PERL5222DELTA(1)

✨ perl5222delta — what's new for perl v5.22.2 ✨

okay bestie, gather round — this is the tea on perl5222delta, straight from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide. 💖

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🌸 NAME 🌸

perl5222delta — what is new for perl v5.22.2. That's it, that's the whole name, iconic behavior honestly. 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

This doc spills everything that changed between the 5.22.1 release and the 5.22.2 release. That's it. That's the glow-up window. ✨

If you're upgrading from something earlier — like, say, 5.22.0 — then pause bestie, you gotta read perl5221delta first, because that one covers what went down between 5.22.0 and 5.22.1. Don't skip it, it's giving prerequisites. 🙈

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🔥 Security 🔥

🛡️ Fix out of boundary access in Win32 path handling

This is CVE-2015-8608. For more info see [GH #15067] and https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15067.

🛡️ Fix loss of taint in canonpath()

This is CVE-2015-8607. For more info see [GH #15084] and https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15084.

🛡️ Set proper umask before calling mkstemp(3)

So back in 5.22.0, perl started setting umask to 0600 before calling mkstemp(3) and then restoring it afterwards. Cute idea, wrong execution — this wrongfully tells open(2) to strip the owner read and write bits from the given mode before applying it, instead of the intended negation of leaving only those bits in place. Not the vibe. 😭

Systems that use mode 0666 in mkstemp(3) (like old versions of glibc) create a file with permissions 0066, which leaves world read and write permissions regardless of the current umask. Not it.

This has been fixed by using umask 0177 instead. Slay. 💅

[GH #15135] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15135

🛡️ Avoid accessing uninitialized memory in Win32 crypt()

Validation that will detect both a short salt and invalid characters in the salt has been added. Two-for-one, we love to see it. ✨

[GH #15091] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15091

🛡️ Remove duplicate environment variables from environ

Okay so previously, if an environment variable appeared more than once in environ[], %ENV would contain the last entry for that name, while a typical getenv() would return the first entry. Chaos. We now make sure %ENV contains the same as what getenv() returns. Consistency era. 🫶

Secondly, we now remove duplicates from environ[], so if a setting with that name is set in %ENV we won't pass an unsafe value to a child process. Protective king behavior. 👑

This is CVE-2016-2381.

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💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

There are no changes intentionally incompatible with Perl 5.22.1. If any exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. See "Reporting Bugs" below. Like, if you find one, tell us, we're not mad we're just disappointed. 😭

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🎀 Modules and Pragmata 🎀

⭐ Updated Modules and Pragmata

• File::Spec has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.56_01.

canonpath() now preserves taint. See "Fix loss of taint in canonpath()".

• Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20151213 to 5.20160429.

The version number of Digest::SHA listed for Perl 5.18.4 was wrong and has been corrected. Likewise for the version number of Config in 5.18.3 and 5.18.4. [GH #15202] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15202

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🌈 Documentation 🌈

📚 Changes to Existing Documentation

perldiag

• The explanation of the warning "unable to close filehandle %s properly: %s" which can occur when doing an implicit close of a filehandle has been expanded and improved. Glow-up arc complete. 💖

perlfunc

• The documentation of hex() has been revised to clarify valid inputs. No more guessing bestie, we spelled it out. ✨

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🧚 Configuration and Compilation 🧚

• Dtrace builds now build successfully on systems with a newer dtrace that require an input object file that uses the probes in the .d file.

Previously the probe would fail and cause a build failure. Embarrassing.

[GH #13985] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13985

• Configure no longer probes for libnm by default. Originally this was the "New Math" library, but the name has been re-used by the GNOME NetworkManager. Name collision, truly the villain of the story. 😤

[GH #15115] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15115

• Configure now knows about gcc 5. It's caught up. 🎀
• Compiling perl with -DPERL_MEM_LOG now works again. She's back. 💅

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🦋 Platform Support 🦋

🌍 Platform-Specific Notes

Darwin

Compiling perl with -Dusecbacktrace on Darwin now works again. 🫶

[GH #15245] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15245

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. the drama of it all 😭

Perl now uses setenv()/unsetenv() to update the environment on OS X.

