perl5133delta - what is new for perl v5.13.3
This document describes differences between the 5.13.3 release and the 5.13.2 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.13.1, first read perl5132delta, which describes differences between 5.13.1 and 5.13.2.
There is a new escape sequence, "\o"
, in double-quote-like contexts.
It must be followed by braces enclosing an octal number of at least one
digit. It interpolates as the character with an ordinal value equal to
the octal number. This construct allows large octal ordinals beyond the
current max of 0777 to be represented. It also allows you to specify a
character in octal which can safely be concatenated with other regex
snippets and which won't be confused with being a backreference to
a regex capture group. See Capture groups in perlre.
\N{name} and charnames
enhancements\N{}
and charnames::vianame
now know about the abbreviated
character names listed by Unicode, such as NBSP, SHY, LRO, ZWJ, etc., as
well as all the customary abbreviations for the C0 and C1 control
characters (such as ACK, BEL, CAN, etc.), as well as a few new variants
in common usage of some C1 full names.
In the past, it was ineffective to override one of Perl's abbreviations with your own custom alias. Now it works.
You can also create a custom alias directly to the ordinal of a
character, known by \N{...}
, charnames::vianame()
, and
charnames::viacode()
. Previously, an alias had to be to an official
Unicode character name. This made it impossible to create an alias for
a code point that had no name, such as the ones reserved for private
use. So this change allows you to make more effective use of private
use characters. Only if there is no official name will
charnames::viacode()
return your custom one.
See charnames for details on all these changes.
Literals may now use either upper case 0X...
or 0B...
prefixes,
in addition to the already supported 0x...
and 0b...
syntax. (RT#76296) (a674e8d, 333f87f)
C, Ruby, Python and PHP already supported this syntax, and it makes
Perl more internally consistent. A round-trip with eval sprintf
"%#X", 0x10
now returns 16
in addition to eval sprintf "%#x",
0x10
, which worked before.
Use of \400
- \777
in regexes in certain circumstances has given
different, anomalous behavior than their use in all other
double-quote-like contexts. Since 5.10.1, a deprecated warning message
has been raised when this happens. Now, all double-quote-like contexts
have the same behavior, namely to be equivalent to \x{100}
-
\x{1FF}
, with no deprecation warning. Use of these values in the
command line option "-0"
retains the current meaning to slurp input
files whole; previously, this was documented only for "-0777"
. It is
recommended, however, because of various ambiguities, to use the new
\o{...}
construct to represent characters in octal.
(fa1639c..f6993e9).
Omitting a space between a regex pattern or pattern modifiers and the
following word is deprecated. Deprecation for regular expression
matches was added in Perl 5.13.2. In this release, the deprecation
is extended to regular expression substitutions. For example,
s/foo/bar/sand $bar
will still be parsed as
s/foo/bar/s and $bar
but will issue a warning. (aa78b66)
This is a mandatory warning, not obeying -X or lexical warning bits. The warning is modelled on that supplied by deprecate.pm for deprecated-in-core .pm libraries. It points to the specific CPAN distribution that contains the .pl libraries. The CPAN version, of course, does not generate the warning. (0111154)
There are several small optimizations to reduce CPU cache misses in various very
commonly used modules like warnings
and Carp
as well in accessing
file-handles for reading.
autodie
Upgraded from version 2.06_01 to 2.10.
charnames
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.10.
viacode()
is now significantly faster. (f3227b7)
lib
Upgraded from version 0.62 to 0.63.
threads
Upgraded from version 1.77_02 to 1.77_03.
threads::shared
Upgraded from version 1.33_01 to 1.33_02.
warnings
Upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.10.
Calling use warnings
without arguments is now significantly more efficient.
(8452af9)
Archive::Extract
Upgraded from version 0.38 to 0.42.
Updates since 0.38 include: a safe print method that guards Archive::Extract from changes to $\; a fix to the tests when run in core perl; support for TZ files; and a modification for the lzma logic to favour IO::Uncompress::Unlzma (d7f8799)
Archive::Tar
Upgraded from version 1.54 to 1.64.
Important changes since 1.54 include: compatibility with busybox
implementations of tar; a fix so that write() and create_archive()
close only handles they opened; and a bug was fixed regarding the exit code
of extract_archive. (afabe0e)
Attribute::Handlers
Upgraded from version 0.87 to 0.88.
Compress::Raw::Bzip2
Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027.
Compress::Raw::Zlib
Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027_01.
Compress::Zlib
Upgraded from version 2.024 to 2.027.
