1N/Aperl571delta - what's new for perl v5.7.1
1N/AThis document describes differences between the 5.7.0 release and the
1N/A(To view the differences between the 5.6.0 release and the 5.7.0
1N/Arelease, see L<perl570delta>.)
1N/A=head1 Security Vulnerability Closed
1N/A(This change was already made in 5.7.0 but bears repeating here.)
1N/AA potential security vulnerability in the optional suidperl component
1N/Aof Perl was identified in August 2000. suidperl is neither built nor
1N/Ainstalled by default. As of April 2001 the only known vulnerable
1N/Aplatform is Linux, most likely all Linux distributions. CERT and
1N/Avarious vendors and distributors have been alerted about the vulnerability.
1N/Afor more information.
1N/AThe problem was caused by Perl trying to report a suspected security
1N/Aexploit attempt using an external program,
/bin/mail. On Linux
1N/Aplatforms the
/bin/mail program had an undocumented feature which
1N/Awhen combined with suidperl gave access to a root shell, resulting in
1N/Aa serious compromise instead of reporting the exploit attempt. If you
1N/Adon't have
/bin/mail, or if you have 'safe setuid scripts', or if
1N/Asuidperl is not installed, you are safe.
1N/AThe exploit attempt reporting feature has been completely removed from
1N/Aall the Perl 5.7 releases (and will be gone also from the maintenance
1N/Arelease 5.6.1), so that particular vulnerability isn't there anymore.
1N/AHowever, further security vulnerabilities are, unfortunately, always
1N/Apossible. The suidperl code is being reviewed and if deemed too risky
1N/Ato continue to be supported, it may be completely removed from future
1N/Areleases. In any case, suidperl should only be used by security
1N/Aexperts who know exactly what they are doing and why they are using
1N/Asuidperl instead of some other solution such as sudo
1N/A=head1 Incompatible Changes
1N/AAlthough "you shouldn't do that", it was possible to write code that
1N/Adepends on Perl's hashed key order (Data::Dumper does this). The new
1N/Aalgorithm "One-at-a-Time" produces a different hashed key order.
1N/AMore details are in L</"Performance Enhancements">.
1N/AThe list of filenames from glob() (or <...>) is now by default sorted
1N/Aalphabetically to be csh-compliant. (bsd_glob() does still sort platform
1N/Anatively, ASCII or EBCDIC, unless GLOB_ALPHASORT is specified.)
1N/A=head1 Core Enhancements
1N/A=head2 AUTOLOAD Is Now Lvaluable
1N/AAUTOLOAD is now lvaluable, meaning that you can add the :lvalue attribute
1N/Ato AUTOLOAD subroutines and you can assign to the AUTOLOAD return value.
1N/A=head2 PerlIO is Now The Default
1N/AIO is now by default done via PerlIO rather than system's "stdio".
1N/APerlIO allows "layers" to be "pushed" onto a file handle to alter the
1N/Ahandle's behaviour. Layers can be specified at open time via 3-arg
1N/A open($fh,'>:crlf :utf8', $path) || ...
1N/Aor on already opened handles via extended C<binmode>:
1N/A binmode($fh,':encoding(iso-8859-7)');
1N/AThe built-in layers are: unix (low level
read/write), stdio (as in
1N/Aprevious Perls), perlio (re-implementation of stdio buffering in a
1N/Aportable manner), crlf (does CRLF <=> "\n" translation as on Win32,
1N/Abut available on any platform). A mmap layer may be available if
1N/Aplatform supports it (mostly UNIXes).
1N/ALayers to be applied by default may be specified via the 'open' pragma.
1N/ASee L</"Installation and Configuration Improvements"> for the effects
1N/Aof PerlIO on your architecture name.
1N/AFile handles can be marked as accepting Perl's internal encoding of Unicode
1N/A(UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC depending on platform) by a pseudo layer ":utf8" :
1N/ANote for EBCDIC users: the pseudo layer ":utf8" is erroneously named
1N/Afor you since it's not UTF-8 what you will be getting but instead
1N/AUTF-EBCDIC. See L<perlunicode>, L<utf8>, and
1N/AIn future releases this naming may change.
