PERL5101DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5101DELTA(1)
NAME
perl5101delta - what is new for perl v5.10.1
DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.10.0 release and the
5.10.1 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.8.8, first read
the perl5100delta, which describes differences between 5.8.8 and 5.10.0
Incompatible Changes
Switch statement changes
The handling of complex expressions by the "given"/"when" switch
statement has been enhanced. There are two new cases where "when" now
interprets its argument as a boolean, instead of an expression to be
used in a smart match:
flip-flop operators
The ".." and "..." flip-flop operators are now evaluated in boolean
context, following their usual semantics; see "Range Operators" in
perlop.
Note that, as in perl 5.10.0, "when (1..10)" will not work to test
whether a given value is an integer between 1 and 10; you should use
"when ([1..10])" instead (note the array reference).
However, contrary to 5.10.0, evaluating the flip-flop operators in
boolean context ensures it can now be useful in a when(), notably
for implementing bistable conditions, like in:
when (/^=begin/ .. /^=end/) {
# do something
}
defined-or operator
A compound expression involving the defined-or operator, as in "when
(expr1 // expr2)", will be treated as boolean if the first
expression is boolean. (This just extends the existing rule that
applies to the regular or operator, as in "when (expr1 || expr2)".)
The next section details more changes brought to the semantics to the
smart match operator, that naturally also modify the behaviour of the
switch statements where smart matching is implicitly used.
Smart match changes
Changes to type-based dispatch
The smart match operator "~~" is no longer commutative. The behaviour of
a smart match now depends primarily on the type of its right hand
argument. Moreover, its semantics have been adjusted for greater
consistency or usefulness in several cases. While the general backwards
compatibility is maintained, several changes must be noted:
• Code references with an empty prototype are no longer treated
specially. They are passed an argument like the other code
references (even if they choose to ignore it).
• "%hash ~~ sub {}" and "@array ~~ sub {}" now test that the
subroutine returns a true value for each key of the hash (or element
of the array), instead of passing the whole hash or array as a
reference to the subroutine.
• Due to the commutativity breakage, code references are no longer
treated specially when appearing on the left of the "~~" operator,
but like any vulgar scalar.
• "undef ~~ %hash" is always false (since "undef" can't be a key in a
hash). No implicit conversion to "" is done (as was the case in perl
5.10.0).
• "$scalar ~~ @array" now always distributes the smart match across
the elements of the array. It's true if one element in @array
verifies "$scalar ~~ $element". This is a generalization of the old
behaviour that tested whether the array contained the scalar.
The full dispatch table for the smart match operator is given in "Smart
matching in detail" in perlsyn.
Smart match and overloading
According to the rule of dispatch based on the rightmost argument type,
when an object overloading "~~" appears on the right side of the
operator, the overload routine will always be called (with a 3rd
argument set to a true value, see overload.) However, when the object
will appear on the left, the overload routine will be called only when
the rightmost argument is a simple scalar. This way distributivity of
smart match across arrays is not broken, as well as the other behaviours
with complex types (coderefs, hashes, regexes). Thus, writers of
overloading routines for smart match mostly need to worry only with
comparing against a scalar, and possibly with stringification
overloading; the other common cases will be automatically handled
consistently.
"~~" will now refuse to work on objects that do not overload it (in
order to avoid relying on the object's underlying structure). (However,
if the object overloads the stringification or the numification
operators, and if overload fallback is active, it will be used instead,
as usual.)
Other incompatible changes
• The semantics of "use feature :5.10*" have changed slightly. See
"Modules and Pragmata" for more information.
• It is now a run-time error to use the smart match operator "~~" with
an object that has no overload defined for it. (This way "~~" will
not break encapsulation by matching against the object's internal
representation as a reference.)
• The version control system used for the development of the perl
interpreter has been switched from Perforce to git. This is mainly
an internal issue that only affects people actively working on the
perl core; but it may have minor external visibility, for example in
some of details of the output of "perl -V". See perlrepository for
more information.
• The internal structure of the "ext/" directory in the perl source
has been reorganised. In general, a module "Foo::Bar" whose source
was stored under ext/Foo/Bar/ is now located under ext/Foo-Bar/.
Also, some modules have been moved from lib/ to ext/. This is purely
a source tarball change, and should make no difference to the
compilation or installation of perl, unless you have a very
customised build process that explicitly relies on this structure,
or which hard-codes the "nonxs_ext" Configure parameter.
Specifically, this change does not by default alter the location of
any files in the final installation.
