1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
|
TODO: perl591delta and further
=head1 NAME
perldelta - what is new for perl 5.10.0
=head1 DESCRIPTION
This document describes the differences between the 5.8.8 release and
the 5.10.0 release.
Many of the bug fixes in 5.10.0 were already seen in the 5.8.X maintenance
releases; they are not duplicated here and are documented in the set of
man pages named perl58[1-8]?delta.
=head1 Incompatible Changes
=head2 Packing and UTF-8 strings
=for XXX update this
The semantics of pack() and unpack() regarding UTF-8-encoded data has been
changed. Processing is now by default character per character instead of
byte per byte on the underlying encoding. Notably, code that used things
like C<pack("a*", $string)> to see through the encoding of string will now
simply get back the original $string. Packed strings can also get upgraded
during processing when you store upgraded characters. You can get the old
behaviour by using C<use bytes>.
To be consistent with pack(), the C<C0> in unpack() templates indicates
that the data is to be processed in character mode, i.e. character by
character; on the contrary, C<U0> in unpack() indicates UTF-8 mode, where
the packed string is processed in its UTF-8-encoded Unicode form on a byte
by byte basis. This is reversed with regard to perl 5.8.X.
Moreover, C<C0> and C<U0> can also be used in pack() templates to specify
respectively character and byte modes.
C<C0> and C<U0> in the middle of a pack or unpack format now switch to the
specified encoding mode, honoring parens grouping. Previously, parens were
ignored.
Also, there is a new pack() character format, C<W>, which is intended to
replace the old C<C>. C<C> is kept for unsigned chars coded as bytes in
the strings internal representation. C<W> represents unsigned (logical)
character values, which can be greater than 255. It is therefore more
robust when dealing with potentially UTF-8-encoded data (as C<C> will wrap
values outside the range 0..255, and not respect the string encoding).
In practice, that means that pack formats are now encoding-neutral, except
C<C>.
For consistency, C<A> in unpack() format now trims all Unicode whitespace
from the end of the string. Before perl 5.9.2, it used to strip only the
classical ASCII space characters.
=head2 Byte/character count feature in unpack()
A new unpack() template character, C<".">, returns the number of bytes or
characters (depending on the selected encoding mode, see above) read so far.
=head2 The C<$*> and C<$#> variables have been removed
C<$*>, which was deprecated in favor of the C</s> and C</m> regexp
modifiers, has been removed.
The deprecated C<$#> variable (output format for numbers) has been
removed.
Two new warnings, C<$#/$* is no longer supported>, have been added.
=head2 substr() lvalues are no longer fixed-length
The lvalues returned by the three argument form of substr() used to be a
"fixed length window" on the original string. In some cases this could
cause surprising action at distance or other undefined behaviour. Now the
length of the window adjusts itself to the length of the string assigned to
it.
=head2 Parsing of C<-f _>
The identifier C<_> is now forced to be a bareword after a filetest
operator. This solves a number of misparsing issues when a global C<_>
subroutine is defined.
=head2 C<:unique>
The C<:unique> attribute has been made a no-op, since its current
implementation was fundamentally flawed and not threadsafe.
=head2 Scoping of the C<sort> pragma
The C<sort> pragma is now lexically scoped. Its effect used to be global.
=head2 Scoping of C<bignum>, C<bigint>, C<bigrat>
The three numeric pragmas C<bignum>, C<bigint> and C<bigrat> are now
lexically scoped. (Tels)
=head2 Effect of pragmas in eval
The compile-time value of the C<%^H> hint variable can now propagate into
eval("")uated code. This makes it more useful to implement lexical
pragmas.
As a side-effect of this, the overloaded-ness of constants now propagates
into eval("").
=head2 chdir FOO
A bareword argument to chdir() is now recognized as a file handle.
Earlier releases interpreted the bareword as a directory name.
(Gisle Aas)
=head2 Handling of .pmc files
An old feature of perl was that before C<require> or C<use> look for a
file with a F<.pm> extension, they will first look for a similar filename
with a F<.pmc> extension. If this file is found, it will be loaded in
place of any potentially existing file ending in a F<.pm> extension.
