The handling of complex expressions by the given/when switchstatement has been enhanced. There are two new cases where when nowinterprets its argument as a boolean, instead of an expression to be usedin a smart match:

flip-flop operators
The .. and ... flip-flop operators are now evaluated in booleancontext, following their usual semantics; see Range Operators in perlop.
Note that, as in perl 5.10.0, when (1..10) will not work to testwhether a given value is an integer between 1 and 10; you should usewhen ([1..10]) instead (note the array reference).
However, contrary to 5.10.0, evaluating the flip-flop operators in booleancontext ensures it can now be useful in a when(), notably forimplementing bistable conditions, like in:
```
 when (/^=begin/ .. /^=end/) {
   # do something
  }
 
```
defined-or operator
A compound expression involving the defined-or operator, as inwhen (expr1 // expr2), will be treated as boolean if the firstexpression is boolean. (This just extends the existing rule that appliesto the regular or operator, as in when (expr1 || expr2).)

The next section details more changes brought to the semantics tothe smart match operator, that naturally also modify the behaviourof the switch statements where smart matching is implicitly used.

Smart match changes

Changes to type-based dispatch

The smart match operator ~~ is no longer commutative. The behaviour ofa smart match now depends primarily on the type of its right handargument. Moreover, its semantics have been adjusted for greaterconsistency or usefulness in several cases. While the general backwardscompatibility is maintained, several changes must be noted:

Code references with an empty prototype are no longer treated specially.They are passed an argument like the other code references (even if theychoose to ignore it).
%hash ~~ sub {} and @array ~~ sub {} now test that the subroutinereturns a true value for each key of the hash (or element of thearray), instead of passing the whole hash or array as a reference tothe subroutine.
Due to the commutativity breakage, code references are no longertreated specially when appearing on the left of the ~~ operator,but like any vulgar scalar.
undef ~~ %hash is always false (since undef can't be a key in ahash). No implicit conversion to "" is done (as was the case in perl5.10.0).
$scalar ~~ @array now always distributes the smart match across theelements of the array. It's true if one element in @array verifies$scalar ~~ $element. This is a generalization of the old behaviourthat tested whether the array contained the scalar.

The full dispatch table for the smart match operator is given inSmart matching in detail in perlsyn.

Smart match and overloading

According to the rule of dispatch based on the rightmost argument type,when an object overloading ~~ appears on the right side of theoperator, the overload routine will always be called (with a 3rd argumentset to a true value, see overload.) However, when the object willappear on the left, the overload routine will be called only when therightmost argument is a simple scalar. This way distributivity of smart matchacross arrays is not broken, as well as the other behaviours with complextypes (coderefs, hashes, regexes). Thus, writers of overloading routinesfor smart match mostly need to worry only with comparing against a scalar,and possibly with stringification overloading; the other common caseswill be automatically handled consistently.

~~ will now refuse to work on objects that do not overload it (in orderto avoid relying on the object's underlying structure). (However, if theobject overloads the stringification or the numification operators, andif overload fallback is active, it will be used instead, as usual.)

Other incompatible changes

The semantics of use feature :5.10* have changed slightly.See Modules and Pragmata for more information.
It is now a run-time error to use the smart match operator ~~with an object that has no overload defined for it. (This way~~ will not break encapsulation by matching against theobject's internal representation as a reference.)
The version control system used for the development of the perlinterpreter has been switched from Perforce to git. This is mainly aninternal issue that only affects people actively working on the perl core;but it may have minor external visibility, for example in some of detailsof the output of perl -V. See perlrepository for more information.
The internal structure of the ext/ directory in the perl source hasbeen reorganised. In general, a module Foo::Bar whose source wasstored under ext/Foo/Bar/ is now located under ext/Foo-Bar/. Also,some modules have been moved from lib/ to ext/. This is purely asource tarball change, and should make no difference to the compilation orinstallation of perl, unless you have a very customised build process thatexplicitly relies on this structure, or which hard-codes the nonxs_extConfigure parameter. Specifically, this change does not by defaultalter the location of any files in the final installation.
As part of the Test::Harness 2.x to 3.x upgrade, the experimentalTest::Harness::Straps module has been removed.See Updated Modules for more details.
As part of the ExtUtils::MakeMaker upgrade, theExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes and ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsish moduleshave been removed from this distribution.
Module::CoreList no longer contains the %:patchlevel hash.
This one is actually a change introduced in 5.10.0, but it was missedfrom that release's perldelta, so it is mentioned here instead.
A bugfix related to the handling of the /m modifier and qr resultedin a change of behaviour between 5.8.x and 5.10.0:
```
 # matches in 5.8.x, doesn't match in 5.10.0
  $re = qr/^bar/; "foo\nbar" =~ /$re/m;
 
```

Core Enhancements

Unicode Character Database 5.1.0

The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.10.1 hasbeen updated to 5.1.0 from 5.0.0. Seehttp://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.1.0/#Notable_Changes for thenotable changes.

