NAME

       perlfreebsd - Perl version 5 on FreeBSD systems

DESCRIPTION

       This document describes various features of FreeBSD that will affect how Perl version 5
       (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.

   FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads
       When perl is configured to use ithreads, it will use re-entrant library calls in
       preference to non-re-entrant versions.  There is a bug in FreeBSD's "readdir_r" function
       in versions 4.5 and earlier that can cause a SEGV when reading large directories. A patch
       for FreeBSD libc is available (see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=misc/30631 )
       which has been integrated into FreeBSD 4.6.

   $^X doesn't always contain a full path in FreeBSD
       perl sets $^X where possible to a full path by asking the operating system. On FreeBSD the
       full path of the perl interpreter is found by using "sysctl" with "KERN_PROC_PATHNAME" if
       that is supported, else by reading the symlink /proc/curproc/file. FreeBSD 7 and earlier
       has a bug where either approach sometimes returns an incorrect value (see
       http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=35703 ).  In these cases perl will fall back to
       the old behaviour of using C's argv[0] value for $^X.

AUTHOR

       Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>, collating wisdom supplied by Slaven Rezic and Tim Bunce.

       Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to perlbug@perl.org.