PERL5422DELTA(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

perl5422delta — the tea on what's new for perl v5.42.2 ☕✨

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay bestie, so this doc spills the differences between the 5.42.1 release and the 5.42.2 release. That's it, that's the vibe.

And listen — if you're jumping in from something older, like 5.42.0, you gotta read perl5421delta first, because that one covers the glow-up from 5.42.0 to 5.42.1. No skipping steps, babe 🙈

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🚨 Security 🚨

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

So 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 of a vendored version of zlib that had several vulnerabilities, including [CVE-2026-27171] — https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-27171. Not it. Truly not it 😭

This whole problem got assigned [CVE-2026-4176] — https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-4176 — by the CPAN Security Group, whose whole thing lives at https://security.metacpan.org/. Slay for them honestly, fixing what needed fixing 👑

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🚫 Incompatible Changes 🚫

Good news era: there are no changes that are intentionally incompatible with 5.42.1.

But if you do find some? Then they're bugs, periodt. And we are begging you — please submit a report. Peep "Reporting Bugs" down below for the deets 🫶

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📦 Modules and Pragmata 📦

✨ Updated Modules and Pragmata ✨

• Compress::Raw::Zlib got upgraded from version 2.213 to version 2.222. Glow up 💅
• Module::CoreList got upgraded from version 5.20260308 to version 5.20260329_42. Yes, that's the real version string, we don't make the rules 💀

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📖 Documentation 📖

🎀 Changes to Existing Documentation 🎀

We tried to update the docs so they reflect all the changes listed in this very document. If you spot something we missed, open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. We're listening bestie, fr fr 🌸

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🧪 Testing 🧪

Tests were added and changed to reflect all the other additions and changes in this release. That's the vibe check passing ✅

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🫶 Acknowledgements 🫶

Perl 5.42.2 represents approximately 3 weeks of development since Perl 5.42.1, and it contains approximately 2,900 lines of changes across 57 files from 6 authors. Iconic behavior, honestly 🌟

Now, excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 1,900 lines of changes to 23 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. And the following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.42.2:

Eric Herman, James E Keenan, Olaf Alders, Paul Marquess, Richard Leach, Steve Hay.

Okay real talk — that list above is almost certainly incomplete, because it's automatically generated from version control history. And specifically, it doesn't include the names of the (very much appreciated!!) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug tracker. You're all main characters, no cap 💖

Many of the changes 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. Y'all ate 🍓

And 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 wanna 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. Two places to look, bestie 🔍

If you believe you've got an unreported bug, please open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. And please be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case — tiny but mighty, that's the goal ✨

If the bug you're reporting has security implications that 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. Do not just drop it in the public tracker, okay? 🙏

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🙏 Give Thanks 🙏

If you wanna thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we did in Perl 5, you can do it by running the perlthanks program:

perlthanks

That sends an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks. Cute, right? Go be sweet 🥹💌

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• The Changes file — for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. That's your lore archive 📚
• 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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And that's a wrap on perl5422delta, babe — this page lives in the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, it's perl v5.42.3 energy, dated 2026-08-03. Go forth and upgrade responsibly 💖✨🎀🦋