A proper interface for pluggable Method Resolution Orders

As of Perl 5.10.1 there is a new interface for plugging and using methodresolution orders other than the default (linear depth first search).The C3 method resolution order added in 5.10.0 has been re-implemented asa plugin, without changing its Perl-space interface. See perlmroapi formore information.

The `overloading` pragma

This pragma allows you to lexically disable or enable overloadingfor some or all operations. (Yuval Kogman)

Parallel tests

The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel onUnix-like platforms. Instead of running make test, set TEST_JOBS inyour environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and runmake test_harness. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as

 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness  # Run 3 tests in parallel

An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, becauseTAP::Harness needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting testscripts itself, and there is no standard interface to make utilities tointeract with their job schedulers.

Note that currently some test scripts may fail when run in parallel (mostnotably ext/IO/t/io_dir.t). If necessary run just the failing scriptsagain sequentially and see if the failures go away.

DTrace support

Some support for DTrace has been added. See "DTrace support" in INSTALL.

Support for `configure_requires` in CPAN module metadata

Both CPAN and CPANPLUS now support the configure_requires keywordin the META.yml metadata file included in most recent CPAN distributions.This allows distribution authors to specify configuration prerequisites thatmust be installed before running Makefile.PL or Build.PL.

See the documentation for ExtUtils::MakeMaker or Module::Build for moreon how to specify configure_requires when creating a distribution for CPAN.

Modules and Pragmata

New Modules and Pragmata

autodie
This is a new lexically-scoped alternative for the Fatal module.The bundled version is 2.06_01. Note that in this release, using a stringeval when autodie is in effect can cause the autodie behaviour to leakinto the surrounding scope. See BUGS in autodie for more details.
Compress::Raw::Bzip2
This has been added to the core (version 2.020).
parent
This pragma establishes an ISA relationship with base classes at compiletime. It provides the key feature of base without the feature creep.
Parse::CPAN::Meta
This has been added to the core (version 1.39).

Pragmata Changes

attributes
Upgraded from version 0.08 to 0.09.
attrs
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
base
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14. See parent for a replacement.
bigint
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
bignum
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
bigrat
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23.
charnames
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
The Unicode NameAliases.txt database file has been added. This has theeffect of adding some extra \N character names that formerly wouldn'thave been recognised; for example, "\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GHA}".
constant
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.17.
feature
The meaning of the :5.10 and :5.10.X feature bundles haschanged slightly. The last component, if any (i.e. X) is simply ignored.This is predicated on the assumption that new features will not, ingeneral, be added to maintenance releases. So :5.10 and :5.10.Xhave identical effect. This is a change to the behaviour documented for5.10.0.
fields
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14 (this was just a version bump; therewere no functional changes).
lib
Upgraded from version 0.5565 to 0.62.
open
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
overload
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
overloading
See The overloading pragma above.
version
Upgraded from version 0.74 to 0.77.