• As part of the "Test::Harness" 2.x to 3.x upgrade, the experimental
"Test::Harness::Straps" module has been removed. See "Updated
Modules" for more details.
• As part of the "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" upgrade, the
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes" and "ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsish"
modules have been removed from this distribution.
• "Module::CoreList" no longer contains the %:patchlevel hash.
• This one is actually a change introduced in 5.10.0, but it was
missed from that release's perldelta, so it is mentioned here
instead.
A bugfix related to the handling of the "/m" modifier and "qr"
resulted in a change of behaviour between 5.8.x and 5.10.0:
# matches in 5.8.x, doesn't match in 5.10.0
$re = qr/^bar/; "foo\nbar" =~ /$re/m;
Core Enhancements
Unicode Character Database 5.1.0
The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.10.1 has
been updated to 5.1.0 from 5.0.0. See
<http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#Notable_Changes> for the
notable changes.
A proper interface for pluggable Method Resolution Orders
As of Perl 5.10.1 there is a new interface for plugging and using method
resolution orders other than the default (linear depth first search).
The C3 method resolution order added in 5.10.0 has been re-implemented
as a plugin, without changing its Perl-space interface. See perlmroapi
for more information.
The "overloading" pragma
This pragma allows you to lexically disable or enable overloading for
some or all operations. (Yuval Kogman)
Parallel tests
The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
Unix-like platforms. Instead of running "make test", set "TEST_JOBS" in
your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
"make test_harness". On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself,
because TAP::Harness needs to be able to schedule individual non-
conflicting test scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to
"make" utilities to interact with their job schedulers.
Note that currently some test scripts may fail when run in parallel
(most notably "ext/IO/t/io_dir.t"). If necessary run just the failing
scripts again sequentially and see if the failures go away.
DTrace support
Some support for DTrace has been added. See "DTrace support" in INSTALL.
Support for "configure_requires" in CPAN module metadata
Both "CPAN" and "CPANPLUS" now support the "configure_requires" keyword
in the "META.yml" metadata file included in most recent CPAN
distributions. This allows distribution authors to specify
configuration prerequisites that must be installed before running
Makefile.PL or Build.PL.
See the documentation for "ExtUtils::MakeMaker" or "Module::Build" for
more on how to specify "configure_requires" when creating a distribution
for CPAN.
Modules and Pragmata
New Modules and Pragmata
"autodie"
This is a new lexically-scoped alternative for the "Fatal" module.
The bundled version is 2.06_01. Note that in this release, using a
string eval when "autodie" is in effect can cause the autodie
behaviour to leak into the surrounding scope. See "BUGS" in autodie
for more details.
"Compress::Raw::Bzip2"
This has been added to the core (version 2.020).
"parent"
This pragma establishes an ISA relationship with base classes at
compile time. It provides the key feature of "base" without the
feature creep.
"Parse::CPAN::Meta"
This has been added to the core (version 1.39).
Pragmata Changes
"attributes"
Upgraded from version 0.08 to 0.09.
"attrs"
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
"base"
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14. See parent for a replacement.
"bigint"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
"bignum"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
"bigrat"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
"charnames"
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
The Unicode NameAliases.txt database file has been added. This has
the effect of adding some extra "\N" character names that formerly
wouldn't have been recognised; for example, "\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
GHA}".
"constant"
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.17.
"feature"
The meaning of the ":5.10" and ":5.10.X" feature bundles has changed
slightly. The last component, if any (i.e. "X") is simply ignored.
This is predicated on the assumption that new features will not, in
general, be added to maintenance releases. So ":5.10" and ":5.10.X"
have identical effect. This is a change to the behaviour documented
for 5.10.0.
"fields"
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14 (this was just a version bump;
there were no functional changes).
"lib"
Upgraded from version 0.5565 to 0.62.
"open"
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
"overload"
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
"overloading"
See "The "overloading" pragma" above.
"version"
Upgraded from version 0.74 to 0.77.
Updated Modules
"Archive::Extract"
Upgraded from version 0.24 to 0.34.
"Archive::Tar"
Upgraded from version 1.38 to 1.52.
"Attribute::Handlers"
Upgraded from version 0.79 to 0.85.
"AutoLoader"
Upgraded from version 5.63 to 5.68.
"AutoSplit"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06.
"B" Upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.22.
"B::Debug"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.11.
"B::Deparse"
Upgraded from version 0.83 to 0.89.
"B::Lint"
Upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.11.
"B::Xref"
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.
"Benchmark"
Upgraded from version 1.10 to 1.11.
"Carp"
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.11.
