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NAME
       perl56delta - what's new for perl v5.6.0

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes differences between the 5.005
       release and the 5.6.0 release.

Core Enhancements
   Interpreter cloning, threads, and concurrency
       Perl 5.6.0 introduces the beginnings of support for
       running multiple interpreters concurrently in different
       threads.  In conjunction with the perl_clone() API call,
       which can be used to selectively duplicate the state of
       any given interpreter, it is possible to compile a piece
       of code once in an interpreter, clone that interpreter one
       or more times, and run all the resulting interpreters in
       distinct threads.

       On the Windows platform, this feature is used to emulate
       fork() at the interpreter level.  See perlfork for details
       about that.

       This feature is still in evolution.  It is eventually
       meant to be used to selectively clone a subroutine and
       data reachable from that subroutine in a separate
       interpreter and run the cloned subroutine in a separate
       thread.  Since there is no shared data between the
       interpreters, little or no locking will be needed (unless
       parts of the symbol table are explicitly shared).  This is
       obviously intended to be an easy-to-use replacement for
       the existing threads support.

       Support for cloning interpreters and interpreter
       concurrency can be enabled using the -Dusethreads
       Configure option (see win32/Makefile for how to enable it
       on Windows.)  The resulting perl executable will be
       functionally identical to one that was built with
       -Dmultiplicity, but the perl_clone() API call will only be
       available in the former.

       -Dusethreads enables the cpp macro USE_ITHREADS by
       default, which in turn enables Perl source code changes
       that provide a clear separation between the op tree and
       the data it operates with.  The former is immutable, and
       can therefore be shared between an interpreter and all of
       its clones, while the latter is considered local to each
       interpreter, and is therefore copied for each clone.

       Note that building Perl with the -Dusemultiplicity
       Configure option is adequate if you wish to run multiple
       independent interpreters concurrently in different
       threads.  -Dusethreads only provides the additional
       functionality of the perl_clone() API call and other
       support for running cloned interpreters concurrently.



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           NOTE: This is an experimental feature.  Implementation details are
           subject to change.

   Lexically scoped warning categories
       You can now control the granularity of warnings emitted by
       perl at a finer level using the "use warnings" pragma.
       warnings and perllexwarn have copious documentation on
       this feature.

   Unicode and UTF-8 support
       Perl now uses UTF-8 as its internal representation for
       character strings.  The "utf8" and "bytes" pragmas are
       used to control this support in the current lexical scope.
       See perlunicode, utf8 and bytes for more information.

       This feature is expected to evolve quickly to support some
       form of I/O disciplines that can be used to specify the
       kind of input and output data (bytes or characters).
       Until that happens, additional modules from CPAN will be
       needed to complete the toolkit for dealing with Unicode.

           NOTE: This should be considered an experimental feature.  Implementation
           details are subject to change.

   Support for interpolating named characters
       The new "\N" escape interpolates named characters within
       strings.  For example, "Hi! \N{WHITE SMILING FACE}"
       evaluates to a string with a unicode smiley face at the
       end.

   "our" declarations
       An "our" declaration introduces a value that can be best
       understood as a lexically scoped symbolic alias to a
       global variable in the package that was current where the
       variable was declared.  This is mostly useful as an
       alternative to the "vars" pragma, but also provides the
       opportunity to introduce typing and other attributes for
       such variables.  See "our" in perlfunc.

   Support for strings represented as a vector of ordinals
       Literals of the form "v1.2.3.4" are now parsed as a string
       composed of characters with the specified ordinals.  This
       is an alternative, more readable way to construct
       (possibly unicode) strings instead of interpolating
       characters, as in "\x{1}\x{2}\x{3}\x{4}".  The leading "v"
       may be omitted if there are more than two ordinals, so
       1.2.3 is parsed the same as "v1.2.3".

       Strings written in this form are also useful to represent
       version "numbers".  It is easy to compare such version
       "numbers" (which are really just plain strings) using any
       of the usual string comparison operators "eq", "ne", "lt",
       "gt", etc., or perform bitwise string operations on them
       using "|", "&", etc.



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       In conjunction with the new $^V magic variable (which
       contains the perl version as a string), such literals can
       be used as a readable way to check if you're running a
       particular version of Perl:

           # this will parse in older versions of Perl also
           if ($^V and $^V gt v5.6.0) {
               # new features supported
           }

       "require" and "use" also have some special magic to
       support such literals, but this particular usage should be
       avoided because it leads to misleading error messages
       under versions of Perl which don't support vector strings.
       Using a true version number will ensure correct behavior
       in all versions of Perl:

           require 5.006;    # run time check for v5.6
           use 5.006_001;    # compile time check for v5.6.1

       Also, "sprintf" and "printf" support the Perl-specific
       format flag %v to print ordinals of characters in
       arbitrary strings:

           printf "v%vd", $^V;         # prints current version, such as "v5.5.650"
           printf "%*vX", ":", $addr;  # formats IPv6 address
           printf "%*vb", " ", $bits;  # displays bitstring

       See "Scalar value constructors" in perldata for additional
       information.

   Improved Perl version numbering system
       Beginning with Perl version 5.6.0, the version number
       convention has been changed to a "dotted integer" scheme
       that is more commonly found in open source projects.

       Maintenance versions of v5.6.0 will be released as v5.6.1,
       v5.6.2 etc.  The next development series following v5.6.0
       will be numbered v5.7.x, beginning with v5.7.0, and the
       next major production release following v5.6.0 will be
       v5.8.0.

       The English module now sets $PERL_VERSION to $^V (a string
       value) rather than $] (a numeric value).  (This is a
       potential incompatibility.  Send us a report via perlbug
       if you are affected by this.)

       The v1.2.3 syntax is also now legal in Perl.  See "Support
       for strings represented as a vector of ordinals" for more
       on that.

       To cope with the new versioning system's use of at least
       three significant digits for each version component, the
       method used for incrementing the subversion number has



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       also changed slightly.  We assume that versions older than
       v5.6.0 have been incrementing the subversion component in
       multiples of 10.  Versions after v5.6.0 will increment
       them by 1.  Thus, using the new notation, 5.005_03 is the
       "same" as v5.5.30, and the first maintenance version
       following v5.6.0 will be v5.6.1 (which should be read as
       being equivalent to a floating point value of 5.006_001 in
       the older format, stored in $]).

   New syntax for declaring subroutine attributes
       Formerly, if you wanted to mark a subroutine as being a
       method call or as requiring an automatic lock() when it is
       entered, you had to declare that with a "use attrs" pragma
       in the body of the subroutine.  That can now be
       accomplished with declaration syntax, like this:

           sub mymethod : locked method;
           ...
           sub mymethod : locked method {
               ...
           }

           sub othermethod :locked :method;
           ...
           sub othermethod :locked :method {
               ...
           }

       (Note how only the first ":" is mandatory, and whitespace
       surrounding the ":" is optional.)

       AutoSplit.pm and SelfLoader.pm have been updated to keep
       the attributes with the stubs they provide.  See
       attributes.

   File and directory handles can be autovivified
       Similar to how constructs such as "$x->[0]" autovivify a
       reference, handle constructors (open(), opendir(), pipe(),
       socketpair(), sysopen(), socket(), and accept()) now
       autovivify a file or directory handle if the handle passed
       to them is an uninitialized scalar variable.  This allows
       the constructs such as "open(my $fh, ...)" and "open(local
       $fh,...)"  to be used to create filehandles that will
       conveniently be closed automatically when the scope ends,
       provided there are no other references to them.  This
       largely eliminates the need for typeglobs when opening
       filehandles that must be passed around, as in the
       following example:

           sub myopen {
               open my $fh, "@_"
                    or die "Can't open '@_': $!";
               return $fh;
           }



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           {
               my $f = myopen("</etc/motd");
               print <$f>;
               # $f implicitly closed here
           }

   open() with more than two arguments
       If open() is passed three arguments instead of two, the
       second argument is used as the mode and the third argument
       is taken to be the file name.  This is primarily useful
       for protecting against unintended magic behavior of the
       traditional two-argument form.  See "open" in perlfunc.

   64-bit support
       Any platform that has 64-bit integers either

               (1) natively as longs or ints
               (2) via special compiler flags
               (3) using long long or int64_t

       is able to use "quads" (64-bit integers) as follows:

       o   constants (decimal, hexadecimal, octal, binary) in the
           code

       o   arguments to oct() and hex()

       o   arguments to print(), printf() and sprintf() (flag
           prefixes ll, L, q)

       o   printed as such

       o   pack() and unpack() "q" and "Q" formats

       o   in basic arithmetics: + - * / % (NOTE: operating close
           to the limits of the integer values may produce
           surprising results)

       o   in bit arithmetics: & | ^ ~ << >> (NOTE: these used to
           be forced to be 32 bits wide but now operate on the
           full native width.)

       o   vec()

       Note that unless you have the case (a) you will have to
       configure and compile Perl using the -Duse64bitint
       Configure flag.

           NOTE: The Configure flags -Duselonglong and -Duse64bits have been
           deprecated.  Use -Duse64bitint instead.

       There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one
       is achieved using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second



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       one using Configure -Duse64bitall.  The difference is that
       the first one is minimal and the second one maximal.  The
       first works in more places than the second.

       The "use64bitint" does only as much as is required to get
       64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example,
       using "long longs") while your memory may still be limited
       to 2 gigabytes (because your pointers could still be
       32-bit).  Note that the name "64bitint" does not imply
       that your C compiler will be using 64-bit "int"s (it
       might, but it doesn't have to): the "use64bitint" means
       that you will be able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.

       The "use64bitall" goes all the way by attempting to switch
       also integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being
       64-bit.  This may create an even more binary incompatible
       Perl than -Duse64bitint: the resulting executable may not
       run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may have to
       reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be
       64-bit aware.

       Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither
       -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.

       Last but not least: note that due to Perl's habit of
       always using floating point numbers, the quads are still
       not true integers.  When quads overflow their limits
       (0...18_446_744_073_709_551_615 unsigned,
       -9_223_372_036_854_775_808...9_223_372_036_854_775_807
       signed), they are silently promoted to floating point
       numbers, after which they will start losing precision (in
       their lower digits).

           NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
           Existing support only covers the LP64 data model.  In particular, the
           LLP64 data model is not yet supported.  64-bit libraries and system
           APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.

   Large file support
       If you have filesystems that support "large files" (files
       larger than 2 gigabytes), you may now also be able to
       create and access them from Perl.

           NOTE: The default action is to enable large file support, if
           available on the platform.

       If the large file support is on, and you have a Fcntl
       constant O_LARGEFILE, the O_LARGEFILE is automatically
       added to the flags of sysopen().

       Beware that unless your filesystem also supports "sparse
       files" seeking to umpteen petabytes may be inadvisable.

       Note that in addition to requiring a proper file system to



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       do large files you may also need to adjust your per-
       process (or your per-system, or per-process-group, or per-
       user-group) maximum filesize limits before running Perl
       scripts that try to handle large files, especially if you
       intend to write such files.

       Finally, in addition to your process/process group maximum
       filesize limits, you may have quota limits on your
       filesystems that stop you (your user id or your user group
       id) from using large files.