Previously, F<.pmc> files were loaded only if more recent than the
matching F<.pm> file. Starting with 5.9.4, they'll be always loaded if
they exist.
=head2 @- and @+ in patterns
The special arrays C<@-> and C<@+> are no longer interpolated in regular
expressions. (Sadahiro Tomoyuki)
=head2 $AUTOLOAD can now be tainted
If you call a subroutine by a tainted name, and if it defers to an
AUTOLOAD function, then $AUTOLOAD will be (correctly) tainted.
(Rick Delaney)
=head2 Tainting and printf
When perl is run under taint mode, C<printf()> and C<sprintf()> will now
reject any tainted format argument. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 undef and signal handlers
Undefining or deleting a signal handler via C<undef $SIG{FOO}> is now
equivalent to setting it to C<'DEFAULT'>. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 strictures and array/hash dereferencing in defined()
C<defined @$foo> and C<defined %$bar> are now subject to C<strict 'refs'>
(that is, C<$foo> and C<$bar> shall be proper references there.)
(Nicholas Clark)
(However, C<defined(@foo)> and C<defined(%bar)> are discouraged constructs
anyway.)
=head2 C<(?p{})> has been removed
The regular expression construct C<(?p{})>, which was deprecated in perl
5.8, has been removed. Use C<(??{})> instead. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 Pseudo-hashes have been removed
Support for pseudo-hashes has been removed from Perl 5.9. (The C<fields>
pragma remains here, but uses an alternate implementation.)
=head2 Removal of the bytecode compiler and of perlcc
C<perlcc>, the byteloader and the supporting modules (B::C, B::CC,
B::Bytecode, etc.) are no longer distributed with the perl sources. Those
experimental tools have never worked reliably, and, due to the lack of
volunteers to keep them in line with the perl interpreter developments, it
was decided to remove them instead of shipping a broken version of those.
The last version of those modules can be found with perl 5.9.4.
However the B compiler framework stays supported in the perl core, as with
the more useful modules it has permitted (among others, B::Deparse and
B::Concise).
=head2 Removal of the JPL
The JPL (Java-Perl Linguo) has been removed from the perl sources tarball.
=head2 Recursive inheritance detected earlier
Perl will now immediately throw an exception if you modify any package's
C<@ISA> in such a way that it would cause recursive inheritance.
Previously, the exception would not occur until Perl attempted to make
use of the recursive inheritance while resolving a method or doing a
C<$foo-E<gt>isa($bar)> lookup.
=head1 Core Enhancements
=head2 The C<feature> pragma
The C<feature> pragma is used to enable new syntax that would break Perl's
backwards-compatibility with older releases of the language. It's a lexical
pragma, like C<strict> or C<warnings>.
Currently the following new features are available: C<switch> (adds a
switch statement), C<say> (adds a C<say> built-in function), and C<state>
(adds an C<state> keyword for declaring "static" variables). Those
features are described in their own sections of this document.
The C<feature> pragma is also implicitly loaded when you require a minimal
perl version (with the C<use VERSION> construct) greater than, or equal
to, 5.9.5. See L<feature> for details.
=head2 New B<-E> command-line switch
B<-E> is equivalent to B<-e>, but it implicitly enables all
optional features (like C<use feature ":5.10">).
=head2 Defined-or operator
A new operator C<//> (defined-or) has been implemented.
The following statement:
$a // $b
is merely equivalent to
defined $a ? $a : $b
and
$c //= $d;
can now be used instead of
$c = $d unless defined $c;
The C<//> operator has the same precedence and associativity as C<||>.
Special care has been taken to ensure that this operator Do What You Mean
while not breaking old code, but some edge cases involving the empty
regular expression may now parse differently. See L<perlop> for
details.
=head2 Switch and Smart Match operator
Perl 5 now has a switch statement. It's available when C<use feature
'switch'> is in effect. This feature introduces three new keywords,
C<given>, C<when>, and C<default>:
given ($foo) {
when (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; }
when (/^def/) { $def = 1; }
when (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; }
default { $nothing = 1; }
}
A more complete description of how Perl matches the switch variable
against the C<when> conditions is given in L<perlsyn/"Switch statements">.
