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| 33 | .ds C+ C\v'-.1v'\h'-1p'\s-2+\h'-1p'+\s0\v'.1v'\h'-1p' |
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| 127 | .\} |
| 128 | .rm #[ #] #H #V #F C |
| 129 | .\" ======================================================================== |
| 130 | .\" |
| 131 | .IX Title "PERL581DELTA 1" |
| 132 | .TH PERL581DELTA 1 "2006-01-07" "perl v5.8.8" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide" |
| 133 | .SH "NAME" |
| 134 | perl581delta \- what is new for perl v5.8.1 |
| 135 | .SH "DESCRIPTION" |
| 136 | .IX Header "DESCRIPTION" |
| 137 | This document describes differences between the 5.8.0 release and |
| 138 | the 5.8.1 release. |
| 139 | .PP |
| 140 | If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.6.1, first read |
| 141 | the perl58delta, which describes differences between 5.6.0 and |
| 142 | 5.8.0. |
| 143 | .PP |
| 144 | In case you are wondering about 5.6.1, it was bug-fix-wise rather |
| 145 | identical to the development release 5.7.1. Confused? This timeline |
| 146 | hopefully helps a bit: it lists the new major releases, their maintenance |
| 147 | releases, and the development releases. |
| 148 | .PP |
| 149 | .Vb 1 |
| 150 | \& New Maintenance Development |
| 151 | .Ve |
| 152 | .PP |
| 153 | .Vb 8 |
| 154 | \& 5.6.0 2000-Mar-22 |
| 155 | \& 5.7.0 2000-Sep-02 |
| 156 | \& 5.6.1 2001-Apr-08 |
| 157 | \& 5.7.1 2001-Apr-09 |
| 158 | \& 5.7.2 2001-Jul-13 |
| 159 | \& 5.7.3 2002-Mar-05 |
| 160 | \& 5.8.0 2002-Jul-18 |
| 161 | \& 5.8.1 2003-Sep-25 |
| 162 | .Ve |
| 163 | .SH "Incompatible Changes" |
| 164 | .IX Header "Incompatible Changes" |
| 165 | .Sh "Hash Randomisation" |
| 166 | .IX Subsection "Hash Randomisation" |
| 167 | Mainly due to security reasons, the \*(L"random ordering\*(R" of hashes |
| 168 | has been made even more random. Previously while the order of hash |
| 169 | elements from \fIkeys()\fR, \fIvalues()\fR, and \fIeach()\fR was essentially random, |
| 170 | it was still repeatable. Now, however, the order varies between |
| 171 | different runs of Perl. |
| 172 | .PP |
| 173 | \&\fBPerl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys\fR, and the |
| 174 | ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of |
| 175 | Perl 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and |
| 176 | continues to be, affected by the insertion order. |
| 177 | .PP |
| 178 | The added randomness may affect applications. |
| 179 | .PP |
| 180 | One possible scenario is when output of an application has included |
| 181 | hash data. For example, if you have used the Data::Dumper module to |
| 182 | dump data into different files, and then compared the files to see |
| 183 | whether the data has changed, now you will have false positives since |
| 184 | the order in which hashes are dumped will vary. In general the cure |
| 185 | is to sort the keys (or the values); in particular for Data::Dumper to |
| 186 | use the \f(CW\*(C`Sortkeys\*(C'\fR option. If some particular order is really |
| 187 | important, use tied hashes: for example the Tie::IxHash module |
| 188 | which by default preserves the order in which the hash elements |
| 189 | were added. |
| 190 | .PP |
| 191 | More subtle problem is reliance on the order of \*(L"global destruction\*(R". |
| 192 | That is what happens at the end of execution: Perl destroys all data |
| 193 | structures, including user data. If your destructors (the \s-1DESTROY\s0 |
| 194 | subroutines) have assumed any particular ordering to the global |
| 195 | destruction, there might be problems ahead. For example, in a |
| 196 | destructor of one object you cannot assume that objects of any other |
| 197 | class are still available, unless you hold a reference to them. |
| 198 | If the environment variable \s-1PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL\s0 is set to a non-zero |
| 199 | value, or if Perl is exiting a spawned thread, it will also destruct |
| 200 | the ordinary references and the symbol tables that are no longer in use. |
| 201 | You can't call a class method or an ordinary function on a class that |
| 202 | has been collected that way. |
| 203 | .PP |
| 204 | The hash randomisation is certain to reveal hidden assumptions about |
| 205 | some particular ordering of hash elements, and outright bugs: it |
| 206 | revealed a few bugs in the Perl core and core modules. |
| 207 | .PP |
| 208 | To disable the hash randomisation in runtime, set the environment |
| 209 | variable \s-1PERL_HASH_SEED\s0 to 0 (zero) before running Perl (for more |
| 210 | information see \*(L"\s-1PERL_HASH_SEED\s0\*(R" in perlrun), or to disable the feature |
| 211 | completely in compile time, compile with \f(CW\*(C`\-DNO_HASH_SEED\*(C'\fR (see \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR). |
| 212 | .PP |
| 213 | See \*(L"Algorithmic Complexity Attacks\*(R" in perlsec for the original |
| 214 | rationale behind this change. |
| 215 | .Sh "\s-1UTF\-8\s0 On Filehandles No Longer Activated By Locale" |
| 216 | .IX Subsection "UTF-8 On Filehandles No Longer Activated By Locale" |
| 217 | In Perl 5.8.0 all filehandles, including the standard filehandles, |
| 218 | were implicitly set to be in Unicode \s-1UTF\-8\s0 if the locale settings |
| 219 | indicated the use of \s-1UTF\-8\s0. This feature caused too many problems, |
| 220 | so the feature was turned off and redesigned: see \*(L"Core Enhancements\*(R". |
| 221 | .ie n .Sh "Single-number v\-strings are no longer v\-strings before ""=>""" |
| 222 | .el .Sh "Single-number v\-strings are no longer v\-strings before ``=>''" |
| 223 | .IX Subsection "Single-number v-strings are no longer v-strings before =>" |
| 224 | The version strings or v\-strings (see \*(L"Version Strings\*(R" in perldata) |
| 225 | feature introduced in Perl 5.6.0 has been a source of some confusion\*(-- |
| 226 | especially when the user did not want to use it, but Perl thought it |
| 227 | knew better. Especially troublesome has been the feature that before |
| 228 | a \*(L"=>\*(R" a version string (a \*(L"v\*(R" followed by digits) has been interpreted |
| 229 | as a v\-string instead of a string literal. In other words: |
| 230 | .PP |
| 231 | .Vb 1 |
| 232 | \& %h = ( v65 => 42 ); |
| 233 | .Ve |
| 234 | .PP |
| 235 | has meant since Perl 5.6.0 |
| 236 | .PP |
| 237 | .Vb 1 |
| 238 | \& %h = ( 'A' => 42 ); |
| 239 | .Ve |
| 240 | .PP |
| 241 | (at least in platforms of \s-1ASCII\s0 progeny) Perl 5.8.1 restores the |
| 242 | more natural interpretation |
| 243 | .PP |
| 244 | .Vb 1 |
| 245 | \& %h = ( 'v65' => 42 ); |
| 246 | .Ve |
| 247 | .PP |
| 248 | The multi-number v\-strings like v65.66 and 65.66.67 still continue to |
| 249 | be v\-strings in Perl 5.8. |
| 250 | .Sh "(Win32) The \-C Switch Has Been Repurposed" |
| 251 | .IX Subsection "(Win32) The -C Switch Has Been Repurposed" |
| 252 | The \-C switch has changed in an incompatible way. The old semantics |
| 253 | of this switch only made sense in Win32 and only in the \*(L"use utf8\*(R" |
| 254 | universe in 5.6.x releases, and do not make sense for the Unicode |
| 255 | implementation in 5.8.0. Since this switch could not have been used |
| 256 | by anyone, it has been repurposed. The behavior that this switch |
