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perl593delta (1)

Name

perl593delta - what is new for perl v5.9.3

Synopsis

Please see following description for synopsis

Description




Perl Programmers Reference Guide                  PERL593DELTA(1)



NAME
     perl593delta - what is new for perl v5.9.3

DESCRIPTION
     This document describes differences between the 5.9.2 and
     the 5.9.3 development releases. See perl590delta,
     perl591delta and perl592delta for the differences between
     5.8.0 and 5.9.2.

Incompatible Changes
  Parsing of "-f _"
     The identifier "_" is now forced to be a bareword after a
     filetest operator. This solves a number of misparsing issues
     when a global "_" subroutine is defined.

  "mkdir()"
     "mkdir()" without arguments now defaults to $_.

  Magic goto and eval
     The construct "eval { goto &foo }" is now disallowed. (Note
     that the similar construct, but with "eval("")" instead, was
     already forbidden.)

  $# has been removed
     The deprecated $# variable (output format for numbers) has
     been removed. A new warning, "$# is no longer supported",
     has been added.

  ":unique"
     The ":unique" attribute has been made a no-op, since its
     current implementation was fundamentally flawed and not
     threadsafe.

  Scoping of the "sort" pragma
     The "sort" pragma is now lexically scoped. Its effect used
     to be global.

Core Enhancements
  The "feature" pragma
     The "feature" pragma is used to enable new syntax that would
     break Perl's backwards-compatibility with older releases of
     the language. It's a lexical pragma, like "strict" or
     "warnings".

     Currently the following new features are available: "switch"
     (adds a switch statement), "~~" (adds a Perl 6-like smart
     match operator), "say" (adds a "say" built-in function), and
     "err" (adds an "err" keyword).  Those features are described
     below.

     Note that "err" low-precedence defined-or operator used to
     be enabled by default (although as a weak keyword, meaning



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     that any function would override it). It's now only
     recognized when explicitly turned on (and is then a regular
     keyword).

     Those features, and the "feature" pragma itself, have been
     contributed by Robin Houston.

  Switch and Smart Match operator
     Perl 5 now has a switch statement. It's available when "use
     feature 'switch'" is in effect. This feature introduces
     three new keywords, "given", "when", and "default":

         given ($foo) {
             when (/^abc/) { $abc = 1; }
             when (/^def/) { $def = 1; }
             when (/^xyz/) { $xyz = 1; }
             default { $nothing = 1; }
         }

     A more complete description of how Perl matches the switch
     variable against the "when" conditions is given in "Switch
     statements" in perlsyn.

     This kind of match is called smart match, and it's also
     possible to use it outside of switch statements, via the new
     "~~" operator (enabled via the "use feature '~~'"
     directive). See "Smart matching in detail" in perlsyn.

  "say()"
     say() is a new built-in, only available when "use feature
     'say'" is in effect, that is similar to print(), but that
     implicitly appends a newline to the printed string. See
     "say" in perlfunc.

  "CLONE_SKIP()"
     Perl has now support for the "CLONE_SKIP" special
     subroutine. Like "CLONE", "CLONE_SKIP" is called once per
     package; however, it is called just before cloning starts,
     and in the context of the parent thread. If it returns a
     true value, then no objects of that class will be cloned.
     See perlmod for details. (Contributed by Dave Mitchell.)

  "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}"
     A new internal variable, "${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE}", gives the
     native status returned by the last pipe close, backtick
     command, successful call to wait() or waitpid(), or from the
     system() operator. See perlrun for details. (Contributed by
     Gisle Aas.)

  Assertions
     The support for assertions, introduced in perl 5.9.0, has
     been improved.  The syntax for the "-A" command-line switch



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     has changed; it now accepts an optional module name,
     defaulting to "assertions::activate". See assertions and
     perlrun. (Contributed by Salvador FandiA~Xo GarcA~a.)

  Unicode Character Database 4.1.0
     The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl
     5.9 has been updated to 4.1.0.

