1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2see.  It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3specifically designed to be readable as is.
4
5=head1 NAME
6
7perlfreebsd - Perl version 5 on FreeBSD systems
8
9=head1 DESCRIPTION
10
11This document describes various features of FreeBSD that will affect how Perl
12version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.
13
14=head2 FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads
15
16When perl is configured to use ithreads, it will use re-entrant library calls
17in preference to non-re-entrant versions.  There is a bug in FreeBSD's
18C<readdir_r> function in versions 4.5 and earlier that can cause a SEGV when
19reading large directories. A patch for FreeBSD libc is available
20(see L<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=misc/30631> )
21which has been integrated into FreeBSD 4.6.
22
23=head2 C<$^X> doesn't always contain a full path in FreeBSD
24
25perl sets C<$^X> where possible to a full path by asking the operating
26system. On FreeBSD the full path of the perl interpreter is found by using
27C<sysctl> with C<KERN_PROC_PATHNAME> if that is supported, else by reading
28the symlink F</proc/curproc/file>. FreeBSD 7 and earlier has a bug where
29either approach sometimes returns an incorrect value
30(see L<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=35703> ).
31In these cases perl will fall back to the old behaviour of using C's
32C<argv[0]> value for C<$^X>.
33
34=head1 AUTHOR
35
36Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>, collating wisdom supplied by Slaven Rezic
37and Tim Bunce.
38
39Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to
40L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.
41
42