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NAME

perldelta - what is new for perl v5.18.3

DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.18.2 release and the 5.18.3 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.18.1, first read perl5182delta, which describes differences between 5.18.1 and 5.18.2.

Modules and Pragmata

Updated Modules and Pragmata

  • Digest::SHA has been upgraded from 5.84_01 to 5.84_02.

  • perl5db.pl has been upgraded from version 1.39_10 to 1.39_11.

    This fixes a crash in tab completion, where available. [perl #120827] Also, filehandle information is properly reset after a pager is run. [perl #121456]

Platform Support

Platform-Specific Notes

Win32
  • Introduced by perl #113536, a memory leak on every call to system and backticks ( `` ), on most Win32 Perls starting from 5.18.0 has been fixed. The memory leak only occurred if you enabled psuedo-fork in your build of Win32 Perl, and were running that build on Server 2003 R2 or newer OS. The leak does not appear on WinXP SP3. [perl #121676]

Internal Changes

XXX Changes which affect the interface available to XS code go here. Other significant internal changes for future core maintainers should be noted as well.

[ List each change as a =item entry ]

  • XXX

Selected Bug Fixes

  • The debugger now properly resets filehandles as needed. [perl #121456]

  • A segfault in Digest::SHA has been addressed. [perl #121421]

  • perl can again be built with USE_64_BIT_INT, with Visual C 2003, 32 bit. [perl #120925]

  • A leading { (brace) in formats is properly parsed again. [perl #119973]

  • Copy the values used to perturb hash iteration when cloning an interpreter. This was fairly harmless but caused valgrind to complain. [perl #121336]

  • In Perl v5.18 undef *_; goto &sub and local *_; goto &sub started crashing. This has been fixed. [perl #119949]

Known Problems

XXX Descriptions of platform agnostic bugs we know we can't fix go here. Any tests that had to be TODOed for the release would be noted here. Unfixed platform specific bugs also go here.

[ List each fix as a =item entry ]

  • XXX

Obituary

XXX If any significant core contributor has died, we've added a short obituary here.

Acknowledgements

XXX Generate this with:

  perl Porting/acknowledgements.pl v5.18.2..HEAD

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.

SEE ALSO

The Changes file for an explanation of how to view 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.