1N/AFile handles can translate character encodings
from/to Perl's internal
1N/AFile handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via:
1N/A open($fh,'>', \$variable) || ...
1N/AAnonymous temporary files are available without need to
1N/A'use FileHandle' or other module via
1N/A open($fh,"+>", undef) || ...
1N/AThat is a literal undef, not an undefined value.
1N/AThe list form of C<open> is now implemented for pipes (at least on UNIX):
1N/Acreates a pipe, and runs the equivalent of exec('cat', '
/etc/motd') in
1N/AThe following builtin functions are now overridable: chop(), chomp(),
1N/Aeach(), keys(), pop(), push(), shift(), splice(), unshift().
1N/AFormats now support zero-padded decimal fields.
1N/APerl now tries internally to use integer values in numeric conversions
1N/Aand basic arithmetics (+ - * /) if the arguments are integers, and
1N/Atries also to keep the results stored internally as integers.
1N/AThis change leads into often slightly faster and always less lossy
1N/Aarithmetics. (Previously Perl always preferred floating point numbers
1N/AThe printf() and sprintf() now support parameter reordering using the
1N/AC<%\d+\$> and C<*\d+\$> syntaxes. For example
1N/A print "%2\$s %1\$s\n", "foo", "bar";
1N/Awill print "bar foo\n"; This feature helps in writing
1N/Ainternationalised software.
1N/AUnicode in general should be now much more usable. Unicode can be
1N/Aused in hash keys, Unicode in regular expressions should work now,
1N/AUnicode in tr/// should work now (though tr/// seems to be a
1N/Aparticularly tricky to get right, so you have been warned)
1N/AThe Unicode Character Database coming with Perl has been upgraded
1N/AFor developers interested in enhancing Perl's Unicode capabilities:
1N/Aalmost all the UCD files are included with the Perl distribution in
1N/Aconsiderations, is the Unihan database.
1N/AThe Unicode character classes \p{Blank} and \p{SpacePerl} have been
1N/Aadded. "Blank" is like C isblank(), that is, it contains only
1N/A"horizontal whitespace" (the space character is, the newline isn't),
1N/Aand the "SpacePerl" is the Unicode equivalent of C<\s> (\p{Space}
1N/Aisn't, since that includes the vertical tabulator character, whereas
1N/A=head2 Signals Are Now Safe
1N/APerl used to be fragile in that signals arriving at inopportune moments
1N/Acould corrupt Perl's internal state.
1N/A=head1 Modules and Pragmata
1N/AB::Concise, by Stephen McCamant, is a new compiler backend for
1N/Awalking the Perl syntax tree, printing concise info about ops.
1N/AThe output is highly customisable.
1N/ASee L<B::Concise> for more information.
1N/AClass::ISA, by Sean Burke, for reporting the search path for a
1N/Aclass's ISA tree, has been added.
1N/ASee L<Class::ISA> for more information.
1N/ACwd has now a split personality: if possible, an extension is used,
1N/A(this will hopefully be both faster and more secure and robust) but
1N/Aif not possible, the familiar Perl library implementation is used.
1N/ADigest, a frontend module for calculating digests (checksums),
1N/Afrom Gisle Aas, has been added.
1N/ASee L<Digest> for more information.
1N/ADigest::MD5 for calculating MD5 digests (checksums), by Gisle Aas,
1N/A use Digest::MD5 'md5_hex';
1N/A $digest = md5_hex("Thirsty Camel");
1N/A print $digest, "\n"; # 01d19d9d2045e005c3f1b80e8b164de1
1N/ANOTE: the MD5 backward compatibility module is deliberately not
1N/Aincluded since its use is discouraged.
1N/ASee L<Digest::MD5> for more information.
1N/AEncode, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides a mechanism to translate
1N/Abetween different character encodings. Support for Unicode,
1N/AISO-8859-*, ASCII, CP*, KOI8-R, and three variants of EBCDIC are
1N/Acompiled in to the module. Several other encodings (like Japanese,
1N/AChinese, and MacIntosh encodings) are included and will be loaded at
1N/AAny encoding supported by Encode module is also available to the
1N/A":encoding()" layer if PerlIO is used.
