=encoding utf8 =for release_engineer * changelogged up to 38ef960 * the mauve module will not be part of the release, so it's not changelogged yet. it also added some new api functions. those aren't covered either, as they might go away again in case mauve gets rolled back for 5.13.5. =head1 NAME [ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as XXX needs to be processed before release. ] perldelta - what is new for perl v5.13.5 =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes differences between the 5.13.4 release and the 5.13.5 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.13.3, first read L, which describes differences between 5.13.3 and 5.13.4. =head1 Notice XXX Any important notices here =head1 Core Enhancements XXX New core language features go here. Summarise user-visible core language enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go here, but most should go in the L section. =head2 Adjacent pairs of nextstate opcodes are now optimized away Previously, in code such as use constant DEBUG => 0; sub GAK { warn if DEBUG; print "stuff\n"; } the ops for C would be folded to a C op (C), but the C op would remain, resulting in a runtime op dispatch of C, C, ... The execution of a sequence of C ops is indistinguishable from just the last C op, so teach the peephole optimiser to eliminate the first of a pair of C ops. (Except where the first carries a label, as labels mustn't be eliminated by the optimiser, and label usage isn't conclusively known at compile time.) =head2 API function to parse statements The C function has been added to allow parsing of a single complete Perl statement. See L for details. =head2 API functions for accessing the runtime hinthash A new C API for introspecting the hinthash C<%^H> at runtime has been added. See C, C, C, and C in L for details. =head2 C interface to C The C function has been added as an XSUB-writer's equivalent of C. See L for details. =head1 Security XXX Any security-related notices go here. In particular, any security vulnerabilities closed should be noted here rather than in the L section. [ List each security issue as a =head2 entry ] =head1 Incompatible Changes =head2 Magic Variables Outside the Main Package In previous versions of perl, magic variables like C<$!>, C<%SIG>, etc. would 'leak' into other packages. So C<%foo::SIG> could be used to access signals, C<${"foo::!"}> (with strict mode off) to access C's C, etc. This was a bug, or an 'unintentional' feature, which caused various ill effects, such as signal handlers being wiped when modules were loaded, etc. This has been fixed (or the feature has been removed, depending on how you see it). =head2 Smart-matching against array slices Previously, the following code resulted in a successful match: my @a = qw(a y0 z); my @b = qw(a x0 z); $a[0 .. $#b] ~~ @b; This odd behaviour has now been fixed [perl #77468]. =head2 C API changes The first argument of the C API function C has changed from C to C, to better insulate the user from implementation details. This API function was marked as "may change", and likely isn't in use outside the core. (Neither an unpacked CPAN, nor Google's codesearch, finds any other references to it.) =head1 Deprecations XXX Any deprecated features, syntax, modules etc. should be listed here. In particular, deprecated modules should be listed here even if they are listed as an updated module in the L section. =head2 Use of qw(...) as parentheses Historically the parser fooled itself into thinking that C literals were always enclosed in parentheses, and as a result you could sometimes omit parentheses around them: for $x qw(a b c) { ... } The parser no longer lies to itself in this way. Wrap the list literal in parentheses, like: for $x (qw(a b c)) { ... } =head1 Performance Enhancements XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There may well be none in a stable release. [ List each enhancement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * Scalars containing regular expressions now only allocate the part of the C body they actually use, saving some space. =back =head1 Modules and Pragmata XXX All changes to installed files in F, F, F and F go here. If Module::CoreList is updated, generate an initial draft of the following sections using F, which prints stub entries to STDOUT. Results can be pasted in place of the '=head2' entries below. A paragraph summary for important changes should then be added by hand. In an ideal world, dual-life modules would have a F file that could be cribbed. [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ] =head2 New Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06. =item * C, C, and C have been upgraded from version 0.23 to 0.24. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.10 to 1.11. C has been upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02. It is now possible to register warning categories other than the names of packages using warnings::register. See L for more information. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.14. =item * C has been upgraded from version 2.126 to 2.128. This fixes a crash when using custom sort functions that might cause the stack to change. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13. On some platforms with unusual header files, like Win32/gcc using mingw64 headers, some constants which weren't actually error numbers have been exposed by C. This has been fixed (RT#77416). =item * C has been upgraded from version 6.56 to 6.57_05. =item * C has been upgraded from version 0.84 to 0.85. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.89_01 to 1.95. C has been upgraded from version 0.52 to 0.54. This fixes, among other things, incorrect results when computing binomial coefficients (RT#77640). =item * C has been upgraded from version 0.19 to 0.22. =item * C has been upgraded from version 2.37 to 2.38. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.20. It now includes constants for POSIX signal constants. =item * C has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04. Calling C<< Tie::Hash->TIEHASH() >> used to loop forever. Now it Cs. =item * C has been upgraded from version 0.56 to 0.59. =item * C has been upgraded from version 0.10 to 0.11. =back =head2 Removed Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Documentation XXX Changes to files in F go here. Consider grouping entries by file and be sure to link to the appropriate page, e.g. L. =head2 New Documentation XXX Changes which create B files in F go here. =head3 L XXX Description of the purpose of the new file here =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F go here. However, any changes to F should go in the L section. =head3 L =over 4 =item * Many of the optree construction functions are now documented. =back =head1 Diagnostics The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output, including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of diagnostic messages, see L. XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C