perl5300delta - Man Page

Using a lookbehind assertion (like (?<=foo?) or (?<!ba{1,9}r) previously would generate an error and refuse to compile.  Now it compiles (if the maximum lookbehind is at most 255 characters), but raises a warning in the new experimental::vlb warnings category.  This is to caution you that the precise behavior is subject to change based on feedback from use in the field.

See "(?<=pattern)" in perlre and "(?<!pattern)" in perlre.

The meaning of an unbounded upper quantifier "{m,}" remains unchanged. It matches 2**31 - 1 times on most platforms, and more on ones where a C language short variable is more than 4 bytes long.

Because of a change in Unicode release cycles, Perl jumps from Unicode 10.0 in Perl 5.28 to Unicode 12.1 in Perl 5.30.

For details on the Unicode changes, see <https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode11.0.0/> for 11.0; <https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.0.0/> for 12.0; and <https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/> for 12.1. (Unicode 12.1 differs from 12.0 only in the addition of a single character, that for the new Japanese era name.)

The Word_Break property, as in past Perl releases, remains tailored to behave more in line with expectations of Perl users.  This means that sequential runs of horizontal white space characters are not broken apart, but kept as a single run.  Unicode 11 changed from past versions to be more in line with Perl, but it left several white space characters as causing breaks: TAB, NO BREAK SPACE, and FIGURE SPACE (U+2007).  We have decided to continue to use the previous Perl tailoring with regards to these.

You can now do something like this in a regular expression pattern

 qr! \p{nv= /(?x) \A [0-5] \z / }!

which matches all Unicode code points whose numeric value is between 0 and 5 inclusive.  So, it could match the Thai or Bengali digits whose numeric values are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

This marks another step in implementing the regular expression features the Unicode Consortium suggests.

Most properties are supported, with the remainder planned for 5.32. Details are in "Wildcards in Property Values" in perlunicode.

Previously it was an error to evaluate a named character \N{...} within a single quoted regular expression pattern (whose evaluation is deferred from the normal place).  This restriction is now removed.

Turkic languages have different casing rules than other languages for the characters "i" and "I".  The uppercase of "i" is LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH DOT ABOVE (U+0130); and the lowercase of "I" is LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I (U+0131).  Unicode furnishes alternate casing rules for use with Turkic languages.  Previously, Perl ignored these, but now, it uses them when it detects that it is operating under a Turkic UTF-8 locale.

Previously, these calls were only used when the perl was compiled to be multi-threaded.  To always enable them, add

 -Accflags='-DUSE_THREAD_SAFE_LOCALE'

to your Configure flags.

This macro is still defined but no longer used in core

Now, adding the verbose flag (-Dv) to the -Dr flag turns on all possible regular expression debugging.

Setting $[ to a non-zero value has been deprecated since Perl 5.12 and now throws a fatal error. See "Assigning non-zero to $[ is fatal" in perldeprecation.

See "Use of unassigned code point or non-standalone grapheme for a delimiter." in perldeprecation

But to avoid breaking code unnecessarily, most instances that issued a deprecation warning, remain legal and now have a non-deprecation warning raised.  See "Unescaped left braces in regular expressions" in perldeprecation.

Calling sysread(), syswrite(), send() or recv() on a :utf8 handle, whether applied explicitly or implicitly, is now fatal.  This was deprecated in perl 5.24.

There were two problems with calling these functions on :utf8 handles:

• All four functions only paid attention to the :utf8 flag.  Other layers were completely ignored, so a handle with :encoding(UTF-16LE) layer would be treated as UTF-8.  Other layers, such as compression are completely ignored with or without the :utf8 flag.
• sysread() and recv() would read from the handle, skipping any validation by the layers, and do no validation of their own.  This could lead to invalidly encoded perl scalars.

[GH #14839] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/14839>.

Declarations such as my $x if 0 are no longer permitted.

[GH #16702] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16702>.

These special variables, long deprecated, now throw exceptions when used.

[GH #16718] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16718>.

The dump() function, long discouraged, may no longer be used unless it is fully qualified, i.e., CORE::dump().

[GH #16719] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16719>.

The File::Glob::glob() function, long deprecated, has been removed and now throws an exception which advises use of File::Glob::bsd_glob() instead.

[GH #16721] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16721>.

It croaks if it would otherwise return a UTF-8 string that contains malformed UTF-8.  This protects against potential security threats.  This is considered a bug fix as well. [GH #16035] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16035>.