Updated Modules

Archive::Extract
Upgraded from version 0.24 to 0.34.
Archive::Tar
Upgraded from version 1.38 to 1.52.
Attribute::Handlers
Upgraded from version 0.79 to 0.85.
AutoLoader
Upgraded from version 5.63 to 5.68.
AutoSplit
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06.
B
Upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.22.
B::Debug
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.11.
B::Deparse
Upgraded from version 0.83 to 0.89.
B::Lint
Upgraded from version 1.09 to 1.11.
B::Xref
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.
Benchmark
Upgraded from version 1.10 to 1.11.
Carp
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.11.
CGI
Upgraded from version 3.29 to 3.43.(also includes the "default_value for popup_menu()" fix from 3.45).
Compress::Zlib
Upgraded from version 2.008 to 2.020.
CPAN
Upgraded from version 1.9205 to 1.9402. CPAN::FTP has a local fix tostop it being too verbose on download failure.
CPANPLUS
Upgraded from version 0.84 to 0.88.
CPANPLUS::Dist::Build
Upgraded from version 0.06_02 to 0.36.
Cwd
Upgraded from version 3.25_01 to 3.30.
Data::Dumper
Upgraded from version 2.121_14 to 2.124.
DB
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.
DB_File
Upgraded from version 1.816_1 to 1.820.
Devel::PPPort
Upgraded from version 3.13 to 3.19.
Digest::MD5
Upgraded from version 2.36_01 to 2.39.
Digest::SHA
Upgraded from version 5.45 to 5.47.
DirHandle
Upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.03.
Dumpvalue
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
DynaLoader
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.10.
Encode
Upgraded from version 2.23 to 2.35.
Errno
Upgraded from version 1.10 to 1.11.
Exporter
Upgraded from version 5.62 to 5.63.
ExtUtils::CBuilder
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.2602.
ExtUtils::Command
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.16.
ExtUtils::Constant
Upgraded from 0.20 to 0.22. (Note that neither of these versions areavailable on CPAN.)
ExtUtils::Embed
Upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
ExtUtils::Install
Upgraded from version 1.44 to 1.54.
ExtUtils::MakeMaker
Upgraded from version 6.42 to 6.55_02.
Note that ExtUtils::MakeMaker::bytes and ExtUtils::MakeMaker::vmsishhave been removed from this distribution.
ExtUtils::Manifest
Upgraded from version 1.51_01 to 1.56.
ExtUtils::ParseXS
Upgraded from version 2.18_02 to 2.2002.
Fatal
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 2.06_01. See also the new pragma autodie.
File::Basename
Upgraded from version 2.76 to 2.77.
File::Compare
Upgraded from version 1.1005 to 1.1006.
File::Copy
Upgraded from version 2.11 to 2.14.
File::Fetch
Upgraded from version 0.14 to 0.20.
File::Find
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.14.
File::Path
Upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.07_03.
File::Spec
Upgraded from version 3.2501 to 3.30.
File::stat
Upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.01.
File::Temp
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.22.
FileCache
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
FileHandle
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.02.
Filter::Simple
Upgraded from version 0.82 to 0.84.
Filter::Util::Call
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
FindBin
Upgraded from version 1.49 to 1.50.
GDBM_File
Upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
Getopt::Long
Upgraded from version 2.37 to 2.38.
Hash::Util::FieldHash
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04. This fixes a memory leak.
I18N::Collate
Upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.01.
IO
Upgraded from version 1.23_01 to 1.25.
This makes non-blocking mode work on Windows in IO::Socket::INET[CPAN #43573].
IO::Compress::*
Upgraded from version 2.008 to 2.020.
IO::Dir
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
IO::Handle
Upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
IO::Socket
Upgraded from version 1.30_01 to 1.31.
IO::Zlib
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.09.
IPC::Cmd
Upgraded from version 0.40_1 to 0.46.
IPC::Open3
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.04.
IPC::SysV
Upgraded from version 1.05 to 2.01.
lib
Upgraded from version 0.5565 to 0.62.
List::Util
Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.21.
Locale::MakeText
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.
Log::Message
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
Math::BigFloat
Upgraded from version 1.59 to 1.60.
Math::BigInt
Upgraded from version 1.88 to 1.89.
Math::BigInt::FastCalc
Upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.19.
Math::BigRat
Upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.22.
Math::Complex
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.56.
Math::Trig
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.20.
Memoize
Upgraded from version 1.01_02 to 1.01_03 (just a minor documentationchange).
Module::Build
Upgraded from version 0.2808_01 to 0.34_02.
Module::CoreList
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.18. This release no longer contains the%Module::CoreList::patchlevel hash.
Module::Load
Upgraded from version 0.12 to 0.16.
Module::Load::Conditional
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.30.
Module::Loaded
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
Module::Pluggable
Upgraded from version 3.6 to 3.9.
NDBM_File
Upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.
Net::Ping
Upgraded from version 2.33 to 2.36.
NEXT
Upgraded from version 0.60_01 to 0.64.
Object::Accessor
Upgraded from version 0.32 to 0.34.
OS2::REXX
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
Package::Constants
Upgraded from version 0.01 to 0.02.
PerlIO
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.06.
PerlIO::via
Upgraded from version 0.04 to 0.07.
Pod::Man
Upgraded from version 2.16 to 2.22.
Pod::Parser
Upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.37.
Pod::Simple
Upgraded from version 3.05 to 3.07.
Pod::Text
Upgraded from version 3.08 to 3.13.
POSIX
Upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.17.
Safe
Upgraded from 2.12 to 2.18.
Scalar::Util
Upgraded from version 1.19 to 1.21.
SelectSaver
Upgraded from 1.01 to 1.02.
SelfLoader
Upgraded from 1.11 to 1.17.
Socket
Upgraded from 1.80 to 1.82.
Storable
Upgraded from 2.18 to 2.20.
Switch
Upgraded from version 2.13 to 2.14. Please see Deprecations.
Symbol
Upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
Sys::Syslog
Upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.27.
Term::ANSIColor
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 2.00.
Term::ReadLine
Upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.
Term::UI
Upgraded from version 0.18 to 0.20.
Test::Harness
Upgraded from version 2.64 to 3.17.
Note that one side-effect of the 2.x to 3.x upgrade is that theexperimental Test::Harness::Straps module (and its supportingAssert, Iterator, Point and Results modules) have beenremoved. If you still need this, then they are available in the(unmaintained) Test-Harness-Straps distribution on CPAN.
Test::Simple
Upgraded from version 0.72 to 0.92.
Text::ParseWords
Upgraded from version 3.26 to 3.27.
Text::Tabs
Upgraded from version 2007.1117 to 2009.0305.
Text::Wrap
Upgraded from version 2006.1117 to 2009.0305.
Thread::Queue
Upgraded from version 2.00 to 2.11.
Thread::Semaphore
Upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.09.
threads
Upgraded from version 1.67 to 1.72.
threads::shared
Upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.29.
Tie::RefHash
Upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.38.
Tie::StdHandle
This has documentation changes, and has been assigned a version for thefirst time: version 4.2.
Time::HiRes
Upgraded from version 1.9711 to 1.9719.
Time::Local
Upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.1901.
Time::Piece
Upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.15.
Unicode::Normalize
Upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
Unicode::UCD
Upgraded from version 0.25 to 0.27.
charinfo() now works on Unified CJK code points added to later versionsof Unicode.
casefold() has new fields returned to provide both a simpler interfaceand previously missing information. The old fields are retained forbackwards compatibility. Information about Turkic-specific code points isnow returned.
The documentation has been corrected and expanded.
UNIVERSAL
Upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.05.
Win32
Upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.39.
Win32API::File
Upgraded from version 0.1001_01 to 0.1101.
XSLoader
Upgraded from version 0.08 to 0.10.

