NAME¶
perl5133delta - what is new for perl v5.13.3
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes differences between the 5.13.3 release and the 5.13.2
release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.13.1, first read
perl5132delta, which describes differences between 5.13.1 and 5.13.2.
Core Enhancements¶
\o{...} for octals¶
There is a new escape sequence, "\o", in double-quote-like contexts.
It must be followed by braces enclosing an octal number of at least one digit.
It interpolates as the character with an ordinal value equal to the octal
number. This construct allows large octal ordinals beyond the current max of
0777 to be represented. It also allows you to specify a character in octal
which can safely be concatenated with other regex snippets and which won't be
confused with being a backreference to a regex capture group. See
"Capture groups" in perlre.
"\N{name}" and "charnames"
enhancements¶
"\N{}" and "charnames::vianame" now know about the
abbreviated character names listed by Unicode, such as NBSP, SHY, LRO, ZWJ,
etc., as well as all the customary abbreviations for the C0 and C1 control
characters (such as ACK, BEL, CAN, etc.), as well as a few new variants in
common usage of some C1 full names.
In the past, it was ineffective to override one of Perl's abbreviations with
your own custom alias. Now it works.
You can also create a custom alias directly to the ordinal of a character, known
by "\N{...}", "charnames::vianame()", and
"charnames::viacode()". Previously, an alias had to be to an
official Unicode character name. This made it impossible to create an alias
for a code point that had no name, such as the ones reserved for private use.
So this change allows you to make more effective use of private use
characters. Only if there is no official name will
"charnames::viacode()" return your custom one.
See charnames for details on all these changes.
Uppercase X/B allowed in hexadecimal/binary literals¶
Literals may now use either upper case "0X..." or "0B..."
prefixes, in addition to the already supported "0x..." and
"0b..." syntax. (RT#76296) (a674e8d, 333f87f)
C, Ruby, Python and PHP already supported this syntax, and it makes Perl more
internally consistent. A round-trip with "eval sprintf "%#X",
0x10" now returns 16 in addition to "eval sprintf "%#x",
0x10", which worked before.
Incompatible Changes¶
\400 - \777¶
Use of "\400" - "\777" in regexes in certain circumstances
has given different, anomalous behavior than their use in all other
double-quote-like contexts. Since 5.10.1, a deprecated warning message has
been raised when this happens. Now, all double-quote-like contexts have the
same behavior, namely to be equivalent to "\x{100}" -
"\x{1FF}", with no deprecation warning. Use of these values in the
command line option "-0" retains the current meaning to slurp input
files whole; previously, this was documented only for "-0777". It is
recommended, however, because of various ambiguities, to use the new
"\o{...}" construct to represent characters in octal.
(fa1639c..f6993e9).
Deprecations¶
Omitting a space between a regular expression and subsequent
word¶
Omitting a space between a regex pattern or pattern modifiers and the following
word is deprecated. Deprecation for regular expression
matches was
added in Perl 5.13.2. In this release, the deprecation is extended to regular
expression
substitutions. For example, "s/foo/bar/sand $bar"
will still be parsed as "s/foo/bar/s and $bar" but will issue a
warning. (aa78b66)
Deprecation warning added for deprecated-in-core .pl libs¶
This is a mandatory warning, not obeying -X or lexical warning bits. The warning
is modelled on that supplied by deprecate.pm for deprecated-in-core .pm
libraries. It points to the specific CPAN distribution that contains the .pl
libraries. The CPAN version, of course, does not generate the warning.
(0111154)
There are several small optimizations to reduce CPU cache misses in various very
commonly used modules like "warnings" and "Carp" as well
in accessing file-handles for reading.
Modules and Pragmata¶
Updated Modules and Pragmata¶
- "autodie"
- Upgraded from version 2.06_01 to 2.10.
- "charnames"
- Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.10.
"viacode()" is now significantly faster. (f3227b7)
- "lib"
- Upgraded from version 0.62 to 0.63.
- "threads"
- Upgraded from version 1.77_02 to 1.77_03.
- "threads::shared"
- Upgraded from version 1.33_01 to 1.33_02.
- "warnings"
- Upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.10.
Calling "use warnings" without arguments is now significantly more
efficient. (8452af9)
- "Archive::Extract"
- Upgraded from version 0.38 to 0.42.
Updates since 0.38 include: a safe print method that guards Archive::Extract
from changes to $\; a fix to the tests when run in core perl; support for
TZ files; and a modification for the lzma logic to favour
IO::Uncompress::Unlzma (d7f8799)
- "Archive::Tar"
- Upgraded from version 1.54 to 1.64.
Important changes since 1.54 include: compatibility with busybox
implementations of tar; a fix so that "write()" and
"create_archive()" close only handles they opened; and a bug was
fixed regarding the exit code of extract_archive. (afabe0e)
- "Attribute::Handlers"
- Upgraded from version 0.87 to 0.88.
- "Compress::Raw::Bzip2"
- Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027.
- "Compress::Raw::Zlib"
- Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027_01.
- "Compress::Zlib"
- Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027.
- "CPANPLUS"
- Upgraded from version 0.90 to 0.9007.
