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| 128 | .rm #[ #] #H #V #F C |
| 129 | .\" ======================================================================== |
| 130 | .\" |
| 131 | .IX Title "PERL572DELTA 1" |
| 132 | .TH PERL572DELTA 1 "2006-01-07" "perl v5.8.8" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide" |
| 133 | .SH "NAME" |
| 134 | perl572delta \- what's new for perl v5.7.2 |
| 135 | .SH "DESCRIPTION" |
| 136 | .IX Header "DESCRIPTION" |
| 137 | This document describes differences between the 5.7.1 release and the |
| 138 | 5.7.2 release. |
| 139 | .PP |
| 140 | (To view the differences between the 5.6.0 release and the 5.7.0 |
| 141 | release, see perl570delta. To view the differences between the |
| 142 | 5.7.0 release and the 5.7.1 release, see perl571delta.) |
| 143 | .SH "Security Vulnerability Closed" |
| 144 | .IX Header "Security Vulnerability Closed" |
| 145 | (This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.) |
| 146 | .PP |
| 147 | A security vulnerability affecting all Perl versions prior to 5.6.1 |
| 148 | was found in August 2000. The vulnerability does not affect default |
| 149 | installations and as far as is known affects only the Linux platform. |
| 150 | .PP |
| 151 | You should upgrade your Perl to 5.6.1 as soon as possible. Patches |
| 152 | for earlier releases exist but using the patches require full |
| 153 | recompilation from the source code anyway, so 5.6.1 is your best |
| 154 | choice. |
| 155 | .PP |
| 156 | See http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/sperl\-2000\-08\-05/sperl\-2000\-08\-05.txt |
| 157 | for more information. |
| 158 | .SH "Incompatible Changes" |
| 159 | .IX Header "Incompatible Changes" |
| 160 | .Sh "64\-bit platforms and malloc" |
| 161 | .IX Subsection "64-bit platforms and malloc" |
| 162 | If your pointers are 64 bits wide, the Perl malloc is no more being |
| 163 | used because it simply does not work with 8\-byte pointers. Also, |
| 164 | usually the system malloc on such platforms are much better optimized |
| 165 | for such large memory models than the Perl malloc. |
| 166 | .Sh "\s-1AIX\s0 Dynaloading" |
| 167 | .IX Subsection "AIX Dynaloading" |
| 168 | The \s-1AIX\s0 dynaloading now uses in \s-1AIX\s0 releases 4.3 and newer the native |
| 169 | dlopen interface of \s-1AIX\s0 instead of the old emulated interface. This |
| 170 | change will probably break backward compatibility with compiled |
| 171 | modules. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other |
| 172 | applications like modperl which are using the \s-1AIX\s0 native interface. |
| 173 | .Sh "Socket Extension Dynamic in \s-1VMS\s0" |
| 174 | .IX Subsection "Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS" |
| 175 | The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being |
| 176 | statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient |
| 177 | \&\s-1TCP/IP\s0 stacks of \s-1VMS:\s0 we do not know since we weren't able to test |
| 178 | Perl in such configurations. |
| 179 | .Sh "Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes \ep{In...}" |
| 180 | .IX Subsection "Different Definition of the Unicode Character Classes p{In...}" |
| 181 | As suggested by the Unicode consortium, the Unicode character classes |
| 182 | now prefer \fIscripts\fR as opposed to \fIblocks\fR (as defined by Unicode); |
| 183 | in Perl, when the \f(CW\*(C`\ep{In....}\*(C'\fR and the \f(CW\*(C`\ep{In....}\*(C'\fR regular expression |
| 184 | constructs are used. This has changed the definition of some of those |
| 185 | character classes. |
| 186 | .PP |
| 187 | The difference between scripts and blocks is that scripts are the |
| 188 | glyphs used by a language or a group of languages, while the blocks |
| 189 | are more artificial groupings of 256 characters based on the Unicode |
| 190 | numbering. |
| 191 | .PP |
| 192 | In general this change results in more inclusive Unicode character |
| 193 | classes, but changes to the other direction also do take place: |
| 194 | for example while the script \f(CW\*(C`Latin\*(C'\fR includes all the Latin |
| 195 | characters and their various diacritic-adorned versions, it |
| 196 | does not include the various punctuation or digits (since they |
| 197 | are not solely \f(CW\*(C`Latin\*(C'\fR). |
| 198 | .PP |
| 199 | Changes in the character class semantics may have happened if a script |
| 200 | and a block happen to have the same name, for example \f(CW\*(C`Hebrew\*(C'\fR. |
| 201 | In such cases the script wins and \f(CW\*(C`\ep{InHebrew}\*(C'\fR now means the script |
| 202 | definition of Hebrew. The block definition in still available, |
| 203 | though, by appending \f(CW\*(C`Block\*(C'\fR to the name: \f(CW\*(C`\ep{InHebrewBlock}\*(C'\fR means |
