NAME¶
perldelta - what is new for perl v5.14.2
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes differences between the 5.14.1 release and the 5.14.2
release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.14.0, first read
perl5141delta, which describes differences between 5.14.0 and 5.14.1.
Core Enhancements¶
No changes since 5.14.0.
Security¶
"File::Glob::bsd_glob()" memory error with
GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC (CVE-2011-2728).¶
Calling "File::Glob::bsd_glob" with the unsupported flag
GLOB_ALTDIRFUNC would cause an access violation / segfault. A Perl program
that accepts a flags value from an external source could expose itself to
denial of service or arbitrary code execution attacks. There are no known
exploits in the wild. The problem has been corrected by explicitly disabling
all unsupported flags and setting unused function pointers to null. Bug
reported by Clement Lecigne.
"Encode" decode_xs n-byte heap-overflow
(CVE-2011-2939)¶
A bug in "Encode" could, on certain inputs, cause the heap to
overflow. This problem has been corrected. Bug reported by Robert Zacek.
Incompatible Changes¶
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.14.0. If any exist, they
are bugs and reports are welcome.
Deprecations¶
There have been no deprecations since 5.14.0.
Modules and Pragmata¶
New Modules and Pragmata¶
None
Updated Modules and Pragmata¶
- •
- CPAN has been upgraded from version 1.9600 to version
1.9600_01.
CPAN::Distribution has been upgraded from version 1.9602 to 1.9602_01.
Backported bugfixes from CPAN version 1.9800. Ensures proper detection of
"configure_requires" prerequisites from CPAN Meta files in the
case where "dynamic_config" is true. [rt.cpan.org #68835]
Also ensures that "configure_requires" is only checked in META
files, not MYMETA files, so protect against MYMETA generation that drops
"configure_requires".
- •
- Encode has been upgraded from version 2.42 to 2.42_01.
See "Security".
- •
- File::Glob has been upgraded from version 1.12 to version
1.13.
See "Security".
- •
- PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.11 to
0.11_01.
It fixes a problem with "open my $fh, ">", \$scalar"
not working if $scalar is a copy-on-write scalar.
Removed Modules and Pragmata¶
None
None
None
- HP-UX PA-RISC/64 now supports gcc-4.x
- A fix to correct the socketsize now makes the test suite
pass on HP-UX PA-RISC for 64bitall builds.
- Building on OS X 10.7 Lion and Xcode 4 works again
- The build system has been updated to work with the build
tools under Mac OS X 10.7.
Bug Fixes¶
- •
- In @INC filters (subroutines returned by subroutines in
@INC), $_ used to misbehave: If returned from a subroutine, it would not
be copied, but the variable itself would be returned; and freeing $_
(e.g., with "undef *_") would cause perl to crash. This has been
fixed [perl #91880].
- •
- Perl 5.10.0 introduced some faulty logic that made
"U*" in the middle of a pack template equivalent to
"U0" if the input string was empty. This has been fixed [perl
#90160].
- •
- "caller" no longer leaks memory when called from
the DB package if @DB::args was assigned to after the first call to
"caller". Carp was triggering this bug [perl #97010].
- •
- "utf8::decode" had a nasty bug that would modify
copy-on-write scalars' string buffers in place (i.e., skipping the copy).
This could result in hashes having two elements with the same key [perl
#91834].
- •
- Localising a tied variable used to make it read-only if it
contained a copy-on-write string.
- •
- Elements of restricted hashes (see the fields pragma)
containing copy-on-write values couldn't be deleted, nor could such hashes
be cleared ("%hash = ()").
- •
- Locking a hash element that is a glob copy no longer causes
subsequent assignment to it to corrupt the glob.
- •
- A panic involving the combination of the regular expression
modifiers "/aa" introduced in 5.14.0 and the "\b"
escape sequence has been fixed [perl #95964].
Known Problems¶
This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from
5.12.0.
- •
- "PERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT" is broken.
Since perl 5.14.0, building with "-DPERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT" hasn't
been possible. This means that perl currently doesn't work on any
platforms that require it to be built this way, including Symbian.
While "PERL_GLOBAL_STRUCT" now works again on recent development
versions of perl, it actually working on Symbian again hasn't been
verified.
We'd be very interested in hearing from anyone working with Perl on
Symbian.
Acknowledgements¶
Perl 5.14.2 represents approximately three months of development since Perl
5.14.1 and contains approximately 1200 lines of changes across 61 files from 9
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 5.14.2:
Craig A. Berry, David Golden, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, H.Merijn
Brand, Karl Williamson, Nicholas Clark, Pau Amma and Ricardo Signes.
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.