Fixed the shell test to skip if test is not being run under a terminal;
resolved the issue where a prereq on Config would not be recognised as a
core module. (d4e225a)
- "Digest::MD5"
- Upgraded from version 2.39 to 2.40.
- "Digest::SHA"
- Upgraded from version 5.47 to 5.48.
- "Exporter"
- Upgraded from version 5.64_02 to 5.64_03.
Exporter no longer overrides $SIG{__WARN__} (RT #74472) (9b86bb5)
- "ExtUtils::CBuilder"
- Upgraded from version 0.27 to 0.2703.
- "ExtUtils::Manifest"
- Upgraded from version 1.57 to 1.58.
- "ExtUtils::ParseXS"
- Upgraded from version 2.2205 to 2.2206.
- "File::Copy"
- Upgraded from version 2.19 to 2.20.
Skips suid tests on a nosuid partition. These tests were being skipped on
OpenBSD, but nosuid partitions can exist on other systems too. Now it just
checks if it can create a suid directory, if not the tests are skipped.
Perl builds without errors in a nosuid /tmp with this patch.
(cae9400)
- "I18N::LangTags"
- Upgraded from version 0.35 to 0.35_01.
- "IPC::Cmd"
- Upgraded from version 0.58 to 0.60.
- "IPC::SysV"
- Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.03.
- "Locale::Maketext"
- Upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.
Locale::Maketext guts have been merged back into the main module (87d86da)
and adds external cache support (ace47d6)
- "Module::Build"
- Upgraded from version 0.3603 to 0.3607.
- "Module::CoreList"
- Upgraded from version 2.34 to 2.36.
- "Module::Load"
- Upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.18.
- "Term::ANSIColor"
- Upgraded from version 2.02 to 3.00.
- "Test::Harness"
- Upgraded from version 3.17 to 3.21.
The core update from Test-Harness 3.17 to 3.21 fixed some things, but also
introduced a known problem with argument passing to non-Perl tests.
- "Time::HiRes"
- Upgraded from version 1.9719 to 1.9721.
- "Time::Piece"
- Upgraded from version 1.15_01 to 1.20_01.
- "Unicode::Collate"
- Upgraded from version 0.52_01 to 0.53.
Includes Unicode Collation Algorithm 18 (74b94a7)
- "Unicode::Normalize"
- Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.06.
Documentation¶
New Documentation¶
perl5121delta
The Perl 5.12.1 perldelta file was added from the Perl maintenance branch
Changes to Existing Documentation¶
General changes
- •
- Octal character escapes in documentation now prefer a
three-digit octal escape or the new "\o{...}" escape as they
have more consistent behavior in different contexts than other forms.
(ce7b6f0) (d8b950d) (e1f120a)
- •
- Documentation now standardizes on the term 'capture group'
over 'buffer' in regular expression documentation (c27a5cf)
perlfunc
- •
- Added cautionary note about "no VERSION"
(e0de7c2)
- •
- Added additional notes regarding srand when forking
(d460397)
perlop
- •
- Improved documentation of unusual character escapes
(4068718, 9644846)
- •
- Clarified how hexadecimal escapes are interpreted, with
particular attention to the treatment of invalid characters (9644846)
perlrun
- •
- Clarified the behavior of the "-0NNN" switch for
"-0400" or higher (7ba31cb)
perlpolicy
- •
- Added the policy on compatibility and deprecation along
with definitions of terms like "deprecation" (70e4a83)
perlre
- •
- Added examples of the perils of not using \g{} when there
are more than nine back-references (9d86067)
perltie
- •
- Updated some examples for modern Perl style (67d00dd)
Utility Changes¶
perldb
- •
- The remote terminal works after forking and spawns new
sessions - one for each forked process (11653f7)
- •
- Uses the less pager path from Config instead of searching
for it (bf320d6)
Configuration and Compilation¶
- •
- Adjusted 'make test.valgrind' to account for cpan/dist/ext
separation (e07ce2e)
Testing¶
- •
- t/harness clears PERL5LIB, PERLLIB, PERL5OPT as
t/TEST does (a2d3de1)
- •
- Many common testing routines were refactored into
t/lib/common.pl
- •
- Several test files have been modernized to use
Test::More
- MacOS Classic
- Support for MacOS Classic within ExtUtils::MakeMaker was
removed from Perl in December 2004. Vestigial MacOS Classic specific code
has now been removed from other core modules as well
(8f8c2a4..c457df0)
- Win32
- t/io/openpid.t now uses the alarm() watchdog
strategy for more robustness (5732108)
Internal Changes¶
- •
- Under some circumstances, the "CvGV()" field of a
CV is now reference counted. To ensure consistent behaviour, direct
assignment to it, for example "CvGV(cv) = gv" is now a
compile-time error. A new macro, "CvGV_set(cv,gv)" has been
introduced to perform this operation safely. Note that modification of
this field is not part of of the public API, regardless of this new macro.
This change caused some issues in modules that used the private
"GvGV()" field.
- •
- It is now possible for XS code to hook into Perl's lexical
scope mechanism at compile time, using the new
"Perl_blockhook_register" function. See "Compile-time scope
hooks" in perlguts.
