| 1 | =head1 NAME |
| 2 | |
| 3 | perldelta - what is new for perl v5.8.7 |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 6 | |
| 7 | This document describes differences between the 5.8.6 release and |
| 8 | the 5.8.7 release. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | =head1 Incompatible Changes |
| 11 | |
| 12 | There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.6. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | =head1 Core Enhancements |
| 15 | |
| 16 | =head2 Unicode Character Database 4.1.0 |
| 17 | |
| 18 | The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has |
| 19 | been updated to 4.1.0 from 4.0.1. See |
| 20 | L<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.1.0/#NotableChanges> for the |
| 21 | notable changes. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | =head2 suidperl less insecure |
| 24 | |
| 25 | A pair of exploits in C<suidperl> involving debugging code have been closed. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | For new projects the core perl team strongly recommends that you use |
| 28 | dedicated, single purpose security tools such as C<sudo> in preference to |
| 29 | C<suidperl>. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | =head2 Optional site customization script |
| 32 | |
| 33 | The perl interpreter can be built to allow the use of a site customization |
| 34 | script. By default this is not enabled, to be consistent with previous perl |
| 35 | releases. To use this, add C<-Dusesitecustomize> to the command line flags |
| 36 | when running the C<Configure> script. See also L<perlrun/-f>. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | =head2 C<Config.pm> is now much smaller. |
| 39 | |
| 40 | C<Config.pm> is now about 3K rather than 32K, with the infrequently used |
| 41 | code and C<%Config> values loaded on demand. This is transparent to the |
| 42 | programmer, but means that most code will save parsing and loading 29K of |
| 43 | script (for example, code that uses C<File::Find>). |
| 44 | |
| 45 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata |
| 46 | |
| 47 | =over 4 |
| 48 | |
| 49 | =item * |
| 50 | |
| 51 | B upgraded to version 1.09 |
| 52 | |
| 53 | =item * |
| 54 | |
| 55 | base upgraded to version 2.07 |
| 56 | |
| 57 | =item * |
| 58 | |
| 59 | bignum upgraded to version 0.17 |
| 60 | |
| 61 | =item * |
| 62 | |
| 63 | bytes upgraded to version 1.02 |
| 64 | |
| 65 | =item * |
| 66 | |
| 67 | Carp upgraded to version 1.04 |
| 68 | |
| 69 | =item * |
| 70 | |
| 71 | CGI upgraded to version 3.10 |
| 72 | |
| 73 | =item * |
| 74 | |
| 75 | Class::ISA upgraded to version 0.33 |
| 76 | |
| 77 | =item * |
| 78 | |
| 79 | Data::Dumper upgraded to version 2.121_02 |
| 80 | |
| 81 | =item * |
| 82 | |
| 83 | DB_File upgraded to version 1.811 |
| 84 | |
| 85 | =item * |
| 86 | |
| 87 | Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.06 |
| 88 | |
| 89 | =item * |
| 90 | |
| 91 | Digest upgraded to version 1.10 |
| 92 | |
| 93 | =item * |
| 94 | |
| 95 | Encode upgraded to version 2.10 |
| 96 | |
| 97 | =item * |
| 98 | |
| 99 | FileCache upgraded to version 1.05 |
| 100 | |
| 101 | =item * |
| 102 | |
| 103 | File::Path upgraded to version 1.07 |
| 104 | |
| 105 | =item * |
| 106 | |
| 107 | File::Temp upgraded to version 0.16 |
| 108 | |
| 109 | =item * |
| 110 | |
| 111 | IO::File upgraded to version 1.11 |
| 112 | |
| 113 | =item * |
| 114 | |
| 115 | IO::Socket upgraded to version 1.28 |
| 116 | |
| 117 | =item * |
| 118 | |
| 119 | Math::BigInt upgraded to version 1.77 |
| 120 | |
| 121 | =item * |
| 122 | |
| 123 | Math::BigRat upgraded to version 0.15 |
| 124 | |
| 125 | =item * |
| 126 | |
| 127 | overload upgraded to version 1.03 |
| 128 | |
| 129 | =item * |
| 130 | |
| 131 | PathTools upgraded to version 3.05 |
| 132 | |
| 133 | =item * |
| 134 | |
| 135 | Pod::HTML upgraded to version 1.0503 |
| 136 | |
| 137 | =item * |
| 138 | |
| 139 | Pod::Perldoc upgraded to version 3.14 |
| 140 | |
| 141 | =item * |
| 142 | |
| 143 | Pod::LaTeX upgraded to version 0.58 |
| 144 | |
| 145 | =item * |
| 146 | |
