perl5005delta(1)


NAME

   perl5005delta - what's new for perl5.005

DESCRIPTION

   This document describes differences between the 5.004 release and this
   one.

About the new versioning system

   Perl is now developed on two tracks: a maintenance track that makes
   small, safe updates to released production versions with emphasis on
   compatibility; and a development track that pursues more aggressive
   evolution.  Maintenance releases (which should be considered production
   quality) have subversion numbers that run from 1 to 49, and development
   releases (which should be considered "alpha" quality) run from 50 to
   99.

   Perl 5.005 is the combined product of the new dual-track development
   scheme.

Incompatible Changes

   WARNING:  This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
   Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching
   changes to the language internals.  If you have dynamically loaded
   extensions that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue
   to use them with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall
   those extensions to use them 5.005.  See INSTALL for detailed
   instructions on how to upgrade.

   Default installation structure has changed
   The new Configure defaults are designed to allow a smooth upgrade from
   5.004 to 5.005, but you should read INSTALL for a detailed discussion
   of the changes in order to adapt them to your system.

   Perl Source Compatibility
   When none of the experimental features are enabled, there should be
   very few user-visible Perl source compatibility issues.

   If threads are enabled, then some caveats apply. @_ and $_ become
   lexical variables.  The effect of this should be largely transparent to
   the user, but there are some boundary conditions under which user will
   need to be aware of the issues.  For example, "local(@_)" results in a
   "Can't localize lexical variable @_ ..." message.  This may be enabled
   in a future version.

   Some new keywords have been introduced.  These are generally expected
   to have very little impact on compatibility.  See "New "INIT" keyword",
   "New "lock" keyword", and "New "qr//" operator".

   Certain barewords are now reserved.  Use of these will provoke a
   warning if you have asked for them with the "-w" switch.  See ""our" is
   now a reserved word".

   C Source Compatibility
   There have been a large number of changes in the internals to support
   the new features in this release.

   *   Core sources now require ANSI C compiler

       An ANSI C compiler is now required to build perl.  See INSTALL.

   *   All Perl global variables must now be referenced with an explicit
       prefix

       All Perl global variables that are visible for use by extensions
       now have a "PL_" prefix.  New extensions should "not" refer to perl
       globals by their unqualified names.  To preserve sanity, we provide
       limited backward compatibility for globals that are being widely
       used like "sv_undef" and "na" (which should now be written as
       "PL_sv_undef", "PL_na" etc.)

       If you find that your XS extension does not compile anymore because
       a perl global is not visible, try adding a "PL_" prefix to the
       global and rebuild.

       It is strongly recommended that all functions in the Perl API that
       don't begin with "perl" be referenced with a "Perl_" prefix.  The
       bare function names without the "Perl_" prefix are supported with
       macros, but this support may cease in a future release.

       See perlapi.

   *   Enabling threads has source compatibility issues

       Perl built with threading enabled requires extensions to use the
       new "dTHR" macro to initialize the handle to access per-thread
       data.  If you see a compiler error that talks about the variable
       "thr" not being declared (when building a module that has XS code),
       you need to add "dTHR;" at the beginning of the block that elicited
       the error.

       The API function "perl_get_sv("@",GV_ADD)" should be used instead
       of directly accessing perl globals as "GvSV(errgv)".  The API call
       is backward compatible with existing perls and provides source
       compatibility with threading is enabled.

       See "C Source Compatibility" for more information.

   Binary Compatibility
   This version is NOT binary compatible with older versions.  All
   extensions will need to be recompiled.  Further binaries built with
   threads enabled are incompatible with binaries built without.  This
   should largely be transparent to the user, as all binary incompatible
   configurations have their own unique architecture name, and extension
   binaries get installed at unique locations.  This allows coexistence of
   several configurations in the same directory hierarchy.  See INSTALL.

