Manpages

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Arrays now always interpolate into double-quoted strings: constructs like "foo@bar" now always assume @bar is an array, whether or not the compiler has seen use of @bar.

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The semantics of bless( REF , REF ) were unclear and until someone proves it to make some sense, it is forbidden.

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A reference to a reference now stringify as " REF (0x81485ec)" instead of " SCALAR (0x81485ec)" in order to be more consistent with the return value of ref().

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The very dusty examples in the eg/ directory have been removed. Suggestions for new shiny examples welcome but the main issue is that the examples need to be documented, tested and (most importantly) maintained.

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The obsolete chat2 library that should never have been allowed to escape the laboratory has been decommissioned.

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The unimplemented POSIX regex features [[.cc.]] and [[=c=]] are still recognised but now cause fatal errors. The previous behaviour of ignoring them by default and warning if requested was unacceptable since it, in a way, falsely promised that the features could be used.

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The (bogus) escape sequences \8 and \9 now give an optional warning ("Unrecognized escape passed through"). There is no need to \−escape any "\w" character.

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lstat( FILEHANDLE ) now gives a warning because the operation makes no sense. In future releases this may become a fatal error.

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The long deprecated uppercase aliases for the string comparison operators ( EQ , NE , LT , LE , GE , GT ) have now been removed.

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The regular expression captured submatches ($1, $2, ...) are now more consistently unset if the match fails, instead of leaving false data lying around in them.

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The tr///C and tr///U features have been removed and will not return; the interface was a mistake. Sorry about that. For similar functionality, see pack(’U0’, ...) and pack(’C0’, ...).

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"perl −d:Module=arg,arg,arg" now works (previously one couldn’t pass in multiple arguments.)

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my __PACKAGE__ $obj now works.

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"no Module;" now works even if there is no "sub unimport" in the Module.

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The numerical comparison operators return "undef" if either operand is a NaN. Previously the behaviour was unspecified.

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"pack('U0a*', ...)" can now be used to force a string to UTF−8 .

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prototype(\&) is now available.

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There is now an UNTIE method.

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File::Temp allows one to create temporary files and directories in an easy, portable, and secure way.

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Storable gives persistence to Perl data structures by allowing the storage and retrieval of Perl data to and from files in a fast and compact binary format.

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The following independently supported modules have been updated to newer versions from CPAN: CGI , CPAN , DB_File, File::Spec, Getopt::Long, the podlators bundle, Pod::LaTeX, Pod::Parser, Term::ANSIColor, Test.

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Bug fixes and minor enhancements have been applied to B::Deparse, Data::Dumper, IO::Poll, IO::Socket::INET, Math::BigFloat, Math::Complex, Math::Trig, Net::protoent, the re pragma, SelfLoader, Sys::SysLog, Test::Harness, Text::Wrap, UNIVERSAL , and the warnings pragma.

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The attributes::reftype() now works on tied arguments.

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AutoLoader can now be disabled with "no AutoLoader;",

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The English module can now be used without the infamous performance hit by saying

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File::Find now has pre− and post-processing callbacks. It also correctly changes directories when chasing symbolic links. Callbacks (naughtily) exiting with "next;" instead of "return;" now work.

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File::Glob::glob() renamed to File::Glob::bsd_glob() to avoid prototype mismatch with CORE::glob().

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IPC::Open3 now allows the use of numeric file descriptors.

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use lib now works identically to @INC. Removing directories with ’no lib’ now works.

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%INC now localised in a Safe compartment so that use/require work.

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The Shell module now has an OO interface.

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The Emacs perl mode (emacs/cperl−mode.el) has been updated to version 4.31.

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Perlbug is now much more robust. It also sends the bug report to perl.org, not perl.com.

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The perlcc utility has been rewritten and its user interface (that is, command line) is much more like that of the UNIX C compiler, cc.

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The xsubpp utility for extension writers now understands POD documentation embedded in the *.xs files.

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perl56delta details the changes between the 5.005 release and the 5.6.0 release.

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perldebtut is a Perl debugging tutorial.

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perlebcdic contains considerations for running Perl on EBCDIC platforms. Note that unfortunately EBCDIC platforms that used to supported back in Perl 5.005 are still unsupported by Perl 5.7.0; the plan, however, is to bring them back to the fold.

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perlnewmod tells about writing and submitting a new module.

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perlposix-bc explains using Perl on the POSIX-BC platform (an EBCDIC mainframe platform).

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perlretut is a regular expression tutorial.

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perlrequick is a regular expressions quick-start guide. Yes, much quicker than perlretut.

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perlutil explains the command line utilities packaged with the Perl distribution.

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map() that changes the size of the list should now work faster.

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sort() has been changed to use mergesort internally as opposed to the earlier quicksort. For very small lists this may result in slightly slower sorting times, but in general the speedup should be at least 20%. Additional bonuses are that the worst case behaviour of sort() is now better (in computer science terms it now runs in time O(N log N), as opposed to quicksort’s Theta(N**2) worst-case run time behaviour), and that sort() is now stable (meaning that elements with identical keys will stay ordered as they were before the sort).

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INSTALL now explains how you can configure Perl to use 64−bit integers even on non−64−bit platforms.

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Policy.sh policy change: if you are reusing a Policy.sh file (see INSTALL ) and you use Configure −Dprefix=/foo/bar and in the old Policy $prefix eq $siteprefix and $prefix eq $vendorprefix, all of them will now be changed to the new prefix, /foo/bar. (Previously only $prefix changed.) If you do not like this new behaviour, specify prefix, siteprefix, and vendorprefix explicitly.

