=encoding utf8
=head1 NAME
perl5236delta - what is new for perl v5.23.6
=head1 DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.23.5 release and the 5.23.6
release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.23.4, first read
L<perl5235delta>, which describes differences between 5.23.4 and 5.23.5.
=head1 Incompatible Changes
=head2 Regular expression compilation errors
Some regular expression patterns that had runtime errors now
don't compile at all.
This should have been in the perldelta for 5.23.4, but was omitted.
Almost all Unicode properties using the C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> regular
expression pattern constructs are now checked for validity at pattern
compilation time, and invalid ones will cause the program to not
compile. In earlier releases, this check was often deferred until run
time. Whenever an error check is moved from run- to compile time,
erroneous code is caught 100% of the time, whereas before it would only
get caught if and when the offending portion actually gets executed,
which for unreachable code might be never.
=head1 Deprecations
=head2 Using code points above the platform's C<IV_MAX> is now
deprecated
Unicode defines code points in the range C<0..0x10FFFF>. Some standards
at one time defined them up to 2**31 - 1, but Perl has allowed them to
be as high as anything that will fit in a word on the platform being
used. However, use of those above the platform's C<IV_MAX> is broken in
some constructs, notably C<tr///>, regular expression patterns involving
quantifiers, and in some arithmetic and comparison operations, such as
being the upper limit of a loop. Now the use of such code points raises
a deprecation warning, unless that warning category is turned off.
C<IV_MAX> is typically 2**31 -1 on 32-bit platforms, and 2**63-1 on
64-bit ones.
=head2 Doing bitwise operations on strings containing code points above
0xFF is deprecated
The string bitwise operators treat their operands as strings of bytes,
and values beyond 0xFF are nonsensical in this context. To operate on
encoded bytes, first encode the strings. To operate on code points'
numeric values, use C<split> and C<map ord>. In the future, this
warning will be replaced by an exception.
=head1 Performance Enhancements
=over 4
=item *
Many languages, such as Chinese, are caseless. Perl now knows about
most modern commercially important ones, and skips much of the work when
a program tries to change case in them (like C<ucfirst()>) or match
caselessly (C<qr//i>). This will speed up a program, such as a web
server, that can operate on multiple languages, while operating on a
caseless one.
=back
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
=head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata
=over 4
=item *
The modules L<sigtrap>, L<DB>, and the perl debugger could have, under
rare circumstances, output raw control characters. This has been fixed.
=item *
L<B::Deparse> has been upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.36.
Uses of C<< < > >> are now always deparsed as either C<glob()> or
C<readline()>, and uses of C<glob()> or C<readline()> are never deparsed as
C<< < > >>. This fixes the deparsing of C<readline ${"a"}>.
L<[perl #116677]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=116677>
=item *
L<base> has been upgraded from version 2.22_01 to 2.23.
=item *
L<Benchmark> has been upgraded from version 1.2 to 1.21.
=item *
L<CPAN::Meta::Requirements> has been upgraded from version 2.133 to 2.140.
Adds a method for getting structured requirements and adds better error
messages.
=item *
L<CPAN::Meta::YAML> has been upgraded from version 0.017 to 0.018,
with no change since 0.017.
=item *
L<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.158 to 2.159.
This adds a "Trailingcomma" option, which when enabled adds a trailing comma
after the last element of dumped arrays and hashes that would otherwise be
followed immediately by a line break.
L<[perl #126813]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126813>
The internals have also been substantially refactored and cleaned up. It
may be more efficient on some platforms.
=item *
L<DynaLoader> has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.37.
Fixed an else nesting issue in dynamic loading support for OS/390 (and
similar systems) that was introduced in 1.36.
=item *
L<encoding::warnings> has been upgraded from version 0.11 to 0.12.
=item *
L<fields> has been upgraded from version 2.22_01 to 2.23.
=item *
L<File::Spec> and L<Cwd> have been upgraded from version 3.59 to 3.60,
adding L<File::Spec::AmigaOS>.
=item *
L<Hash::Util::FieldHash> has been upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19.
=item *
L<locale> has been upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
=item *
L<Locale::Codes> has been upgraded from version 3.36 to 3.37.
=item *
L<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> has been updated from version 0.37 to 0.38.
=item *
L<Module::CoreList> has been updated from version 5.20151120 to
5.20151220.
=item *
L<Module::Metadata> has been updated from version 1.000030 to
1.000031, with no functional changes.
=item *
L<Opcode> has been upgraded from version 1.33 to 1.34.
=item *
L<PerlIO::mmap> has been upgraded from version 0.015 to 0.016.
=item *
L<Pod::Perldoc> has been upgraded from version 3.25_01 to 3.25_02.
=item *
L<SDBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
=item *
L<strict> has been upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.10, with only a
documentation change.
=item *
L<Term::ANSIColor> has been upgraded from version 4.03 to 4.04, with no
functional changes.
=item *
L<Test> has been upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
=item *
L<threads> has been upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.05.
=item *
L<threads::shared> has been upgraded from version 1.49 to 1.50.
=item *
L<Unicode::Normalize> has been updated from version 1.23 to 1.24, with
no functional changes.
=item *
L<utf8> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.
Partly reverted a micro-optimization to F<lib/utf_heavy.pl> that
caused self-recursion when it was loaded with C<${^ENCODING}> set.
L<[perl #126593]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126593>
=back
=head1 Documentation
=head2 Changes to Existing Documentation
=head3 L<perlfunc>
=over 4
=item *
The documentation of C<hex> has been revised to clarify valid inputs.
=back
=head3 L<perlop>
=over 4
=item *
The documentation of C<qx//> now describes how C<$?> is affected.