       Adjusting your process/user/group/file system/operating
       system limits is outside the scope of Perl core language.
       For process limits, you may try increasing the limits
       using your shell's limits/limit/ulimit command before
       running Perl.  The BSD::Resource extension (not included
       with the standard Perl distribution) may also be of use,
       it offers the getrlimit/setrlimit interface that can be
       used to adjust process resource usage limits, including
       the maximum filesize limit.

   Long doubles
       In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to
       enhance the range and precision of your double precision
       floating point numbers (that is, Perl's numbers).  Use
       Configure -Duselongdouble to enable this support (if it is
       available).

   "more bits"
       You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the
       64-bit support and the long double support.

   Enhanced support for sort() subroutines
       Perl subroutines with a prototype of "($$)", and XSUBs in
       general, can now be used as sort subroutines.  In either
       case, the two elements to be compared are passed as normal
       parameters in @_.  See "sort" in perlfunc.

       For unprototyped sort subroutines, the historical behavior
       of passing the elements to be compared as the global
       variables $a and $b remains unchanged.

   "sort $coderef @foo" allowed
       sort() did not accept a subroutine reference as the
       comparison function in earlier versions.  This is now
       permitted.

   File globbing implemented internally
       Perl now uses the File::Glob implementation of the glob()
       operator automatically.  This avoids using an external csh
       process and the problems associated with it.

           NOTE: This is currently an experimental feature.  Interfaces and
           implementation are subject to change.



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   Support for CHECK blocks
       In addition to "BEGIN", "INIT", "END", "DESTROY" and
       "AUTOLOAD", subroutines named "CHECK" are now special.
       These are queued up during compilation and behave similar
       to END blocks, except they are called at the end of
       compilation rather than at the end of execution.  They
       cannot be called directly.

   POSIX character class syntax [: :] supported
       For example to match alphabetic characters use
       /[[:alpha:]]/.  See perlre for details.

   Better pseudo-random number generator
       In 5.005_0x and earlier, perl's rand() function used the C
       library rand(3) function.  As of 5.005_52, Configure tests
       for drand48(), random(), and rand() (in that order) and
       picks the first one it finds.

       These changes should result in better random numbers from
       rand().

   Improved "qw//" operator
       The "qw//" operator is now evaluated at compile time into
       a true list instead of being replaced with a run time call
       to "split()".  This removes the confusing misbehaviour of
       "qw//" in scalar context, which had inherited that
       behaviour from split().

       Thus:

           $foo = ($bar) = qw(a b c); print "$foo|$bar\n";

       now correctly prints "3|a", instead of "2|a".

   Better worst-case behavior of hashes
       Small changes in the hashing algorithm have been
       implemented in order to improve the distribution of lower
       order bits in the hashed value.  This is expected to yield
       better performance on keys that are repeated sequences.

   pack() format 'Z' supported
       The new format type 'Z' is useful for packing and
       unpacking null-terminated strings.  See "pack" in
       perlfunc.

   pack() format modifier '!' supported
       The new format type modifier '!' is useful for packing and
       unpacking native shorts, ints, and longs.  See "pack" in
       perlfunc.

   pack() and unpack() support counted strings
       The template character '/' can be used to specify a
       counted string type to be packed or unpacked.  See "pack"
       in perlfunc.



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   Comments in pack() templates
       The '#' character in a template introduces a comment up to
       end of the line.  This facilitates documentation of pack()
       templates.

   Weak references
       In previous versions of Perl, you couldn't cache objects
       so as to allow them to be deleted if the last reference
       from outside the cache is deleted.  The reference in the
       cache would hold a reference count on the object and the
       objects would never be destroyed.

       Another familiar problem is with circular references.
       When an object references itself, its reference count
       would never go down to zero, and it would not get
       destroyed until the program is about to exit.

       Weak references solve this by allowing you to "weaken" any
       reference, that is, make it not count towards the
       reference count.  When the last non-weak reference to an
       object is deleted, the object is destroyed and all the
       weak references to the object are automatically undef-ed.

       To use this feature, you need the Devel::WeakRef package
       from CPAN, which contains additional documentation.

           NOTE: This is an experimental feature.  Details are subject to change.

   Binary numbers supported
       Binary numbers are now supported as literals, in s?printf
       formats, and "oct()":

           $answer = 0b101010;
           printf "The answer is: %b\n", oct("0b101010");

   Lvalue subroutines
       Subroutines can now return modifiable lvalues.  See
       "Lvalue subroutines" in perlsub.

           NOTE: This is an experimental feature.  Details are subject to change.

   Some arrows may be omitted in calls through references
       Perl now allows the arrow to be omitted in many constructs
       involving subroutine calls through references.  For
       example, "$foo[10]->('foo')" may now be written
       "$foo[10]('foo')".  This is rather similar to how the
       arrow may be omitted from "$foo[10]->{'foo'}".  Note
       however, that the arrow is still required for
       "foo(10)->('bar')".

   Boolean assignment operators are legal lvalues
       Constructs such as "($a ||= 2) += 1" are now allowed.





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   exists() is supported on subroutine names
       The exists() builtin now works on subroutine names.  A
       subroutine is considered to exist if it has been declared
       (even if implicitly).  See "exists" in perlfunc for
       examples.

   exists() and delete() are supported on array elements
       The exists() and delete() builtins now work on simple
       arrays as well.  The behavior is similar to that on hash
       elements.

       exists() can be used to check whether an array element has
       been initialized.  This avoids autovivifying array
       elements that don't exist.  If the array is tied, the
       EXISTS() method in the corresponding tied package will be
       invoked.

       delete() may be used to remove an element from the array
       and return it.  The array element at that position returns
       to its uninitialized state, so that testing for the same
       element with exists() will return false.  If the element
       happens to be the one at the end, the size of the array
       also shrinks up to the highest element that tests true for
       exists(), or 0 if none such is found.  If the array is
       tied, the DELETE() method in the corresponding tied
       package will be invoked.

       See "exists" in perlfunc and "delete" in perlfunc for
       examples.

   Pseudo-hashes work better
       Dereferencing some types of reference values in a pseudo-
       hash, such as "$ph->{foo}[1]", was accidentally
       disallowed.  This has been corrected.

       When applied to a pseudo-hash element, exists() now
       reports whether the specified value exists, not merely if
       the key is valid.

       delete() now works on pseudo-hashes.  When given a pseudo-
       hash element or slice it deletes the values corresponding
       to the keys (but not the keys themselves).  See "Pseudo-
       hashes: Using an array as a hash" in perlref.

       Pseudo-hash slices with constant keys are now optimized to
       array lookups at compile-time.

       List assignments to pseudo-hash slices are now supported.

       The "fields" pragma now provides ways to create pseudo-
       hashes, via fields::new() and fields::phash().  See
       fields.





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           NOTE: The pseudo-hash data type continues to be experimental.
           Limiting oneself to the interface elements provided by the
           fields pragma will provide protection from any future changes.

   Automatic flushing of output buffers
       fork(), exec(), system(), qx//, and pipe open()s now flush
       buffers of all files opened for output when the operation
       was attempted.  This mostly eliminates confusing buffering
       mishaps suffered by users unaware of how Perl internally
       handles I/O.

       This is not supported on some platforms like Solaris where
       a suitably correct implementation of fflush(NULL) isn't
       available.

   Better diagnostics on meaningless filehandle operations
       Constructs such as "open(<FH>)" and "close(<FH>)" are
       compile time errors.  Attempting to read from filehandles
       that were opened only for writing will now produce
       warnings (just as writing to read-only filehandles does).

   Where possible, buffered data discarded from duped input
       filehandle
       "open(NEW, "<&OLD")" now attempts to discard any data that
       was previously read and buffered in "OLD" before duping
       the handle.  On platforms where doing this is allowed, the
       next read operation on "NEW" will return the same data as
       the corresponding operation on "OLD".  Formerly, it would
       have returned the data from the start of the following
       disk block instead.

   eof() has the same old magic as <>
       "eof()" would return true if no attempt to read from "<>"
       had yet been made.  "eof()" has been changed to have a
       little magic of its own, it now opens the "<>" files.

   binmode() can be used to set :crlf and :raw modes
       binmode() now accepts a second argument that specifies a
       discipline for the handle in question.  The two pseudo-
       disciplines ":raw" and ":crlf" are currently supported on
       DOS-derivative platforms.  See "binmode" in perlfunc and
       open.

   "-T" filetest recognizes UTF-8 encoded files as "text"
       The algorithm used for the "-T" filetest has been enhanced
       to correctly identify UTF-8 content as "text".

   system(), backticks and pipe open now reflect exec() failure
       On Unix and similar platforms, system(), qx() and
       open(FOO, "cmd |") etc., are implemented via fork() and
       exec().  When the underlying exec() fails, earlier
       versions did not report the error properly, since the
       exec() happened to be in a different process.




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       The child process now communicates with the parent about
       the error in launching the external command, which allows
       these constructs to return with their usual error value
       and set $!.

   Improved diagnostics
       Line numbers are no longer suppressed (under most likely
       circumstances) during the global destruction phase.

       Diagnostics emitted from code running in threads other
       than the main thread are now accompanied by the thread ID.

       Embedded null characters in diagnostics now actually show
       up.  They used to truncate the message in prior versions.

       $foo::a and $foo::b are now exempt from "possible typo"
       warnings only if sort() is encountered in package "foo".

       Unrecognized alphabetic escapes encountered when parsing
       quote constructs now generate a warning, since they may
       take on new semantics in later versions of Perl.

       Many diagnostics now report the internal operation in
       which the warning was provoked, like so:

           Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) at (eval 1) line 1.
           Use of uninitialized value in print at (eval 1) line 1.

       Diagnostics  that occur within eval may also report the
       file and line number where the eval is located, in
       addition to the eval sequence number and the line number
       within the evaluated text itself.  For example:

           Not enough arguments for scalar at (eval 4)[newlib/perl5db.pl:1411] line 2, at EOF

   Diagnostics follow STDERR
       Diagnostic output now goes to whichever file the "STDERR"
       handle is pointing at, instead of always going to the
       underlying C runtime library's "stderr".

   More consistent close-on-exec behavior
       On systems that support a close-on-exec flag on
       filehandles, the flag is now set for any handles created
       by pipe(), socketpair(), socket(), and accept(), if that
       is warranted by the value of $^F that may be in effect.
       Earlier versions neglected to set the flag for handles
       created with these operators.  See "pipe" in perlfunc,
       "socketpair" in perlfunc, "socket" in perlfunc, "accept"
       in perlfunc, and "$^F" in perlvar.

   syswrite() ease-of-use
       The length argument of "syswrite()" has become optional.





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   Better syntax checks on parenthesized unary operators
       Expressions such as:

           print defined(&foo,&bar,&baz);
           print uc("foo","bar","baz");
           undef($foo,&bar);

       used to be accidentally allowed in earlier versions, and
       produced unpredictable behaviour.  Some produced ancillary
       warnings when used in this way; others silently did the
       wrong thing.

       The parenthesized forms of most unary operators that
       expect a single argument now ensure that they are not
       called with more than one argument, making the cases shown
       above syntax errors.  The usual behaviour of:

           print defined &foo, &bar, &baz;
           print uc "foo", "bar", "baz";
           undef $foo, &bar;

       remains unchanged.  See perlop.