  "no VERSION"
     You can now use "no" followed by a version number to specify
     that you want to use a version of perl older than the
     specified one.

  Recursive sort subs
     You can now use recursive subroutines with sort(), thanks to
     Robin Houston.

  Effect of pragmas in eval
     The compile-time value of the "%^H" hint variable can now
     propagate into eval("")uated code. This makes it more useful
     to implement lexical pragmas.

     As a side-effect of this, the overloaded-ness of constants
     now propagates into eval("").

  New -E command-line switch
     -E is equivalent to -e, but it implicitly enables all
     optional features (like "use feature ":5.10"").

  "chdir", "chmod" and "chown" on filehandles
     "chdir", "chmod" and "chown" can now work on filehandles as
     well as filenames, if the system supports respectively
     "fchdir", "fchmod" and "fchown", thanks to a patch provided
     by Gisle Aas.

  OS groups
     $( and $) now return groups in the order where the OS
     returns them, thanks to Gisle Aas. This wasn't previously
     the case.

Modules and Pragmata
  New Core Modules
     o   A new pragma, "feature", has been added; see above in
         "Core Enhancements".

     o   "assertions::compat", also available on CPAN, allows the
         use of assertions on perl versions prior to 5.9.0 (that
         is the first one to natively support them).

     o   "Math::BigInt::FastCalc" is an XS-enabled, and thus
         faster, version of "Math::BigInt::Calc".




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     o   "Compress::Zlib" is an interface to the zlib compression
         library. It comes with a bundled version of zlib, so
         having a working zlib is not a prerequisite to install
         it. It's used by "Archive::Tar" (see below).

     o   "IO::Zlib" is an "IO::"-style interface to
         "Compress::Zlib".

     o   "Archive::Tar" is a module to manipulate "tar" archives.

     o   "Digest::SHA" is a module used to calculate many types
         of SHA digests, has been included for SHA support in the
         CPAN module.

     o   "ExtUtils::CBuilder" and "ExtUtils::ParseXS" have been
         added.

Utility Changes
  "ptar"
     "ptar" is a pure perl implementation of "tar", that comes
     with "Archive::Tar".

  "ptardiff"
     "ptardiff" is a small script used to generate a diff between
     the contents of a tar archive and a directory tree. Like
     "ptar", it comes with "Archive::Tar".

  "shasum"
     This command-line utility, used to print or to check SHA
     digests, comes with the new "Digest::SHA" module.

  "h2xs" enhancements
     "h2xs" implements a new option "--use-xsloader" to force use
     of "XSLoader" even in backwards compatible modules.

     The handling of authors' names that had apostrophes has been
     fixed.

     Any enums with negative values are now skipped.

  "perlivp" enhancements
     "perlivp" no longer checks for *.ph files by default.  Use
     the new "-a" option to run all tests.

Documentation
  Perl Glossary
     The perlglossary manpage is a glossary of terms used in the
     Perl documentation, technical and otherwise, kindly provided
     by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

     perltodo now lists a rough roadmap to Perl 5.10.




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Performance Enhancements
  XS-assisted SWASHGET
     Some pure-perl code that perl was using to retrieve Unicode
     properties and transliteration mappings has been
     reimplemented in XS.

  Constant subroutines
     The interpreter internals now support a far more memory
     efficient form of inlineable constants. Storing a reference
     to a constant value in a symbol table is equivalent to a
     full typeglob referencing a constant subroutine, but using
     about 400 bytes less memory. This proxy constant subroutine
     is automatically upgraded to a real typeglob with subroutine
     if necessary.  The approach taken is analogous to the
     existing space optimisation for subroutine stub
     declarations, which are stored as plain scalars in place of
     the full typeglob.

     Several of the core modules have been converted to use this
     feature for their system dependent constants - as a result
     "use POSIX;" now takes about 200K less memory.