1N/ASee L<Encode> for more information.
1N/AFilter::Simple is an easy-to-use frontend to Filter::Util::Call,
1N/A use Filter::Simple sub {
1N/A while (my ($from, $to) = splice @_, 0, 2) {
1N/A print "red\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "green\n"
1N/A print "bored\n"; # this code is filtered, will print "bogreen\n"
1N/A print "red\n"; # this code is not filtered, will print "red\n"
1N/ASee L<Filter::Simple> for more information.
1N/AFilter::Util::Call, by Paul Marquess, provides you with the
1N/Aframework to write I<Source Filters> in Perl. For most uses
1N/Athe frontend Filter::Simple is to be preferred.
1N/ASee L<Filter::Util::Call> for more information.
1N/ALocale::Constants, Locale::Country, Locale::Currency, and Locale::Language,
1N/Afrom Neil Bowers, have been added. They provide the codes for various
1N/Alocale standards, such as "fr" for France, "usd" for US Dollar, and
1N/A use Locale::Country;
1N/A $country = code2country('jp'); # $country gets 'Japan'
1N/A $code = country2code('Norway'); # $code gets 'no'
1N/ASee L<Locale::Constants>, L<Locale::Country>, L<Locale::Currency>,
1N/Aand L<Locale::Language> for more information.
1N/AMIME::Base64, by Gisle Aas, allows you to encode data in base64.
1N/A $encoded = encode_base64('Aladdin:open sesame');
1N/A $decoded = decode_base64($encoded);
1N/A print $encoded, "\n"; # "QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ=="
1N/ASee L<MIME::Base64> for more information.
1N/AMIME::QuotedPrint, by Gisle Aas, allows you to encode data in
1N/Aquoted-printable encoding.
1N/A use MIME::QuotedPrint;
1N/A $encoded = encode_qp("Smiley in Unicode: \x{263a}");
1N/A $decoded = decode_qp($encoded);
1N/A print $encoded, "\n"; # "Smiley in Unicode: =263A"
1N/AMIME::QuotedPrint has been enhanced to provide the basic methods
1N/Anecessary to use it with PerlIO::Via as in :
1N/A use MIME::QuotedPrint;
1N/A open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path)
1N/ASee L<MIME::QuotedPrint> for more information.
1N/APerlIO::Scalar, by Nick Ing-Simmons, provides the implementation of
1N/AIO to "in memory" Perl scalars as discussed above. It also serves as
1N/Aan example of a loadable layer. Other future possibilities include
1N/APerlIO::Array and PerlIO::Code. See L<PerlIO::Scalar> for more
1N/APerlIO::Via, by Nick Ing-Simmons, acts as a PerlIO layer and wraps
1N/APerlIO layer functionality provided by a class (typically implemented
1N/A use MIME::QuotedPrint;
1N/A open($fh,">Via(MIME::QuotedPrint)",$path)
1N/AThis will automatically convert everything output to C<$fh>
1N/Ato Quoted-Printable. See L<PerlIO::Via> for more information.
1N/APod::Text::Overstrike, by Joe Smith, has been added.
1N/AIt converts POD data to formatted overstrike text.
1N/ASee L<Pod::Text::Overstrike> for more information.
1N/ASwitch from Damian Conway has been added. Just by saying
1N/Ayou have C<switch> and C<case> available in Perl.
1N/A case 1 { print "number 1" }
1N/A case "a" { print "string a" }
1N/A case [1..10,42] { print "number in list" }
1N/A case (@array) { print "number in list" }
1N/A case /\w+/ { print "pattern" }
1N/A case qr/\w+/ { print "pattern" }
1N/A case (%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
1N/A case (\%hash) { print "entry in hash" }
1N/A case (\&sub) { print "arg to subroutine" }
1N/A else { print "previous case not true" }
1N/ASee L<Switch> for more information.
1N/AText::Balanced from Damian Conway has been added, for
1N/Aextracting delimited text sequences from strings.
