PERL583DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL583DELTA(1)NAMEperl583delta - what is new for perl v5.8.3
DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.8.2
release and the 5.8.3 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.6.1,
first read the perl58delta, which describes differences
between 5.6.0 and 5.8.0, and the perl581delta and
perl582delta, which describe differences between 5.8.0,
5.8.1 and 5.8.2
Incompatible Changes
There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.2.
Core Enhancements
A "SCALAR" method is now available for tied hashes. This is
called when a tied hash is used in scalar context, such as
if (%tied_hash) {
...
}
The old behaviour was that %tied_hash would return whatever
would have been returned for that hash before the hash was
tied (so usually 0). The new behaviour in the absence of a
SCALAR method is to return TRUE if in the middle of an
"each" iteration, and otherwise call FIRSTKEY to check if
the hash is empty (making sure that a subsequent "each" will
also begin by calling FIRSTKEY). Please see "SCALAR" in
perltie for the full details and caveats.
Modules and Pragmata
CGI
Cwd
Digest
Digest::MD5
Encode
File::Spec
FindBin
A function "again" is provided to resolve problems where
modules in different directories wish to use FindBin.
List::Util
You can now weaken references to read only values.
Math::BigInt
PodParser
Pod::Perldoc
POSIX
Unicode::Collate
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Unicode::Normalize
Test::Harness
threads::shared
"cond_wait" has a new two argument form.
"cond_timedwait" has been added.
Utility Changes
"find2perl" now assumes "-print" as a default action. Previ-
ously, it needed to be specified explicitly.
A new utility, "prove", makes it easy to run an individual
regression test at the command line. "prove" is part of
Test::Harness, which users of earlier Perl versions can
install from CPAN.
New Documentation
The documentation has been revised in places to produce more
standard manpages.
The documentation for the special code blocks (BEGIN, CHECK,
INIT, END) has been improved.
Installation and Configuration Improvements
Perl now builds on OpenVMS I64
Selected Bug Fixes
Using substr() on a UTF8 string could cause subsequent
accesses on that string to return garbage. This was due to
incorrect UTF8 offsets being cached, and is now fixed.
join() could return garbage when the same join() statement
was used to process 8 bit data having earlier processed UTF8
data, due to the flags on that statement's temporary
workspace not being reset correctly. This is now fixed.
"$a .. $b" will now work as expected when either $a or $b is
"undef"
Using Unicode keys with tied hashes should now work
correctly.
Reading $^E now preserves $!. Previously, the C code imple-
menting $^E did not preserve "errno", so reading $^E could
cause "errno" and therefore $! to change unexpectedly.
Reentrant functions will (once more) work with C++. 5.8.2
introduced a bugfix which accidentally broke the compilation
of Perl extensions written in C++
New or Changed Diagnostics
The fatal error "DESTROY created new reference to dead
object" is now documented in perldiag.
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PERL583DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL583DELTA(1)Changed Internals
The hash code has been refactored to reduce source duplica-
tion. The external interface is unchanged, and aside from
the bug fixes described above, there should be no change in
behaviour.
"hv_clear_placeholders" is now part of the perl API
Some C macros have been tidied. In particular macros which
create temporary local variables now name these variables
more defensively, which should avoid bugs where names clash.
<signal.h> is now always included.
Configuration and Building
"Configure" now invokes callbacks regardless of the value of
the variable they are called for. Previously callbacks were
only invoked in the "case $variable $define)" branch. This
change should only affect platform maintainers writing con-
figuration hints files.
Platform Specific Problems
The regression test ext/threads/shared/t/wait.t fails on
early RedHat 9 and HP-UX 10.20 due to bugs in their thread-
ing implementations. RedHat users should see
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2003-136.html and con-
sider upgrading their glibc.
Known Problems
Detached threads aren't supported on Windows yet, as they
may lead to memory access violation problems.
There is a known race condition opening scripts in "suid-
perl". "suidperl" is neither built nor installed by default,
and has been deprecated since perl 5.8.0. You are advised to
replace use of suidperl with tools such as sudo (
http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ )
We have a backlog of unresolved bugs. Dealing with bugs and
bug reports is unglamorous work; not something ideally
suited to volunteer labour, but that is all that we have.
The perl5 development team are implementing changes to help
address this problem, which should go live in early 2004.
Future Directions
Code freeze for the next maintenance release (5.8.4) is on
March 31st 2004, with release expected by mid April. Simi-
larly 5.8.5's freeze will be at the end of June, with
release by mid July.
perl v5.8.8 2006-06-30 3
PERL583DELTA(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL583DELTA(1)Obituary
Iain 'Spoon' Truskett, Perl hacker, author of perlreref and
contributor to CPAN, died suddenly on 29th December 2003,
aged 24. He will be missed.
Reporting Bugs
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the
articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc news-
group and the perl bug database at http://bugs.perl.org.
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.
You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
http://bugs.perl.org/
SEE ALSO
The Changes file for 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.
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