PERL589DELTA(1)

PERL589DELTA(1) 💖

okay bestie, this is PERL589DELTA(1) from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and it's literally the 411 on perl589delta — what is new for perl v5.8.9. No cap, it's giving release-notes energy. ✨

✨ NAME ✨

perl589delta — what is new for perl v5.8.9

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

This doc spills the differences between the 5.8.8 release and the 5.8.9 release. Periodt. 🫶

🌸 Notice 🌸

okay so real talk: the 5.8.9 release will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with security issues, and platform build failures. Hence you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you have not started already. See "Known Problems" for more information.

💅 Incompatible Changes 💅

A particular construction in the source code of extensions written in C++ may need changing. See "Changed Internals" for more details. All extensions written in C, most written in C++, and all existing compiled extensions are unaffected. This was necessary to improve C++ support.

Other than this, there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.8.8. If any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.

👑 Core Enhancements 👑

🌈 Unicode Character Database 5.1.0 🌈

The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has been updated to 5.1.0 from 4.1.0. See http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#NotableChanges for the notable changes.

🦋 stat and -X on directory handles 🦋

It is now possible to call stat and the -X filestat operators on directory handles. As both directory and file handles are barewords, there can be ambiguities over which was intended. In these situations the file handle semantics are preferred. Both also treat *FILE{IO} filehandles like *FILE filehandles.

✨ Source filters in @INC ✨

It's possible to enhance the mechanism of subroutine hooks in @INC by adding a source filter on top of the filehandle opened and returned by the hook. This feature was planned a long time ago, but wasn't quite working until now. See "require" in perlfunc for details. (Nicholas Clark)

🎀 Exceptions in constant folding 🎀

The constant folding routine is now wrapped in an exception handler, and if folding throws an exception (such as attempting to evaluate 0/0), perl now retains the current optree, rather than aborting the whole program. Without this change, programs would not compile if they had expressions that happened to generate exceptions, even though those expressions were in code that could never be reached at runtime. (Nicholas Clark, Dave Mitchell)

💖 "no VERSION" 💖

You can now use no followed by a version number to specify that you want to use a version of perl older than the specified one.

⭐ Improved internal UTF-8 caching code ⭐

The code that caches calculated UTF-8 byte offsets for character offsets for a string has been re-written. Several bugs have been located and eliminated, and the code now makes better use of the information it has, so should be faster. In particular, it doesn't scan to the end of a string before calculating an offset within the string, which should speed up some operations on long strings. It is now possible to disable the caching code at run time, to verify that it is not the cause of suspected problems.

🌸 Runtime relocatable installations 🌸

There is now Configure support for creating a perl tree that is relocatable at run time. see "Relocatable installations".

🍓 New internal variables 🍓

${^CHILD_ERROR_NATIVE} — This variable gives the native status returned by the last pipe close, backtick command, successful call to wait or waitpid, or from the system operator. See perlvar for details. (Contributed by Gisle Aas.)
${^UTF8CACHE} — This variable controls the state of the internal UTF-8 offset caching code. 1 for on (the default), 0 for off, -1 to debug the caching code by checking all its results against linear scans, and panicking on any discrepancy.

🧚 "readpipe" is now overridable 🧚

The built-in function readpipe is now overridable. Overriding it permits also to override its operator counterpart, qx// (also known as ``).

💜 simple exception handling macros 💜

Perl 5.8.9 (and 5.10.0 onwards) now provides a couple of macros to do very basic exception handling in XS modules. You can use these macros if you call code that may croak, but you need to do some cleanup before giving control back to Perl. See "Exception Handling" in perlguts for more details.

🔥 -D option enhancements 🔥

-Dq — suppresses the EXECUTING... message when running under -D
-Dl — logs runops loop entry and exit, and jump level popping.
-Dv — displays the process id as part of the trace output.

🌈 XS-assisted SWASHGET 🌈

Some pure-perl code that the regexp engine was using to retrieve Unicode properties and transliteration mappings has been reimplemented in XS for faster execution. (SADAHIRO Tomoyuki)

👑 Constant subroutines 👑

The interpreter internals now support a far more memory efficient form of inlineable constants. Storing a reference to a constant value in a symbol table is equivalent to a full typeglob referencing a constant subroutine, but using about 400 bytes less memory. This proxy constant subroutine is automatically upgraded to a real typeglob with subroutine if necessary. The approach taken is analogous to the existing space optimisation for subroutine stub declarations, which are stored as plain scalars in place of the full typeglob.

However, to aid backwards compatibility of existing code, which (wrongly) does not expect anything other than typeglobs in symbol tables, nothing in core uses this feature, other than the regression tests.

Stubs for prototyped subroutines have been stored in symbol tables as plain strings, and stubs for unprototyped subroutines as the number -1, since 5.005, so code which assumes that the core only places typeglobs in symbol tables has been making incorrect assumptions for over 10 years.

🌟 New Platforms 🌟

Compile support added for:

DragonFlyBSD
MidnightBSD
MirOS BSD
RISC OS
Cray XT4/Catamount

🎀 Modules and Pragmata 🎀

✨ New Modules ✨

Module::Pluggable is a simple framework to create modules that accept pluggable sub-modules. The bundled version is 3.8
Module::CoreList is a hash of hashes that is keyed on perl version as indicated in $]. The bundled version is 2.17
Win32API::File now available in core on Microsoft Windows. The bundled version is 0.1001_01
Devel::InnerPackage finds all the packages defined by a single file. It is part of the Module::Pluggable distribution. The bundled version is 0.3

