PERL5244DELTA(1perl)

✨ NAME ✨

perl5244delta — the tea on what's new for perl v5.24.4 💖 (it lives in the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, bestie, that's the whole vibe)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so this doc is literally the glow-up notes between the 5.24.3 release and the 5.24.4 release. that's it. that's the summary.

but like, if you're hopping over from something even older — say 5.24.2 — you gotta read perl5243delta first, because that one covers the 5.24.2 → 5.24.3 arc. no skipping chapters, bestie 🙈

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🔥 SECURITY 🔥

this is the part where we all sit up straight. these were real ones.

💀 [CVE-2018-6797] heap-buffer-overflow (WRITE of size 1) in S_regatom (regcomp.c)

a crafted regular expression could cause a heap buffer write overflow, with control over the bytes written. like, attacker picks what gets written. that's giving chaos. 😭 [GH #16185] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16185

💀 [CVE-2018-6798] Heap-buffer-overflow in Perl__byte_dump_string (utf8.c)

matching a crafted locale dependent regular expression could cause a heap buffer read overflow and potentially information disclosure. information disclosure, as in, leaking stuff it should NOT be leaking. [GH #16143] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16143

💀 [CVE-2018-6913] heap-buffer-overflow in S_pack_rec

pack() could cause a heap buffer write overflow with a large item count. yes, the classic "big number go brrr" but make it a security incident. [GH #16098] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16098

⭐ Assertion failure in Perl__core_swash_init (utf8.c)

control characters in a supposed Unicode property name could cause perl to crash. this has been fixed. periodt. [perl #132055] https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=132055 [perl #132553] https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=132553 [perl #132658] https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=132658

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🌈 INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES 🌈

there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.24.3. none. zero. if you find any, they're bugs and we would genuinely love it if you submitted a report — see "Reporting Bugs" down below, bestie 🫶

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🎀 MODULES AND PRAGMATA 🎀

✨ Updated Modules and Pragmata ✨

• Module::CoreList got upgraded from version 5.20170922_24 to 5.20180414_24. glow up, honestly. 💅

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👑 SELECTED BUG FIXES 👑

• the readpipe() built-in function now checks at compile time that it has only one parameter expression, and puts it in scalar context, thus ensuring that it doesn't corrupt the stack at runtime. stack corruption? not on her watch. [GH #2793] https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/2793

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🌸 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🌸

Perl 5.24.4 represents approximately 7 months of development since Perl 5.24.3 and contains approximately 2,400 lines of changes across 49 files from 12 authors. iconic behavior fr fr.

excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 1,300 lines of changes to 12 .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 5.24.4:

Abigail, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, John SJ Anderson, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Renee Baecker, Sawyer X, Steve Hay, Todd Rinaldo, Tony Cook, Yves Orton, Zefram.

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. they're the real MVPs, honestly. 🫶

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, you might check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at https://rt.perl.org/. there may also be information at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page. iykyk.

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 — tiny but sufficient, the two-part challenge ✨. 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 see "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of how to report the issue. 🔒

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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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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, filed under the manual-name PERL5244DELTA(1perl) 🎀 go forth and perl -V responsibly 💖✨