| 204 | what \f(CW\*(C`\ep{InHebrew}\*(C'\fR meant in perl 5.6.0. For the full list |
| 205 | of affected character classes, see \*(L"Blocks\*(R" in perlunicode. |
| 206 | .Sh "Deprecations" |
| 207 | .IX Subsection "Deprecations" |
| 208 | The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird |
| 209 | use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0 |
| 210 | and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be |
| 211 | implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather |
| 212 | ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash |
| 213 | use quite noticeably. The \f(CW\*(C`fields\*(C'\fR pragma interface will remain |
| 214 | available. |
| 215 | .PP |
| 216 | The syntaxes \f(CW\*(C`@a\->[...]\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`@h\->{...}\*(C'\fR have now been deprecated. |
| 217 | .PP |
| 218 | The suidperl is also considered to be too much a risk to continue |
| 219 | maintaining and the suidperl code is likely to be removed in a future |
| 220 | release. |
| 221 | .PP |
| 222 | The \f(CW\*(C`package;\*(C'\fR syntax (\f(CW\*(C`package\*(C'\fR without an argument has been |
| 223 | deprecated. Its semantics were never that clear and its |
| 224 | implementation even less so. If you have used that feature to |
| 225 | disallow all but fully qualified variables, \f(CW\*(C`use strict;\*(C'\fR instead. |
| 226 | .PP |
| 227 | The chdir(undef) and chdir('') behaviors to match \fIchdir()\fR has been |
| 228 | deprecated. In future versions, chdir(undef) and chdir('') will |
| 229 | simply fail. |
| 230 | .SH "Core Enhancements" |
| 231 | .IX Header "Core Enhancements" |
| 232 | In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's |
| 233 | understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in |
| 234 | many systems the standard number parsing functions like \f(CW\*(C`strtoul()\*(C'\fR |
| 235 | and \f(CW\*(C`atof()\*(C'\fR seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their |
| 236 | deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers. |
| 237 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 238 | The rules for allowing underscores (underbars) in numeric constants |
| 239 | have been relaxed and simplified: now you can have an underscore |
| 240 | \&\fBbetween digits\fR. |
| 241 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 242 | \&\s-1GMAGIC\s0 (right\-hand side magic) could in many cases such as string |
| 243 | concatenation be invoked too many times. |
| 244 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 245 | Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "\*(L" weren't resolved |
| 246 | correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval \*(R"\*(L" if they |
| 247 | were not already referenced in the top level of the eval\*(R""ed code. |
| 248 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 249 | Lexicals \s-1II:\s0 lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that |
| 250 | were declared before the lexicals. |
| 251 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 252 | Lvalue subroutines can now return \f(CW\*(C`undef\*(C'\fR in list context. |
| 253 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 254 | The \f(CW\*(C`op_clear\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`op_null\*(C'\fR are now exported. |
| 255 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 256 | A new special regular expression variable has been introduced: |
| 257 | \&\f(CW$^N\fR, which contains the most-recently closed group (submatch). |
| 258 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 259 | utime now supports \f(CW\*(C`utime undef, undef, @files\*(C'\fR to change the |
| 260 | file timestamps to the current time. |
| 261 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 262 | The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and |
| 263 | Markov chain input. |
| 264 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 265 | \&\f(CW\*(C`eval "v200"\*(C'\fR now works. |
| 266 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 267 | \&\s-1VMS\s0 now works under PerlIO. |
| 268 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 269 | \&\s-1END\s0 blocks are now run even if you exit/die in a \s-1BEGIN\s0 block. |
| 270 | The execution of \s-1END\s0 blocks is now controlled by |
| 271 | PL_exit_flags & \s-1PERL_EXIT_DESTRUCT_END\s0. This enables the new |
| 272 | behaviour for perl embedders. This will default in 5.10. See |
| 273 | perlembed. |
| 274 | .SH "Modules and Pragmata" |
| 275 | .IX Header "Modules and Pragmata" |
| 276 | .Sh "New Modules and Distributions" |
| 277 | .IX Subsection "New Modules and Distributions" |
