1 | =head1 NAME
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2 |
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3 | perl584delta - what is new for perl v5.8.4
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4 |
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5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION
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6 |
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7 | This document describes differences between the 5.8.3 release and
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8 | the 5.8.4 release.
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9 |
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10 | =head1 Incompatible Changes
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11 |
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12 | Many minor bugs have been fixed. Scripts which happen to rely on previously
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13 | erroneous behaviour will consider these fixes as incompatible changes :-)
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14 | You are advised to perform sufficient acceptance testing on this release
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15 | to satisfy yourself that this does not affect you, before putting this
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16 | release into production.
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17 |
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18 | The diagnostic output of Carp has been changed slightly, to add a space after
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19 | the comma between arguments. This makes it much easier for tools such as
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20 | web browsers to wrap it, but might confuse any automatic tools which perform
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21 | detailed parsing of Carp output.
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22 |
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23 | The internal dump output has been improved, so that non-printable characters
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24 | such as newline and backspace are output in C<\x> notation, rather than
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25 | octal. This might just confuse non-robust tools which parse the output of
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26 | modules such as Devel::Peek.
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27 |
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28 | =head1 Core Enhancements
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29 |
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30 | =head2 Malloc wrapping
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31 |
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32 | Perl can now be built to detect attempts to assign pathologically large chunks
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33 | of memory. Previously such assignments would suffer from integer wrap-around
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34 | during size calculations causing a misallocation, which would crash perl, and
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35 | could theoretically be used for "stack smashing" attacks. The wrapping
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36 | defaults to enabled on platforms where we know it works (most AIX
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37 | configurations, BSDi, Darwin, DEC OSF/1, FreeBSD, HP/UX, GNU Linux, OpenBSD,
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38 | Solaris, VMS and most Win32 compilers) and defaults to disabled on other
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39 | platforms.
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40 |
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41 | =head2 Unicode Character Database 4.0.1
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42 |
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43 | The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has
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44 | been updated to 4.0.1 from 4.0.0.
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45 |
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46 | =head2 suidperl less insecure
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47 |
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48 | Paul Szabo has analysed and patched C<suidperl> to remove existing known
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49 | insecurities. Currently there are no known holes in C<suidperl>, but previous
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50 | experience shows that we cannot be confident that these were the last. You may
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51 | no longer invoke the set uid perl directly, so to preserve backwards
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52 | compatibility with scripts that invoke #!/usr/bin/suidperl the only set uid
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53 | binary is now C<sperl5.8.>I<n> (C<sperl5.8.4> for this release). C<suidperl>
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54 | is installed as a hard link to C<perl>; both C<suidperl> and C<perl> will
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55 | invoke C<sperl5.8.4> automatically the set uid binary, so this change should
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56 | be completely transparent.
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57 |
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58 | For new projects the core perl team would strongly recommend that you use
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59 | dedicated, single purpose security tools such as C<sudo> in preference to
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60 | C<suidperl>.
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61 |
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62 | =head2 format
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63 |
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64 | In addition to bug fixes, C<format>'s features have been enhanced. See
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65 | L<perlform>
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66 |
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67 | =head1 Modules and Pragmata
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68 |
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69 | The (mis)use of C</tmp> in core modules and documentation has been tidied up.
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70 | Some modules available both within the perl core and independently from CPAN
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71 | ("dual-life modules") have not yet had these changes applied; the changes
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72 | will be integrated into future stable perl releases as the modules are
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73 | updated on CPAN.
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74 |
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75 | =head2 Updated modules
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76 |
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77 | =over 4
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78 |
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79 | =item Attribute::Handlers
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80 |
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81 | =item B
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82 |
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83 | =item Benchmark
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84 |
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85 | =item CGI
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86 |
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87 | =item Carp
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88 |
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89 | =item Cwd
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90 |
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91 | =item Exporter
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92 |
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93 | =item File::Find
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94 |
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95 | =item IO
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96 |
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97 | =item IPC::Open3
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98 |
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99 | =item Local::Maketext
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100 |
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101 | =item Math::BigFloat
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102 |
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103 | =item Math::BigInt
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104 |
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105 | =item Math::BigRat
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106 |
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107 | =item MIME::Base64
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108 |
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109 | =item ODBM_File
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110 |
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111 | =item POSIX
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112 |
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113 | =item Shell
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114 |
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115 | =item Socket
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116 |
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117 | There is experimental support for Linux abstract Unix domain sockets.
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118 |
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119 | =item Storable
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120 |
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121 | =item Switch
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122 |
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123 | Synced with its CPAN version 2.10
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124 |
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125 | =item Sys::Syslog
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126 |
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127 | C<syslog()> can now use numeric constants for facility names and priorities,
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128 | in addition to strings.
