=encoding utf8 =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 v5.19.8 =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes differences between the 5.19.7 release and the 5.19.8 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.19.6, first read L, which describes differences between 5.19.6 and 5.19.7. =head1 Notice XXX Any important notices here =head1 Core Enhancements XXX New core language features go here. Summarize user-visible core language enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go here, but most should go in the L section. =head2 New C<\p{Unicode}> regular expression pattern property This is a synonym for C<\p{Any}> and matches the set of Unicode-defined code points 0 - 0x10FFFF. =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 C can no longer be used to call subroutines The C form has resulted in a deprecation warning since Perl v5.0.0, and is now a syntax error. =head2 C<\p{}>, C<\P{}> matching has changed for non-Unicode code points. C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> are defined by Unicode only on Unicode-defined code points (C through C). Their behavior on matching these legal Unicode code points is unchanged, but there are changes for code points C<0x110000> and above. Previously, Perl treated the result of matching C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> against these as C, which translates into "false". For C<\P{}>, this was then complemented into "true". A warning was supposed to be raised when this happened. However, various optimizations could prevent the warning, and the results were often counter-intuitive, with both a match and its seeming complement being false. Now all non-Unicode code points are treated as typical unassigned Unicode code points. This generally is more Do-What-I-Mean. A warning is raised only if the results are arguably different from a strict Unicode approach, and from what Perl used to do. Code that needs to be strictly Unicode compliant can make this warning fatal, and then Perl always raises the warning. Details are in L. =head2 C<\p{All}> has been expanded to match all possible code points The Perl-defined regular expression pattern element C<\p{All}>, unused on CPAN, used to match just the Unicode code points; now it matches all possible code points; that is, it is equivalent to C. Thus C<\p{All}> is no longer synonymous with C<\p{Any}>, which continues to match just the Unicode code points, as Unicode says it should. =head1 Deprecations XXX Any deprecated features, syntax, modules etc. should be listed here. =head2 Module removals XXX Remove this section if inapplicable. 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 C<"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. =over XXX Note that deprecated modules should be listed here even if they are listed as an updated module in the L section. =back [ List each other deprecation as a =head2 entry ] =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 * XXX =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. 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 * L has been upgraded from version 2.20 to 2.21. The stricter load failure tests added in 2.20 now allow for C<${^LAST_FH}> being set. =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.56 to 2.57. UTF-8 is no longer used in the C source (which some compilers didn't like), and some POD errors have been fixed in the documentation. =item * The libnet module collection has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.24. The handling of CRLF characters in L has been fixed. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.26. Removed a warning about an ancient behaviour change and filled out the SYNOPSIS. [perl #120981] =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.42 to 1.43 Fix a crash in tab completion, where available. [perl #120827] The debugger tests no longer open two handles to the same output file, making them more robust. [perl #118817] =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 * XXX Description of the change here =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. =head2 New Diagnostics XXX Newly added diagnostic messages go under here, separated into New Errors and New Warnings =head3 New Errors =over 4 =item * XXX L =back =head3 New Warnings =over 4 =item * %s on a reference is now experimental The "auto-deref" feature is now experimental. Starting in v5.14.0, it was possible to use push, pop, keys, and other built-in functions not only on aggregate types, but on references to them. The feature was not deployed to its original intended specification, and now may become redundant to postfix dereferencing. It has always been categorized as an experimental feature, and in v5.20.0 is carries a warning as such. Warnings will now be issued at compile time when these operations are detected. no if $] >= 5.01908, warnings => "experimental::autoderef"; Consider, though, replacing the use of these features, as they may change behavior again before becoming stable. =item * L. This replaces the message "Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, all \p{} matches fail; all \P{} matches succeed". =back =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics XXX Changes (i.e. rewording) of diagnostic messages go here =over 4 =item * XXX Describe change here =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 * XXX =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 * Distinct library basenames with C. When compiling perl with this option, the library files for XS modules are named something "unique" -- for example, Hash/Util/Util.so becomes Hash/Util/PL_Hash__Util.so. This behavior is similar to what currently happens on VMS, and serves as groundwork for the Android port. =item * C option to indicate the logical root directory under gcc and clang. When building with this option set, both Configure and the compilers search for all headers and libraries under this new sysroot, instead of /. This is a huge time saver if cross-compiling, but can also help on native builds if your toolchain's files have non-standard locations. =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 summarizing, although the bugs that they represent may be covered elsewhere. [ List each test improvement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * XXX =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. ] =over 4 =item * Code related to supporting C has been removed. Perl 5.004 added support to use the native API of C, AT&T's Safe/Fast I/O library. This code still built with v5.8.0, albeit with many regression tests failing, but was inadvertently broken before the v5.8.1 release, meaning that it has not worked on any version of Perl released since then. In over a decade we have received no bug reports about this, hence it is clear that no-one is using this functionality on any version of Perl that is still supported to any degree. =back =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 Cygwin recv() on a connected handle would populate the returned sender address with whatever happened to be in the working buffer. recv() now uses a workaround similar to the Win32 recv() wrapper and returns an empty string when recvfrom(2) doesn't modify the supplied address length. [perl #118843] =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 change as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item newATTRSUB is now a macro The public API newATTRSUB was previously a macro to the private function Perl_newATTRSUB. Function Perl_newATTRSUB has been removed. newATTRSUB is now macro to a different internal function. =item Changes in warnings raised by C This bottom level function decodes the first character of a UTF-8 string into a code point. It is accessible to C level code, but it's discouraged from using it directly. There are higher level functions that call this that should be used instead, such as L. For completeness though, this documents some changes to it. Now, tests for malformations are done before any tests for other potential issues. One of those issues involves code points so large that they have never appeared in any official standard (the current standard has scaled back the highest acceptable code point from earlier versions). It is possible (though not done in CPAN) to warn and/or forbid these code points, while accepting smaller code points that are still above the legal Unicode maximum. The warning message for this now includes the code point if representable on the machine. Previously it always displayed raw bytes, which is what it still does for non-representable code points. =back =head1 Selected Bug Fixes XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarized here. Bug fixes in files in F and F are best summarized in L. [ List each fix as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * In v5.19.6, C was inadvertently changed from being interpreted as do-file (i.e., C) to do-sub (i.e., C<&CORE()>). It has now been changed back. =item * v5.19.7 inadvertently caused freed scalars to be passed to subroutines in @INC it contained multiple subs. This has been fixed. [perl #120657] =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. Unfixed platform specific bugs also go here. [ 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 Generate this with: perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.19.7..HEAD =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 https://rt.perl.org/ . 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 L 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 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. =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