Utility Changes

h2ph
Now looks in include-fixed too, which is a recent addition to gcc'ssearch path.
h2xs
No longer incorrectly treats enum values like macros (Daniel Burr).
Now handles C++ style constants (//) properly in enums. (A patch fromRainer Weikusat was used; Daniel Burr also proposed a similar fix).
perl5db.pl
LVALUE subroutines now work under the debugger.
The debugger now correctly handles proxy constant subroutines, andsubroutine stubs.
perlthanks
Perl 5.10.1 adds a new utility perlthanks, which is a variant ofperlbug, but for sending non-bug-reports to the authors and maintainersof Perl. Getting nothing but bug reports can become a bit demoralising:we'll see if this changes things.

New Documentation

perlhaiku
This contains instructions on how to build perl for the Haiku platform.
perlmroapi
This describes the new interface for pluggable Method Resolution Orders.
perlperf
This document, by Richard Foley, provides an introduction to the use ofperformance and optimization techniques which can be used with particularreference to perl programs.
perlrepository
This describes how to access the perl source using the git versioncontrol system.
perlthanks
This describes the new perlthanks utility.

Changes to Existing Documentation

The various large Changes* files (which listed every change made to perlover the last 18 years) have been removed, and replaced by a small file,also called Changes, which just explains how that same information maybe extracted from the git version control system.

The file Porting/patching.pod has been deleted, as it mainly describedinteracting with the old Perforce-based repository, which is now obsolete.Information still relevant has been moved to perlrepository.

perlapi, perlintern, perlmodlib and perltoc are now allgenerated at build time, rather than being shipped as part of the release.

Performance Enhancements

A new internal cache means that isa() will often be faster.
Under use locale, the locale-relevant information is now cached onread-only values, such as the list returned by keys %hash. This makesoperations such as sort keys %hash in the scope of use locale muchfaster.
Empty DESTROY methods are no longer called.

