=encoding utf8 =for comment This has been completed up to 5dca8ed9d28, except for b0f2e9e nwclark Fix two bugs related to pod files outside of pod/ (important enough?) 9b9f19d craigb Another vms bug cc5de3b craigb " " " bdba49a shlomif perl -d bugfixes and tests 5d5d9ea shlomif Make "c 3" work again 43d9ecf jpeacock Set all version object math ops to noop f300909 smueller EU::ParseXS: Silence warning (probably unnecessary) =head1 NAME [ this is a template for a new perldelta file. Any text flagged as XXX needs to be processed before release. ] perldelta - what is new for perl v5.15.6 =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes differences between the 5.15.5 release and the 5.15.6 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.15.4, first read L, which describes differences between 5.15.4 and 5.15.5. =head1 Notice XXX Any important notices here =head1 Core Enhancements XXX New core language features go here. Summarise user-visible core language enhancements. Particularly prominent performance optimisations could go here, but most should go in the L section. [ List each enhancement as a =head2 entry ] =head2 C<__SUB__> The new C<__SUB__> token, available under the "current_sub" feature (see L) or C, returns a reference to the current subroutine, making it easier to write recursive closures. =head2 New option for the debugger's B command The B command in the debugger, which toggles tracing mode, now accepts a numerical argument that determines how many levels of subroutine calls to trace. =head2 Return value of C The value returned by C on a tied variable is now the actual scalar that holds the object to which the variable is tied. This allows ties to be weakened with C. =head2 Lvalue C C can now be used as an lvalue. You might consider this a new feature (which is why it is listed in this section), but the author of the change considered it a bug fix, since C is only supposed to be setting scalar context, not changing lvalueness [perl #24346]. =head1 Security XXX Any security-related notices go here. In particular, any security vulnerabilities closed should be noted here rather than in the L section. =head2 C The XS-callable function C when presented with malformed UTF-8 input can read up to 12 bytes beyond the end of the string. This cannot be fixed without changing its API. It is not called from CPAN. The documentation for it now describes how to use it safely. =head2 Other C functions, as well as C, etc. Most of the other XS-callable functions that take UTF-8 encoded input implicitly assume that the UTF-8 is valid (not malformed) in regards to buffer length. Do not do things such as change a character's case or see if it is alphanumeric without first being sure that it is valid UTF-8. This can be safely done for a whole string by using one of the functions C, C, and C. =head1 Incompatible Changes XXX For a release on a stable branch, this section aspires to be: There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.XXX.XXX If any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome. [ List each incompatible change as a =head2 entry ] =head2 C> As of this release, version declarations like C now disable all features before enabling the new feature bundle. This means that the following holds true: use 5.016; # 5.16 features enabled here use 5.014; # 5.16 features disabled here C and higher continue to enable strict, but explicit C and C now override the version declaration, even when they come first: no strict; use 5.012; # no strict here There is a new ":default" feature bundle, that represents the set of features enabled before any version declaration or C has been seen. Version declarations below 5.10 now enable the ":default" feature set. This does not actually change the behaviour of C, because features added to the ":default" set are those that were traditionally enabled by default, before they could be turned off. C<$[> is now disabled under C. It is part of the default feature set and can be turned on or off explicitly with C. =head2 C The change to C in 5.15.2 has been reverted. It now returns a stringified version object once more. =head2 C lvalue revamp When C is called in lvalue or potential lvalue context with two or three arguments, a special lvalue scalar is returned that modifies the original string (the first argument) when assigned to. Previously, the offsets (the second and third arguments) passed to C would be converted immediately to match the string, negative offsets being translated to positive and offsets beyond the end of the string being truncated. Now, the offsets are recorded without modification in the special lvalue scalar that is returned, and the original string is not even looked at by C itself, but only when the returned lvalue is read or modified. These changes result in several incompatible changes and bug fixes: =over =item * If the original string changes length after the call to C but before assignment to its return value, negative offsets will remember their position from the end of the string, affecting code like this: my $string = "string"; my $lvalue = \substr $string, -4, 2; print $lvalue, "\n"; # prints "ri" $string = "bailing twine"; print $lvalue, "\n"; # prints "wi"; used to print "il" The same thing happens with an omitted third argument. The returned lvalue will always extend to the end of the string, even if the string becomes longer. =item * Tied (and otherwise magical) variables are no longer exempt from the "Attempt ot use reference as lvalue in substr" warning. =item * That warning now occurs when the returned lvalue is assigned to, not when C itself is called. This only makes a difference if the return value of C is referenced and assigned to later. =item * The order in which "uninitialized" warnings occur for arguments to C has changed. =item * Passing a substring of a read-only value or a typeglob to a function (potential lvalue context) no longer causes an immediate "Can't coerce" or "Modification of a read-only value" error. That error only occurs if and when the value passed is assigned to. The same thing happens with the "substr outside of string" error. If the lvalue is only read, not written to, it is now just a warning, as with rvalue C. =item * C assignments no longer call FETCH twice if the first argument is a tied variable, but just once. =back It was impossible to fix all the bugs without an incompatible change, and the behaviour of negative offsets was never specified, so the change was deemed acceptable. =head2 Return value of C C returns C in scalar context or an empty list in list context when there is a run-time error. For syntax errors (when C is passed a string), in list context it used to return a list containing a single undefined element. Now it returns an empty list in list context for all errors [perl #80630]. =head2 Anonymous handles Automatically generated file handles are now named __ANONIO__ when the variable name cannot be determined, rather than $__ANONIO__. =head2 XS API tweak The C C-level function, added in 5.15.4, now has a C parameter. =head1 Deprecations XXX Any deprecated features, syntax, modules etc. should be listed here. In particular, deprecated modules should be listed here even if they are listed as an updated module in the L section. [ List each deprecation as a =head2 entry ] =head1 Performance Enhancements XXX Changes which enhance performance without changing behaviour go here. There may well be none in a stable release. [ List each enhancement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * Perl 5.12.0 sped up the destruction of objects whose classes define empty C methods (to prevent autoloading), simply by not calling such empty methods. This release takes this optimisation a step further, by not calling any C method that begins with an C statement. This can be useful for destructors that are only used for debugging: use constant DEBUG => 1; sub DESTROY { return unless DEBUG; ... } Constant-folding will reduce the first statement to C if DEBUG is set to 0, triggering this optimisation. =item * Assign to a variable that holds a typeglob or copy-on-write scalar is now much faster. Previously the typeglob would be stringified or the copy-on-write scalar would be copied before being clobbered. =item * Assignment to a substring in void context is now more than twice its previous speed. Instead of creating and returning a special lvalue scalar that is then assigned to, C modifies the original string itself. =back =head1 Modules and Pragmata XXX All changes to installed files in F, F, F and F go here. If Module::CoreList is updated, generate an initial draft of the following sections using F, which prints stub entries to STDOUT. Results can be pasted in place of the '=head2' entries below. A paragraph summary for important changes should then be added by hand. In an ideal world, dual-life modules would have a F file that could be cribbed. [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry ] =head2 New Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.80 to version 1.82. Adjustments to handle files >8gb (>0777777777777 octal) and a feature to return the MD5SUM of files in the archive. =item * L has been upgraded from version 5.71 to version 5.72. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.16 to version 1.17. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.09 to version 1.10. Various constructs that used to be deparsed incorrectly have been fixed: =over =item C C, how it used to deparse, makes foo the sort routine, rather than a regular function call. =item Keys and values in C<%^H> Undefined values in the hint hash were being deparsed as empty strings. Whenever the hint hash changed, all undefined values, even those unmodified, were being printed. Special characters, such as quotation marks, were not being escaped properly. Some values used to be omitted if, for instance, a key was the same as a previous value and vice versa. =item "method BLOCK" syntax C used to be deparsed as something like C<< do{ $expr }->method >>, but the latter puts the $expr in scalar context, whereas the former puts in list context. =item C and C These are both variants of do-file syntax, but