There are several sets of digits in the Common script.  [0-9] is the most familiar.  But there are also [\x{FF10}-\x{FF19}] (FULLWIDTH DIGIT ZERO - FULLWIDTH DIGIT NINE), and several sets for use in mathematical notation, such as the MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK DIGITs. Any of these sets should be able to appear in script runs of, say, Greek.  But the design of 5.30 overlooked all but the ASCII digits [0-9], so the design was flawed.  This has been fixed, so is both a bug fix and an incompatibility. [GH #16704] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16704>.

All digits in a run still have to come from the same set of ten digits.

As JSON::XS 4.0 changed its policy and enabled allow_nonref by default, JSON::PP also enabled allow_nonref by default.

This deprecation was scheduled to become fatal in 5.30, but has been delayed to 5.32 due to problems that showed up with some CPAN modules. For details of what's affected, see perldeprecation.

• Archive::Tar has been upgraded from version 2.30 to 2.32.
• B has been upgraded from version 1.74 to 1.76.
• B::Concise has been upgraded from version 1.003 to 1.004.
• B::Deparse has been upgraded from version 1.48 to 1.49.
• bignum has been upgraded from version 0.49 to 0.51.
• bytes has been upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.
• Carp has been upgraded from version 1.38 to 1.50
• Compress::Raw::Bzip2 has been upgraded from version 2.074 to 2.084.
• Compress::Raw::Zlib has been upgraded from version 2.076 to 2.084.
• Config::Extensions has been upgraded from version 0.02 to 0.03.
• Config::Perl::V. has been upgraded from version 0.29 to 0.32. This was due to a new configuration variable that has influence on binary compatibility: USE_THREAD_SAFE_LOCALE.
• CPAN has been upgraded from version 2.20 to 2.22.

• Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.170 to 2.174

  Data::Dumper now avoids leaking when croaking.

• DB_File has been upgraded from version 1.840 to 1.843.
• deprecate has been upgraded from version 0.03 to 0.04.
• Devel::Peek has been upgraded from version 1.27 to 1.28.
• Devel::PPPort has been upgraded from version 3.40 to 3.52.
• Digest::SHA has been upgraded from version 6.01 to 6.02.
• Encode has been upgraded from version 2.97 to 3.01.
• Errno has been upgraded from version 1.29 to 1.30.
• experimental has been upgraded from version 0.019 to 0.020.
• ExtUtils::CBuilder has been upgraded from version 0.280230 to 0.280231.
• ExtUtils::Manifest has been upgraded from version 1.70 to 1.72.
• ExtUtils::Miniperl has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.
• ExtUtils::ParseXS has been upgraded from version 3.39 to 3.40. OUTLIST parameters are no longer incorrectly included in the automatically generated function prototype. [GH #16746] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16746>.
• feature has been upgraded from version 1.52 to 1.54.
• File::Copy has been upgraded from version 2.33 to 2.34.

• File::Find has been upgraded from version 1.34 to 1.36.

  $File::Find::dont_use_nlink now defaults to 1 on all platforms. [GH #16759] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16759>.

  Variables $Is_Win32 and $Is_VMS are being initialized.

• File::Glob has been upgraded from version 1.31 to 1.32.
• File::Path has been upgraded from version 2.15 to 2.16.

• File::Spec has been upgraded from version 3.74 to 3.78.

  Silence Cwd warning on Android builds if targetsh is not defined.

• File::Temp has been upgraded from version 0.2304 to 0.2309.
• Filter::Util::Call has been upgraded from version 1.58 to 1.59.
• GDBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.
• HTTP::Tiny has been upgraded from version 0.070 to 0.076.
• I18N::Langinfo has been upgraded from version 0.17 to 0.18.
• IO has been upgraded from version 1.39 to 1.40.

• IO-Compress has been upgraded from version 2.074 to 2.084.

  Adds support for IO::Uncompress::Zstd and IO::Uncompress::UnLzip.

  The BinModeIn and BinModeOut options are now no-ops. ALL files will be read/written in binmode.

• IPC::Cmd has been upgraded from version 1.00 to 1.02.

• JSON::PP has been upgraded from version 2.97001 to 4.02.

  JSON::PP as JSON::XS 4.0 enables allow_nonref by default.

• lib has been upgraded from version 0.64 to 0.65.
• Locale::Codes has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.57.