| 278 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 279 | Attribute::Handlers \- Simpler definition of attribute handlers |
| 280 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 281 | ExtUtils::Constant \- generate \s-1XS\s0 code to import C header constants |
| 282 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 283 | I18N::Langinfo \- query locale information |
| 284 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 285 | I18N::LangTags \- functions for dealing with RFC3066\-style language tags |
| 286 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 287 | libnet \- a collection of perl5 modules related to network programming |
| 288 | .Sp |
| 289 | Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use \fIlibnetcfg\fR to configure. |
| 290 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 291 | List::Util \- selection of general-utility list subroutines |
| 292 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 293 | Locale::Maketext \- framework for localization |
| 294 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 295 | Memoize \- Make your functions faster by trading space for time |
| 296 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 297 | \&\s-1NEXT\s0 \- pseudo-class for method redispatch |
| 298 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 299 | Scalar::Util \- selection of general-utility scalar subroutines |
| 300 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 301 | Test::More \- yet another framework for writing test scripts |
| 302 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 303 | Test::Simple \- Basic utilities for writing tests |
| 304 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 305 | Time::HiRes \- high resolution ualarm, usleep, and gettimeofday |
| 306 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 307 | Time::Piece \- Object Oriented time objects |
| 308 | .Sp |
| 309 | (Previously known as Time::Object.) |
| 310 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 311 | Time::Seconds \- a simple \s-1API\s0 to convert seconds to other date values |
| 312 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 313 | UnicodeCD \- Unicode Character Database |
| 314 | .Sh "Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata" |
| 315 | .IX Subsection "Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata" |
| 316 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 317 | B::Deparse module has been significantly enhanced. It now |
| 318 | can deparse almost all of the standard test suite (so that the |
| 319 | tests still succeed). There is a make target \*(L"test.deparse\*(R" |
| 320 | for trying this out. |
| 321 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 322 | Class::Struct now assigns the array/hash element if the accessor |
| 323 | is called with an array/hash element as the \fBsole\fR argument. |
| 324 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 325 | Cwd extension is now (even) faster. |
| 326 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 327 | DB_File extension has been updated to version 1.77. |
| 328 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 329 | Fcntl, Socket, and Sys::Syslog have been rewritten to use the |
| 330 | new-style constant dispatch section (see ExtUtils::Constant). |
| 331 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 332 | File::Find is now (again) reentrant. It also has been made |
| 333 | more portable. |
| 334 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 335 | File::Glob now supports \f(CW\*(C`GLOB_LIMIT\*(C'\fR constant to limit the |
| 336 | size of the returned list of filenames. |
| 337 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 338 | IO::Socket::INET now supports \f(CW\*(C`LocalPort\*(C'\fR of zero (usually meaning |
| 339 | that the operating system will make one up.) |
| 340 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 341 | The vars pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables. |
| 342 | (Something that \f(CW\*(C`our()\*(C'\fR does not and will not support.) |
| 343 | .SH "Utility Changes" |
| 344 | .IX Header "Utility Changes" |
| 345 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 346 | The \fIemacs/e2ctags.pl\fR is now much faster. |
| 347 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 348 | h2ph now supports C trigraphs. |
| 349 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 350 | h2xs uses the new ExtUtils::Constant module which will affect |
| 351 | newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is |
| 352 | more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a |
| 353 | prefix of the second one, the first constant \fBnever\fR gets defined), |
