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perl-5.19.8
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/ perl5196delta

NAME

perl5196delta - what is new for perl v5.19.6

DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.19.5 release and the 5.19.6 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.19.4, first read perl5195delta, which describes differences between 5.19.4 and 5.19.5.

Core Enhancements

$a and $b warnings exemption

The special variables $a and $b, used in sort, are now exempt from "used once" warnings, even where sort is not used. This makes it easier for CPAN modules to provide functions using $a and $b for similar purposes. [perl #120462]

Deprecations

Module removals

The following modules will be removed from the core distribution in a future release, and will at that time need to be installed from CPAN. Distributions on CPAN which require these modules will need to list them as prerequisites.

The core versions of these modules will now issue "deprecated"-category warnings to alert you to this fact. To silence these deprecation warnings, install the modules in question from CPAN.

Note that these are (with rare exceptions) fine modules that you are encouraged to continue to use. Their disinclusion from core primarily hinges on their necessity to bootstrapping a fully functional, CPAN-capable Perl installation, not usually on concerns over their design.

Package::Constants

Performance Enhancements

  • Constant hash key lookups ($hash{key} as opposed to $hash{$key}) have long had the internal hash value computed at compile time, to speed up lookup. This optimisation has only now been applied to hash slices as well.

  • Combined and and or operators in void context, like those generated for unless ($a && $b) and if ($a || b) now short circuit directly to the end of the statement. [perl #120128]

Modules and Pragmata

Updated Modules and Pragmata

  • Archive::Tar has been upgraded from version 1.92 to 1.96.

  • AutoLoader has been upgraded from version 5.73 to 5.74.

  • B has been upgraded from version 1.46 to 1.47.

    B::PMOP->precomp now preserves the internal UTF8 flag correctly, so chr 256 remains chr 256, instead of turning into "\xc4\x80". This allows B::Deparse to deparse Unicode regular expression correctly. [perl #120182]

    B::HV->ARRAY now preserves the UTF8 flag on returned hash keys. [perl #120535]

  • B::Concise has been upgraded from version 0.99 to 0.991.

    -debug output now includes op_other pointers.

  • B::Deparse has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.24.

    s//\(3)/e is now deparsed in a way that does not issue warnings when parsed again. [perl #119807]

    glob(my $x) is now deparsed correctly, rather than as <my $x> or similar.

    CORE::glob is now deparsed correctly with the CORE:: prefix when there is a subroutine named "glob".

  • B::Debug has been upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19.

  • bignum has been upgraded from version 0.36 to 0.37.

  • Compress::Raw::Bzip2 has been upgraded from version 2.062 to 2.063.

  • Compress::Raw::Zlib has been upgraded from version 2.062 to 2.063.

  • constant has been upgraded from version 1.28 to 1.29.

  • DB_File has been upgraded from version 1.829 to 1.831.

  • ExtUtils::MakeMaker has been upgraded from version 6.80 to 6.82.

  • HTTP::Tiny has been upgraded from version 0.036 to 0.038.

  • IO has been upgraded from version 1.29 to 1.30.

  • IO::Select has been upgraded from version 1.21 to 1.22.

    Removing a closed file handle from an IO::Select object now correctly updates its internal state and returns the correct value. [perl #75156]

  • Locale::Maketext has been upgraded from version 1.24 to 1.25.

    An issue with escaped backslashes if the literal is compiled as function argument has been resolved.

  • IPC::Cmd has been upgraded from version 0.84_01 to 0.90.

  • Module::Build has been upgraded from version 0.4007 to 0.4202.

    NOTE: Module::Build is deprecated and may be removed from a future version of Perl.

  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 3.00 to 3.01.

    The list of Perl versions covered has been updated.

  • Package::Constants has been upgraded from version 0.02 to 0.04.

    NOTE: Package::Constants is deprecated and may be removed from a future version of Perl.

  • PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.17 to 0.18.

    A bug fix in 0.17 caused references to be stringified as soon as a handle to it was opened, even if it was opened only for reading. It also croaked on read-only references. This has been fixed. [perl #119529]

  • Socket has been upgraded from version 2.012 to 2.013.

  • Term::Cap has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.15.

