NAME
perl5411delta - what is new for perl v5.41.1
DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.41.0 release and the 5.41.1 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.40.0, first read perl5410delta, which describes differences between 5.40.0 and 5.41.0.
Core Enhancements
More CORE:: subs
chdir has been added as a subroutine to the CORE:: namespace.
Previously, code like &CORE::chdir($dir) or my $ref = \&CORE::chdir; $ref->($dir) would throw an error saying &CORE::chdir cannot be called directly. These cases are now fully supported.
Performance Enhancements
Constant-folded strings are now sharable via the Copy-on-Write mechanism. [GH #22163]
The following code would previously have allocated eleven string buffers, each containing one million "A"s:
my @scalars; push @scalars, ("A" x 1_000_000) for 0..9;Now a single buffer is allocated and shared between a CONST OP and the ten scalar elements of @scalars.
Note that any code using this sort of constant to simulate memory leaks (perhaps in test files) must now permute the string in order to trigger a string copy and the allocation of separate buffers. For example,
("A" x 1_000_000).timemight be a suitable small change.Perl_leave_adjust_stacks: additional efficiency for mortal copies.
Modules and Pragmata
Updated Modules and Pragmata
builtin has been upgraded from version 0.014 to 0.015.
Documented when each builtin function was first available and stabilized.
Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.189 to 2.190.
ExtUtils::ParseXS has been upgraded from version 3.51 to 3.52.
Fcntl has been upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19.
Removed pointless
S_ISENFMTfunction.Getopt::Long has been upgraded from version 2.57 to 2.58.
Math::BigInt has been upgraded from version 2.003002 to 2.003003.
Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20240610 to 5.20240620.
POSIX has been upgraded from version 2.20 to 2.21.
sort has been upgraded from version 2.05 to 2.06.
Test2::Suite has been upgraded from version 0.000162 to 0.000163.
VMS::Filespec has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14.
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. If you find any we have missed, open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues.
Additionally, the following selected changes have been made:
perlapi
Combined the documentation for several groups of related functions into single entries.
perlfunc
Clarified the description of
refandreftypein relation to built-in types and class names.Clarified that perl
sortis stable (and has been since v5.8.0).
perlguts
Added some description of "real"
AVs compared to "fake"AVs.
Testing
Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release. Furthermore, these significant changes were made:
A new t/run/todo.t test script was added as a place for TODO tests for known unfixed bugs.
Internal Changes
The "
sv_strftime_ints" in perlapi function is introduced. This is an enhanced version of "my_strftime" in perlapi, which is retained for backwards compatibility. Both are to call strftime(3) when you have the year, month, hour, etc. The new function handles UTF8ness for you, and allows you to specify if you want the possibility of daylight savings time to be considered.my_strftimenever considers DST.The
bytes_to_utf8,bytes_from_utf8, andbytes_from_utf8_locfunctions are no longer experimental.
Selected Bug Fixes
Fix null pointer dereference in S_SvREFCNT_dec [GH #16627].
Fix feature 'class' Segmentation fault in DESTROY [GH #22278].
Fix
POSIX::strftime()[GH #22369].
Acknowledgements
Perl 5.41.1 represents approximately 3 weeks of development since Perl 5.41.0 and contains approximately 6,000 lines of changes across 270 files from 20 authors.
Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 3,900 lines of changes to 210 .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 5.41.1:
Chad Granum, Craig A. Berry, Dabrien 'Dabe' Murphy, Dan Book, David Mitchell, Elvin Aslanov, Graham Knop, James E Keenan, James Raspass, Johan Vromans, Karl Williamson, Leon Timmermans, Lukas Mai, Max Maischein, Paul Evans, Peter John Acklam, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Richard Leach, TAKAI Kousuke, 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.
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.
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.
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:
perlthanksThis will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.
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.