| 147 | Pod::Parser upgraded to version 1.30 |
| 148 | |
| 149 | =item * |
| 150 | |
| 151 | Symbol upgraded to version 1.06 |
| 152 | |
| 153 | =item * |
| 154 | |
| 155 | Term::ANSIColor upgraded to version 1.09 |
| 156 | |
| 157 | =item * |
| 158 | |
| 159 | Test::Harness upgraded to version 2.48 |
| 160 | |
| 161 | =item * |
| 162 | |
| 163 | Test::Simple upgraded to version 0.54 |
| 164 | |
| 165 | =item * |
| 166 | |
| 167 | Text::Wrap upgraded to version 2001.09293, to fix a bug when wrap() was |
| 168 | called with a non-space separator. |
| 169 | |
| 170 | =item * |
| 171 | |
| 172 | threads::shared upgraded to version 0.93 |
| 173 | |
| 174 | =item * |
| 175 | |
| 176 | Time::HiRes upgraded to version 1.66 |
| 177 | |
| 178 | =item * |
| 179 | |
| 180 | Time::Local upgraded to version 1.11 |
| 181 | |
| 182 | =item * |
| 183 | |
| 184 | Unicode::Normalize upgraded to version 0.32 |
| 185 | |
| 186 | =item * |
| 187 | |
| 188 | utf8 upgraded to version 1.05 |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =item * |
| 191 | |
| 192 | Win32 upgraded to version 0.24, which provides Win32::GetFileVersion |
| 193 | |
| 194 | =back |
| 195 | |
| 196 | =head1 Utility Changes |
| 197 | |
| 198 | =head2 find2perl enhancements |
| 199 | |
| 200 | C<find2perl> has new options C<-iname>, C<-path> and C<-ipath>. |
| 201 | |
| 202 | =head1 Performance Enhancements |
| 203 | |
| 204 | The internal pointer mapping hash used during ithreads cloning now uses an |
| 205 | arena for memory allocation. In tests this reduced ithreads cloning time by |
| 206 | about 10%. |
| 207 | |
| 208 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements |
| 209 | |
| 210 | =over 4 |
| 211 | |
| 212 | =item * |
| 213 | |
| 214 | The Win32 "dmake" makefile.mk has been updated to make it compatible |
| 215 | with the latest versions of dmake. |
| 216 | |
| 217 | =item * |
| 218 | |
| 219 | C<PERL_MALLOC>, C<DEBUG_MSTATS>, C<PERL_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT> and C<NO_HASH_SEED> |
| 220 | should now work in Win32 makefiles. |
| 221 | |
| 222 | =back |
| 223 | |
| 224 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes |
| 225 | |
| 226 | =over 4 |
| 227 | |
| 228 | =item * |
| 229 | |
| 230 | The socket() function on Win32 has been fixed so that it is able to use |
| 231 | transport providers which specify a protocol of 0 (meaning any protocol |
| 232 | is allowed) once more. (This was broken in 5.8.6, and typically caused |
| 233 | the use of ICMP sockets to fail.) |
| 234 | |
| 235 | =item * |
| 236 | |
| 237 | Another obscure bug involving C<substr> and UTF-8 caused by bad internal |
| 238 | offset caching has been identified and fixed. |
| 239 | |
| 240 | =item * |
| 241 | |
| 242 | A bug involving the loading of UTF-8 tables by the regexp engine has been |
| 243 | fixed - code such as C<"\x{100}" =~ /[[:print:]]/> will no longer give |
| 244 | corrupt results. |
| 245 | |
| 246 | =item * |
| 247 | |
| 248 | Case conversion operations such as C<uc> on a long Unicode string could |
| 249 | exhaust memory. This has been fixed. |
| 250 | |
| 251 | =item * |
| 252 | |
| 253 | C<index>/C<rindex> were buggy for some combinations of Unicode and |
| 254 | non-Unicode data. This has been fixed. |
| 255 | |
| 256 | =item * |
| 257 | |
| 258 | C<read> (and presumably C<sysread>) would expose the UTF-8 internals when |
| 259 | reading from a byte oriented file handle into a UTF-8 scalar. This has |
| 260 | been fixed. |
| 261 | |
| 262 | =item * |
| 263 | |
| 264 | Several C<pack>/C<unpack> bug fixes: |
| 265 | |
| 266 | =over 4 |
| 267 | |
| 268 | =item * |
| 269 | |
| 270 | Checksums with C<b> or C<B> formats were broken. |
| 271 | |
| 272 | =item * |
| 273 | |
| 274 | C<unpack> checksums could overflow with the C<C> format. |
| 275 | |
| 276 | =item * |
| 277 | |
| 278 | C<U0> and C<C0> are now scoped to C<()> C<pack> sub-templates. |
| 279 | |
| 280 | =item * |
| 281 | |
| 282 | Counted length prefixes now don't change C<C0>/C<U0> mode. |
| 283 | |
| 284 | =item * |
| 285 | |