   Security fixes may affect compatibility
   A few taint leaks and taint omissions have been corrected.  This may
   lead to "failure" of scripts that used to work with older versions.
   Compiling with -DINCOMPLETE_TAINTS provides a perl with minimal amounts
   of changes to the tainting behavior.  But note that the resulting perl
   will have known insecurities.

   Oneliners with the "-e" switch do not create temporary files anymore.

   Relaxed new mandatory warnings introduced in 5.004
   Many new warnings that were introduced in 5.004 have been made
   optional.  Some of these warnings are still present, but perl's new
   features make them less often a problem.  See "New Diagnostics".

   Licensing
   Perl has a new Social Contract for contributors.  See Porting/Contract.

   The license included in much of the Perl documentation has changed.
   Most of the Perl documentation was previously under the implicit GNU
   General Public License or the Artistic License (at the user's choice).
   Now much of the documentation unambiguously states the terms under
   which it may be distributed.  Those terms are in general much less
   restrictive than the GNU GPL.  See perl and the individual perl
   manpages listed therein.

Core Changes

   Threads
   WARNING: Threading is considered an experimental feature.  Details of
   the implementation may change without notice.  There are known
   limitations and some bugs.  These are expected to be fixed in future
   versions.

   See README.threads.

   Compiler
   WARNING: The Compiler and related tools are considered experimental.
   Features may change without notice, and there are known limitations and
   bugs.  Since the compiler is fully external to perl, the default
   configuration will build and install it.

   The Compiler produces three different types of transformations of a
   perl program.  The C backend generates C code that captures perl's
   state just before execution begins.  It eliminates the compile-time
   overheads of the regular perl interpreter, but the run-time performance
   remains comparatively the same.  The CC backend generates optimized C
   code equivalent to the code path at run-time.  The CC backend has
   greater potential for big optimizations, but only a few optimizations
   are implemented currently.  The Bytecode backend generates a platform
   independent bytecode representation of the interpreter's state just
   before execution.  Thus, the Bytecode back end also eliminates much of
   the compilation overhead of the interpreter.

   The compiler comes with several valuable utilities.

   "B::Lint" is an experimental module to detect and warn about suspicious
   code, especially the cases that the "-w" switch does not detect.

   "B::Deparse" can be used to demystify perl code, and understand how
   perl optimizes certain constructs.

   "B::Xref" generates cross reference reports of all definition and use
   of variables, subroutines and formats in a program.

   "B::Showlex" show the lexical variables used by a subroutine or file at
   a glance.

   "perlcc" is a simple frontend for compiling perl.

   See "ext/B/README", B, and the respective compiler modules.

   Regular Expressions
   Perl's regular expression engine has been seriously overhauled, and
   many new constructs are supported.  Several bugs have been fixed.

   Here is an itemized summary:

   Many new and improved optimizations
       Changes in the RE engine:

               Unneeded nodes removed;
               Substrings merged together;
               New types of nodes to process (SUBEXPR)* and similar expressions
                   quickly, used if the SUBEXPR has no side effects and matches
                   strings of the same length;
               Better optimizations by lookup for constant substrings;
               Better search for constants substrings anchored by $ ;

       Changes in Perl code using RE engine:

               More optimizations to s/longer/short/;
               study() was not working;
               /blah/ may be optimized to an analogue of index() if $& $` $' not seen;
               Unneeded copying of matched-against string removed;
               Only matched part of the string is copying if $` $' were not seen;

   Many bug fixes
       Note that only the major bug fixes are listed here.  See Changes
       for others.

               Backtracking might not restore start of $3.
               No feedback if max count for * or + on "complex" subexpression
                   was reached, similarly (but at compile time) for {3,34567}
               Primitive restrictions on max count introduced to decrease a
                   possibility of a segfault;
               (ZERO-LENGTH)* could segfault;
               (ZERO-LENGTH)* was prohibited;
               Long REs were not allowed;
               /RE/g could skip matches at the same position after a
                 zero-length match;

   New regular expression constructs
       The following new syntax elements are supported:

               (?<=RE)
               (?<!RE)
               (?{ CODE })
               (?i-x)
               (?i:RE)
               (?(COND)YES_RE|NO_RE)
               (?>RE)
               \z

   New operator for precompiled regular expressions
       See "New "qr//" operator".

