NAME¶
perl5121delta - what is new for perl v5.12.1
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes differences between the 5.12.0 release and the 5.12.1
release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.10.1, first read
perl5120delta, which describes differences between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0.
Incompatible Changes¶
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.0. If any
incompatibilities with 5.12.0 exist, they are bugs. Please report them.
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¶
Pragmata Changes¶
- •
- We fixed exporting of "is_strict" and
"is_lax" from version.
These were being exported with a wrapper that treated them as method calls,
which caused them to fail. They are just functions, are documented as
such, and should never be subclassed, so this patch just exports them
directly as functions without the wrapper.
Updated Modules¶
- •
- We upgraded CGI.pm to version 3.49 to incorporate fixes for
regressions introduced in the release we shipped with Perl 5.12.0.
- •
- We upgraded Pod::Simple to version 3.14 to get an
improvement to \C\<\< \>\> parsing.
- •
- We made a small fix to the CPANPLUS test suite to fix an
occasional spurious test failure.
- •
- We upgraded Safe to version 2.27 to wrap coderefs returned
by "reval()" and "rdo()".
Changes to Existing Documentation¶
- •
- We added the new maintenance release policy to
perlpolicy.pod
- •
- We've clarified the multiple-angle-bracket construct in the
spec for POD in perlpodspec
- •
- We added a missing explanation for a warning about
":=" to perldiag.pod
- •
- We removed a false claim in perlunitut that all text
strings are Unicode strings in Perl.
- •
- We updated the Github mirror link in perlrepository to
mirrors/perl, not github/perl
- •
- We fixed a a minor error in perl5114delta.pod.
- •
- We replaced a mention of the now-obsolete Switch.pm with
given/when.
- •
- We improved documentation about
$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl in perlrun.
- •
- We corrected perlmodlib.pod which had unintentionally
omitted a number of modules.
- •
- We updated the documentation for 'require' in perlfunc.pod
relating to putting Perl code in @INC.
- •
- We reinstated some erroneously-removed documentation about
quotemeta in perlfunc.
- •
- We fixed an a2p example in perlutil.pod.
- •
- We filled in a blank in perlport.pod with the release date
of Perl 5.12.
- •
- We fixed broken links in a number of perldelta files.
- •
- The documentation for Carp.pm incorrectly stated that the
$Carp::Verbose variable makes cluck generate stack backtraces.
- •
- We fixed a number of typos in Pod::Functions
- •
- We improved documentation of case-changing functions in
perlfunc.pod
- •
- We corrected perlgpl.pod to contain the correct version of
the GNU General Public License.
Testing¶
Testing Improvements¶
- •
- t/op/sselect.t is now less prone to clock jitter
during timing checks on Windows.
sleep() time on Win32 may be rounded down to multiple of the clock
tick interval.
- •
- lib/blib.t and lib/locale.t: Fixes for test
failures on Darwin/PPC
- •
- perl5db.t: Fix for test failures when
"Term::ReadLine::Gnu" is installed.
Installation and Configuration Improvements¶
Configuration improvements¶
- •
- We updated INSTALL with notes about how to deal with
broken dbm.h on OpenSUSE (and possibly other platforms)
Bug Fixes¶
- •
- A bug in how we process filetest operations could cause a
segfault. Filetests don't always expect an op on the stack, so we now use
TOPs only if we're sure that we're not stat'ing the _ filehandle. This is
indicated by OPf_KIDS (as checked in ck_ftst).
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74542>
- •
- When deparsing a nextstate op that has both a change of
package (relative to the previous nextstate) and a label, the package
declaration is now emitted first, because it is syntactically
impermissible for a label to prefix a package declaration.
- •
- XSUB.h now correctly redefines fgets under
PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS
See also: <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55049>
- •
- utf8::is_utf8 now respects GMAGIC (e.g. $1)
- •
- XS code using "fputc()" or "fputs()":
on Windows could cause an error due to their arguments being swapped.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=72704>
- •
- We fixed a small bug in lex_stuff_pvn() that caused
spurious syntax errors in an obscure situation. It happened when stuffing
was performed on the last line of a file and the line ended with a
statement that lacked a terminating semicolon.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74006>
- •
- We fixed a bug that could cause \N{} constructs followed by
a single . to be parsed incorrectly.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74978>
- •
- We fixed a bug that caused when(scalar) without an argument
not to be treated as a syntax error.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74114>
- •
- We fixed a regression in the handling of labels immediately
before string evals that was introduced in Perl 5.12.0.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=74290>
- •
- We fixed a regression in case-insensitive matching of
folded characters in regular expressions introduced in Perl 5.10.1.
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=72998>
HP-UX¶
- •
- Perl now allows -Duse64bitint without promoting to
use64bitall on HP-UX
AIX¶
- •
- Perl now builds on AIX 4.2
The changes required work around AIX 4.2s' lack of support for IPv6, and
limited support for POSIX "sigaction()".
FreeBSD 7¶
- •
- FreeBSD 7 no longer contains /usr/bin/objformat. At
build time, Perl now skips the objformat check for versions 7 and
higher and assumes ELF.
VMS¶
- •
- It's now possible to build extensions on older (pre 7.3-2)
VMS systems.
DCL symbol length was limited to 1K up until about seven years or so ago,
but there was no particularly deep reason to prevent those older systems
from configuring and building Perl.
- •
- We fixed the previously-broken "-Uuseperlio"
build on VMS.
We were checking a variable that doesn't exist in the non-default case of
disabling perlio. Now we only look at it when it exists.
- •
- We fixed the -Uuseperlio command-line option in
configure.com.
Formerly it only worked if you went through all the questions interactively
and explicitly answered no.
Known Problems¶
- •
- "List::Util::first" misbehaves in the presence of
a lexical $_ (typically introduced by "my $_" or implicitly by
"given"). The variable which gets set for each iteration is the
package variable $_, not the lexical $_.
A similar issue may occur in other modules that provide functions which take
a block as their first argument, like
foo { ... $_ ...} list
See also:
<http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=67694>
- •
- "Module::Load::Conditional" and
"version" have an unfortunate interaction which can cause
"CPANPLUS" to crash when it encounters an unparseable version
string. Upgrading to "CPANPLUS" 0.9004 or
"Module::Load::Conditional" 0.38 from CPAN will resolve this
issue.
Acknowledgements¶
Perl 5.12.1 represents approximately four weeks of development since Perl 5.12.0
and contains approximately 4,000 lines of changes across 142 files from 28
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 5.12.1:
AEvar Arnfjoerd` Bjarmason, Chris Williams, chromatic, Craig A. Berry, David
Golden, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, Frank Wiegand, Gene Sullivan,
Goro Fuji, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jan Dubois, Jesse Vincent, Josh ben
Jore, Karl Williamson, Leon Brocard, Michael Schwern, Nga Tang Chan, Nicholas
Clark, Niko Tyni, Philippe Bruhat, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Ricardo Signes,
Steffen Mueller, Todd Rinaldo, Vincent Pit and Zefram.
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 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.