Ubuntu Manpage: perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2

Provided by: perl-doc_5.38.2-3.2ubuntu0.1_all

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 5.10.0 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

       •   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.

Changes to Existing Documentation

       •   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>.

Installation and Configuration Improvements

   Configuration improvements
       •   The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.

   Compilation improvements
       •   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".

Selected Bug Fixes

       •   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>

Platform Specific Notes

   AIX
       •   README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11 compiler suite.

   Windows
       •   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.

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,  Ævar  Arnfjörð  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 Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ 迪拉斯, 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.