"CGI"
Upgraded from version 3.29 to 3.43. (also includes the
"default_value for popup_menu()" fix from 3.45).
"Compress::Zlib"
Upgraded from version 2.008 to 2.020.
"CPAN"
Upgraded from version 1.9205 to 1.9402. "CPAN::FTP" has a local fix
to stop it being too verbose on download failure.
"CPANPLUS"
Upgraded from version 0.84 to 0.88.
"CPANPLUS::Dist::Build"
Upgraded from version 0.06_02 to 0.36.
"Cwd"
Upgraded from version 3.25_01 to 3.30.
"Data::Dumper"
Upgraded from version 2.121_14 to 2.124.
"DB"
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.
"DB_File"
Upgraded from version 1.816_1 to 1.820.
"Devel::PPPort"
Upgraded from version 3.13 to 3.19.
"Digest::MD5"
Upgraded from version 2.36_01 to 2.39.
"Digest::SHA"
Upgraded from version 5.45 to 5.47.
"DirHandle"
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.03.
"Dumpvalue"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
"DynaLoader"
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.10.
"Encode"
Upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.35.
"Errno"
Upgraded from version 1.10 to 1.11.
"Exporter"
Upgraded from version 5.62 to 5.63.
"ExtUtils::CBuilder"
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.2602.
"ExtUtils::Command"
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.16.
"ExtUtils::Constant"
Upgraded from 0.20 to 0.22. (Note that neither of these versions are
available on CPAN.)
"ExtUtils::Embed"
Upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
"ExtUtils::Install"
Upgraded from version 1.44 to 1.54.
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker"
Upgraded from version 6.42 to 6.55_02.
Note that "ExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes" and
"ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsish" have been removed from this
distribution.
"ExtUtils::Manifest"
Upgraded from version 1.51_01 to 1.56.
"ExtUtils::ParseXS"
Upgraded from version 2.18_02 to 2.2002.
"Fatal"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 2.06_01. See also the new pragma
"autodie".
"File::Basename"
Upgraded from version 2.76 to 2.77.
"File::Compare"
Upgraded from version 1.1005 to 1.1006.
"File::Copy"
Upgraded from version 2.11 to 2.14.
"File::Fetch"
Upgraded from version 0.14 to 0.20.
"File::Find"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.14.
"File::Path"
Upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.07_03.
"File::Spec"
Upgraded from version 3.2501 to 3.30.
"File::stat"
Upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.01.
"File::Temp"
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.22.
"FileCache"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
"FileHandle"
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.02.
"Filter::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.82 to 0.84.
"Filter::Util::Call"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
"FindBin"
Upgraded from version 1.49 to 1.50.
"GDBM_File"
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
"Getopt::Long"
Upgraded from version 2.37 to 2.38.
"Hash::Util::FieldHash"
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04. This fixes a memory leak.
"I18N::Collate"
Upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.01.
"IO"
Upgraded from version 1.23_01 to 1.25.
This makes non-blocking mode work on Windows in "IO::Socket::INET"
[CPAN #43573].
"IO::Compress::*"
Upgraded from version 2.008 to 2.020.
"IO::Dir"
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
"IO::Handle"
Upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
"IO::Socket"
Upgraded from version 1.30_01 to 1.31.
"IO::Zlib"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.09.
"IPC::Cmd"
Upgraded from version 0.40_1 to 0.46.
"IPC::Open3"
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.04.
"IPC::SysV"
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 2.01.
"lib"
Upgraded from version 0.5565 to 0.62.
"List::Util"
Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.21.
"Locale::MakeText"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
"Log::Message"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
"Math::BigFloat"
Upgraded from version 1.59 to 1.60.
"Math::BigInt"
Upgraded from version 1.88 to 1.89.
"Math::BigInt::FastCalc"
Upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.19.
"Math::BigRat"
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.22.
"Math::Complex"
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.56.
"Math::Trig"
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.20.
"Memoize"
Upgraded from version 1.01_02 to 1.01_03 (just a minor documentation
change).
"Module::Build"
Upgraded from version 0.2808_01 to 0.34_02.
"Module::CoreList"
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.18. This release no longer contains
the %Module::CoreList::patchlevel hash.
"Module::Load"
Upgraded from version 0.12 to 0.16.
"Module::Load::Conditional"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.30.
"Module::Loaded"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
"Module::Pluggable"
Upgraded from version 3.6 to 3.9.
"NDBM_File"
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
"Net::Ping"
Upgraded from version 2.33 to 2.36.
"NEXT"
Upgraded from version 0.60_01 to 0.64.