were being deparsed as do-blocks. =item Keywords that do not follow the llafr Keywords like C and C that do not follow the looks-like-a-function rule are now deparsed correctly with parentheses in the right place. Similarly, C, which I follow the llafr, was being deparsed as though it does not. =item C<=~> In various cases, B::Deparse started adding a spurious C<$_ =~> before the right-hand side in Perl 5.14; e.g., C<< "" =~ <$a> >> would become C<< "" =~ ($_ =~ <$a>) >>. =item C C, C and other functions that autovivify handles used to omit C from C. =item Negated single-letter subroutine calls Negated subroutine calls like C<- f()> and C<-(f())> were being deparsed as file test operators. =item C<&{&}> C<&{&}> and C<& &>, which are calls to the subroutine named "&", believe it or not, were being deparsed as C<&&>. =back =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.042 to version 2.045. =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.042 to version 2.045. =item * L has been upgraded from version 0.004 to version 0.005. =item * L has been upgraded from version 0.9112 to version 0.9113. =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.134 to version 2.135. The XS implementation has been updated to account for the Unicode symbol changes in Perl 5.15.4. It also knows how to output typeglobs with nulls in their names. =item * L has been upgraded from version 5.63 to version 5.70. Added BITS mode to addfile method and shasum which makes partial-byte inputs now possible via files/STDIN and allows shasum to check all 8074 NIST Msg vectors, where previously special programming was required to do this. =item * L has been upgraded from version 5.65 to version 5.66. It no longer tries to localise C<$_> unnecessarily. =item * L has been upgraded from version 3.05 to version 3.07. =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.042 to version 2.045. Added zipdetails utility. =item * L has been upgraded from version 3.18 to version 3.20. The code2XXX, XXX2code, all_XXX_codes, and all_XXX_names functions now support retired codes. All codesets may be specified by a constant or by their name now. Previously, they were specified only by a constant. The alias_code function exists for backward compatibility. It has been replaced by rename_country_code. The alias_code function will be removed sometime after September, 2013. All work is now done in the central module (Locale::Codes). Previously, some was still done in the wrapper modules (Locale::Codes::*) but that is gone now. Added Language Family codes (langfam) as defined in ISO 639-5. =item * L has been uprgaded from version 0.06 to version 0.08. =item * L has been upgraded from version 0.59 to version 0.60. Added another LaTeX escape: --- => -{}-{}- Pod::LaTeX doesn't handle -- in PODs specially, passing it directly to LaTeX, which then proceeds to replace it with a single -. This patch replaces ----- with -{}-{}-{}-{}- =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.26 to version 1.27. It no longer produces a "Constant subroutine TCSANOW redefined" warning on Windows. XXX When did it start producing that warning? Was it post-5.15.5? Even if it was not, adding a note will help whoever compiles perl5160delta. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.94_02 to version 1.96. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.85 to version 1.86. =item * L has been upgraded from version 0.85 to version 0.87. Tailored compatibility ideographs as well as unified ideographs for the locales: ja, ko, zh__big5han, zh__gb2312han, zh__pinyin, zh__stroke. Now Locale/*.pl files are searched in @INC. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.10 to version 1.11. Documentation change clarifies return values from UNIVERSAL::VERSION. =back =head2 Removed Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * Changing the case of a UTF-8 encoded string under C now gives better, but still imperfect, results. Previously, such a string would entirely lose locale semantics and silently be treated as Unicode. Now, the code points that are less than 256 are treated with locale rules, while those above 255 are, of course, treated as Unicode. See L for more details, including the deficiencies of this scheme. =back =head1 Documentation XXX Changes to files in F go here. Consider grouping entries by file and be sure to link to the appropriate page, e.g. L. =head2 New Documentation XXX Changes which create B files in F go here. =head3 L XXX Description of the purpose of the new file here =head2 Changes to Existing Documentation XXX Changes which significantly change existing files in F go here. However, any changes to F should go in the L section. =head3 L =over 4 =item * The example function for checking for taintedness contained a subtle error. C<$@> needs to be localized to prevent its changing this global's value outside the function. The preferred method to check for this, though, remains to use L. =back =head1 Diagnostics The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output, including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of