| 354 | less lossy (it uses integers for integer constant, as opposed to the |
| 355 | old code that used floating point numbers even for integer constants), |
| 356 | and slightly faster, you might want to consider regenerating your |
| 357 | extension code (the new scheme makes regenerating easy). |
| 358 | h2xs now also supports C trigraphs. |
| 359 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 360 | libnetcfg has been added to configure the libnet. |
| 361 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 362 | The \fIPod::Html\fR (and thusly pod2html) now allows specifying |
| 363 | a cache directory. |
| 364 | .SH "New Documentation" |
| 365 | .IX Header "New Documentation" |
| 366 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 367 | Locale::Maketext::TPJ13 is an article about software localization, |
| 368 | originally published in The Perl Journal #13, republished here with |
| 369 | kind permission. |
| 370 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 371 | More \s-1README\s0.$PLATFORM files have been converted into pod, which also |
| 372 | means that they also be installed as perl$PLATFORM documentation |
| 373 | files. The new files are perlapollo, perlbeos, perldgux, |
| 374 | perlhurd, perlmint, perlnetware, perlplan9, perlqnx, |
| 375 | and perltru64. |
| 376 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 377 | The \fITodo\fR and \fITodo\-5.6\fR files have been merged into perltodo. |
| 378 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 379 | Use of the \fIgprof\fR tool to profile Perl has been documented in |
| 380 | perlhack. There is a make target \*(L"perl.gprof\*(R" for generating a |
| 381 | gprofiled Perl executable. |
| 382 | .SH "Installation and Configuration Improvements" |
| 383 | .IX Header "Installation and Configuration Improvements" |
| 384 | .Sh "New Or Improved Platforms" |
| 385 | .IX Subsection "New Or Improved Platforms" |
| 386 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 387 | \&\s-1AIX\s0 should now work better with gcc, threads, and 64\-bitness. Also the |
| 388 | long doubles support in \s-1AIX\s0 should be better now. See perlaix. |
| 389 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 390 | AtheOS ( http://www.atheos.cx/ ) is a new platform. |
| 391 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 392 | \&\s-1DG/UX\s0 platform now supports the 5.005\-style threads. See perldgux. |
| 393 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 394 | DYNIX/ptx platform (a.k.a. dynixptx) is supported at or near osvers 4.5.2. |
| 395 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 396 | Several Mac \s-1OS\s0 (Classic) portability patches have been applied. We |
| 397 | hope to get a fully working port by 5.8.0. (The remaining problems |
| 398 | relate to the changed \s-1IO\s0 model of Perl.) See perlmacos. |
| 399 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 400 | Mac \s-1OS\s0 X (or Darwin) should now be able to build Perl even on \s-1HFS+\s0 |
| 401 | filesystems. (The case-insensitivity confused the Perl build process.) |
| 402 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 403 | NetWare from Novell is now supported. See perlnetware. |
| 404 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 405 | The Amdahl \s-1UTS\s0 \s-1UNIX\s0 mainframe platform is now supported. |
| 406 | .Sh "Generic Improvements" |
| 407 | .IX Subsection "Generic Improvements" |
| 408 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 409 | In \s-1AFS\s0 installations one can configure the root of the \s-1AFS\s0 to be |
| 410 | somewhere else than the default \fI/afs\fR by using the Configure |
| 411 | parameter \f(CW\*(C`\-Dafsroot=/some/where/else\*(C'\fR. |
| 412 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 413 | The version of Berkeley \s-1DB\s0 used when the Perl (and, presumably, the |
| 414 | DB_File extension) was built is now available as |
| 415 | \&\f(CW@Config{qw(db_version_major db_version_minor db_version_patch)}\fR |
| 416 | from Perl and as \f(CW\*(C`DB_VERSION_MAJOR_CFG DB_VERSION_MINOR_CFG |
| 417 | DB_VERSION_PATCH_CFG\*(C'\fR from C. |
| 418 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 419 | The Thread extension is now not built at all under ithreads |
| 420 | (\f(CW\*(C`Configure \-Duseithreads\*(C'\fR) because it wouldn't work anyway (the |
| 421 | Thread extension requires being Configured with \f(CW\*(C`\-Duse5005threads\*(C'\fR). |
| 422 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 423 | The \f(CW\*(C`B::Deparse\*(C'\fR compiler backend has been so significantly improved |
| 424 | that almost the whole Perl test suite passes after being deparsed. A |
| 425 | make target has been added to help in further testing: \f(CW\*(C`make test.deparse\*(C'\fR. |