1N/A use Text::Balanced 'extract_delimited';
1N/A ($a, $b) = extract_delimited("'never say never', he never said", "'", '');
1N/A$a will be "'never say never'", $b will be ', he never said'.
1N/AIn addition to extract_delimited() there are also extract_bracketed(),
1N/Aextract_quotelike(), extract_codeblock(), extract_variable(),
1N/Aextract_tagged(), extract_multiple(), gen_delimited_pat(), and
1N/Agen_extract_tagged(). With these you can implement rather advanced
1N/Aparsing algorithms. See L<Text::Balanced> for more information.
1N/ATie::RefHash::Nestable, by Edward Avis, allows storing hash references
1N/A(unlike the standard Tie::RefHash) The module is contained within
1N/AXS::Typemap, by Tim Jenness, is a test extension that exercises XS
1N/Atypemaps. Nothing gets installed but for extension writers the code
1N/A=head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
1N/AB::Deparse should be now more robust. It still far from providing a full
1N/Around trip for any random piece of Perl code, though, and is under active
1N/Adevelopment: expect more robustness in 5.7.2.
1N/AClass::Struct can now define the classes in compile time.
1N/AMath::BigFloat has undergone much fixing, and in addition the fmod()
1N/Afunction now supports modulus operations.
1N/A( The fixed Math::BigFloat module is also available in CPAN for those
1N/ADevel::Peek now has an interface for the Perl memory statistics
1N/A(this works only if you are using perl's malloc, and if you have
1N/Acompiled with debugging).
1N/AIO::Socket has now atmark() method, which returns true if the socket
1N/Ais positioned at the out-of-band mark. The method is also exportable
1N/Aas a sockatmark() function.
1N/AIO::Socket::INET has support for ReusePort option (if your platform
1N/Asupports it). The Reuse option now has an alias, ReuseAddr. For clarity
1N/Ayou may want to prefer ReuseAddr.
1N/ANet::Ping has been enhanced. There is now "external" protocol which
1N/Auses Net::Ping::External module which runs external ping(1) and parses
1N/Athe output. An alpha version of Net::Ping::External is available in
1N/ACPAN and in 5.7.2 the Net::Ping::External may be integrated to Perl.
1N/AThe C<open> pragma allows layers other than ":raw" and ":crlf" when
1N/APOSIX::sigaction() is now much more flexible and robust.
1N/AYou can now install coderef handlers, 'DEFAULT', and 'IGNORE'
1N/Ahandlers, installing new handlers was not atomic.
1N/AThe Test module has been significantly enhanced. Its use is
1N/Agreatly recommended for module writers.
1N/AThe utf8:: name space (as in the pragma) provides various
1N/APerl-callable functions to provide low level access to Perl's
1N/Ainternal Unicode representation. At the moment only length()
1N/Ahas been implemented.
1N/AThe following modules have been upgraded from the versions at CPAN:
1N/ACPAN, CGI, DB_File, File::Temp, Getopt::Long, Pod::Man, Pod::Text,
1N/AStorable, Text-Tabs+Wrap.
1N/A=head1 Performance Enhancements
1N/AHashes now use Bob Jenkins "One-at-a-Time" hashing key algorithm
1N/Areasonably fast while producing a much better spread of values than
1N/Athe old hashing algorithm (originally by Chris Torek, later tweaked by
1N/AIlya Zakharevich). Hash values output from the algorithm on a hash of
1N/Aall 3-char printable ASCII keys comes much closer to passing the
1N/ADIEHARD random number generation tests. According to perlbench, this
1N/Achange has not affected the overall speed of Perl.
1N/Aunshift() should now be noticeably faster.
1N/A=head1 Utility Changes
1N/Ah2xs now produces template README.
1N/As2p has been completely rewritten in Perl. (It is in fact a full
1N/Aimplementation of sed in Perl.)
1N/Axsubpp now supports OUT keyword.
1N/A=head1 New Documentation
1N/AInternal replacements for standard C library functions.
1N/A(Interesting only for extension writers and Perl core hackers.)
1N/AInternals of PerlIO with layers.