"Object::Accessor"
Upgraded from version 0.32 to 0.34.
"OS2::REXX"
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
"Package::Constants"
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
"PerlIO"
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.06.
"PerlIO::via"
Upgraded from version 0.04 to 0.07.
"Pod::Man"
Upgraded from version 2.16 to 2.22.
"Pod::Parser"
Upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.37.
"Pod::Simple"
Upgraded from version 3.05 to 3.07.
"Pod::Text"
Upgraded from version 3.08 to 3.13.
"POSIX"
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.17.
"Safe"
Upgraded from 2.12 to 2.18.
"Scalar::Util"
Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.21.
"SelectSaver"
Upgraded from 1.01 to 1.02.
"SelfLoader"
Upgraded from 1.11 to 1.17.
"Socket"
Upgraded from 1.80 to 1.82.
"Storable"
Upgraded from 2.18 to 2.20.
"Switch"
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14. Please see "Deprecations".
"Symbol"
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
"Sys::Syslog"
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.27.
"Term::ANSIColor"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 2.00.
"Term::ReadLine"
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
"Term::UI"
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.20.
"Test::Harness"
Upgraded from version 2.64 to 3.17.
Note that one side-effect of the 2.x to 3.x upgrade is that the
experimental "Test::Harness::Straps" module (and its supporting
"Assert", "Iterator", "Point" and "Results" modules) have been
removed. If you still need this, then they are available in the
(unmaintained) "Test-Harness-Straps" distribution on CPAN.
"Test::Simple"
Upgraded from version 0.72 to 0.92.
"Text::ParseWords"
Upgraded from version 3.26 to 3.27.
"Text::Tabs"
Upgraded from version 2007.1117 to 2009.0305.
"Text::Wrap"
Upgraded from version 2006.1117 to 2009.0305.
"Thread::Queue"
Upgraded from version 2.00 to 2.11.
"Thread::Semaphore"
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.09.
"threads"
Upgraded from version 1.67 to 1.72.
"threads::shared"
Upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.29.
"Tie::RefHash"
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
"Tie::StdHandle"
This has documentation changes, and has been assigned a version for
the first time: version 4.2.
"Time::HiRes"
Upgraded from version 1.9711 to 1.9719.
"Time::Local"
Upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.1901.
"Time::Piece"
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.15.
"Unicode::Normalize"
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
"Unicode::UCD"
Upgraded from version 0.25 to 0.27.
charinfo() now works on Unified CJK code points added to later
versions of Unicode.
casefold() has new fields returned to provide both a simpler
interface and previously missing information. The old fields are
retained for backwards compatibility. Information about Turkic-
specific code points is now returned.
The documentation has been corrected and expanded.
"UNIVERSAL"
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.05.
"Win32"
Upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.39.
"Win32API::File"
Upgraded from version 0.1001_01 to 0.1101.
"XSLoader"
Upgraded from version 0.08 to 0.10.
Utility Changes
h2ph
Now looks in "include-fixed" too, which is a recent addition to
gcc's search path.
h2xs
No longer incorrectly treats enum values like macros (Daniel Burr).
Now handles C++ style constants ("//") properly in enums. (A patch
from Rainer Weikusat was used; Daniel Burr also proposed a similar
fix).
perl5db.pl
"LVALUE" subroutines now work under the debugger.
The debugger now correctly handles proxy constant subroutines, and
subroutine stubs.
perlthanks
Perl 5.10.1 adds a new utility perlthanks, which is a variant of
perlbug, but for sending non-bug-reports to the authors and
maintainers of Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can become a
bit demoralising: we'll see if this changes things.
New Documentation
perlhaiku
This contains instructions on how to build perl for the Haiku
platform.
perlmroapi
This describes the new interface for pluggable Method Resolution
Orders.
perlperf
This document, by Richard Foley, provides an introduction to the use
of performance and optimization techniques which can be used with
particular reference to perl programs.
perlrepository
This describes how to access the perl source using the git version
control system.
perlthanks
This describes the new perlthanks utility.
Changes to Existing Documentation
The various large "Changes*" files (which listed every change made to
perl over the last 18 years) have been removed, and replaced by a small
file, also called "Changes", which just explains how that same
information may be extracted from the git version control system.
The file Porting/patching.pod has been deleted, as it mainly described
interacting with the old Perforce-based repository, which is now
obsolete. Information still relevant has been moved to perlrepository.
perlapi, perlintern, perlmodlib and perltoc are now all generated at
build time, rather than being shipped as part of the release.