   Bit operators support full native integer width
       The bit operators (& | ^ ~ << >>) now operate on the full
       native integral width (the exact size of which is
       available in $Config{ivsize}).  For example, if your
       platform is either natively 64-bit or if Perl has been
       configured to use 64-bit integers, these operations apply
       to 8 bytes (as opposed to 4 bytes on 32-bit platforms).
       For portability, be sure to mask off the excess bits in
       the result of unary "~", e.g., "~$x & 0xffffffff".

   Improved security features
       More potentially unsafe operations taint their results for
       improved security.

       The "passwd" and "shell" fields returned by the
       getpwent(), getpwnam(), and getpwuid() are now tainted,
       because the user can affect their own encrypted password
       and login shell.

       The variable modified by shmread(), and messages returned
       by msgrcv() (and its object-oriented interface
       IPC::SysV::Msg::rcv) are also tainted, because other
       untrusted processes can modify messages and shared memory
       segments for their own nefarious purposes.

   More functional bareword prototype (*)
       Bareword prototypes have been rationalized to enable them
       to be used to override builtins that accept barewords and
       interpret them in a special way, such as "require" or
       "do".




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       Arguments prototyped as "*" will now be visible within the
       subroutine as either a simple scalar or as a reference to
       a typeglob.  See "Prototypes" in perlsub.

   "require" and "do" may be overridden
       "require" and "do 'file'" operations may be overridden
       locally by importing subroutines of the same name into the
       current package (or globally by importing them into the
       CORE::GLOBAL:: namespace).  Overriding "require" will also
       affect "use", provided the override is visible at compile-
       time.  See "Overriding Built-in Functions" in perlsub.

   $^X variables may now have names longer than one character
       Formerly, $^X was synonymous with ${"\cX"}, but $^XY was a
       syntax error.  Now variable names that begin with a
       control character may be arbitrarily long.  However, for
       compatibility reasons, these variables must be written
       with explicit braces, as "${^XY}" for example.  "${^XYZ}"
       is synonymous with ${"\cXYZ"}.  Variable names with more
       than one control character, such as "${^XY^Z}", are
       illegal.

       The old syntax has not changed.  As before, `^X' may be
       either a literal control-X character or the two-character
       sequence `caret' plus `X'.  When braces are omitted, the
       variable name stops after the control character.  Thus
       "$^XYZ" continues to be synonymous with "$^X . "YZ"" as
       before.

       As before, lexical variables may not have names beginning
       with control characters.  As before, variables whose names
       begin with a control character are always forced to be in
       package `main'.  All such variables are reserved for
       future extensions, except those that begin with "^_",
       which may be used by user programs and are guaranteed not
       to acquire special meaning in any future version of Perl.

   New variable $^C reflects "-c" switch
       $^C has a boolean value that reflects whether perl is
       being run in compile-only mode (i.e. via the "-c" switch).
       Since BEGIN blocks are executed under such conditions,
       this variable enables perl code to determine whether
       actions that make sense only during normal running are
       warranted.  See perlvar.

   New variable $^V contains Perl version as a string
       $^V contains the Perl version number as a string composed
       of characters whose ordinals match the version numbers,
       i.e. v5.6.0.  This may be used in string comparisons.

       See "Support for strings represented as a vector of
       ordinals" for an example.





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   Optional Y2K warnings
       If Perl is built with the cpp macro "PERL_Y2KWARN"
       defined, it emits optional warnings when concatenating the
       number 19 with another number.

       This behavior must be specifically enabled when running
       Configure.  See INSTALL and README.Y2K.

   Arrays now always interpolate into double-quoted strings
       In double-quoted strings, arrays now interpolate, no
       matter what.  The behavior in earlier versions of perl 5
       was that arrays would interpolate into strings if the
       array had been mentioned before the string was compiled,
       and otherwise Perl would raise a fatal compile-time error.
       In versions 5.000 through 5.003, the error was

               Literal @example now requires backslash

       In versions 5.004_01 through 5.6.0, the error was

               In string, @example now must be written as \@example

       The idea here was to get people into the habit of writing
       "fred\@example.com" when they wanted a literal "@" sign,
       just as they have always written "Give me back my \$5"
       when they wanted a literal "$" sign.

       Starting with 5.6.1, when Perl now sees an "@" sign in a
       double-quoted string, it always attempts to interpolate an
       array, regardless of whether or not the array has been
       used or declared already.  The fatal error has been
       downgraded to an optional warning:

               Possible unintended interpolation of @example in string

       This warns you that "fred@example.com" is going to turn
       into "fred.com" if you don't backslash the "@".  See
       http://www.plover.com/~mjd/perl/at-error.html for more
       details about the history here.

   @- and @+ provide starting/ending offsets of regex matches
       The new magic variables @- and @+ provide the starting and
       ending offsets, respectively, of $&, $1, $2, etc.  See
       perlvar for details.

Modules and Pragmata
   Modules
       attributes
           While used internally by Perl as a pragma, this module
           also provides a way to fetch subroutine and variable
           attributes.  See attributes.

       B   The Perl Compiler suite has been extensively reworked
           for this release.  More of the standard Perl test



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           suite passes when run under the Compiler, but there is
           still a significant way to go to achieve production
           quality compiled executables.

               NOTE: The Compiler suite remains highly experimental.  The
               generated code may not be correct, even when it manages to execute
               without errors.

       Benchmark
           Overall, Benchmark results exhibit lower average error
           and better timing accuracy.

           You can now run tests for n seconds instead of
           guessing the right number of tests to run: e.g.,
           timethese(-5, ...) will run each code for at least 5
           CPU seconds.  Zero as the "number of repetitions"
           means "for at least 3 CPU seconds".  The output format
           has also changed.  For example:

              use Benchmark;$x=3;timethese(-5,{a=>sub{$x*$x},b=>sub{$x**2}})

           will now output something like this:

              Benchmark: running a, b, each for at least 5 CPU seconds...
                       a:  5 wallclock secs ( 5.77 usr +  0.00 sys =  5.77 CPU) @ 200551.91/s (n=1156516)
                       b:  4 wallclock secs ( 5.00 usr +  0.02 sys =  5.02 CPU) @ 159605.18/s (n=800686)

           New features: "each for at least N CPU seconds...",
           "wallclock secs", and the "@ operations/CPU second
           (n=operations)".

           timethese() now returns a reference to a hash of
           Benchmark objects containing the test results, keyed
           on the names of the tests.

           timethis() now returns the iterations field in the
           Benchmark result object instead of 0.

           timethese(), timethis(), and the new cmpthese() (see
           below) can also take a format specifier of 'none' to
           suppress output.

           A new function countit() is just like timeit() except
           that it takes a TIME instead of a COUNT.

           A new function cmpthese() prints a chart comparing the
           results of each test returned from a timethese() call.
           For each possible pair of tests, the percentage speed
           difference (iters/sec or seconds/iter) is shown.

           For other details, see Benchmark.

       ByteLoader
           The ByteLoader is a dedicated extension to generate



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           and run Perl bytecode.  See ByteLoader.

       constant
           References can now be used.

           The new version also allows a leading underscore in
           constant names, but disallows a double leading
           underscore (as in "__LINE__").  Some other names are
           disallowed or warned against, including BEGIN, END,
           etc.  Some names which were forced into main:: used to
           fail silently in some cases; now they're fatal
           (outside of main::) and an optional warning (inside of
           main::).  The ability to detect whether a constant had
           been set with a given name has been added.

           See constant.

       charnames
           This pragma implements the "\N" string escape.  See
           charnames.

       Data::Dumper
           A "Maxdepth" setting can be specified to avoid
           venturing too deeply into deep data structures.  See
           Data::Dumper.

           The XSUB implementation of Dump() is now automatically
           called if the "Useqq" setting is not in use.

           Dumping "qr//" objects works correctly.

       DB  "DB" is an experimental module that exposes a clean
           abstraction to Perl's debugging API.

       DB_File
           DB_File can now be built with Berkeley DB versions 1,
           2 or 3.  See "ext/DB_File/Changes".

       Devel::DProf
           Devel::DProf, a Perl source code profiler has been
           added.  See Devel::DProf and dprofpp.

       Devel::Peek
           The Devel::Peek module provides access to the internal
           representation of Perl variables and data.  It is a
           data debugging tool for the XS programmer.

       Dumpvalue
           The Dumpvalue module provides screen dumps of Perl
           data.

       DynaLoader
           DynaLoader now supports a dl_unload_file() function on
           platforms that support unloading shared objects using



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           dlclose().

           Perl can also optionally arrange to unload all
           extension shared objects loaded by Perl.  To enable
           this, build Perl with the Configure option
           "-Accflags=-DDL_UNLOAD_ALL_AT_EXIT".  (This maybe
           useful if you are using Apache with mod_perl.)

       English
           $PERL_VERSION now stands for $^V (a string value)
           rather than for $] (a numeric value).

       Env Env now supports accessing environment variables like
           PATH as array variables.

       Fcntl
           More Fcntl constants added: F_SETLK64, F_SETLKW64,
           O_LARGEFILE for large file (more than 4GB) access
           (NOTE: the O_LARGEFILE is automatically added to
           sysopen() flags if large file support has been
           configured, as is the default), Free/Net/OpenBSD
           locking behaviour flags F_FLOCK, F_POSIX, Linux
           F_SHLCK, and O_ACCMODE: the combined mask of O_RDONLY,
           O_WRONLY, and O_RDWR.  The seek()/sysseek() constants
           SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, and SEEK_END are available via the
           ":seek" tag.  The chmod()/stat() S_IF* constants and
           S_IS* functions are available via the ":mode" tag.

       File::Compare
           A compare_text() function has been added, which allows
           custom comparison functions.  See File::Compare.

       File::Find
           File::Find now works correctly when the wanted()
           function is either autoloaded or is a symbolic
           reference.

           A bug that caused File::Find to lose track of the
           working directory when pruning top-level directories
           has been fixed.

           File::Find now also supports several other options to
           control its behavior.  It can follow symbolic links if
           the "follow" option is specified.  Enabling the
           "no_chdir" option will make File::Find skip changing
           the current directory when walking directories.  The
           "untaint" flag can be useful when running with taint
           checks enabled.

           See File::Find.

       File::Glob
           This extension implements BSD-style file globbing.  By
           default, it will also be used for the internal



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           implementation of the glob() operator.  See
           File::Glob.

       File::Spec
           New methods have been added to the File::Spec module:
           devnull() returns the name of the null device
           (/dev/null on Unix) and tmpdir() the name of the temp
           directory (normally /tmp on Unix).  There are now also
           methods to convert between absolute and relative
           filenames: abs2rel() and rel2abs().  For compatibility
           with operating systems that specify volume names in
           file paths, the splitpath(), splitdir(), and catdir()
           methods have been added.

       File::Spec::Functions
           The new File::Spec::Functions modules provides a
           function interface to the File::Spec module.  Allows
           shorthand

               $fullname = catfile($dir1, $dir2, $file);

           instead of

               $fullname = File::Spec->catfile($dir1, $dir2, $file);

       Getopt::Long
           Getopt::Long licensing has changed to allow the Perl
           Artistic License as well as the GPL. It used to be GPL
           only, which got in the way of non-GPL applications
           that wanted to use Getopt::Long.