diagnostic messages, see L. XXX New or changed warnings emitted by the core's C code go here. Also include any changes in L that reconcile it to the C code. [ Within each section, list entries as a =item entry that links to perldiag, e.g. =item * L ] =head2 New Diagnostics XXX Newly added diagnostic messages go here =head3 New Errors =over 4 =item * XXX L =back =head3 New Warnings =over 4 =item * XXX L =back =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics XXX Changes (i.e. rewording) of diagnostic messages go here =over 4 =item * Redefinition warnings for constant subroutines used to be mandatory, even occurring under C. Now they respect the L pragma. =item * The "Attempt to free non-existent shared string" has had the spelling of "non-existent" corrected to "nonexistent". It was already listed with the correct spelling in L. =item * The 'Use of "foo" without parentheses is ambiguous' warning has been extended to apply also to user-defined subroutines with a (;$) prototype, and not just to built-in functions. =back =head1 Utility Changes XXX Changes to installed programs such as F and F go here. Most of these are built within the directories F and F. [ List utility changes as a =head3 entry for each utility and =item entries for each change Use L with program names to get proper documentation linking. ] =head3 L =over 4 =item * L displays information about the internal record structure of the zip file. It is not concerned with displaying any details of the compressed data stored in the zip file. =back =head1 Configuration and Compilation XXX Changes to F, F, F, and analogous tools go here. Any other changes to the Perl build process should be listed here. However, any platform-specific changes should be listed in the L section, instead. [ List changes as a =item entry ]. =over 4 =item * F is now build by F, instead of being shipped with the distribution. Its list of manpages is now generated (and therefore current). See also RT #103202 for an unresolved related issue. =item * Perl 5.15.5 had a bug in its installation script, which did not install F. This has been corrected [perl #104226]. XXX Is that Perl version correct? Is the file path correct? =item * The -Dusesitecustomize and -Duserelocatableinc options now work together properly. =back =head1 Testing XXX Any significant changes to the testing of a freshly built perl should be listed here. Changes which create B files in F go here as do any large changes to the testing harness (e.g. when parallel testing was added). Changes to existing files in F aren't worth summarising, although the bugs that they represent may be covered elsewhere. [ List each test improvement as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * The F and F scripts for testing C have been moved under F, where they were originally. They had been moved under F along with the substitution tests when that directory was created. =back =head1 Platform Support XXX Any changes to platform support should be listed in the sections below. [ Within the sections, list each platform as a =item entry with specific changes as paragraphs below it. ] =head2 New Platforms XXX List any platforms that this version of perl compiles on, that previous versions did not. These will either be enabled by new files in the F directories, or new subdirectories and F files at the top level of the source tree. =over 4 =item XXX-some-platform XXX =back =head2 Discontinued Platforms XXX List any platforms that this version of perl no longer compiles on. =over 4 =item XXX-some-platform XXX =back =head2 Platform-Specific Notes XXX List any changes for specific platforms. This could include configuration and compilation changes or changes in portability/compatibility. However, changes within modules for platforms should generally be listed in the L section. =head3 VMS =over 4 =item * Fixed a bug that caused a link error on older versions of VMS. =item * Perl no longer supports pre-7.0 VMS or pre-6.0 DEC C. =back =head1 Internal Changes XXX Changes which affect the interface available to C code go here. Other significant internal changes for future core maintainers should be noted as well. [ List each change as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Selected Bug Fixes XXX Important bug fixes in the core language are summarised here. Bug fixes in files in F and F are best summarised in L. [ List each fix as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * RT #78266: The regex engine has been leaking memory when accessing named captures that weren't matched as part of a regex ever since 5.10 when they were introduced, e.g. this would consume over a hundred MB of memory: for (1..10_000_000) { if ("foo" =~ /(foo|(?bar))?