  "PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV"
     The new compilation flag "PERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV", introduced
     as an option in perl 5.8.8, is turned on by default in perl
     5.9.3. It prevents perl from creating an empty scalar with
     every new typeglob. See perl589delta for details.

  Weak references are cheaper
     Weak reference creation is now O(1) rather than O(n),
     courtesy of Nicholas Clark. Weak reference deletion remains
     O(n), but if deletion only happens at program exit, it may
     be skipped completely.

  sort() enhancements
     Salvador FandiA~Xo provided improvements to reduce the
     memory usage of "sort" and to speed up some cases.

Installation and Configuration Improvements
  Compilation improvements
     Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may
     still be problems if "make test" is instructed to run in
     parallel.

     Building with Borland's compilers on Win32 should work more
     smoothly. In particular Steve Hay has worked to side step
     many warnings emitted by their compilers and at least one C
     compiler internal error.

     Perl extensions on Windows now can be statically built into
     the Perl DLL, thanks to a work by Vadim Konovalov.




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  New Or Improved Platforms
     Perl is being ported to Symbian OS. See perlsymbian for more
     information.

     The VMS port has been improved. See perlvms.

     DynaLoader::dl_unload_file() now works on Windows.

     Portability of Perl on various recent compilers on Windows
     has been improved (Borland C++, Visual C++ 7.0).

  New probes
     "Configure" will now detect "clearenv" and "unsetenv",
     thanks to a patch from Alan Burlison. It will also probe for
     "futimes" (and use it internally if available), and whether
     "sprintf" correctly returns the length of the formatted
     string.

  Module auxiliary files
     README files and changelogs for CPAN modules bundled with
     perl are no longer installed.

Selected Bug Fixes
  "defined $$x"
     "use strict "refs"" was ignoring taking a hard reference in
     an argument to defined(), as in :

         use strict "refs";
         my $x = "foo";
         if (defined $$x) {...}

     This now correctly produces the run-time error "Can't use
     string as a SCALAR ref while "strict refs" in use".
     (However, "defined @$foo" and "defined %$foo" are still
     allowed. Those constructs are discouraged anyway.)

  Calling CORE::require()
     CORE::require() and CORE::do() were always parsed as
     require() and do() when they were overridden. This is now
     fixed.

  Subscripts of slices
     You can now use a non-arrowed form for chained subscripts
     after a list slice, like in:

         ({foo => "bar"})[0]{foo}

     This used to be a syntax error; a "->" was required.

  Remove over-optimisation
     Perl 5.9.2 introduced a change so that assignments of
     "undef" to a scalar, or of an empty list to an array or a



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     hash, were optimised out. As this could cause problems when
     "goto" jumps were involved, this change was backed out.

  sprintf() fixes
     Using the sprintf() function with some formats could lead to
     a buffer overflow in some specific cases. This has been
     fixed, along with several other bugs, notably in bounds
     checking.

     In related fixes, it was possible for badly written code
     that did not follow the documentation of "Sys::Syslog" to
     have formatting vulnerabilities.  "Sys::Syslog" has been
     changed to protect people from poor quality third party
     code.

  no warnings 'category' works correctly with -w
     Previously when running with warnings enabled globally via
     "-w", selective disabling of specific warning categories
     would actually turn off all warnings.  This is now fixed;
     now "no warnings 'io';" will only turn off warnings in the
     "io" class. Previously it would erroneously turn off all
     warnings.

  Smaller fixes
     o   "FindBin" now works better with directories where access
         rights are more restrictive than usual.

     o   Several memory leaks in ithreads were closed. Also,
         ithreads were made less memory-intensive.

     o   Trailing spaces are now trimmed from $! and $^E.

     o   Operations that require perl to read a process's list of
         groups, such as reads of $( and $), now dynamically
         allocate memory rather than using a fixed sized array.
         The fixed size array could cause C stack exhaustion on
         systems configured to use large numbers of groups.

     o   "PerlIO::scalar" now works better with non-default $/
         settings.

     o   The "x" repetition operator is now able to operate on
         "qw//" lists. This used to raise a syntax error.

     o   The debugger now traces correctly execution in
         eval("")uated code that contains #line directives.

     o   The value of the "open" pragma is no longer ignored for
         three-argument opens.

     o   Perl will now use the C library calls "unsetenv" and
         "clearenv" if present to delete keys from %ENV and



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         delete %ENV entirely, thanks to a patch from Alan
         Burlison.