| 426 | .SH "Selected Bug Fixes" |
| 427 | .IX Header "Selected Bug Fixes" |
| 428 | .IP "\(bu" 5 |
| 429 | The autouse pragma didn't work for Multi::Part::Function::Names. |
| 430 | .IP "\(bu" 5 |
| 431 | The behaviour of non-decimal but numeric string constants such as |
| 432 | \&\*(L"0x23\*(R" was platform\-dependent: in some platforms that was seen as 35, |
| 433 | in some as 0, in some as a floating point number (don't ask). This |
| 434 | was caused by Perl using the operating system libraries in a situation |
| 435 | where the result of the string to number conversion is undefined: now |
| 436 | Perl consistently handles such strings as zero in numeric contexts. |
| 437 | .IP "\(bu" 5 |
| 438 | dprofpp \-R didn't work. |
| 439 | .IP "\(bu" 5 |
| 440 | \&\s-1PERL5OPT\s0 with embedded spaces didn't work. |
| 441 | .IP "\(bu" 5 |
| 442 | Sys::Syslog ignored the \f(CW\*(C`LOG_AUTH\*(C'\fR constant. |
| 443 | .Sh "Platform Specific Changes and Fixes" |
| 444 | .IX Subsection "Platform Specific Changes and Fixes" |
| 445 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 446 | Some versions of glibc have a broken \fImodfl()\fR. This affects builds |
| 447 | with \f(CW\*(C`\-Duselongdouble\*(C'\fR. This version of Perl detects this brokenness |
| 448 | and has a workaround for it. The glibc release 2.2.2 is known to have |
| 449 | fixed the \fImodfl()\fR bug. |
| 450 | .SH "New or Changed Diagnostics" |
| 451 | .IX Header "New or Changed Diagnostics" |
| 452 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 453 | In the regular expression diagnostics the \f(CW\*(C`<< HERE\*(C'\fR marker |
| 454 | introduced in 5.7.0 has been changed to be \f(CW\*(C`<\-\- HERE\*(C'\fR since too |
| 455 | many people found the \f(CW\*(C`<<\*(C'\fR to be too similar to here-document |
| 456 | starters. |
| 457 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 458 | If you try to \*(L"pack\*(R" in perlfunc a number less than 0 or larger than 255 |
| 459 | using the \f(CW"C"\fR format you will get an optional warning. Similarly |
| 460 | for the \f(CW"c"\fR format and a number less than \-128 or more than 127. |
| 461 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 462 | Certain regex modifiers such as \f(CW\*(C`(?o)\*(C'\fR make sense only if applied to |
| 463 | the entire regex. You will an optional warning if you try to do otherwise. |
| 464 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 465 | Using arrays or hashes as references (e.g. \f(CW\*(C`%foo\->{bar}\*(C'\fR has been |
| 466 | deprecated for a while. Now you will get an optional warning. |
| 467 | .SH "Source Code Enhancements" |
| 468 | .IX Header "Source Code Enhancements" |
| 469 | .Sh "\s-1MAGIC\s0 constants" |
| 470 | .IX Subsection "MAGIC constants" |
| 471 | The \s-1MAGIC\s0 constants (e.g. \f(CW'P'\fR) have been macrofied |
| 472 | (e.g. \f(CW\*(C`PERL_MAGIC_TIED\*(C'\fR) for better source code readability |
| 473 | and maintainability. |
| 474 | .Sh "Better commented code" |
| 475 | .IX Subsection "Better commented code" |
| 476 | \&\fIperly.c\fR, \fIsv.c\fR, and \fIsv.h\fR have now been extensively commented. |
| 477 | .Sh "Regex pre\-/post\-compilation items matched up" |
| 478 | .IX Subsection "Regex pre-/post-compilation items matched up" |
| 479 | The regex compiler now maintains a structure that identifies nodes in |
| 480 | the compiled bytecode with the corresponding syntactic features of the |
| 481 | original regex expression. The information is attached to the new |
| 482 | \&\f(CW\*(C`offsets\*(C'\fR member of the \f(CW\*(C`struct regexp\*(C'\fR. See perldebguts for more |
| 483 | complete information. |
| 484 | .Sh "gcc \-Wall" |
| 485 | .IX Subsection "gcc -Wall" |
| 486 | The C code has been made much more \f(CW\*(C`gcc \-Wall\*(C'\fR clean. Some warning |
| 487 | messages still remain, though, so if you are compiling with gcc you |
| 488 | will see some warnings about dubious practices. The warnings are |
| 489 | being worked on. |
| 490 | .SH "New Tests" |
| 491 | .IX Header "New Tests" |
| 492 | Several new tests have been added, especially for the \fIlib\fR subsection. |
| 493 | .PP |
| 494 | The tests are now reported in a different order than in earlier Perls. |
| 495 | (This happens because the test scripts from under t/lib have been moved |
| 496 | to be closer to the library/extension they are testing.) |
| 497 | .SH "Known Problems" |
| 498 | .IX Header "Known Problems" |
| 499 | Note that unlike other sections in this document (which describe |
| 500 | changes since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known |
| 501 | problems for all the 5.7 releases. |
| 502 | .Sh "\s-1AIX\s0" |
| 503 | .IX Subsection "AIX" |
