perl586delta(1)


NAME

   perl586delta - what is new for perl v5.8.6

DESCRIPTION

   This document describes differences between the 5.8.5 release and the
   5.8.6 release.

Incompatible Changes

   There are no changes incompatible with 5.8.5.

Core Enhancements

   The perl interpreter is now more tolerant of UTF-16-encoded scripts.

   On Win32, Perl can now use non-IFS compatible LSPs, which allows Perl
   to work in conjunction with firewalls such as McAfee Guardian. For full
   details see the file README.win32, particularly if you're running
   Win95.

Modules and Pragmata

   *   With the "base" pragma, an intermediate class with no fields used
       to messes up private fields in the base class. This has been fixed.

   *   Cwd upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools
       distribution)

   *   Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.03

   *   File::Spec upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools
       distribution)

   *   Encode upgraded to version 2.08

   *   ExtUtils::MakeMaker remains at version 6.17, as later stable
       releases currently available on CPAN have some issues with core
       modules on some core platforms.

   *   I18N::LangTags upgraded to version 0.35

   *   Math::BigInt upgraded to version 1.73

   *   Math::BigRat upgraded to version 0.13

   *   MIME::Base64 upgraded to version 3.05

   *   POSIX::sigprocmask function can now retrieve the current signal
       mask without also setting it.

   *   Time::HiRes upgraded to version 1.65

Utility Changes

   Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in
   the debugger.

Performance Enhancements

   "reverse sort ..." is now optimized to sort in reverse, avoiding the
   generation of a temporary intermediate list.

   "for (reverse @foo)" now iterates in reverse, avoiding the generation
   of a temporary reversed list.

Selected Bug Fixes

   The regexp engine is now more robust when given invalid utf8 input, as
   is sometimes generated by buggy XS modules.

   "foreach" on threads::shared array used to be able to crash Perl. This
   bug has now been fixed.

   A regexp in "STDOUT"'s destructor used to coredump, because the regexp
   pad was already freed. This has been fixed.

   "goto &" is now more robust - bugs in deep recursion and chained "goto
   &" have been fixed.

   Using "delete" on an array no longer leaks memory. A "pop" of an item
   from a shared array reference no longer causes a leak.

   "eval_sv()" failing a taint test could corrupt the stack - this has
   been fixed.

   On platforms with 64 bit pointers numeric comparison operators used to
   erroneously compare the addresses of references that are overloaded,
   rather than using the overloaded values. This has been fixed.

   "read" into a UTF8-encoded buffer with an offset off the end of the
   buffer no longer mis-calculates buffer lengths.

   Although Perl has promised since version 5.8 that "sort()" would be
   stable, the two cases "sort {$b cmp $a}" and "sort {$b <=> $a}" could
   produce non-stable sorts.   This is corrected in perl5.8.6.

   Localising $^D no longer generates a diagnostic message about valid -D
   flags.

New or Changed Diagnostics

   For -t and -T,
      Too late for "-T" option has been changed to the more informative
      "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line

Changed Internals

   From now on all applications embedding perl will behave as if perl were
   compiled with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV.  See "Environment access" in the
   INSTALL file for details.

   Most "C" source files now have comments at the top explaining their
   purpose, which should help anyone wishing to get an overview of the
   implementation.

New Tests

   There are significantly more tests for the "B" suite of modules.

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.

   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.  You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
   http://bugs.perl.org/

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.





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