/) { my $capture = $+{capture} } } system "ps -o rss $$"' =item * A constant subroutine assigned to a glob whose name contains a null will no longer cause extra globs to pop into existence when the constant is referenced under its new name. =item * C was not treating C and C as equivalent when such a sub was provided as the comparison routine. It used to croak on C. =item * Subroutines from the C namespace are once more exempt from redefinition warnings. This used to work in 5.005, but was broken in 5.6 for most subroutines. For subs created via XS that redefine subroutines from the C package, this stopped working in 5.10. =item * New XSUBs now produce redefinition warnings if they overwrite existing subs, as they did in 5.8.x. (The C logic was reversed in 5.10-14. Only subroutines from the C namespace would warn when clobbered.) =item * Redefinition warnings triggered by the creation of XSUBs now respect Unicode glob names, instead of using the internal representation. This was missed in 5.15.4, partly because this warning was so hard to trigger. (See the previous item.) =item * C used to use compile-time warning hints, instead of run-time hints. The following code should never produce a redefinition warning, but it used to, if C redefine and existing subroutine: use warnings; BEGIN { no warnings; some_XS_function_that_calls_new_CONSTSUB(); } =item * Redefinition warnings for constant subroutines are on by default (what are known as severe warnings in L). This was only the case when it was a glob assignment or declaration of a Perl subroutine that caused the warning. If the creation of XSUBs triggered the warning, it was not a default warning. This has been corrected. =item * The internal check to see whether a redefinition warning should occur used to emit "uninitialized" warnings in cases like this: use warnings "uninitialized"; use constant {u=>undef,v=>undef}; sub foo(){u} sub foo(){v} =item * A bug fix in Perl 5.14 introduced a new bug, causing "uninitialized" warnings to report the wrong variable if the operator in question has two operands and one is C<%{...}> or C<@{...}>. This has been fixed [perl #103766]. =item * C<< version->new("version") >> and C no longer crash [perl #102586]. =item * C<$tied =~ y/a/b/>, C and C now call FETCH just once when $tied holds a reference. =item * Four-argument C no longer produces its "Non-string passed as bitmask" warning on tied or tainted variables that are strings. =item * C now always calls FETCH on the buffer passed to it if it is tied. It used to skip the call if the tied variable happened to hold a typeglob. =item * C<< $tied .= <> >> now calls FETCH once on C<$tied>. It used to call it multiple times if the last value assigned to or returned from the tied variable was anything other than a string or typeglob. =item * The C keyword added in 5.15.5 was respecting C declarations from the outer scope, when it should have been ignoring them. =item * C no longers crashes, but produces an error message, when the unwinding of the current subroutine's scope fires a destructor that undefines the subroutine being "goneto" [perl #99850]. =item * Arithmetic assignment (C<$left += $right>) involving overloaded objects that rely on the 'nomethod' override no longer segfault when the left operand is not overloaded. =item * Assigning C<__PACKAGE__> or any other shared hash key scalar to a stash element no longer causes a double free. Regardless of this change, the results of such assignments are still undefined. =item * Creating a C sub no longer stops C<%+>, C<%-> and C<%!> from working some of the time [perl #105024]. =item * Assigning C<__PACKAGE__> or another shared hash key string to a variable no longer stops that variable from being tied if it happens to be a PVMG or PVLV internally. =item * When presented with malformed UTF-8 input, the XS-callable functions C, C, and C could read beyond the end of the input string by up to 12 bytes. This no longer happens. [perl #32080]. However, currently, C still has this defect, see L above. =item * Doing a substitution on a tied variable returning a copy-on-write scalar used to cause an assertion failure or an "Attempt to free nonexistent shared string" warning. =item * A change in perl 5.15.4 caused C to produce malloc errors and a crash with Perl's own malloc, and possibly with other malloc implementations, too [perl #104034]. =item * A bug fix in 5.15.5 could sometimes result in assertion failures under debugging builds of perl for certain syntax errors in C, such as C =back =head1 Known Problems XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any tests that had to be Ced for the release would be noted here, unless they were specific to a particular platform (see below). This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressions from either 5.XXX.XXX or 5.XXX.XXX. [ List each fix as a =item entry ] =over 4 =item * XXX =back =head1 Obituary XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary here. =head1 Acknowledgements XXX Generate this with: perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.15.5..HEAD =head1 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 L 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 C, 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. =head1 SEE ALSO The F file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. The F file for how to build Perl. The F file for general stuff. The F and F files for copyright information. =cut