1N/ADocumentation on compiling Perl on AIX has been added. AIX has
1N/Aseveral different C compilers and getting the right patch level
1N/Ais essential. On install
README.aix will be installed as L<perlaix>.
1N/ADocumentation on compiling Perl on the POSIX-BC platform (an EBCDIC
1N/Amainframe environment) has been added.
1N/Ato be too confusing (it has nothing to do with the POSIX module or the
1N/AIn perl 5.7.1 (and in the 5.6.1) the MacPerl sources have been
1N/Asynchronised with the standard Perl sources. To compile MacPerl
1N/Asome additional steps are required, and this file documents those
1N/Aabout compiling and using Perl on the
MPE/iX miniframe platform will
1N/Abe installed as L<perlmpeix>.
1N/Ain the Perl documentation has been collected there. On install
1N/AThe
README.vos has been podified, which means that this information
1N/Aabout compiling and using Perl on the Stratus VOS miniframe platform
1N/Awill be installed as L<perlvos>.
1N/ADocumentation on how to use the Perl source repository has been added.
1N/A=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
1N/ABecause PerlIO is now the default on most platforms, "-perlio" doesn't
1N/Aget appended to the $Config{archname} (also known as $^O) anymore.
1N/AInstead, if you explicitly choose not to use perlio (Configure command
1N/Aline option -Uuseperlio), you will get "-stdio" appended.
1N/AAnother change related to the architecture name is that "-64all"
1N/A(-Duse64bitall, or "maximally 64-bit") is appended only if your
1N/Apointers are 64 bits wide. (To be exact, the use64bitall is ignored.)
1N/AAPPLLIB_EXP, a less-know configuration-time definition, has been
1N/Adocumented. It can be used to prepend site-specific directories
1N/Ato Perl's default search path (@INC), see INSTALL for information.
1N/ABuilding Berkeley DB3 for compatibility modes for DB, NDBM, and ODBM
1N/Ahas been documented in INSTALL.
1N/Ahave been added, see L<perlhack> for more information about pixie and
1N/A=head2 New Or Improved Platforms
1N/AFor the list of platforms known to support Perl,
1N/Asee L<perlport/"Supported Platforms">.
1N/AAIX dynamic loading should be now better supported.
1N/AAfter a long pause, AmigaOS has been verified to be happy with Perl.
1N/AEBCDIC platforms (
z/OS, also known as OS/390, POSIX-BC, and
VM/ESA)
1N/Ahave been regained. Many test suite tests still fail and the
1N/Aco-existence of Unicode and EBCDIC isn't quite settled, but the
1N/Asituation is much better than with Perl 5.6. See L<perlos390>,
1N/AL<perlbs2000> (for POSIX-BC), and L<perlvmesa> for more information.
1N/ABuilding perl with -Duseithreads or -Duse5005threads now works under
1N/AHP-UX 10.20 (previously it only worked under 10.30 or later). You will
1N/AMac OS Classic (MacPerl has of course been available since
1N/Aperl 5.004 but now the source code bases of standard Perl
1N/Aand MacPerl have been synchronised)
1N/ANCR MP-RAS is now supported.
1N/ANonStop-UX is now supported.
1N/AAmdahl UTS is now supported.
1N/Az/OS (formerly known as OS/390, formerly known as MVS OE) has now
1N/Asupport for dynamic loading. This is not selected by default,
1N/Ahowever, you must specify -Dusedl in the arguments of Configure.
1N/A=head2 Generic Improvements
1N/AConfigure no longer includes the DBM libraries (dbm, gdbm, db, ndbm)
1N/Awhen building the Perl binary. The only exception to this is SunOS
4.x,
1N/ASome new Configure symbols, useful for extension writers:
1N/A=item d_fcntl_can_lock
1N/AWhether fcntl() can be used for file locking.
1N/AFor getpagesize(), though you should prefer POSIX::sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE))
1N/AWhether one needs to use Perl_va_copy() to copy varargs.
1N/AThe number of elements in an array needed to hold all the available signals.
1N/AWhether one needs to access character data aligned by U32 sized pointers.