code go here. Also include any changes in L that reconcile it to the C code. [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ] =head2 New Diagnostics XXX Newly added diagnostic messages go here =over 4 =item * Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated =back =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics XXX Changes (i.e. rewording) of diagnostic messages go here =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Utility Changes XXX Changes to installed programs such as F and F go here. Most of these are built within the directories F and F. [ List utility changes as a =head3 entry for each utility and =item entries for each change Use L with program names to get proper documentation linking. ] =head3 L =over 4 =item * The use of a deprecated C construct has been removed (RT#74404). =back =head1 Configuration and Compilation XXX Changes to F, F, F, and analogous tools go here. Any other changes to the Perl build process should be listed here. However, any platform-specific changes should be listed in the L section, instead. [ List changes as a =item entry ]. =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Testing XXX Any significant changes to the testing of a freshly built perl should be listed here. Changes which create B files in F go here as do any large changes to the testing harness (e.g. when parallel testing was added). Changes to existing files in F aren't worth summarising, although the bugs that they represent may be covered elsewhere. [ List each test improvement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * A rare race condition in F has been fixed, stopping it from failing randomly when running tests in parallel. =item * The new F script tests that magic applied to variables in the main packages does not affect other packages. =back =head1 Platform Support XXX Any changes to platform support should be listed in the sections below. [ Within the sections, list each platform as a =item entry with specific changes as paragraphs below it. ] =head2 New Platforms XXX List any platforms that this version of perl compiles on, that previous versions did not. These will either be enabled by new files in the F directories, or new subdirectories and F files at the top level of the source tree. =over 4 =item XXX-some-platform XXX =back =head2 Discontinued Platforms XXX List any platforms that this version of perl no longer compiles on. =over 4 =item XXX-some-platform XXX =back =head2 Platform-Specific Notes XXX List any changes for specific platforms. This could include configuration and compilation changes or changes in portability/compatibility. However, changes within modules for platforms should generally be listed in the L section. =over 4 =item VMS =over 4 =item * Make PerlIOUnix_open honor default permissions on VMS. When perlio became the default and unixio became the default bottom layer, the most common path for creating files from Perl became C, which has always explicitly used C<0666> as the permission mask. To avoid this, C<0777> is now passed as the permissions to C. In the VMS CRTL, C<0777> has a special meaning over and above intersecting with the current umask; specifically, it allows Unix syscalls to preserve native default permissions. =back =back =head1 Internal Changes XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C code go here. Other significant internal changes for future core maintainers should be noted as well. [ List each test improvement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * C and C have been removed deprecated. Those are left from an old implementation of C using C++ objects, which has been removed in 5.8. Nowadays these macros do exactly nothing, so they shouldn't be used anymore. For compatibility, they are still defined for external C code. Only extensions defining C must be updated now. =item * C has been added as a convenience macro wrapping C for literal strings. =item * The recursive part of the peephole optimizer is how hookable. In addition to C, for hooking into the toplevel peephole optimizer, a C is now available to hook into the optimizer recursing into side-chains of the optree. =back =head1 Selected Bug Fixes XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here. Bug fixes in files in F and F are best summarised in L. [ List each fix as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * A regression introduced in perl 5.12.0, making C<< my $x = 3; $x = length(undef) >> result in C<$x> set to C<3> has been fixed. C<$x> will now be C. =item * A fatal error in regular expressions when processing UTF-8 data has been fixed (RT#75680). =item * An erroneous regular expression engine optimization, that caused regex verbs like C<*COMMIT> to sometimes be ignored, has been removed. =item * The perl debugger now also works in taint mode (RT#76872). =item * Several memory leaks in cloning and freeing threaded perl interpreters have been fixed (RT#77352). =item * A possible string corruption when doing regular expression matches on overloaded objects has been fixed (RT#77084). =item * Magic applied to variables in the main package no longer affects other packages. See L, above [perl #76138]. =item * Opening a glob reference via C<< open $fh, ">", \*glob >> will no longer cause the glob to be corrupted when the file handle is printed to. This would cause perl to crash whenever the glob's contents were accessed [perl #77492]. =item * The postincrement and postdecrement operators, C<++> and C<--> used to cause leaks when being used on references. This has now been fixed. =item * A bug when replacing the glob of a loop variable within the loop has been fixed [perl #21469]. This means the following code will no longer crash: for $x (...) { *x = *y; } =item * Perl would segfault if the undocumented C functions that used reference prototypes were called with the C<&foo()> syntax, e.g. C<&Internals::SvREADONLY(undef)> [perl #77776]. These functions now call C on their arguments before dereferencing them with C, and we test for this case in F. =back =head1 Known Problems XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any tests that had to be Ced for the release would be noted here, unless they were specific to a particular platform (see below). This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from either 5.XXX.XXX or 5.XXX.XXX. [ List each fix as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Obituary XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary here. =head1 Acknowledgements XXX The list of people to thank goes here. =head1 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 B 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 C, 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 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. =head1 SEE ALSO The F file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. The F file for how to build Perl. The F file for general stuff. The F and F files for copyright information. =cut