| 504 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 505 | In \s-1AIX\s0 4.2 Perl extensions that use \*(C+ functions that use statics |
| 506 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
| 507 | In newer \s-1AIX\s0 releases this has been solved by linking Perl with |
| 508 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in \s-1AIX\s0 4.2 the said library |
| 509 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
| 510 | (such as \fItime()\fR and \fIgettimeofday()\fR) return broken values, and |
| 511 | therefore in \s-1AIX\s0 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. |
| 512 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 513 | vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl |
| 514 | .Sp |
| 515 | The \s-1AIX\s0 C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code, |
| 516 | resulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests |
| 517 | are run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least |
| 518 | vac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly. |
| 519 | \&\*(L"lslpp \-L|grep vac.C\*(R" will tell you the vac version. |
| 520 | .Sh "Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery" |
| 521 | .IX Subsection "Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery" |
| 522 | One cannot call Perl using the \f(CW\*(C`volume:\*(C'\fR syntax, that is, \f(CW\*(C`perl \-v\*(C'\fR |
| 523 | works, but for example \f(CW\*(C`bin:perl \-v\*(C'\fR doesn't. The exact reason is |
| 524 | known but the current suspect is the \fIixemul\fR library. |
| 525 | .Sh "lib/ftmp\-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'" |
| 526 | .IX Subsection "lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'" |
| 527 | Don't panic. Read \s-1INSTALL\s0 'make test' section instead. |
| 528 | .Sh "Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12" |
| 529 | .IX Subsection "Cygwin intermittent failures of lib/Memoize/t/expire_file 11 and 12" |
| 530 | The subtests 11 and 12 sometimes fail and sometimes work. |
| 531 | .Sh "HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64\-Configured" |
| 532 | .IX Subsection "HP-UX lib/io_multihomed Fails When LP64-Configured" |
| 533 | The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has been |
| 534 | configured to be 64\-bit. Because other 64\-bit platforms do not hang in |
| 535 | this test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64\-bit \s-1HP\-UX\s0. The |
| 536 | test attempts to create and connect to \*(L"multihomed\*(R" sockets (sockets |
| 537 | which have multiple \s-1IP\s0 addresses). |
| 538 | .Sh "HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64\-Configured" |
| 539 | .IX Subsection "HP-UX lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails When LP64-Configured" |
| 540 | If perl is configured with \-Duse64bitall, the successful result of the |
| 541 | subtest 10 of lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the |
| 542 | subtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the |
| 543 | subtest 9 failed. |
| 544 | .Sh "Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48" |
| 545 | .IX Subsection "Linux With Sfio Fails op/misc Test 48" |
| 546 | No known fix. |
| 547 | .Sh "\s-1OS/390\s0" |
| 548 | .IX Subsection "OS/390" |
| 549 | \&\s-1OS/390\s0 has rather many test failures but the situation is actually |
| 550 | better than it was in 5.6.0, it's just that so many new modules and |
| 551 | tests have been added. |
| 552 | .PP |
| 553 | .Vb 21 |
| 554 | \& Failed Test Stat Wstat Total Fail Failed List of Failed |
| 555 | \& ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 556 | \& ../ext/B/Deparse.t 14 1 7.14% 14 |
| 557 | \& ../ext/B/Showlex.t 1 1 100.00% 1 |
| 558 | \& ../ext/Encode/Encode/Tcl.t 610 13 2.13% 592 594 596 598 |
| 559 | \& 600 602 604-610 |
| 560 | \& ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t 113 28928 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
| 561 | \& ../ext/POSIX/POSIX.t 29 1 3.45% 14 |
| 562 | \& ../ext/Storable/t/lock.t 255 65280 5 3 60.00% 3-5 |
| 563 | \& ../lib/locale.t 129 33024 117 19 16.24% 99-117 |
| 564 | \& ../lib/warnings.t 434 1 0.23% 75 |
| 565 | \& ../lib/ExtUtils.t 27 1 3.70% 25 |
| 566 | \& ../lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm.t 1190 1 0.08% 1145 |
| 567 | \& ../lib/Unicode/UCD.t 81 48 59.26% 1-16 49-64 66-81 |
| 568 | \& ../lib/User/pwent.t 9 1 11.11% 4 |
| 569 | \& op/pat.t 660 6 0.91% 242-243 424-425 |
| 570 | \& 626-627 |
| 571 | \& op/split.t 0 9 ?? ?? % ?? |
| 572 | \& op/taint.t 174 3 1.72% 156 162 168 |
| 573 | \& op/tr.t 70 3 4.29% 50 58-59 |
| 574 | \& Failed 16/422 test scripts, 96.21% okay. 105/23251 subtests failed, 99.55% okay. |
| 575 | .Ve |