Installation and Configuration Improvements

ext/ reorganisation

The layout of directories in ext has been revised. Specifically, allextensions are now flat, and at the top level, with / in pathnamesreplaced by -, so that ext/Data/Dumper/ is now ext/Data-Dumper/,etc. The names of the extensions as specified to Configure, and asreported by %Config::Config under the keys dynamic_ext,known_extensions, nonxs_ext and static_ext have not changed, andstill use /. Hence this change will not have any affect once perl isinstalled. However, Attribute::Handlers, Safe and mro have nowbecome extensions in their own right, so if you run Configure withoptions to specify an exact list of extensions to build, you will need tochange it to account for this.

For 5.10.2, it is planned that many dual-life modules will have been movedfrom lib to ext; again this will have no effect on an installedperl, but will matter if you invoke Configure with a pre-canned list ofextensions to build.

Configuration improvements

If vendorlib and vendorarch are the same, then they are only added to@INC once.

$Config{usedevel} and the C-level PERL_USE_DEVEL are now defined ifperl is built with -Dusedevel.

Configure will enable use of -fstack-protector, to provide protectionagainst stack-smashing attacks, if the compiler supports it.

Configure will now determine the correct prototypes for re-entrantfunctions, and for gconvert, if you are using a C++ compiler ratherthan a C compiler.

On Unix, if you build from a tree containing a git repository, theconfiguration process will note the commit hash you have checked out, fordisplay in the output of perl -v and perl -V. Unpushed local commitsare automatically added to the list of local patches displayed byperl -V.

Compilation improvements

As part of the flattening of ext, all extensions on all platforms arebuilt by make_ext.pl. This replaces the Unix-specificext/util/make_ext, VMS-specific make_ext.com and Win32-specificwin32/buildext.pl.

Platform Specific Changes

AIX
Removed libbsd for AIX 5L and 6.1. Only flock() was used from libbsd.
Removed libgdbm for AIX 5L and 6.1. The libgdbm is delivered as anoptional package with the AIX Toolbox. Unfortunately the 64 bit version is broken.
Hints changes mean that AIX 4.2 should work again.
Cygwin
On Cygwin we now strip the last number from the DLL. This has been thebehaviour in the cygwin.com build for years. The hints files have beenupdated.
FreeBSD
The hints files now identify the correct threading libraries on FreeBSD 7and later.
Irix
We now work around a bizarre preprocessor bug in the Irix 6.5 compiler:cc -E - unfortunately goes into K&R mode, but cc -E file.c doesn't.
Haiku
Patches from the Haiku maintainers have been merged in. Perl should nowbuild on Haiku.
MirOS BSD
Perl should now build on MirOS BSD.
NetBSD
Hints now supports versions 5.*.
Stratus VOS
Various changes from Stratus have been merged in.
Symbian
There is now support for Symbian S60 3.2 SDK and S60 5.0 SDK.
Win32
Improved message window handling means that alarm and kill messageswill no longer be dropped under race conditions.
VMS
Reads from the in-memory temporary files of PerlIO::scalar used to failif $/ was set to a numeric reference (to indicate record-style reads).This is now fixed.
VMS now supports getgrgid.
Many improvements and cleanups have been made to the VMS file name handlingand conversion code.
Enabling the PERL_VMS_POSIX_EXIT logical name now encodes a POSIX exitstatus in a VMS condition value for better interaction with GNV's bashshell and other utilities that depend on POSIX exit values. See$? in perlvms for details.

Selected Bug Fixes

5.10.0 inadvertently disabled an optimisation, which caused a measurableperformance drop in list assignment, such as is often used to assignfunction parameters from @_. The optimisation has been re-instated, andthe performance regression fixed.
Fixed memory leak on while (1) { map 1, 1 } [RT #53038].
Some potential coredumps in PerlIO fixed [RT #57322,54828].
The debugger now works with lvalue subroutines.
The debugger's m command was broken on modules that defined constants[RT #61222].
crypt() and string complement could return tainted values for untaintedarguments [RT #59998].
The -i.suffix command-line switch now recreates the file usingrestricted permissions, before changing its mode to match the originalfile. This eliminates a potential race condition [RT #60904].
On some Unix systems, the value in $? would not have the top bit set($? & 128) even if the child core dumped.
Under some circumstances, $^R could incorrectly become undefined[RT #57042].
(XS) In various hash functions, passing a pre-computed hash to when thekey is UTF-8 might result in an incorrect lookup.
(XS) Including XSUB.h before perl.h gave a compile-time error[RT #57176].
$object->isa('Foo') would report false if the package Foo didn'texist, even if the object's @ISA contained Foo.
Various bugs in the new-to 5.10.0 mro code, triggered by manipulating@ISA, have been found and fixed.
Bitwise operations on references could crash the interpreter, e.g.$x=\$y; $x |= "foo" [RT #54956].