Performance Enhancements
• A new internal cache means that isa() will often be faster.
• Under "use locale", the locale-relevant information is now cached on
read-only values, such as the list returned by "keys %hash". This
makes operations such as "sort keys %hash" in the scope of "use
locale" much faster.
• Empty "DESTROY" methods are no longer called.
Installation and Configuration Improvements
ext/ reorganisation
The layout of directories in ext has been revised. Specifically, all
extensions are now flat, and at the top level, with "/" in pathnames
replaced by "-", so that ext/Data/Dumper/ is now ext/Data-Dumper/, etc.
The names of the extensions as specified to Configure, and as reported
by %Config::Config under the keys "dynamic_ext", "known_extensions",
"nonxs_ext" and "static_ext" have not changed, and still use "/". Hence
this change will not have any affect once perl is installed. However,
"Attribute::Handlers", "Safe" and "mro" have now become extensions in
their own right, so if you run Configure with options to specify an
exact list of extensions to build, you will need to change it to account
for this.
For 5.10.2, it is planned that many dual-life modules will have been
moved from lib to ext; again this will have no effect on an installed
perl, but will matter if you invoke Configure with a pre-canned list of
extensions to build.
Configuration improvements
If "vendorlib" and "vendorarch" are the same, then they are only added
to @INC once.
$Config{usedevel} and the C-level "PERL_USE_DEVEL" are now defined if
perl is built with "-Dusedevel".
Configure will enable use of "-fstack-protector", to provide protection
against stack-smashing attacks, if the compiler supports it.
Configure will now determine the correct prototypes for re-entrant
functions, and for "gconvert", if you are using a C++ compiler rather
than a C compiler.
On Unix, if you build from a tree containing a git repository, the
configuration process will note the commit hash you have checked out,
for display in the output of "perl -v" and "perl -V". Unpushed local
commits are automatically added to the list of local patches displayed
by "perl -V".
Compilation improvements
As part of the flattening of ext, all extensions on all platforms are
built by make_ext.pl. This replaces the Unix-specific ext/util/make_ext,
VMS-specific make_ext.com and Win32-specific win32/buildext.pl.
Platform Specific Changes
AIX Removed libbsd for AIX 5L and 6.1. Only flock() was used from
libbsd.
Removed libgdbm for AIX 5L and 6.1. The libgdbm is delivered as an
optional package with the AIX Toolbox. Unfortunately the 64 bit
version is broken.
Hints changes mean that AIX 4.2 should work again.
Cygwin
On Cygwin we now strip the last number from the DLL. This has been
the behaviour in the cygwin.com build for years. The hints files
have been updated.
FreeBSD
The hints files now identify the correct threading libraries on
FreeBSD 7 and later.
Irix
We now work around a bizarre preprocessor bug in the Irix 6.5
compiler: "cc -E -" unfortunately goes into K&R mode, but "cc -E
file.c" doesn't.
Haiku
Patches from the Haiku maintainers have been merged in. Perl should
now build on Haiku.
MirOS BSD
Perl should now build on MirOS BSD.
NetBSD
Hints now supports versions 5.*.
Stratus VOS
Various changes from Stratus have been merged in.
Symbian
There is now support for Symbian S60 3.2 SDK and S60 5.0 SDK.
Win32
Improved message window handling means that "alarm" and "kill"
messages will no longer be dropped under race conditions.
VMS Reads from the in-memory temporary files of "PerlIO::scalar" used to
fail if $/ was set to a numeric reference (to indicate record-style
reads). This is now fixed.
VMS now supports "getgrgid".
Many improvements and cleanups have been made to the VMS file name
handling and conversion code.
Enabling the "PERL_VMS_POSIX_EXIT" logical name now encodes a POSIX
exit status in a VMS condition value for better interaction with
GNV's bash shell and other utilities that depend on POSIX exit
values. See "$?" in perlvms for details.
Selected Bug Fixes
• 5.10.0 inadvertently disabled an optimisation, which caused a
measurable performance drop in list assignment, such as is often
used to assign function parameters from @_. The optimisation has
been re-instated, and the performance regression fixed.
• Fixed memory leak on "while (1) { map 1, 1 }" [RT #53038].
• Some potential coredumps in PerlIO fixed [RT #57322,54828].
• The debugger now works with lvalue subroutines.
• The debugger's "m" command was broken on modules that defined
constants [RT #61222].
• crypt() and string complement could return tainted values for
untainted arguments [RT #59998].
• The "-i.suffix" command-line switch now recreates the file using
restricted permissions, before changing its mode to match the
original file. This eliminates a potential race condition [RT
#60904].
