perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2
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 5.10.0
and 5.12.0, as well as perl5121delta, which describes earlier changes in the
5.12 stable release series.
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If
any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no
user-visible changes to the core language in this release.
This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.
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.
- "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.
- perlbug now always gives the reporter a chance to change the email
address it guesses for them.
- perlbug should no longer warn about uninitialized values when using
the "-d" and
"-v" options.
- The existing policy on backward-compatibility and deprecation has been
added to perlpolicy, along with definitions of terms like
deprecation.
- "srand" in perlfunc's usage has been clarified.
- The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its
role in the exception mechanism.
- Perl's INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that Perl
requires a C89 compliant ANSI C Compiler.
- IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and
"setsockopt()" have been
documented.
- alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO
on Windows has been documented.
- Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been removed as a
recommended solution for random number generation.
- perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to
perl.
- To ease user confusion, $# and
$*, two special variables that were removed in
earlier versions of Perl have been documented.
- 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>.
- •
- The "d_u32align" configuration probe on
ARM has been fixed.
- An ""incompatible operand
types"" error in ternary expressions when building with
"clang" has been fixed.
- Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests
on partitions it detects to be mounted as
"nosuid".
- A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ"
default typemap has been fixed.
- A possible memory leak when using caller() to set
@DB::args has been fixed.
- Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.
- "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", ...)". [GH
#10257] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/10257>
- Perl now avoids using memory after calling
"free()" in pp_require when there
are CODEREFs in @INC.
- A bug that could cause ""Unknown
error"" messages when
""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is
called from an XS destructor has been fixed.
- The implementation of the "open $fh, '>'
\$buffer" feature now supports get/set magic and thus tied
buffers correctly.
- The "pp_getc",
"pp_tell", and
"pp_eof" opcodes now make room on the
stack for their return values in cases where no argument was passed
in.
- When matching unicode strings under some conditions inappropriate
backtracking would result in a "Malformed UTF-8
character (fatal)" error. This should no longer occur. See [GH
#10434] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/10434>
AIX
- •
- README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11
compiler suite.
- •
- When building Perl with the mingw64 x64 cross-compiler
"incpath",
"libpth",
"ldflags",
"lddlflags" and
"ldflags_nolargefiles" values in
Config.pm and Config_heavy.pl were not previously being set
correctly because, with that compiler, the include and lib directories are
not immediately below "$(CCHOME)".
VMS
- git_version.h is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in
v5.12.0 which caused some extensions to fail to build.
- Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.
- A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to
a double allocation has been fixed.
- A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()"
(used by "realpath()" and
"realname()") has been fixed.
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 Arnfjoerd` 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 DXXXXXX XXX, 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.
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.
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.