PERL586DELTA(1perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 perl586delta — what is new for perl v5.8.6 💖

okay bestie, so this is perl586delta, from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide (yes it's a section 1perl page, we love that for her). she's the gossip doc that spills every single difference between the 5.8.5 release and the 5.8.6 release. grab a snack 🍓

✨ NAME ✨

perl586delta — what's new in perl v5.8.6, aka the glow-up notes 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so basically this whole document is the receipts on what changed between the 5.8.5 release and the 5.8.6 release. nothing more, nothing less, no cap.

💀 Incompatible Changes 💀

good news era: there are no changes incompatible with 5.8.5. zero. none. your old code is safe, breathe 😮💨

👑 Core Enhancements 👑

  • the perl interpreter is now more tolerant of UTF-16-encoded scripts ✨ lowkey a vibe upgrade.
  • on Win32, Perl can now use non-IFS compatible LSPs, which means Perl can work in conjunction with firewalls such as McAfee Guardian. for the full details go read the file README.win32 — especially if you're running Win95. yes, Win95. iconic fossil behavior 🦕

🎀 Modules and Pragmata 🎀

  • with the base pragma, an intermediate class with no fields used to mess up private fields in the base class. that's fixed now bestie, she's healed 🫶
  • Cwd upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools distribution)
  • Devel::PPPort upgraded to version 3.03
  • File::Spec upgraded to version 3.01 (as part of the new PathTools distribution)
  • Encode upgraded to version 2.08
  • ExtUtils::MakeMaker stays at version 6.17, because later stable releases currently available on CPAN have some issues with core modules on some core platforms. it's not laziness it's strategy 💅
  • I18N::LangTags upgraded to version 0.35
  • Math::BigInt upgraded to version 1.73
  • Math::BigRat upgraded to version 0.13
  • MIME::Base64 upgraded to version 3.05
  • the POSIX::sigprocmask function can now retrieve the current signal mask without also setting it. multitasking queen 👑
  • Time::HiRes upgraded to version 1.65

🛠️ Utility Changes 🛠️

Perl has a new -dt command-line flag, which enables threads support in the debugger. new flag just dropped 🔥

🚀 Performance Enhancements 🚀

  • reverse sort ... is now optimized to sort in reverse, avoiding the generation of a temporary intermediate list. ate and left no crumbs.
  • for (reverse @foo) now iterates in reverse, avoiding the generation of a temporary reversed list. same energy, less mess ✨

🐛 Selected Bug Fixes 🐛

the regexp engine is now more robust when given invalid utf8 input, as is sometimes generated by buggy XS modules. she's strong now 💪

foreach on threads::shared array used to be able to crash Perl. bug fixed, no more crashing, we don't do that here 🙈

a regexp in STDOUT's destructor used to coredump, because the regexp pad was already freed. fixed. the drama is over.

goto & is now more robust — bugs in deep recursion and chained goto & have been fixed. she goes where she needs to go, safely 🌈

using delete on an array no longer leaks memory. and a pop of an item from a shared array reference no longer causes a leak. memory leaks are not the vibe 🚫

eval_sv() failing a taint test could corrupt the stack — this has been fixed. scary but fixed.

on platforms with 64 bit pointers, numeric comparison operators used to erroneously compare the addresses of references that are overloaded, rather than using the overloaded values. this has been fixed, bestie, the comparison actually compares now 😭

read into a UTF8-encoded buffer with an offset off the end of the buffer no longer mis-calculates buffer lengths. math corrected, periodt.

even though Perl has promised since version 5.8 that sort() would be stable, the two cases sort {$b cmp $a} and sort {$b <=> $a} could produce non-stable sorts. this is corrected in perl5.8.6. a promise is a promise 💖

localising $^D no longer generates a diagnostic message about valid -D flags. shhh, no more yelling.

📢 New or Changed Diagnostics 📢

for -t and -T:

Too late for "-T" option has been changed to the more informative "-T" is on the #! line, it must also be used on the command line

she communicates clearly now 💅

🔧 Changed Internals 🔧

from now on, all applications embedding perl will behave as if perl were compiled with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. see "Environment access" in the INSTALL file for the details 👀

most "C" source files now have comments at the top explaining their purpose, which should help anyone wishing to get an overview of the implementation. documentation? in my C files? more likely than you think 🌸

🧪 New Tests 🧪

there are significantly more tests for the "B" suite of modules. testing era, we stan a thorough queen ✅

🐞 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://bugs.perl.org. 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 — tiny but sufficient, that's the rule. 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. you can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/ 🫶

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

  • the Changes file for 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, we made it 💖 this was perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17, from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide — mwah, go forth and know exactly what changed in 5.8.6 🌈✨🎀

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