PERL5222DELTA(1perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 perl5222delta — what is new for perl v5.22.2 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the perl5222delta page from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and it's the glow-up report for perl v5.22.2. it's a lot, so we're doing it in two parts — buckle up 🦋

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So basically this doc spills all the tea on what changed between the 5.22.1 release and the 5.22.2 release. 💅

And if you're jumping in from something even older, like 5.22.0? No worries, but do your homework first: go read perl5221delta, which covers the differences between 5.22.0 and 5.22.1. it's giving "prerequisite reading", fr fr.

🔒 Security 🔒

the serious section. pay attention, no scrolling. 🫶

Fix out of boundary access in Win32 path handling

This is CVE-2015-8608. For more info, see [GH #15067] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15067>.

Fix loss of taint in canonpath()

This is CVE-2015-8607. For more info, see [GH #15084] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15084>.

Set proper umask before calling mkstemp(3)

okay so back in 5.22.0, perl started setting umask to 0600 before calling mkstemp(3) and then restoring it afterwards. sounds responsible, right? it was NOT. 😭 that wrongfully tells open(2) to strip the owner read and write bits from the given mode before applying it, rather than the intended negation of leaving only those bits in place. like, the opposite of the plan.

So systems that use mode 0666 in mkstemp(3) (like old versions of glibc) create a file with permissions 0066 — leaving world read and write permissions regardless of current umask. world read and write. regardless of umask. yeah.

This has been fixed by using umask 0177 instead. 🙏

[GH #15135] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15135>

Avoid accessing uninitialized memory in Win32 crypt()

Validation that will detect both a short salt and invalid characters in the salt has been added. slay. ✨

[GH #15091] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15091>

Remove duplicate environment variables from environ

So previously, if an environment variable appeared more than once in environ[], %ENV would contain the last entry for that name, while a typical getenv() would return the first entry. messy, mismatched, not the vibe. We now make sure %ENV contains the same as what getenv() returns. 💖

Secondly — and this is the important bit — we now remove duplicates from environ[], so if a setting with that name is set in %ENV we won't pass an unsafe value to a child process. 🛡️

This is CVE-2016-2381.

💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

There are no changes intentionally incompatible with Perl 5.22.1. If any exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. See "Reporting Bugs" below. (yes bestie, go snitch, it's the right thing to do 🎀)

📦 Modules and Pragmata 📦

Updated Modules and Pragmata

  • File::Spec has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.56_01.
    • canonpath() now preserves taint. See "Fix loss of taint in canonpath()".
  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20151213 to 5.20160429.
    • The version number of Digest::SHA listed for Perl 5.18.4 was wrong and has been corrected. Likewise for the version number of Config in 5.18.3 and 5.18.4. [GH #15202] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15202>

📚 Documentation 📚

Changes to Existing Documentation

perldiag

  • The explanation of the warning unable to close filehandle %s properly: %s which can occur when doing an implicit close of a filehandle has been expanded and improved. (yes, the docs got their moment 👑)

perlfunc

  • The documentation of hex() has been revised to clarify valid inputs.

⚙️ Configuration and Compilation ⚙️

  • Dtrace builds now build successfully on systems with a newer dtrace that require an input object file that uses the probes in the .d file.
  • Configure no longer probes for libnm by default. Originally this was the "New Math" library, but the name has been re-used by the GNOME NetworkManager. name collision behavior, honestly 💀
  • Configure now knows about gcc 5. hi gcc 5 👋
  • Compiling perl with -DPERL_MEM_LOG now works again.

🖥️ Platform Support 🖥️

Platform-Specific Notes

Darwin

Compiling perl with -Dusecbacktrace on Darwin now works again. 🎉

[GH #15245] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15245>

OS X/Darwin

Builds with both -DDEBUGGING and threading enabled would fail with a "panic: free from wrong pool" error when built or tested from Terminal on OS X. dramatic much? 😭 This was caused by perl's internal management of the environment conflicting with an atfork handler using the libc setenv() function to update the environment.

Perl now uses setenv()/unsetenv() to update the environment on OS X.

[GH #14955] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14955>

ppc64el

The floating point format of ppc64el (Debian naming for little-endian PowerPC) is now detected correctly. periodt. 💅

Tru64

A test failure in t/porting/extrefs.t has been fixed.

🧠 Internal Changes 🧠

  • An unwarranted assertion in Perl_newATTRSUB_x() has been removed. If a stub subroutine definition with a prototype has been seen, then any subsequent stub (or definition) of the same subroutine with an attribute was causing an assertion failure because of a null pointer. girl, the null pointer did NOT have to do all that. 🙈

🐛 Selected Bug Fixes 🐛

🫶 Acknowledgements 🫶

Perl 5.22.2 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.22.1 and contains approximately 3,000 lines of changes across 110 files from 24 authors. iconic. ✨

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 1,500 lines of changes to 52 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

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 5.22.2:

Aaron Crane, Abigail, Andreas König, Aristotle Pagaltzis, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, David Golden, David Mitchell, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Jarkko Hietaniemi, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Matthew Horsfall, Niko Tyni, Ricardo Signes, Sawyer X, Stevan Little, Steve Hay, Todd Rinaldo, Tony Cook, Vladimir Timofeev, Yves Orton.

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.

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.

okay that's part 1 bestie, we're not done yet, keep scrolling 💅

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

okay bestie, so you think you found a bug?? 💀 first of all, relatable, second of all, here's the vibe:

  • go peek at the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup, and also the perl bug database over at https://rt.perl.org/
  • there might also be info waiting for you at http://www.perl.org/, aka the Perl Home Page 🌈

if you're like "no fr, nobody has reported this one", then pleeease run the perlbug program that ships with your release. 💅 and listen — trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case. tiny!! but sufficient!! that's the assignment. your bug report, plus the output of perl -V, gets sent off to perlbug@perl.org so the Perl porting team can analyse it. 🫶

security girlies, this one's for you: if the bug you're reporting has security implications, and that makes it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org instead. 🔐

that address 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. no cap, it's giving coordinated response team. 👑

one (1) very important note: please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN. those are a whole different situation, bestie. 🙈

👀 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 PERL5222DELTA(1perl), from perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17 — go forth and file the tidiest little bug report the porting team has ever seen. slay, mwah 💖✨

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