| 576 | .Sh "op/sprintf tests 129 and 130" |
| 577 | .IX Subsection "op/sprintf tests 129 and 130" |
| 578 | The op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms. |
| 579 | Examples include any platform using sfio, and Compaq/Tandem's NonStop\-UX. |
| 580 | The failing platforms do not comply with the \s-1ANSI\s0 C Standard, line |
| 581 | 19ff on page 134 of \s-1ANSI\s0 X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce |
| 582 | something other than \*(L"1\*(R" and \*(L"\-1\*(R" when formatting 0.6 and \-0.6 using |
| 583 | the printf format \*(L"%.0f\*(R", most often they produce \*(L"0\*(R" and \*(L"\-0\*(R".) |
| 584 | .Sh "Failure of Thread tests" |
| 585 | .IX Subsection "Failure of Thread tests" |
| 586 | \&\fBNote that support for 5.005\-style threading remains experimental.\fR |
| 587 | .PP |
| 588 | The following tests are known to fail due to fundamental problems in |
| 589 | the 5.005 threading implementation. These are not new failures\*(--Perl |
| 590 | 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests. |
| 591 | .PP |
| 592 | .Vb 2 |
| 593 | \& lib/autouse.t 4 |
| 594 | \& t/lib/thr5005.t 19-20 |
| 595 | .Ve |
| 596 | .Sh "\s-1UNICOS\s0" |
| 597 | .IX Subsection "UNICOS" |
| 598 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 599 | ext/POSIX/sigaction subtests 6 and 13 may fail. |
| 600 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 601 | lib/ExtUtils may spuriously claim that subtest 28 failed, |
| 602 | which is interesting since the test only has 27 tests. |
| 603 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 604 | Numerous numerical test failures |
| 605 | .Sp |
| 606 | .Vb 5 |
| 607 | \& op/numconvert 209,210,217,218 |
| 608 | \& op/override 7 |
| 609 | \& ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes 9 |
| 610 | \& lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintpm 1145 |
| 611 | \& lib/Math/Trig 25 |
| 612 | .Ve |
| 613 | .Sp |
| 614 | These tests fail because of yet unresolved floating point inaccuracies. |
| 615 | .Sh "\s-1UTS\s0" |
| 616 | .IX Subsection "UTS" |
| 617 | There are a few known test failures, see perluts. |
| 618 | .Sh "\s-1VMS\s0" |
| 619 | .IX Subsection "VMS" |
| 620 | Rather many tests are failing in \s-1VMS\s0 but that actually more tests |
| 621 | succeed in \s-1VMS\s0 than they used to, it's just that there are many, |
| 622 | many more tests than there used to be. |
| 623 | .PP |
| 624 | Here are the known failures from some compiler/platform combinations. |
| 625 | .PP |
| 626 | \&\s-1DEC\s0 C V5.3\-006 on OpenVMS \s-1VAX\s0 V6.2 |
| 627 | .PP |
| 628 | .Vb 9 |
| 629 | \& [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 630 | \& [-.ext.posix]sigaction..................FAILED on test 7 |
| 631 | \& [-.ext.time.hires]hires.................FAILED on test 14 |
| 632 | \& [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 633 | \& [-.lib.math.bigint.t]bigintpm...........FAILED on test 1183 |
| 634 | \& [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 635 | \& [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 636 | \& [.op]sprintf............................FAILED on test 12 |
| 637 | \& Failed 8/399 tests, 91.23% okay. |
| 638 | .Ve |
| 639 | .PP |
| 640 | \&\s-1DEC\s0 C V6.0\-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.2\-1 and |
| 641 | Compaq C V6.2\-008 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.1 |
| 642 | .PP |
| 643 | .Vb 5 |
| 644 | \& [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 645 | \& [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 646 | \& [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 647 | \& [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 648 | \& Failed 4/399 tests, 92.48% okay. |
| 649 | .Ve |
| 650 | .PP |
| 651 | Compaq C V6.4\-005 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.1 |
| 652 | .PP |
| 653 | .Vb 7 |
| 654 | \& [-.ext.b]showlex........................FAILED on test 1 |
| 655 | \& [-.ext.list.util.t]tainted..............FAILED on test 3 |
| 656 | \& [-.lib.file.find]taint..................FAILED on test 17 |
| 657 | \& [-.lib.test.simple.t]exit...............FAILED on test 1 |
| 658 | \& [.lib]vmsish............................FAILED on test 13 |
| 659 | \& [.op]misc...............................FAILED on test 49 |
| 660 | \& Failed 6/401 tests, 92.77% okay. |
| 661 | .Ve |
| 662 | .Sh "Win32" |
| 663 | .IX Subsection "Win32" |
| 664 | In multi-CPU boxes there are some problems with the I/O buffering: |
| 665 | some output may appear twice. |
| 666 | .Sh "Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory" |
| 667 | .IX Subsection "Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory" |
| 668 | .Vb 2 |
