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perl-5.41.7
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NAME

perl5416delta - what is new for perl v5.41.6

DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.41.5 release and the 5.41.6 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.41.4, first read perl5415delta, which describes differences between 5.41.4 and 5.41.5.

Performance Enhancements

  • Code that uses the indexed function from the builtin module to generate a list of index/value pairs out of array which is then passed into a two-variable foreach list to unpack those again is now optimised to be more efficient.

    my @array = (...);

foreach my ($idx, $val) (builtin::indexed @array) {
    ...
}

    In particular, a temporary list twice the size of the original array is no longer generated. Instead, the list iterates down the array in-place directly, in the same way that foreach (@array) would do.

Incompatible Changes

Apostrophe is again recognized as a global name separator

This was deprecated in Perl 5.38 and removed as scheduled in perl 5.41.3, but after some discussion has been reinstated by default.

This can be controlled with the apostrophe_as_package_separator feature which is enabled by default, but is disabled from the 5.41 feature bundle onwards.

If you want to disable use within your own code you can explicitly disable the feature:

no feature "apostrophe_as_package_separator";

Note that disabling this feature only prevents use of apostrophe as a package separator within code; symbolic references still treat ' as :: with the feature disabled:

my $symref = "My'Module'Var";
# default features
my $x = $My'Module'Var; # fine
no feature "apostrophe_as_package_separator";
no strict "refs";
my $y = $$symref;       # like $My::Module::Var
my $z = $My'Module'Var; # syntax error

[GH #22644]

Modules and Pragmata

Updated Modules and Pragmata

  • B::Deparse has been upgraded from version 1.78 to 1.80.

    It now retains parens around logical negations on the left-hand side of comparisons (such as (!$x) == $y) because omitting them would trigger a Possible precedence problem warning since perl v5.41.4. [GH #22661]

  • builtin has been upgraded from version 0.015 to 0.016.

  • CPAN has been upgraded from version 2.37 to 2.38.

  • DB has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.

  • ExtUtils::ParseXS has been upgraded from version 3.55 to 3.56.

  • ExtUtils::Typemaps has been upgraded from version 3.55 to 3.56.

  • feature has been upgraded from version 1.91 to 1.92.

  • fields has been upgraded from version 2.25 to 2.26.

  • HTTP::Tiny has been upgraded from version 0.088 to 0.090.

  • IPC::Open3 has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.24. IPC::Open2 has been upgraded from version 1.07 to 1.08.

    There is now a way to pass lexical filehandles to child processes directly (instead of having the module create a pipe internally). Previously, only bareword filehandles could be used in "dup mode".

  • Math::Complex has been upgraded from version 1.62 to 1.63.

    The complex number parser for string inputs has been improved. In particular, 1+i, 123i, inf, -inf, infi, and -infi are now handled correctly.

  • Memoize has been upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.

  • Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20241020 to 5.20241120.

  • NDBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.

  • ODBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.18 to 1.19.

  • parent has been upgraded from version 0.242 to 0.242_001.

  • POSIX has been upgraded from version 2.22 to 2.23.

  • Scalar::Util has been upgraded from version 1.68 to 1.68_01.

  • Term::Table has been upgraded from version 0.022 to 0.023.

  • warnings has been upgraded from version 1.70 to 1.71.

Platform Support

Platform-Specific Notes

arm64 DARWIN

Fix arm64 darwin hints when using use64bitall with Configure [GH #22672]

Android

Changes to perl_langinfo.h for Android [GH #22650] related to [GH #22627]

Cygwin

cygwin.c: fix several silly/terrible C errors [GH #22724]

workaround DLL load address conflict [GH #22696]

Internal Changes

  • Enable removing most of mathoms.c and stub functions [GH #22691] and [GH #22714]

  • reinstate apostrophe as package separator behind a default enabled feature, which is disabled from feature bundle 5.41.

  • pp_reverse: don't COW buffer just to then un-COW it [GH #22729]

Selected Bug Fixes

  • The perl parser would erroneously parse like =cut some other POD directives whose names start with cut, prematurely terminating an embedded POD section. The following cases were affected: cut followed by a digit (e.g. =cut2studio), cut followed by an underscore (e.g. =cut_grass), and in string eval, any identifier starting with cut (e.g. =cute). [GH #22759]

  • Builds with -msse and quadmath on 32-bit x86 systems would crash with a misaligned access early in the build. [GH #22577]

  • On threaded builds on POSIX-like systems, if the perl signal handler receives we now resend the signal to the main perl thread. Previously this would crash. [GH #22487]

Known Problems

  • cygwin builds may fail during testing due to a conflict between the load addresses of cygperl5_41_6.dll and olib/auto/I18N/Langinfo/Langinfo.dll. This will also be visible for anything that attempts to fork() with I18N::LangInfo loaded.

    This is known to fail for builds with options that increase the size of the binary, such as -DDEBUGGING, -Doptimize="-O0 -g" or -Doptimize="-O2 -g -march=x86-64-v2".

    This can be avoided by building perl with -Astatic_ext=I18N/Langinfo.

    The base addresses are generated by the linker based on the names of the DLLs, so this is expected to clear up for 5.41.7.

    [GH #22695]

Acknowledgements

Perl 5.41.6 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.41.5 and contains approximately 8,400 lines of changes across 180 files from 14 authors.

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 6,700 lines of changes to 120 .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 5.41.6:

Chad Granum, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Daniel Dragan, David Mitchell, Graham Knop, James E Keenan, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Marin Tsanov, Paul Evans, pyrrhlin, Richard Leach, Thibault Duponchelle, 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:

perlthanks

This 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.