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NAME

perl5312delta - what is new for perl v5.31.2

DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.31.1 release and the 5.31.2 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.31.0, first read perl5311delta, which describes differences between 5.31.0 and 5.31.1.

Modules and Pragmata

Updated Modules and Pragmata

  • Devel::PPPort has been upgraded from version 3.53 to 3.54.

  • Exporter has been upgraded from version 5.73 to 5.74.

  • IPC::Cmd has been upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.04.

  • JSON::PP has been upgraded from version 4.02 to 4.04.

  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20190620 to 5.20190720.

  • Opcode has been upgraded from version 1.43 to 1.44.

  • PerlIO::encoding has been upgraded from version 0.27 to 0.28.

  • Pod::Simple has been upgraded from version 3.38 to 3.39.

  • threads::shared has been upgraded from version 1.60 to 1.61.

Diagnostics

New Diagnostics

New Errors

Changes to Existing Diagnostics

  • \N{} here is restricted to one character is now emitted in the same circumstances where previously \N{} in inverted character class or as a range end-point is restricted to one character was.

    This is due to new circumstances having been added in Perl 5.30 that weren't covered by the earlier wording.

Configuration and Compilation

  • The ECHO macro is now defined. This is used in a dtrace rule that was originally changed for FreeBSD, and the FreeBSD make apparently predefines it. The Solaris make does not predefine ECHO which broke this rule on Solaris. [perl #134218]

  • Bison versions 3.1 through 3.4 are now supported.

Platform Support

Platform-Specific Notes

Linux

cc will be used to populate plibpth if cc is clang. [perl #134189]

VMS

-Duse64bitint is now the default on VMS.

Internal Changes

  • The PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL environment variable was formerly only honoured on perl binaries built with DEBUGGING support. It is now checked on all perl builds. Its normal use is to force perl to individually free every block of memory which it has allocated before exiting, which is useful when using automated leak detection tools such as valgrind.

  • The API eval_sv() now accepts a G_RETHROW flag. If this flag is set and an exception is thrown while compiling or executing the supplied code, it will be rethrown, and eval_sv() will not return. [perl #134177]

  • As part of the fix for [perl #2754] perl_parse() now returns non-zero if exit(0) is called in a BEGIN, UNITCHECK or CHECK block.

  • Most functions which recursively walked an op tree during compilation have been made non-recursive. This avoids SEGVs from stack overflow when the op tree is deeply nested, such as $n == 1 ? "one" : $n == 2 ? "two" : .... (especially in code which is auto-generated).

    This is particularly noticeable where the code is compiled within a separate thread, as threads tend to have small stacks by default.

Selected Bug Fixes

  • Parsing incomplete hex or binary literals was changed in 5.31.1 to treat such a literal as just the 0, leaving the following x or b to be parsed as part of the next token. This could lead to some silent changes in behaviour, so now incomplete hex or binary literals produce a fatal error. [perl #134125]

  • eval_pv()'s croak_on_error flag will now throw even if the exception is a false overloaded value. [perl #134177]

  • INIT blocks and the program itself are no longer run if exit(0) is called within a BEGIN, UNITCHECK or CHECK block. [perl #2754]

  • open my $fh, ">>+", undef now opens the temporary file in append mode - writes will seek to the end of file before writing. [perl #134221]

  • Fixed a SEGV when searching for the source of an uninitialized value warning on an op whose subtree includes an OP_MULTIDEREF. [perl #134275]

Known Problems

  • The VC++ 6.0 build on Windows is currently broken. Support for this compiler is likely to be removed in the near future.

  • Tests 9-11 in t/op/blocks.t currently fail on Windows. [perl #134295]

Acknowledgements

Perl 5.31.2 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.31.1 and contains approximately 7,600 lines of changes across 190 files from 16 authors.

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 3,100 lines of changes to 99 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.31.2:

Alexandr Savca, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, David Mitchell, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Nicolas R., Pali, Paul Evans, Richard Leach, Steve Hay, Svyatoslav, Tony Cook.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug tracker.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for helping Perl to flourish.

For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.

Reporting Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at https://rt.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.

If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then see "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of how to report the issue.

Give Thanks

If you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5, you can do so by running the perlthanks program:

    perlthanks

This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.

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.