perl583delta - what is new for perl v5.8.3
This document describes differences between the 5.8.2
release and the 5.8.3 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as
5.6.1, first read the perl58delta, which describes differences
between 5.6.0 and 5.8.0, and the perl581delta and
perl582delta, which describe differences between 5.8.0,
5.8.1 and 5.8.2
There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.2.
A "SCALAR" method is now available for tied hashes. This
is called when a tied hash is used in scalar context, such
as
if (%tied_hash) {
...
}
The old behaviour was that %tied_hash would return whatever
would have been returned for that hash before the
hash was tied (so usually 0). The new behaviour in the
absence of a SCALAR method is to return TRUE if in the
middle of an "each" iteration, and otherwise call FIRSTKEY
to check if the hash is empty (making sure that a subsequent
"each" will also begin by calling FIRSTKEY). Please
see "SCALAR" in perltie for the full details and caveats.
CGI
Cwd
Digest
Digest::MD5
Encode
File::Spec
FindBin
A function "again" is provided to resolve problems
where modules in different directories wish to use
FindBin.
List::Util
You can now weaken references to read only values.
Math::BigInt
PodParser
Pod::Perldoc
POSIX
Unicode::Collate
Unicode::Normalize
Test::Harness
threads::shared
"cond_wait" has a new two argument form. "cond_timedwait"
has been added.
"find2perl" now assumes "-print" as a default action. Previously,
it needed to be specified explicitly.
A new utility, "prove", makes it easy to run an individual
regression test at the command line. "prove" is part of
Test::Harness, which users of earlier Perl versions can
install from CPAN.
The documentation has been revised in places to produce
more standard manpages.
The documentation for the special code blocks (BEGIN,
CHECK, INIT, END) has been improved.
Installation and Configuration Improvements [Toc] [Back] Perl now builds on OpenVMS I64
Using substr() on a UTF8 string could cause subsequent
accesses on that string to return garbage. This was due to
incorrect UTF8 offsets being cached, and is now fixed.
join() could return garbage when the same join() statement
was used to process 8 bit data having earlier processed
UTF8 data, due to the flags on that statement's temporary
workspace not being reset correctly. This is now fixed.
"$a .. $b" will now work as expected when either $a or $b
is "undef"
Using Unicode keys with tied hashes should now work correctly.
Reading $^E now preserves $!. Previously, the C code
implementing $^E did not preserve "errno", so reading $^E
could cause "errno" and therefore $! to change unexpectedly.
Reentrant functions will (once more) work with C++. 5.8.2
introduced a bugfix which accidentally broke the compilation
of Perl extensions written in C++
New or Changed Diagnostics [Toc] [Back] The fatal error "DESTROY created new reference to dead
object" is now documented in perldiag. The hash code has been refactored to reduce source duplication.
The external interface is unchanged, and aside
from the bug fixes described above, there should be no
change in behaviour.
"hv_clear_placeholders" is now part of the perl API
Some C macros have been tidied. In particular macros which
create temporary local variables now name these variables
more defensively, which should avoid bugs where names
clash.
<signal.h> is now always included.
Configuration and Building [Toc] [Back] "Configure" now invokes callbacks regardless of the value
of the variable they are called for. Previously callbacks
were only invoked in the "case $variable $define)" branch.
This change should only affect platform maintainers writing
configuration hints files.
Platform Specific Problems [Toc] [Back] The regression test ext/threads/shared/t/wait.t fails on
early RedHat 9 and HP-UX 10.20 due to bugs in their
threading implementations. RedHat users should see
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2003-136.html and consider
upgrading their glibc.
Detached threads aren't supported on Windows yet, as they
may lead to memory access violation problems.
There is a known race condition opening scripts in "suidperl".
"suidperl" is neither built nor installed by
default, and has been deprecated since perl 5.8.0. You are
advised to replace use of suidperl with tools such as sudo
( http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ )
We have a backlog of unresolved bugs. Dealing with bugs
and bug reports is unglamorous work; not something ideally
suited to volunteer labour, but that is all that we have.
The perl5 development team are implementing changes to
help address this problem, which should go live in early
2004.
Code freeze for the next maintenance release (5.8.4) is on
March 31st 2004, with release expected by mid April. Similarly
5.8.5's freeze will be at the end of June, with
release by mid July. Iain 'Spoon' Truskett, Perl hacker, author of perlreref
and contributor to CPAN, died suddenly on 29th December
2003, aged 24. He will be missed.
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://bugs.perl.org.
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 [email protected] to be analysed by the Perl
porting team. You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs
at http://bugs.perl.org/
The Changes file for 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 v5.8.5 2002-11-06 4 [ Back ] | 