1N/ARemoved Configure symbols: the PDP-11 memory model settings: huge,
1N/Alarge, medium, models.
1N/ASOCKS support is now much more robust.
1N/AIf your file system supports symbolic links you can build Perl outside
1N/Aof the source directory by
1N/Aunaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
1N/A=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
1N/ANumerous memory leaks and uninitialized memory accesses have been hunted down.
1N/AMost importantly anonymous subs used to leak quite a bit.
1N/Achop(@list) in list context returned the characters chopped in
1N/Areverse order. This has been reversed to be in the right order.
1N/AThe order of DESTROYs has been made more predictable.
1N/Amkdir() now ignores trailing slashes in the directory name,
1N/Aas mandated by POSIX.
1N/AAttributes (like :shared) didn't work with our().
1N/AThe PERL5OPT environment variable (for passing command line arguments
1N/Ato Perl) didn't work for more than a single group of options.
1N/AThe tainting behaviour of sprintf() has been rationalized. It does
1N/Anot taint the result of floating point formats anymore, making the
1N/Abehaviour consistent with that of string interpolation.
1N/AAll but the first argument of the IO syswrite() method are now optional.
1N/ATie::ARRAY SPLICE method was broken.
1N/Avec() now tries to work with characters <= 255 when possible, but it leaves
1N/Ahigher character values in place. In that case, if vec() was used to modify
1N/Athe string, it is no longer considered to be utf8-encoded.
1N/A=head2 Platform Specific Changes and Fixes
1N/ALinux previously had problems related to sockaddrlen when using
1N/Aaccept(), revcfrom() (in Perl: recv()), getpeername(), and getsockname().
1N/APreviously
DYNIX/ptx had problems in its Configure probe for non-blocking I/O.
1N/ABorland C++ v5.5 is now a supported compiler that can build Perl.
1N/AHowever, the generated binaries continue to be incompatible with those
1N/Agenerated by the other supported compilers (GCC and Visual C++).
1N/AWin32::GetCwd() correctly returns C:\ instead of C: when at the drive root.
1N/AOther bugs in chdir() and Cwd::cwd() have also been fixed.
1N/ADuping socket handles with open(F, ">&MYSOCK") now works under Windows 9x.
1N/AHTML files will be installed in c:\perl\html instead of c:\perl\lib\pod\html
1N/AThe makefiles now provide a single switch to bulk-enable all the features
1N/Aenabled in ActiveState ActivePerl (a popular binary distribution).
1N/A=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
1N/ATwo new debugging options have been added: if you have compiled your
1N/APerl with debugging, you can use the -DT and -DR options to trace
1N/Atokenising and to add reference counts to displaying variables,
1N/AIf an attempt to use a (non-blessed) reference as an array index
1N/Ais made, a warning is given.
1N/AC<push @a;> and C<unshift @a;> (with no values to push or unshift)
1N/Anow give a warning. This may be a problem for generated and evaled
1N/A=head1 Changed Internals
1N/ASome new APIs: ptr_table_clear(), ptr_table_free(), sv_setref_uv().
1N/AFor the full list of the available APIs see L<perlapi>.
1N/AdTHR and djSP have been obsoleted; the former removed (because it's
1N/Aa no-op) and the latter replaced with dSP.
1N/APerl now uses system malloc instead of Perl malloc on all 64-bit
1N/Aplatforms, and even in some not-always-64-bit platforms like AIX,
1N/AIRIX, and Solaris. This change breaks backward compatibility but
1N/APerl's malloc has problems with large address spaces and also the
1N/Aspeed of vendors' malloc is generally better in large address space
1N/Amachines (Perl's malloc is mostly tuned for space).
1N/AMany new tests have been added. The most notable is probably the
1N/Alib/1_compile: it is very notable because running it takes quite a
1N/Along time -- it test compiles all the Perl modules in the distribution.
1N/A=head1 Known Problems
1N/ANote that unlike other sections in this document (which describe
1N/Achanges since 5.7.0) this section is cumulative containing known
1N/Aproblems for all the 5.7 releases.