| 257 | enabled in 5.6.x releases may be supported in a transparent, |
| 258 | data-dependent fashion in a future release. |
| 259 | .PP |
| 260 | For the new life of this switch, see \*(L"\s-1UTF\-8\s0 no longer default under \s-1UTF\-8\s0 locales\*(R", and \*(L"\-C\*(R" in perlrun. |
| 261 | .Sh "(Win32) The /d Switch Of cmd.exe" |
| 262 | .IX Subsection "(Win32) The /d Switch Of cmd.exe" |
| 263 | Perl 5.8.1 uses the /d switch when running the cmd.exe shell |
| 264 | internally for \fIsystem()\fR, backticks, and when opening pipes to external |
| 265 | programs. The extra switch disables the execution of AutoRun commands |
| 266 | from the registry, which is generally considered undesirable when |
| 267 | running external programs. If you wish to retain compatibility with |
| 268 | the older behavior, set \s-1PERL5SHELL\s0 in your environment to \f(CW\*(C`cmd /x/c\*(C'\fR. |
| 269 | .SH "Core Enhancements" |
| 270 | .IX Header "Core Enhancements" |
| 271 | .Sh "\s-1UTF\-8\s0 no longer default under \s-1UTF\-8\s0 locales" |
| 272 | .IX Subsection "UTF-8 no longer default under UTF-8 locales" |
| 273 | In Perl 5.8.0 many Unicode features were introduced. One of them |
| 274 | was found to be of more nuisance than benefit: the automagic |
| 275 | (and silent) \*(L"UTF\-8\-ification\*(R" of filehandles, including the |
| 276 | standard filehandles, if the user's locale settings indicated |
| 277 | use of \s-1UTF\-8\s0. |
| 278 | .PP |
| 279 | For example, if you had \f(CW\*(C`en_US.UTF\-8\*(C'\fR as your locale, your \s-1STDIN\s0 and |
| 280 | \&\s-1STDOUT\s0 were automatically \*(L"\s-1UTF\-8\s0\*(R", in other words an implicit |
| 281 | binmode(..., \*(L":utf8\*(R") was made. This meant that trying to print, say, |
| 282 | \&\fIchr\fR\|(0xff), ended up printing the bytes 0xc3 0xbf. Hardly what |
| 283 | you had in mind unless you were aware of this feature of Perl 5.8.0. |
| 284 | The problem is that the vast majority of people weren't: for example |
| 285 | in RedHat releases 8 and 9 the \fBdefault\fR locale setting is \s-1UTF\-8\s0, so |
| 286 | all RedHat users got \s-1UTF\-8\s0 filehandles, whether they wanted it or not. |
| 287 | The pain was intensified by the Unicode implementation of Perl 5.8.0 |
| 288 | (still) having nasty bugs, especially related to the use of s/// and |
| 289 | tr///. (Bugs that have been fixed in 5.8.1) |
| 290 | .PP |
| 291 | Therefore a decision was made to backtrack the feature and change it |
| 292 | from implicit silent default to explicit conscious option. The new |
| 293 | Perl command line option \f(CW\*(C`\-C\*(C'\fR and its counterpart environment |
| 294 | variable \s-1PERL_UNICODE\s0 can now be used to control how Perl and Unicode |
| 295 | interact at interfaces like I/O and for example the command line |
| 296 | arguments. See \*(L"\-C\*(R" in perlrun and \*(L"\s-1PERL_UNICODE\s0\*(R" in perlrun for more |
| 297 | information. |
| 298 | .Sh "Unsafe signals again available" |
| 299 | .IX Subsection "Unsafe signals again available" |
| 300 | In Perl 5.8.0 the so-called \*(L"safe signals\*(R" were introduced. This |
| 301 | means that Perl no longer handles signals immediately but instead |
| 302 | \&\*(L"between opcodes\*(R", when it is safe to do so. The earlier immediate |
| 303 | handling easily could corrupt the internal state of Perl, resulting |
| 304 | in mysterious crashes. |
| 305 | .PP |
| 306 | However, the new safer model has its problems too. Because now an |
| 307 | opcode, a basic unit of Perl execution, is never interrupted but |
| 308 | instead let to run to completion, certain operations that can take a |
| 309 | long time now really do take a long time. For example, certain |
| 310 | network operations have their own blocking and timeout mechanisms, and |
| 311 | being able to interrupt them immediately would be nice. |
| 312 | .PP |
| 313 | Therefore perl 5.8.1 introduces a \*(L"backdoor\*(R" to restore the pre\-5.8.0 |
| 314 | (pre\-5.7.3, really) signal behaviour. Just set the environment variable |
| 315 | \&\s-1PERL_SIGNALS\s0 to \f(CW\*(C`unsafe\*(C'\fR, and the old immediate (and unsafe) |
| 316 | signal handling behaviour returns. See \*(L"\s-1PERL_SIGNALS\s0\*(R" in perlrun |
| 317 | and \*(L"Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)\*(R" in perlipc. |
| 318 | .PP |
| 319 | In completely unrelated news, you can now use safe signals with |
| 320 | POSIX::SigAction. See \*(L"POSIX::SigAction\*(R" in \s-1POSIX\s0. |
| 321 | .Sh "Tied Arrays with Negative Array Indices" |
| 322 | .IX Subsection "Tied Arrays with Negative Array Indices" |
| 323 | Formerly, the indices passed to \f(CW\*(C`FETCH\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`STORE\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`EXISTS\*(C'\fR, and |
| 324 | \&\f(CW\*(C`DELETE\*(C'\fR methods in tied array class were always non\-negative. If |
| 325 | the actual argument was negative, Perl would call \s-1FETCHSIZE\s0 implicitly |
| 326 | and add the result to the index before passing the result to the tied |
| 327 | array method. This behaviour is now optional. If the tied array class |
| 328 | contains a package variable named \f(CW$NEGATIVE_INDICES\fR which is set to |
| 329 | a true value, negative values will be passed to \f(CW\*(C`FETCH\*(C'\fR, \f(CW\*(C`STORE\*(C'\fR, |
| 330 | \&\f(CW\*(C`EXISTS\*(C'\fR, and \f(CW\*(C`DELETE\*(C'\fR unchanged. |
| 331 | .Sh "local ${$x}" |
| 332 | .IX Subsection "local ${$x}" |
| 333 | The syntaxes |
| 334 | .PP |
| 335 | .Vb 3 |
| 336 | \& local ${$x} |
| 337 | \& local @{$x} |
| 338 | \& local %{$x} |
| 339 | .Ve |
| 340 | .PP |
| 341 | now do localise variables, given that the \f(CW$x\fR is a valid variable name. |
| 342 | .Sh "Unicode Character Database 4.0.0" |
| 343 | .IX Subsection "Unicode Character Database 4.0.0" |
| 344 | The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has |
| 345 | been updated to 4.0.0 from 3.2.0. This means for example that the |
| 346 | Unicode character properties are as in Unicode 4.0.0. |
| 347 | .Sh "Deprecation Warnings" |
| 348 | .IX Subsection "Deprecation Warnings" |
| 349 | There is one new feature deprecation. Perl 5.8.0 forgot to add |
| 350 | some deprecation warnings, these warnings have now been added. |
| 351 | Finally, a reminder of an impending feature removal. |
| 352 | .PP |
| 353 | \fI(Reminder) Pseudo-hashes are deprecated (really)\fR |
| 354 | .IX Subsection "(Reminder) Pseudo-hashes are deprecated (really)" |
| 355 | .PP |
| 356 | Pseudo-hashes were deprecated in Perl 5.8.0 and will be removed in |
| 357 | Perl 5.10.0, see perl58delta for details. Each attempt to access |
| 358 | pseudo-hashes will trigger the warning \f(CW\*(C`Pseudo\-hashes are deprecated\*(C'\fR. |
| 359 | If you really want to continue using pseudo-hashes but not to see the |
| 360 | deprecation warnings, use: |
| 361 | .PP |
| 362 | .Vb 1 |
| 363 | \& no warnings 'deprecated'; |
| 364 | .Ve |
| 365 | .PP |
| 366 | Or you can continue to use the fields pragma, but please don't |
| 367 | expect the data structures to be pseudohashes any more. |
| 368 | .PP |
| 369 | \fI(Reminder) 5.005\-style threads are deprecated (really)\fR |
