perl5005delta
(1)
Name
perl5005delta - what's new for perl5.005
Synopsis
Please see following description for synopsis
Description
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
NAME
perl5005delta - what's new for perl5.005
DESCRIPTION
This document describes differences between the 5.004
release and this one.
About the new versioning system
Perl is now developed on two tracks: a maintenance track
that makes small, safe updates to released production
versions with emphasis on compatibility; and a development
track that pursues more aggressive evolution. Maintenance
releases (which should be considered production quality)
have subversion numbers that run from 1 to 49, and
development releases (which should be considered "alpha"
quality) run from 50 to 99.
Perl 5.005 is the combined product of the new dual-track
development scheme.
Incompatible Changes
WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl
5.004.
Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-
reaching changes to the language internals. If you have
dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl
5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them with 5.004, but
you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions to
use them 5.005. See INSTALL for detailed instructions on
how to upgrade.
Default installation structure has changed
The new Configure defaults are designed to allow a smooth
upgrade from 5.004 to 5.005, but you should read INSTALL for
a detailed discussion of the changes in order to adapt them
to your system.
Perl Source Compatibility
When none of the experimental features are enabled, there
should be very few user-visible Perl source compatibility
issues.
If threads are enabled, then some caveats apply. @_ and $_
become lexical variables. The effect of this should be
largely transparent to the user, but there are some boundary
conditions under which user will need to be aware of the
issues. For example, "local(@_)" results in a "Can't
localize lexical variable @_ ..." message. This may be
enabled in a future version.
Some new keywords have been introduced. These are generally
expected to have very little impact on compatibility. See
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 1
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
"New "INIT" keyword", "New "lock" keyword", and "New "qr//"
operator".
Certain barewords are now reserved. Use of these will
provoke a warning if you have asked for them with the "-w"
switch. See ""our" is now a reserved word".
C Source Compatibility
There have been a large number of changes in the internals
to support the new features in this release.
o Core sources now require ANSI C compiler
An ANSI C compiler is now required to build perl. See
INSTALL.
o All Perl global variables must now be referenced with an
explicit prefix
All Perl global variables that are visible for use by
extensions now have a "PL_" prefix. New extensions
should "not" refer to perl globals by their unqualified
names. To preserve sanity, we provide limited backward
compatibility for globals that are being widely used
like "sv_undef" and "na" (which should now be written as
"PL_sv_undef", "PL_na" etc.)
If you find that your XS extension does not compile
anymore because a perl global is not visible, try adding
a "PL_" prefix to the global and rebuild.
It is strongly recommended that all functions in the
Perl API that don't begin with "perl" be referenced with
a "Perl_" prefix. The bare function names without the
"Perl_" prefix are supported with macros, but this
support may cease in a future release.
See perlapi.
o Enabling threads has source compatibility issues
Perl built with threading enabled requires extensions to
use the new "dTHR" macro to initialize the handle to
access per-thread data. If you see a compiler error
that talks about the variable "thr" not being declared
(when building a module that has XS code), you need to
add "dTHR;" at the beginning of the block that elicited
the error.
The API function "perl_get_sv("@",GV_ADD)" should be
used instead of directly accessing perl globals as
"GvSV(errgv)". The API call is backward compatible with
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 2
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
existing perls and provides source compatibility with
threading is enabled.
See "C Source Compatibility" for more information.
Binary Compatibility
This version is NOT binary compatible with older versions.
All extensions will need to be recompiled. Further binaries
built with threads enabled are incompatible with binaries
built without. This should largely be transparent to the
user, as all binary incompatible configurations have their
own unique architecture name, and extension binaries get
installed at unique locations. This allows coexistence of
several configurations in the same directory hierarchy. See
INSTALL.
Security fixes may affect compatibility
A few taint leaks and taint omissions have been corrected.
This may lead to "failure" of scripts that used to work with
older versions. Compiling with -DINCOMPLETE_TAINTS provides
a perl with minimal amounts of changes to the tainting
behavior. But note that the resulting perl will have known
insecurities.
Oneliners with the "-e" switch do not create temporary files
anymore.
Relaxed new mandatory warnings introduced in 5.004
Many new warnings that were introduced in 5.004 have been
made optional. Some of these warnings are still present,
but perl's new features make them less often a problem. See
"New Diagnostics".
Licensing
Perl has a new Social Contract for contributors. See
Porting/Contract.