- •
- Added "Perl_croak_no_modify()" to implement
"Perl_croak("%s", PL_no_modify)" (6ad8f25)
- •
- Added prototypes for "tie()" and
"untie()" to allow overloading (RT#75902) (1db4d19)
- •
- Adds "my_[l]stat_flags()" to replace
"my_[l]stat()". "my_stat()" and "my_lstat()"
call get magic on the stack arg, so create "_flags()" variants
that allow us to control this. (0d7d409)
Selected Bug Fixes¶
- •
- Some work has been done on the internal pointers that link
between symbol tables (stashes), typeglobs and subroutines. This has the
effect that various edge cases related to deleting stashes or stash
entries (e.g. <%FOO:: = ()>), and complex typeglob or code reference
aliasing, will no longer crash the interpreter.
- •
- Fixed readline() when interrupted by signals so it
no longer returns the "same thing" as before or random
memory
- •
- Fixed a regression of kill() when a match variable
is used for the process ID to kill (RT#75812) (8af710e)
- •
- Fixed several subtle bugs in sort() when @_ is
accessed within a subroutine used for sorting (RT#72334) (8f443ca)
- •
- Catch yyparse() exceptions in "(?{...})"
(RT#2353) (634d691)
- •
- Avoid UTF-8 cache panics with offsets beyond a string (RT
#75898) (3e2d381)
- •
- Fixed POSIX::strftime memory leak (RT#73520) (c4bc4aa)
- •
- Doesn't set strict with "no VERSION" if
"VERSION" is greater than 5.12 (da8fb5d)
- •
- Avoids multiple FETCH/stringify on filetest ops
(40c852d)
- •
- Fixed issue with string "eval" not detecting
taint of overloaded/tied arguments (RT #75716) (895b760)
- •
- Fix potential crashes of string "eval" when
evaluating a object with overloaded stringification by creating a
stringified copy when necessary (3e5c018)
- •
- Fixed bug where overloaded stringification could remove
tainting (RT #75716) (a02ec77)
- •
- Plugs more memory leaks in vms.c. (9e2bec0)
- •
- Fix pthread include error for Time::Piece (e9f284c)
Known Problems¶
- •
- Bug fixes involving CvGV reference counting break
Sub::Name. A patch has been sent upstream to the maintainer
- •
- readline() returns an empty string instead of undef
when it is interrupted by a signal
- •
- Test-Harness was updated from 3.17 to 3.21 for this
release. A rewrite in how it handles non-Perl tests (in 3.17_01) broke
argument passing to non-Perl tests with prove (RT #59186), and required
that non-Perl tests be run as "prove ./test.sh" instead of
"prove test.sh" These issues are being solved upstream, but
didn't make it into this release. They're expected to be fixed in time for
perl v5.13.4. (RT #59457)
- •
- "version" now prevents object methods from being
called as class methods (d808b68)
Errata¶
- •
- Retroactively added the Acknowledgements list to
perl5132delta, which was excluded in the original release (d1e2db0)
Acknowledgements¶
Perl 5.13.3 represents approximately one month of development since Perl 5.13.2,
and contains 12,184 lines of changes across 575 files from 104 authors and
committers.
Thank you to the following for contributing to this release:
Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Alex Davies, Alex Vandiver, Alexandr Ciornii,
Andreas J. Koenig, Andrew Rodland, Andy Dougherty, Aristotle Pagaltzis,
Arkturuz, Ben Morrow, Bo Borgerson, Bo Lindbergh, Brad Gilbert, Bram, Brian
Phillips, Chas. Owens, Chip Salzenberg, Chris Williams, Craig A. Berry, Curtis
Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, Daniel Frederick Crisman, Dave Rolsky, David Caldwell,
David E. Wheeler, David Golden, David Leadbeater, David Mitchell, Dennis
Kaarsemaker, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, Frank Wiegand,
Gene Sullivan, George Greer, Gerard Goossen, Gisle Aas, Goro Fuji, Graham
Barr, H.Merijn Brand, Harmen, Hugo van der Sanden, James E Keenan, James
Mastros, Jan Dubois, Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, John Peacock,
Jos Boumans, Josh ben Jore, Karl Williamson, Kevin Ryde, Leon Brocard, Lubomir
Rintel, Maik Hentsche, Marcus Holland-Moritz, Matt Johnson, Matt S Trout, Max
Maischein, Michael Breen, Michael G Schwern, Moritz Lenz, Nga Tang Chan,
Nicholas Clark, Nick Cleaton, Nick Johnston, Niko Tyni, Offer Kaye, Paul
Marquess, Philip Hazel, Philippe Bruhat, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer,
Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Richard Soderberg, Robin Barker, Ruslan Zakirov,
Salvador Fandino, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Shlomi Fish, Sinan Unur, Sisyphus,
Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Stepan Kasal, Steve Hay, Steve Peters, Sullivan
Beck, Tim Bunce, Todd Rinaldo, Tom Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook,
Vincent Pit, Yuval Kogman, Yves Orton, Zefram, brian d foy, chromatic, kmx,
AEvar Arnfjoerd` Bjarmason
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.