PERL582DELTA(1)                                 Perl Programmers Reference Guide                                 PERL582DELTA(1)



NAME
       perl582delta - what is new for perl v5.8.2

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.8.1 release and the 5.8.2 release.

       If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.6.1, first read the perl58delta, which describes differences
       between 5.6.0 and 5.8.0, and the perl581delta, which describes differences between 5.8.0 and 5.8.1.

Incompatible Changes
       For threaded builds for modules calling certain re-entrant system calls, binary compatibility was accidentally lost
       between 5.8.0 and 5.8.1.  Binary compatibility with 5.8.0 has been restored in 5.8.2, which necessitates breaking
       compatibility with 5.8.1. We see this as the lesser of two evils.

       This will only affect people who have a threaded perl 5.8.1, and compiled modules which use these calls, and now attempt
       to run the compiled modules with 5.8.2. The fix is to re-compile and re-install the modules using 5.8.2.

Core Enhancements
   Hash Randomisation
       The hash randomisation introduced with 5.8.1 has been amended. It transpired that although the implementation introduced
       in 5.8.1 was source compatible with 5.8.0, it was not binary compatible in certain cases. 5.8.2 contains an improved
       implementation which is both source and binary compatible with both 5.8.0 and 5.8.1, and remains robust against the form
       of attack which prompted the change for 5.8.1.

       We are grateful to the Debian project for their input in this area.  See "Algorithmic Complexity Attacks" in perlsec for
       the original rationale behind this change.

   Threading
       Several memory leaks associated with variables shared between threads have been fixed.

Modules and Pragmata
   Updated Modules And Pragmata
       The following modules and pragmata have been updated since Perl 5.8.1:

       Devel::PPPort
       Digest::MD5
       I18N::LangTags
       libnet
       MIME::Base64
       Pod::Perldoc
       strict
           Documentation improved

       Tie::Hash
           Documentation improved

       Time::HiRes
       Unicode::Collate
       Unicode::Normalize
       UNIVERSAL
           Documentation improved

Selected Bug Fixes
       Some syntax errors involving unrecognized filetest operators are now handled correctly by the parser.

Changed Internals
       Interpreter initialization is more complete when -DMULTIPLICITY is off.  This should resolve problems with initializing
       and destroying the Perl interpreter more than once in a single process.

Platform Specific Problems
       Dynamic linker flags have been tweaked for Solaris and OS X, which should solve problems seen while building some XS
       modules.

       Bugs in OS/2 sockets and tmpfile have been fixed.

       In OS X "setreuid" and friends are troublesome - perl will now work around their problems as best possible.

Future Directions
       Starting with 5.8.3 we intend to make more frequent maintenance releases, with a smaller number of changes in each. The
       intent is to propagate bug fixes out to stable releases more rapidly and make upgrading stable releases less of an
       upheaval. This should give end users more flexibility in their choice of upgrade timing, and allow them easier assessment
       of the impact of upgrades. The current plan is for code freezes as follows

       o   5.8.3 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday December 31st 2003

       o   5.8.4 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday March 31st 2004

       o   5.8.5 23:59:59 GMT, Wednesday June 30th 2004

       with the release following soon after, when testing is complete.

       See "Future Directions" in perl581delta for more soothsaying.

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.com/, 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 perlbugATperl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.  You can browse and search the Perl 5 bugs at
       http://bugs.perl.org/

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.



perl v5.12.4                                               2011-06-01                                            PERL582DELTA(1)