The license included in much of the Perl documentation has
changed. Most of the Perl documentation was previously
under the implicit GNU General Public License or the
Artistic License (at the user's choice). Now much of the
documentation unambiguously states the terms under which it
may be distributed. Those terms are in general much less
restrictive than the GNU GPL. See perl and the individual
perl manpages listed therein.
Core Changes
Threads
WARNING: Threading is considered an experimental feature.
Details of the implementation may change without notice.
There are known limitations and some bugs. These are
expected to be fixed in future versions.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 3
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
See README.threads.
Compiler
WARNING: The Compiler and related tools are considered
experimental. Features may change without notice, and there
are known limitations and bugs. Since the compiler is fully
external to perl, the default configuration will build and
install it.
The Compiler produces three different types of
transformations of a perl program. The C backend generates
C code that captures perl's state just before execution
begins. It eliminates the compile-time overheads of the
regular perl interpreter, but the run-time performance
remains comparatively the same. The CC backend generates
optimized C code equivalent to the code path at run-time.
The CC backend has greater potential for big optimizations,
but only a few optimizations are implemented currently. The
Bytecode backend generates a platform independent bytecode
representation of the interpreter's state just before
execution. Thus, the Bytecode back end also eliminates much
of the compilation overhead of the interpreter.
The compiler comes with several valuable utilities.
"B::Lint" is an experimental module to detect and warn about
suspicious code, especially the cases that the "-w" switch
does not detect.
"B::Deparse" can be used to demystify perl code, and
understand how perl optimizes certain constructs.
"B::Xref" generates cross reference reports of all
definition and use of variables, subroutines and formats in
a program.
"B::Showlex" show the lexical variables used by a subroutine
or file at a glance.
"perlcc" is a simple frontend for compiling perl.
See "ext/B/README", B, and the respective compiler modules.
Regular Expressions
Perl's regular expression engine has been seriously
overhauled, and many new constructs are supported. Several
bugs have been fixed.
Here is an itemized summary:
Many new and improved optimizations
Changes in the RE engine:
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 4
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Unneeded nodes removed;
Substrings merged together;
New types of nodes to process (SUBEXPR)* and similar expressions
quickly, used if the SUBEXPR has no side effects and matches
strings of the same length;
Better optimizations by lookup for constant substrings;
Better search for constants substrings anchored by $ ;
Changes in Perl code using RE engine:
More optimizations to s/longer/short/;
study() was not working;
/blah/ may be optimized to an analogue of index() if $& $` $' not seen;
Unneeded copying of matched-against string removed;
Only matched part of the string is copying if $` $' were not seen;
Many bug fixes
Note that only the major bug fixes are listed here. See
Changes for others.
Backtracking might not restore start of $3.
No feedback if max count for * or + on "complex" subexpression
was reached, similarly (but at compile time) for {3,34567}
Primitive restrictions on max count introduced to decrease a
possibility of a segfault;
(ZERO-LENGTH)* could segfault;
(ZERO-LENGTH)* was prohibited;
Long REs were not allowed;
/RE/g could skip matches at the same position after a
zero-length match;
New regular expression constructs
The following new syntax elements are supported:
(?<=RE)
(?<!RE)
(?{ CODE })
(?i-x)
(?i:RE)
(?(COND)YES_RE|NO_RE)
(?>RE)
\z
New operator for precompiled regular expressions
See "New "qr//" operator".
Other improvements
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 5
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Better debugging output (possibly with colors),
even from non-debugging Perl;
RE engine code now looks like C, not like assembler;
Behaviour of RE modifiable by `use re' directive;
Improved documentation;
Test suite significantly extended;
Syntax [:^upper:] etc., reserved inside character classes;
Incompatible changes
(?i) localized inside enclosing group;
$( is not interpolated into RE any more;
/RE/g may match at the same position (with non-zero length)
after a zero-length match (bug fix).
See perlre and perlop.
Improved malloc()
See banner at the beginning of "malloc.c" for details.
Quicksort is internally implemented
Perl now contains its own highly optimized qsort() routine.
The new qsort() is resistant to inconsistent comparison
functions, so Perl's "sort()" will not provoke coredumps any
more when given poorly written sort subroutines. (Some C
library "qsort()"s that were being used before used to have
this problem.) In our testing, the new "qsort()" required
the minimal number of pair-wise compares on average, among
all known "qsort()" implementations.
See "perlfunc/sort".
Reliable signals
Perl's signal handling is susceptible to random crashes,
because signals arrive asynchronously, and the Perl runtime
is not reentrant at arbitrary times.