1N/A=head2 AIX vac 5.0.0.0 May Produce Buggy Code For Perl
1N/AThe AIX C compiler vac version 5.0.0.0 may produce buggy code,
1N/Aresulting in few random tests failing, but when the failing tests
1N/Aare run by hand, they succeed. We suggest upgrading to at least
1N/Avac version 5.0.1.0, that has been known to compile Perl correctly.
1N/A"lslpp -L|grep
vac.C" will tell you the vac version.
1N/ADon't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.
1N/Aconfigured to be 64-bit. Because other 64-bit platforms do not hang in
1N/Athis test, HP-UX is suspect. All other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX. The
1N/Atest attempts to create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets
1N/Awhich have multiple IP addresses).
1N/A=head2 Test
lib/posix Subtest 9 Fails In LP64-Configured HP-UX
1N/AIf perl is configured with -Duse64bitall, the successful result of the
1N/Asubtest 10 of
lib/posix may arrive before the successful result of the
1N/Asubtest 9, which confuses the test harness so much that it thinks the
1N/AThe test fails on various platforms (PA64 and IA64 are known), but the
1N/Aexact cause is still being investigated.
1N/A=head2 sigaction test 13 in VMS
1N/AThe test is known to fail; whether it's because of VMS of because
1N/Aof faulty test is not known.
1N/A=head2 sprintf tests 129 and 130
1N/AThe
op/sprintf tests 129 and 130 are known to fail on some platforms.
1N/AThe failing platforms do not comply with the ANSI C Standard, line
1N/A19ff on page 134 of ANSI X3.159 1989 to be exact. (They produce
1N/Asomething else than "1" and "-1" when formatting 0.6 and -0.6 using
1N/Athe printf format "%.0f", most often they produce "0" and "-0".)
1N/A=head2 Failure of Thread tests
1N/Afundamental problems in the 5.005 threading implementation. These are
1N/Anot new failures--Perl 5.005_0x has the same bugs, but didn't have
1N/Athese tests. (Note that support for 5.005-style threading remains
1N/A=head2 Localising a Tied Variable Leaks Memory
1N/A tie my %tie_hash => 'Tie::StdHash';
1N/A local($tie_hash{Foo}) = 1; # leaks
1N/ACode like the above is known to leak memory every time the local()
1N/A=head2 Self-tying of Arrays and Hashes Is Forbidden
1N/ASelf-tying of arrays and hashes is broken in rather deep and
1N/Ahard-to-fix ways. As a stop-gap measure to avoid people from getting
1N/Afrustrated at the mysterious results (core dumps, most often) it is
1N/Afor now forbidden (you will get a fatal error even from an attempt).
1N/A=head2 Building Extensions Can Fail Because Of Largefiles
1N/ASome extensions like mod_perl are known to have issues with
1N/A`largefiles', a change brought by Perl 5.6.0 in which file offsets
1N/Adefault to 64 bits wide, where supported. Modules may fail to compile
1N/Aat all or compile and work incorrectly. Currently there is no good
1N/Asolution for the problem, but Configure now provides appropriate
1N/Anon-largefile ccflags, ldflags, libswanted, and libs in the %Config
1N/Ahash (
e.g., $Config{ccflags_nolargefiles}) so the extensions that are
1N/Ahaving problems can try configuring themselves without the
1N/Alargefileness. This is admittedly not a clean solution, and the
1N/Asolution may not even work at all. One potential failure is whether
1N/Aone can (or, if one can, whether it's a good idea) link together at
1N/Aall binaries with different ideas about file offsets, all this is
1N/A=head2 The Compiler Suite Is Still Experimental
1N/AThe compiler suite is slowly getting better but is nowhere near
1N/A=head1 Reporting Bugs
1N/AIf you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
1N/AIf you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
1N/Aprogram included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down
1N/Ato a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the
1N/Aoutput of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
1N/Aanalysed by the Perl porting team.
1N/AThe F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
1N/AThe F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
1N/AThe F<README> file for general stuff.
1N/AThe F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
1N/AWritten by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>, with many contributions
1N/Afrom The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches.
1N/ASend omissions or corrections to <F<perlbug@perl.org>>.