           Getopt::Long encourages the use of Pod::Usage to
           produce help messages. For example:

               use Getopt::Long;
               use Pod::Usage;
               my $man = 0;
               my $help = 0;
               GetOptions('help|?' => \$help, man => \$man) or pod2usage(2);
               pod2usage(1) if $help;
               pod2usage(-exitstatus => 0, -verbose => 2) if $man;

               __END__

               =head1 NAME

               sample - Using Getopt::Long and Pod::Usage

               =head1 SYNOPSIS

               sample [options] [file ...]

                Options:
                  -help            brief help message



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                  -man             full documentation

               =head1 OPTIONS

               =over 8

               =item B<-help>

               Print a brief help message and exits.

               =item B<-man>

               Prints the manual page and exits.

               =back

               =head1 DESCRIPTION

               B<This program> will read the given input file(s) and do something
               useful with the contents thereof.

               =cut

           See Pod::Usage for details.

           A bug that prevented the non-option call-back <> from
           being specified as the first argument has been fixed.

           To specify the characters < and > as option starters,
           use ><. Note, however, that changing option starters
           is strongly deprecated.

       IO  write() and syswrite() will now accept a single-
           argument form of the call, for consistency with Perl's
           syswrite().

           You can now create a TCP-based IO::Socket::INET
           without forcing a connect attempt.  This allows you to
           configure its options (like making it non-blocking)
           and then call connect() manually.

           A bug that prevented the IO::Socket::protocol()
           accessor from ever returning the correct value has
           been corrected.

           IO::Socket::connect now uses non-blocking IO instead
           of alarm() to do connect timeouts.

           IO::Socket::accept now uses select() instead of
           alarm() for doing timeouts.

           IO::Socket::INET->new now sets $! correctly on
           failure. $@ is still set for backwards compatibility.




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       JPL Java Perl Lingo is now distributed with Perl.  See
           jpl/README for more information.

       lib "use lib" now weeds out any trailing duplicate
           entries.  "no lib" removes all named entries.

       Math::BigInt
           The bitwise operations "<<", ">>", "&", "|", and "~"
           are now supported on bigints.

       Math::Complex
           The accessor methods Re, Im, arg, abs, rho, and theta
           can now also act as mutators (accessor $z->Re(),
           mutator $z->Re(3)).

           The class method "display_format" and the
           corresponding object method "display_format", in
           addition to accepting just one argument, now can also
           accept a parameter hash.  Recognized keys of a
           parameter hash are "style", which corresponds to the
           old one parameter case, and two new parameters:
           "format", which is a printf()-style format string
           (defaults usually to "%.15g", you can revert to the
           default by setting the format string to "undef") used
           for both parts of a complex number, and
           "polar_pretty_print" (defaults to true), which
           controls whether an attempt is made to try to
           recognize small multiples and rationals of pi (2pi,
           pi/2) at the argument (angle) of a polar complex
           number.

           The potentially disruptive change is that in list
           context both methods now return the parameter hash,
           instead of only the value of the "style" parameter.

       Math::Trig
           A little bit of radial trigonometry (cylindrical and
           spherical), radial coordinate conversions, and the
           great circle distance were added.

       Pod::Parser, Pod::InputObjects
           Pod::Parser is a base class for parsing and selecting
           sections of pod documentation from an input stream.
           This module takes care of identifying pod paragraphs
           and commands in the input and hands off the parsed
           paragraphs and commands to user-defined methods which
           are free to interpret or translate them as they see
           fit.

           Pod::InputObjects defines some input objects needed by
           Pod::Parser, and for advanced users of Pod::Parser
           that need more about a command besides its name and
           text.




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           As of release 5.6.0 of Perl, Pod::Parser is now the
           officially sanctioned "base parser code" recommended
           for use by all pod2xxx translators.  Pod::Text
           (pod2text) and Pod::Man (pod2man) have already been
           converted to use Pod::Parser and efforts to convert
           Pod::HTML (pod2html) are already underway.  For any
           questions or comments about pod parsing and
           translating issues and utilities, please use the
           pod-people@perl.org mailing list.

           For further information, please see Pod::Parser and
           Pod::InputObjects.

       Pod::Checker, podchecker
           This utility checks pod files for correct syntax,
           according to perlpod.  Obvious errors are flagged as
           such, while warnings are printed for mistakes that can
           be handled gracefully.  The checklist is not complete
           yet.  See Pod::Checker.

       Pod::ParseUtils, Pod::Find
           These modules provide a set of gizmos that are useful
           mainly for pod translators.  Pod::Find traverses
           directory structures and returns found pod files,
           along with their canonical names (like
           "File::Spec::Unix").  Pod::ParseUtils contains
           Pod::List (useful for storing pod list information),
           Pod::Hyperlink (for parsing the contents of "L<>"
           sequences) and Pod::Cache (for caching information
           about pod files, e.g., link nodes).

       Pod::Select, podselect
           Pod::Select is a subclass of Pod::Parser which
           provides a function named "podselect()" to filter out
           user-specified sections of raw pod documentation from
           an input stream. podselect is a script that provides
           access to Pod::Select from other scripts to be used as
           a filter.  See Pod::Select.

       Pod::Usage, pod2usage
           Pod::Usage provides the function "pod2usage()" to
           print usage messages for a Perl script based on its
           embedded pod documentation.  The pod2usage() function
           is generally useful to all script authors since it
           lets them write and maintain a single source (the
           pods) for documentation, thus removing the need to
           create and maintain redundant usage message text
           consisting of information already in the pods.

           There is also a pod2usage script which can be used
           from other kinds of scripts to print usage messages
           from pods (even for non-Perl scripts with pods
           embedded in comments).




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           For details and examples, please see Pod::Usage.

       Pod::Text and Pod::Man
           Pod::Text has been rewritten to use Pod::Parser.
           While pod2text() is still available for backwards
           compatibility, the module now has a new preferred
           interface.  See Pod::Text for the details.  The new
           Pod::Text module is easily subclassed for tweaks to
           the output, and two such subclasses
           (Pod::Text::Termcap for man-page-style bold and
           underlining using termcap information, and
           Pod::Text::Color for markup with ANSI color sequences)
           are now standard.

           pod2man has been turned into a module, Pod::Man, which
           also uses Pod::Parser.  In the process, several
           outstanding bugs related to quotes in section headers,
           quoting of code escapes, and nested lists have been
           fixed.  pod2man is now a wrapper script around this
           module.

       SDBM_File
           An EXISTS method has been added to this module (and
           sdbm_exists() has been added to the underlying sdbm
           library), so one can now call exists on an SDBM_File
           tied hash and get the correct result, rather than a
           runtime error.

           A bug that may have caused data loss when more than
           one disk block happens to be read from the database in
           a single FETCH() has been fixed.

       Sys::Syslog
           Sys::Syslog now uses XSUBs to access facilities from
           syslog.h so it no longer requires syslog.ph to exist.

       Sys::Hostname
           Sys::Hostname now uses XSUBs to call the C library's
           gethostname() or uname() if they exist.

       Term::ANSIColor
           Term::ANSIColor is a very simple module to provide
           easy and readable access to the ANSI color and
           highlighting escape sequences, supported by most ANSI
           terminal emulators.  It is now included standard.

       Time::Local
           The timelocal() and timegm() functions used to
           silently return bogus results when the date fell
           outside the machine's integer range.  They now
           consistently croak() if the date falls in an
           unsupported range.





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       Win32
           The error return value in list context has been
           changed for all functions that return a list of
           values.  Previously these functions returned a list
           with a single element "undef" if an error occurred.
           Now these functions return the empty list in these
           situations.  This applies to the following functions:

               Win32::FsType
               Win32::GetOSVersion

           The remaining functions are unchanged and continue to
           return "undef" on error even in list context.

           The Win32::SetLastError(ERROR) function has been added
           as a complement to the Win32::GetLastError() function.

           The new Win32::GetFullPathName(FILENAME) returns the
           full absolute pathname for FILENAME in scalar context.
           In list context it returns a two-element list
           containing the fully qualified directory name and the
           filename.  See Win32.

       XSLoader
           The XSLoader extension is a simpler alternative to
           DynaLoader.  See XSLoader.

       DBM Filters
           A new feature called "DBM Filters" has been added to
           all the DBM modules--DB_File, GDBM_File, NDBM_File,
           ODBM_File, and SDBM_File.  DBM Filters add four new
           methods to each DBM module:

               filter_store_key
               filter_store_value
               filter_fetch_key
               filter_fetch_value

           These can be used to filter key-value pairs before the
           pairs are written to the database or just after they
           are read from the database.  See perldbmfilter for
           further information.

   Pragmata
       "use attrs" is now obsolete, and is only provided for
       backward-compatibility.  It's been replaced by the "sub :
       attributes" syntax.  See "Subroutine Attributes" in
       perlsub and attributes.

       Lexical warnings pragma, "use warnings;", to control
       optional warnings.  See perllexwarn.

       "use filetest" to control the behaviour of filetests ("-r"
       "-w" ...).  Currently only one subpragma implemented, "use



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       filetest 'access';", that uses access(2) or equivalent to
       check permissions instead of using stat(2) as usual.  This
       matters in filesystems where there are ACLs (access
       control lists): the stat(2) might lie, but access(2) knows
       better.

       The "open" pragma can be used to specify default
       disciplines for handle constructors (e.g. open()) and for
       qx//.  The two pseudo-disciplines ":raw" and ":crlf" are
       currently supported on DOS-derivative platforms (i.e.
       where binmode is not a no-op).  See also "binmode() can be
       used to set :crlf and :raw modes".

Utility Changes
   dprofpp
       "dprofpp" is used to display profile data generated using
       "Devel::DProf".  See dprofpp.

   find2perl
       The "find2perl" utility now uses the enhanced features of
       the File::Find module.  The -depth and -follow options are
       supported.  Pod documentation is also included in the
       script.

   h2xs
       The "h2xs" tool can now work in conjunction with "C::Scan"
       (available from CPAN) to automatically parse real-life
       header files.  The "-M", "-a", "-k", and "-o" options are
       new.

   perlcc
       "perlcc" now supports the C and Bytecode backends.  By
       default, it generates output from the simple C backend
       rather than the optimized C backend.

       Support for non-Unix platforms has been improved.

   perldoc
       "perldoc" has been reworked to avoid possible security
       holes.  It will not by default let itself be run as the
       superuser, but you may still use the -U switch to try to
       make it drop privileges first.

   The Perl Debugger
       Many bug fixes and enhancements were added to perl5db.pl,
       the Perl debugger.  The help documentation was rearranged.
       New commands include "< ?", "> ?", and "{ ?" to list out
       current actions, "man docpage" to run your doc viewer on
       some perl docset, and support for quoted options.  The
       help information was rearranged, and should be viewable
       once again if you're using less as your pager.  A serious
       security hole was plugged--you should immediately remove
       all older versions of the Perl debugger as installed in
       previous releases, all the way back to perl3, from your



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       system to avoid being bitten by this.