This kind of match is called I<smart match>, and it's also possible to use
it outside of switch statements, via the new C<~~> operator. See
L<perlsyn/"Smart matching in detail">.
This feature was contributed by Robin Houston.
=head2 Regular expressions
=over 4
=item Recursive Patterns
It is now possible to write recursive patterns without using the C<(??{})>
construct. This new way is more efficient, and in many cases easier to
read.
Each capturing parenthesis can now be treated as an independent pattern
that can be entered by using the C<(?PARNO)> syntax (C<PARNO> standing for
"parenthesis number"). For example, the following pattern will match
nested balanced angle brackets:
/
^ # start of line
( # start capture buffer 1
< # match an opening angle bracket
(?: # match one of:
(?> # don't backtrack over the inside of this group
[^<>]+ # one or more non angle brackets
) # end non backtracking group
| # ... or ...
(?1) # recurse to bracket 1 and try it again
)* # 0 or more times.
> # match a closing angle bracket
) # end capture buffer one
$ # end of line
/x
Note, users experienced with PCRE will find that the Perl implementation
of this feature differs from the PCRE one in that it is possible to
backtrack into a recursed pattern, whereas in PCRE the recursion is
atomic or "possessive" in nature. (Yves Orton)
=item Named Capture Buffers
It is now possible to name capturing parenthesis in a pattern and refer to
the captured contents by name. The naming syntax is C<< (?<NAME>....) >>.
It's possible to backreference to a named buffer with the C<< \k<NAME> >>
syntax. In code, the new magical hashes C<%+> and C<%-> can be used to
access the contents of the capture buffers.
Thus, to replace all doubled chars, one could write
s/(?<letter>.)\k<letter>/$+{letter}/g
Only buffers with defined contents will be "visible" in the C<%+> hash, so
it's possible to do something like
foreach my $name (keys %+) {
print "content of buffer '$name' is $+{$name}\n";
}
The C<%-> hash is a bit more complete, since it will contain array refs
holding values from all capture buffers similarly named, if there should
be many of them.
C<%+> and C<%-> are implemented as tied hashes through the new module
C<Tie::Hash::NamedCapture>.
Users exposed to the .NET regex engine will find that the perl
implementation differs in that the numerical ordering of the buffers
is sequential, and not "unnamed first, then named". Thus in the pattern
/(A)(?<B>B)(C)(?<D>D)/
$1 will be 'A', $2 will be 'B', $3 will be 'C' and $4 will be 'D' and not
$1 is 'A', $2 is 'C' and $3 is 'B' and $4 is 'D' that a .NET programmer
would expect. This is considered a feature. :-) (Yves Orton)
=item Possessive Quantifiers
Perl now supports the "possessive quantifier" syntax of the "atomic match"
pattern. Basically a possessive quantifier matches as much as it can and never
gives any back. Thus it can be used to control backtracking. The syntax is
similar to non-greedy matching, except instead of using a '?' as the modifier
the '+' is used. Thus C<?+>, C<*+>, C<++>, C<{min,max}+> are now legal
quantifiers. (Yves Orton)
=item Backtracking control verbs
The regex engine now supports a number of special-purpose backtrack
control verbs: (*THEN), (*PRUNE), (*MARK), (*SKIP), (*COMMIT), (*FAIL)
and (*ACCEPT). See L<perlre> for their descriptions. (Yves Orton)
=item Relative backreferences
A new syntax C<\g{N}> or C<\gN> where "N" is a decimal integer allows a
safer form of back-reference notation as well as allowing relative
backreferences. This should make it easier to generate and embed patterns
that contain backreferences. See L<perlre/"Capture buffers">. (Yves Orton)
=item C<\K> escape
The functionality of Jeff Pinyan's module Regexp::Keep has been added to
the core. You can now use in regular expressions the special escape C<\K>
as a way to do something like floating length positive lookbehind. It is
also useful in substitutions like:
s/(foo)bar/$1/g
that can now be converted to
s/foo\Kbar//g
which is much more efficient. (Yves Orton)
=item Vertical and horizontal whitespace, and linebreak
Regular expressions now recognize the C<\v> and C<\h> escapes, that match
vertical and horizontal whitespace, respectively. C<\V> and C<\H>
logically match their complements.