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A new optional location for Perl libraries, otherlibdirs, is available. It can be used for example for vendor add-ons without disturbing Perl’s own library directories.

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In many platforms the vendor-supplied ’cc’ is too stripped-down to build Perl (basically, ’cc’ doesn’t do ANSI C). If this seems to be the case and ’cc’ does not seem to be the GNU C compiler ’gcc’, an automatic attempt is made to find and use ’gcc’ instead.

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gcc needs to closely track the operating system release to avoid build problems. If Configure finds that gcc was built for a different operating system release than is running, it now gives a clearly visible warning that there may be trouble ahead.

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If binary compatibility with the 5.005 release is not wanted, Configure no longer suggests including the 5.005 modules in @INC.

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Configure "−S" can now run non-interactively.

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configure.gnu now works with options with whitespace in them.

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installperl now outputs everything to STDERR .

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$Config{byteorder} is now computed dynamically (this is more robust with "fat binaries" where an executable image contains binaries for more than one binary platform.)

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Several debugger fixes: exit code now reflects the script exit code, condition "0" now treated correctly, the "d" command now checks line number, the $. no longer gets corrupted, all debugger output now goes correctly to the socket if RemotePort is set.

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*foo{FORMAT} now works.

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Lexical warnings now propagating correctly between scopes.

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Line renumbering with eval and "#line" now works.

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Fixed numerous memory leaks, especially in eval "".

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Modulus of unsigned numbers now works (4063328477 % 65535 used to return 27406, instead of 27047).

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Some "not a number" warnings introduced in 5.6.0 eliminated to be more compatible with 5.005. Infinity is now recognised as a number.

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our() variables will not cause "will not stay shared" warnings.

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pack "Z" now correctly terminates the string with "\0".

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Fix password routines which in some shadow password platforms (e.g. HP-UX) caused getpwent() to return every other entry.

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printf() no longer resets the numeric locale to "C".

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"q(a\\b)" now parses correctly as 'a\\b'.

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Printing quads (64−bit integers) with printf/sprintf now works without the q L ll prefixes (assuming you are on a quad-capable platform).

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Regular expressions on references and overloaded scalars now work.

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scalar() now forces scalar context even when used in void context.

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sort() arguments are now compiled in the right wantarray context (they were accidentally using the context of the sort() itself).

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Changed the POSIX character class "[[:space:]]" to include the (very rare) vertical tab character. Added a new POSIX-ish character class "[[:blank:]]" which stands for horizontal whitespace (currently, the space and the tab).

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$AUTOLOAD, sort(), lock(), and spawning subprocesses in multiple threads simultaneously are now thread-safe.

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Allow read-only string on left hand side of non-modifying tr///.

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Several Unicode fixes (but still not perfect).

BOMs (byte order marks) in the beginning of Perl files (scripts, modules) should now be transparently skipped. UTF−16 ( UCS−2 ) encoded Perl files should now be read correctly.

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The character tables have been updated to Unicode 3.0.1.

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chr() for values greater than 127 now create utf8 when under use utf8.

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Comparing with utf8 data does not magically upgrade non−utf8 data into utf8.

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"IsAlnum", "IsAlpha", and "IsWord" now match titlecase.

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Concatenation with the "." operator or via variable interpolation, "eq", "substr", "reverse", "quotemeta", the "x" operator, substitution with "s///", single-quoted UTF−8 , should now work--in theory.

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The "tr///" operator now works slightly better but is still rather broken. Note that the "tr///CU" functionality has been removed (but see pack(’U0’, ...)).

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vec() now refuses to deal with characters >255.

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Zero entries were missing from the Unicode classes like "IsDigit".

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BSDI 4.*

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All BSDs

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Cygwin

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EPOC

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FreeBSD 3.*

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HP-UX

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IRIX

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Linux

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Mac OS Classic

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MPE/iX

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NetBSD/sparc

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OS/2

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Solaris

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Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX , aka DEC OSF/1 )

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Unicos

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VMS

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Windows

accept() no longer leaks memory.

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Better chdir() return value for a non-existent directory.

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New %ENV entries now propagate to subprocesses.

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$ENV{ LIB } now used to search for libs under Visual C.

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A failed (pseudo)fork now returns undef and sets errno to EAGAIN .

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Allow REG_EXPAND_SZ keys in the registry.

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Can now send() from all threads, not just the first one.

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Fake signal handling reenabled, bugs and all.

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Less stack reserved per thread so that more threads can run concurrently. (Still 16M per thread.)

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"File::Spec−>tmpdir()" now prefers C:/temp over /tmp (works better when perl is running as service).

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Better UNC path handling under ithreads.

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wait() and waitpid() now work much better.

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winsock handle leak fixed.

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perlapi.pod (a companion to perlguts) now attempts to document the internal API .

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You can now build a really minimal perl called microperl. Building microperl does not require even running Configure; "make −f Makefile.micro" should be enough. Beware: microperl makes many assumptions, some of which may be too bold; the resulting executable may crash or otherwise misbehave in wondrous ways. For careful hackers only.

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Added rsignal(), whichsig(), do_join() to the publicised API .

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Made possible to propagate customised exceptions via croak()ing.

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Added is_utf8_char(), is_utf8_string(), bytes_to_utf8(), and utf8_to_bytes().

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Now xsubs can have attributes just like subs.

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Many Storable tests fail on AIX configured with 64 bit integers.

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DOS DJGPP may hang when testing Storable.

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st−06compat fails in UNICOS and UNICOS/mk.

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st−store.t and st-retrieve may fail with Compaq C 6.2 on OpenVMS Alpha 7.2.