• On some Unix systems, the value in $? would not have the top bit set
("$? & 128") even if the child core dumped.
• Under some circumstances, $^R could incorrectly become undefined [RT
#57042].
• (XS) In various hash functions, passing a pre-computed hash to when
the key is UTF-8 might result in an incorrect lookup.
• (XS) Including XSUB.h before perl.h gave a compile-time error [RT
#57176].
• "$object->isa('Foo')" would report false if the package "Foo" didn't
exist, even if the object's @ISA contained "Foo".
• Various bugs in the new-to 5.10.0 mro code, triggered by
manipulating @ISA, have been found and fixed.
• Bitwise operations on references could crash the interpreter, e.g.
"$x=\$y; $x |= "foo"" [RT #54956].
• Patterns including alternation might be sensitive to the internal
UTF-8 representation, e.g.
my $byte = chr(192);
my $utf8 = chr(192); utf8::upgrade($utf8);
$utf8 =~ /$byte|X}/i; # failed in 5.10.0
• Within UTF8-encoded Perl source files (i.e. where "use utf8" is in
effect), double-quoted literal strings could be corrupted where a
"\xNN", "\0NNN" or "\N{}" is followed by a literal character with
ordinal value greater than 255 [RT #59908].
• "B::Deparse" failed to correctly deparse various constructs:
"readpipe STRING" [RT #62428], CORE::require(STRING) [RT #62488],
"sub foo(_)" [RT #62484].
• Using setpgrp() with no arguments could corrupt the perl stack.
• The block form of "eval" is now specifically trappable by "Safe" and
"ops". Previously it was erroneously treated like string "eval".
• In 5.10.0, the two characters "[~" were sometimes parsed as the
smart match operator ("~~") [RT #63854].
• In 5.10.0, the "*" quantifier in patterns was sometimes treated as
"{0,32767}" [RT #60034, #60464]. For example, this match would fail:
("ab" x 32768) =~ /^(ab)*$/
• "shmget" was limited to a 32 bit segment size on a 64 bit OS [RT
#63924].
• Using "next" or "last" to exit a "given" block no longer produces a
spurious warning like the following:
Exiting given via last at foo.pl line 123
• On Windows, '.\foo' and '..\foo' were treated differently than
'./foo' and '../foo' by "do" and "require" [RT #63492].
• Assigning a format to a glob could corrupt the format; e.g.:
*bar=*foo{FORMAT}; # foo format now bad
• Attempting to coerce a typeglob to a string or number could cause an
assertion failure. The correct error message is now generated,
"Can't coerce GLOB to $type".
• Under "use filetest 'access'", "-x" was using the wrong access mode.
This has been fixed [RT #49003].
• "length" on a tied scalar that returned a Unicode value would not be
correct the first time. This has been fixed.
• Using an array "tie" inside in array "tie" could SEGV. This has been
fixed. [RT #51636]
• A race condition inside PerlIOStdio_close() has been identified and
fixed. This used to cause various threading issues, including SEGVs.
• In "unpack", the use of "()" groups in scalar context was internally
placing a list on the interpreter's stack, which manifested in
various ways, including SEGVs. This is now fixed [RT #50256].
• Magic was called twice in "substr", "\&$x", "tie $x, $m" and "chop".
These have all been fixed.
• A 5.10.0 optimisation to clear the temporary stack within the
implicit loop of "s///ge" has been reverted, as it turned out to be
the cause of obscure bugs in seemingly unrelated parts of the
interpreter [commit ef0d4e17921ee3de].
• The line numbers for warnings inside "elsif" are now correct.
• The ".." operator now works correctly with ranges whose ends are at
or close to the values of the smallest and largest integers.
• "binmode STDIN, ':raw'" could lead to segmentation faults on some
platforms. This has been fixed [RT #54828].
• An off-by-one error meant that "index $str, ..." was effectively
being executed as "index "$str\0", ...". This has been fixed [RT
#53746].
• Various leaks associated with named captures in regexes have been
fixed [RT #57024].
• A weak reference to a hash would leak. This was affecting "DBI" [RT
#56908].
• Using (?|) in a regex could cause a segfault [RT #59734].
• Use of a UTF-8 "tr//" within a closure could cause a segfault [RT
#61520].
• Calling sv_chop() or otherwise upgrading an SV could result in an
unaligned 64-bit access on the SPARC architecture [RT #60574].
• In the 5.10.0 release, "inc_version_list" would incorrectly list
"5.10.*" after "5.8.*"; this affected the @INC search order [RT
#67628].