   Other improvements
               Better debugging output (possibly with colors),
                   even from non-debugging Perl;
               RE engine code now looks like C, not like assembler;
               Behaviour of RE modifiable by `use re' directive;
               Improved documentation;
               Test suite significantly extended;
               Syntax [:^upper:] etc., reserved inside character classes;

   Incompatible changes
               (?i) localized inside enclosing group;
               $( is not interpolated into RE any more;
               /RE/g may match at the same position (with non-zero length)
                   after a zero-length match (bug fix).

   See perlre and perlop.

   Improved malloc()
   See banner at the beginning of "malloc.c" for details.

   Quicksort is internally implemented
   Perl now contains its own highly optimized qsort() routine.  The new
   qsort() is resistant to inconsistent comparison functions, so Perl's
   "sort()" will not provoke coredumps any more when given poorly written
   sort subroutines.  (Some C library "qsort()"s that were being used
   before used to have this problem.)  In our testing, the new "qsort()"
   required the minimal number of pair-wise compares on average, among all
   known "qsort()" implementations.

   See "perlfunc/sort".

   Reliable signals
   Perl's signal handling is susceptible to random crashes, because
   signals arrive asynchronously, and the Perl runtime is not reentrant at
   arbitrary times.

   However, one experimental implementation of reliable signals is
   available when threads are enabled.  See "Thread::Signal".  Also see
   INSTALL for how to build a Perl capable of threads.

   Reliable stack pointers
   The internals now reallocate the perl stack only at predictable times.
   In particular, magic calls never trigger reallocations of the stack,
   because all reentrancy of the runtime is handled using a "stack of
   stacks".  This should improve reliability of cached stack pointers in
   the internals and in XSUBs.

   More generous treatment of carriage returns
   Perl used to complain if it encountered literal carriage returns in
   scripts.  Now they are mostly treated like whitespace within program
   text.  Inside string literals and here documents, literal carriage
   returns are ignored if they occur paired with linefeeds, or get
   interpreted as whitespace if they stand alone.  This behavior means
   that literal carriage returns in files should be avoided.  You can get
   the older, more compatible (but less generous) behavior by defining the
   preprocessor symbol "PERL_STRICT_CR" when building perl.  Of course,
   all this has nothing whatever to do with how escapes like "\r" are
   handled within strings.

   Note that this doesn't somehow magically allow you to keep all text
   files in DOS format.  The generous treatment only applies to files that
   perl itself parses.  If your C compiler doesn't allow carriage returns
   in files, you may still be unable to build modules that need a C
   compiler.

   Memory leaks
   "substr", "pos" and "vec" don't leak memory anymore when used in lvalue
   context.  Many small leaks that impacted applications that embed
   multiple interpreters have been fixed.

   Better support for multiple interpreters
   The build-time option "-DMULTIPLICITY" has had many of the details
   reworked.  Some previously global variables that should have been per-
   interpreter now are.  With care, this allows interpreters to call each
   other.  See the "PerlInterp" extension on CPAN.

   Behavior of local() on array and hash elements is now well-defined
   See "Temporary Values via local()" in perlsub.

   "%!" is transparently tied to the Errno module
   See perlvar, and Errno.

   Pseudo-hashes are supported
   See perlref.

   "EXPR foreach EXPR" is supported
   See perlsyn.

   Keywords can be globally overridden
   See perlsub.

   $^E is meaningful on Win32
   See perlvar.

   "foreach (1..1000000)" optimized
   "foreach (1..1000000)" is now optimized into a counting loop.  It does
   not try to allocate a 1000000-size list anymore.