💅 Updated Modules 💅

attributes upgraded to version 0.09
AutoLoader upgraded to version 5.67
AutoSplit upgraded to 1.06
autouse upgraded to version 1.06
B upgraded from 1.09_01 to 1.19
- provides new pad related abstraction macros B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_LOW, B::NV::COP_SEQ_RANGE_HIGH, B::NV::PARENT_PAD_INDEX, B::NV::PARENT_FAKELEX_FLAGS, which hides the difference in storage in 5.10.0 and later.
- provides B::sub_generation, which exposes PL_sub_generation
- provides B::GV::isGV_with_GP, which on pre-5.10 perls always returns true.
- New type B::HE added with methods VAL, HASH and SVKEY_force
- The B::GVf_IMPORTED_CV flag is now set correctly when a proxy constant subroutine is imported.
- bugs fixed in the handling of PMOPs.
- B::BM::PREVIOUS returns now U32, not U16. B::CV::START and B:CV::ROOT return now NULL on an XSUB, B::CV::XSUB and B::CV::XSUBANY return 0 on a non-XSUB.
B::C upgraded to 1.05
B::Concise upgraded to 0.76
- new option -src causes the rendering of each statement (starting with the nextstate OP) to be preceded by the first line of source code that generates it.
- new option -stash="somepackage", requires somepackage, and then renders each function defined in its namespace.
- now has documentation of detailed hint symbols.
B::Debug upgraded to version 1.05
B::Deparse upgraded to version 0.87
- properly deparse print readpipe $x, $y.
- now handles ''->(), ::(), sub :: {}, etc. correctly [RT #43010]. All bugs in parsing these kinds of syntax are now fixed:

perl -MO=Deparse -e '"my %h = "->()'
perl -MO=Deparse -e '::->()'
perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub :: {}'
perl -MO=Deparse -e 'package a; sub a::b::c {}'
perl -MO=Deparse -e 'sub the::main::road {}'

does not deparse $^H{v_string}, which is automatically set by the internals.

B::Lint upgraded to version 1.11
B::Terse upgraded to version 1.05
base upgraded to version 2.13
- loading a module via base.pm would mask a global $SIG{__DIE__} in that module.
- push all classes at once in @ISA
Benchmark upgraded to version 1.10
bigint upgraded to 0.23
bignum upgraded to 0.23
bigrat upgraded to 0.23
blib upgraded to 0.04
Carp upgraded to version 1.10
- The argument backtrace code now shows undef as undef, instead of a string undef.
CGI upgraded to version 3.42
charnames upgraded to 1.06
constant upgraded to version 1.17
CPAN upgraded to version 1.9301
Cwd upgraded to version 3.29 with some platform specific improvements (including for VMS).
Data::Dumper upgraded to version 2.121_17
- Fixes hash iterator current position with the pure Perl version [RT #40668]
- Performance enhancements, which will be most evident on platforms where repeated calls to C's realloc() are slow, such as Win32.
DB_File upgraded to version 1.817
DB_Filter upgraded to version 0.02
Devel::DProf upgraded to version 20080331.00
Devel::Peek upgraded to version 1.04
Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.14
diagnostics upgraded to version 1.16
Digest upgraded to version 1.15
Digest::MD5 upgraded to version 2.37
DirHandle upgraded to version 1.02
- now localises $., $@, $!, $^E, and $? before closing the directory handle to suppress leaking any side effects of warnings about it already being closed.
DynaLoader upgraded to version 1.09
- DynaLoader can now dynamically load a loadable object from a file with a non-default file extension.
Encode upgraded to version 2.26
Encode::Alias — got a fix for encoding "646" on Solaris (which is just ASCII wearing a fake mustache, bestie, you already know her 💅).
English — upgraded to version 1.03 ✨
Errno — upgraded to version 1.10
Exporter — upgraded to version 5.63
ExtUtils::Command — upgraded to version 1.15
ExtUtils::Constant — upgraded to version 0.21
ExtUtils::Embed — upgraded to version 1.28
ExtUtils::Install — upgraded to version 1.50_01
ExtUtils::Installed — upgraded to version 1.43
ExtUtils::MakeMaker — upgraded to version 6.48
- support for INSTALLSITESCRIPT and INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT configuration 🛠️
ExtUtils::Manifest — upgraded to version 1.55
ExtUtils::ParseXS — upgraded to version 2.19
Fatal — upgraded to version 1.06
- allows built-ins in CORE::GLOBAL to be made fatal 😤
Fcntl — upgraded to version 1.06
fields — upgraded to version 2.12
File::Basename — upgraded to version 2.77
FileCache — upgraded to version 1.07
File::Compare — upgraded to 1.1005
File::Copy — upgraded to 2.13
- now uses 3-arg open 🫶
File::DosGlob — upgraded to 1.01
File::Find — upgraded to version 1.13
File::Glob — upgraded to version 1.06
- fixes spurious results with brackets inside braces 🔍
File::Path — upgraded to version 2.07_02
File::Spec — upgraded to version 3.29
- improved handling of bad arguments 💀
- some platform specific improvements (including for VMS and Cygwin), with an optimisation on abs2rel when handling both relative arguments ✨
File::stat — upgraded to version 1.01
File::Temp — upgraded to version 0.20
filetest — upgraded to version 1.02
Filter::Util::Call — upgraded to version 1.07
Filter::Simple — upgraded to version 0.83
FindBin — upgraded to version 1.49
GDBM_File — upgraded to version 1.09
Getopt::Long — upgraded to version 2.37
Getopt::Std — upgraded to version 1.06
Hash::Util — upgraded to version 0.06
if — upgraded to version 0.05
IO — upgraded to version 1.23