C<\R> matches a generic linebreak, that is, vertical whitespace, plus
the multi-character sequence C<"\x0D\x0A">.
=item Unicode Character Classes
Perl's regular expression engine now contains support for matching on the
intersection of two Unicode character classes. You can also now refer to
user-defined character classes from within other user defined character
classes.
=back
=head2 C<say()>
say() is a new built-in, only available when C<use feature 'say'> is in
effect, that is similar to print(), but that implicitly appends a newline
to the printed string. See L<perlfunc/say>. (Robin Houston)
=head2 Lexical C<$_>
The default variable C<$_> can now be lexicalized, by declaring it like
any other lexical variable, with a simple
my $_;
The operations that default on C<$_> will use the lexically-scoped
version of C<$_> when it exists, instead of the global C<$_>.
In a C<map> or a C<grep> block, if C<$_> was previously my'ed, then the
C<$_> inside the block is lexical as well (and scoped to the block).
In a scope where C<$_> has been lexicalized, you can still have access to
the global version of C<$_> by using C<$::_>, or, more simply, by
overriding the lexical declaration with C<our $_>.
=head2 The C<_> prototype
A new prototype character has been added. C<_> is equivalent to C<$> (it
denotes a scalar), but defaults to C<$_> if the corresponding argument
isn't supplied. Due to the optional nature of the argument, you can only
use it at the end of a prototype, or before a semicolon.
This has a small incompatible consequence: the prototype() function has
been adjusted to return C<_> for some built-ins in appropriate cases (for
example, C<prototype('CORE::rmdir')>). (Rafael Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 UNITCHECK blocks
C<UNITCHECK>, a new special code block has been introduced, in addition to
C<BEGIN>, C<CHECK>, C<INIT> and C<END>.
C<CHECK> and C<INIT> blocks, while useful for some specialized purposes,
are always executed at the transition between the compilation and the
execution of the main program, and thus are useless whenever code is
loaded at runtime. On the other hand, C<UNITCHECK> blocks are executed
just after the unit which defined them has been compiled. See L<perlmod>
for more information. (Alex Gough)
=head2 New Pragma, C<mro>
A new pragma, C<mro> (for Method Resolution Order) has been added. It
permits to switch, on a per-class basis, the algorithm that perl uses to
find inherited methods in case of a mutiple inheritance hierachy. The
default MRO hasn't changed (DFS, for Depth First Search). Another MRO is
available: the C3 algorithm. See L<mro> for more information.
(Brandon Black)
Note that, due to changes in the implentation of class hierarchy search,
code that used to undef the C<*ISA> glob will most probably break. Anyway,
undef'ing C<*ISA> had the side-effect of removing the magic on the @ISA
array and should not have been done in the first place.
=head2 readpipe() is now overridable
The built-in function readpipe() is now overridable. Overriding it permits
also to override its operator counterpart, C<qx//> (a.k.a. C<``>).
Moreover, it now defaults to C<$_> if no argument is provided. (Rafael
Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 default argument for readline()
readline() now defaults to C<*ARGV> if no argument is provided. (Rafael
Garcia-Suarez)
=head2 state() variables
A new class of variables has been introduced. State variables are similar
to C<my> variables, but are declared with the C<state> keyword in place of
C<my>. They're visible only in their lexical scope, but their value is
persistent: unlike C<my> variables, they're not undefined at scope entry,
but retain their previous value. (Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Nicholas Clark)
To use state variables, one needs to enable them by using
use feature "state";
or by using the C<-E> command-line switch in one-liners.
See L<perlsub/"Persistent variables via state()">.
=head2 Stacked filetest operators
As a new form of syntactic sugar, it's now possible to stack up filetest
operators. You can now write C<-f -w -x $file> in a row to mean
C<-x $file && -w _ && -f _>. See L<perlfunc/-X>.
=head2 UNIVERSAL::DOES()
The C<UNIVERSAL> class has a new method, C<DOES()>. It has been added to
solve semantic problems with the C<isa()> method. C<isa()> checks for
inheritance, while C<DOES()> has been designed to be overridden when
module authors use other types of relations between classes (in addition
to inheritance). (chromatic)
See L<< UNIVERSAL/"$obj->DOES( ROLE )" >>.