   "Foo::" can be used as implicitly quoted package name
   Barewords caused unintuitive behavior when a subroutine with the same
   name as a package happened to be defined.  Thus, "new Foo @args", use
   the result of the call to "Foo()" instead of "Foo" being treated as a
   literal.  The recommended way to write barewords in the indirect object
   slot is "new Foo:: @args".  Note that the method "new()" is called with
   a first argument of "Foo", not "Foo::" when you do that.

   "exists $Foo::{Bar::}" tests existence of a package
   It was impossible to test for the existence of a package without
   actually creating it before.  Now "exists $Foo::{Bar::}" can be used to
   test if the "Foo::Bar" namespace has been created.

   Better locale support
   See perllocale.

   Experimental support for 64-bit platforms
   Perl5 has always had 64-bit support on systems with 64-bit longs.
   Starting with 5.005, the beginnings of experimental support for systems
   with 32-bit long and 64-bit 'long long' integers has been added.  If
   you add -DUSE_LONG_LONG to your ccflags in config.sh (or manually
   define it in perl.h) then perl will be built with 'long long' support.
   There will be many compiler warnings, and the resultant perl may not
   work on all systems.  There are many other issues related to third-
   party extensions and libraries.  This option exists to allow people to
   work on those issues.

   prototype() returns useful results on builtins
   See "prototype" in perlfunc.

   Extended support for exception handling
   "die()" now accepts a reference value, and $@ gets set to that value in
   exception traps.  This makes it possible to propagate exception
   objects.  This is an undocumented experimental feature.

   Re-blessing in DESTROY() supported for chaining DESTROY() methods
   See "Destructors" in perlobj.

   All "printf" format conversions are handled internally
   See "printf" in perlfunc.

   New "INIT" keyword
   "INIT" subs are like "BEGIN" and "END", but they get run just before
   the perl runtime begins execution.  e.g., the Perl Compiler makes use
   of "INIT" blocks to initialize and resolve pointers to XSUBs.

   New "lock" keyword
   The "lock" keyword is the fundamental synchronization primitive in
   threaded perl.  When threads are not enabled, it is currently a noop.

   To minimize impact on source compatibility this keyword is "weak",
   i.e., any user-defined subroutine of the same name overrides it, unless
   a "use Thread" has been seen.

   New "qr//" operator
   The "qr//" operator, which is syntactically similar to the other quote-
   like operators, is used to create precompiled regular expressions.
   This compiled form can now be explicitly passed around in variables,
   and interpolated in other regular expressions.  See perlop.

   "our" is now a reserved word
   Calling a subroutine with the name "our" will now provoke a warning
   when using the "-w" switch.

   Tied arrays are now fully supported
   See Tie::Array.

   Tied handles support is better
   Several missing hooks have been added.  There is also a new base class
   for TIEARRAY implementations.  See Tie::Array.

   4th argument to substr
   substr() can now both return and replace in one operation.  The
   optional 4th argument is the replacement string.  See "substr" in
   perlfunc.

   Negative LENGTH argument to splice
   splice() with a negative LENGTH argument now work similar to what the
   LENGTH did for substr().  Previously a negative LENGTH was treated as
   0.  See "splice" in perlfunc.

   Magic lvalues are now more magical
   When you say something like "substr($x, 5) = "hi"", the scalar returned
   by substr() is special, in that any modifications to it affect $x.
   (This is called a 'magic lvalue' because an 'lvalue' is something on
   the left side of an assignment.)  Normally, this is exactly what you
   would expect to happen, but Perl uses the same magic if you use
   substr(), pos(), or vec() in a context where they might be modified,
   like taking a reference with "\" or as an argument to a sub that
   modifies @_.  In previous versions, this 'magic' only went one way, but
   now changes to the scalar the magic refers to ($x in the above example)
   affect the magic lvalue too. For instance, this code now acts
   differently:

       $x = "hello";
       sub printit {
           $x = "g'bye";
           print $_[0], "\n";
       }
       printit(substr($x, 0, 5));

   In previous versions, this would print "hello", but it now prints
   "g'bye".