Patterns including alternation might be sensitive to the internal UTF-8representation, e.g.

 my $byte = chr(192);
  my $utf8 = chr(192); utf8::upgrade($utf8);
  $utf8 =~ /$byte|X}/i;# failed in 5.10.0

Within UTF8-encoded Perl source files (i.e. where use utf8 is ineffect), double-quoted literal strings could be corrupted where a \xNN,\0NNN or \N{} is followed by a literal character with ordinal valuegreater than 255 [RT #59908].
B::Deparse failed to correctly deparse various constructs:readpipe STRING [RT #62428], CORE::require(STRING) [RT #62488],sub foo(_) [RT #62484].
Using setpgrp() with no arguments could corrupt the perl stack.
The block form of eval is now specifically trappable by Safe andops. Previously it was erroneously treated like string eval.
In 5.10.0, the two characters [~ were sometimes parsed as the smartmatch operator (~~) [RT #63854].
In 5.10.0, the * quantifier in patterns was sometimes treated as{0,32767} [RT #60034, #60464]. For example, this match would fail:
```
 ("ab" x 32768) =~ /^(ab)*$/
 
```
shmget was limited to a 32 bit segment size on a 64 bit OS [RT #63924].
Using next or last to exit a given block no longer produces aspurious warning like the following:
```
 Exiting given via last at foo.pl line 123
 
```
On Windows, '.\foo' and '..\foo' were treated differently than'./foo' and '../foo' by do and require [RT #63492].
Assigning a format to a glob could corrupt the format; e.g.:
```
 *bar=*foo{FORMAT}; # foo format now bad
 
```
Attempting to coerce a typeglob to a string or number could cause anassertion failure. The correct error message is now generated,Can't coerce GLOB to $type.
Under use filetest 'access', -x was using the wrong access mode. Thishas been fixed [RT #49003].
length on a tied scalar that returned a Unicode value would not becorrect the first time. This has been fixed.
Using an array tie inside in array tie could SEGV. This has beenfixed. [RT #51636]
A race condition inside PerlIOStdio_close() has been identified andfixed. This used to cause various threading issues, including SEGVs.
In unpack, the use of () groups in scalar context was internallyplacing a list on the interpreter's stack, which manifested in variousways, including SEGVs. This is now fixed [RT #50256].
Magic was called twice in substr, \&$x, tie $x, $m and chop.These have all been fixed.
A 5.10.0 optimisation to clear the temporary stack within the implicitloop of s///ge has been reverted, as it turned out to be the cause ofobscure bugs in seemingly unrelated parts of the interpreter [commit ef0d4e17921ee3de].
The line numbers for warnings inside elsif are now correct.
The .. operator now works correctly with ranges whose ends are at orclose to the values of the smallest and largest integers.
binmode STDIN, ':raw' could lead to segmentation faults on some platforms.This has been fixed [RT #54828].
An off-by-one error meant that index $str, ... was effectively beingexecuted as index "$str\0", .... This has been fixed [RT #53746].
Various leaks associated with named captures in regexes have been fixed[RT #57024].
A weak reference to a hash would leak. This was affecting DBI[RT #56908].
Using (?|) in a regex could cause a segfault [RT #59734].
Use of a UTF-8 tr// within a closure could cause a segfault [RT #61520].
Calling sv_chop() or otherwise upgrading an SV could result in anunaligned 64-bit access on the SPARC architecture [RT #60574].
In the 5.10.0 release, inc_version_list would incorrectly list5.10.* after 5.8.*; this affected the @INC search order[RT #67628].
In 5.10.0, pack "a*", $tainted_value returned a non-tainted value[RT #52552].
In 5.10.0, printf and sprintf could produce the fatal errorpanic: utf8_mg_pos_cache_update when printing UTF-8 strings[RT #62666].
In the 5.10.0 release, a dynamically created AUTOLOAD method might bemissed (method cache issue) [RT #60220,60232].
In the 5.10.0 release, a combination of use feature and //ee couldcause a memory leak [RT #63110].
-C on the shebang (#!) line is once more permitted if it is alsospecified on the command line. -C on the shebang line used to be asilent no-op if it was not also on the command line, so perl 5.10.0disallowed it, which broke some scripts. Now perl checks whether it isalso on the command line and only dies if it is not [RT #67880].
In 5.10.0, certain types of re-entrant regular expression could crash,or cause the following assertion failure [RT #60508]:
```
 Assertion rx->sublen >= (s - rx->subbeg) + i failed
 