=head2 C<CLONE_SKIP()>
Perl has now support for the C<CLONE_SKIP> special subroutine. Like
C<CLONE>, C<CLONE_SKIP> is called once per package; however, it is called
just before cloning starts, and in the context of the parent thread. If it
returns a true value, then no objects of that class will be cloned. See
L<perlmod> for details. (Contributed by Dave Mitchell.)
=head2 Formats
Formats were improved in several ways. A new field, C<^*>, can be used for
variable-width, one-line-at-a-time text. Null characters are now handled
correctly in picture lines. Using C<@#> and C<~~> together will now
produce a compile-time error, as those format fields are incompatible.
L<perlform> has been improved, and miscellaneous bugs fixed.
=head2 Byte-order modifiers for pack() and unpack()
There are two new byte-order modifiers, C<E<gt>> (big-endian) and C<E<lt>>
(little-endian), that can be appended to most pack() and unpack() template
characters and groups to force a certain byte-order for that type or group.
See L<perlfunc/pack> and L<perlpacktut> for details.
=head2 C<no VERSION>
You can now use C<no> followed by a version number to specify that you
want to use a version of perl older than the specified one.
=head2 C<chdir>, C<chmod> and C<chown> on filehandles
C<chdir>, C<chmod> and C<chown> can now work on filehandles as well as
filenames, if the system supports respectively C<fchdir>, C<fchmod> and
C<fchown>, thanks to a patch provided by Gisle Aas.
=head2 OS groups
C<$(> and C<$)> now return groups in the order where the OS returns them,
thanks to Gisle Aas. This wasn't previously the case.
=head2 Recursive sort subs
You can now use recursive subroutines with sort(), thanks to Robin Houston.
=head2 Exceptions in constant folding
The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and
if folding throws an exception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl
now retains the current optree, rather than aborting the whole program.
(Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)
=head2 Source filters in @INC
It's possible to enhance the mechanism of subroutine hooks in @INC by
adding a source filter on top of the filehandle opened and returned by the
hook. This feature was planned a long time ago, but wasn't quite working
until now. See L<perlfunc/require> for details. (Nicholas Clark)
=head2 New internal variables
=over 4
=item C<${^RE_DEBUG_FLAGS}>
This variable controls what debug flags are in effect for the regular
expression engine when running under C<use re "debug">. See L<re> for
details.
=item C<${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}>
This variable gives the native status returned by the last pipe close,
backtick command, successful call to wait() or waitpid(), or from the
system() operator. See L<perlrun> for details. (Contributed by Gisle Aas.)
=back
=head2 Miscellaneous
C<unpack()> now defaults to unpacking the C<$_> variable.
C<mkdir()> without arguments now defaults to C<$_>.
The internal dump output has been improved, so that non-printable characters
such as newline and backspace are output in C<\x> notation, rather than
octal.
The B<-C> option can no longer be used on the C<#!> line. It wasn't
working there anyway.
=head2 PERLIO_DEBUG
The C<PERLIO_DEBUG> environment variable has no longer any effect for
setuid scripts and for scripts run with B<-T>.
Moreover, with a thread-enabled perl, using C<PERLIO_DEBUG> could lead to
an internal buffer overflow. This has been fixed.
=head2 UCD 5.0.0
The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5 has
been updated to version 5.0.0.
=head2 MAD
MAD, which stands for I<Misc Attribute Decoration>, is a
still-in-development work leading to a Perl 5 to Perl 6 converter. To
enable it, it's necessary to pass the argument C<-Dmad> to Configure. The
obtained perl isn't binary compatible with a regular perl 5.9.4, and has
space and speed penalties; moreover not all regression tests still pass
with it. (Larry Wall, Nicholas Clark)
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
=head2 New modules
=over 4
=item *
C<encoding::warnings>, by Audrey Tang, is a module to emit warnings
whenever an ASCII character string containing high-bit bytes is implicitly
converted into UTF-8.
=item *
C<Module::CoreList>, by Richard Clamp, is a small handy module that tells
you what versions of core modules ship with any versions of Perl 5. It
comes with a command-line frontend, C<corelist>.