   <> now reads in records
   If $/ is a reference to an integer, or a scalar that holds an integer,
   <> will read in records instead of lines. For more info, see "$/" in
   perlvar.

Supported Platforms

   Configure has many incremental improvements.  Site-wide policy for
   building perl can now be made persistent, via Policy.sh.  Configure
   also records the command-line arguments used in config.sh.

   New Platforms
   BeOS is now supported.  See README.beos.

   DOS is now supported under the DJGPP tools.  See README.dos (installed
   as perldos on some systems).

   MiNT is now supported.  See README.mint.

   MPE/iX is now supported.  See README.mpeix.

   MVS (aka OS390, aka Open Edition) is now supported.  See README.os390
   (installed as perlos390 on some systems).

   Stratus VOS is now supported.  See README.vos.

   Changes in existing support
   Win32 support has been vastly enhanced.  Support for Perl Object, a C++
   encapsulation of Perl.  GCC and EGCS are now supported on Win32.  See
   README.win32, aka perlwin32.

   VMS configuration system has been rewritten.  See README.vms (installed
   as README_vms on some systems).

   The hints files for most Unix platforms have seen incremental
   improvements.

Modules and Pragmata

   New Modules
   B   Perl compiler and tools.  See B.

   Data::Dumper
       A module to pretty print Perl data.  See Data::Dumper.

   Dumpvalue
       A module to dump perl values to the screen. See Dumpvalue.

   Errno
       A module to look up errors more conveniently.  See Errno.

   File::Spec
       A portable API for file operations.

   ExtUtils::Installed
       Query and manage installed modules.

   ExtUtils::Packlist
       Manipulate .packlist files.

   Fatal
       Make functions/builtins succeed or die.

   IPC::SysV
       Constants and other support infrastructure for System V IPC
       operations in perl.

   Test
       A framework for writing test suites.

   Tie::Array
       Base class for tied arrays.

   Tie::Handle
       Base class for tied handles.

   Thread
       Perl thread creation, manipulation, and support.

   attrs
       Set subroutine attributes.

   fields
       Compile-time class fields.

   re  Various pragmata to control behavior of regular expressions.

   Changes in existing modules
   Benchmark
       You can now run tests for x seconds instead of guessing the right
       number of tests to run.

       Keeps better time.

   Carp
       Carp has a new function cluck(). cluck() warns, like carp(), but
       also adds a stack backtrace to the error message, like confess().

   CGI CGI has been updated to version 2.42.

   Fcntl
       More Fcntl constants added: F_SETLK64, F_SETLKW64, O_LARGEFILE for
       large (more than 4G) file access (the 64-bit support is not yet
       working, though, so no need to get overly excited),
       Free/Net/OpenBSD locking behaviour flags F_FLOCK, F_POSIX, Linux
       F_SHLCK, and O_ACCMODE: the mask of O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, and O_RDWR.

   Math::Complex
       The accessors methods Re, Im, arg, abs, rho, theta, methods can
       ($z->Re()) now also act as mutators ($z->Re(3)).

   Math::Trig
       A little bit of radial trigonometry (cylindrical and spherical)
       added, for example the great circle distance.

   POSIX
       POSIX now has its own platform-specific hints files.

   DB_File
       DB_File supports version 2.x of Berkeley DB.  See
       "ext/DB_File/Changes".

   MakeMaker
       MakeMaker now supports writing empty makefiles, provides a way to
       specify that site umask() policy should be honored.  There is also
       better support for manipulation of .packlist files, and getting
       information about installed modules.

       Extensions that have both architecture-dependent and architecture-
       independent files are now always installed completely in the
       architecture-dependent locations.  Previously, the shareable parts
       were shared both across architectures and across perl versions and
       were therefore liable to be overwritten with newer versions that
       might have subtle incompatibilities.

