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database/perl/lib/pods/perl584delta.pod

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+=head1 NAME
+
+perl584delta - what is new for perl v5.8.4
+
+=head1 DESCRIPTION
+
+This document describes differences between the 5.8.3 release and
+the 5.8.4 release.
+
+=head1 Incompatible Changes
+
+Many minor bugs have been fixed. Scripts which happen to rely on previously
+erroneous behaviour will consider these fixes as incompatible changes :-)
+You are advised to perform sufficient acceptance testing on this release
+to satisfy yourself that this does not affect you, before putting this
+release into production.
+
+The diagnostic output of Carp has been changed slightly, to add a space after
+the comma between arguments. This makes it much easier for tools such as
+web browsers to wrap it, but might confuse any automatic tools which perform
+detailed parsing of Carp output.
+
+The internal dump output has been improved, so that non-printable characters
+such as newline and backspace are output in C<\x> notation, rather than
+octal. This might just confuse non-robust tools which parse the output of
+modules such as Devel::Peek.
+
+=head1 Core Enhancements
+
+=head2 Malloc wrapping
+
+Perl can now be built to detect attempts to assign pathologically large chunks
+of memory.  Previously such assignments would suffer from integer wrap-around
+during size calculations causing a misallocation, which would crash perl, and
+could theoretically be used for "stack smashing" attacks.  The wrapping
+defaults to enabled on platforms where we know it works (most AIX
+configurations, BSDi, Darwin, DEC OSF/1, FreeBSD, HP/UX, GNU Linux, OpenBSD,
+Solaris, VMS and most Win32 compilers) and defaults to disabled on other
+platforms.
+
+=head2 Unicode Character Database 4.0.1
+
+The copy of the Unicode Character Database included in Perl 5.8 has
+been updated to 4.0.1 from 4.0.0.
+
+=head2 suidperl less insecure
+
+Paul Szabo has analysed and patched C<suidperl> to remove existing known
+insecurities. Currently there are no known holes in C<suidperl>, but previous
+experience shows that we cannot be confident that these were the last. You may
+no longer invoke the set uid perl directly, so to preserve backwards
+compatibility with scripts that invoke #!/usr/bin/suidperl the only set uid
+binary is now C<sperl5.8.>I<n> (C<sperl5.8.4> for this release). C<suidperl>
+is installed as a hard link to C<perl>; both C<suidperl> and C<perl> will
+invoke C<sperl5.8.4> automatically the set uid binary, so this change should
+be completely transparent.
+
+For new projects the core perl team would strongly recommend that you use
+dedicated, single purpose security tools such as C<sudo> in preference to
+C<suidperl>.
+
+=head2 format
+
+In addition to bug fixes, C<format>'s features have been enhanced. See
+L<perlform>
+
+=head1 Modules and Pragmata
+
+The (mis)use of C</tmp> in core modules and documentation has been tidied up.
+Some modules available both within the perl core and independently from CPAN
+("dual-life modules") have not yet had these changes applied; the changes
+will be integrated into future stable perl releases as the modules are
+updated on CPAN.
+
+=head2 Updated modules
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Attribute::Handlers
+
+=item B
+
+=item Benchmark
+
+=item CGI
+
+=item Carp
+
+=item Cwd
+
+=item Exporter
+
+=item File::Find
+
+=item IO
+
+=item IPC::Open3
+
+=item Local::Maketext
+
+=item Math::BigFloat
+
+=item Math::BigInt
+
+=item Math::BigRat
+
+=item MIME::Base64
+
+=item ODBM_File
+
+=item POSIX
+
+=item Shell
+
+=item Socket
+
+There is experimental support for Linux abstract Unix domain sockets.
+
+=item Storable
+
+=item Switch
+
+Synced with its CPAN version 2.10
+
+=item Sys::Syslog
+
+C<syslog()> can now use numeric constants for facility names and priorities,
+in addition to strings.
+
+=item Term::ANSIColor
+
+=item Time::HiRes
+
+=item Unicode::UCD
+
+=item Win32
+
+Win32.pm/Win32.xs has moved from the libwin32 module to core Perl
+
+=item base
+
+=item open
+
+=item threads
+
+Detached threads are now also supported on Windows.
+
+=item utf8
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Performance Enhancements
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Accelerated Unicode case mappings (C</i>, C<lc>, C<uc>, etc).
+
+=item *
+
+In place sort optimised (eg C<@a = sort @a>)
+
+=item *
+
+Unnecessary assignment optimised away in
+
+  my $s = undef;
+  my @a = ();
+  my %h = ();
+
+=item *
+
+Optimised C<map> in scalar context
+
+=back
+
+=head1 Utility Changes
+
+The Perl debugger (F<lib/perl5db.pl>) can now save all debugger commands for
+sourcing later, and can display the parent inheritance tree of a given class.
+
+=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
+
+The build process on both VMS and Windows has had several minor improvements
+made. On Windows Borland's C compiler can now compile perl with PerlIO and/or
+USE_LARGE_FILES enabled.
+
+C<perl.exe> on Windows now has a "Camel" logo icon. The use of a camel with
+the topic of Perl is a trademark of O'Reilly and Associates Inc., and is used
+with their permission (ie distribution of the source, compiling a Windows
+executable from it, and using that executable locally). Use of the supplied
+camel for anything other than a perl executable's icon is specifically not
+covered, and anyone wishing to redistribute perl binaries I<with> the icon
+should check directly with O'Reilly beforehand.
+
+Perl should build cleanly on Stratus VOS once more.
+
+=head1 Selected Bug Fixes
+
+More utf8 bugs fixed, notably in how C<chomp>, C<chop>, C<send>, and
+C<syswrite> and interact with utf8 data. Concatenation now works correctly
+when C<use bytes;> is in scope.
+
+Pragmata are now correctly propagated into (?{...}) constructions in regexps.
+Code such as
+
+   my $x = qr{ ... (??{ $x }) ... };
+
+will now (correctly) fail under use strict. (As the inner C<$x> is and
+has always referred to C<$::x>)
+
+The "const in void context" warning has been suppressed for a constant in an
+optimised-away boolean expression such as C<5 || print;>
+
+C<perl -i> could C<fchmod(stdin)> by mistake. This is serious if stdin is
+attached to a terminal, and perl is running as root. Now fixed.
+
+=head1 New or Changed Diagnostics
+
+C<Carp> and the internal diagnostic routines used by C<Devel::Peek> have been
+made clearer, as described in L</Incompatible Changes>
+
+=head1 Changed Internals
+
+Some bugs have been fixed in the hash internals. Restricted hashes and
+their place holders are now allocated and deleted at slightly different times,
+but this should not be visible to user code.
+
+=head1 Future Directions
+
+Code freeze for the next maintenance release (5.8.5) will be on 30th June
+2004, with release by mid July.
+
+=head1 Platform Specific Problems
+
+This release is known not to build on Windows 95.
+
+=head1 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://bugs.perl.org.  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 B<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 C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
+analysed by the Perl porting team.  You can browse and search
+the Perl 5 bugs at http://bugs.perl.org/
+
+=head1 SEE ALSO
+
+The F<Changes> file for exhaustive details on what changed.
+
+The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.
+
+The F<README> file for general stuff.
+
+The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.
+
+=cut