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perl-5.42.2
⭐ Starred 2013 / DirHandle
Security Advisories (1)
CVE-2026-8376 (2026-05-25)

Perl versions through 5.43.10 have a heap buffer overflow when compiling regular expressions with a repeated fixed string on 32-bit builds. Perl_study_chunk in regcomp_study.c checked the size of the joined substring buffer in characters rather than bytes. For a quantified fixed substring with a large minimum count, the byte length mincount * l could overflow SSize_t, producing an undersized SvGROW allocation; the subsequent copy writes past the end of the buffer. A caller that compiles an attacker-controlled regular expression on a 32-bit perl build triggers a heap buffer overflow at compile time.

NAME

DirHandle - (obsolete) supply object methods for directory handles

SYNOPSIS

# recommended approach since Perl 5.6: do not use DirHandle
if (opendir my $d, '.') {
    while (readdir $d) { something($_); }
    rewind $d;
    while (readdir $d) { something_else($_); }
}

# how you would use this module if you were going to
use DirHandle;
if (my $d = DirHandle->new(".")) {
    while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something($_); }
    $d->rewind;
    while (defined($_ = $d->read)) { something_else($_); }
}

DESCRIPTION

There is no reason to use this module nowadays.

The DirHandle method provide an alternative interface to the opendir(), closedir(), readdir(), and rewinddir() functions.

Up to Perl 5.5, opendir() could not autovivify a directory handle from undef, so using a lexical handle required using a function from Symbol to create an anonymous glob, which took a separate step. DirHandle encapsulates this, which allowed cleaner code than opendir(). Since Perl 5.6, opendir() alone has been all you need for lexical handles.