| 669 | \& use Tie::Hash; |
| 670 | \& tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash'; |
| 671 | .Ve |
| 672 | .PP |
| 673 | .Vb 1 |
| 674 | \& ... |
| 675 | .Ve |
| 676 | .PP |
| 677 | .Vb 1 |
| 678 | \& local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks |
| 679 | .Ve |
| 680 | .PP |
| 681 | Code like the above is known to leak memory every time the \fIlocal()\fR |
| 682 | is executed. |
| 683 | .Sh "Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden" |
| 684 | .IX Subsection "Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden" |
| 685 | Self-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and |
| 686 | hard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting |
| 687 | frustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is |
| 688 | for now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt). |
| 689 | .Sh "Variable Attributes are not Currently Usable for Tieing" |
| 690 | .IX Subsection "Variable Attributes are not Currently Usable for Tieing" |
| 691 | This limitation will hopefully be fixed in future. (Subroutine |
| 692 | attributes work fine for tieing, see Attribute::Handlers). |
| 693 | .Sh "Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles" |
| 694 | .IX Subsection "Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles" |
| 695 | Some extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with |
| 696 | `largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets |
| 697 | default to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile |
| 698 | at all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good |
| 699 | solution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate |
| 700 | non-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the \f(CW%Config\fR |
| 701 | hash (e.g., \f(CW$Config\fR{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are |
| 702 | having problems can try configuring themselves without the |
| 703 | largefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the |
| 704 | solution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether |
| 705 | one can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at |
| 706 | all binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is |
| 707 | platform\-dependent. |
| 708 | .Sh "The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental" |
| 709 | .IX Subsection "The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental" |
| 710 | The compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near |
| 711 | working order yet. |
| 712 | .Sh "The Long Double Support is Still Experimental" |
| 713 | .IX Subsection "The Long Double Support is Still Experimental" |
| 714 | The ability to configure Perl's numbers to use \*(L"long doubles\*(R", |
| 715 | floating point numbers of hopefully better accuracy, is still |
| 716 | experimental. The implementations of long doubles are not yet |
| 717 | widespread and the existing implementations are not quite mature |
| 718 | or standardised, therefore trying to support them is a rare |
| 719 | and moving target. The gain of more precision may also be offset |
| 720 | by slowdown in computations (more bits to move around, and the |
| 721 | operations are more likely to be executed by less optimised |
| 722 | libraries). |
| 723 | .SH "Reporting Bugs" |
| 724 | .IX Header "Reporting Bugs" |
| 725 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 726 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 727 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ There may also be |
| 728 | information at http://www.perl.com/perl/ , the Perl Home Page. |
| 729 | .PP |
| 730 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the \fBperlbug\fR |
| 731 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 732 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 733 | output of \f(CW\*(C`perl \-V\*(C'\fR, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 734 | analysed by the Perl porting team. |
| 735 | .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| 736 | .IX Header "SEE ALSO" |
| 737 | The \fIChanges\fR file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 738 | .PP |
| 739 | The \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file for how to build Perl. |
| 740 | .PP |
| 741 | The \fI\s-1README\s0\fR file for general stuff. |
| 742 | .PP |
| 743 | The \fIArtistic\fR and \fICopying\fR files for copyright information. |
| 744 | .SH "HISTORY" |
| 745 | .IX Header "HISTORY" |
| 746 | Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <\fIjhi@iki.fi\fR>, with many contributions |
| 747 | from The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches. |
| 748 | .PP |
| 749 | Send omissions or corrections to <\fIperlbug@perl.org\fR>. |