=back
=head3 L<perlvar>
=over 4
=item *
The documentation of C<$@> was reworded to clarify that it is not just for
syntax errors in C<eval>.
L<[perl #124034]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=124034>
=back
=head3 L<perlxs>
=over 4
=item *
The documentation of C<PROTOTYPES> has been clarified; they are I<disabled>
by default, not I<enabled>.
=back
=head1 Diagnostics
The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of
diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.
=head2 New Diagnostics
=head3 New Errors
=over 4
=item *
L<Invalid number '%s' for -C option.|perldiag/"Invalid number '%s' for -C option.">
(F) You supplied a number to the -C option that either has extra leading
zeroes or overflows perl's unsigned integer representation.
=back
=head1 Configuration and Compilation
=over 4
=item *
F<make_ext.pl> is no longer inappropriately silent. This was caused
by an operator precedence error introduced in 5.23.4.
=back
=head1 Platform Support
=head2 New Platforms
=over 4
=item OpenIndiana
OpenIndiana (continuation of OpenSolaris) builds were not working due
to problems with the Perl shared library. This should be working now.
L<[perl #126958]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126958>
=back
=head2 Platform-Specific Notes
=over 4
=item EBCDIC platforms, such as z/OS
UTF-EBCDIC is like UTF-8, but for EBCDIC platforms. It now has been
extended so that it can represent code points up to 2 ** 64 - 1 on
platforms with 64-bit words. This brings it into parity with UTF-8.
This enhancement requires an incompatible change to the representation
of code points in the range 2 ** 30 to 2 ** 31 -1 (the latter was the
previous maximum representable code point). This means that a file that
contains one of these code points, written out with previous versions of
perl cannot be read in, without conversion, by a perl containing this
change. We do not believe any such files are in existence, but if you
do have one, submit a ticket at L<perlbug@perl.org|mailto:perlbug@perl.org>,
and we will write a conversion script for you.
=item Cygwin
Tests are more robust against unusual cygdrive prefixes.
L<[perl #126834]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126834>
=item OS X/Darwin
Builds with both -DDEBUGGING and threading enabled would fail with a
"panic: free from wrong pool" error when built or tested from Terminal
on OS X. This was caused by perl's internal management of the
environment conflicting with an atfork handler using the libc
setenv() function to update the environment.
Perl now uses setenv()/unsetenv() to update the environment on OS X.
L<[perl #126240]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126240>
=item ppc64el floating point
The floating point format of ppc64el (Debian naming for little-endian
PowerPC) is now detected correctly.
=item Solaris
All Solaris now builds shared libperl.
Solaris and variants like OpenIndiana now always build with the shared
Perl library (Configure -Duseshrplib). This was required for the
OpenIndiana builds, but this has also been the setting for Oracle/Sun
Perl builds for several years.
=back
=head1 Internal Changes
=over 4
=item *
Perl core code and the threads extension have been annotated so that,
if Perl is configured to use threads, then during compile-time clang (3.6
or later) will warn about suspicious uses of mutexes.
See L<http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ThreadSafetyAnalysis.html> for more
information.
=item *
The C<signbit()> emulation has been enhanced. This will help older
and/or more exotic platforms or configurations.
=item *
The C<to_utf8_case> function is discouraged in favor of C<toUPPER_utf8>,
C<toTITLE_utf8>, C<toLOWER_utf8>, and C<toFOLD_utf8>.
=item *
EBCDIC code paths have largely been unified to avoid repetition.
=item *
MSWin32 code for C<$^X> has been moved out of the F<win32> directory to
F<caretx.c>, where other operating systems set that variable.
=back
=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
=over 4
=item *
C</...\G/> no longer crashes on utf8 strings. When C<\G> is a fixed number
of characters from the start of the regex, perl needs to count back that
many characters from the current C<pos()> position and start matching from
there. However, it was counting back bytes rather than characters, which
could lead to panics on utf8 strings.
=item *
In some cases operators that return integers would return negative
integers as large positive integers.
L<[perl #126635]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126635>
=item *
The C<pipe()> operator would assert for DEBUGGING builds instead of
producing the correct error message. The condition asserted on is
detected and reported on correctly without the assertions, so the
assertions were removed.
L<[perl #126480]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126480>
=item *
In some cases, failing to parse a here-doc would attempt to use freed
memory. This was caused by a pointer not being restored correctly.
L<[perl #126443]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126443>
=item *
C<< @x = sort { *a = 0; $a <=> $b } 0 .. 1 >> no longer frees the GP
for *a before restoring its SV slot.
L<[perl #124097]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=124097>
=item *
Multiple problems with the new hexadecimal floating point printf
format C<%a> were fixed:
L<[perl #126582]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126582>,
L<[perl #126586]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126586>,
L<[perl #126822]|https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=126822>
=item *
Calling mg_set() in leave_scope() no longer leaks.
=item *
A regression from Perl v5.20 was fixed in which debugging output of regular
expression compilation was wrong. (The pattern was correctly compiled, but
what got displayed for it was wrong.)
=back
=head1 Acknowledgements
Perl 5.23.6 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.23.5
and contains approximately 11,000 lines of changes across 260 files from 22
authors.
Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
approximately 7,500 lines of changes to 170 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.
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 5.23.6:
Aaron Crane, Abigail, Achim Gratz, Andy Broad, Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris
'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Daniel Dragan,
David Golden, David Mitchell, Doug Bell, Ed Avis, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Karen
Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Steve Hay,
Sullivan Beck, 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 F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.
=head1 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
L<https://rt.perl.org/> . There may also be information at
L<http://www.perl.org/> , the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<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 C<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.
=head1 SEE ALSO
The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
what changed.
The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
The F<README> file for general stuff.
The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
=cut