5.20.2 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl
233       5.20.1 and contains approximately 6,300 lines of changes across 170
234       files from 34 authors.
235
236       Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there
237       were approximately 1,900 lines of changes to 80 .pm, .t, .c and .h
238       files.
239
240       Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant
241       community of users and developers.  The following people are known to
242       have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.20.2:
243
244       Aaron Crane, Abigail, Andreas Voegele, Andy Dougherty, Anthony Heading,
245       Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Daniel
246       Dragan, Doug Bell, Ed J, Father Chrysostomos, Glenn D. Golden, H.Merijn
247       Brand, Hugo van der Sanden, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Jim
248       Cromie, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, kmx, Matthew Horsfall, Max
249       Maischein, Peter Martini, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi
250       Fish, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Müller, Steve Hay, Tadeusz Sośnierz, Tony
251       Cook, Yves Orton, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason.
252
253       The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically
254       generated from version control history.  In particular, it does not
255       include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who
256       reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.
257
258       Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN
259       modules included in Perl's core.  We're grateful to the entire CPAN
260       community for helping Perl to flourish.
261
262       For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors,
263       please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.
264

Reporting Bugs

266       If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
267       recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug
268       database at https://rt.perl.org/ .  There may also be information at
269       http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.
270
271       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug
272       program included with your release.  Be sure to trim your bug down to a
273       tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report, along with the output
274       of "perl -V", will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by
275       the Perl porting team.
276
277       If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
278       inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please
279       send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org.  This points to a closed
280       subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core
281       committers, who will be able to help assess the impact of issues,
282       figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to
283       mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is
284       supported.  Please only use this address for security issues in the
285       Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
286

SEE ALSO

288       The Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details
289       on what changed.
290
291       The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
292
293       The README file for general stuff.
294
295       The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.
296
297
298
299perl v5.38.2                      2023-11-30                  PERL5202DELTA(1)
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