| 370 | .IX Subsection "(Reminder) 5.005-style threads are deprecated (really)" |
| 371 | .PP |
| 372 | 5.005\-style threads (activated by \f(CW\*(C`use Thread;\*(C'\fR) were deprecated in |
| 373 | Perl 5.8.0 and will be removed after Perl 5.8, see perl58delta for |
| 374 | details. Each 5.005\-style thread creation will trigger the warning |
| 375 | \&\f(CW\*(C`5.005 threads are deprecated\*(C'\fR. If you really want to continue |
| 376 | using the 5.005 threads but not to see the deprecation warnings, use: |
| 377 | .PP |
| 378 | .Vb 1 |
| 379 | \& no warnings 'deprecated'; |
| 380 | .Ve |
| 381 | .PP |
| 382 | \fI(Reminder) The $* variable is deprecated (really)\fR |
| 383 | .IX Subsection "(Reminder) The $* variable is deprecated (really)" |
| 384 | .PP |
| 385 | The \f(CW$*\fR variable controlling multi-line matching has been deprecated |
| 386 | and will be removed after 5.8. The variable has been deprecated for a |
| 387 | long time, and a deprecation warning \f(CW\*(C`Use of $* is deprecated\*(C'\fR is given, |
| 388 | now the variable will just finally be removed. The functionality has |
| 389 | been supplanted by the \f(CW\*(C`/s\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`/m\*(C'\fR modifiers on pattern matching. |
| 390 | If you really want to continue using the \f(CW$*\fR\-variable but not to see |
| 391 | the deprecation warnings, use: |
| 392 | .PP |
| 393 | .Vb 1 |
| 394 | \& no warnings 'deprecated'; |
| 395 | .Ve |
| 396 | .Sh "Miscellaneous Enhancements" |
| 397 | .IX Subsection "Miscellaneous Enhancements" |
| 398 | \&\f(CW\*(C`map\*(C'\fR in void context is no longer expensive. \f(CW\*(C`map\*(C'\fR is now context |
| 399 | aware, and will not construct a list if called in void context. |
| 400 | .PP |
| 401 | If a socket gets closed by the server while printing to it, the client |
| 402 | now gets a \s-1SIGPIPE\s0. While this new feature was not planned, it fell |
| 403 | naturally out of PerlIO changes, and is to be considered an accidental |
| 404 | feature. |
| 405 | .PP |
| 406 | PerlIO::get_layers(\s-1FH\s0) returns the names of the PerlIO layers |
| 407 | active on a filehandle. |
| 408 | .PP |
| 409 | PerlIO::via layers can now have an optional \s-1UTF8\s0 method to |
| 410 | indicate whether the layer wants to \*(L"auto\-:utf8\*(R" the stream. |
| 411 | .PP |
| 412 | \&\fIutf8::is_utf8()\fR has been added as a quick way to test whether |
| 413 | a scalar is encoded internally in \s-1UTF\-8\s0 (Unicode). |
| 414 | .SH "Modules and Pragmata" |
| 415 | .IX Header "Modules and Pragmata" |
| 416 | .Sh "Updated Modules And Pragmata" |
| 417 | .IX Subsection "Updated Modules And Pragmata" |
| 418 | The following modules and pragmata have been updated since Perl 5.8.0: |
| 419 | .IP "base" 4 |
| 420 | .IX Item "base" |
| 421 | .PD 0 |
| 422 | .IP "B::Bytecode" 4 |
| 423 | .IX Item "B::Bytecode" |
| 424 | .PD |
| 425 | In much better shape than it used to be. Still far from perfect, but |
| 426 | maybe worth a try. |
| 427 | .IP "B::Concise" 4 |
| 428 | .IX Item "B::Concise" |
| 429 | .PD 0 |
| 430 | .IP "B::Deparse" 4 |
| 431 | .IX Item "B::Deparse" |
| 432 | .IP "Benchmark" 4 |
| 433 | .IX Item "Benchmark" |
| 434 | .PD |
| 435 | An optional feature, \f(CW\*(C`:hireswallclock\*(C'\fR, now allows for high |
| 436 | resolution wall clock times (uses Time::HiRes). |
| 437 | .IP "ByteLoader" 4 |
| 438 | .IX Item "ByteLoader" |
| 439 | See B::Bytecode. |
| 440 | .IP "bytes" 4 |
| 441 | .IX Item "bytes" |
| 442 | Now has bytes::substr. |
| 443 | .IP "\s-1CGI\s0" 4 |
| 444 | .IX Item "CGI" |
| 445 | .PD 0 |
| 446 | .IP "charnames" 4 |
| 447 | .IX Item "charnames" |
| 448 | .PD |
| 449 | One can now have custom character name aliases. |
| 450 | .IP "\s-1CPAN\s0" 4 |
| 451 | .IX Item "CPAN" |
| 452 | There is now a simple command line frontend to the \s-1CPAN\s0.pm |
| 453 | module called \fIcpan\fR. |
| 454 | .IP "Data::Dumper" 4 |
| 455 | .IX Item "Data::Dumper" |
| 456 | A new option, Pair, allows choosing the separator between hash keys |
| 457 | and values. |
| 458 | .IP "DB_File" 4 |
| 459 | .IX Item "DB_File" |
| 460 | .PD 0 |
| 461 | .IP "Devel::PPPort" 4 |
| 462 | .IX Item "Devel::PPPort" |
| 463 | .IP "Digest::MD5" 4 |
| 464 | .IX Item "Digest::MD5" |
| 465 | .IP "Encode" 4 |
| 466 | .IX Item "Encode" |
| 467 | .PD |
| 468 | Significant updates on the encoding pragma functionality |
| 469 | (tr/// and the \s-1DATA\s0 filehandle, formats). |
| 470 | .Sp |
| 471 | If a filehandle has been marked as to have an encoding, unmappable |
| 472 | characters are detected already during input, not later (when the |
| 473 | corrupted data is being used). |
| 474 | .Sp |
| 475 | The \s-1ISO\s0 8859\-6 conversion table has been corrected (the 0x30..0x39 |
| 476 | erroneously mapped to U+0660..U+0669, instead of U+0030..U+0039). The |
| 477 | \&\s-1GSM\s0 03.38 conversion did not handle escape sequences correctly. The |
| 478 | \&\s-1UTF\-7\s0 encoding has been added (making Encode feature-complete with |
| 479 | Unicode::String). |
| 480 | .IP "fields" 4 |
| 481 | .IX Item "fields" |
| 482 | .PD 0 |
| 483 | .IP "libnet" 4 |
| 484 | .IX Item "libnet" |
| 485 | .IP "Math::BigInt" 4 |
| 486 | .IX Item "Math::BigInt" |
| 487 | .PD |
| 488 | A lot of bugs have been fixed since v1.60, the version included in Perl |
| 489 | v5.8.0. Especially noteworthy are the bug in Calc that caused div and mod to |
| 490 | fail for some large values, and the fixes to the handling of bad inputs. |
| 491 | .Sp |
| 492 | Some new features were added, e.g. the \fIbroot()\fR method, you can now pass |
| 493 | parameters to \fIconfig()\fR to change some settings at runtime, and it is now |
| 494 | possible to trap the creation of NaN and infinity. |
| 495 | .Sp |
| 496 | As usual, some optimizations took place and made the math overall a tad |
| 497 | faster. In some cases, quite a lot faster, actually. Especially alternative |
| 498 | libraries like Math::BigInt::GMP benefit from this. In addition, a lot of the |
| 499 | quite clunky routines like \fIfsqrt()\fR and \fIflog()\fR are now much much faster. |
| 500 | .IP "MIME::Base64" 4 |
| 501 | .IX Item "MIME::Base64" |
| 502 | .PD 0 |
| 503 | .IP "\s-1NEXT\s0" 4 |
| 504 | .IX Item "NEXT" |
| 505 | .PD |
| 506 | Diamond inheritance now works. |
| 507 | .IP "Net::Ping" 4 |
| 508 | .IX Item "Net::Ping" |
| 509 | .PD 0 |
| 510 | .IP "PerlIO::scalar" 4 |
| 511 | .IX Item "PerlIO::scalar" |
| 512 | .PD |
| 513 | Reading from non-string scalars (like the special variables, see |
| 514 | perlvar) now works. |
| 515 | .IP "podlators" 4 |
| 516 | .IX Item "podlators" |
| 517 | .PD 0 |
| 518 | .IP "Pod::LaTeX" 4 |
| 519 | .IX Item "Pod::LaTeX" |
| 520 | .IP "PodParsers" 4 |
| 521 | .IX Item "PodParsers" |
| 522 | .IP "Pod::Perldoc" 4 |
| 523 | .IX Item "Pod::Perldoc" |
| 524 | .PD |
| 525 | Complete rewrite. As a side\-effect, no longer refuses to startup when |
| 526 | run by root. |
| 527 | .IP "Scalar::Util" 4 |
| 528 | .IX Item "Scalar::Util" |
| 529 | New utilities: refaddr, isvstring, looks_like_number, set_prototype. |
| 530 | .IP "Storable" 4 |
| 531 | .IX Item "Storable" |
| 532 | Can now store code references (via B::Deparse, so not foolproof). |
| 533 | .IP "strict" 4 |
| 534 | .IX Item "strict" |
