Ubuntu Manpage: perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2

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NAME

       perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2

DESCRIPTION

       This document describes differences between the 5.12.1 release and the 5.12.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier major version, such as 5.10.1, first read perl5120delta, which
       describes differences between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0, as well as perl5121delta, which describes earlier
       changes in the 5.12 stable release series.

Incompatible Changes

       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If any exist, they are bugs and reports are
       welcome.

Core Enhancements

       Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible changes to the core language in
       this release.

Modules and Pragmata

New Modules and Pragmata
This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.

Pragmata Changes
In the previous release, "no VERSION;" statements triggered a bug which could cause feature bundles to be
loaded and strict mode to be enabled unintentionally.

Updated Modules
"Carp"
Upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.

Carp now detects incomplete caller() overrides and avoids using bogus @DB::args. To provide
backtraces, Carp relies on particular behaviour of the caller built-in. Carp now detects if other
code has overridden this with an incomplete implementation, and modifies its backtrace accordingly.
Previously incomplete overrides would cause incorrect values in backtraces (best case), or obscure
fatal errors (worst case)

This fixes certain cases of "Bizarre copy of ARRAY" caused by modules overriding "caller()"
incorrectly.

"CPANPLUS"
A patch to cpanp-run-perl has been backported from CPANPLUS 0.9004. This resolves RT #55964
<http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55964> and RT #57106
<http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=57106>, both of which related to failures to install
distributions that use "Module::Install::DSL".

"File::Glob"
A regression which caused a failure to find "CORE::GLOBAL::glob" after loading "File::Glob" to crash
has been fixed. Now, it correctly falls back to external globbing via "pp_glob".

"File::Copy"
"File::Copy::copy(FILE, DIR)" is now documented.

"File::Spec"
Upgraded from version 3.31 to 3.31_01.

Several portability fixes were made in "File::Spec::VMS": a colon is now recognized as a delimiter in
native filespecs; caret-escaped delimiters are recognized for better handling of extended filespecs;
"catpath()" returns an empty directory rather than the current directory if the input directory name
is empty; "abs2rel()" properly handles Unix-style input.

Utility Changes

       •   perlbug now always gives the reporter a chance to change the email address it guesses for them.

       •   perlbug should no longer warn about uninitialized values when using the "-d" and "-v" options.

Changes to Existing Documentation

       •   The existing policy on backward-compatibility and deprecation has been  added  to  perlpolicy,  along
           with definitions of terms like deprecation.

       •   "srand" in perlfunc's usage has been clarified.

       •   The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its role in the exception mechanism.

       •   Perl's  INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that Perl requires a C89 compliant ANSI C
           Compiler.

       •   IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and "setsockopt()" have been documented.

       •   alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO on Windows has been documented.

       •   Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been removed as a recommended  solution  for
           random number generation.

       •   perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to perl.

       •   To  ease  user  confusion,  $# and $*, two special variables that were removed in earlier versions of
           Perl have been documented.

       •   The version of perlfaq shipped with the Perl core has been updated from  the  official  FAQ  version,
           which   is   now   maintained   in   the   "briandfoy/perlfaq"  branch  of  the  Perl  repository  at
           <git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git>.

Installation and Configuration Improvements

   Configuration improvements
       •   The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.

   Compilation improvements
       •   An ""incompatible operand types"" error in ternary expressions when building with  "clang"  has  been
           fixed.

       •   Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests on partitions it detects to be mounted as "nosuid".

Selected Bug Fixes

       •   A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ" default typemap has been fixed.

       •   A possible memory leak when using caller() to set @DB::args has been fixed.

       •   Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.

       •   "unpack()"  now  handles  scalar  context  correctly  for  %32H  and  %32u, fixing a potential crash.
           "split()" would crash because the third item on the stack wasn't the regular expression it  expected.
           "unpack("%2H",  ...)"  would  return both the unpacked result and the checksum on the stack, as would
           "unpack("%2u", ...)".  [perl #73814] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=73814>

       •   Perl now avoids using memory after calling "free()" in pp_require when there are CODEREFs in @INC.

       •   A bug that could cause ""Unknown error"" messages when ""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is called from an XS
           destructor has been fixed.

       •   The implementation of the "open $fh, '>' \$buffer" feature now supports get/set magic and  thus  tied
           buffers correctly.

       •   The  "pp_getc", "pp_tell", and "pp_eof" opcodes now make room on the stack for their return values in
           cases where no argument was passed in.

       •   When matching unicode strings under some conditions inappropriate  backtracking  would  result  in  a
           "Malformed  UTF-8  character  (fatal)"  error.  This  should  no  longer  occur.   See  [perl #75680]
           <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=75680>

Platform Specific Notes

   AIX
       •   README.aix has been updated with information about the XL C/C++ V11 compiler suite.

   Windows
       •   When building Perl with the mingw64 x64 cross-compiler "incpath",  "libpth",  "ldflags",  "lddlflags"
           and  "ldflags_nolargefiles"  values  in  Config.pm  and Config_heavy.pl were not previously being set
           correctly because, with that compiler, the include and lib  directories  are  not  immediately  below
           "$(CCHOME)".

   VMS
       •   git_version.h  is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in v5.12.0 which caused some extensions
           to fail to build.

       •   Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.

       •   A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to a double allocation has been fixed.

       •   A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()" (used by "realpath()" and "realname()") has been fixed.

Acknowledgements

       Perl 5.12.2 represents  approximately  three  months  of  development  since  Perl  5.12.1  and  contains
       approximately 2,000 lines of changes across 100 files from 36 authors.

       Perl  continues  to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers.
       The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.2:

       Abigail, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Ben Morrow, brian d foy, Brian Phillips, Chas.  Owens,  Chris  'BinGOs'
       Williams,  Chris  Williams,  Craig A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, David Golden, David Mitchell,
       Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, George Greer,  H.Merijn  Brand,  Jan  Dubois,  Jesse  Vincent,  Jim
       Cromie,  Karl Williamson, Lars Dɪᴇᴄᴋᴏᴡ 迪拉斯, Leon Brocard, Maik Hentsche, Matt S Trout, Nicholas Clark,
       Rafael Garcia-Suarez, Rainer Tammer, Ricardo Signes,  Salvador  Ortiz  Garcia,  Sisyphus,  Slaven  Rezic,
       Steffen Mueller, Tony Cook, Vincent Pit and Yves Orton.

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://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .  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.

       If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly
       archived  mailing  list,  then  please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed
       subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be  able  to  help
       assess  the  impact  of  issues,  figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to
       mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address
       for security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.