[perl #7508] Use NULL for nonexistent array elems

This commit fixes bug #7508 and provides the groundwork for fixing
several other bugs.

Elements of @_ are aliased to the arguments, so that \$_[0] within
sub foo will reference the same scalar as \$x if the sub is called
as foo($x).

&PL_sv_undef (the global read-only undef scalar returned by the
‘undef’ operator itself) was being used to represent nonexistent
array elements.  So the pattern would be broken for foo(undef), where
\$_[0] would vivify a new $_[0] element, treating it as having been
nonexistent.

This also causes other problems with constants under ithreads
(#105906) and causes a pending fix for another bug (#118691) to trig-
ger this bug.

This commit changes the internals to use a null pointer to represent a
nonexistent element.

This requires that Storable be changed to account for it.  Also,
IPC::Open3 was relying on the bug.  So this commit patches
both modules.

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/ext/IPC-Open3/lib/IPC/Open3.pm b/ext/IPC-Open3/lib/IPC/Open3.pm
index af1d1e0690..90bd9fb087 100644
--- a/ext/IPC-Open3/lib/IPC/Open3.pm
+++ b/ext/IPC-Open3/lib/IPC/Open3.pm
@@ -185,6 +185,10 @@ sub _open3 {
     # it's too ugly to use @_ throughout to make perl do it for us
     # tchrist 5-Mar-00
 
+    # Historically, open3(undef...) has silently worked, so keep
+    # it working.
+    splice @_, 0, 1, undef if \$_[0] == \undef;
+    splice @_, 1, 1, undef if \$_[1] == \undef;
     unless (eval  {
 	$_[0] = gensym unless defined $_[0] && length $_[0];
 	$_[1] = gensym unless defined $_[1] && length $_[1];