1=encoding utf8 2 3=head1 NAME 4 5perl5181delta - what is new for perl v5.18.1 6 7=head1 DESCRIPTION 8 9This document describes differences between the 5.18.0 release and the 5.18.1 10release. 11 12If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.16.0, first read 13L<perl5180delta>, which describes differences between 5.16.0 and 5.18.0. 14 15=head1 Incompatible Changes 16 17There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.18.0 18If any exist, they are bugs, and we request that you submit a 19report. See L</Reporting Bugs> below. 20 21=head1 Modules and Pragmata 22 23=head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata 24 25=over 4 26 27=item * 28 29B has been upgraded from 1.42 to 1.42_01, fixing bugs related to lexical 30subroutines. 31 32=item * 33 34Digest::SHA has been upgraded from 5.84 to 5.84_01, fixing a crashing bug. 35[RT #118649] 36 37=item * 38 39Module::CoreList has been upgraded from 2.89 to 2.96. 40 41=back 42 43=head1 Platform Support 44 45=head2 Platform-Specific Notes 46 47=over 4 48 49=item AIX 50 51A rarely-encountered configuration bug in the AIX hints file has been corrected. 52 53=item MidnightBSD 54 55After a patch to the relevant hints file, perl should now build correctly on 56MidnightBSD 0.4-RELEASE. 57 58=back 59 60=head1 Selected Bug Fixes 61 62=over 4 63 64=item * 65 66Starting in v5.18.0, a construct like C</[#](?{})/x> would have its C<#> 67incorrectly interpreted as a comment. The code block would be skipped, 68unparsed. This has been corrected. 69 70=item * 71 72A number of memory leaks related to the new, experimental regexp bracketed 73character class feature have been plugged. 74 75=item * 76 77The OP allocation code now returns correctly aligned memory in all cases 78for C<struct pmop>. Previously it could return memory only aligned to a 794-byte boundary, which is not correct for an ithreads build with 64 bit IVs 80on some 32 bit platforms. Notably, this caused the build to fail completely 81on sparc GNU/Linux. [RT #118055] 82 83=item * 84 85The debugger's C<man> command been fixed. It was broken in the v5.18.0 86release. The C<man> command is aliased to the names C<doc> and C<perldoc> - 87all now work again. 88 89=item * 90 91C<@_> is now correctly visible in the debugger, fixing a regression 92introduced in v5.18.0's debugger. [RT #118169] 93 94=item * 95 96Fixed a small number of regexp constructions that could either fail to 97match or crash perl when the string being matched against was 98allocated above the 2GB line on 32-bit systems. [RT #118175] 99 100=item * 101 102Perl v5.16 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby calls to XSUBs that were 103not visible at compile time were treated as lvalues and could be assigned 104to, even when the subroutine was not an lvalue sub. This has been fixed. 105[perl #117947] 106 107=item * 108 109Perl v5.18 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby dual-vars (i.e. 110variables with both string and numeric values, such as C<$!> ) where the 111truthness of the variable was determined by the numeric value rather than 112the string value. [RT #118159] 113 114=item * 115 116Perl v5.18 inadvertently introduced a bug whereby interpolating mixed up- 117and down-graded UTF-8 strings in a regex could result in malformed UTF-8 118in the pattern: specifically if a downgraded character in the range 119C<\x80..\xff> followed a UTF-8 string, e.g. 120 121 utf8::upgrade( my $u = "\x{e5}"); 122 utf8::downgrade(my $d = "\x{e5}"); 123 /$u$d/ 124 125[perl #118297]. 126 127=item * 128 129Lexical constants (C<my sub a() { 42 }>) no longer crash when inlined. 130 131=item * 132 133Parameter prototypes attached to lexical subroutines are now respected when 134compiling sub calls without parentheses. Previously, the prototypes were 135honoured only for calls I<with> parentheses. [RT #116735] 136 137=item * 138 139Syntax errors in lexical subroutines in combination with calls to the same 140subroutines no longer cause crashes at compile time. 141 142=item * 143 144The dtrace sub-entry probe now works with lexical subs, instead of 145crashing [perl #118305]. 146 147=item * 148 149Undefining an inlinable lexical subroutine (C<my sub foo() { 42 } undef 150&foo>) would result in a crash if warnings were turned on. 151 152=item * 153 154Deep recursion warnings no longer crash lexical subroutines. [RT #118521] 155 156=back 157 158=head1 Acknowledgements 159 160Perl 5.18.1 represents approximately 2 months of development since Perl 5.18.0 161and contains approximately 8,400 lines of changes across 60 files from 12 162authors. 163 164Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community 165of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the 166improvements that became Perl 5.18.1: 167 168Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, David 169Mitchell, Father Chrysostomos, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Nicholas Clark, 170Peter Martini, Ricardo Signes, Shlomi Fish, Tony Cook. 171 172The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically generated 173from version control history. In particular, it does not include the names of 174the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to the Perl bug 175tracker. 176 177Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules 178included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for 179helping Perl to flourish. 180 181For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see 182the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution. 183 184=head1 Reporting Bugs 185 186If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently 187posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl bug database at 188http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at 189http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page. 190 191If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the L<perlbug> program 192included with your release. Be sure to trim your bug down to a tiny but 193sufficient test case. Your bug report, along with the output of C<perl -V>, 194will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team. 195 196If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it 197inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it 198to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription 199unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be 200able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help 201co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all 202platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for 203security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on 204CPAN. 205 206=head1 SEE ALSO 207 208The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on 209what changed. 210 211The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl. 212 213The F<README> file for general stuff. 214 215The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information. 216 217=cut 218