```

New or Changed Diagnostics

panic: sv_chop %s
This new fatal error occurs when the C routine Perl_sv_chop() waspassed a position that is not within the scalar's string buffer. Thiscould be caused by buggy XS code, and at this point recovery is notpossible.
Can't locate package %s for the parents of %s
This warning has been removed. In general, it only got produced inconjunction with other warnings, and removing it allowed an ISA lookupoptimisation to be added.
v-string in use/require is non-portable
This warning has been removed.
Deep recursion on subroutine "%s"
It is now possible to change the depth threshold for this warning from thedefault of 100, by recompiling the perl binary, setting the Cpre-processor macro PERL_SUB_DEPTH_WARN to the desired value.

Changed Internals

The J.R.R. Tolkien quotes at the head of C source file have been checked andproper citations added, thanks to a patch from Tom Christiansen.
vcroak() now accepts a null first argument. In addition, a full auditwas made of the "not NULL" compiler annotations, and those for severalother internal functions were corrected.
New macros dSAVEDERRNO, dSAVE_ERRNO, SAVE_ERRNO, RESTORE_ERRNOhave been added to formalise the temporary saving of the errnovariable.
The function Perl_sv_insert_flags has been added to augmentPerl_sv_insert.
The function Perl_newSV_type(type) has been added, equivalent toPerl_newSV() followed by Perl_sv_upgrade(type).
The function Perl_newSVpvn_flags() has been added, equivalent toPerl_newSVpvn() and then performing the action relevant to the flag.
Two flag bits are currently supported.
- SVf_UTF8
  This will call SvUTF8_on() for you. (Note that this does not convert ansequence of ISO 8859-1 characters to UTF-8). A wrapper, newSVpvn_utf8()is available for this.
- SVs_TEMP
  Call sv_2mortal() on the new SV.
There is also a wrapper that takes constant strings, newSVpvs_flags().
The function Perl_croak_xs_usage has been added as a wrapper toPerl_croak.
The functions PerlIO_find_layer and PerlIO_list_alloc are nowexported.
PL_na has been exterminated from the core code, replaced by local STRLENtemporaries, or *_nolen() calls. Either approach is faster than PL_na,which is a pointer deference into the interpreter structure under ithreads,and a global variable otherwise.
Perl_mg_free() used to leave freed memory accessible via SvMAGIC() onthe scalar. It now updates the linked list to remove each piece of magicas it is freed.
Under ithreads, the regex in PL_reg_curpm is now reference counted. Thiseliminates a lot of hackish workarounds to cope with it not being referencecounted.
Perl_mg_magical() would sometimes incorrectly turn on SvRMAGICAL().This has been fixed.
The public IV and NV flags are now not set if the string value hastrailing "garbage". This behaviour is consistent with not setting thepublic IV or NV flags if the value is out of range for the type.
SV allocation tracing has been added to the diagnostics enabled by -Dm.The tracing can alternatively output via the PERL_MEM_LOG mechanism, ifthat was enabled when the perl binary was compiled.
Uses of Nullav, Nullcv, Nullhv, Nullop, Nullsv etc have beenreplaced by NULL in the core code, and non-dual-life modules, as NULLis clearer to those unfamiliar with the core code.
A macro MUTABLE_PTR(p) has been added, which on (non-pedantic) gcc willnot cast away const, returning a void *. Macros MUTABLE_SV(av),MUTABLE_SV(cv) etc build on this, casting to AV * etc withoutcasting away const. This allows proper compile-time auditing ofconst correctness in the core, and helped picked up some errors (nowfixed).
Macros mPUSHs() and mXPUSHs() have been added, for pushing SVs on thestack and mortalizing them.
Use of the private structure mro_meta has changed slightly. Nothingoutside the core should be accessing this directly anyway.
A new tool, Porting/expand-macro.pl has been added, that allows youto view how a C preprocessor macro would be expanded when compiled.This is handy when trying to decode the macro hell that is the perlguts.

New Tests

Many modules updated from CPAN incorporate new tests.

Several tests that have the potential to hang forever if they fail nowincorporate a "watchdog" functionality that will kill them after a timeout,which helps ensure that make test and make test_harness run tocompletion automatically. (Jerry Hedden).

