PERL5404DELTA(1)

📦
version 5.42.3 · 5 versions
, in fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, gather round — perl5404delta is literally the tea on what's new for perl v5.40.4 ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So this doc spills everything that changed between the 5.40.3 release and the 5.40.4 release. fr fr.

And if you're jumping in from something older — like 5.40.2 — you gotta go read perl5403delta first, bestie, because that one covers the 5.40.2 → 5.40.3 glow-up. Don't skip it, it's giving prerequisite energy. 💅

🔒 Security 🔒

🚨 [CVE-2026-4176] Vulnerability in Compress::Raw::Zlib 🚨

okay so this one's important. Compress::Raw::Zlib ships inside Perl as a dual-life core module, and it was vulnerable to [CVE-2026-3381] — that's https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-3381 — because it had a vendored version of zlib bundled in, and that zlib had several vulnerabilities, including [CVE-2026-27171] over at https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-27171.

This whole thing got assigned [CVE-2026-4176] — https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-4176 — by the CPAN Security Group, which you can find at https://security.metacpan.org/.

not me being dramatic but this is the actual reason this release exists, so like... upgrade. 🔥

💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

Bestie. There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.40.3. None. Zero. Nada. 🎀

But — if any do exist, they're bugs, and we are begging you to submit a report. See "Reporting Bugs" down below for the deets. 🙈

📦 Modules and Pragmata 📦

✨ Updated Modules and Pragmata ✨

  • Compress::Raw::Zlib has been upgraded from version 2.212 to 2.222. slay 💅
  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20250803_40 to 5.20260329_40. iconic 👑

📚 Documentation 📚

🖊️ Changes to Existing Documentation 🖊️

We tried to update the docs so they actually reflect the changes listed in this document. Like, we really did. 🫶

But if you spot something we missed — open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. Do it. We wanna know. 😭

🧪 Testing 🧪

Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release. periodt. 🌈

🙌 Acknowledgements 🙌

Perl 5.40.4 represents approximately 8 months of development since Perl 5.40.3, and it contains approximately 4,000 lines of changes across 58 files from 10 authors. that's a whole vibe. ✨

And excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 2,800 lines of changes to 24 .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 5.40.4:

  • Eric Herman
  • James E Keenan
  • Karen Etheridge
  • Max Maischein
  • Olaf Alders
  • Paul Marquess
  • Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
  • Richard Leach
  • Steve Hay
  • Thibault Duponchelle

okay so, real talk — that list above is almost certainly incomplete, because it's automatically generated from version control history. In particular, it doesn't include the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug tracker. so if you're not on it, you're still loved, bestie. 💜

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. 🦋

And 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://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. There may also be info at https://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. And bestie — be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. Nobody wants your 4,000-line repro. 😭

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. 🔐

🫶 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 valid, do it. 🌸

👀 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. 💖

and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-03 — go forth and upgrade, mwah 🎀

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