PERL5401DELTA(1perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 perl5401delta — what is new for perl v5.40.1 💅

okay bestie, this page lives in the Perl Programmers Reference Guide and its whole manual name is PERL5401DELTA(1perl) — say it with me now, one time for the release notes. 🎀 This is the glow-up log, the receipts, the little changelog that could. Let's get into it. ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This doc spills the tea on everything that changed between the 5.40.0 release and the 5.40.1 release. fr fr, that's the whole scope.

If you're jumping up from something older like 5.38.0, no worries, just read perl5400delta first, because that one covers the glow-up from 5.38.0 to 5.40.0. Do it in order, queen. 👑

💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

Good news, no drama: there are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.40.0. Periodt.

If you do find any, they're bugs, and we would very much like you to submit a report about it. Peep "Reporting Bugs" below for the deets. 🫶

📦 Modules and Pragmata 📦

✨ Updated Modules and Pragmata ✨

Some very iconic modules got their little upgrades:

  • File::Spec has been upgraded from version 3.90 to 3.91. 🌸
  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20240609 to 5.20250118_40. 💖
  • warnings has been upgraded from version 1.69 to 1.70. ✨

📖 Documentation 📖

🎀 Changes to Existing Documentation 🎀

We have attempted to update the documentation to reflect the changes listed in this document. The way we're trying 💅 — but if you find any we missed, please open an issue at <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>. Not me asking you to snitch, but like, do snitch. 🙈

🛠️ Configuration and Compilation 🛠️

🧪 Testing 🧪

Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release. We don't ship vibes without receipts, bestie. ✅

🐛 Selected Bug Fixes 🐛

  • Starting in Perl 5.39.8, "strftime" in POSIX would crash or produce odd errors (such as Out of memory in perl:util:safesysmalloc) when given a format string that wasn't actually a string, but a number, undef, or an object (even one with overloaded string conversion). 😭

Now "strftime" stringifies its first argument, as before. [GH #22498 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/22498>] — back to behaving, we love a redemption arc. 🦋

  • Builds with -msse and quadmath on 32-bit x86 systems would crash with a misaligned access early in the build. [GH #22577 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/22577>] — early! in the build! embarrassing, but fixed. 💅
  • Using goto to tail call, or using the call_sv() and related APIs to call, any of trim(), refaddr(), reftype(), ceil(), floor() or stringify() in the builtin:: package would crash or assert due to a TARG handling bug. [GH #22542 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/22542>] — TARG was going through it, we held its hand. 🫶
  • Fixed an issue where utf8n_to_uvchr() failed to correctly identify certain invalid UTF-8 sequences as invalid. Specifically, sequences that start with continuation bytes or unassigned bytes could cause unexpected behaviour or a panic. This fix ensures that such invalid sequences are now properly detected and handled. This correction also resolves related issues in modules that handle UTF-8 processing, such as Encode. 🌈 — invalid input is now correctly clocked as invalid, as it should be. vibe check passed.
  • Fixed a double free error or possible memory leak when failing to compile certain regexps. [GH #21661 <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/21661>] — regexes stay messy, the memory handling does not. 🎀

👑 Acknowledgements 👑

Perl 5.40.1 represents approximately 7 months of development since Perl 5.40.0 and contains approximately 5,600 lines of changes across 54 files from 15 authors. The numbers are giving dedication. 🔥

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 1,800 lines of changes to 19 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.40.1:

Andrei Horodniceanu, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, E. Choroba, Graham Knop, James E Keenan, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Masahiro Honma, Max Maischein, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Richard Leach, Steve Hay, Thibault Duponchelle, 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. 😭 every single one of y'all matters, the script just can't see you.

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 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>. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case — we do not want the whole novel, we want the one perfect paragraph. ✍️

If the bug you are 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. > please do not just post the exploit in the group chat, bestie. read perlsec first. 🙏

💌 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. Not me tearing up at a thank-you email. wholesome. 🥹💖

🦋 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.

aaaand that's the page, bestie — this was Perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, filed under PERL5401DELTA(1perl). go forth and upgrade responsibly. ✨💅🫶

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