• In 5.10.0, "pack "a*", $tainted_value" returned a non-tainted value
[RT #52552].
• In 5.10.0, "printf" and "sprintf" could produce the fatal error
"panic: utf8_mg_pos_cache_update" when printing UTF-8 strings [RT
#62666].
• In the 5.10.0 release, a dynamically created "AUTOLOAD" method might
be missed (method cache issue) [RT #60220,60232].
• In the 5.10.0 release, a combination of "use feature" and "//ee"
could cause a memory leak [RT #63110].
• "-C" on the shebang ("#!") line is once more permitted if it is also
specified on the command line. "-C" on the shebang line used to be a
silent no-op if it was not also on the command line, so perl 5.10.0
disallowed it, which broke some scripts. Now perl checks whether it
is also on the command line and only dies if it is not [RT #67880].
• In 5.10.0, certain types of re-entrant regular expression could
crash, or cause the following assertion failure [RT #60508]:
Assertion rx->sublen >= (s - rx->subbeg) + i failed
New or Changed Diagnostics
"panic: sv_chop %s"
This new fatal error occurs when the C routine Perl_sv_chop() was
passed a position that is not within the scalar's string buffer.
This could be caused by buggy XS code, and at this point recovery is
not possible.
"Can't locate package %s for the parents of %s"
This warning has been removed. In general, it only got produced in
conjunction with other warnings, and removing it allowed an ISA
lookup optimisation to be added.
"v-string in use/require is non-portable"
This warning has been removed.
"Deep recursion on subroutine "%s""
It is now possible to change the depth threshold for this warning
from the default of 100, by recompiling the perl binary, setting the
C pre-processor macro "PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN" to the desired value.
Changed Internals
• The J.R.R. Tolkien quotes at the head of C source file have been
checked and proper citations added, thanks to a patch from Tom
Christiansen.
• vcroak() now accepts a null first argument. In addition, a full
audit was made of the "not NULL" compiler annotations, and those for
several other internal functions were corrected.
• New macros "dSAVEDERRNO", "dSAVE_ERRNO", "SAVE_ERRNO",
"RESTORE_ERRNO" have been added to formalise the temporary saving of
the "errno" variable.
• The function "Perl_sv_insert_flags" has been added to augment
"Perl_sv_insert".
• The function Perl_newSV_type(type) has been added, equivalent to
Perl_newSV() followed by Perl_sv_upgrade(type).
• The function Perl_newSVpvn_flags() has been added, equivalent to
Perl_newSVpvn() and then performing the action relevant to the flag.
Two flag bits are currently supported.
"SVf_UTF8"
This will call SvUTF8_on() for you. (Note that this does not
convert an sequence of ISO 8859-1 characters to UTF-8). A
wrapper, newSVpvn_utf8() is available for this.
"SVs_TEMP"
Call sv_2mortal() on the new SV.
There is also a wrapper that takes constant strings,
newSVpvs_flags().
• The function "Perl_croak_xs_usage" has been added as a wrapper to
"Perl_croak".
• The functions "PerlIO_find_layer" and "PerlIO_list_alloc" are now
exported.
• "PL_na" has been exterminated from the core code, replaced by local
STRLEN temporaries, or *_nolen() calls. Either approach is faster
than "PL_na", which is a pointer deference into the interpreter
structure under ithreads, and a global variable otherwise.
• Perl_mg_free() used to leave freed memory accessible via SvMAGIC()
on the scalar. It now updates the linked list to remove each piece
of magic as it is freed.
• Under ithreads, the regex in "PL_reg_curpm" is now reference
counted. This eliminates a lot of hackish workarounds to cope with
it not being reference counted.
• Perl_mg_magical() would sometimes incorrectly turn on SvRMAGICAL().
This has been fixed.
• The public IV and NV flags are now not set if the string value has
trailing "garbage". This behaviour is consistent with not setting
the public IV or NV flags if the value is out of range for the type.
• SV allocation tracing has been added to the diagnostics enabled by
"-Dm". The tracing can alternatively output via the "PERL_MEM_LOG"
mechanism, if that was enabled when the perl binary was compiled.
• Uses of "Nullav", "Nullcv", "Nullhv", "Nullop", "Nullsv" etc have
been replaced by "NULL" in the core code, and non-dual-life modules,
as "NULL" is clearer to those unfamiliar with the core code.
