PERL5184DELTA(1perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

✨ perl5184delta — the tea on what's new in Perl v5.18.4 ✨

Ok bestie, sit down, hydrate, because this is perl5184delta, the manual page that spills everything that changed in Perl v5.18.4. 💖

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So basically, this doc is the rundown on what's different between the 5.18.4 release and the 5.18.2 release.

💀 real talk though: this doc completely ignores perl 5.18.3. That was a broken release that literally only existed for a few hours. We do not talk about 5.18.3. Not me pretending it never happened. 🙈

And if you're upgrading from something even older, like 5.18.1? First go read perl5182delta, which covers the differences between 5.18.1 and 5.18.2. Do your homework first, bestie. 📚

👑 Modules and Pragmata 👑

🎀 Updated Modules and Pragmata 🎀

  • Digest::SHA got upgraded from 5.84_01 to 5.84_02. Glow up. ✨
  • perl5db.pl got upgraded from version 1.39_10 to 1.39_11.

This fixes a crash in tab completion, where available. [perl #120827] Also, filehandle information is properly reset after a pager is run. [perl #121456]

🦋 Platform Support 🦋

🌈 Platform-Specific Notes 🌈

Win32

  • Introduced by [GH #12161] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/12161>, a memory leak on every call to system and backticks ( `` ), on most Win32 Perls starting from 5.18.0 has been fixed. The memory leak only occurred if you enabled pseudo-fork in your build of Win32 Perl, and were running that build on Server 2003 R2 or newer OS. The leak does not appear on WinXP SP3. [GH #13741] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/13741>

🔥 Selected Bug Fixes 🔥

  • The debugger now properly resets filehandles as needed. [perl #121456]
  • A segfault in Digest::SHA has been addressed. [perl #121421]
  • perl can again be built with USE_64_BIT_INT, with Visual C 2003, 32 bit. [perl #120925]
  • A leading { (brace) in formats is properly parsed again. [perl #119973]
  • Copy the values used to perturb hash iteration when cloning an interpreter. This was fairly harmless but caused valgrind to complain. [perl #121336]
  • In Perl v5.18 undef *_; goto &sub and local *_; goto &sub started crashing. This has been fixed. [perl #119949]

💜 Acknowledgements 💜

Perl 5.18.4 represents approximately 9 months of development since Perl 5.18.2 and contains approximately 2,000 lines of changes across 53 files from 13 authors. The way that's thirteen whole humans contributing. Obsessed. 🫶

Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.18.4:

Daniel Dragan, David Mitchell, Doug Bell, Father Chrysostomos, Hiroo Hayashi, James E Keenan, Karl Williamson, Mark Shelor, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Smylers, Steve Hay, Tony Cook.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is 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. 😭 we see you, bug reporters.

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.

🐛 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://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.

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.

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.

👀 fr fr: security stuff goes to that private address only. Don't be the person who yells a CVE into a public list, iykyk.

🌟 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 perl5184delta from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, version perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17. Slay, go build something iconic. 👑🎀

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