Improved Documentation
       Many of the platform-specific README files are now part of
       the perl installation.  See perl for the complete list.

       perlapi.pod
           The official list of public Perl API functions.

       perlboot.pod
           A tutorial for beginners on object-oriented Perl.

       perlcompile.pod
           An introduction to using the Perl Compiler suite.

       perldbmfilter.pod
           A howto document on using the DBM filter facility.

       perldebug.pod
           All material unrelated to running the Perl debugger,
           plus all low-level guts-like details that risked
           crushing the casual user of the debugger, have been
           relocated from the old manpage to the next entry
           below.

       perldebguts.pod
           This new manpage contains excessively low-level
           material not related to the Perl debugger, but
           slightly related to debugging Perl itself.  It also
           contains some arcane internal details of how the
           debugging process works that may only be of interest
           to developers of Perl debuggers.

       perlfork.pod
           Notes on the fork() emulation currently available for
           the Windows platform.

       perlfilter.pod
           An introduction to writing Perl source filters.

       perlhack.pod
           Some guidelines for hacking the Perl source code.

       perlintern.pod
           A list of internal functions in the Perl source code.
           (List is currently empty.)

       perllexwarn.pod
           Introduction and reference information about lexically
           scoped warning categories.

       perlnumber.pod
           Detailed information about numbers as they are
           represented in Perl.



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       perlopentut.pod
           A tutorial on using open() effectively.

       perlreftut.pod
           A tutorial that introduces the essentials of
           references.

       perltootc.pod
           A tutorial on managing class data for object modules.

       perltodo.pod
           Discussion of the most often wanted features that may
           someday be supported in Perl.

       perlunicode.pod
           An introduction to Unicode support features in Perl.

Performance enhancements
   Simple sort() using { $a <=> $b } and the like are optimized
       Many common sort() operations using a simple inlined block
       are now optimized for faster performance.

   Optimized assignments to lexical variables
       Certain operations in the RHS of assignment statements
       have been optimized to directly set the lexical variable
       on the LHS, eliminating redundant copying overheads.

   Faster subroutine calls
       Minor changes in how subroutine calls are handled
       internally provide marginal improvements in performance.

   delete(), each(), values() and hash iteration are faster
       The hash values returned by delete(), each(), values() and
       hashes in a list context are the actual values in the
       hash, instead of copies.  This results in significantly
       better performance, because it eliminates needless copying
       in most situations.

Installation and Configuration Improvements
   -Dusethreads means something different
       The -Dusethreads flag now enables the experimental
       interpreter-based thread support by default.  To get the
       flavor of experimental threads that was in 5.005 instead,
       you need to run Configure with "-Dusethreads
       -Duse5005threads".

       As of v5.6.0, interpreter-threads support is still lacking
       a way to create new threads from Perl (i.e., "use Thread;"
       will not work with interpreter threads).  "use Thread;"
       continues to be available when you specify the
       -Duse5005threads option to Configure, bugs and all.

           NOTE: Support for threads continues to be an experimental feature.
           Interfaces and implementation are subject to sudden and drastic changes.



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   New Configure flags
       The following new flags may be enabled on the Configure
       command line by running Configure with "-Dflag".

           usemultiplicity
           usethreads useithreads      (new interpreter threads: no Perl API yet)
           usethreads use5005threads   (threads as they were in 5.005)

           use64bitint                 (equal to now deprecated 'use64bits')
           use64bitall

           uselongdouble
           usemorebits
           uselargefiles
           usesocks                    (only SOCKS v5 supported)

   Threadedness and 64-bitness now more daring
       The Configure options enabling the use of threads and the
       use of 64-bitness are now more daring in the sense that
       they no more have an explicit list of operating systems of
       known threads/64-bit capabilities.  In other words: if
       your operating system has the necessary APIs and
       datatypes, you should be able just to go ahead and use
       them, for threads by Configure -Dusethreads, and for 64
       bits either explicitly by Configure -Duse64bitint or
       implicitly if your system has 64-bit wide datatypes.  See
       also "64-bit support".

   Long Doubles
       Some platforms have "long doubles", floating point numbers
       of even larger range than ordinary "doubles".  To enable
       using long doubles for Perl's scalars, use
       -Duselongdouble.

   -Dusemorebits
       You can enable both -Duse64bitint and -Duselongdouble with
       -Dusemorebits.  See also "64-bit support".

   -Duselargefiles
       Some platforms support system APIs that are capable of
       handling large files (typically, files larger than two
       gigabytes).  Perl will try to use these APIs if you ask
       for -Duselargefiles.

       See "Large file support" for more information.

   installusrbinperl
       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.





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   SOCKS support
       You can use "Configure -Dusesocks" which causes Perl to
       probe for the SOCKS proxy protocol library (v5, not v4).
       For more information on SOCKS, see:

           http://www.socks.nec.com/

   "-A" flag
       You can "post-edit" the Configure variables using the
       Configure "-A" switch.  The editing happens immediately
       after the platform specific hints files have been
       processed but before the actual configuration process
       starts.  Run "Configure -h" to find out the full "-A"
       syntax.

   Enhanced Installation Directories
       The installation structure has been enriched to improve
       the support for maintaining multiple versions of perl, to
       provide locations for vendor-supplied modules, scripts,
       and manpages, and to ease maintenance of locally-added
       modules, scripts, and manpages.  See the section on
       Installation Directories in the INSTALL file for complete
       details.  For most users building and installing from
       source, the defaults should be fine.

       If you previously used "Configure -Dsitelib" or
       "-Dsitearch" to set special values for library
       directories, you might wish to consider using the new
       "-Dsiteprefix" setting instead.  Also, if you wish to re-
       use a config.sh file from an earlier version of perl, you
       should be sure to check that Configure makes sensible
       choices for the new directories.  See INSTALL for complete
       details.

Platform specific changes
   Supported platforms
       o   The Mach CThreads (NEXTSTEP, OPENSTEP) are now
           supported by the Thread extension.

       o   GNU/Hurd is now supported.

       o   Rhapsody/Darwin is now supported.

       o   EPOC is now supported (on Psion 5).

       o   The cygwin port (formerly cygwin32) has been greatly
           improved.

   DOS
       o   Perl now works with djgpp 2.02 (and 2.03 alpha).

       o   Environment variable names are not converted to
           uppercase any more.




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       o   Incorrect exit codes from backticks have been fixed.

       o   This port continues to use its own builtin globbing
           (not File::Glob).

   OS390 (OpenEdition MVS)
       Support for this EBCDIC platform has not been renewed in
       this release.  There are difficulties in reconciling
       Perl's standardization on UTF-8 as its internal
       representation for characters with the EBCDIC character
       set, because the two are incompatible.

       It is unclear whether future versions will renew support
       for this platform, but the possibility exists.

   VMS
       Numerous revisions and extensions to configuration, build,
       testing, and installation process to accommodate core
       changes and VMS-specific options.

       Expand %ENV-handling code to allow runtime mapping to
       logical names, CLI symbols, and CRTL environ array.

       Extension of subprocess invocation code to accept
       filespecs as command "verbs".

       Add to Perl command line processing the ability to use
       default file types and to recognize Unix-style "2>&1".

       Expansion of File::Spec::VMS routines, and integration
       into ExtUtils::MM_VMS.

       Extension of ExtUtils::MM_VMS to handle complex extensions
       more flexibly.

       Barewords at start of Unix-syntax paths may be treated as
       text rather than only as logical names.

       Optional secure translation of several logical names used
       internally by Perl.

       Miscellaneous bugfixing and porting of new core code to
       VMS.

       Thanks are gladly extended to the many people who have
       contributed VMS patches, testing, and ideas.

   Win32
       Perl can now emulate fork() internally, using multiple
       interpreters running in different concurrent threads.
       This support must be enabled at build time.  See perlfork
       for detailed information.

       When given a pathname that consists only of a drivename,



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       such as "A:", opendir() and stat() now use the current
       working directory for the drive rather than the drive
       root.

       The builtin XSUB functions in the Win32:: namespace are
       documented.  See Win32.

       $^X now contains the full path name of the running
       executable.

       A Win32::GetLongPathName() function is provided to
       complement Win32::GetFullPathName() and
       Win32::GetShortPathName().  See Win32.

       POSIX::uname() is supported.

       system(1,...) now returns true process IDs rather than
       process handles.  kill() accepts any real process id,
       rather than strictly return values from system(1,...).

       For better compatibility with Unix, "kill(0, $pid)" can
       now be used to test whether a process exists.

       The "Shell" module is supported.

       Better support for building Perl under command.com in
       Windows 95 has been added.

       Scripts are read in binary mode by default to allow
       ByteLoader (and the filter mechanism in general) to work
       properly.  For compatibility, the DATA filehandle will be
       set to text mode if a carriage return is detected at the
       end of the line containing the __END__ or __DATA__ token;
       if not, the DATA filehandle will be left open in binary
       mode.  Earlier versions always opened the DATA filehandle
       in text mode.

       The glob() operator is implemented via the "File::Glob"
       extension, which supports glob syntax of the C shell.
       This increases the flexibility of the glob() operator, but
       there may be compatibility issues for programs that relied
       on the older globbing syntax.  If you want to preserve
       compatibility with the older syntax, you might want to run
       perl with "-MFile::DosGlob".  For details and
       compatibility information, see File::Glob.

Significant bug fixes
   <HANDLE> on empty files
       With $/ set to "undef", "slurping" an empty file returns a
       string of zero length (instead of "undef", as it used to)
       the first time the HANDLE is read after $/ is set to
       "undef".  Further reads yield "undef".

       This means that the following will append "foo" to an



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       empty file (it used to do nothing):

           perl -0777 -pi -e 's/^/foo/' empty_file

       The behaviour of:

           perl -pi -e 's/^/foo/' empty_file

       is unchanged (it continues to leave the file empty).

   "eval '...'" improvements
       Line numbers (as reflected by caller() and most
       diagnostics) within "eval '...'" were often incorrect
       where here documents were involved.  This has been
       corrected.

       Lexical lookups for variables appearing in "eval '...'"
       within functions that were themselves called within an
       "eval '...'" were searching the wrong place for lexicals.
       The lexical search now correctly ends at the subroutine's
       block boundary.

       The use of "return" within "eval {...}" caused $@ not to
       be reset correctly when no exception occurred within the
       eval.  This has been fixed.

       Parsing of here documents used to be flawed when they
       appeared as the replacement expression in "eval
       's/.../.../e'".  This has been fixed.

   All compilation errors are true errors
       Some "errors" encountered at compile time were by
       necessity generated as warnings followed by eventual
       termination of the program.  This enabled more such errors
       to be reported in a single run, rather than causing a hard
       stop at the first error that was encountered.

       The mechanism for reporting such errors has been
       reimplemented to queue compile-time errors and report them
       at the end of the compilation as true errors rather than
       as warnings.  This fixes cases where error messages leaked
       through in the form of warnings when code was compiled at
       run time using "eval STRING", and also allows such errors
       to be reliably trapped using "eval "..."".

   Implicitly closed filehandles are safer
       Sometimes implicitly closed filehandles (as when they are
       localized, and Perl automatically closes them on exiting
       the scope) could inadvertently set $? or $!.  This has
       been corrected.

