PERL5384DELTA(1perl)

💖 perl5384delta — what's new for perl v5.38.4 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the PERL5384DELTA page (that's the 1perl manual section, iykyk 👑). this is the tea on what changed in Perl v5.38.4, and honestly? sit down for this one 🫖

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✨ NAME ✨

perl5384delta — literally just the rundown of what's new for perl v5.38.4, periodt 💅

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so this doc spills all the differences between the 5.38.3 release and the 5.38.4 release. two releases, one glow-up ✨

and hiii, if you're upgrading from something even older like 5.38.2, bestie please read perl5383delta first — that one walks you through the differences between 5.38.2 and 5.38.3. don't skip steps, you'll get whiplash 🦋

🔒 Security 🔒

🚨 [CVE-2024-56406] Heap buffer overflow vulnerability with tr// 🚨

not to be dramatic but a heap buffer overflow vulnerability was discovered in Perl 😭 like, actual yikes.

here's the situation: when there are non-ASCII bytes in the left-hand-side of the tr operator, S_do_trans_invmap() can overflow the destination pointer d. she's overcapitaalizing, literally 💀

watch it happen in real time:

$ perl -e '$_ = "\x{FF}" x 1000000; tr/\xFF/\x{100}/;'
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

it is believed that this vulnerability can enable Denial of Service or Arbitrary Code Execution attacks on platforms that lack sufficient defenses. so, highkey not a vibe. protect ur platforms 🛡️

Discovered by: Nathan Mills. ty for ur service king 🫡

🔄 Incompatible Changes 🔄

good news bestie: there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.38.3. none. zero. zip. ✨

BUT — if any do exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a report. see "Reporting Bugs" below for the deets 🐛

📦 Modules and Pragmata 📦

⬆️ Updated Modules and Pragmata ⬆️

• Module::CoreList — has been upgraded from version 5.20250118_38 to 5.20250413_38. glow-up complete 💅✨

🫶 Acknowledgements 🫶

Perl 5.38.4 represents approximately 3 months of development since Perl 5.38.3 and contains approximately 1,500 lines of changes across 36 files from 7 authors. that's a whole group project that actually got finished, iconic behavior 👑

and excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 640 lines of changes to 5 .pm, .t, .c and .h files. look at those numbers, chef's kiss 🍓

Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. and the following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.38.4:

Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Max Maischein, Paul Evans, Richard Leach, Steve Hay, Thibault Duponchelle.

ngl, that list above is almost certainly incomplete since 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. the reporters are the real main characters and we love them 💜

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 🌈

and for a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution. the receipts are all there 📜

🐛 Reporting Bugs 🐛

if you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. there may also be information at <https://www.perl.org/>, the Perl Home Page 🌐

if you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. and bestie, be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case — we don't need the whole saga, just the plot twist 🔍

if the bug you're reporting has security implications which make it inappropriate to send to a public issue tracker, then see "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of how to report the issue. handle with care, she's sensitive 🚨💅

💌 Give Thanks 💌

if you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5, you can do so by running the perlthanks program:

perlthanks

this will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks. wholesome content, no notes 🥹🫶

👀 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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aaaand that's the whole page ✨ this was perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, and it's the PERL5384DELTA(1perl) manual — so go forth, upgrade responsibly, and stay safe out there 💖🎀🦋 bye bestie!!