However, one experimental implementation of reliable signals
is available when threads are enabled. See
"Thread::Signal". Also see INSTALL for how to build a Perl
capable of threads.
Reliable stack pointers
The internals now reallocate the perl stack only at
predictable times. In particular, magic calls never trigger
reallocations of the stack, because all reentrancy of the
runtime is handled using a "stack of stacks". This should
improve reliability of cached stack pointers in the
internals and in XSUBs.
More generous treatment of carriage returns
Perl used to complain if it encountered literal carriage
returns in scripts. Now they are mostly treated like
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 6
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
whitespace within program text. Inside string literals and
here documents, literal carriage returns are ignored if they
occur paired with linefeeds, or get interpreted as
whitespace if they stand alone. This behavior means that
literal carriage returns in files should be avoided. You
can get the older, more compatible (but less generous)
behavior by defining the preprocessor symbol
"PERL_STRICT_CR" when building perl. Of course, all this
has nothing whatever to do with how escapes like "\r" are
handled within strings.
Note that this doesn't somehow magically allow you to keep
all text files in DOS format. The generous treatment only
applies to files that perl itself parses. If your C
compiler doesn't allow carriage returns in files, you may
still be unable to build modules that need a C compiler.
Memory leaks
"substr", "pos" and "vec" don't leak memory anymore when
used in lvalue context. Many small leaks that impacted
applications that embed multiple interpreters have been
fixed.
Better support for multiple interpreters
The build-time option "-DMULTIPLICITY" has had many of the
details reworked. Some previously global variables that
should have been per-interpreter now are. With care, this
allows interpreters to call each other. See the
"PerlInterp" extension on CPAN.
Behavior of local() on array and hash elements is now well-
defined
See "Temporary Values via local()" in perlsub.
"%!" is transparently tied to the Errno module
See perlvar, and Errno.
Pseudo-hashes are supported
See perlref.
"EXPR foreach EXPR" is supported
See perlsyn.
Keywords can be globally overridden
See perlsub.
$^E is meaningful on Win32
See perlvar.
"foreach (1..1000000)" optimized
"foreach (1..1000000)" is now optimized into a counting
loop. It does not try to allocate a 1000000-size list
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 7
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
anymore.
"Foo::" can be used as implicitly quoted package name
Barewords caused unintuitive behavior when a subroutine with
the same name as a package happened to be defined. Thus,
"new Foo @args", use the result of the call to "Foo()"
instead of "Foo" being treated as a literal. The
recommended way to write barewords in the indirect object
slot is "new Foo:: @args". Note that the method "new()" is
called with a first argument of "Foo", not "Foo::" when you
do that.
"exists $Foo::{Bar::}" tests existence of a package
It was impossible to test for the existence of a package
without actually creating it before. Now "exists
$Foo::{Bar::}" can be used to test if the "Foo::Bar"
namespace has been created.
Better locale support
See perllocale.
Experimental support for 64-bit platforms
Perl5 has always had 64-bit support on systems with 64-bit
longs. Starting with 5.005, the beginnings of experimental
support for systems with 32-bit long and 64-bit 'long long'
integers has been added. If you add -DUSE_LONG_LONG to your
ccflags in config.sh (or manually define it in perl.h) then
perl will be built with 'long long' support. There will be
many compiler warnings, and the resultant perl may not work
on all systems. There are many other issues related to
third-party extensions and libraries. This option exists to
allow people to work on those issues.
prototype() returns useful results on builtins
See "prototype" in perlfunc.
Extended support for exception handling
"die()" now accepts a reference value, and $@ gets set to
that value in exception traps. This makes it possible to
propagate exception objects. This is an undocumented
experimental feature.
Re-blessing in DESTROY() supported for chaining DESTROY()
methods
See "Destructors" in perlobj.
All "printf" format conversions are handled internally
See "printf" in perlfunc.
New "INIT" keyword
"INIT" subs are like "BEGIN" and "END", but they get run
just before the perl runtime begins execution. e.g., the
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 8
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Perl Compiler makes use of "INIT" blocks to initialize and
resolve pointers to XSUBs.
New "lock" keyword
The "lock" keyword is the fundamental synchronization
primitive in threaded perl. When threads are not enabled,
it is currently a noop.
To minimize impact on source compatibility this keyword is
"weak", i.e., any user-defined subroutine of the same name
overrides it, unless a "use Thread" has been seen.