| 286 | C<pack> C<Z0> used to destroy the preceding character. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | =item * |
| 289 | |
| 290 | C<P>/C<p> C<pack> formats used to only recognise literal C<undef> |
| 291 | |
| 292 | =back |
| 293 | |
| 294 | =item * |
| 295 | |
| 296 | Using closures with ithreads could cause perl to crash. This was due to |
| 297 | failure to correctly lock internal OP structures, and has been fixed. |
| 298 | |
| 299 | =item * |
| 300 | |
| 301 | The return value of C<close> now correctly reflects any file errors that |
| 302 | occur while flushing the handle's data, instead of just giving failure if |
| 303 | the actual underlying file close operation failed. |
| 304 | |
| 305 | =item * |
| 306 | |
| 307 | C<not() || 1> used to segfault. C<not()> now behaves like C<not(0)>, which was |
| 308 | the pre 5.6.0 behaviour. |
| 309 | |
| 310 | =item * |
| 311 | |
| 312 | C<h2ph> has various enhancements to cope with constructs in header files that |
| 313 | used to result in incorrect or invalid output. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | =back |
| 316 | |
| 317 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics |
| 318 | |
| 319 | There is a new taint error, "%ENV is aliased to %s". This error is thrown |
| 320 | when taint checks are enabled and when C<*ENV> has been aliased, so that |
| 321 | C<%ENV> has no env-magic anymore and hence the environment cannot be verified |
| 322 | as taint-free. |
| 323 | |
| 324 | The internals of C<pack> and C<unpack> have been updated. All legitimate |
| 325 | templates should work as before, but there may be some changes in the error |
| 326 | reported for complex failure cases. Any behaviour changes for non-error cases |
| 327 | are bugs, and should be reported. |
| 328 | |
| 329 | =head1 Changed Internals |
| 330 | |
| 331 | There has been a fair amount of refactoring of the C<C> source code, partly to |
| 332 | make it tidier and more maintainable. The resulting object code and the |
| 333 | C<perl> binary may well be smaller than 5.8.6, and hopefully faster in some |
| 334 | cases, but apart from this there should be no user-detectable changes. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | C<${^UTF8LOCALE}> has been added to give perl space access to C<PL_utf8locale>. |
| 337 | |
| 338 | The size of the arenas used to allocate SV heads and most SV bodies can now |
| 339 | be changed at compile time. The old size was 1008 bytes, the new default size |
| 340 | is 4080 bytes. |
| 341 | |
| 342 | =head1 Known Problems |
| 343 | |
| 344 | Unicode strings returned from overloaded operators can be buggy. This is a |
| 345 | long standing bug reported since 5.8.6 was released, but we do not yet have |
| 346 | a suitable fix for it. |
| 347 | |
| 348 | =head1 Platform Specific Problems |
| 349 | |
| 350 | On UNICOS, lib/Math/BigInt/t/bigintc.t hangs burning CPU. |
| 351 | ext/B/t/bytecode.t and ext/Socket/t/socketpair.t both fail tests. |
| 352 | These are unlikely to be resolved, as our valiant UNICOS porter's last |
| 353 | Cray is being decommissioned. |
| 354 | |
| 355 | =head1 Reporting Bugs |
| 356 | |
| 357 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 358 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 359 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be |
| 360 | information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page. |
| 361 | |
| 362 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug> |
| 363 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 364 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 365 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 366 | analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search |
| 367 | the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ |
| 368 | |
| 369 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 370 | |
| 371 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 372 | |
| 373 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. |
| 374 | |
| 375 | The F<README> file for general stuff. |
| 376 | |
| 377 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. |
| 378 | |
| 379 | =cut |