| 535 | Earlier versions of the strict pragma did not check the parameters |
| 536 | implicitly passed to its \*(L"import\*(R" (use) and \*(L"unimport\*(R" (no) routine. |
| 537 | This caused the false idiom such as: |
| 538 | .Sp |
| 539 | .Vb 2 |
| 540 | \& use strict qw(@ISA); |
| 541 | \& @ISA = qw(Foo); |
| 542 | .Ve |
| 543 | .Sp |
| 544 | This however (probably) raised the false expectation that the strict |
| 545 | refs, vars and subs were being enforced (and that \f(CW@ISA\fR was somehow |
| 546 | \&\*(L"declared\*(R"). But the strict refs, vars, and subs are \fBnot\fR enforced |
| 547 | when using this false idiom. |
| 548 | .Sp |
| 549 | Starting from Perl 5.8.1, the above \fBwill\fR cause an error to be |
| 550 | raised. This may cause programs which used to execute seemingly |
| 551 | correctly without warnings and errors to fail when run under 5.8.1. |
| 552 | This happens because |
| 553 | .Sp |
| 554 | .Vb 1 |
| 555 | \& use strict qw(@ISA); |
| 556 | .Ve |
| 557 | .Sp |
| 558 | will now fail with the error: |
| 559 | .Sp |
| 560 | .Vb 1 |
| 561 | \& Unknown 'strict' tag(s) '@ISA' |
| 562 | .Ve |
| 563 | .Sp |
| 564 | The remedy to this problem is to replace this code with the correct idiom: |
| 565 | .Sp |
| 566 | .Vb 3 |
| 567 | \& use strict; |
| 568 | \& use vars qw(@ISA); |
| 569 | \& @ISA = qw(Foo); |
| 570 | .Ve |
| 571 | .IP "Term::ANSIcolor" 4 |
| 572 | .IX Item "Term::ANSIcolor" |
| 573 | .PD 0 |
| 574 | .IP "Test::Harness" 4 |
| 575 | .IX Item "Test::Harness" |
| 576 | .PD |
| 577 | Now much more picky about extra or missing output from test scripts. |
| 578 | .IP "Test::More" 4 |
| 579 | .IX Item "Test::More" |
| 580 | .PD 0 |
| 581 | .IP "Test::Simple" 4 |
| 582 | .IX Item "Test::Simple" |
| 583 | .IP "Text::Balanced" 4 |
| 584 | .IX Item "Text::Balanced" |
| 585 | .IP "Time::HiRes" 4 |
| 586 | .IX Item "Time::HiRes" |
| 587 | .PD |
| 588 | Use of \fInanosleep()\fR, if available, allows mixing subsecond sleeps with |
| 589 | alarms. |
| 590 | .IP "threads" 4 |
| 591 | .IX Item "threads" |
| 592 | Several fixes, for example for \fIjoin()\fR problems and memory |
| 593 | leaks. In some platforms (like Linux) that use glibc the minimum memory |
| 594 | footprint of one ithread has been reduced by several hundred kilobytes. |
| 595 | .IP "threads::shared" 4 |
| 596 | .IX Item "threads::shared" |
| 597 | Many memory leaks have been fixed. |
| 598 | .IP "Unicode::Collate" 4 |
| 599 | .IX Item "Unicode::Collate" |
| 600 | .PD 0 |
| 601 | .IP "Unicode::Normalize" 4 |
| 602 | .IX Item "Unicode::Normalize" |
| 603 | .IP "Win32::GetFolderPath" 4 |
| 604 | .IX Item "Win32::GetFolderPath" |
| 605 | .IP "Win32::GetOSVersion" 4 |
| 606 | .IX Item "Win32::GetOSVersion" |
| 607 | .PD |
| 608 | Now returns extra information. |
| 609 | .SH "Utility Changes" |
| 610 | .IX Header "Utility Changes" |
| 611 | The \f(CW\*(C`h2xs\*(C'\fR utility now produces a more modern layout: |
| 612 | \&\fIFoo\-Bar/lib/Foo/Bar.pm\fR instead of \fIFoo/Bar/Bar.pm\fR. |
| 613 | Also, the boilerplate test is now called \fIt/Foo\-Bar.t\fR |
| 614 | instead of \fIt/1.t\fR. |
| 615 | .PP |
| 616 | The Perl debugger (\fIlib/perl5db.pl\fR) has now been extensively |
| 617 | documented and bugs found while documenting have been fixed. |
| 618 | .PP |
| 619 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perldoc\*(C'\fR has been rewritten from scratch to be more robust and |
| 620 | featureful. |
| 621 | .PP |
| 622 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perlcc \-B\*(C'\fR works now at least somewhat better, while \f(CW\*(C`perlcc \-c\*(C'\fR |
| 623 | is rather more broken. (The Perl compiler suite as a whole continues |
| 624 | to be experimental.) |
| 625 | .SH "New Documentation" |
| 626 | .IX Header "New Documentation" |
| 627 | perl573delta has been added to list the differences between the |
| 628 | (now quite obsolete) development releases 5.7.2 and 5.7.3. |
| 629 | .PP |
| 630 | perl58delta has been added: it is the perldelta of 5.8.0, detailing |
| 631 | the differences between 5.6.0 and 5.8.0. |
| 632 | .PP |
| 633 | perlartistic has been added: it is the Artistic License in pod format, |
| 634 | making it easier for modules to refer to it. |
| 635 | .PP |
| 636 | perlcheat has been added: it is a Perl cheat sheet. |
| 637 | .PP |
| 638 | perlgpl has been added: it is the \s-1GNU\s0 General Public License in pod |
| 639 | format, making it easier for modules to refer to it. |
| 640 | .PP |
| 641 | perlmacosx has been added to tell about the installation and use |
| 642 | of Perl in Mac \s-1OS\s0 X. |
| 643 | .PP |
| 644 | perlos400 has been added to tell about the installation and use |
| 645 | of Perl in \s-1OS/400\s0 \s-1PASE\s0. |
| 646 | .PP |
| 647 | perlreref has been added: it is a regular expressions quick reference. |
| 648 | .SH "Installation and Configuration Improvements" |
| 649 | .IX Header "Installation and Configuration Improvements" |
| 650 | The \s-1UNIX\s0 standard Perl location, \fI/usr/bin/perl\fR, is no longer |
| 651 | overwritten by default if it exists. This change was very prudent |
| 652 | because so many \s-1UNIX\s0 vendors already provide a \fI/usr/bin/perl\fR, |
| 653 | but simultaneously many system utilities may depend on that |
| 654 | exact version of Perl, so better not to overwrite it. |
| 655 | .PP |
| 656 | One can now specify installation directories for site and vendor man |
| 657 | and \s-1HTML\s0 pages, and site and vendor scripts. See \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR. |
| 658 | .PP |
| 659 | One can now specify a destination directory for Perl installation |
| 660 | by specifying the \s-1DESTDIR\s0 variable for \f(CW\*(C`make install\*(C'\fR. (This feature |
| 661 | is slightly different from the previous \f(CW\*(C`Configure \-Dinstallprefix=...\*(C'\fR.) |
| 662 | See \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR. |
| 663 | .PP |
| 664 | gcc versions 3.x introduced a new warning that caused a lot of noise |
| 665 | during Perl compilation: \f(CW\*(C`gcc \-Ialreadyknowndirectory (warning: |
| 666 | changing search order)\*(C'\fR. This warning has now been avoided by |
| 667 | Configure weeding out such directories before the compilation. |
| 668 | .PP |
| 669 | One can now build subsets of Perl core modules by using the |
| 670 | Configure flags \f(CW\*(C`\-Dnoextensions=...\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`\-Donlyextensions=...\*(C'\fR, |
| 671 | see \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR. |
| 672 | .Sh "Platform-specific enhancements" |
| 673 | .IX Subsection "Platform-specific enhancements" |
| 674 | In Cygwin Perl can now be built with threads (\f(CW\*(C`Configure \-Duseithreads\*(C'\fR). |
| 675 | This works with both Cygwin 1.3.22 and Cygwin 1.5.3. |
| 676 | .PP |
| 677 | In newer FreeBSD releases Perl 5.8.0 compilation failed because of |
| 678 | trying to use \fImalloc.h\fR, which in FreeBSD is just a dummy file, and |
| 679 | a fatal error to even try to use. Now \fImalloc.h\fR is not used. |
| 680 | .PP |
| 681 | Perl is now known to build also in Hitachi \s-1HI\-UXMPP\s0. |
| 682 | .PP |
| 683 | Perl is now known to build again in LynxOS. |
| 684 | .PP |