New "qr//" operator
The "qr//" operator, which is syntactically similar to the
other quote-like operators, is used to create precompiled
regular expressions. This compiled form can now be
explicitly passed around in variables, and interpolated in
other regular expressions. See perlop.
"our" is now a reserved word
Calling a subroutine with the name "our" will now provoke a
warning when using the "-w" switch.
Tied arrays are now fully supported
See Tie::Array.
Tied handles support is better
Several missing hooks have been added. There is also a new
base class for TIEARRAY implementations. See Tie::Array.
4th argument to substr
substr() can now both return and replace in one operation.
The optional 4th argument is the replacement string. See
"substr" in perlfunc.
Negative LENGTH argument to splice
splice() with a negative LENGTH argument now work similar to
what the LENGTH did for substr(). Previously a negative
LENGTH was treated as 0. See "splice" in perlfunc.
Magic lvalues are now more magical
When you say something like "substr($x, 5) = "hi"", the
scalar returned by substr() is special, in that any
modifications to it affect $x. (This is called a 'magic
lvalue' because an 'lvalue' is something on the left side of
an assignment.) Normally, this is exactly what you would
expect to happen, but Perl uses the same magic if you use
substr(), pos(), or vec() in a context where they might be
modified, like taking a reference with "\" or as an argument
to a sub that modifies @_. In previous versions, this
'magic' only went one way, but now changes to the scalar the
magic refers to ($x in the above example) affect the magic
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 9
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
lvalue too. For instance, this code now acts differently:
$x = "hello";
sub printit {
$x = "g'bye";
print $_[0], "\n";
}
printit(substr($x, 0, 5));
In previous versions, this would print "hello", but it now
prints "g'bye".
<> now reads in records
If $/ is a reference to an integer, or a scalar that holds
an integer, <> will read in records instead of lines. For
more info, see "$/" in perlvar.
Supported Platforms
Configure has many incremental improvements. Site-wide
policy for building perl can now be made persistent, via
Policy.sh. Configure also records the command-line
arguments used in config.sh.
New Platforms
BeOS is now supported. See README.beos.
DOS is now supported under the DJGPP tools. See README.dos
(installed as perldos on some systems).
MiNT is now supported. See README.mint.
MPE/iX is now supported. See README.mpeix.
MVS (aka OS390, aka Open Edition) is now supported. See
README.os390 (installed as perlos390 on some systems).
Stratus VOS is now supported. See README.vos.
Changes in existing support
Win32 support has been vastly enhanced. Support for Perl
Object, a C++ encapsulation of Perl. GCC and EGCS are now
supported on Win32. See README.win32, aka perlwin32.
VMS configuration system has been rewritten. See README.vms
(installed as README_vms on some systems).
The hints files for most Unix platforms have seen
incremental improvements.
Modules and Pragmata
New Modules
B Perl compiler and tools. See B.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 10
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Data::Dumper
A module to pretty print Perl data. See Data::Dumper.
Dumpvalue
A module to dump perl values to the screen. See
Dumpvalue.
Errno
A module to look up errors more conveniently. See
Errno.
File::Spec
A portable API for file operations.
ExtUtils::Installed
Query and manage installed modules.
ExtUtils::Packlist
Manipulate .packlist files.
Fatal
Make functions/builtins succeed or die.
IPC::SysV
Constants and other support infrastructure for System V
IPC operations in perl.
Test
A framework for writing test suites.
Tie::Array
Base class for tied arrays.
Tie::Handle
Base class for tied handles.
Thread
Perl thread creation, manipulation, and support.
attrs
Set subroutine attributes.
fields
Compile-time class fields.
re Various pragmata to control behavior of regular
expressions.
Changes in existing modules
Benchmark
You can now run tests for x seconds instead of guessing
the right number of tests to run.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 11
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Keeps better time.
Carp
Carp has a new function cluck(). cluck() warns, like
carp(), but also adds a stack backtrace to the error
message, like confess().
CGI CGI has been updated to version 2.42.
Fcntl
More Fcntl constants added: F_SETLK64, F_SETLKW64,
O_LARGEFILE for large (more than 4G) file access (the
64-bit support is not yet working, though, so no need to
get overly excited), Free/Net/OpenBSD locking behaviour
flags F_FLOCK, F_POSIX, Linux F_SHLCK, and O_ACCMODE:
the mask of O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, and O_RDWR.