   Behavior of list slices is more consistent
       When taking a slice of a literal list (as opposed to a
       slice of an array or hash), Perl used to return an empty



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       list if the result happened to be composed of all undef
       values.

       The new behavior is to produce an empty list if (and only
       if) the original list was empty.  Consider the following
       example:

           @a = (1,undef,undef,2)[2,1,2];

       The old behavior would have resulted in @a having no
       elements.  The new behavior ensures it has three undefined
       elements.

       Note in particular that the behavior of slices of the
       following cases remains unchanged:

           @a = ()[1,2];
           @a = (getpwent)[7,0];
           @a = (anything_returning_empty_list())[2,1,2];
           @a = @b[2,1,2];
           @a = @c{'a','b','c'};

       See perldata.

   "(\$)" prototype and $foo{a}
       A scalar reference prototype now correctly allows a hash
       or array element in that slot.

   "goto &sub" and AUTOLOAD
       The "goto &sub" construct works correctly when &sub
       happens to be autoloaded.

   "-bareword" allowed under "use integer"
       The autoquoting of barewords preceded by "-" did not work
       in prior versions when the "integer" pragma was enabled.
       This has been fixed.

   Failures in DESTROY()
       When code in a destructor threw an exception, it went
       unnoticed in earlier versions of Perl, unless someone
       happened to be looking in $@ just after the point the
       destructor happened to run.  Such failures are now visible
       as warnings when warnings are enabled.

   Locale bugs fixed
       printf() and sprintf() previously reset the numeric locale
       back to the default "C" locale.  This has been fixed.

       Numbers formatted according to the local numeric locale
       (such as using a decimal comma instead of a decimal dot)
       caused "isn't numeric" warnings, even while the operations
       accessing those numbers produced correct results.  These
       warnings have been discontinued.




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   Memory leaks
       The "eval 'return sub {...}'" construct could sometimes
       leak memory.  This has been fixed.

       Operations that aren't filehandle constructors used to
       leak memory when used on invalid filehandles.  This has
       been fixed.

       Constructs that modified @_ could fail to deallocate
       values in @_ and thus leak memory.  This has been
       corrected.

   Spurious subroutine stubs after failed subroutine calls
       Perl could sometimes create empty subroutine stubs when a
       subroutine was not found in the package.  Such cases
       stopped later method lookups from progressing into base
       packages.  This has been corrected.

   Taint failures under "-U"
       When running in unsafe mode, taint violations could
       sometimes cause silent failures.  This has been fixed.

   END blocks and the "-c" switch
       Prior versions used to run BEGIN and END blocks when Perl
       was run in compile-only mode.  Since this is typically not
       the expected behavior, END blocks are not executed anymore
       when the "-c" switch is used, or if compilation fails.

       See "Support for CHECK blocks" for how to run things when
       the compile phase ends.

   Potential to leak DATA filehandles
       Using the "__DATA__" token creates an implicit filehandle
       to the file that contains the token.  It is the program's
       responsibility to close it when it is done reading from
       it.

       This caveat is now better explained in the documentation.
       See perldata.

New or Changed Diagnostics
       "%s" variable %s masks earlier declaration in same %s
           (W misc) A "my" or "our" variable has been redeclared
           in the current scope or statement, effectively
           eliminating all access to the previous instance.  This
           is almost always a typographical error.  Note that the
           earlier variable will still exist until the end of the
           scope or until all closure referents to it are
           destroyed.

       "my sub" not yet implemented
           (F) Lexically scoped subroutines are not yet
           implemented.  Don't try that yet.




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       "our" variable %s redeclared
           (W misc) You seem to have already declared the same
           global once before in the current lexical scope.

       '!' allowed only after types %s
           (F) The '!' is allowed in pack() and unpack() only
           after certain types.  See "pack" in perlfunc.

       / cannot take a count
           (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-
           length string, but you have also specified an explicit
           size for the string.  See "pack" in perlfunc.

       / must be followed by a, A or Z
           (F) You had an unpack template indicating a counted-
           length string, which must be followed by one of the
           letters a, A or Z to indicate what sort of string is
           to be unpacked.  See "pack" in perlfunc.

       / must be followed by a*, A* or Z*
           (F) You had a pack template indicating a counted-
           length string, Currently the only things that can have
           their length counted are a*, A* or Z*.  See "pack" in
           perlfunc.

       / must follow a numeric type
           (F) You had an unpack template that contained a '#',
           but this did not follow some numeric unpack
           specification.  See "pack" in perlfunc.

       /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
           (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination
           which is not recognized by Perl.  This combination
           appears in an interpolated variable or a "'"-delimited
           regular expression.  The character was understood
           literally.

       /%s/: Unrecognized escape \\%c in character class passed
       through
           (W regexp) You used a backslash-character combination
           which is not recognized by Perl inside character
           classes.  The character was understood literally.

       /%s/ should probably be written as "%s"
           (W syntax) You have used a pattern where Perl expected
           to find a string, as in the first argument to "join".
           Perl will treat the true or false result of matching
           the pattern against $_ as the string, which is
           probably not what you had in mind.

       %s() called too early to check prototype
           (W prototype) You've called a function that has a
           prototype before the parser saw a definition or
           declaration for it, and Perl could not check that the



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           call conforms to the prototype.  You need to either
           add an early prototype declaration for the subroutine
           in question, or move the subroutine definition ahead
           of the call to get proper prototype checking.
           Alternatively, if you are certain that you're calling
           the function correctly, you may put an ampersand
           before the name to avoid the warning.  See perlsub.

       %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element
           (F) The argument to exists() must be a hash or array
           element, such as:

               $foo{$bar}
               $ref->{"susie"}[12]

       %s argument is not a HASH or ARRAY element or slice
           (F) The argument to delete() must be either a hash or
           array element, such as:

               $foo{$bar}
               $ref->{"susie"}[12]

           or a hash or array slice, such as:

               @foo[$bar, $baz, $xyzzy]
               @{$ref->[12]}{"susie", "queue"}

       %s argument is not a subroutine name
           (F) The argument to exists() for "exists &sub" must be
           a subroutine name, and not a subroutine call.  "exists
           &sub()" will generate this error.

       %s package attribute may clash with future reserved word:
       %s
           (W reserved) A lowercase attribute name was used that
           had a package-specific handler.  That name might have
           a meaning to Perl itself some day, even though it
           doesn't yet.  Perhaps you should use a mixed-case
           attribute name, instead.  See attributes.

       (in cleanup) %s
           (W misc) This prefix usually indicates that a
           DESTROY() method raised the indicated exception.
           Since destructors are usually called by the system at
           arbitrary points during execution, and often a vast
           number of times, the warning is issued only once for
           any number of failures that would otherwise result in
           the same message being repeated.

           Failure of user callbacks dispatched using the
           "G_KEEPERR" flag could also result in this warning.
           See "G_KEEPERR" in perlcall.





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       <> should be quotes
           (F) You wrote "require <file>" when you should have
           written "require 'file'".

       Attempt to join self
           (F) You tried to join a thread from within itself,
           which is an impossible task.  You may be joining the
           wrong thread, or you may need to move the join() to
           some other thread.

       Bad evalled substitution pattern
           (F) You've used the /e switch to evaluate the
           replacement for a substitution, but perl found a
           syntax error in the code to evaluate, most likely an
           unexpected right brace '}'.

       Bad realloc() ignored
           (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something
           that had never been malloc()ed in the first place.
           Mandatory, but can be disabled by setting environment
           variable "PERL_BADFREE" to 1.

       Bareword found in conditional
           (W bareword) The compiler found a bareword where it
           expected a conditional, which often indicates that an
           || or && was parsed as part of the last argument of
           the previous construct, for example:

               open FOO || die;

           It may also indicate a misspelled constant that has
           been interpreted as a bareword:

               use constant TYPO => 1;
               if (TYOP) { print "foo" }

           The "strict" pragma is useful in avoiding such errors.

       Binary number > 0b11111111111111111111111111111111 non-
       portable
           (W portable) The binary number you specified is larger
           than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable
           between systems.  See perlport for more on portability
           concerns.

       Bit vector size > 32 non-portable
           (W portable) Using bit vector sizes larger than 32 is
           non-portable.

       Buffer overflow in prime_env_iter: %s
           (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS.  While Perl
           was preparing to iterate over %ENV, it encountered a
           logical name or symbol definition which was too long,
           so it was truncated to the string shown.



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       Can't check filesystem of script "%s"
           (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of
           the script for nosuid.

       Can't declare class for non-scalar %s in "%s"
           (S) Currently, only scalar variables can declared with
           a specific class qualifier in a "my" or "our"
           declaration.  The semantics may be extended for other
           types of variables in future.

       Can't declare %s in "%s"
           (F) Only scalar, array, and hash variables may be
           declared as "my" or "our" variables.  They must have
           ordinary identifiers as names.

       Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default
           (W signal) Perl has detected that it is being run with
           the SIGCHLD signal (sometimes known as SIGCLD)
           disabled.  Since disabling this signal will interfere
           with proper determination of exit status of child
           processes, Perl has reset the signal to its default
           value.  This situation typically indicates that the
           parent program under which Perl may be running (e.g.,
           cron) is being very careless.

       Can't modify non-lvalue subroutine call
           (F) Subroutines meant to be used in lvalue context
           should be declared as such, see "Lvalue subroutines"
           in perlsub.

       Can't read CRTL environ
           (S) A warning peculiar to VMS.  Perl tried to read an
           element of %ENV from the CRTL's internal environment
           array and discovered the array was missing.  You need
           to figure out where your CRTL misplaced its environ or
           define PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that environ
           is not searched.

       Can't remove %s: %s, skipping file
           (S) You requested an inplace edit without creating a
           backup file.  Perl was unable to remove the original
           file to replace it with the modified file.  The file
           was left unmodified.

       Can't return %s from lvalue subroutine
           (F) Perl detected an attempt to return illegal lvalues
           (such as temporary or readonly values) from a
           subroutine used as an lvalue.  This is not allowed.

       Can't weaken a nonreference
           (F) You attempted to weaken something that was not a
           reference.  Only references can be weakened.





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       Character class [:%s:] unknown
           (F) The class in the character class [: :] syntax is
           unknown.  See perlre.

       Character class syntax [%s] belongs inside character
       classes
           (W unsafe) The character class constructs [: :], [=
           =], and [. .]  go inside character classes, the [] are
           part of the construct, for example:
           /[012[:alpha:]345]/.  Note that [= =] and [. .]  are
           not currently implemented; they are simply
           placeholders for future extensions.

       Constant is not %s reference
           (F) A constant value (perhaps declared using the "use
           constant" pragma) is being dereferenced, but it
           amounts to the wrong type of reference.  The message
           indicates the type of reference that was expected.
           This usually indicates a syntax error in dereferencing
           the constant value.  See "Constant Functions" in
           perlsub and constant.

       constant(%s): %s
           (F) The parser found inconsistencies either while
           attempting to define an overloaded constant, or when
           trying to find the character name specified in the
           "\N{...}" escape.  Perhaps you forgot to load the
           corresponding "overload" or "charnames" pragma?  See
           charnames and overload.