| 685 | Mac \s-1OS\s0 X now installs with Perl version number embedded in |
| 686 | installation directory names for easier upgrading of user-compiled |
| 687 | Perl, and the installation directories in general are more standard. |
| 688 | In other words, the default installation no longer breaks the |
| 689 | Apple-provided Perl. On the other hand, with \f(CW\*(C`Configure \-Dprefix=/usr\*(C'\fR |
| 690 | you can now really replace the Apple-supplied Perl (\fBplease be careful\fR). |
| 691 | .PP |
| 692 | Mac \s-1OS\s0 X now builds Perl statically by default. This change was done |
| 693 | mainly for faster startup times. The Apple-provided Perl is still |
| 694 | dynamically linked and shared, and you can enable the sharedness for |
| 695 | your own Perl builds by \f(CW\*(C`Configure \-Duseshrplib\*(C'\fR. |
| 696 | .PP |
| 697 | Perl has been ported to \s-1IBM\s0's \s-1OS/400\s0 \s-1PASE\s0 environment. The best way |
| 698 | to build a Perl for \s-1PASE\s0 is to use an \s-1AIX\s0 host as a cross-compilation |
| 699 | environment. See \s-1README\s0.os400. |
| 700 | .PP |
| 701 | Yet another cross-compilation option has been added: now Perl builds |
| 702 | on OpenZaurus, an Linux distribution based on Mandrake + Embedix for |
| 703 | the Sharp Zaurus \s-1PDA\s0. See the Cross/README file. |
| 704 | .PP |
| 705 | Tru64 when using gcc 3 drops the optimisation for \fItoke.c\fR to \f(CW\*(C`\-O2\*(C'\fR |
| 706 | because of gigantic memory use with the default \f(CW\*(C`\-O3\*(C'\fR. |
| 707 | .PP |
| 708 | Tru64 can now build Perl with the newer Berkeley DBs. |
| 709 | .PP |
| 710 | Building Perl on WinCE has been much enhanced, see \fI\s-1README\s0.ce\fR |
| 711 | and \fI\s-1README\s0.perlce\fR. |
| 712 | .SH "Selected Bug Fixes" |
| 713 | .IX Header "Selected Bug Fixes" |
| 714 | .Sh "Closures, eval and lexicals" |
| 715 | .IX Subsection "Closures, eval and lexicals" |
| 716 | There have been many fixes in the area of anonymous subs, lexicals and |
| 717 | closures. Although this means that Perl is now more \*(L"correct\*(R", it is |
| 718 | possible that some existing code will break that happens to rely on |
| 719 | the faulty behaviour. In practice this is unlikely unless your code |
| 720 | contains a very complex nesting of anonymous subs, evals and lexicals. |
| 721 | .Sh "Generic fixes" |
| 722 | .IX Subsection "Generic fixes" |
| 723 | If an input filehandle is marked \f(CW\*(C`:utf8\*(C'\fR and Perl sees illegal \s-1UTF\-8\s0 |
| 724 | coming in when doing \f(CW\*(C`<FH>\*(C'\fR, if warnings are enabled a warning is |
| 725 | immediately given \- instead of being silent about it and Perl being |
| 726 | unhappy about the broken data later. (The \f(CW\*(C`:encoding(utf8)\*(C'\fR layer |
| 727 | also works the same way.) |
| 728 | .PP |
| 729 | binmode(\s-1SOCKET\s0, \*(L":utf8\*(R") only worked on the input side, not on the |
| 730 | output side of the socket. Now it works both ways. |
| 731 | .PP |
| 732 | For threaded Perls certain system database functions like \fIgetpwent()\fR |
| 733 | and \fIgetgrent()\fR now grow their result buffer dynamically, instead of |
| 734 | failing. This means that at sites with lots of users and groups the |
| 735 | functions no longer fail by returning only partial results. |
| 736 | .PP |
| 737 | Perl 5.8.0 had accidentally broken the capability for users |
| 738 | to define their own uppercase<\->lowercase Unicode mappings |
| 739 | (as advertised by the Camel). This feature has been fixed and |
| 740 | is also documented better. |
| 741 | .PP |
| 742 | In 5.8.0 this |
| 743 | .PP |
| 744 | .Vb 1 |
| 745 | \& $some_unicode .= <FH>; |
| 746 | .Ve |
| 747 | .PP |
| 748 | didn't work correctly but instead corrupted the data. This has now |
| 749 | been fixed. |
| 750 | .PP |
| 751 | Tied methods like \s-1FETCH\s0 etc. may now safely access tied values, i.e. |
| 752 | resulting in a recursive call to \s-1FETCH\s0 etc. Remember to break the |
| 753 | recursion, though. |
| 754 | .PP |
| 755 | At startup Perl blocks the \s-1SIGFPE\s0 signal away since there isn't much |
| 756 | Perl can do about it. Previously this blocking was in effect also for |
| 757 | programs executed from within Perl. Now Perl restores the original |
| 758 | \&\s-1SIGFPE\s0 handling routine, whatever it was, before running external |
| 759 | programs. |
| 760 | .PP |
| 761 | Linenumbers in Perl scripts may now be greater than 65536, or 2**16. |
| 762 | (Perl scripts have always been able to be larger than that, it's just |
| 763 | that the linenumber for reported errors and warnings have \*(L"wrapped |
| 764 | around\*(R".) While scripts that large usually indicate a need to rethink |
| 765 | your code a bit, such Perl scripts do exist, for example as results |
| 766 | from generated code. Now linenumbers can go all the way to |
| 767 | 4294967296, or 2**32. |
| 768 | .Sh "Platform-specific fixes" |
| 769 | .IX Subsection "Platform-specific fixes" |
| 770 | Linux |
| 771 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 772 | Setting \f(CW$0\fR works again (with certain limitations that |
| 773 | Perl cannot do much about: see \*(L"$0\*(R" in perlvar) |
| 774 | .PP |
| 775 | HP-UX |
| 776 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 777 | Setting \f(CW$0\fR now works. |
| 778 | .PP |
| 779 | \&\s-1VMS\s0 |
| 780 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 781 | Configuration now tests for the presence of \f(CW\*(C`poll()\*(C'\fR, and IO::Poll |
| 782 | now uses the vendor-supplied function if detected. |
| 783 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 784 | A rare access violation at Perl start-up could occur if the Perl image was |
| 785 | installed with privileges or if there was an identifier with the |
| 786 | subsystem attribute set in the process's rightslist. Either of these |
| 787 | circumstances triggered tainting code that contained a pointer bug. |
| 788 | The faulty pointer arithmetic has been fixed. |
| 789 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 790 | The length limit on values (not keys) in the \f(CW%ENV\fR hash has been raised |
| 791 | from 255 bytes to 32640 bytes (except when the \s-1PERL_ENV_TABLES\s0 setting |
| 792 | overrides the default use of logical names for \f(CW%ENV\fR). If it is |
| 793 | necessary to access these long values from outside Perl, be aware that |
| 794 | they are implemented using search list logical names that store the |
| 795 | value in pieces, each 255\-byte piece (up to 128 of them) being an |
| 796 | element in the search list. When doing a lookup in \f(CW%ENV\fR from within |
| 797 | Perl, the elements are combined into a single value. The existing |
| 798 | VMS-specific ability to access individual elements of a search list |
| 799 | logical name via the \f(CW$ENV\fR{'foo;N'} syntax (where N is the search list |
| 800 | index) is unimpaired. |
| 801 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 802 | The piping implementation now uses local rather than global \s-1DCL\s0 |
| 803 | symbols for inter-process communication. |
| 804 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 805 | File::Find could become confused when navigating to a relative |
| 806 | directory whose name collided with a logical name. This problem has |