Math::Complex
The accessors methods Re, Im, arg, abs, rho, theta,
methods can ($z->Re()) now also act as mutators
($z->Re(3)).
Math::Trig
A little bit of radial trigonometry (cylindrical and
spherical) added, for example the great circle distance.
POSIX
POSIX now has its own platform-specific hints files.
DB_File
DB_File supports version 2.x of Berkeley DB. See
"ext/DB_File/Changes".
MakeMaker
MakeMaker now supports writing empty makefiles, provides
a way to specify that site umask() policy should be
honored. There is also better support for manipulation
of .packlist files, and getting information about
installed modules.
Extensions that have both architecture-dependent and
architecture-independent files are now always installed
completely in the architecture-dependent locations.
Previously, the shareable parts were shared both across
architectures and across perl versions and were
therefore liable to be overwritten with newer versions
that might have subtle incompatibilities.
CPAN
See perlmodinstall and CPAN.
Cwd Cwd::cwd is faster on most platforms.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 12
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Utility Changes
"h2ph" and related utilities have been vastly overhauled.
"perlcc", a new experimental front end for the compiler is
available.
The crude GNU "configure" emulator is now called
"configure.gnu" to avoid trampling on "Configure" under
case-insensitive filesystems.
"perldoc" used to be rather slow. The slower features are
now optional. In particular, case-insensitive searches need
the "-i" switch, and recursive searches need "-r". You can
set these switches in the "PERLDOC" environment variable to
get the old behavior.
Documentation Changes
Config.pm now has a glossary of variables.
Porting/patching.pod has detailed instructions on how to
create and submit patches for perl.
perlport specifies guidelines on how to write portably.
perlmodinstall describes how to fetch and install modules
from "CPAN" sites.
Some more Perl traps are documented now. See perltrap.
perlopentut gives a tutorial on using open().
perlreftut gives a tutorial on references.
perlthrtut gives a tutorial on threads.
New Diagnostics
Ambiguous call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or
use &
(W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as
a Perl keyword, and you have used the name without
qualification for calling one or the other. Perl
decided to call the builtin because the subroutine is
not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put
an ampersand before the subroutine name, or qualify the
name with its package. Alternatively, you can import
the subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the
"use subs" pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the
"CORE::" prefix on the operator (e.g. "CORE::log($x)")
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 13
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
or by declaring the subroutine to be an object method
(see attrs).
Bad index while coercing array into hash
(F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th
element of a pseudo-hash is not legal. Index values
must be at 1 or greater. See perlref.
Bareword "%s" refers to nonexistent package
(W) You used a qualified bareword of the form "Foo::",
but the compiler saw no other uses of that namespace
before that point. Perhaps you need to predeclare a
package?
Can't call method "%s" on an undefined value
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot
filled by the object reference or package name contains
an undefined value. Something like this will reproduce
the error:
$BADREF = 42;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
Can't check filesystem of script "%s" for nosuid
(P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of
the script for nosuid.
Can't coerce array into hash
(F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the
array has no information on how to map from keys to
array indices. You can do that only with arrays that
have a hash reference at index 0.
Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
(F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out
of an eval "string". (You can use it to jump out of an
eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't want to.)
Can't localize pseudo-hash element
(F) You said something like "local $ar->{'key'}", where
$ar is a reference to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been
implemented yet, but you can get a similar effect by
localizing the corresponding array element directly:
"local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}]".
Can't use %%! because Errno.pm is not available
(F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl
automatically loads the Errno.pm module. The Errno
module is expected to tie the %! hash to provide
symbolic names for $! errno values.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 14
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
(F) A string of a form "CORE::word" was given to
prototype(), but there is no builtin with the name
"word".
Character class syntax [. .] is reserved for future
extensions
(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the
syntax beginning with "[." and ending with ".]" is
reserved for future extensions. If you need to
represent those character sequences inside a regular
expression character class, just quote the square
brackets with the backslash: "\[." and ".\]".
Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future
extensions
(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the
syntax beginning with "[:" and ending with ":]" is
reserved for future extensions. If you need to
represent those character sequences inside a regular
expression character class, just quote the square
brackets with the backslash: "\[:" and ":\]".
Character class syntax [= =] is reserved for future
extensions
(W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the
syntax beginning with "[=" and ending with "=]" is
reserved for future extensions. If you need to
represent those character sequences inside a regular
expression character class, just quote the square
brackets with the backslash: "\[=" and "=\]".