  • Test::Harness has been upgraded from version 3.29 to 3.30.

  • Test::Simple has been upgraded from version 0.99 to 1.001002.

  • Tie::StdHandle has been upgraded from version 4.3 to 4.4.

    It no longer prints $\ twice. [perl #120202]

    It no longer ignores the offset passed to syswrite.

  • threads has been upgraded from version 1.89 to 1.90.

  • threads::shared has been upgraded from version 1.44 to 1.45.

  • Unicode::Collate has been upgraded from version 0.99 to 1.02.

Documentation

Changes to Existing Documentation

  • perlhacktips has been updated to include some more examples of gdb usage.

  • perlfunc:

    each, clarify hash "modify while iterating".

    pack, the documentation for verbatim tables has been clarified.

  • perlre, the documentation for /x and (?# comment) has been expanded and clarified.

  • perllexwarn, a note has been added to users of FATAL warnings of the risk of upgrades.

Diagnostics

Changes to Existing Diagnostics

Testing

  • ext/File-Find/t/find.t has been converted from manual print statements to Test::More functions. Each test now has a description. [perl #120503]

Platform Support

New Platforms

Synology

Synology ships its NAS boxes with a lean Linux distribution (DSM) on relative cheap CPU's (like the Marvell Kirkwood mv6282 - ARMv5tel or Freescale QorIQ P1022 ppc - e500v2) not meant for workstations or development. These boxes should build now. The basic problems are the non-standard location for tools.

Platform-Specific Notes

Windows

Support for building with Visual C++ 2013 has been added. There are currently two possible test failures (see "Testing Perl on Windows" in perlwin32) which will hopefully be resolved soon.

Experimental support for building with Intel C++ Compiler has been added. Only the nmake makefile (win32/Makefile) can be used. A "nmake test" will not pass at this time due to "cpan/CGI/t/url.t".

WinCE

Perl can now be built in one shot with no user intervention on WinCE by running nmake -f Makefile.ce all.

Support for building with EVC (Embedded Visual C++) 4 has been restored. Perl can also be built using Smart Devices for Visual C++ 2005 or 2008.

Internal Changes

  • Compiling with -Accflags=-PERL_BOOL_AS_CHAR now allows C99 and C++ compilers to emulate the aliasing of bool to char that perl does for C89 compilers. [perl #120314]

Selected Bug Fixes

  • Perl 5.18.0 accidentally disallowed -bareword under use strict and use integer. This has been fixed. [perl #120288]

  • -a at the start of a line (or a hyphen with any single letter that is not a filetest operator) no longer produces an erroneous 'Use of "-a" without parentheses is ambiguous' warning. [perl #120288]

  • Lvalue context is now properly propagated into bare blocks and if and else blocks in lvalue subroutines. Previously, arrays and hashes would sometimes incorrectly be flattened when returned in lvalue list context, or "Bizarre copy" errors could occur. [perl #119797]

  • Lvalue context is now propagated to the branches of || and && (and their alphabetic equivalents, or and and). This means foreach (pos $x || pos $y) {...} now allows pos to be modified through $_.

  • *DB::DB = sub {} if 0 no longer stops Perl's debugging mode from finding DB::DB subs declared thereafter.

  • stat and readline remember the last handle used; the former for the special _ filehandle, the latter for ${^LAST_FH}. eval "*foo if 0" where *foo was the last handle passed to stat or readline could cause that handle to be forgotten if the handle were not opened yet. This has been fixed.

  • Various cases of delete $::{a}, delete $::{ENV} etc. causing a crash have been fixed. [perl #54044]

  • Assigning another typeglob to *^R no longer makes the regular expression engine crash.

  • %{'_<...'} hashes now set breakpoints on the corresponding @{'_<...'} rather than whichever array @DB::dbline is aliased to. [perl #119799]

  • Setting $! to EACCESS before calling require could affect require's behaviour. This has been fixed.

  • The "Can't use \1 to mean $1 in expression" warning message now only occurs on the right-hand (replacement) part of a substitution. Formerly it could happen in code embedded in the left-hand side, or in any other quote-like operator.