Reduced number of calls to getpeername in IO::Socket 📞

IPC::Open — upgraded to version 1.03
IPC::Open3 — upgraded to version 1.03
IPC::SysV — upgraded to version 2.00
lib — upgraded to version 0.61
- avoid warning about loading .par files 🙈
libnet — upgraded to version 1.22
List::Util — upgraded to 1.19
Locale::Maketext — upgraded to 1.13
Math::BigFloat — upgraded to version 1.60
Math::BigInt — upgraded to version 1.89
Math::BigRat — upgraded to version 0.22
- implements new as_float method 🔢
Math::Complex — upgraded to version 1.54.
Math::Trig — upgraded to version 1.18.
NDBM_File — upgraded to version 1.07
- improve g++ handling for systems using GDBM compatibility headers 🧠
Net::Ping — upgraded to version 2.35
NEXT — upgraded to version 0.61
- fix several bugs with NEXT when working with AUTOLOAD, eval block, and within overloaded stringification 🐛
ODBM_File — upgraded to 1.07
open — upgraded to 1.06
ops — upgraded to 1.02
PerlIO::encoding — upgraded to version 0.11
PerlIO::scalar — upgraded to version 0.06
- [RT #40267] PerlIO::scalar doesn't respect readonly-ness 😭
PerlIO::via — upgraded to version 0.05
Pod::Html — upgraded to version 1.09
Pod::Parser — upgraded to version 1.35
Pod::Usage — upgraded to version 1.35
POSIX — upgraded to version 1.15
- POSIX constants that duplicate those in Fcntl are now imported from Fcntl and re-exported, rather than being duplicated by POSIX 👑
- POSIX::remove can remove empty directories.
- POSIX::setlocale safer to call multiple times.
- POSIX::SigRt added, which provides access to POSIX realtime signal functionality on systems that support it ⚡
re — upgraded to version 0.06_01
Safe — upgraded to version 2.16
Scalar::Util — upgraded to 1.19
SDBM_File — upgraded to version 1.06
SelfLoader — upgraded to version 1.17
Shell — upgraded to version 0.72
sigtrap — upgraded to version 1.04
Socket — upgraded to version 1.81
- this fixes an optimistic use of gethostbyname 🌐
Storable — upgraded to 2.19
Switch — upgraded to version 2.13
Sys::Syslog — upgraded to version 0.27
Term::ANSIColor — upgraded to version 1.12
Term::Cap — upgraded to version 1.12
Term::ReadLine — upgraded to version 1.03
Test::Builder — upgraded to version 0.80
Test::Harness — upgraded version to 2.64
- this makes it able to handle newlines 📝
Test::More — upgraded to version 0.80
Test::Simple — upgraded to version 0.80
Text::Balanced — upgraded to version 1.98
Text::ParseWords — upgraded to version 3.27
Text::Soundex — upgraded to version 3.03
Text::Tabs — upgraded to version 2007.1117
Text::Wrap — upgraded to version 2006.1117
Thread — upgraded to version 2.01
Thread::Semaphore — upgraded to version 2.09
Thread::Queue — upgraded to version 2.11
- added capability to add complex structures (e.g., hash of hashes) to queues 🧵
- added capability to dequeue multiple items at once.
- added new methods to inspect and manipulate queues: peek, insert and extract ✨
Tie::Handle — upgraded to version 4.2
Tie::Hash — upgraded to version 1.03
Tie::Memoize — upgraded to version 1.1
- Tie::Memoize::EXISTS now correctly caches its results 💾
Tie::RefHash — upgraded to version 1.38
Tie::Scalar — upgraded to version 1.01
Tie::StdHandle — upgraded to version 4.2
Time::gmtime — upgraded to version 1.03
Time::Local — upgraded to version 1.1901
Time::HiRes — upgraded to version 1.9715 with various build improvements (including VMS) and minor platform-specific bug fixes (including for HP-UX 11 ia64) ⏱️
threads — upgraded to 1.71
- new thread state information methods: is_running, is_detached and is_joinable. list method enhanced to return running or joinable threads 🧶
- new thread signal method: kill
- added capability to specify thread stack size.
- added capability to control thread exiting behavior. Added a new exit method.
threads::shared — upgraded to version 1.27
- smaller and faster implementation that eliminates one internal structure and the consequent level of indirection 🚀
- user locks are now stored in a safer manner.
- new function shared_clone creates a copy of an object leaving shared elements as-is and deep-cloning non-shared elements.
- added new is_shared method.
Unicode::Normalize — upgraded to version 1.02
Unicode::UCD — upgraded to version 0.25
warnings — upgraded to version 1.05_01
Win32 — upgraded to version 0.38
- added new function GetCurrentProcessId which returns the regular Windows process identifier of the current process, even when called from within a fork 🪟
XSLoader — upgraded to version 0.10
XS::APItest and XS::Typemap are for internal use only and hence no longer installed. Many more tests have been added to XS::APItest 🧪

🛠️ Utility Changes 🛠️

debugger upgraded to version 1.31

Andreas König contributed two functions to save and load the debugger history 📜
NEXT::AUTOLOAD no longer emits warnings under the debugger.
The debugger should now correctly find tty the device on OS X 10.5 and VMS when the program forks 🍎
LVALUE subs now work inside the debugger 💪

perlthanks

Perl 5.8.9 adds a new utility perlthanks, which is a variant of perlbug, but for sending non-bug-reports to the authors and maintainers of Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can become a bit demoralising - we'll see if this changes things 🥺

perlbug

perlbug now checks if you're reporting about a non-core module and suggests you report it to the CPAN author instead 🙌

h2xs

won't define an empty string as a constant [RT #25366]
has examples for h2xs -X 📚

h2ph

now attempts to deal sensibly with the difference in path implications between "" and <> quoting in #include statements 🧐
now generates correct code for #if defined A || defined B [RT #39130]

📖 New Documentation 📖

As usual, the documentation received its share of corrections, clarifications and other nitfixes. More "" tags were added for indexing ✨

perlunitut is a tutorial written by Juerd Waalboer on Unicode-related terminology and how to correctly handle Unicode in Perl scripts 🌸

perlunicode is updated in section user defined properties.

perluniintro has been updated in the example of detecting data that is not valid in particular encoding.

perlcommunity provides an overview of the Perl Community along with further resources 🫶

CORE documents the pseudo-namespace for Perl's core routines 👑

💅 Changes to Existing Documentation 💅

okay bestie, the docs got a whole glow-up. Let's go:

perlglossary now adds deprecated modules and features, plus the modules that are to be dropped. we love a cleanup era.
perlhack has been updated, and it added resources on smoke testing. iykyk.
The Perl FAQs (perlfaq1..perlfaq9) have been updated. all of them, periodt.
perlcheat is updated with better details on "\w", "\d", and "\s". regex girlies rise.
perldebug is updated with information on how to call the debugger. debugger bestie.
perldiag documentation is updated with the subroutine-with-an-ampersand situation on the argument to "exists" and "delete", and also several terminology updates on warnings. warnings but make it clearer.
perlfork documents the limitation of "exec" inside pseudo-processes. noted, bestie.
perlfunc: let's get into it
- Documentation is fixed in section "caller" and "pop". fixed and fine.
- Function "alarm" now mentions Time::HiRes::ualarm in preference to select. timey-wimey.
- Regarding precedence in -X, filetest operators are the same as unary operators, but not regarding parsing and parentheses (spotted by Eirik Berg Hanssen). shoutout Eirik.
- "reverse" function documentation received scalar context examples. scalar context bestie.
perllocale documentation is adjusted for number localization and POSIX::setlocale to fix Debian bug #379463. bug squashed.
perlmodlib is updated with CPAN::API::HOWTO and Sys::Syslog::win32::Win32. modules modules modules.
perlre documentation is updated to reflect the differences between [[:xxxxx:]] and \p{IsXxxxx} matches. Also added section on /g and /c modifiers. regex lore.
perlreguts describes the internals of the regular expressions engine. It has been contributed by Yves Orton. iconic.
perlrebackslash describes all perl regular expression backslash and escape sequences. backslash baddies.
perlrecharclass describes the syntax and use of character classes in Perl Regular Expressions. character class slay.
perlrun is updated to clarify on the hash seed PERL_HASH_SEED. Also more information in options "-x" and "-u". hash seed tea.
perlsub example is updated to use a lexical variable for "opendir" syntax. lexical, as she should be.
perlvar fixes confusion about real GID $( and effective GID $). gid clarity.
Perl thread tutorial example is fixed in section "Queues: Passing Data Around" in perlthrtut and perlthrtut. yes, twice — we keep it exactly.
perlhack documentation is extensively improved by Jarkko Hietaniemi and others. hack the planet.
perltoot provides information on modifying @UNIVERSAL::ISA. universal tea.
perlport documentation is extended to include different "kill(-9, ...)" semantics on Windows. It also clearly states "dump" is not supported on Win32 and cygwin. platform notes.
INSTALL has been updated and modernised. modernised, periodt.

🔥 Performance Enhancements 🔥

The default since perl 5.000 has been for perl to create an empty scalar with every new typeglob. The increased use of lexical variables means that most are now unused. Thanks to Nicholas Clark's efforts, Perl can now be compiled with -DPERL_DONT_CREATE_GVSV to avoid creating these empty scalars. This will significantly decrease the number of scalars allocated for all configurations, and the number of scalars that need to be copied for ithread creation. Whilst this option is binary compatible with existing perl installations, it does change a long-standing assumption about the internals, hence it is not enabled by default, as some third party code may rely on the old behaviour.

We would recommend testing with this configuration on new deployments of perl, particularly for multi-threaded servers, to see whether all third party code is compatible with it, as this configuration may give useful performance improvements. For existing installations we would not recommend changing to this configuration unless thorough testing is performed before deployment.

"diagnostics" no longer uses $&, which results in large speedups for regexp matching in all code using it. speed, she is speed
Regular expressions classes of a single character are now treated the same as if the character had been used as a literal, meaning that code that uses char-classes as an escaping mechanism will see a speedup. (Yves Orton) literal energy
Creating anonymous array and hash references (i.e. "[]" and "{}") now incurs no more overhead than creating an anonymous list or hash. Nicholas Clark provided changes with a saving of two ops and one stack push, which was measured as a slightly better than 5% improvement for these operations. 5% is 5%
Many calls to strlen() have been eliminated, either because the length was already known, or by adopting or enhancing APIs that pass lengths. This has been aided by the adoption of a my_sprintf() wrapper, which returns the correct C89 value - the length of the formatted string. Previously we could not rely on the return value of sprintf(), because on some ancient but extant platforms it still returns "char *". C89 bestie
"index" is now faster if the search string is stored in UTF-8 but only contains characters in the Latin-1 range. Latin-1 range, we love her
The Unicode swatch cache inside the regexp engine is now used. (the lookup had a key mismatch, present since the initial implementation). [RT #42839] cache finally caching

🛠️ Installation and Configuration Improvements 🛠️

🧚 Relocatable installations

There is now Configure support for creating a relocatable perl tree. If you Configure with -Duserelocatableinc, then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be optionally located via the path of the perl executable. relocatable, she moves

At start time, if any paths in @INC or "Config" that Configure marked as relocatable (by starting them with ".../"), then they are prefixed the directory of $^X. This allows the relocation can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with -Duserelocatableinc is that everything is relocated. The initial install is done to the original configured prefix. per-directory vibes

⚙️ Configuration improvements

Configure is now better at removing temporary files. Tom Callaway (from RedHat) also contributed patches that complete the set of flags passed to the compiler and the linker, in particular that "-fPIC" is now enabled on Linux. It will also croak when your /dev/null isn't a device. RedHat bestie Tom

A new configuration variable "d_pseudofork" has been added to Configure, and is available as $Config{d_pseudofork} in the "Config" module. This distinguishes real "fork" support from the pseudofork emulation used on Windows platforms. fork vs pseudofork

Config.pod and config.sh are now placed correctly for cross-compilation. cross-compilation clean

$Config{useshrplib} is now 'true' rather than 'yes' when using a shared perl library. true not yes

🧱 Compilation improvements

Parallel makes should work properly now, although there may still be problems if "make test" is instructed to run in parallel. parallel make era

Many compilation warnings have been cleaned up. A very stubborn compiler warning in S_emulate_eaccess() was killed after six attempts. g++ support has been tuned, especially for FreeBSD. six attempts, iconic

mkppport has been integrated, and all ppport.h files in the core will now be autogenerated at build time (and removed during cleanup). autogenerated, as she should be

📦 Installation improvements

installman now works with "-Duserelocatableinc" and "DESTDIR". DESTDIR bestie

installperl no longer installs: the list

static library files of statically linked extensions when a shared perl library is being used. (They are not needed. See "Windows" below). not needed, periodt
SIGNATURE and PAUSE*.pub (CPAN files) CPAN files
NOTES and PATCHING (ExtUtils files) ExtUtils files
perlld and ld2 (Cygwin files) Cygwin files

🌍 Platform Specific Changes

There are improved hints for AIX, Cygwin, DEC/OSF, FreeBSD, HP/UX, Irix 6 Linux, MachTen, NetBSD, OS/390, QNX, SCO, Solaris, SunOS, System V Release 5.x (UnixWare 7, OpenUNIX 8), Ultrix, UMIPS, uts and VOS. platform glow-up

🐚 FreeBSD

Drop "-std=c89" and "-ansi" if using "long long" as the main integral type, else in FreeBSD 6.2 (and perhaps other releases), system headers do not declare some functions required by perl. long long tea

☀️ Solaris

Starting with Solaris 10, we do not want versioned shared libraries, because those often indicate a private use only library. These problems could often be triggered when SUNWbdb (Berkeley DB) was installed. Hence if Solaris 10 is detected set "ignore_versioned_solibs=y". Berkeley DB flashbacks

