=encoding utf8 =head1 NAME perldelta - what is new for perl v5.31.8 =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes differences between the 5.31.7 release and the 5.31.8 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.31.6, first read L, which describes differences between 5.31.6 and 5.31.7. =head1 Notice We are now in the Contentious Changes Freeze portion of the 5.31.X release cycle. =head1 Performance Enhancements =over 4 =item * C has been sped up for systems that don't have their own C implementation. =item * C (and so, C, C, and C) have been sped up. =item * C has been sped up. =back =head1 Modules and Pragmata =head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata =over 4 =item * L has been upgraded from version 2.29 to 2.32. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.852 to 1.853. =item * L has been upgraded from version 3.01 to 3.02. =item * L has been upgraded from version 7.42 to 7.44. =item * L has been upgraded from version 0.22 to 0.23. The Synopsis has been updated as the example code stopped working with newer perls. [L] =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.41 to 1.42. =item * L has been upgraded from version 5.20191220 to 5.20200120. =item * L has been upgraded from version 4.12 to 4.14. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.90 to 1.91. =item * L has been upgraded from version 4.06 to 5.01. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.302170 to 1.302171. =item * L has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06. =back =head1 Documentation =head2 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, send email to L. Additionally, the following selected changes have been made: =head3 L =over 4 =item * C updated to mention it will croak if the SV cannot be downgraded. =item * C updated to mention that the UTF-8 flag will not be changed by this function, and a terminating NUL byte is guaranteed. =item * Documentation for C has been added. =item * The documentation for C, C, and C has been updated and clarified. =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * Don't suggest using perl's C anymore. Modern system C is assumed to be much better than perl's implementation at this point. =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * The docs for the repetition operator C have been clarified [L] =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * The documentation surrounding C and handle usage has been modernized to prefer 3-arg open and lexical variables instead of barewords. =item * Various updates and fixes including making all examples strict-safe and replacing C<-w> with C. =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * Update C example to use correct year format I<1970> instead of I<70>. [L] =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * Recommend stringifying C<$]> and comparing it numerically. =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * Suggest using libffi for simple library bindings. =back =head3 L =over 4 =item * C warning about threaded builds updated to note it does not apply on Perl 5.28.X and later. =item * C<< Posix::SigSet->new(...) >> updated to state it throws an error if any of the supplied signals cannot be added to the set. =back =head1 Diagnostics The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output, including warnings and fatal error messages. For the complete list of diagnostic messages, see L. =head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics =over 4 =item * The "Code point 0x%X is not Unicode, and not portable" warning removed the line "Code points above 0xFFFF_FFFF require larger than a 32 bit word." as code points that large are no longer legal on 32-bit platforms. =back =head1 Configuration and Compilation =over 4 =item * For clang++, add C<< #include >> to Configure's probes for C, C, C, C, C, otherwise the probes would fail to compile. =item * Use a compile and run test for C to satisfy clang++ which should more reliably detect it. =item * For C++ compilers, add C<< #include >> to Configure's probes for C and C as they use printf and C++ compilers may fail compilation instead of just warning. =back =head1 Testing Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release. Furthermore, these significant changes were made: =over 4 =item * Certain test output of scalars containing control characters and Unicode has been fixed on EBCDIC. =back =head1 Platform Support =head2 Platform-Specific Notes =over 4 =item NetBSD 8.0 Fix compilation of Perl on NetBSD 8.0 with g++. [L] =item Solaris Configure now uses the detected types for gethostby* functions, allowing Perl to once again compile on certain configurations of Solaris. =back =head1 Internal Changes =over 4 =item * C's len parameter is now a C instead of an C since we can handle longer strings than 31 bits. =back =head1 Selected Bug Fixes =over 4 =item * A heap-buffer-overflow has been fixed in the regular expression engine. [L] =item * Fix an assertion failure in the regular expression engine. [L] =item * Fix regression in C added somewhere in v5.31.6. [L] =item * Fix coredump in pp_hot.c after C. [L] =item * Commit bc62bf8519 ("Add some defensive coding to av_store()" has been reverted as it broke I in v5.31.2. [L] =item * Loading IO is now threadsafe. [L] =back =head1 Acknowledgements Perl 5.31.8 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.31.7 and contains approximately 16,000 lines of changes across 400 files from 25 authors. Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 8,300 lines of changes to 260 .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 5.31.8: Andy Dougherty, Bernhard M. Wiedemann, Chad Granum, Chase Whitener, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Craig A. Berry, Dan Book, Dan Kogai, David Mitchell, Felipe Gasper, Hugo van der Sanden, James E Keenan, Karl Williamson, Matthew Horsfall, Nicholas Clark, Nicolas R., Ricardo Signes, Russ Allbery, Santtu Ojanperä, Slaven Rezic, Smylers, Todd Rinaldo, Tomasz Konojacki, Tony Cook, Yves Orton. 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 F file in the Perl source distribution. =head1 Reporting Bugs If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at L. There may also be information at L, the Perl Home Page. If you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at L. 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 L for details of how to report the issue. =head1 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 C program: perlthanks This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks. =head1 SEE ALSO The F file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on what changed. The F file for how to build Perl. The F file for general stuff. The F and F files for copyright information. =cut