       CORE::%s is not a keyword
           (F) The CORE:: namespace is reserved for Perl
           keywords.

       defined(@array) is deprecated
           (D) defined() is not usually useful on arrays because
           it checks for an undefined scalar value.  If you want
           to see if the array is empty, just use "if (@array) {
           # not empty }" for example.

       defined(%hash) is deprecated
           (D) defined() is not usually useful on hashes because
           it checks for an undefined scalar value.  If you want
           to see if the hash is empty, just use "if (%hash) { #
           not empty }" for example.

       Did not produce a valid header
           See Server error.

       (Did you mean "local" instead of "our"?)
           (W misc) Remember that "our" does not localize the
           declared global variable.  You have declared it again
           in the same lexical scope, which seems superfluous.




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       Document contains no data
           See Server error.

       entering effective %s failed
           (F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching
           the real and effective uids or gids failed.

       false [] range "%s" in regexp
           (W regexp) A character class range must start and end
           at a literal character, not another character class
           like "\d" or "[:alpha:]".  The "-" in your false range
           is interpreted as a literal "-".  Consider quoting the
           "-",  "\-".  See perlre.

       Filehandle %s opened only for output
           (W io) You tried to read from a filehandle opened only
           for writing.  If you intended it to be a read/write
           filehandle, you needed to open it with "+<" or "+>" or
           "+>>" instead of with "<" or nothing.  If you intended
           only to read from the file, use "<".  See "open" in
           perlfunc.

       flock() on closed filehandle %s
           (W closed) The filehandle you're attempting to flock()
           got itself closed some time before now.  Check your
           logic flow.  flock() operates on filehandles.  Are you
           attempting to call flock() on a dirhandle by the same
           name?

       Global symbol "%s" requires explicit package name
           (F) You've said "use strict vars", which indicates
           that all variables must either be lexically scoped
           (using "my"), declared beforehand using "our", or
           explicitly qualified to say which package the global
           variable is in (using "::").

       Hexadecimal number > 0xffffffff non-portable
           (W portable) The hexadecimal number you specified is
           larger than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-
           portable between systems.  See perlport for more on
           portability concerns.

       Ill-formed CRTL environ value "%s"
           (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS.  Perl tried to
           read the CRTL's internal environ array, and
           encountered an element without the "=" delimiter used
           to separate keys from values.  The element is ignored.

       Ill-formed message in prime_env_iter: |%s|
           (W internal) A warning peculiar to VMS.  Perl tried to
           read a logical name or CLI symbol definition when
           preparing to iterate over %ENV, and didn't see the
           expected delimiter between key and value, so the line
           was ignored.



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       Illegal binary digit %s
           (F) You used a digit other than 0 or 1 in a binary
           number.

       Illegal binary digit %s ignored
           (W digit) You may have tried to use a digit other than
           0 or 1 in a binary number.  Interpretation of the
           binary number stopped before the offending digit.

       Illegal number of bits in vec
           (F) The number of bits in vec() (the third argument)
           must be a power of two from 1 to 32 (or 64, if your
           platform supports that).

       Integer overflow in %s number
           (W overflow) The hexadecimal, octal or binary number
           you have specified either as a literal or as an
           argument to hex() or oct() is too big for your
           architecture, and has been converted to a floating
           point number.  On a 32-bit architecture the largest
           hexadecimal, octal or binary number representable
           without overflow is 0xFFFFFFFF, 037777777777, or
           0b11111111111111111111111111111111 respectively.  Note
           that Perl transparently promotes all numbers to a
           floating point representation internally--subject to
           loss of precision errors in subsequent operations.

       Invalid %s attribute: %s
           The indicated attribute for a subroutine or variable
           was not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied
           handler.  See attributes.

       Invalid %s attributes: %s
           The indicated attributes for a subroutine or variable
           were not recognized by Perl or by a user-supplied
           handler.  See attributes.

       invalid [] range "%s" in regexp
           The offending range is now explicitly displayed.

       Invalid separator character %s in attribute list
           (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was
           seen between the elements of an attribute list.  If
           the previous attribute had a parenthesised parameter
           list, perhaps that list was terminated too soon.  See
           attributes.

       Invalid separator character %s in subroutine attribute
       list
           (F) Something other than a colon or whitespace was
           seen between the elements of a subroutine attribute
           list.  If the previous attribute had a parenthesised
           parameter list, perhaps that list was terminated too
           soon.



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       leaving effective %s failed
           (F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, switching
           the real and effective uids or gids failed.

       Lvalue subs returning %s not implemented yet
           (F) Due to limitations in the current implementation,
           array and hash values cannot be returned in
           subroutines used in lvalue context.  See "Lvalue
           subroutines" in perlsub.

       Method %s not permitted
           See Server error.

       Missing %sbrace%s on \N{}
           (F) Wrong syntax of character name literal
           "\N{charname}" within double-quotish context.

       Missing command in piped open
           (W pipe) You used the "open(FH, "| command")" or
           "open(FH, "command |")" construction, but the command
           was missing or blank.

       Missing name in "my sub"
           (F) The reserved syntax for lexically scoped
           subroutines requires that they have a name with which
           they can be found.

       No %s specified for -%c
           (F) The indicated command line switch needs a
           mandatory argument, but you haven't specified one.

       No package name allowed for variable %s in "our"
           (F) Fully qualified variable names are not allowed in
           "our" declarations, because that doesn't make much
           sense under existing semantics.  Such syntax is
           reserved for future extensions.

       No space allowed after -%c
           (F) The argument to the indicated command line switch
           must follow immediately after the switch, without
           intervening spaces.

       no UTC offset information; assuming local time is UTC
           (S) A warning peculiar to VMS.  Perl was unable to
           find the local timezone offset, so it's assuming that
           local system time is equivalent to UTC.  If it's not,
           define the logical name SYS$TIMEZONE_DIFFERENTIAL to
           translate to the number of seconds which need to be
           added to UTC to get local time.

       Octal number > 037777777777 non-portable
           (W portable) The octal number you specified is larger
           than 2**32-1 (4294967295) and therefore non-portable
           between systems.  See perlport for more on portability



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           concerns.

           See also perlport for writing portable code.

       panic: del_backref
           (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying
           to reset a weak reference.

       panic: kid popen errno read
           (F) forked child returned an incomprehensible message
           about its errno.

       panic: magic_killbackrefs
           (P) Failed an internal consistency check while trying
           to reset all weak references to an object.

       Parentheses missing around "%s" list
           (W parenthesis) You said something like

               my $foo, $bar = @_;

           when you meant

               my ($foo, $bar) = @_;

           Remember that "my", "our", and "local" bind tighter
           than comma.

       Possible unintended interpolation of %s in string
           (W ambiguous) It used to be that Perl would try to
           guess whether you wanted an array interpolated or a
           literal @.  It no longer does this; arrays are now
           always interpolated into strings.  This means that if
           you try something like:

                   print "fred@example.com";

           and the array @example doesn't exist, Perl is going to
           print "fred.com", which is probably not what you
           wanted.  To get a literal "@" sign in a string, put a
           backslash before it, just as you would to get a
           literal "$" sign.

       Possible Y2K bug: %s
           (W y2k) You are concatenating the number 19 with
           another number, which could be a potential Year 2000
           problem.

       pragma "attrs" is deprecated, use "sub NAME : ATTRS"
       instead
           (W deprecated) You have written something like this:






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               sub doit
               {
                   use attrs qw(locked);
               }

           You should use the new declaration syntax instead.

               sub doit : locked
               {
                   ...

           The "use attrs" pragma is now obsolete, and is only
           provided for backward-compatibility. See "Subroutine
           Attributes" in perlsub.

       Premature end of script headers
           See Server error.

       Repeat count in pack overflows
           (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it
           overflows your signed integers.  See "pack" in
           perlfunc.

       Repeat count in unpack overflows
           (F) You can't specify a repeat count so large that it
           overflows your signed integers.  See "unpack" in
           perlfunc.

       realloc() of freed memory ignored
           (S) An internal routine called realloc() on something
           that had already been freed.

       Reference is already weak
           (W misc) You have attempted to weaken a reference that
           is already weak.  Doing so has no effect.

       setpgrp can't take arguments
           (F) Your system has the setpgrp() from BSD 4.2, which
           takes no arguments, unlike POSIX setpgid(), which
           takes a process ID and process group ID.

       Strange *+?{} on zero-length expression
           (W regexp) You applied a regular expression quantifier
           in a place where it makes no sense, such as on a zero-
           width assertion.  Try putting the quantifier inside
           the assertion instead.  For example, the way to match
           "abc" provided that it is followed by three
           repetitions of "xyz" is "/abc(?=(?:xyz){3})/", not
           "/abc(?=xyz){3}/".

       switching effective %s is not implemented
           (F) While under the "use filetest" pragma, we cannot
           switch the real and effective uids or gids.




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       This Perl can't reset CRTL environ elements (%s)
       This Perl can't set CRTL environ elements (%s=%s)
           (W internal) Warnings peculiar to VMS.  You tried to
           change or delete an element of the CRTL's internal
           environ array, but your copy of Perl wasn't built with
           a CRTL that contained the setenv() function.  You'll
           need to rebuild Perl with a CRTL that does, or
           redefine PERL_ENV_TABLES (see perlvms) so that the
           environ array isn't the target of the change to %ENV
           which produced the warning.

       Too late to run %s block
           (W void) A CHECK or INIT block is being defined during
           run time proper, when the opportunity to run them has
           already passed.  Perhaps you are loading a file with
           "require" or "do" when you should be using "use"
           instead.  Or perhaps you should put the "require" or
           "do" inside a BEGIN block.

       Unknown open() mode '%s'
           (F) The second argument of 3-argument open() is not
           among the list of valid modes: "<", ">", ">>", "+<",
           "+>", "+>>", "-|", "|-".

       Unknown process %x sent message to prime_env_iter: %s
           (P) An error peculiar to VMS.  Perl was reading values
           for %ENV before iterating over it, and someone else
           stuck a message in the stream of data Perl expected.
           Someone's very confused, or perhaps trying to subvert
           Perl's population of %ENV for nefarious purposes.

       Unrecognized escape \\%c passed through
           (W misc) You used a backslash-character combination
           which is not recognized by Perl.  The character was
           understood literally.

       Unterminated attribute parameter in attribute list
           (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis
           character while parsing an attribute list, but the
           matching closing (right) parenthesis character was not
           found.  You may need to add (or remove) a backslash
           character to get your parentheses to balance.  See
           attributes.

       Unterminated attribute list
           (F) The lexer found something other than a simple
           identifier at the start of an attribute, and it wasn't
           a semicolon or the start of a block.  Perhaps you
           terminated the parameter list of the previous
           attribute too soon.  See attributes.

       Unterminated attribute parameter in subroutine attribute
       list
           (F) The lexer saw an opening (left) parenthesis



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           character while parsing a subroutine attribute list,
           but the matching closing (right) parenthesis character
           was not found.  You may need to add (or remove) a
           backslash character to get your parentheses to
           balance.

       Unterminated subroutine attribute list
           (F) The lexer found something other than a simple
           identifier at the start of a subroutine attribute, and
           it wasn't a semicolon or the start of a block.
           Perhaps you terminated the parameter list of the
           previous attribute too soon.