  • The \N regular expression escape, when used without the curly braces (to mean [^\n]), was ignoring a following * if followed by whitespace under /x. It had been this way since \N to mean [^\n] was introduced in 5.12.0.

  • Blessing into a reference (bless $thisref, $thatref) has long been disallowed, but magical scalars for the second like $/ and those tied were exempt. They no longer are. [perl #119809]

  • Blessing into a reference was accidentally allowed in 5.18 if the class argument were a blessed reference with stale method caches (i.e., whose class had had subs defined since the last method call). They are disallowed once more, as in 5.16.

  • An undefined lexical sub used as an inherited method no longer crashes.

  • $x->{key} where $x was declared as my Class $x no longer crashes if a Class::FIELDS subroutine stub has been declared.

  • @$obj{'key'} and ${$obj}{key} used to be exempt from compile-time field checking ("No such class field"; see fields) but no longer are.

  • That compile-time field checking also applies now to the %$obj{'key'} syntax, added recently in Perl 5.19.4.

  • A nonexistent array element with a large index passed to a subroutine that ties the array and then tries to access the element no longer results in a crash.

  • Declaring a subroutine stub named NEGATIVE_INDICES no longer makes negative array indices crash when the current package is a tied array class.

  • Declaring a require, glob, or do subroutine stub in the CORE::GLOBAL:: package no longer makes compilation of calls to the corresponding functions crash.

  • Aliasing CORE::GLOBAL:: functions to constants stopped working in Perl 5.10 but has now been fixed.

  • When `...` or qx/.../ calls a readpipe override, double-quotish interpolation now happens, as is the case when there is no override. Previously, the presence of an override would make these quote-like operators act like q{}, suppressing interpolation. [perl #115330]

  • <<`...` here-docs (with backticks as the delimiters) now call readpipe overrides. [perl #119827]

  • The presence of a lexical sub named "CORE" no longer stops the CORE:: prefix from working.

  • &CORE::exit() and &CORE::die() now respect vmsish hints.

  • Undefining a glob that triggers a DESTROY method that undefines the same glob is now safe. It used to produce "Attempt to free unreferenced glob pointer" warnings and leak memory.

  • If subroutine redefinition (eval 'sub foo{}' or newXS for XS code) triggers a DESTROY method on the sub that is being redefined, and that method assigns a subroutine to the same slot (*foo = sub {}), $_[0] is no longer left pointing to a freed scalar. Now DESTROY is delayed until the new subroutine has been installed.

  • s///, tr/// and y/// now work when a wide character is used as the delimiter. [perl #120463]

  • On Windows, perl no longer calls CloseHandle() on a socket handle. This makes debugging easier on Windows by removing certain irrelevant bad handle exceptions. It also fixes a race condition that made socket functions randomly fail in a Perl process with multiple OS threads, and possible test failures in dist/IO/t/cachepropagate-tcp.t. [perl #120091/118059]

  • Some cases of unterminated (?...) sequences in regular expressions (e.g., /(?</) have been fixed to produce the proper error message instead of "panic: memory wrap". Other cases (e.g., /(?(/) have yet to be fixed.

  • Strange vars like ties, overloads, or stringified refs (and in recent perls, pure NOK vars) would generally do the wrong thing in formats when the var is treated as a string and repeatedly chopped, as in ^<<<~~ and similar. This has now been resolved.

Known Problems

  • do CORE() used to call a sub named "CORE" and treat its return value as a file name to execute. A bug fix inadvertently caused it to be interpreted as the deprecated "do-SUB" construct. (Yes, do bareword() is inconsistent.) This will likely be changed back.

Acknowledgements

Perl 5.19.6 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.19.5 and contains approximately 88,000 lines of changes across 630 files from 24 authors.

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.19.6:

Anno Siegel, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Daniel Dragan, David Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos, François Perrad, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jerry D. Hedden, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Kevin Falcone, Lukas Mai, Marc Simpson, Matthew Horsfall, Peter Martini, Petr Písař, Reini Urban, Steve Hay, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook, Victor Efimov, Yves Orton.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for helping Perl to flourish.

For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.

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://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , 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.

If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.

SEE ALSO

The Changes file for an explanation of how to view 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.