CPANPLUS
Upgraded from version 0.90 to 0.9007.
Fixed the shell test to skip if test is not being run under a terminal; resolved the issue where a prereq on Config would not be recognised as a core module. (d4e225a)
Digest::MD5
Upgraded from version 2.39 to 2.40.
Digest::SHA
Upgraded from version 5.47 to 5.48.
Exporter
Upgraded from version 5.64_02 to 5.64_03.
Exporter no longer overrides $SIG{__WARN__}
(RT #74472) (9b86bb5)
ExtUtils::CBuilder
Upgraded from version 0.27 to 0.2703.
ExtUtils::Manifest
Upgraded from version 1.57 to 1.58.
ExtUtils::ParseXS
Upgraded from version 2.2205 to 2.2206.
File::Copy
Upgraded from version 2.19 to 2.20.
Skips suid tests on a nosuid partition. These tests were being skipped on OpenBSD, but nosuid partitions can exist on other systems too. Now it just checks if it can create a suid directory, if not the tests are skipped. Perl builds without errors in a nosuid /tmp with this patch. (cae9400)
I18N::LangTags
Upgraded from version 0.35 to 0.35_01.
IPC::Cmd
Upgraded from version 0.58 to 0.60.
IPC::SysV
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.03.
Locale::Maketext
Upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.
Locale::Maketext guts have been merged back into the main module (87d86da) and adds external cache support (ace47d6)
Module::Build
Upgraded from version 0.3603 to 0.3607.
Module::CoreList
Upgraded from version 2.34 to 2.36.
Module::Load
Upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.18.
Term::ANSIColor
Upgraded from version 2.02 to 3.00.
Test::Harness
Upgraded from version 3.17 to 3.21.
The core update from Test-Harness 3.17 to 3.21 fixed some things, but also introduced a known problem with argument passing to non-Perl tests.
Time::HiRes
Upgraded from version 1.9719 to 1.9721.
Time::Piece
Upgraded from version 1.15_01 to 1.20_01.
Unicode::Collate
Upgraded from version 0.52_01 to 0.53.
Includes Unicode Collation Algorithm 18 (74b94a7)
Unicode::Normalize
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.06.
The Perl 5.12.1 perldelta file was added from the Perl maintenance branch
Octal character escapes in documentation now prefer a three-digit octal
escape or the new \o{...}
escape as they have more consistent behavior
in different contexts than other forms. (ce7b6f0) (d8b950d) (e1f120a)
Documentation now standardizes on the term 'capture group' over 'buffer' in regular expression documentation (c27a5cf)
Added cautionary note about "no VERSION" (e0de7c2)
Added additional notes regarding srand when forking (d460397)
Improved documentation of unusual character escapes (4068718, 9644846)
Clarified how hexadecimal escapes are interpreted, with particular attention to the treatment of invalid characters (9644846)
Clarified the behavior of the -0NNN
switch for -0400
or higher (7ba31cb)
Added the policy on compatibility and deprecation along with definitions of terms like "deprecation" (70e4a83)
Added examples of the perils of not using \g{} when there are more than nine back-references (9d86067)
Updated some examples for modern Perl style (67d00dd)
The remote terminal works after forking and spawns new sessions - one for each forked process (11653f7)
Uses the less pager path from Config instead of searching for it (bf320d6)
Adjusted 'make test.valgrind' to account for cpan/dist/ext separation (e07ce2e)
t/harness clears PERL5LIB, PERLLIB, PERL5OPT as t/TEST does (a2d3de1)
Many common testing routines were refactored into t/lib/common.pl
Several test files have been modernized to use Test::More
Support for MacOS Classic within ExtUtils::MakeMaker was removed from Perl in December 2004. Vestigial MacOS Classic specific code has now been removed from other core modules as well (8f8c2a4..c457df0)
Under some circumstances, the CvGV()
field of a CV is now reference
counted. To ensure consistent behaviour, direct assignment to it, for
example CvGV(cv) = gv
is now a compile-time error. A new macro,
CvGV_set(cv,gv)
has been introduced to perform this operation safely.
Note that modification of this field is not part of of the public API,
regardless of this new macro. This change caused some
issues in modules that used the private GvGV()
field.
It is now possible for XS code to hook into Perl's lexical scope
mechanism at compile time, using the new Perl_blockhook_register
function. See Compile-time scope hooks in perlguts.