• A macro MUTABLE_PTR(p) has been added, which on (non-pedantic) gcc
will not cast away "const", returning a "void *". Macros
MUTABLE_SV(av), MUTABLE_SV(cv) etc build on this, casting to "AV *"
etc without casting away "const". This allows proper compile-time
auditing of "const" correctness in the core, and helped picked up
some errors (now fixed).
• Macros mPUSHs() and mXPUSHs() have been added, for pushing SVs on
the stack and mortalizing them.
• Use of the private structure "mro_meta" has changed slightly.
Nothing outside the core should be accessing this directly anyway.
• A new tool, "Porting/expand-macro.pl" has been added, that allows
you to view how a C preprocessor macro would be expanded when
compiled. This is handy when trying to decode the macro hell that
is the perl guts.
New Tests
Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests.
Several tests that have the potential to hang forever if they fail now
incorporate a "watchdog" functionality that will kill them after a
timeout, which helps ensure that "make test" and "make test_harness" run
to completion automatically. (Jerry Hedden).
Some core-specific tests have been added:
t/comp/retainedlines.t
Check that the debugger can retain source lines from "eval".
t/io/perlio_fail.t
Check that bad layers fail.
t/io/perlio_leaks.t
Check that PerlIO layers are not leaking.
t/io/perlio_open.t
Check that certain special forms of open work.
t/io/perlio.t
General PerlIO tests.
t/io/pvbm.t
Check that there is no unexpected interaction between the internal
types "PVBM" and "PVGV".
t/mro/package_aliases.t
Check that mro works properly in the presence of aliased packages.
t/op/dbm.t
Tests for "dbmopen" and "dbmclose".
t/op/index_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of "index" and threads.
t/op/pat_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of esoteric patterns and threads.
t/op/qr_gc.t
Test that "qr" doesn't leak.
t/op/reg_email_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of regex recursion and threads.
t/op/regexp_qr_embed_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of patterns with embedded "qr//" and
threads.
t/op/regexp_unicode_prop.t
Tests for Unicode properties in regular expressions.
t/op/regexp_unicode_prop_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of Unicode properties and threads.
t/op/reg_nc_tie.t
Test the tied methods of "Tie::Hash::NamedCapture".
t/op/reg_posixcc.t
Check that POSIX character classes behave consistently.
t/op/re.t
Check that exportable "re" functions in universal.c work.
t/op/setpgrpstack.t
Check that "setpgrp" works.
t/op/substr_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of "substr" and threads.
t/op/upgrade.t
Check that upgrading and assigning scalars works.
t/uni/lex_utf8.t
Check that Unicode in the lexer works.
t/uni/tie.t
Check that Unicode and "tie" work.
Known Problems
This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions
from either 5.10.0 or 5.8.x.
• "List::Util::first" misbehaves in the presence of a lexical $_
(typically introduced by "my $_" or implicitly by "given"). The
variable which gets set for each iteration is the package variable
$_, not the lexical $_ [RT #67694].
A similar issue may occur in other modules that provide functions
which take a block as their first argument, like
foo { ... $_ ...} list
• The "charnames" pragma may generate a run-time error when a regex is
interpolated [RT #56444]:
use charnames ':full';
my $r1 = qr/\N{THAI CHARACTER SARA I}/;
"foo" =~ $r1; # okay
"foo" =~ /$r1+/; # runtime error
A workaround is to generate the character outside of the regex:
my $a = "\N{THAI CHARACTER SARA I}";
my $r1 = qr/$a/;
• Some regexes may run much more slowly when run in a child thread
compared with the thread the pattern was compiled into [RT #55600].
Deprecations
The following items are now deprecated.
• "Switch" is buggy and should be avoided. From perl 5.11.0 onwards,
it is intended that any use of the core version of this module will
emit a warning, and that the module will eventually be removed from
the core (probably in perl 5.14.0). See "Switch statements" in
perlsyn for its replacement.
• "suidperl" will be removed in 5.12.0. This provides a mechanism to
emulate setuid permission bits on systems that don't support it
properly.
Acknowledgements
Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant.
Nicholas Clark officially retired from maintenance pumpking duty at the
end of 2008; however in reality he has put much effort in since then to
help get 5.10.1 into a fit state to be released, including writing a
considerable chunk of this perldelta.
Steffen Mueller and David Golden in particular helped getting CPAN
modules polished and synchronised with their in-core equivalents.
Craig Berry was tireless in getting maint to run under VMS, no matter
how many times we broke it for him.
The other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied
most of the patches sent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in
AUTHORS.
(Sorry to all the people I haven't mentioned by name).
Finally, thanks to Larry Wall, without whom none of this would be
necessary.
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.
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