[GH #14955] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14955

ppc64el

The floating point format of ppc64el (Debian naming for little-endian PowerPC) is now detected correctly. finally. ✨

Tru64

A test failure in t/porting/extrefs.t has been fixed. 🎀

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👑 Internal Changes 👑

• An unwarranted assertion in Perl_newATTRSUB_x() has been removed. If a stub subroutine definition with a prototype has been seen, then any subsequent stub (or definition) of the same subroutine with an attribute was causing an assertion failure because of a null pointer. null pointer said no thank you. 💀

[GH #15081] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15081

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🍓 Selected Bug Fixes 🍓

• Calls to the placeholder &PL_sv_yes used internally when an import() or unimport() method isn't found now correctly handle scalar context. [GH #14902] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14902
• The 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. [GH #15015] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15015
• 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. yikes on bikes. [GH #15009] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15009
• Perl now reports more context when it sees an array where it expects to see an operator, and avoids an assertion failure. [GH #14472] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14472
• If a here-doc was found while parsing another operator, the parser had already read end of file, and the here-doc was not terminated, perl could produce an assertion or a segmentation fault. This now reliably complains about the unterminated here-doc. [GH #14789] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14789
• Parsing beyond the end of the buffer when processing a "#line" directive with no filename is now avoided. [GH #15139] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15139
• Perl 5.22.0 added support for the C99 hexadecimal floating point notation, but sometimes misparsed hex floats. This has been fixed. [GH #15120] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15120
• Certain regex patterns involving a complemented posix class in an inverted bracketed character class, and matching something else optionally would improperly fail to match. An example of one that could fail is "qr/_?[^\Wbar]\x{100}/". This has been fixed. [GH #15181] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15181
• Fixed an issue with pack() where "pack "H"" (and "pack "h"") could read past the source when given a non-utf8 source and a utf8 target. [GH #14977] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14977
• Fixed some cases where perl would abort due to a segmentation fault, or a C-level assert. [GH #14941] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14941 [GH #14962] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14962 [GH #14963] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14963 [GH #14997] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14997 [GH #15039] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15039 [GH #15247] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15247 [GH #15251] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15251
• A memory leak when setting $ENV{foo} on Darwin has been fixed. [GH #14955] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14955
• Perl now correctly raises an error when trying to compile patterns with unterminated character classes while there are trailing backslashes. [GH #14919] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14919
• "NOTHING" regops and "EXACTFU_SS" regops in make_trie() are now handled properly. [GH #14945] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14945
• Perl now only tests semctl() if we have everything needed to use it. In FreeBSD the semctl() entry point may exist, but it can be disabled by policy. [GH #15180] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15180
• A regression that allowed undeclared barewords as hash keys to work despite strictures has been fixed. strictures said absolutely not. [GH #15099] — https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15099
• As an optimization (introduced in Perl 5.20.0), uc(), lc(), ucfirst() and lcfirst() sometimes modify their argument in-place rather than returning a modified copy. The criteria for this optimization has been made stricter to avoid these functions accidentally modifying in-place when they should not, which has been happening in some cases, e.g. in List::Util.
• Excessive memory usage in the compilation of some regular expressions involving non-ASCII characters has been reduced. A more complete fix is forthcoming in Perl 5.24.0.

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💜 Acknowledgements 💜

Perl 5.22.2 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.22.1 and contains approximately 3,000 lines of changes across 110 files from 24 authors. the collective effort, the community, the slay 🌈

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 1,500 lines of changes to 52 .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 5.22.2:

Aaron Crane, Abigail, Andreas König, Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, David Golden, David Mitchell, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Matthew Horsfall, Niko Tyni, Ricardo Signes, Sawyer X, Stevan Little, Steve Hay, Todd Rinaldo, Tony Cook, Vladimir Timofeev, Yves Orton.

every single one of them, legends, periodt. 👑

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. iykyk 🫶

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 🐞

Okay bestie, so you found a bug and you're like "omg what do I do" — here's the whole tea. 💅

If you think you've found a bug, first thing: go check the articles that got posted recently to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup, and also go peek at the perl bug database at https://rt.perl.org/ . There might also be some info waiting for you at http://www.perl.org/ , aka the Perl Home Page. No cap, check there first. 🔍

But if you genuinely believe you've got an unreported bug? Then please run the perlbug program that ships with your release. And listen — trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Like, tiny. But sufficient. Both things, bestie. 🙏

Your bug report, plus the output of perl -V (yes, capital V, don't skip it), gets sent off to perlbug@perl.org so the Perl porting team can analyse it. Slay. 💌

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Now for the serious bit, and I mean it — if the bug you're reporting has security implications, which makes it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org instead. 🫢

That address points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers — they're the ones who can 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. Read that again. We mean it. 💀

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• The Changes file — for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. Go get your lore. 📜
• The INSTALL file — for how to build Perl. 🔨
• The README file — for general stuff. The vibe-y bits. 🌈
• The Artistic and Copying files — for copyright information. ⚖️

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And that's a wrap on the whole delta, bestie! 🎀 This was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-03, and the page you've been reading is PERL5222DELTA(1). Thanks for sticking with me through all of it — you're officially the main character of reading manpages now. ✨🦋 mwah, go write some perl 💖