PERL5383DELTA(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay so this is perl5383delta — it's the tea on what's new for perl v5.38.3 💖 the manual page itself is PERL5383DELTA(1), and yes bestie, we're reading it together, grab a snack 🍓

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So this doc spills the differences between the 5.38.2 release and the 5.38.3 release. That's it. That's the whole vibe. 🦋

And if you're upgrading from something earlier — like, say, 5.38.1 — you gotta go read perl5382delta first, because that one covers the glow-up from 5.38.1 to 5.38.2. Do your homework, bestie, it's a whole reading order situation 📚✨

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💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

Good news: there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.38.2. Periodt. 🎀

But — and this is important — if any do exist, they are bugs, and they want you to submit a report. Like, it's not a feature, it's a mistake, go tell them. See "Reporting Bugs" below for the deets. 🙈

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👑 Modules and Pragmata 👑

🧚 Updated Modules and Pragmata 🧚

• DynaLoader got upgraded from version 1.54 to version 1.54_01.

The way this fixes an error when building Perl on OS X 10.3?? iconic. 🩹 [GH #21751](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21751)

• Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20231129 to 5.20250118_38. slay 💅

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🌈 Documentation 🌈

🎀 Changes to Existing Documentation 🎀

They tried their best to update the docs so they actually match the changes listed in this document. If you spot one they missed, open an issue at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. Be the main character and report it, fr fr 🫶

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⭐ Testing ⭐

Tests were added and changed to reflect all the other additions and changes in this release. No cap, the test suite stays fed 🍓

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🔥 Selected Bug Fixes 🔥

• use 5.36; or later didn't enable the post parse reporting of Name "%s::%s" used only once: possible typo warnings when enabling warnings. [GH #21271](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21271)
• Fixed a crash or assertion when cleaning up a closure that refers to an outside our sub. [GH #21067](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21067)
• Don't clear the integer flag IOK from lines in the @{"_<$sourcefile"} array when a dbstate op is removed for that line. This was broken when fixing [GH #19198](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19198). [GH #21564](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21564)
• Fixed an issue where utf8n_to_uvchr() failed to correctly identify certain invalid UTF-8 sequences as invalid. Specifically, sequences that start with continuation bytes or unassigned bytes could cause unexpected behaviour or a panic. This fix ensures that such invalid sequences are now properly detected and handled. This correction also resolves related issues in modules that handle UTF-8 processing, such as Encode. 😭
• Builds with -msse and quadmath on 32-bit x86 systems would crash with a misaligned access early in the build. [GH #22577](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/22577)
• Fixed a bug introduced in Perl 5.34 whereby uninitialized data in the underlying array of an AV after it has been unshifted and resized could lead to segmentation faults or other errors depending on the data. [GH #21235](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21235)
• Fixed an issue where Perl sometimes failed to correctly toggle into a dot radix locale. [GH #21746](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21746) [GH #22176](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/22176)
• Stopped certain syntax errors from provoking core dumps due to a double free of an OP. [GH #21724](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21724)
• Fixed a double free error or possible memory leak when failing to compile certain regexps. [GH #21661](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21661)
• Fixed the initialization of Perl's querylocale() emulation so that the locale is set correctly if the environment specifies a non-C locale. [GH #21366](https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21366)

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🫶 Acknowledgements 🫶

Perl 5.38.3 represents approximately 14 months of development since Perl 5.38.2 and contains approximately 5,600 lines of changes across 62 files from 22 authors. like, the dedication?? 😭💖

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 2,600 lines of changes to 20 .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 5.38.3 — give it up for them 👑:

Anton Voloshin, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, E. Choroba, Elvin Aslanov, Graham Knop, James E Keenan, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Masahiro Honma, Matthew Horsfall, Max Maischein, Paul Evans, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Renee Baecker, Ricardo Signes, Richard Leach, Steve Hay, Thibault Duponchelle, Tony Cook, Yves Orton.

ngl the list above is almost certainly incomplete because it's 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. so if your name isn't there, it's not shade, it's automation 🙈

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. 📄

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🐛 Reporting Bugs 🐛

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. There may also be information at <http://www.perl.org/>, the Perl Home Page. ✨

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case — like, minimal repro energy, that's the move 💅

If the bug you're reporting has security implications which make it inappropriate to send to a public issue tracker, then see "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of how to report the issue. 🔒

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💌 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. so sweet, so wholesome, do it 🥹🌸

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👀 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. ⚖️

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aaaand that's a wrap bestie 🎀 this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-03 — PERL5383DELTA(1), out 💖✨ go update your perl, you deserve it 💅