| 807 | been corrected by adding directory syntax to relative path names, thus |
| 808 | preventing logical name translation. |
| 809 | .PP |
| 810 | Win32 |
| 811 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 812 | A memory leak in the \fIfork()\fR emulation has been fixed. |
| 813 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 814 | The return value of the \fIioctl()\fR built-in function was accidentally |
| 815 | broken in 5.8.0. This has been corrected. |
| 816 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 817 | The internal message loop executed by perl during blocking operations |
| 818 | sometimes interfered with messages that were external to Perl. |
| 819 | This often resulted in blocking operations terminating prematurely or |
| 820 | returning incorrect results, when Perl was executing under environments |
| 821 | that could generate Windows messages. This has been corrected. |
| 822 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 823 | Pipes and sockets are now automatically in binary mode. |
| 824 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 825 | The four-argument form of \fIselect()\fR did not preserve $! (errno) properly |
| 826 | when there were errors in the underlying call. This is now fixed. |
| 827 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 828 | The \*(L"\s-1CR\s0 \s-1CR\s0 \s-1LF\s0\*(R" problem of has been fixed, binmode(\s-1FH\s0, \*(L":crlf\*(R") |
| 829 | is now effectively a no\-op. |
| 830 | .SH "New or Changed Diagnostics" |
| 831 | .IX Header "New or Changed Diagnostics" |
| 832 | All the warnings related to \fIpack()\fR and \fIunpack()\fR were made more |
| 833 | informative and consistent. |
| 834 | .ie n .Sh "Changed ""A thread exited while %d threads were running""" |
| 835 | .el .Sh "Changed ``A thread exited while \f(CW%d\fP threads were running''" |
| 836 | .IX Subsection "Changed A thread exited while %d threads were running" |
| 837 | The old version |
| 838 | .PP |
| 839 | .Vb 1 |
| 840 | \& A thread exited while %d other threads were still running |
| 841 | .Ve |
| 842 | .PP |
| 843 | was misleading because the \*(L"other\*(R" included also the thread giving |
| 844 | the warning. |
| 845 | .ie n .Sh "Removed ""Attempt to clear a restricted hash""" |
| 846 | .el .Sh "Removed ``Attempt to clear a restricted hash''" |
| 847 | .IX Subsection "Removed Attempt to clear a restricted hash" |
| 848 | It is not illegal to clear a restricted hash, so the warning |
| 849 | was removed. |
| 850 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine""" |
| 851 | .el .Sh "New ``Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine''" |
| 852 | .IX Subsection "New Illegal declaration of anonymous subroutine" |
| 853 | You must specify the block of code for \f(CW\*(C`sub\*(C'\fR. |
| 854 | .ie n .Sh "Changed ""Invalid range ""%s"" in transliteration operator""" |
| 855 | .el .Sh "Changed ``Invalid range ''%s`` in transliteration operator''" |
| 856 | .IX Subsection "Changed Invalid range %s in transliteration operator" |
| 857 | The old version |
| 858 | .PP |
| 859 | .Vb 1 |
| 860 | \& Invalid [] range "%s" in transliteration operator |
| 861 | .Ve |
| 862 | .PP |
| 863 | was simply wrong because there are no \*(L"[] ranges\*(R" in tr///. |
| 864 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Missing control char name in \ec""" |
| 865 | .el .Sh "New ``Missing control char name in \ec''" |
| 866 | .IX Subsection "New Missing control char name in c" |
| 867 | Self\-explanatory. |
| 868 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Newline in left-justified string for %s""" |
| 869 | .el .Sh "New ``Newline in left-justified string for \f(CW%s\fP''" |
| 870 | .IX Subsection "New Newline in left-justified string for %s" |
| 871 | The padding spaces would appear after the newline, which is |
| 872 | probably not what you had in mind. |
| 873 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator""" |
| 874 | .el .Sh "New ``Possible precedence problem on bitwise \f(CW%c\fP operator''" |
| 875 | .IX Subsection "New Possible precedence problem on bitwise %c operator" |
| 876 | If you think this |
| 877 | .PP |
| 878 | .Vb 1 |
| 879 | \& $x & $y == 0 |
| 880 | .Ve |
| 881 | .PP |
| 882 | tests whether the bitwise \s-1AND\s0 of \f(CW$x\fR and \f(CW$y\fR is zero, |
| 883 | you will like this warning. |
| 884 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Pseudo\-hashes are deprecated""" |
| 885 | .el .Sh "New ``Pseudo\-hashes are deprecated''" |
| 886 | .IX Subsection "New Pseudo-hashes are deprecated" |
| 887 | This warning should have been already in 5.8.0, since they are. |
| 888 | .ie n .Sh "New ""\fIread()\fP on %s\fP filehandle \f(CW%s""" |
| 889 | .el .Sh "New ``\fIread()\fP on \f(CW%s\fP filehandle \f(CW%s\fP''" |
| 890 | .IX Subsection "New read() on %s filehandle %s" |
| 891 | You cannot \fIread()\fR (or \fIsysread()\fR) from a closed or unopened filehandle. |
| 892 | .ie n .Sh "New ""5.005 threads are deprecated""" |
| 893 | .el .Sh "New ``5.005 threads are deprecated''" |
| 894 | .IX Subsection "New 5.005 threads are deprecated" |
| 895 | This warning should have been already in 5.8.0, since they are. |
| 896 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Tied variable freed while still in use""" |
| 897 | .el .Sh "New ``Tied variable freed while still in use''" |
| 898 | .IX Subsection "New Tied variable freed while still in use" |
| 899 | Something pulled the plug on a live tied variable, Perl plays |
| 900 | safe by bailing out. |
| 901 | .ie n .Sh "New ""To%s: illegal mapping '%s'""" |
| 902 | .el .Sh "New ``To%s: illegal mapping '%s'''" |
| 903 | .IX Subsection "New To%s: illegal mapping '%s'" |
| 904 | An illegal user-defined Unicode casemapping was specified. |
| 905 | .ie n .Sh "New ""Use of freed value in iteration""" |
| 906 | .el .Sh "New ``Use of freed value in iteration''" |
| 907 | .IX Subsection "New Use of freed value in iteration" |
| 908 | Something modified the values being iterated over. This is not good. |
| 909 | .SH "Changed Internals" |
| 910 | .IX Header "Changed Internals" |
| 911 | These news matter to you only if you either write \s-1XS\s0 code or like to |
| 912 | know about or hack Perl internals (using Devel::Peek or any of the |
| 913 | \&\f(CW\*(C`B::\*(C'\fR modules counts), or like to run Perl with the \f(CW\*(C`\-D\*(C'\fR option. |
| 914 | .PP |
| 915 | The embedding examples of perlembed have been reviewed to be |
| 916 | uptodate and consistent: for example, the correct use of |
| 917 | \&\s-1\fIPERL_SYS_INIT3\s0()\fR and \s-1\fIPERL_SYS_TERM\s0()\fR. |
| 918 | .PP |
| 919 | Extensive reworking of the pad code (the code responsible |
| 920 | for lexical variables) has been conducted by Dave Mitchell. |
| 921 | .PP |
| 922 | Extensive work on the v\-strings by John Peacock. |
| 923 | .PP |
| 924 | \&\s-1UTF\-8\s0 length and position cache: to speed up the handling of Unicode |
| 925 | (\s-1UTF\-8\s0) scalars, a cache was introduced. Potential problems exist if |
| 926 | an extension bypasses the official APIs and directly modifies the \s-1PV\s0 |
| 927 | of an \s-1SV:\s0 the \s-1UTF\-8\s0 cache does not get cleared as it should. |
| 928 | .PP |