• Math::BigInt has been upgraded from version 1.999811 to 1.999816.

  bnok() now supports the full Kronenburg extension. [cpan #95628] <https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=95628>.

• Math::BigInt::FastCalc has been upgraded from version 0.5006 to 0.5008.
• Math::BigRat has been upgraded from version 0.2613 to 0.2614.

• Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20180622 to 5.20190520.

  Changes to B::Op_private and Config

• Module::Load has been upgraded from version 0.32 to 0.34.

• Module::Metadata has been upgraded from version 1.000033 to 1.000036.

  Properly clean up temporary directories after testing.

• NDBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.
• Net::Ping has been upgraded from version 2.62 to 2.71.
• ODBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.15 to 1.16.
• PathTools has been upgraded from version 3.74 to 3.78.
• parent has been upgraded from version 0.236 to 0.237.

• perl5db.pl has been upgraded from version 1.54 to 1.55.

  Debugging threaded code no longer deadlocks in DB::sub nor DB::lsub.

• perlfaq has been upgraded from version 5.021011 to 5.20190126.

• PerlIO::encoding has been upgraded from version 0.26 to 0.27.

  Warnings enabled by setting the WARN_ON_ERR flag in $PerlIO::encoding::fallback are now only produced if warnings are enabled with use warnings "utf8"; or setting $^W.

• PerlIO::scalar has been upgraded from version 0.29 to 0.30.
• podlators has been upgraded from version 4.10 to 4.11.
• POSIX has been upgraded from version 1.84 to 1.88.
• re has been upgraded from version 0.36 to 0.37.
• SDBM_File has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.
• sigtrap has been upgraded from version 1.08 to 1.09.

• Storable has been upgraded from version 3.08 to 3.15.

  Storable no longer probes for recursion limits at build time. [GH #16780] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16780> and others.

  Metasploit exploit code was included to test for CVE-2015-1592 detection, this caused anti-virus detections on at least one AV suite. The exploit code has been removed and replaced with a simple functional test. [GH #16778] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16778>

• Test::Simple has been upgraded from version 1.302133 to 1.302162.
• Thread::Queue has been upgraded from version 3.12 to 3.13.

• threads::shared has been upgraded from version 1.58 to 1.60.

  Added support for extra tracing of locking, this requires a -DDEBUGGING and extra compilation flags.

• Time::HiRes has been upgraded from version 1.9759 to 1.9760.
• Time::Local has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.28.
• Time::Piece has been upgraded from version 1.3204 to 1.33.
• Unicode::Collate has been upgraded from version 1.25 to 1.27.
• Unicode::UCD has been upgraded from version 0.70 to 0.72.
• User::grent has been upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.
• utf8 has been upgraded from version 1.21 to 1.22.

• vars has been upgraded from version 1.04 to 1.05.

  vars.pm no longer disables non-vars strict when checking if strict vars is enabled. [GH #15851] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15851>.

• version has been upgraded from version 0.9923 to 0.9924.
• warnings has been upgraded from version 1.42 to 1.44.
• XS::APItest has been upgraded from version 0.98 to 1.00.
• XS::Typemap has been upgraded from version 0.16 to 0.17.

The following modules will be removed from the core distribution in a future release, and will at that time need to be installed from CPAN. Distributions on CPAN which require these modules will need to list them as prerequisites.

The core versions of these modules will now issue "deprecated"-category warnings to alert you to this fact.  To silence these deprecation warnings, install the modules in question from CPAN.

Note that these are (with rare exceptions) fine modules that you are encouraged to continue to use.  Their disinclusion from core primarily hinges on their necessity to bootstrapping a fully functional, CPAN-capable Perl installation, not usually on concerns over their design.

• arybase has been removed. It used to provide the implementation of the $[ variable (also known as the array_base feature), letting array and string indices start at a non-zero value. As the feature has been removed (see "Assigning non-zero to $[ is fatal"), this internal module is gone as well.
• B::Debug is no longer distributed with the core distribution.  It continues to be available on CPAN as B::Debug <https://metacpan.org/pod/B::Debug>.
• Locale::Codes has been removed at the request of its author.  It continues to be available on CPAN as Locale::Codes <https://metacpan.org/pod/Locale::Codes> [GH #16660] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16660>.