Some core-specific tests have been added:

t/comp/retainedlines.t
Check that the debugger can retain source lines from eval.
t/io/perlio_fail.t
Check that bad layers fail.
t/io/perlio_leaks.t
Check that PerlIO layers are not leaking.
t/io/perlio_open.t
Check that certain special forms of open work.
t/io/perlio.t
General PerlIO tests.
t/io/pvbm.t
Check that there is no unexpected interaction between the internal typesPVBM and PVGV.
t/mro/package_aliases.t
Check that mro works properly in the presence of aliased packages.
t/op/dbm.t
Tests for dbmopen and dbmclose.
t/op/index_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of index and threads.
t/op/pat_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of esoteric patterns and threads.
t/op/qr_gc.t
Test that qr doesn't leak.
t/op/reg_email_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of regex recursion and threads.
t/op/regexp_qr_embed_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of patterns with embedded qr// and threads.
t/op/regexp_unicode_prop.t
Tests for Unicode properties in regular expressions.
t/op/regexp_unicode_prop_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of Unicode properties and threads.
t/op/reg_nc_tie.t
Test the tied methods of Tie::Hash::NamedCapture.
t/op/reg_posixcc.t
Check that POSIX character classes behave consistently.
t/op/re.t
Check that exportable re functions in universal.c work.
t/op/setpgrpstack.t
Check that setpgrp works.
t/op/substr_thr.t
Tests for the interaction of substr and threads.
t/op/upgrade.t
Check that upgrading and assigning scalars works.
t/uni/lex_utf8.t
Check that Unicode in the lexer works.
t/uni/tie.t
Check that Unicode and tie work.

Known Problems

This is a list of some significant unfixed bugs, which are regressionsfrom either 5.10.0 or 5.8.x.

List::Util::first misbehaves in the presence of a lexical $_(typically introduced by my $_ or implicitly by given). The variablewhich gets set for each iteration is the package variable $_, not thelexical $_ [RT #67694].
A similar issue may occur in other modules that provide functions whichtake a block as their first argument, like
```
 foo { ... $_ ...} list
 
```

The charnames pragma may generate a run-time error when a regex isinterpolated [RT #56444]:

 use charnames ':full';
  my $r1 = qr/\N{THAI CHARACTER SARA I}/;
  "foo" =~ $r1; # okay
  "foo" =~ /$r1+/; # runtime error

A workaround is to generate the character outside of the regex:

 my $a = "\N{THAI CHARACTER SARA I}";
  my $r1 = qr/$a/;

Some regexes may run much more slowly when run in a child thread comparedwith the thread the pattern was compiled into [RT #55600].

Deprecations

The following items are now deprecated.

Switch is buggy and should be avoided. From perl 5.11.0 onwards, it isintended that any use of the core version of this module will emit awarning, and that the module will eventually be removed from the core(probably in perl 5.14.0). See Switch statements in perlsyn for itsreplacement.
suidperl will be removed in 5.12.0. This provides a mechanism toemulate setuid permission bits on systems that don't support it properly.

Acknowledgements

Some of the work in this release was funded by a TPF grant.

Nicholas Clark officially retired from maintenance pumpking duty at theend of 2008; however in reality he has put much effort in since then tohelp get 5.10.1 into a fit state to be released, including writing aconsiderable chunk of this perldelta.

Steffen Mueller and David Golden in particular helped getting CPAN modulespolished and synchronised with their in-core equivalents.

Craig Berry was tireless in getting maint to run under VMS, no matter howmany times we broke it for him.

The other core committers contributed most of the changes, and applied mostof the patches sent in by the hundreds of contributors listed in AUTHORS.

(Sorry to all the people I haven't mentioned by name).

Finally, thanks to Larry Wall, without whom none of this would benecessary.

Reporting Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articlesrecently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perlbug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also beinformation at http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbugprogram included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug downto a tiny but sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with theoutput of perl -V, will be sent off to [email protected] to beanalysed by the Perl porting team.

If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make itinappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please sendit to [email protected]. This points to a closed subscriptionunarchived mailing list, which includesall the core committers, who will be ableto help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and helpco-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across allplatforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address forsecurity issues in the Perl core, not for modules independentlydistributed on CPAN.

What is new for perl v5.10.1

Daftar Isi

NAME

DESCRIPTION

Incompatible Changes

Switch statement changes