Added Perl_croak_no_modify()
to implement
Perl_croak("%s", PL_no_modify)
(6ad8f25)
Added prototypes for tie() and untie() to allow overloading (RT#75902)
(1db4d19)
Adds my_[l]stat_flags()
to replace my_[l]stat()
. my_stat()
and
my_lstat()
call get magic on the stack arg, so create _flags()
variants that allow us to control this. (0d7d409)
Some work has been done on the internal pointers that link between symbol tables (stashes), typeglobs and subroutines. This has the effect that various edge cases related to deleting stashes or stash entries (e.g. <%FOO:: = ()>), and complex typeglob or code reference aliasing, will no longer crash the interpreter.
Fixed readline() when interrupted by signals so it no longer returns the "same thing" as before or random memory
Fixed a regression of kill() when a match variable is used for the process ID to kill (RT#75812) (8af710e)
Fixed several subtle bugs in sort() when @_ is accessed within a subroutine used for sorting (RT#72334) (8f443ca)
Catch yyparse() exceptions in (?{...}) (RT#2353) (634d691)
Avoid UTF-8 cache panics with offsets beyond a string (RT #75898) (3e2d381)
Fixed POSIX::strftime memory leak (RT#73520) (c4bc4aa)
Doesn't set strict with no VERSION
if VERSION
is greater than 5.12
(da8fb5d)
Avoids multiple FETCH/stringify on filetest ops (40c852d)
Fixed issue with string eval not detecting taint of overloaded/tied
arguments (RT #75716) (895b760)
Fix potential crashes of string eval when evaluating a object with
overloaded stringification by creating a stringified copy when necessary
(3e5c018)
Fixed bug where overloaded stringification could remove tainting (RT #75716) (a02ec77)
Plugs more memory leaks in vms.c. (9e2bec0)
Fix pthread include error for Time::Piece (e9f284c)
Bug fixes involving CvGV reference counting break Sub::Name. A patch has been sent upstream to the maintainer
readline() returns an empty string instead of undef when it is interrupted by a signal
Test-Harness was updated from 3.17 to 3.21 for this release. A rewrite
in how it handles non-Perl tests (in 3.17_01) broke argument passing to
non-Perl tests with prove (RT #59186), and required that non-Perl
tests be run as prove ./test.sh
instead of prove test.sh
These
issues are being solved upstream, but didn't make it into this release.
They're expected to be fixed in time for perl v5.13.4. (RT #59457)
version
now prevents object methods from being called as class methods
(d808b68)
Retroactively added the Acknowledgements list to perl5132delta, which was excluded in the original release (d1e2db0)
Perl 5.13.3 represents approximately one month of development since Perl 5.13.2, and contains 12,184 lines of changes across 575 files from 104 authors and committers.
Thank you to the following for contributing to this release:
Abhijit Menon-Sen, Abigail, Alex Davies, Alex Vandiver, Alexandr Ciornii, Andreas J. Koenig, Andrew Rodland, Andy Dougherty, Aristotle Pagaltzis, Arkturuz, Ben Morrow, Bo Borgerson, Bo Lindbergh, Brad Gilbert, Bram, Brian Phillips, Chas. Owens, Chip Salzenberg, Chris Williams, Craig A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, Daniel Frederick Crisman, Dave Rolsky, David Caldwell, David E. Wheeler, David Golden, David Leadbeater, David Mitchell, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Eric Brine, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, Frank Wiegand, Gene Sullivan, George Greer, Gerard Goossen, Gisle Aas, Goro Fuji, Graham Barr, H.Merijn Brand, Harmen, Hugo van der Sanden, James E Keenan, James Mastros, Jan Dubois, Jerry D. Hedden, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, John Peacock, Jos Boumans, Josh ben Jore, Karl Williamson, Kevin Ryde, Leon Brocard, Lubomir Rintel, Maik Hentsche, Marcus Holland-Moritz, Matt Johnson, Matt S Trout, Max Maischein, Michael Breen, Michael G Schwern, Moritz Lenz, Nga Tang Chan, Nicholas Clark, Nick Cleaton, Nick Johnston, Niko Tyni, Offer Kaye, Paul Marquess, Philip Hazel, Philippe Bruhat, Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Richard Soderberg, Robin Barker, Ruslan Zakirov, Salvador Fandino, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Shlomi Fish, Sinan Unur, Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Stepan Kasal, Steve Hay, Steve Peters, Sullivan Beck, Tim Bunce, Todd Rinaldo, Tom Christiansen, Tom Hukins, Tony Cook, Vincent Pit, Yuval Kogman, Yves Orton, Zefram, brian d foy, chromatic, kmx, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
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 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.