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.