💾 VMS

Allow IEEE math to be deselected on OpenVMS I64 (but it remains the default). IEEE but optional
Record IEEE usage in "config.h" config.h noted
Help older VMS compilers by using "ccflags" when building "munchconfig.exe". older compilers, we got you
Don't try to build old "Thread" extension on VMS when "-Duseithreads" has been chosen. no old Thread
Passing a raw string of "NaN" to nawk causes a core dump - so the string has been changed to "*NaN*" core dump avoided
t/op/stat.t tests will now test hard links on VMS if they are supported. hard links test

🪟 Windows

When using a shared perl library installperl no longer installs static library files, import library files and export library files (of statically linked extensions) and empty bootstrap files (of dynamically linked extensions). This fixes a problem building PAR-Packer on Win32 with a debug build of perl. PAR-Packer fix
Various improvements to the win32 build process, including support for Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition (aka Visual C++ 8.x). Visual C++ 8.x
perl.exe will now have an icon if built with MinGW or Borland. icon era
Improvements to the perl-static.exe build process. static build improvements
Add Win32 makefile option to link all extensions statically. link them all
The WinCE directory has been merged into the Win32 directory. merged
"setlocale" tests have been re-enabled for Windows XP onwards. XP onwards

🔧 Selected Bug Fixes 🔧

okay bestie, this is the part where perl basically went to therapy and fixed its ✨issues✨. grab a snack, there's a LOT. 🍓

🦄 Unicode

so MANY bugs in the internal Unicode implementation (UTF-8) got fixed. like, a whole glow-up. specifically, those long-standing bugs about returning Unicode via tie, overloading, or $@? gone. and some of them were never even reported in the first place — perl just quietly fixed them like the icon it is 💅.

unpack will internally convert the string back from UTF-8 on numeric types. this is a compromise between the full consistency now in 5.10, and the current behaviour, which is often used as a "feature" on string types. (iykyk, don't @ me.)

using :crlf and UTF-16 IO layers together will now work. finally, the crossover episode we deserved 🎀.

fixed problems with split, Unicode /\s+/ and / \0/.

fixed bug RT #40641 — encoding of Unicode characters in regular expressions.

fixed a bug where using certain patterns in a regexp led to a panic. [RT #45337] 😭

Perl no longer segfaults (due to infinite internal recursion) if the locale's character is not UTF-8 [RT #41442]:

use open ':locale';
print STDERR "\x{201e}"; # &bdquo;

🐚 PerlIO

inconsistencies have been fixed in the reference counting PerlIO uses to keep track of Unix file descriptors, and the API used by XS code to manage getting and releasing FILE *s. consistency is the vibe 🌈.

🪄 Magic

several bugs have been fixed in Magic, the internal system used to implement features such as tie, tainting and threads sharing.

undef @array on a tied array now correctly calls the CLEAR method. as it should 💅.

some of the bitwise ops were not checking whether their arguments were magical before using them. [RT #24816]

Magic is no longer invoked twice by the expression \&$x.

a bug with assigning large numbers and tainting has been resolved. [RT #40708]

a new entry has been added to the MAGIC vtable — svt_local. this is used when copying magic to the new value during local, allowing certain problems with localising shared variables to be resolved. slay.

for the implementation details, see "Magic Virtual Tables" in perlguts.

🎭 Reblessing overloaded objects now works

internally, perl object-ness is on the referent, not the reference, even though methods can only be called via a reference. BUT the original implementation of overloading stored flags related to overloading on the reference, relying on the flags being copied when the reference was copied, or set at the creation of a new reference. this manifests in a bug — if you rebless an object from a class that has overloading, into one that does not, then any other existing references think that they (still) point to an overloaded object, choose these C code paths, and then throw errors. analogously, blessing into an overloaded class when other references exist will result in them not using overloading. it's giving "who am I really" 💀.

the implementation has been fixed for 5.10, but this fix changes the semantics of flag bits, so is not binary compatible, so it can't be applied to 5.8.9. HOWEVER, 5.8.9 has a work-around that implements the same bug fix. if the referent has multiple references, then all the other references are located and corrected. a full search is avoided whenever possible by scanning lexicals outwards from the current subroutine, and the argument stack.

a certain well known Linux vendor applied incomplete versions of this bug fix to their /usr/bin/perl and then prematurely closed bug reports about performance issues without consulting back upstream. this not being enough, they then proceeded to ignore the necessary fixes to these unreleased changes for 11 months, until massive pressure was applied by their long-suffering paying customers, catalysed by the failings being featured on a prominent blog and Slashdot. 💀💀💀 not the 11 months.

📏 `strict` now propagates correctly into string evals

under 5.8.8 and earlier:

$ perl5.8.8 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@'
Can't locate foo.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ... .) at (eval 1) line 2.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 2.

under 5.8.9 and later:

$ perl5.8.9 -e 'use strict; eval "use foo bar" or die $@'
Bareword "bar" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1.

this may cause problems with programs that parse the error message and rely on the buggy behaviour. fair warning bestie ⚠️.

🛠️ Other fixes

the tokenizer no longer treats =cute (and other words beginning with =cut) as a synonym for =cut. okay but =cute was lowkey iconic, RIP 🪦.
Calling CORE::require

CORE::require and CORE::do were always parsed as require and do when they were overridden. this is now fixed.

stopped memory leak on long /etc/groups entries.
while (my $x ...) { ...; redo } shouldn't undef $x.

in the presence of my in the conditional of a while(), until(), or for(;;) loop, we now add an extra scope to the body so that redo doesn't undef the lexical.

the encoding pragma now correctly ignores anything following an @ character in the LC_ALL and LANG environment variables. [RT # 49646]
a segfault observed with some gcc 3.3 optimisations is resolved.
a possible segfault when unpack used in scalar context with () groups is resolved. [RT #50256]
resolved issue where $! could be changed by a signal handler interrupting a system call.
fixed bug RT #37886, symbolic dereferencing was allowed in the argument of defined even under the influence of use strict 'refs'.
fixed bug RT #43207, where lc/uc inside sort affected the return value.
fixed bug RT #45607, where *{"BONK"} = \&{"BONK"} didn't work correctly.
fixed bug RT #35878, croaking from a XSUB called via goto &xsub corrupts perl internals.
fixed bug RT #32539, DynaLoader.o is moved into libperl.so to avoid the need to statically link DynaLoader into the stub perl executable. with this libperl.so provides everything needed to get a functional embedded perl interpreter to run.
fix bug RT #36267 so that assigning to a tied hash doesn't change the underlying hash.
fix bug RT #6006, regexp replaces using large replacement variables fail some of the time, i.e. when substitution contains something like ${10} (note the bracket) instead of just $10.
fix bug RT #45053, Perl_newCONSTSUB() is now thread safe.

