NAME¶
perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes differences between the 5.12.1 release and the 5.12.2
release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier major version, such as 5.10.1, first read
perl5120delta, which describes differences between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0, as well
as perl5121delta, which describes earlier changes in the 5.12 stable release
series.
Incompatible Changes¶
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If any exist, they
are bugs and reports are welcome.
Core Enhancements¶
Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible changes
to the core language in this release.
Modules and Pragmata¶
New Modules and Pragmata¶
This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.
Pragmata Changes¶
In the previous release, "no
VERSION;" statements triggered a
bug which could cause feature bundles to be loaded and strict mode to be
enabled unintentionally.
Updated Modules¶
- "Carp"
- Upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.
Carp now detects incomplete caller() overrides and avoids using bogus
@DB::args. To provide backtraces, Carp relies on particular behaviour of
the caller built-in. Carp now detects if other code has overridden this
with an incomplete implementation, and modifies its backtrace accordingly.
Previously incomplete overrides would cause incorrect values in backtraces
(best case), or obscure fatal errors (worst case)
This fixes certain cases of "Bizarre copy of ARRAY" caused by
modules overriding "caller()" incorrectly.
- "CPANPLUS"
- A patch to cpanp-run-perl has been backported from CPANPLUS 0.9004.
This resolves RT #55964
<http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55964> and RT #57106
<http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=57106>, both of which
related to failures to install distributions that use
"Module::Install::DSL".
- "File::Glob"
- A regression which caused a failure to find "CORE::GLOBAL::glob"
after loading "File::Glob" to crash has been fixed. Now, it
correctly falls back to external globbing via "pp_glob".
- "File::Copy"
- "File::Copy::copy(FILE, DIR)" is now documented.
- "File::Spec"
- Upgraded from version 3.31 to 3.31_01.
Several portability fixes were made in "File::Spec::VMS": a colon
is now recognized as a delimiter in native filespecs; caret-escaped
delimiters are recognized for better handling of extended filespecs;
"catpath()" returns an empty directory rather than the current
directory if the input directory name is empty; "abs2rel()"
properly handles Unix-style input.
Utility Changes¶
- •
- perlbug now always gives the reporter a chance to change the email
address it guesses for them.
- •
- perlbug should no longer warn about uninitialized values when using
the "-d" and "-v" options.
Changes to Existing Documentation¶
- •
- The existing policy on backward-compatibility and deprecation has been
added to perlpolicy, along with definitions of terms like
deprecation.
- •
- "srand" in perlfunc's usage has been clarified.
- •
- The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its
role in the exception mechanism.
- •
- Perl's INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that Perl
requires a C89 compliant ANSI C Compiler.
- •
- IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and "setsockopt()" have
been documented.
- •
- alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO on
Windows has been documented.
- •
- Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been removed as a
recommended solution for random number generation.
- •
- perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to
perl.
- •
- To ease user confusion, $# and $*, two special variables that were removed
in earlier versions of Perl have been documented.
- •
- The version of perlfaq shipped with the Perl core has been updated from
the official FAQ version, which is now maintained in the
"briandfoy/perlfaq" branch of the Perl repository at
<git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git>.
Installation and Configuration Improvements¶
Configuration improvements¶
- •
- The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.
Compilation improvements¶
- •
- An ""incompatible operand types"" error in ternary
expressions when building with "clang" has been fixed.
- •
- Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests on partitions it
detects to be mounted as "nosuid".
Selected Bug Fixes¶
- •
- A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ" default typemap has been
fixed.
- •
- A possible memory leak when using caller() to set @DB::args has
been fixed.
- •
- Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.
- •
- "unpack()" now handles scalar context correctly for %32H and
%32u, fixing a potential crash. "split()" would crash because
the third item on the stack wasn't the regular expression it expected.
"unpack("%2H", ...)" would return both the unpacked
result and the checksum on the stack, as would
"unpack("%2u", ...)". [perl #73814]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=73814>
- •
- Perl now avoids using memory after calling "free()" in
pp_require when there are CODEREFs in @INC.
- •
- A bug that could cause ""Unknown error"" messages when
""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is called from an XS
destructor has been fixed.
- •
- The implementation of the "open $fh, '>' \$buffer" feature
now supports get/set magic and thus tied buffers correctly.
- •
- The "pp_getc", "pp_tell", and "pp_eof"
opcodes now make room on the stack for their return values in cases where
no argument was passed in.
- •
- When matching unicode strings under some conditions inappropriate
backtracking would result in a "Malformed UTF-8 character
(fatal)" error. This should no longer occur. See [perl #75680]
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=75680>
AIX¶
- •
- README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11
compiler suite.
Windows¶
- •
- When building Perl with the mingw64 x64 cross-compiler
"incpath", "libpth", "ldflags",
"lddlflags" and "ldflags_nolargefiles" values in
Config.pm and Config_heavy.pl were not previously being set
correctly because, with that compiler, the include and lib directories are
not immediately below "$(CCHOME)".
VMS¶
- •
- git_version.h is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in
v5.12.0 which caused some extensions to fail to build.
- •
- Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.
- •
- A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to a double allocation has
been fixed.
- •
- A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()" (used by
"realpath()" and "realname()") has been fixed.
Acknowledgements¶
Perl 5.12.2 represents approximately three months of development since Perl
5.12.1 and contains approximately 2,000 lines of changes across 100 files from
36 authors.
Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community
of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed
the improvements that became Perl 5.12.2:
Abigail, AEvar Arnfjoerd` Bjarmason, Ben Morrow, brian d foy, Brian Phillips,
Chas. Owens, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Chris Williams, Craig A. Berry, Curtis
Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, David Golden, David Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos,
Florian Ragwitz, George Greer, H.Merijn Brand, Jan Dubois, Jesse Vincent, Jim
Cromie, Karl Williamson, Lars DXXXXXX XXX, Leon Brocard, Maik Hentsche, Matt S
Trout, Nicholas Clark, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Ricardo Signes,
Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Tony Cook,
Vincent Pit and Yves Orton.
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
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 "perl
-V", 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.
SEE ALSO¶
The
Changes file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
what changed.
The
INSTALL file for how to build Perl.
The
README file for general stuff.
The
Artistic and
Copying files for copyright information.