perl5122delta

PERL5122DELTA(1)       Perl Programmers Reference Guide       PERL5122DELTA(1)

NAME
       perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.12.1 release and the
       5.12.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier major version, such as 5.10.1,
       first read perl5120delta, which describes differences between 5.10.1
       and 5.12.0, as well as perl5121delta, which describes earlier changes
       in the 5.12 stable release series.

Incompatible Changes
       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If any
       exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.

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
   New Modules and Pragmata
       This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.

   Pragmata Changes
       In the previous release, "no VERSION;" statements triggered a bug which
       could cause feature bundles to be loaded and strict mode to be enabled
       unintentionally.

   Updated Modules
       "Carp"
           Upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.

           Carp now detects incomplete caller() overrides and avoids using
           bogus @DB::args. To provide backtraces, Carp relies on particular
           behaviour of the caller built-in. Carp now detects if other code
           has overridden this with an incomplete implementation, and modifies
           its backtrace accordingly. Previously incomplete overrides would
           cause incorrect values in backtraces (best case), or obscure fatal
           errors (worst case)

           This fixes certain cases of "Bizarre copy of ARRAY" caused by
           modules overriding "caller()" incorrectly.

       "CPANPLUS"
           A patch to cpanp-run-perl has been backported from CPANPLUS 0.9004.
           This resolves RT #55964
           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55964> and RT #57106
           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=57106>, both of
           which related to failures to install distributions that use
           "Module::Install::DSL".

       "File::Glob"
           A regression which caused a failure to find "CORE::GLOBAL::glob"
           after loading "File::Glob" to crash has been fixed.  Now, it
           correctly falls back to external globbing via "pp_glob".

       "File::Copy"
           "File::Copy::copy(FILE, DIR)" is now documented.

       "File::Spec"
           Upgraded from version 3.31 to 3.31_01.

           Several portability fixes were made in "File::Spec::VMS": a colon
           is now recognized as a delimiter in native filespecs; caret-escaped
           delimiters are recognized for better handling of extended
           filespecs; "catpath()" returns an empty directory rather than the
           current directory if the input directory name is empty; "abs2rel()"
           properly handles Unix-style input.

Utility Changes
       o   perlbug now always gives the reporter a chance to change the email
           address it guesses for them.

       o   perlbug should no longer warn about uninitialized values when using
           the "-d" and "-v" options.

Changes to Existing Documentation
       o   The existing policy on backward-compatibility and deprecation has
           been added to perlpolicy, along with definitions of terms like
           deprecation.

       o   "srand" in perlfunc's usage has been clarified.

       o   The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its
           role in the exception mechanism.

       o   Perl's INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that
           Perl requires a C89 compliant ANSI C Compiler.

       o   IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and "setsockopt()" have been
           documented.

       o   alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO on Windows has been
           documented.

       o   Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been
           removed as a recommended solution for random number generation.

       o   perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to
           perl.

       o   To ease user confusion, $# and $*, two special variables that were
           removed in earlier versions of Perl have been documented.

       o   The version of perlfaq shipped with the Perl core has been updated
           from the official FAQ version, which is now maintained in the
           "briandfoy/perlfaq" branch of the Perl repository at
           <git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git>.

Installation and Configuration Improvements
   Configuration improvements
       o   The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.

   Compilation improvements
       o   An ""incompatible operand types"" error in ternary expressions when
           building with "clang" has been fixed.

       o   Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests on partitions it detects
           to be mounted as "nosuid".

Selected Bug Fixes
       o   A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ" default typemap has been
           fixed.

       o   A possible memory leak when using caller() to set @DB::args has
           been fixed.

       o   Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.

       o   "unpack()" now handles scalar context correctly for %32H and %32u,
           fixing a potential crash.  "split()" would crash because the third
           item on the stack wasn't the regular expression it expected.
           "unpack("%2H", ...)" would return both the unpacked result and the
           checksum on the stack, as would "unpack("%2u", ...)".  [perl
           #73814] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=73814>

       o   Perl now avoids using memory after calling "free()" in pp_require
           when there are CODEREFs in @INC.

       o   A bug that could cause ""Unknown error"" messages when
           ""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is called from an XS destructor has been
           fixed.

       o   The implementation of the "open $fh, '>' \$buffer" feature now
           supports get/set magic and thus tied buffers correctly.

       o   The "pp_getc", "pp_tell", and "pp_eof" opcodes now make room on the
           stack for their return values in cases where no argument was passed
           in.

       o   When matching unicode strings under some conditions inappropriate
           backtracking would result in a "Malformed UTF-8 character (fatal)"
           error. This should no longer occur.  See  [perl #75680]
           <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=75680>

Platform Specific Notes
   AIX
       o   README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11
           compiler suite.

   Windows
       o   When building Perl with the mingw64 x64 cross-compiler "incpath",
           "libpth", "ldflags", "lddlflags" and "ldflags_nolargefiles" values
           in Config.pm and Config_heavy.pl were not previously being set
           correctly because, with that compiler, the include and lib
           directories are not immediately below "$(CCHOME)".

   VMS
       o   git_version.h is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in
           v5.12.0 which caused some extensions to fail to build.

       o   Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.

       o   A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to a double allocation has
           been fixed.

       o   A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()" (used by "realpath()" and
           "realname()") has been fixed.

Acknowledgements
       Perl 5.12.2 represents approximately three months of development since
       Perl 5.12.1 and contains approximately 2,000 lines of changes across
       100 files from 36 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 5.12.2:

       Abigail, AEvar Arnfjordh Bjarmason, Ben Morrow, brian d foy, Brian
       Phillips, Chas. Owens, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Chris Williams, Craig
       A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, David Golden, David Mitchell,
       Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, George Greer, H.Merijn Brand, Jan
       Dubois, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, Karl Williamson, Lars D , Leon
       Brocard, Maik Hentsche, Matt S Trout, Nicholas Clark, Rafael Garcia-
       Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Ricardo Signes, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Sisyphus,
       Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Tony Cook, Vincent Pit and Yves Orton.

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 will 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.

perl v5.30.0                      2023-11-23                  PERL5122DELTA(1)