path: root/pod/perl591delta.pod

=head1 NAME

perldelta - what is new for perl v5.9.1

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.9.0 and the 5.9.1
development releases. See L<perl590delta> for the differences between
5.8.0 and 5.9.0.

=head1 Incompatible Changes

=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 The C<:unique> attribute is only meaningful for globals

Now applying C<:unique> to lexical variables and to subroutines will
result in a compilation error.

=head1 Core Enhancements

=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 Tied hashes in scalar context

As of perl 5.8.2/5.9.0, tied hashes did not return anything useful in
scalar context, for example when used as boolean tests:

	if (%tied_hash) { ... }

The old nonsensical behaviour was always to return false,
regardless of whether the hash is empty or has elements.

There is now an interface for the implementors of tied hashes to implement
the behaviour of a hash in scalar context, via the SCALAR method (see
L<perltie>).  Without a SCALAR method, perl will try to guess whether
the hash is empty, by testing if it's inside an iteration (in this case
it can't be empty) or by calling FIRSTKEY.

=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 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>.

=head1 Modules and Pragmata

=over 4

=item Benchmark

In C<Benchmark>, cmpthese() and timestr() now use the time statistics of
children instead of parent when the selected style is 'nop'.

=item Carp

The error messages produced by C<Carp> now include spaces between the
arguments in function argument lists: this makes long error messages
appear more nicely in browsers and other tools.

=item Exporter

C<Exporter> will now recognize grouping tags (such as C<:name>) anywhere
in the import list, not only at the beginning.

=item FindBin

A function C<again> is provided to resolve problems where modules in different
directories wish to use FindBin.

=item List::Util

You can now weaken references to read only values.

=item threads::shared

C<cond_wait> has a new two argument form. C<cond_timedwait> has been added.

=back

=head1 Utility Changes

C<find2perl> now assumes C<-print> as a default action. Previously, it
needed to be specified explicitly.

A new utility, C<prove>, makes it easy to run an individual regression test
at the command line. C<prove> is part of Test::Harness, which users of earlier
Perl versions can install from CPAN.

The perl debugger now supports a C<save> command, to save the current
history to a file, and an C<i> command, which prints the inheritance tree
of its argument (if the C<Class::ISA> module is installed.)

=head1 Documentation

The documentation has been revised in places to produce more standard manpages.

The long-existing feature of C</(?{...})/> regexps setting C<$_> and pos()
is now documented.

=head1 Performance Enhancements

Sorting arrays in place (C<@a = sort @a>) is now optimized to avoid
making a temporary copy of the array.

The operations involving case mapping on UTF-8 strings (uc(), lc(),
C<//i>, etc.) have been greatly speeded up.

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.)

=head1 Selected Bug Fixes

=head2 UTF-8 bugs

Using substr() on a UTF-8 string could cause subsequent accesses on that
string to return garbage. This was due to incorrect UTF-8 offsets being
cached, and is now fixed.

join() could return garbage when the same join() statement was used to
process 8 bit data having earlier processed UTF-8 data, due to the flags
on that statement's temporary workspace not being reset correctly. This
is now fixed.

Using Unicode keys with tied hashes should now work correctly.

chop() and chomp() used to mangle UTF-8 strings.  This has been fixed.

sprintf() used to misbehave when the format string was in UTF-8. This is
now fixed.

=head2 Threading bugs

Hashes with the C<:unique> attribute weren't made read-only in new
threads. They are now.

=head2 More bugs

C<$a .. $b> will now work as expected when either $a or $b is C<undef>.

Reading $^E now preserves $!. Previously, the C code implementing $^E
did not preserve C<errno>, so reading $^E could cause C<errno> and therefore
C<$!> to change unexpectedly.

C<strict> wasn't in effect in regexp-eval blocks (C</(?{...})/>).

=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>.

The fatal error I<DESTROY created new reference to dead object> is now
documented in L<perldiag>.

A new error, I<%ENV is aliased to %s>, is produced when taint checks are
enabled and when C<*ENV> has been aliased (and thus doesn't reflect the
program's environment anymore.)

=head1 Changed Internals

These news matter to you only if you either write XS code or like to
know about or hack Perl internals (using Devel::Peek or any of the
C<B::> modules counts), or like to run Perl with the C<-D> option.

=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 two one-bit fields, C<op_opt> and C<op_static>.
C<opt_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 Configuration and Building

C<Configure> now invokes callbacks regardless of the value of the variable
they are called for. Previously callbacks were only invoked in the
C<case $variable $define)> branch. This change should only affect platform
maintainers writing configuration hints files.

The portability and cleanliness of the Win32 makefiles has been improved.

=head1 Known Problems

There are still a couple of problems in the implementation of the lexical
C<$_>: it doesn't work inside C</(?{...})/> blocks and with regard to the
reverse() built-in used without arguments. (See the TODO tests in
F<t/op/mydef.t>.)

=head2 Platform Specific Problems

The test F<ext/IPC/SysV/t/ipcsysv.t> may fail on OpenBSD. This hasn't been
diagnosed yet.

On some configurations on AIX 5, one test in F<lib/Time/Local.t> fails.
When configured with long doubles, perl may fail tests 224-236 in
F<t/op/pow.t> on the same platform.

For threaded builds, F<ext/threads/shared/t/wait.t> has been reported to
fail some tests on HP-UX 10.20.

=head1 To-do for perl 5.10.0

This is a non-exhaustive, non-ordered, non-contractual and non-definitive
list of things to do (or nice to have) for perl 5.10.0 :

Clean up and finish support for assertions. See L<assertions>.

Reimplement the mechanism of lexical pragmas to be more extensible. Fix
current pragmas that don't work well (or at all) with lexical scopes or in
run-time eval(STRING) (C<sort>, C<re>, C<encoding> for example). MJD has a
preliminary patch that implements this.

Fix (or rewrite) the implementation of the C</(?{...})/> closures.

Conversions from byte strings to UTF-8 currently map high bit characters
to Unicode without translation (or, depending on how you look at it, by
implicitly assuming that the byte strings are in Latin-1). As perl assumes
the C locale by default, upgrading a string to UTF-8 may change the
meaning of its contents regarding character classes, case mapping, etc.
This should probably emit a warning (at least).

Introduce a new special block, UNITCHECK, which is run at the end of a
compilation unit (module, file, eval(STRING) block). This will correspond to
the Perl 6 CHECK. Perl 5's CHECK cannot be changed or removed because the
O.pm/B.pm backend framework depends on it.

Study the possibility of adding a new prototype character, C<_>, meaning
"this argument defaults to $_".

Make the peephole optimizer optional.

Allow lexical aliases (maybe via the syntax C<my \$alias = \$foo>.

Fix the bugs revealed by running the test suite with the C<-t> switch (via
C<make test.taintwarn>).

Make threads more robust.

Make C<no 6> and C<no v6> work (opposite of C<use 5.005>, etc.).

A test suite for the B module would be nice.

A ponie.

=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://bugs.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 B<perlbug>
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<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
analysed by the Perl porting team.

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file 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