=back
=head1 Utility Changes
=over 4
=item *
The Perl debugger can now save all debugger commands for sourcing later;
notably, it can now emulate stepping backwards, by restarting and
rerunning all bar the last command from a saved command history.
It can also display the parent inheritance tree of a given class, with the
C<i> command.
Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in the
debugger.
=item *
The C<corelist> utility is now installed with perl (see L</"New modules">
above).
=item *
C<h2ph> and C<h2xs> have been made a bit more robust with regard to
"modern" C code.
=item *
C<find2perl> now assumes C<-print> as a default action. Previously, it
needed to be specified explicitly.
Several bugs have been fixed in C<find2perl>, regarding C<-exec> and
C<-eval>. Also the options C<-path>, C<-ipath> and C<-iname> have been
added.
=back
=head1 New Documentation
The long-existing feature of C</(?{...})/> regexps setting C<$_> and pos()
is now documented.
=head1 Performance Enhancements
=over 4
=item *
Sorting arrays in place (C<@a = sort @a>) is now optimized to avoid
making a temporary copy of the array.
Likewise, C<reverse sort ...> is now optimized to sort in reverse,
avoiding the generation of a temporary intermediate list.
=item *
Access to elements of lexical arrays via a numeric constant between 0 and
255 is now faster. (This used to be only the case for global arrays.)
=item *
The regexp engine now implements the trie optimization : it's able to
factorize common prefixes and suffixes in regular expressions. A new
special variable, ${^RE_TRIE_MAXBUF}, has been added to fine-tune this
optimization.
=back
=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled by passing the
C<-Dusesitecustomize> flag to configure. When enabled, this will make perl
run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before anything else. This script can
then be set up to add additional entries to @INC.
There is alpha support for relocatable @INC entries.
=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
C<strict> wasn't in effect in regexp-eval blocks (C</(?{...})/>).
C<$Foo::_> was wrongly forced as C<$main::_>.
=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
A new deprecation warning, I<Deprecated use of my() in false conditional>,
has been added, to warn against the use of the dubious and deprecated
construct
my $x if 0;
See L<perldiag>. Use C<state> variables instead.
A new warning, C<!=~ should be !~>, is emitted to prevent this misspelling
of the non-matching operator.
The warning I<Newline in left-justified string> has been removed.
The error I<Too late for "-T" option> has been reformulated to be more
descriptive.
C<perl -V> has several improvements, making it more useable from shell
scripts to get the value of configuration variables. See L<perlrun> for
details.
=head1 Changed Internals
=head2 Reordering of SVt_* constants
The relative ordering of constants that define the various types of C<SV>
have changed; in particular, C<SVt_PVGV> has been moved before C<SVt_PVLV>,
C<SVt_PVAV>, C<SVt_PVHV> and C<SVt_PVCV>. This is unlikely to make any
difference unless you have code that explicitly makes assumptions about that
ordering. (The inheritance hierarchy of C<B::*> objects has been changed
to reflect this.)
=head2 Removal of CPP symbols
The C preprocessor symbols C<PERL_PM_APIVERSION> and
C<PERL_XS_APIVERSION>, which were supposed to give the version number of
the oldest perl binary-compatible (resp. source-compatible) with the
present one, were not used, and sometimes had misleading values. They have
been removed.
=head2 Less space is used by ops
The C<BASEOP> structure now uses less space. The C<op_seq> field has been
removed and replaced by the one-bit fields C<op_opt>. C<op_type> is now 9
bits long. (Consequently, the C<B::OP> class doesn't provide an C<seq>
method anymore.)
=head2 New parser
perl's parser is now generated by bison (it used to be generated by
byacc.) As a result, it seems to be a bit more robust.
=head1 New Tests
=head1 Known Problems
There's still a remaining problem in the implementation of the lexical
C<$_>: it doesn't work inside C</(?{...})/> blocks. (See the TODO test in
F<t/op/mydef.t>.)
=head1 Platform Specific Problems
=head1 Reporting Bugs
=head1 SEE ALSO
The F<Changes> file and the perl590delta to perl595delta man pages for
exhaustive details on what changed.
The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
The F<README> file for general stuff.
The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
=cut
|