PERL5182DELTA(1perl)

🦋 NAME 🦋

perl5182delta — bestie, it's literally the rundown of what's new in perl v5.18.2 💖

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So this doc spills all the tea on what changed between the 5.18.1 release and the 5.18.2 release. Two point releases, one little glow-up. 💅

And hey, if you're upgrading from something older like 5.18.0, no worries — go read perl5181delta first, because that one covers the whole 5.18.0 → 5.18.1 journey. Gotta go in order, bestie, it's giving chronological. 📚

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🎀 Modules and Pragmata 🎀

💜 Updated Modules and Pragmata 💜

• B — upgraded from version 1.42_01 to 1.42_02. ✨

Okay so here's the lore: the fix for [perl #118525] accidentally broke the behaviour of B::CV::GV — it changed the return value from a B::SPECIAL object on a NULL CvGV to undef, which was NOT the vibe. Good news: B::CV::GV again returns a B::SPECIAL object in this case. We're so back. [perl #119413] 🫶

• B::Concise — upgraded from version 0.95 to 0.95_01. 🔥

This fixes a lil bug when it came to dumping unexpected SPECIALs. No more chaos in the dump, periodt.

• English — upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.06_01. 🌸

This fixes an error about the performance of $` , $&, and $'. Yes, the whole squad. They were being slandered and now they're not. 😭

• File::Glob — upgraded from version 1.20 to 1.20_01. ⭐

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📖 Documentation 📖

🧚 Changes to Existing Documentation 🧚

• perlrepository has been restored, with a pointer to more useful pages. She's back and she's got receipts. 👑
• perlhack has been updated with the latest changes from blead. Fresh out the oven, still warm. 🍓

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🔥 Selected Bug Fixes 🔥

• Perl 5.18.1 brought a regression along with a bugfix for lexical subs — like, it came with baggage. 😩 Some B::SPECIAL results from B::CV::GV became undefs instead, which straight up broke Devel::Cover among other libraries. Bestie, that's a chain reaction. This has been fixed. [perl #119351]
• Perl 5.18.0 introduced a regression where [:^ascii:], if you used it in the same character class as other qualifiers, would fail to match characters in the Latin-1 block. Rude. This has been fixed. [perl #120799]
• Perl 5.18.0 introduced a regression when using ->SUPER::method with AUTOLOAD, by looking up AUTOLOAD from the current package instead of the current package's superclass. Wrong address, wrong vibes. This has been fixed. [perl #120694]
• Perl 5.18.0 introduced a regression whereby -bareword was no longer permitted under the strict and integer pragmata when used together. Imagine. This has been fixed. [perl #120288]
• Previously PerlIOBase_dup didn't check whether pushing the new layer succeeded before (optionally) setting the utf8 flag. This could cause segfaults-by-nullpointer. 💀 Yeah, that kind of segfault. This has been fixed.
• A buffer overflow with very long identifiers has been fixed. We love a safety patch, no cap. 🛡️
• A regression from 5.16 in the handling of padranges led to assertion failures if a keyword plugin declined to handle the second my, but only after creating a padop. Messy. This affected, at least, Devel::CallParser under threaded builds. This has been fixed. 🫶
• The construct $r=qr/.../; /$r/p is now handled properly — an issue which had been worsened by changes in 5.18.0. [perl #118213]

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💖 Acknowledgements 💖

Perl 5.18.2 represents approximately 3 months of development since Perl 5.18.1, and it contains approximately 980 lines of changes across 39 files from 4 authors. Iconic numbers, honestly. ✨

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers — main character energy for a whole programming language, and honestly? Deserved. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.18.2:

Craig A. Berry, David Mitchell, Ricardo Signes, Tony Cook.

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. Y'all are seen, fr fr. 🥺

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, maybe first check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page. Do your research bestie, we love a thorough girlie. 🔍

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug program included with your release. And be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case — nobody wants a whole essay. ✂️ 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.

If the bug you're 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. 🛡️

Lowkey important: that security address is for the core only. CPAN modules distributed independently go elsewhere. Don't mix them up, bestie. 💅

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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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That's the whole page, bestie, you ate it. 🍓 This was perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17 — the PERL5182DELTA(1perl) page, signing off with a lil 💅 and a whole lot of love for the Perl porting team. 🫶✨