perl5393delta - what is new for perl v5.39.3

- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
- Performance Enhancements
- Modules and Pragmata
  - Updated Modules and Pragmata
- Documentation
  - Changes to Existing Documentation
- Configuration and Compilation
- Testing
- Platform Support
  - Platform-Specific Notes
- Internal Changes
- Selected Bug Fixes
- Acknowledgements
- Reporting Bugs
- Give Thanks
- SEE ALSO

# NAME

perl5393delta - what is new for perl v5.39.3

# DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.39.2 release and the 5.39.3 release.

If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.39.1, first read perl5392delta, which describes differences between 5.39.1 and 5.39.2.

# Performance Enhancements

- The negation OPs have been modified to support the generic TARGMY optimization. [GH #21442]

# Modules and Pragmata

## Updated Modules and Pragmata

- B has been upgraded from version 1.88 to 1.89.

- builtin has been upgraded to version 0.010. It now has an `unimport` method, allowing you to remove lexically-imported functions by the `no builtin ...` syntax.

- Data::Dumper has been upgraded from version 2.188 to 2.189.

- DB_File has been upgraded from version 1.858 to 1.859.

- Devel::PPPort has been upgraded from version 3.71 to 3.72.

- ExtUtils::CBuilder has been upgraded from version 0.280239 to 0.280240.

- fields has been upgraded from version 2.24 to 2.25.

- File::Compare has been upgraded from version 1.1007 to 1.1008.

- FindBin has been upgraded from version 1.53 to 1.54.

- Getopt::Std has been upgraded from version 1.13 to 1.14. Documentation and test improvements only; no change in functionality.

- IO has been upgraded from version 1.52 to 1.53.

- Module::CoreList has been upgraded from version 5.20230820 to 5.20230920.

- threads has been upgraded from version 2.38 to 2.39.

- threads::shared has been upgraded from version 1.68 to 1.69.

# Documentation

## Changes to Existing Documentation

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.

# Configuration and Compilation

- Fix here-doc used for code to probe `LC_ALL` syntax for disparate locales introduced in 5.39.2. [GH #21451]

# Testing

Tests were added and changed to reflect the other additions and changes in this release. Furthermore, these significant changes were made:

- t/op/magic.t would fail when `ps` was the BusyBox implementation, since that doesn't support the `-p` flag and otherwise ignores a process id on the command-line. This caused TEST failures on BusyBox systems such as Alpine Linux. [GH #17542]

# Platform Support

## Platform-Specific Notes

MacOS/Darwin

  Don't set `MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET` when building on OS X 10.5. [GH #21367]

# Internal Changes

- A new API function has been added that simplifies C (or XS) code that creates `LISTOP` optree fragments. `newLISTOPn()` is a variadic function that takes a `NULL`-terminated list of child op pointers, and constructs a new checked `LISTOP` to contain them all. This is simpler than creating a new plain `OP_LIST`, adding each child individually, and finally calling `op_convert_list()` in most code fragments.

- The `eval_sv()` API now accepts the `G_USEHINTS` flag, which uses the hints such as strict and features from `PL_curcop` instead of the default, which is to use default hints, e.g. no `use vX.XX;`, no strict, default features.

  Beware if you use this flag in XS code: your evaluated code will need to support whatever strictness or features are in effect at the point your XS function is called.

  [GH #21415]

# Selected Bug Fixes

- Declared references can now be used with `state` variables. [GH #21351]

- Trailing elements in an `unshift`ed and resized array will now always be initialized. [GH #21265]

- Make `use 5.036` respect the -X flag

  perl's -X flag disables all warnings globally, but «use 5.036» didn't respect that until now. [GH #21431]

- Fixed an OP leak when an error was produced for initializer for a class field. [GH #20812]

- Fixed a leak of the return value when smartmatching against a code reference.

- Fixed a slowdown in repeated substitution replacements using special variables, such as `s/....x$1/g`. It actually makes all string concatenations involving such "magic" variables less slow, but the slowdown was more noticeable on repeated substitutions due to extra memory usage that was only freed after the last iteration. The slowdown started in perl 5.28.0 - which generally sped up string concatenation but slowed down when using special variables. [GH #21360]

# Acknowledgements

Perl 5.39.3 represents approximately 4 weeks of development since Perl 5.39.2 and contains approximately 9,100 lines of changes across 170 files from 21 authors.

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were approximately 6,100 lines of changes to 91 .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 5.39.3:

Alexander Kanavin, Bruno Meneguele, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker, Dan Church, David Mitchell, Elvin Aslanov, Graham Knop, Jakub Wilk, James E Keenan, Karl Williamson, Leon Timmermans, Lukas Mai, Matthew Horsfall, Nicolas R, Paul Evans, Paul Marquess, Richard Leach, Sevan Janiyan, Tomasz Konojacki, Tony Cook, Zakariyya Mughal.

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.

# Reporting Bugs

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 http://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.

# Give Thanks

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:

    perlthanks

This will send an email to the Perl 5 Porters list with your show of thanks.

# SEE ALSO

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.

perl5393delta - what is new for perl v5.39.3