   CPAN
       See perlmodinstall and CPAN.

   Cwd Cwd::cwd is faster on most platforms.

Utility Changes

   "h2ph" and related utilities have been vastly overhauled.

   "perlcc", a new experimental front end for the compiler is available.

   The crude GNU "configure" emulator is now called "configure.gnu" to
   avoid trampling on "Configure" under case-insensitive filesystems.

   "perldoc" used to be rather slow.  The slower features are now
   optional.  In particular, case-insensitive searches need the "-i"
   switch, and recursive searches need "-r".  You can set these switches
   in the "PERLDOC" environment variable to get the old behavior.

Documentation Changes

   Config.pm now has a glossary of variables.

   Porting/patching.pod has detailed instructions on how to create and
   submit patches for perl.

   perlport specifies guidelines on how to write portably.

   perlmodinstall describes how to fetch and install modules from "CPAN"
   sites.

   Some more Perl traps are documented now.  See perltrap.

   perlopentut gives a tutorial on using open().

   perlreftut gives a tutorial on references.

   perlthrtut gives a tutorial on threads.

New Diagnostics

   Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
       (W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl
       keyword, and you have used the name without qualification for
       calling one or the other.  Perl decided to call the builtin because
       the subroutine is not imported.

       To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an
       ampersand before the subroutine name, or qualify the name with its
       package.  Alternatively, you can import the subroutine (or pretend
       that it's imported with the "use subs" pragma).

       To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the "CORE::"
       prefix on the operator (e.g. "CORE::log($x)") or by declaring the
       subroutine to be an object method (see "attrs").

   Bad index while coercing array into hash
       (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a
       pseudo-hash is not legal.  Index values must be at 1 or greater.
       See perlref.

   Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
       (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form "Foo::", but the
       compiler saw no other uses of that namespace before that point.
       Perhaps you need to predeclare a package?

   Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
       (F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by
       the object reference or package name contains an undefined value.
       Something like this will reproduce the error:

           $BADREF = 42;
           process $BADREF 1,2,3;
           $BADREF->process(1,2,3);

   Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
       (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script
       for nosuid.

   Can't coerce array into hash
       (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has
       no information on how to map from keys to array indices.  You can
       do that only with arrays that have a hash reference at index 0.

   Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
       (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
       "string".  (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you
       probably don't want to.)

   Can't localize pseudo-hash element
       (F) You said something like "local $ar->{'key'}", where $ar is a
       reference to a pseudo-hash.  That hasn't been implemented yet, but
       you can get a similar effect by localizing the corresponding array
       element directly: "local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}]".

   Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
       (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads
       the Errno.pm module. The Errno module is expected to tie the %!
       hash to provide symbolic names for $! errno values.

   Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
       (F) A string of a form "CORE::word" was given to prototype(), but
       there is no builtin with the name "word".

   Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
       (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
       beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is reserved for future
       extensions.  If you need to represent those character sequences
       inside a regular expression character class, just quote the square
       brackets with the backslash: "\[." and ".\]".

   Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future extensions
       (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
       beginning with "[:" and ending with ":]" is reserved for future
       extensions.  If you need to represent those character sequences
       inside a regular expression character class, just quote the square
       brackets with the backslash: "\[:" and ":\]".

   Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
       (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax
       beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is reserved for future
       extensions.  If you need to represent those character sequences
       inside a regular expression character class, just quote the square
       brackets with the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".

   %s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
       (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular
       expression that contains the "(?{ ... })" zero-width assertion,
       which is unsafe.  See "(?{ code })" in perlre, and perlsec.

   %s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
       (F) A regular expression contained the "(?{ ... })" zero-width
       assertion, but that construct is only allowed when the "use re
       'eval'" pragma is in effect.  See "(?{ code })" in perlre.