🌍 Platform Specific Fixes

🍎 Darwin / MacOS X

various improvements to 64 bit builds.
Mutex protection added in PerlIOStdio_close() to avoid race conditions. hopefully this fixes failures in the threads tests free.t and blocks.t.
added forked terminal support to the debugger, with the ability to update the window title. main character energy tbh 👑.

🟦 OS/2

a build problem with specifying USE_MULTI and USE_ITHREADS but without USE_IMP_SYS has been fixed.
OS2::REXX upgraded to version 1.04

🌊 Tru64

aligned floating point build policies for cc and gcc.

🎩 RedHat Linux

revisited a patch from 5.6.1 for RH7.2 for Intel's icc [RT #7916], added an additional check for $Config{gccversion}.

☀️ Solaris/i386

use -DPTR_IS_LONG when using 64 bit integers

💜 VMS

fixed PerlIO::Scalar in-memory file record-style reads.
pipe shutdown at process exit should now be more robust.
bugs in VMS exit handling tickled by Test::Harness 2.64 have been fixed.
fix fcntl() locking capability test in configure.com.
replaced shrplib='define' with useshrplib='true' on VMS.

🪟 Windows

File::Find used to fail when the target directory is a bare drive letter and no_chdir is 1 (the default is 0). [RT #41555]
a build problem with specifying USE_MULTI and USE_ITHREADS but without USE_IMP_SYS has been fixed.
the process id is no longer truncated to 16 bits on some Windows platforms ( http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=72443 )
fixed bug RT #54828 in perlio.c where calling binmode on Win32 and Cygwin may cause a segmentation fault.

✨ Smaller fixes

it is now possible to overload eq when using nomethod.
various problems using overload with 64 bit integers corrected.
the reference count of PerlIO file descriptors is now correctly handled.
on VMS, escaped dots will be preserved when converted to Unix syntax.
keys %+ no longer throws an 'ambiguous' warning.
using #!perl -d could trigger an assertion, which has been fixed.
don't stringify tied code references in @INC when calling require.
code references in @INC report the correct file name when __FILE__ is used.
width and precision in sprintf didn't handle characters above 255 correctly. [RT #40473]
list slices with indices out of range now work more consistently. [RT #39882]
a change introduced with perl 5.8.1 broke the parsing of arguments of the form -foo=bar with the -s on the <#!> line. this has been fixed. see http://bugs.activestate.com/show_bug.cgi?id=43483
tr/// is now threadsafe. previously it was storing a swash inside its OP, rather than in a pad.
pod2html labels anchors more consistently and handles nested definition lists better.
threads cleanup veto has been extended to include perl_free() and perl_destruct()
on some systems, changes to $ENV{TZ} would not always be respected by the underlying calls to localtime_r(). Perl now forces the inspection of the environment on these systems.
the special variable $^R is now more consistently set when executing regexps using the (?{...}) construct. in particular, it will still be set even if backreferences or optional sub-patterns (?:...)? are used. 🦋

✨ New or Changed Diagnostics ✨

Okay bestie, some of the error messages got a glow-up. Here's every single one 💅

panic: sv_chop %s — brand new fatal error, dropped when the C routine Perl_sv_chop() gets handed a position that is not inside the scalar's string buffer. It's giving buggy XS code energy, and ngl, at that point there's no saving it — recovery is literally not possible. 💀
Maximal count of pending signals (%s) exceeded — new fatal error. Fires when the perl process has to abort because there are too many pending signals, which would definitely stop perl from safely handling any more incoming signals. It's over, fr fr. 😭
panic: attempt to call %s in %s — new fatal error. Happens when the ACL version file test operator gets used somewhere the current platform doesn't support it. Earlier checks mean you should never actually be able to trigger this. Iconic safety net behavior. 🫶
FETCHSIZE returned a negative value — new error, thrown when a tied array claims it has a negative number of elements. Ma'am, that's not a thing. 🙈
Can't upgrade %s (%d) to %d — before this, the internal error from the SV upgrade code was the way less helpful Can't upgrade that kind of scalar. Now it spills the current internal type and the new type being requested. Transparency, we love to see it. ✨
%s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or a subroutine — this error, thrown if you give exists a bad argument, now correctly includes the or a subroutine part. [RT #38955] 👑
Cannot make the non-overridable builtin %s fatal — this error in Fatal used to be mysterious and not name the builtin in question. Now it does (that's the %s up there). No more guessing games. 🎀
Unrecognized character '%s' in column %d — this one used to leave out the column entirely. Now it tells you where. Helpful queen behavior. 💖
Offset outside string — this can now also be generated by a seek on a file handle that's using PerlIO::scalar. Noted. 🦋
Invalid escape in the specified encoding in regexp; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/ — brand new error, introduced as part of the fix for RT #40641, to handle encoding of Unicode characters inside regular expression comments. 🧚
Your machine doesn't support dump/undump — a much more informative fatal error, issued when you call dump on Win32 and Cygwin. And honestly? Given that the whole point of dump is to abort with a core dump, and core dumps can't even be produced on those platforms, this is way more useful than just silently exiting like a ghost. 👻

🛠️ Changed Internals 🛠️

Bestie, the plumbing got a whole makeover. Let's go. 🔥

The perl sources can now be compiled with a C++ compiler instead of a C compiler. One necessary implementation detail: under C++, the macro XS used to define XSUBs now includes an extern "C" definition. Side effect incoming — C++ code that used this construction:

typedef XS(SwigPerlWrapper);

now needs to be written like this:

typedef XSPROTO(SwigPerlWrapper);

using the new XSPROTO macro, in order for it to compile. C extensions are unaffected, though C extensions are encouraged to use XSPROTO too. This change was already present in the 5.10.0 release of perl, so any actively maintained code that happened to use this construction should already have been adapted. Code that needs changing will fail with a compilation error. 💅

set magic on localizing/assigning to a magic variable will now only trigger for container magics — so it'll fire for %ENV or %SIG, but not for $#array. Vibe check passed. ✅