  More Unicode Fixes
     o   chr() on a negative value now gives "\x{FFFD}", the
         Unicode replacement character, unless when the "bytes"
         pragma is in effect, where the low eight bytes of the
         value are used.

     o   Some case insensitive matches between UTF-8 encoded data
         and 8 bit regexps, and vice versa, could give malformed
         character warnings. These have been fixed by Dave
         Mitchell and Yves Orton.

     o   "lcfirst" and "ucfirst" could corrupt the string for
         certain cases where the length UTF-8 encoding of the
         string in lower case, upper case or title case differed.
         This was fixed by Nicholas Clark.

New or Changed Diagnostics
  Attempt to set length of freed array
     This is a new warning, produced in situations like the
     following one:

         $r = do {my @a; \$#a};
         $$r = 503;

  Non-string passed as bitmask
     This is a new warning, produced when number has been passed
     as a argument to select(), instead of a bitmask.

         # Wrong, will now warn
         $rin = fileno(STDIN);
         ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);

         # Should be
         $rin = '';
         vec($rin,fileno(STDIN),1) = 1;
         ($nfound,$timeleft) = select($rout=$rin, undef, undef, $timeout);

  Search pattern not terminated or ternary operator parsed as
     search pattern
     This syntax error indicates that the lexer couldn't find the
     final delimiter of a "?PATTERN?" construct. Mentioning the
     ternary operator in this error message makes syntax
     diagnostic easier.

  "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration
     This warning is now emitted in more consistent cases; in
     short, when one of the declarations involved is a "my"
     variable:




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         my $x;   my $x;     # warns
         my $x;  our $x;     # warns
         our $x;  my $x;     # warns

     On the other hand, the following:

         our $x; our $x;

     now gives a ""our" variable %s redeclared" warning.

  readdir()/closedir()/etc. attempted on invalid dirhandle
     These new warnings are now emitted when a dirhandle is used
     but is either closed or not really a dirhandle.

Changed Internals
     In general, the source code of perl has been refactored,
     tied up, and optimized in many places. Also, memory
     management and allocation has been improved in a couple of
     points.

     Andy Lester supplied many improvements to determine which
     function parameters and local variables could actually be
     declared "const" to the C compiler. Steve Peters provided
     new *_set macros and reworked the core to use these rather
     than assigning to macros in LVALUE context.

     Dave Mitchell improved the lexer debugging output under
     "-DT".

     A new file, mathoms.c, has been added. It contains functions
     that are no longer used in the perl core, but that remain
     available for binary or source compatibility reasons.
     However, those functions will not be compiled in if you add
     "-DNO_MATHOMS" in the compiler flags.

     The "AvFLAGS" macro has been removed.

     The "av_*()" functions, used to manipulate arrays, no longer
     accept null "AV*" parameters.

  B:: modules inheritance changed
     The inheritance hierarchy of "B::" modules has changed;
     "B::NV" now inherits from "B::SV" (it used to inherit from
     "B::IV").

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://bugs.perl.org/
     .  There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ ,
     the Perl Home Page.




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     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.


ATTRIBUTES
     See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
     attributes:

     +---------------+------------------+
     |ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE  |
     +---------------+------------------+
     |Availability   | runtime/perl-512 |
     +---------------+------------------+
     |Stability      | Uncommitted      |
     +---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
     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.



NOTES
     This software was built from source available at
     https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland.  The original
     community source was downloaded from
     http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2

     Further information about this software can be found on the
     open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.


















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