   %s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
       (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the "(?{
       ... })" zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the
       pattern contains interpolated values.  Since that is a security
       risk, it is not allowed.  If you insist, you may still do this by
       explicitly building the pattern from an interpolated string at run
       time and using that in an eval().  See "(?{ code })" in perlre.

   Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
       (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string.  This has
       the effect of blessing the reference into the package main.  This
       is usually not what you want.  Consider providing a default target
       package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');

   Illegal hex digit ignored
       (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F
       in a hexadecimal number.  Interpretation of the hexadecimal number
       stopped before the illegal character.

   No such array field
       (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used
       is not defined.  The hash at index 0 should map all valid field
       names to array indices for that to work.

   No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
       (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type
       does not know about the field name.  The field names are looked up
       in the %FIELDS hash in the type package at compile time.  The
       %FIELDS hash is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.

   Out of memory during ridiculously large request
       (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes.  This
       error is most likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program.
       e.g., $arr[time] instead of $arr[$time].

   Range iterator outside integer range
       (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator
       ".."  are outside the range which can be represented by integers
       internally.  One possible workaround is to force Perl to use
       magical string increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.

   Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' %s
       (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while
       invoking a method.  Probably indicates an unintended loop in your
       inheritance hierarchy.

   Reference found where even-sized list expected
       (W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list
       with an even number of elements (for assignment to a hash). This
       usually means that you used the anon hash constructor when you
       meant to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value pairs.

           %hash = { one => 1, two => 2, };   # WRONG
           %hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ];   # WRONG
           %hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, );   # right
           %hash = qw( one 1 two 2 );                 # also fine

   Undefined value assigned to typeglob
       (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la "*foo =
       undef".  This does nothing.  It's possible that you really mean
       "undef *foo".

   Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
       (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word.  Future versions of
       perl may use it as a keyword, so you're better off either
       explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate for its context
       of use, or using a different name altogether.  The warning can be
       suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a "&" prefix, or
       using a package qualifier, e.g. "&our()", or "Foo::our()".

   perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
       (S) The whole warning message will look something like:

              perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
              perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
                      LC_ALL = "En_US",
                      LANG = (unset)
                  are supported and installed on your system.
              perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

       Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies.  In the above
       the settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no
       value.  This error means that Perl detected that you and/or your
       system administrator have set up the so-called variable system but
       Perl could not use those settings.  This was not dead serious,
       fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can
       and will use, the script will be run.  Before you really fix the
       problem, however, you will get the same error message each time you
       run Perl.  How to really fix the problem can be found in "LOCALE
       PROBLEMS" in perllocale.

Obsolete Diagnostics

   Can't mktemp()
       (F) The mktemp() routine failed for some reason while trying to
       process a -e switch.  Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or
       clobbered.

       Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.

   Can't write to temp file for -e: %s
       (F) The write routine failed for some reason while trying to
       process a -e switch.  Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or
       clobbered.

       Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.

   Cannot open temporary file
       (F) The create routine failed for some reason while trying to
       process a -e switch.  Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or
       clobbered.

       Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.

   regexp too big
       (F) The current implementation of regular expressions uses shorts
       as address offsets within a string.  Unfortunately this means that
       if the regular expression compiles to longer than 32767, it'll blow
       up.  Usually when you want a regular expression this big, there is
       a better way to do it with multiple statements.  See perlre.

Configuration Changes

   You can use "Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl" which causes installperl to
   skip installing perl also as /usr/bin/perl.  This is useful if you
   prefer not to modify /usr/bin for some reason or another but harmful
   because many scripts assume to find Perl in /usr/bin/perl.

BUGS

   If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the headers of
   recently posted articles in the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup.  There
   may also be information at http://www.perl.com/perl/ , the Perl Home
   Page.

   If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug
   program included with your release.  Make sure you 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.com> to be
   analysed by the Perl porting team.

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.

HISTORY

   Written by Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>, with many
   contributions from The Perl Porters.

   Send omissions or corrections to <perlbug@perl.com>.





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