%s: Eval-group in insecure regular expression
(F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a
regular expression that contains the "(?{ ... })" zero-
width assertion, which is unsafe. See "(?{ code })" in
perlre, and perlsec.
%s: Eval-group not allowed, use re 'eval'
(F) A regular expression contained the "(?{ ... })"
zero-width assertion, but that construct is only allowed
when the "use re 'eval'" pragma is in effect. See "(?{
code })" in perlre.
%s: Eval-group not allowed at run time
(F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression
containing the "(?{ ... })" zero-width assertion at run
time, as it would when the pattern contains interpolated
values. Since that is a security risk, it is not
allowed. If you insist, you may still do this by
explicitly building the pattern from an interpolated
string at run time and using that in an eval(). See
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 15
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
"(?{ code })" in perlre.
Explicit blessing to '' (assuming package main)
(W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length
string. This has the effect of blessing the reference
into the package main. This is usually not what you
want. Consider providing a default target package, e.g.
bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
Illegal hex digit ignored
(W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 -
9 or A - F in a hexadecimal number. Interpretation of
the hexadecimal number stopped before the illegal
character.
No such array field
(F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the
field name used is not defined. The hash at index 0
should map all valid field names to array indices for
that to work.
No such field "%s" in variable %s of type %s
(F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable
where the type does not know about the field name. The
field names are looked up in the %FIELDS hash in the
type package at compile time. The %FIELDS hash is
usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
Out of memory during ridiculously large request
(F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount"
bytes. This error is most likely to be caused by a typo
in the Perl program. e.g., $arr[time] instead of
$arr[$time].
Range iterator outside integer range
(F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range
operator ".." are outside the range which can be
represented by integers internally. One possible
workaround is to force Perl to use magical string
increment by prepending "0" to your numbers.
Recursive inheritance detected while looking for method '%s'
%s
(F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered
while invoking a method. Probably indicates an
unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
Reference found where even-sized list expected
(W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting
a list with an even number of elements (for assignment
to a hash). This usually means that you used the anon
hash constructor when you meant to use parens. In any
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 16
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
case, a hash requires key/value pairs.
%hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
%hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
%hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
%hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
Undefined value assigned to typeglob
(W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
"*foo = undef". This does nothing. It's possible that
you really mean "undef *foo".
Use of reserved word "%s" is deprecated
(D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future
versions of perl may use it as a keyword, so you're
better off either explicitly quoting the word in a
manner appropriate for its context of use, or using a
different name altogether. The warning can be
suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a "&"
prefix, or using a package qualifier, e.g. "&our()", or
"Foo::our()".
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In
the above the settings were that the LC_ALL was "En_US"
and the LANG had no value. This error means that Perl
detected that you and/or your system administrator have
set up the so-called variable system but Perl could not
use those settings. This was not dead serious,
fortunately: there is a "default locale" called "C" that
Perl can and will use, the script will be run. Before
you really fix the problem, however, you will get the
same error message each time you run Perl. How to
really fix the problem can be found in "LOCALE PROBLEMS"
in perllocale.
Obsolete Diagnostics
Can't mktemp()
(F) The mktemp() routine failed for some reason while
trying to process a -e switch. Maybe your /tmp
partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 17
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
Can't write to temp file for -e: %s
(F) The write routine failed for some reason while
trying to process a -e switch. Maybe your /tmp
partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
Cannot open temporary file
(F) The create routine failed for some reason while
trying to process a -e switch. Maybe your /tmp
partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
regexp too big
(F) The current implementation of regular expressions
uses shorts as address offsets within a string.
Unfortunately this means that if the regular expression
compiles to longer than 32767, it'll blow up. Usually
when you want a regular expression this big, there is a
better way to do it with multiple statements. See
perlre.
Configuration Changes
You can use "Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl" which causes
installperl to skip installing perl also as /usr/bin/perl.
This is useful if you prefer not to modify /usr/bin for some
reason or another but harmful because many scripts assume to
find Perl in /usr/bin/perl.
BUGS
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the
headers of recently posted articles in the
comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. There may also be
information at http://www.perl.com/perl/ , the Perl Home
Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the
perlbug program included with your release. Make sure you
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.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 18
Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERL5005DELTA(1)
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/perl-512 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
The Changes file for 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.
HISTORY
Written by Gurusamy Sarathy <[email protected]>, with
many contributions from The Perl Porters.
Send omissions or corrections to <[email protected]>.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.
perl v5.12.5 Last change: 2012-11-03 19