perldelta - what is new for perl v5.41.8
This document describes differences between the 5.41.7 release and the 5.41.8 release.
If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.41.6, first read perl5417delta, which describes differences between 5.41.6 and 5.41.7.
Perl 5.40 reintroduced unconditional references from functions to their containing functions to fix a bug introduced in Perl 5.18 that broke the special behaviour of eval EXPR in package DB which is used by the debugger.
In some cases this change led to circular reference chains between closures and other existing references, resulting in memory leaks.
This change has been reverted, fixing [GH #22547] but re-breaking [GH #19370].
This means the reference loops won't occur, and that lexical variables and functions from enclosing functions may not be visible in the debugger.
Note that calling eval EXPR in a function unconditionally causes a function to reference its enclosing functions as it always has.
The peephole optimizer recognises the following zero-offset substr patterns and swaps in a new dedicated operator (OP_SUBSTR_LEFT). [GH #22785]
substr($x, 0, ...)
substr($x, 0, ..., '')B::Deparse has been upgraded from version 1.81 to 1.82.
Config::Perl::V has been upgraded from version 0.36 to 0.38.
Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.190 to 2.191.
DBM_Filter has been upgraded from version 0.06 to 0.07.
experimental has been upgraded from version 0.032 to 0.034.
ExtUtils::ParseXS has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.57.
ExtUtils::Typemaps has been upgraded from version 3.56 to 3.57.
Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20241220 to 5.20250120.
Opcode has been upgraded from version 1.67 to 1.68.
Term::Table has been upgraded from version 0.023 to 0.024.
Test::Simple has been upgraded from version 1.302204 to 1.302207.
Time::Piece has been upgraded from version 1.3401_01 to 1.35.
We have attempted to update the documentation to reflect the changes listed in this document. If you find any we have missed, open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues.
Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release.
"shmread" in perlfunc and "shmwrite" in perlfunc are no longer limited to 31-bit values for their POS and SIZE arguments. [GH #22895]
"shmread" in perlfunc is now better behaved if VAR is not a plain string. If VAR is a tied variable, it calls STORE once; previously, it would also call FETCH, but without using the result. If VAR is a reference, the referenced entity has its refcount properly decremented when VAR is turned into a string; previously, it would leak memory. [GH #22898]
Perl 5.41.8 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.41.7 and contains approximately 8,800 lines of changes across 370 files from 17 authors.
Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 6,800 lines of changes to 320 .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 5.41.8:
Branislav Zahradník, Chad Granum, Dan Book, David Mitchell, Graham Knop, H.Merijn Brand, James E Keenan, Karl Williamson, Lukas Mai, Max Maischein, Paul Evans, Philippe Bruhat (BooK), Richard Leach, Sergei Zhmylev, Steve Hay, TAKAI Kousuke, Tony Cook.
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 AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. There may also be information at https://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.
If you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues. 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 "SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION" in perlsec for details of how to report the issue.
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 perlthanks program:
perlthanksThis will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.
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.