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 perlbug@perl.org <mailto:perlbug@perl.org>.

perlapi

• AvFILL() was wrongly listed as deprecated.  This has been corrected. [GH #16586] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16586>

perlop

• We no longer have null (empty line) here doc terminators, so perlop should not refer to them.
• The behaviour of tr when the delimiter is an apostrophe has been clarified. In particular, hyphens aren't special, and \x{} isn't interpolated. [GH #15853] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15853>

perlreapi, perlvar

• Improve docs for lastparen, lastcloseparen.

perlfunc

• The entry for "-X" in perlfunc has been clarified to indicate that symbolic links are followed for most tests.
• Clarification of behaviour of reset EXPR.
• Try to clarify that ref(qr/xx/) returns Regexp rather than REGEXP and why. [GH #16801] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16801>.

perlreref

• Clarification of the syntax of /(?(cond)yes)/.

perllocale

• There are actually two slightly different types of UTF-8 locales: one for Turkic languages and one for everything else. Starting in Perl v5.30, Perl seamlessly  handles both types.

perlrecharclass

• Added a note for the ::xdigit:: character class.

perlvar

• More specific documentation of paragraph mode. [GH #16787] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16787>.

• As noted under "Incompatible Changes" above, the deprecation warning "Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated here (and will be fatal in Perl 5.30), passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/" has been changed to the non-deprecation warning "Unescaped left brace in regex is passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/%s/".
• Specifying \o{} without anything between the braces now yields the fatal error message "Empty \o{}".  Previously it was  "Number with no digits".  This means the same wording is used for this kind of error as with similar constructs such as \p{}.
• Within the scope of the experimental feature use re 'strict', specifying \x{} without anything between the braces now yields the fatal error message "Empty \x{}".  Previously it was  "Number with no digits".  This means the same wording is used for this kind of error as with similar constructs such as \p{}.  It is legal, though not wise to have an empty \x outside of re 'strict'; it silently generates a NUL character.

• Type of arg %d to %s must be %s (not %s)

  Attempts to push, pop, etc on a hash or glob now produce this message rather than complaining that they no longer work on scalars. [GH #15774] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15774>.

• Prototype not terminated

  The file and line number is now reported for this error. [GH #16697] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16697>

• Under -Dr (or use re 'Debug') the compiled regex engine program is displayed. It used to use two different spellings for infinity, INFINITY, and INFTY. It now uses the latter exclusively, as that spelling has been around the longest.

• The generated prototype (with PROTOTYPES: ENABLE) would include OUTLIST parameters, but these aren't arguments to the perl function. This has been rectified. [GH #16746] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16746>.

HP-UX 11.11

An obscure problem in pack() when compiling with HP C-ANSI-C has been fixed by disabling optimizations in pp_pack.c.

Mac OS X

Perl's build and testing process on Mac OS X for -Duseshrplib builds is now compatible with Mac OS X System Integrity Protection (SIP).

SIP prevents binaries in /bin (and a few other places) being passed the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.  For our purposes this prevents DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH from being passed to the shell, which prevents that variable being passed to the testing or build process, so running perl couldn't find libperl.dylib.

To work around that, the initial build of the perl executable expects to find libperl.dylib in the build directory, and the library path is then adjusted during installation to point to the installed library.

[GH #15057] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/15057>.

Minix3

Some support for Minix3 has been re-added.

Cygwin

Cygwin doesn't make cuserid visible.

Win32 Mingw

C99 math functions are now available.

Windows

• The USE_CPLUSPLUS build option which has long been available in win32/Makefile (for nmake) and win32/makefile.mk (for dmake) is now also available in win32/GNUmakefile (for gmake).

• The nmake makefile no longer defaults to Visual C++ 6.0 (a very old version which is unlikely to be widely used today).  As a result, it is now a requirement to specify the CCTYPE since there is no obvious choice of which modern version to default to instead.  Failure to specify CCTYPE will result in an error being output and the build will stop.

  (The dmake and gmake makefiles will automatically detect which compiler is being used, so do not require CCTYPE to be set.  This feature has not yet been added to the nmake makefile.)

• sleep() with warnings enabled for a USE_IMP_SYS build no longer warns about the sleep timeout being too large. [GH #16631] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16631>.
• Support for compiling perl on Windows using Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 (containing Visual C++ 14.2) has been added.
• socket() now sets $! if the protocol, address family and socket type combination is not found. [GH #16849] <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16849>.
• The Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK build, with its early x64 compiler and tools, was accidentally broken in Perl 5.27.9.  This has now been fixed.