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PERL5122DELTA(1)                           Perl Programmers Reference Guide                          PERL5122DELTA(1)



NAME
       perl5122delta - what is new for perl v5.12.2

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.12.1 release and the 5.12.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier major version, such as 5.10.1, first read perl5120delta, which describes
       differences between 5.10.1 and 5.12.0, as well as perl5121delta, which describes earlier changes in the 5.12
       stable release series.

Incompatible Changes
       There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.12.1. If any exist, they are bugs and reports are
       welcome.

Core Enhancements
       Other than the bug fixes listed below, there should be no user-visible changes to the core language in this
       release.

Modules and Pragmata
   New Modules and Pragmata
       This release does not introduce any new modules or pragmata.

   Pragmata Changes
       In the previous release, "no VERSION;" statements triggered a bug which could cause feature bundles to be
       loaded and strict mode to be enabled unintentionally.

   Updated Modules
       "Carp"
           Upgraded from version 1.16 to 1.17.

           Carp now detects incomplete caller() overrides and avoids using bogus @DB::args. To provide backtraces,
           Carp relies on particular behaviour of the caller built-in. Carp now detects if other code has overridden
           this with an incomplete implementation, and modifies its backtrace accordingly. Previously incomplete
           overrides would cause incorrect values in backtraces (best case), or obscure fatal errors (worst case)

           This fixes certain cases of "Bizarre copy of ARRAY" caused by modules overriding "caller()" incorrectly.

       "CPANPLUS"
           A patch to cpanp-run-perl has been backported from CPANPLUS 0.9004. This resolves RT #55964
           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=55964> and RT #57106
           <http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=57106>, both of which related to failures to install
           distributions that use "Module::Install::DSL".

       "File::Glob"
           A regression which caused a failure to find "CORE::GLOBAL::glob" after loading "File::Glob" to crash has
           been fixed.  Now, it correctly falls back to external globbing via "pp_glob".

       "File::Copy"
           "File::Copy::copy(FILE, DIR)" is now documented.

       "File::Spec"
           Upgraded from version 3.31 to 3.31_01.

           Several portability fixes were made in "File::Spec::VMS": a colon is now recognized as a delimiter in
           native filespecs; caret-escaped delimiters are recognized for better handling of extended filespecs;
           "catpath()" returns an empty directory rather than the current directory if the input directory name is

       ·   The entry for "die" in perlfunc was reorganized to emphasize its role in the exception mechanism.

       ·   Perl's INSTALL file has been clarified to explicitly state that Perl requires a C89 compliant ANSI C
           Compiler.

       ·   IO::Socket's "getsockopt()" and "setsockopt()" have been documented.

       ·   alarm()'s inability to interrupt blocking IO on Windows has been documented.

       ·   Math::TrulyRandom hasn't been updated since 1996 and has been removed as a recommended solution for random
           number generation.

       ·   perlrun has been updated to clarify the behaviour of octal flags to perl.

       ·   To ease user confusion, $# and $*, two special variables that were removed in earlier versions of Perl
           have been documented.

       ·   The version of perlfaq shipped with the Perl core has been updated from the official FAQ version, which is
           now maintained in the "briandfoy/perlfaq" branch of the Perl repository at
           <git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git>.

Installation and Configuration Improvements
   Configuration improvements
       ·   The "d_u32align" configuration probe on ARM has been fixed.

   Compilation improvements
       ·   An ""incompatible operand types"" error in ternary expressions when building with "clang" has been fixed.

       ·   Perl now skips setuid "File::Copy" tests on partitions it detects to be mounted as "nosuid".

Selected Bug Fixes
       ·   A possible segfault in the "T_PRTOBJ" default typemap has been fixed.

       ·   A possible memory leak when using caller() to set @DB::args has been fixed.

       ·   Several memory leaks when loading XS modules were fixed.

       ·   "unpack()" now handles scalar context correctly for %32H and %32u, fixing a potential crash.  "split()"
           would crash because the third item on the stack wasn't the regular expression it expected.  "unpack("%2H",
           ...)" would return both the unpacked result and the checksum on the stack, as would "unpack("%2u", ...)".
           [perl #73814] <http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=73814>

       ·   Perl now avoids using memory after calling "free()" in pp_require when there are CODEREFs in @INC.

       ·   A bug that could cause ""Unknown error"" messages when ""call_sv(code, G_EVAL)"" is called from an XS
           destructor has been fixed.

       ·   The implementation of the "open $fh, '>' \$buffer" feature now supports get/set magic and thus tied
           buffers correctly.

       ·   The "pp_getc", "pp_tell", and "pp_eof" opcodes now make room on the stack for their return values in cases
           where no argument was passed in.


   VMS
       ·   git_version.h is now installed on VMS. This was an oversight in v5.12.0 which caused some extensions to
           fail to build.

       ·   Several memory leaks in stat() have been fixed.

       ·   A memory leak in "Perl_rename()" due to a double allocation has been fixed.

       ·   A memory leak in "vms_fid_to_name()" (used by "realpath()" and "realname()") has been fixed.

Acknowledgements
       Perl 5.12.2 represents approximately three months of development since Perl 5.12.1 and contains approximately
       2,000 lines of changes across 100 files from 36 authors.

       Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers.  The
       following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.12.2:

       Abigail, var Arnfjoer` Bjarmason, Ben Morrow, brian d foy, Brian Phillips, Chas. Owens, Chris 'BinGOs'
       Williams, Chris Williams, Craig A. Berry, Curtis Jewell, Dan Dascalescu, David Golden, David Mitchell, Father
       Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, George Greer, H.Merijn Brand, Jan Dubois, Jesse Vincent, Jim Cromie, Karl
       Williamson, Lars DXXXXXX XXX, Leon Brocard, Maik Hentsche, Matt S Trout, Nicholas Clark, Rafael Garcia-Suarez,
       Rainer Tammer, Ricardo Signes, Salvador Ortiz Garcia, Sisyphus, Slaven Rezic, Steffen Mueller, Tony Cook,
       Vincent Pit and Yves Orton.

Reporting Bugs
       If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc
       newsgroup and the perl bug database at http://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ .  There may also be information at
       http://www.perl.org/ , the Perl Home Page.

       If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the perlbug program included with your release.  Be sure
       to trim your bug down to a tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report, along with the output of "perl
       -V", will be sent off to [email protected] to be analysed by the Perl porting team.

       If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly
       archived mailing list, then please send it to [email protected]. This points to a closed
       subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who will be able to help assess
       the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix
       the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security issues
       in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.

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.



perl v5.16.3                                          2013-03-04                                     PERL5122DELTA(1)