NAME¶
README.freebsd - Perl version 5 on FreeBSD systems
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes various features of FreeBSD that will affect how Perl
version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.
FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads¶
When perl is configured to use ithreads, it will use re-entrant library calls in
preference to non-re-entrant versions. There is a bug in FreeBSD's
"readdir_r" function in versions 4.5 and earlier that can cause a
SEGV when reading large directories. A patch for FreeBSD libc is available
(see
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=misc/30631 ) which has been
integrated into FreeBSD 4.6.
$^X doesn't always contain a full path in FreeBSD¶
perl 5.8.0 sets $^X where possible to a full path by asking the operating
system. On FreeBSD the full path of the perl interpreter is found by reading
the symlink
/proc/curproc/file. FreeBSD has a bug where reading this
symlink sometimes returns an incorrect value (see
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=35703 ). In these cases perl will
fall back to the old behaviour of using C's argv[0] value for $^X.
AUTHOR¶
Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>, collating wisdom supplied by Slaven Rezic
and Tim Bunce.
Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to
perlbug@perl.org.