| 929 | APIs obsoleted in Perl 5.8.0, like sv_2pv, sv_catpvn, sv_catsv, |
| 930 | sv_setsv, are again available. |
| 931 | .PP |
| 932 | Certain Perl core C APIs like cxinc and regatom are no longer |
| 933 | available at all to code outside the Perl core of the Perl core |
| 934 | extensions. This is intentional. They never should have been |
| 935 | available with the shorter names, and if you application depends on |
| 936 | them, you should (be ashamed and) contact perl5\-porters to discuss |
| 937 | what are the proper APIs. |
| 938 | .PP |
| 939 | Certain Perl core C APIs like \f(CW\*(C`Perl_list\*(C'\fR are no longer available |
| 940 | without their \f(CW\*(C`Perl_\*(C'\fR prefix. If your \s-1XS\s0 module stops working |
| 941 | because some functions cannot be found, in many cases a simple fix is |
| 942 | to add the \f(CW\*(C`Perl_\*(C'\fR prefix to the function and the thread context |
| 943 | \&\f(CW\*(C`aTHX_\*(C'\fR as the first argument of the function call. This is also how |
| 944 | it should always have been done: letting the Perl_\-less forms to leak |
| 945 | from the core was an accident. For cleaner embedding you can also |
| 946 | force this for all APIs by defining at compile time the cpp define |
| 947 | \&\s-1PERL_NO_SHORT_NAMES\s0. |
| 948 | .PP |
| 949 | \&\fIPerl_save_bool()\fR has been added. |
| 950 | .PP |
| 951 | Regexp objects (those created with \f(CW\*(C`qr\*(C'\fR) now have S\-magic rather than |
| 952 | R\-magic. This fixed regexps of the form /...(??{...;$x})/ to no |
| 953 | longer ignore changes made to \f(CW$x\fR. The S\-magic avoids dropping |
| 954 | the caching optimization and making (??{...}) constructs obscenely |
| 955 | slow (and consequently useless). See also \*(L"Magic Variables\*(R" in perlguts. |
| 956 | Regexp::Copy was affected by this change. |
| 957 | .PP |
| 958 | The Perl internal debugging macros \s-1\fIDEBUG\s0()\fR and \s-1\fIDEB\s0()\fR have been renamed |
| 959 | to \s-1\fIPERL_DEBUG\s0()\fR and \s-1\fIPERL_DEB\s0()\fR to avoid namespace conflicts. |
| 960 | .PP |
| 961 | \&\f(CW\*(C`\-DL\*(C'\fR removed (the leaktest had been broken and unsupported for years, |
| 962 | use alternative debugging mallocs or tools like valgrind and Purify). |
| 963 | .PP |
| 964 | Verbose modifier \f(CW\*(C`v\*(C'\fR added for \f(CW\*(C`\-DXv\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`\-Dsv\*(C'\fR, see perlrun. |
| 965 | .SH "New Tests" |
| 966 | .IX Header "New Tests" |
| 967 | In Perl 5.8.0 there were about 69000 separate tests in about 700 test files, |
| 968 | in Perl 5.8.1 there are about 77000 separate tests in about 780 test files. |
| 969 | The exact numbers depend on the Perl configuration and on the operating |
| 970 | system platform. |
| 971 | .SH "Known Problems" |
| 972 | .IX Header "Known Problems" |
| 973 | The hash randomisation mentioned in \*(L"Incompatible Changes\*(R" is definitely |
| 974 | problematic: it will wake dormant bugs and shake out bad assumptions. |
| 975 | .PP |
| 976 | If you want to use mod_perl 2.x with Perl 5.8.1, you will need |
| 977 | mod_perl\-1.99_10 or higher. Earlier versions of mod_perl 2.x |
| 978 | do not work with the randomised hashes. (mod_perl 1.x works fine.) |
| 979 | You will also need Apache::Test 1.04 or higher. |
| 980 | .PP |
| 981 | Many of the rarer platforms that worked 100% or pretty close to it |
| 982 | with perl 5.8.0 have been left a little bit untended since their |
| 983 | maintainers have been otherwise busy lately, and therefore there will |
| 984 | be more failures on those platforms. Such platforms include Mac \s-1OS\s0 |
| 985 | Classic, \s-1IBM\s0 z/OS (and other \s-1EBCDIC\s0 platforms), and NetWare. The most |
| 986 | common Perl platforms (Unix and Unix\-like, Microsoft platforms, and |
| 987 | \&\s-1VMS\s0) have large enough testing and expert population that they are |
| 988 | doing well. |
| 989 | .Sh "Tied hashes in scalar context" |
| 990 | .IX Subsection "Tied hashes in scalar context" |
| 991 | Tied hashes do not currently return anything useful in scalar context, |
| 992 | for example when used as boolean tests: |
| 993 | .PP |
| 994 | .Vb 1 |
| 995 | \& if (%tied_hash) { ... } |
| 996 | .Ve |
| 997 | .PP |
| 998 | The current nonsensical behaviour is always to return false, |
| 999 | regardless of whether the hash is empty or has elements. |
| 1000 | .PP |
| 1001 | The root cause is that there is no interface for the implementors of |
| 1002 | tied hashes to implement the behaviour of a hash in scalar context. |
| 1003 | .Sh "Net::Ping 450_service and 510_ping_udp failures" |
| 1004 | .IX Subsection "Net::Ping 450_service and 510_ping_udp failures" |
| 1005 | The subtests 9 and 18 of lib/Net/Ping/t/450_service.t, and the |
| 1006 | subtest 2 of lib/Net/Ping/t/510_ping_udp.t might fail if you have |
| 1007 | an unusual networking setup. For example in the latter case the |
| 1008 | test is trying to send a \s-1UDP\s0 ping to the \s-1IP\s0 address 127.0.0.1. |
| 1009 | .Sh "B::C" |
| 1010 | .IX Subsection "B::C" |
| 1011 | The C\-generating compiler backend B::C (the frontend being |
| 1012 | \&\f(CW\*(C`perlcc \-c\*(C'\fR) is even more broken than it used to be because of |
| 1013 | the extensive lexical variable changes. (The good news is that |
| 1014 | B::Bytecode and ByteLoader are better than they used to be.) |
| 1015 | .SH "Platform Specific Problems" |
| 1016 | .IX Header "Platform Specific Problems" |
| 1017 | .Sh "\s-1EBCDIC\s0 Platforms" |
| 1018 | .IX Subsection "EBCDIC Platforms" |
| 1019 | \&\s-1IBM\s0 z/OS and other \s-1EBCDIC\s0 platforms continue to be problematic |
| 1020 | regarding Unicode support. Many Unicode tests are skipped when |
| 1021 | they really should be fixed. |
| 1022 | .Sh "Cygwin 1.5 problems" |
| 1023 | .IX Subsection "Cygwin 1.5 problems" |
| 1024 | In Cygwin 1.5 the \fIio/tell\fR and \fIop/sysio\fR tests have failures for |
| 1025 | some yet unknown reason. In 1.5.5 the threads tests stress_cv, |
| 1026 | stress_re, and stress_string are failing unless the environment |
| 1027 | variable \s-1PERLIO\s0 is set to \*(L"perlio\*(R" (which makes also the io/tell |
| 1028 | failure go away). |
| 1029 | .PP |
| 1030 | Perl 5.8.1 does build and work well with Cygwin 1.3: with (uname \-a) |
| 1031 | \&\f(CW\*(C`CYGWIN_NT\-5.0 ... 1.3.22(0.78/3/2) 2003\-03\-18 09:20 i686 ...\*(C'\fR |
| 1032 | a 100% \*(L"make test\*(R" was achieved with \f(CW\*(C`Configure \-des \-Duseithreads\*(C'\fR. |
| 1033 | .Sh "\s-1HP\-UX:\s0 \s-1HP\s0 cc warnings about sendfile and sendpath" |
| 1034 | .IX Subsection "HP-UX: HP cc warnings about sendfile and sendpath" |
| 1035 | With certain \s-1HP\s0 C compiler releases (e.g. B.11.11.02) you will |
| 1036 | get many warnings like this (lines wrapped for easier reading): |
| 1037 | .PP |
| 1038 | .Vb 6 |
| 1039 | \& cc: "/usr/include/sys/socket.h", line 504: warning 562: |
| 1040 | \& Redeclaration of "sendfile" with a different storage class specifier: |
| 1041 | \& "sendfile" will have internal linkage. |
| 1042 | \& cc: "/usr/include/sys/socket.h", line 505: warning 562: |
| 1043 | \& Redeclaration of "sendpath" with a different storage class specifier: |
| 1044 | \& "sendpath" will have internal linkage. |
