NAME
perldelta - what is new for perl v5.9.0
DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.8.0 release and the 5.9.0 release.
Incompatible Changes
The $* variable has been removed
$*, which was deprecated in favor of the /s and /m regexp modifiers, has been removed.
Core Enhancements
Tied Arrays with Negative Array Indices
Formerly, the indices passed to FETCH, STORE, EXISTS, and DELETE methods in tied array class were always non-negative. If the actual argument was negative, Perl would call FETCHSIZE implicitly and add the result to the index before passing the result to the tied array method. This behavior is now optional. If the tied array class contains a package variable named $NEGATIVE_INDICES which is set to a true value, negative values will be passed to FETCH, STORE, EXISTS, and DELETE unchanged.
Modules and Pragmata
Utility Changes
New Documentation
Performance Enhancements
Installation and Configuration Improvements
Selected Bug Fixes
New or Changed Diagnostics
Changed Internals
New Tests
Known Problems
Platform Specific Problems
Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://bugs.perl.org/. There may also be information at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of perl -V, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
SEE ALSO
The Changes file for exhaustive details on what changed.
The INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
The README file for general stuff.
The Artistic and Copying files for copyright information.