The new API macro newSVpvs() can be used in place of constructions like newSVpvn("ISA", 3). It takes a single string constant, and at C compile time determines its length. Efficiency, we stan. ⭐

The new API function Perl_newSV_type() can be used as a more efficient replacement of the common idiom:

sv = newSV(0);
sv_upgrade(sv, type);

Similarly, Perl_newSVpvn_flags() can be used to combine Perl_newSVpv() with Perl_sv_2mortal(), or the equivalent Perl_sv_newmortal() with Perl_sv_setpvn(). Combo moves. 🌈

Two new macros, mPUSHs() and mXPUSHs(), are added to make it easier to push mortal SVs onto the stack. They were then used to fix several bugs where values on the stack had not been mortalised. Fixing bugs with new toys, iconic. 🎀

A Perl_signbit() function was added to test the sign of an NV. It maps to the system one when available. 🦋

Perl_av_reify(), Perl_lex_end(), Perl_mod(), Perl_op_clear(), Perl_pop_return(), Perl_qerror(), Perl_setdefout(), Perl_vivify_defelem() and Perl_yylex() are now visible to extensions. This was required to allow Data::Alias to work on Windows. 👑

Perl_find_runcv() is now visible to perl core extensions. This was required to allow Sub::Current to work on Windows. 🫶

ptr_table* functions are now available in unthreaded perl. Storable takes advantage of this. ✨

There have been many small cleanups made to the internals. In particular, Perl_sv_upgrade() has been simplified considerably, with a straight-through code path that uses memset() and memcpy() to initialise the new body, rather than assignment via multiple temporary variables. It has also benefited from simplification and de-duplication of the arena management code. Spring cleaning era. 🧹

A lot of small improvements in the code base were made due to reports from the Coverity static code analyzer. Thanks bestie Coverity. 💖

Corrected use and documentation of Perl_gv_stashpv(), Perl_gv_stashpvn(), Perl_gv_stashsv() functions (the last parameter is a bitmask, not a boolean). Little detail, big consequences. 😭

PERL_SYS_INIT, PERL_SYS_INIT3 and PERL_SYS_TERM macros have been changed into functions. 💅

PERLSYS_TERM no longer requires a context. PerlIO_teardown() is now called without a context, and debugging output in this function has been disabled because that required an interpreter to be present — which is an invalid assumption at termination time. Periodt. 🌸

All compile time options which affect binary compatibility have been grouped together into a global variable (PL_bincompat_options). Organised queen. 🎀

The values of PERL_REVISION, PERL_VERSION and PERL_SUBVERSION are now baked into global variables (and hence into any shared perl library). Additionally, under MULTIPLICITY, the perl executable now records the size of the interpreter structure (total, and for this version). Coupled with PL_bincompat_options, this will allow 5.8.10 (and later), when compiled with a shared perl library, to perform sanity checks in main() to verify that the shared library is indeed binary compatible. Chef's kiss. 👩‍🍳💋

Symbolic references can now have embedded NULs. The new public function Perl_get_cvn_flags() can be used in extensions if you have to handle them. 🦋

Macro cleanups

The core code, and XS code in ext that is not dual-lived on CPAN, no longer uses the macros PL_na, NEWSV(), Null(), Nullav, Nullcv, Nullhv, Nullhv etc. Their use is discouraged in new code — particularly PL_na, which is a small performance hit. Not me still seeing PL_na in the wild 💀

🧪 New Tests 🧪

Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests. Some core specific tests have been added:

ext/DynaLoader/t/DynaLoader.t — Tests for the DynaLoader module. 🎀
t/comp/fold.t — Tests for compile-time constant folding. ✨
t/io/pvbm.t — Tests incorporated from 5.10.0 which check that there is no unexpected interaction between the internal types PVBM and PVGV. 🦋
t/lib/proxy_constant_subs.t — Tests for the new form of constant subroutines. 💖
t/op/attrhand.t — Tests for Attribute::Handlers. 👑
t/op/dbm.t — Tests for dbmopen. 🌸
t/op/inccode-tie.t — Calls all tests in t/op/inccode.t after first tying @INC. 🔥
t/op/incfilter.t — Tests for source filters returned from code references in @INC. 🌈
t/op/kill0.t — Tests for RT #30970. 💅
t/op/qrstack.t — Tests for RT #41484. ⭐
t/op/qr.t — Tests for the qr// construct. 🫶
t/op/regexp_qr_embed.t — Tests for the qr// construct within another regexp. 🧚
t/op/regexp_qr.t — Tests for the qr// construct. 💜
t/op/rxcode.t — Tests for RT #32840. 🍓
t/op/studytied.t — Tests for study on tied scalars. 😭
t/op/substT.t — Tests for subst run under -T mode. 🎀
t/op/symbolcache.t — Tests for undef and delete on stash entries that are bound to subroutines or methods. ✨
t/op/upgrade.t — Tests for Perl_sv_upgrade(). 💖
t/mro/package_aliases.t — MRO tests for isa and package aliases. 👑
t/pod/twice.t — Tests for calling Pod::Parser twice. 🌸
t/run/cloexec.t — Tests for inheriting file descriptors across exec (close-on-exec). 🦋
t/uni/cache.t — Tests for the UTF-8 caching code. 🌈
t/uni/chr.t — Test that strange encodings do not upset Perl_pp_chr(). 🙈
t/uni/greek.t — Tests for RT #40641. ⭐
t/uni/latin2.t — Tests for RT #40641. 💅
t/uni/overload.t — Tests for returning Unicode from overloaded values. 🔥
t/uni/tie.t — Tests for returning Unicode from tied variables. 🫶

😬 Known Problems 😬

Okay so, the good news: there are no known new bugs. Slay. ✨

The bad news, and bestie I need you to sit down for this one:

Programs that rely on bugs that have been fixed will have problems. 💀

Also, many bug fixes present in 5.10.0 can't be back-ported to the 5.8.x branch, because they require changes that are binary incompatible, or because the code changes are too large and hence too risky to incorporate. It's giving "we tried but it's not worth the chaos." 😭