| 1045 | .Ve |
| 1046 | .PP |
| 1047 | The warnings show up both during the build of Perl and during certain |
| 1048 | lib/ExtUtils tests that invoke the C compiler. The warning, however, |
| 1049 | is not serious and can be ignored. |
| 1050 | .Sh "\s-1IRIX:\s0 t/uni/tr_7jis.t falsely failing" |
| 1051 | .IX Subsection "IRIX: t/uni/tr_7jis.t falsely failing" |
| 1052 | The test t/uni/tr_7jis.t is known to report failure under 'make test' |
| 1053 | or the test harness with certain releases of \s-1IRIX\s0 (at least \s-1IRIX\s0 6.5 |
| 1054 | and MIPSpro Compilers Version 7.3.1.1m), but if run manually the test |
| 1055 | fully passes. |
| 1056 | .Sh "Mac \s-1OS\s0 X: no usemymalloc" |
| 1057 | .IX Subsection "Mac OS X: no usemymalloc" |
| 1058 | The Perl malloc (\f(CW\*(C`\-Dusemymalloc\*(C'\fR) does not work at all in Mac \s-1OS\s0 X. |
| 1059 | This is not that serious, though, since the native malloc works just |
| 1060 | fine. |
| 1061 | .Sh "Tru64: No threaded builds with \s-1GNU\s0 cc (gcc)" |
| 1062 | .IX Subsection "Tru64: No threaded builds with GNU cc (gcc)" |
| 1063 | In the latest Tru64 releases (e.g. v5.1B or later) gcc cannot be used |
| 1064 | to compile a threaded Perl (\-Duseithreads) because the system |
| 1065 | \&\f(CW\*(C`<pthread.h>\*(C'\fR file doesn't know about gcc. |
| 1066 | .Sh "Win32: sysopen, sysread, syswrite" |
| 1067 | .IX Subsection "Win32: sysopen, sysread, syswrite" |
| 1068 | As of the 5.8.0 release, \fIsysopen()\fR/\fIsysread()\fR/\fIsyswrite()\fR do not behave |
| 1069 | like they used to in 5.6.1 and earlier with respect to \*(L"text\*(R" mode. |
| 1070 | These built-ins now always operate in \*(L"binary\*(R" mode (even if \fIsysopen()\fR |
| 1071 | was passed the O_TEXT flag, or if \fIbinmode()\fR was used on the file |
| 1072 | handle). Note that this issue should only make a difference for disk |
| 1073 | files, as sockets and pipes have always been in \*(L"binary\*(R" mode in the |
| 1074 | Windows port. As this behavior is currently considered a bug, |
| 1075 | compatible behavior may be re-introduced in a future release. Until |
| 1076 | then, the use of \fIsysopen()\fR, \fIsysread()\fR and \fIsyswrite()\fR is not supported |
| 1077 | for \*(L"text\*(R" mode operations. |
| 1078 | .SH "Future Directions" |
| 1079 | .IX Header "Future Directions" |
| 1080 | The following things \fBmight\fR happen in future. The first publicly |
| 1081 | available releases having these characteristics will be the developer |
| 1082 | releases Perl 5.9.x, culminating in the Perl 5.10.0 release. These |
| 1083 | are our best guesses at the moment: we reserve the right to rethink. |
| 1084 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1085 | PerlIO will become The Default. Currently (in Perl 5.8.x) the stdio |
| 1086 | library is still used if Perl thinks it can use certain tricks to |
| 1087 | make stdio go \fBreally\fR fast. For future releases our goal is to |
| 1088 | make PerlIO go even faster. |
| 1089 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1090 | A new feature called \fIassertions\fR will be available. This means that |
| 1091 | one can have code called assertions sprinkled in the code: usually |
| 1092 | they are optimised away, but they can be enabled with the \f(CW\*(C`\-A\*(C'\fR option. |
| 1093 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1094 | A new operator \f(CW\*(C`//\*(C'\fR (defined\-or) will be available. This means that |
| 1095 | one will be able to say |
| 1096 | .Sp |
| 1097 | .Vb 1 |
| 1098 | \& $a // $b |
| 1099 | .Ve |
| 1100 | .Sp |
| 1101 | instead of |
| 1102 | .Sp |
| 1103 | .Vb 1 |
| 1104 | \& defined $a ? $a : $b |
| 1105 | .Ve |
| 1106 | .Sp |
| 1107 | and |
| 1108 | .Sp |
| 1109 | .Vb 1 |
| 1110 | \& $c //= $d; |
| 1111 | .Ve |
| 1112 | .Sp |
| 1113 | instead of |
| 1114 | .Sp |
| 1115 | .Vb 1 |
| 1116 | \& $c = $d unless defined $c; |
| 1117 | .Ve |
| 1118 | .Sp |
| 1119 | The operator will have the same precedence and associativity as \f(CW\*(C`||\*(C'\fR. |
| 1120 | A source code patch against the Perl 5.8.1 sources will be available |
| 1121 | in \s-1CPAN\s0 as \fIauthors/id/H/HM/HMBRAND/dor\-5.8.1.diff\fR. |
| 1122 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1123 | \&\f(CW\*(C`unpack()\*(C'\fR will default to unpacking the \f(CW$_\fR. |
| 1124 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1125 | Various Copy-On-Write techniques will be investigated in hopes |
| 1126 | of speeding up Perl. |
| 1127 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1128 | \&\s-1CPANPLUS\s0, Inline, and Module::Build will become core modules. |
| 1129 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1130 | The ability to write true lexically scoped pragmas will be introduced. |
| 1131 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1132 | Work will continue on the bytecompiler and byteloader. |
| 1133 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1134 | v\-strings as they currently exist are scheduled to be deprecated. The |
| 1135 | v\-less form (1.2.3) will become a \*(L"version object\*(R" when used with \f(CW\*(C`use\*(C'\fR, |
| 1136 | \&\f(CW\*(C`require\*(C'\fR, and \f(CW$VERSION\fR. $^V will also be a \*(L"version object\*(R" so the |
| 1137 | printf(\*(L"%vd\*(R",...) construct will no longer be needed. The v\-ful version |
| 1138 | (v1.2.3) will become obsolete. The equivalence of strings and v\-strings (e.g. |
| 1139 | that currently 5.8.0 is equal to \*(L"\e5\e8\e0\*(R") will go away. \fBThere may be no |
| 1140 | deprecation warning for v\-strings\fR, though: it is quite hard to detect when |
| 1141 | v\-strings are being used safely, and when they are not. |
| 1142 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1143 | 5.005 Threads Will Be Removed |
| 1144 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1145 | The \f(CW$*\fR Variable Will Be Removed |
| 1146 | (it was deprecated a long time ago) |
| 1147 | .IP "\(bu" 4 |
| 1148 | Pseudohashes Will Be Removed |
| 1149 | .SH "Reporting Bugs" |
| 1150 | .IX Header "Reporting Bugs" |
| 1151 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles |
| 1152 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl |
| 1153 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/ . There may also be |
| 1154 | information at http://www.perl.com/ , the Perl Home Page. |
| 1155 | .PP |
| 1156 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the \fBperlbug\fR |
| 1157 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down |
| 1158 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the |
| 1159 | output of \f(CW\*(C`perl \-V\*(C'\fR, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be |
| 1160 | analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search |
| 1161 | the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ |
| 1162 | .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| 1163 | .IX Header "SEE ALSO" |
| 1164 | The \fIChanges\fR file for exhaustive details on what changed. |
| 1165 | .PP |
| 1166 | The \fI\s-1INSTALL\s0\fR file for how to build Perl. |
| 1167 | .PP |
| 1168 | The \fI\s-1README\s0\fR file for general stuff. |
| 1169 | .PP |
| 1170 | The \fIArtistic\fR and \fICopying\fR files for copyright information. |