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129 |
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130 | =item Term::ANSIColor
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131 |
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132 | =item Time::HiRes
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133 |
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134 | =item Unicode::UCD
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135 |
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136 | =item Win32
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137 |
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138 | Win32.pm/Win32.xs has moved from the libwin32 module to core Perl
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139 |
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140 | =item base
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141 |
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142 | =item open
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143 |
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144 | =item threads
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145 |
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146 | Detached threads are now also supported on Windows.
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147 |
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148 | =item utf8
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149 |
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150 | =back
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151 |
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152 | =head1 Performance Enhancements
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153 |
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154 | =over 4
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155 |
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156 | =item *
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157 |
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158 | Accelerated Unicode case mappings (C</i>, C<lc>, C<uc>, etc).
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159 |
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160 | =item *
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161 |
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162 | In place sort optimised (eg C<@a = sort @a>)
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163 |
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164 | =item *
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165 |
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166 | Unnecessary assignment optimised away in
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167 |
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168 | my $s = undef;
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169 | my @a = ();
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170 | my %h = ();
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171 |
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172 | =item *
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173 |
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174 | Optimised C<map> in scalar context
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175 |
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176 | =back
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177 |
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178 | =head1 Utility Changes
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179 |
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180 | The Perl debugger (F<lib/perl5db.pl>) can now save all debugger commands for
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181 | sourcing later, and can display the parent inheritance tree of a given class.
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182 |
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183 | =head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
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184 |
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185 | The build process on both VMS and Windows has had several minor improvements
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186 | made. On Windows Borland's C compiler can now compile perl with PerlIO and/or
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187 | USE_LARGE_FILES enabled.
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188 |
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189 | C<perl.exe> on Windows now has a "Camel" logo icon. The use of a camel with
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190 | the topic of Perl is a trademark of O'Reilly and Associates Inc., and is used
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191 | with their permission (ie distribution of the source, compiling a Windows
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192 | executable from it, and using that executable locally). Use of the supplied
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193 | camel for anything other than a perl executable's icon is specifically not
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194 | covered, and anyone wishing to redistribute perl binaries I<with> the icon
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195 | should check directly with O'Reilly beforehand.
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196 |
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197 | Perl should build cleanly on Stratus VOS once more.
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198 |
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199 | =head1 Selected Bug Fixes
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200 |
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201 | More utf8 bugs fixed, notably in how C<chomp>, C<chop>, C<send>, and
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202 | C<syswrite> and interact with utf8 data. Concatenation now works correctly
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203 | when C<use bytes;> is in scope.
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204 |
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205 | Pragmata are now correctly propagated into (?{...}) constructions in regexps.
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206 | Code such as
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207 |
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208 | my $x = qr{ ... (??{ $x }) ... };
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209 |
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210 | will now (correctly) fail under use strict. (As the inner C<$x> is and
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211 | has always referred to C<$::x>)
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212 |
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213 | The "const in void context" warning has been suppressed for a constant in an
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214 | optimised-away boolean expression such as C<5 || print;>
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215 |
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216 | C<perl -i> could C<fchmod(stdin)> by mistake. This is serious if stdin is
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217 | attached to a terminal, and perl is running as root. Now fixed.
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218 |
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219 | =head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
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220 |
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221 | C<Carp> and the internal diagnostic routines used by C<Devel::Peek> have been
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222 | made clearer, as described in L</Incompatible Changes>
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223 |
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224 | =head1 Changed Internals
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225 |
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226 | Some bugs have been fixed in the hash internals. Restricted hashes and
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227 | their place holders are now allocated and deleted at slightly different times,
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228 | but this should not be visible to user code.
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229 |
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230 | =head1 Future Directions
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231 |
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232 | Code freeze for the next maintenance release (5.8.5) will be on 30th June
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233 | 2004, with release by mid July.
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234 |
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235 | =head1 Platform Specific Problems
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236 |
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237 | This release is known not to build on Windows 95.
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238 |
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239 | =head1 Reporting Bugs
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240 |
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241 | If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
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242 | recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
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243 | bug database at http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be
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244 | information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page.
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245 |
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246 | If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
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247 | program included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
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248 | to a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
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249 | output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to [email protected] to be
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250 | analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search
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251 | the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/
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252 |
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253 | =head1 SEE ALSO
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254 |
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255 | The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
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256 |
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257 | The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
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258 |
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259 | The F<README> file for general stuff.
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260 |
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261 | The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
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262 |
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263 | =cut
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