We have only limited volunteer labour, and the maintenance burden is getting increasingly complex. Hence this will be the last significant release of the 5.8.x series. Any future releases of 5.8.x will likely only be to deal with security issues, and platform build failures. So yeah — you should look to migrating to 5.10.x, if you haven't started already. Alternatively, if business requirements constrain you to continue to use 5.8.x, you may wish to consider commercial support from firms such as ActiveState. No pressure, but like… pressure. 🫶

🖥️ Platform Specific Notes 🖥️

Win32

readdir(), cwd(), $^X and @INC now use the alternate (short) filename if the long name is outside the current codepage (Jan Dubois). 💅

Updated Modules

Win32 upgraded to version 0.38. Now has a documented 'WinVista' response from GetOSName and support for Vista's privilege elevation in IsAdminUser. Support for Unicode characters in path names. Improved cygwin and Win64 compatibility. 👑
Win32API updated to 0.1001_01
killpg() support added to MSWin32 (Jan Dubois). 🔥
File::Spec::Win32 upgraded to version 3.2701

OS/2

Updated Modules

OS2::Process upgraded to 1.03
- Ilya Zakharevich has added and documented several Window* and Clipbrd* functions. ✨
OS2::REXX::DLL, OS2::REXX updated to version 1.03

VMS

Updated Modules

DCLsym upgraded to version 1.03
Stdio upgraded to version 2.4
VMS::XSSymSet upgraded to 1.1.

🕊️ Obituary 🕊️

Nick Ing-Simmons, long time Perl hacker, author of the Tk and Encode modules, perlio.c in the core, and 5.003_02 pumpking, died of a heart attack on 25th September 2006. He will be missed. 💜

💖 Acknowledgements 💖

okay so before we get to the bug stuff, let's give the people their flowers, because this release did NOT build itself. 🌸

Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant. slay. ✨

Steve Hay worked behind the scenes working out the causes of the differences between core modules, their CPAN releases, and previous core releases, and the best way to rectify them. and bestie... he doesn't want to do it again. 💀 I know this feeling, and I'm very glad he did it this time, instead of me.

Paul Fenwick assembled a team of 18 volunteers, who broke the back of writing this document. In particular, Bradley Dean, Eddy Tan, and Vincent Pit provided half the team's contribution. iconic behavior, no cap. 🫶

Schwern verified the list of updated module versions, correcting quite a few errors that I (and everyone else) had missed, both wrongly stated module versions, and changed modules that had not been listed. the way that he caught all of that... 👑

The crack Berlin-based QA team of Andreas König and Slaven Rezic tirelessly re-built snapshots, tested most everything CPAN against them, and then identified the changes responsible for any module regressions, ensuring that several show-stopper bugs were stomped before the first release candidate was cut. literal legends fr fr. 🔥

The other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied most of the patches sent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in AUTHORS.

And obviously, Larry Wall, without whom we wouldn't have Perl. the main character, periodt. 👑

🐛 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 http://bugs.perl.org. There may also be information at http://www.perl.org, the Perl Home Page. like, do a little vibe check first bestie 🔍

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the 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 perl -V, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team. You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ — go peek, it's giving research era. 🕵️‍♀️

⚠️ okay this next part is important, so listen up. 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. 🔒✨

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

The Changes file for 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 a wrap on this whole delta, bestie. 🎀 this page is from perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-08-03, and you just finished PERL589DELTA(1) — go forth and slay your Perl code, ily. 💅💖🦋

📦 where this page comes from

fedora 43: perl-doc 5.42.3-524.fc43 · (GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl) AND Unicode-3.0 AND LicenseRef-Fedora-UltraPermissive
fedora 44: perl-doc 5.42.3-525.fc44 · (GPL-1.0-or-later OR Artistic-1.0-Perl) AND Unicode-3.0 AND LicenseRef-Fedora-UltraPermissive
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-10-13: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms

PERL589DELTA(1)

PERL589DELTA(1) 💖

✨ NAME ✨

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

🌸 Notice 🌸

💅 Incompatible Changes 💅

👑 Core Enhancements 👑

🌈 Unicode Character Database 5.1.0 🌈

🦋 stat and -X on directory handles 🦋

✨ Source filters in @INC ✨

🎀 Exceptions in constant folding 🎀

💖 "no VERSION" 💖

⭐ Improved internal UTF-8 caching code ⭐

🌸 Runtime relocatable installations 🌸

🍓 New internal variables 🍓

🧚 "readpipe" is now overridable 🧚

💜 simple exception handling macros 💜

🔥 -D option enhancements 🔥

🌈 XS-assisted SWASHGET 🌈

👑 Constant subroutines 👑

🌟 New Platforms 🌟

🎀 Modules and Pragmata 🎀

✨ New Modules ✨

💅 Updated Modules 💅

🛠️ Utility Changes 🛠️

debugger upgraded to version 1.31

perlthanks

perlbug

h2xs

h2ph

📖 New Documentation 📖

💅 Changes to Existing Documentation 💅

🔥 Performance Enhancements 🔥

🛠️ Installation and Configuration Improvements 🛠️

🧚 Relocatable installations

⚙️ Configuration improvements

🧱 Compilation improvements

📦 Installation improvements

🌍 Platform Specific Changes

🐚 FreeBSD

☀️ Solaris

💾 VMS

🪟 Windows

🔧 Selected Bug Fixes 🔧

🦄 Unicode

🐚 PerlIO

🪄 Magic

🎭 Reblessing overloaded objects now works

📏 strict now propagates correctly into string evals

🛠️ Other fixes

🌍 Platform Specific Fixes

🍎 Darwin / MacOS X

🟦 OS/2

🌊 Tru64

🎩 RedHat Linux

☀️ Solaris/i386

💜 VMS

🪟 Windows

✨ Smaller fixes

✨ New or Changed Diagnostics ✨

🛠️ Changed Internals 🛠️

Macro cleanups

🧪 New Tests 🧪

😬 Known Problems 😬

🖥️ Platform Specific Notes 🖥️

Win32

OS/2

VMS

🕊️ Obituary 🕊️

💖 Acknowledgements 💖

🐛 Reporting Bugs 🐛

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

📏 `strict` now propagates correctly into string evals