       Value of CLI symbol "%s" too long
           (W misc) A warning peculiar to VMS.  Perl tried to
           read the value of an %ENV element from a CLI symbol
           table, and found a resultant string longer than 1024
           characters.  The return value has been truncated to
           1024 characters.

       Version number must be a constant number
           (P) The attempt to translate a "use Module n.n LIST"
           statement into its equivalent "BEGIN" block found an
           internal inconsistency with the version number.

New tests
       lib/attrs
           Compatibility tests for "sub : attrs" vs the older
           "use attrs".

       lib/env
           Tests for new environment scalar capability (e.g.,
           "use Env qw($BAR);").

       lib/env-array
           Tests for new environment array capability (e.g., "use
           Env qw(@PATH);").

       lib/io_const
           IO constants (SEEK_*, _IO*).

       lib/io_dir
           Directory-related IO methods (new, read, close,
           rewind, tied delete).

       lib/io_multihomed
           INET sockets with multi-homed hosts.

       lib/io_poll
           IO poll().

       lib/io_unix
           UNIX sockets.




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       op/attrs
           Regression tests for "my ($x,@y,%z) : attrs" and <sub
           : attrs>.

       op/filetest
           File test operators.

       op/lex_assign
           Verify operations that access pad objects (lexicals
           and temporaries).

       op/exists_sub
           Verify "exists &sub" operations.

Incompatible Changes
   Perl Source Incompatibilities
       Beware that any new warnings that have been added or old
       ones that have been enhanced are not considered
       incompatible changes.

       Since all new warnings must be explicitly requested via
       the "-w" switch or the "warnings" pragma, it is ultimately
       the programmer's responsibility to ensure that warnings
       are enabled judiciously.

       CHECK is a new keyword
           All subroutine definitions named CHECK are now
           special.  See "/"Support for CHECK blocks"" for more
           information.

       Treatment of list slices of undef has changed
           There is a potential incompatibility in the behavior
           of list slices that are comprised entirely of
           undefined values.  See "Behavior of list slices is
           more consistent".

       Format of $English::PERL_VERSION is different
           The English module now sets $PERL_VERSION to $^V (a
           string value) rather than $] (a numeric value).  This
           is a potential incompatibility.  Send us a report via
           perlbug if you are affected by this.

           See "Improved Perl version numbering system" for the
           reasons for this change.

       Literals of the form 1.2.3 parse differently
           Previously, numeric literals with more than one dot in
           them were interpreted as a floating point number
           concatenated with one or more numbers.  Such "numbers"
           are now parsed as strings composed of the specified
           ordinals.

           For example, "print 97.98.99" used to output 97.9899
           in earlier versions, but now prints "abc".



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           See "Support for strings represented as a vector of
           ordinals".

       Possibly changed pseudo-random number generator
           Perl programs that depend on reproducing a specific
           set of pseudo-random numbers may now produce different
           output due to improvements made to the rand() builtin.
           You can use "sh Configure -Drandfunc=rand" to obtain
           the old behavior.

           See "Better pseudo-random number generator".

       Hashing function for hash keys has changed
           Even though Perl hashes are not order preserving, the
           apparently random order encountered when iterating on
           the contents of a hash is actually determined by the
           hashing algorithm used.  Improvements in the algorithm
           may yield a random order that is different from that
           of previous versions, especially when iterating on
           hashes.

           See "Better worst-case behavior of hashes" for
           additional information.

       "undef" fails on read only values
           Using the "undef" operator on a readonly value (such
           as $1) has the same effect as assigning "undef" to the
           readonly value--it throws an exception.

       Close-on-exec bit may be set on pipe and socket handles
           Pipe and socket handles are also now subject to the
           close-on-exec behavior determined by the special
           variable $^F.

           See "More consistent close-on-exec behavior".

       Writing "$$1" to mean "${$}1" is unsupported
           Perl 5.004 deprecated the interpretation of $$1 and
           similar within interpolated strings to mean "$$ .
           "1"", but still allowed it.

           In Perl 5.6.0 and later, "$$1" always means "${$1}".

       delete(), each(), values() and "\(%h)"
           operate on aliases to values, not copies

           delete(), each(), values() and hashes (e.g. "\(%h)")
           in a list context return the actual values in the
           hash, instead of copies (as they used to in earlier
           versions).  Typical idioms for using these constructs
           copy the returned values, but this can make a
           significant difference when creating references to the
           returned values.  Keys in the hash are still returned
           as copies when iterating on a hash.



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           See also "delete(), each(), values() and hash
           iteration are faster".

       vec(EXPR,OFFSET,BITS) enforces powers-of-two BITS
           vec() generates a run-time error if the BITS argument
           is not a valid power-of-two integer.

       Text of some diagnostic output has changed
           Most references to internal Perl operations in
           diagnostics have been changed to be more descriptive.
           This may be an issue for programs that may incorrectly
           rely on the exact text of diagnostics for proper
           functioning.

       "%@" has been removed
           The undocumented special variable "%@" that used to
           accumulate "background" errors (such as those that
           happen in DESTROY()) has been removed, because it
           could potentially result in memory leaks.

       Parenthesized not() behaves like a list operator
           The "not" operator now falls under the "if it looks
           like a function, it behaves like a function" rule.

           As a result, the parenthesized form can be used with
           "grep" and "map".  The following construct used to be
           a syntax error before, but it works as expected now:

               grep not($_), @things;

           On the other hand, using "not" with a literal list
           slice may not work.  The following previously allowed
           construct:

               print not (1,2,3)[0];

           needs to be written with additional parentheses now:

               print not((1,2,3)[0]);

           The behavior remains unaffected when "not" is not
           followed by parentheses.

       Semantics of bareword prototype "(*)" have changed
           The semantics of the bareword prototype "*" have
           changed.  Perl 5.005 always coerced simple scalar
           arguments to a typeglob, which wasn't useful in
           situations where the subroutine must distinguish
           between a simple scalar and a typeglob.  The new
           behavior is to not coerce bareword arguments to a
           typeglob.  The value will always be visible as either
           a simple scalar or as a reference to a typeglob.

           See "More functional bareword prototype (*)".



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       Semantics of bit operators may have changed on 64-bit
       platforms
           If your platform is either natively 64-bit or if Perl
           has been configured to used 64-bit integers, i.e.,
           $Config{ivsize} is 8, there may be a potential
           incompatibility in the behavior of bitwise numeric
           operators (& | ^ ~ << >>).  These operators used to
           strictly operate on the lower 32 bits of integers in
           previous versions, but now operate over the entire
           native integral width.  In particular, note that unary
           "~" will produce different results on platforms that
           have different $Config{ivsize}.  For portability, be
           sure to mask off the excess bits in the result of
           unary "~", e.g., "~$x & 0xffffffff".

           See "Bit operators support full native integer width".

       More builtins taint their results
           As described in "Improved security features", there
           may be more sources of taint in a Perl program.

           To avoid these new tainting behaviors, you can build
           Perl with the Configure option
           "-Accflags=-DINCOMPLETE_TAINTS".  Beware that the
           ensuing perl binary may be insecure.

   C Source Incompatibilities
       "PERL_POLLUTE"
           Release 5.005 grandfathered old global symbol names by
           providing preprocessor macros for extension source
           compatibility.  As of release 5.6.0, these
           preprocessor definitions are not available by default.
           You need to explicitly compile perl with
           "-DPERL_POLLUTE" to get these definitions.  For
           extensions still using the old symbols, this option
           can be specified via MakeMaker:

               perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1

       "PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT"
           This new build option provides a set of macros for all
           API functions such that an implicit interpreter/thread
           context argument is passed to every API function.  As
           a result of this, something like "sv_setsv(foo,bar)"
           amounts to a macro invocation that actually translates
           to something like "Perl_sv_setsv(my_perl,foo,bar)".
           While this is generally expected to not have any
           significant source compatibility issues, the
           difference between a macro and a real function call
           will need to be considered.

           This means that there is a source compatibility issue
           as a result of this if your extensions attempt to use
           pointers to any of the Perl API functions.



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           Note that the above issue is not relevant to the
           default build of Perl, whose interfaces continue to
           match those of prior versions (but subject to the
           other options described here).

           See "The Perl API" in perlguts for detailed
           information on the ramifications of building Perl with
           this option.

               NOTE: PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT is automatically enabled whenever Perl is built
               with one of -Dusethreads, -Dusemultiplicity, or both.  It is not
               intended to be enabled by users at this time.

       "PERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
           Enabling Perl's malloc in release 5.005 and earlier
           caused the namespace of the system's malloc family of
           functions to be usurped by the Perl versions, since by
           default they used the same names.  Besides causing
           problems on platforms that do not allow these
           functions to be cleanly replaced, this also meant that
           the system versions could not be called in programs
           that used Perl's malloc.  Previous versions of Perl
           have allowed this behaviour to be suppressed with the
           HIDEMYMALLOC and EMBEDMYMALLOC preprocessor
           definitions.

           As of release 5.6.0, Perl's malloc family of functions
           have default names distinct from the system versions.
           You need to explicitly compile perl with
           "-DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC" to get the older behaviour.
           HIDEMYMALLOC and EMBEDMYMALLOC have no effect, since
           the behaviour they enabled is now the default.

           Note that these functions do not constitute Perl's
           memory allocation API.  See "Memory Allocation" in
           perlguts for further information about that.

   Compatible C Source API Changes
       "PATCHLEVEL" is now "PERL_VERSION"
           The cpp macros "PERL_REVISION", "PERL_VERSION", and
           "PERL_SUBVERSION" are now available by default from
           perl.h, and reflect the base revision, patchlevel, and
           subversion respectively.  "PERL_REVISION" had no prior
           equivalent, while "PERL_VERSION" and "PERL_SUBVERSION"
           were previously available as "PATCHLEVEL" and
           "SUBVERSION".

           The new names cause less pollution of the cpp
           namespace and reflect what the numbers have come to
           stand for in common practice.  For compatibility, the
           old names are still supported when patchlevel.h is
           explicitly included (as required before), so there is
           no source incompatibility from the change.




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   Binary Incompatibilities
       In general, the default build of this release is expected
       to be binary compatible for extensions built with the
       5.005 release or its maintenance versions.  However,
       specific platforms may have broken binary compatibility
       due to changes in the defaults used in hints files.
       Therefore, please be sure to always check the platform-
       specific README files for any notes to the contrary.

       The usethreads or usemultiplicity builds are not binary
       compatible with the corresponding builds in 5.005.

       On platforms that require an explicit list of exports
       (AIX, OS/2 and Windows, among others), purely internal
       symbols such as parser functions and the run time opcodes
       are not exported by default.  Perl 5.005 used to export
       all functions irrespective of whether they were considered
       part of the public API or not.

       For the full list of public API functions, see perlapi.

Known Problems
   Thread test failures
       The subtests 19 and 20 of lib/thr5005.t test are known to
       fail due to fundamental problems in the 5.005 threading
       implementation.  These are not new failures--Perl 5.005_0x
       has the same bugs, but didn't have these tests.

   EBCDIC platforms not supported
       In earlier releases of Perl, EBCDIC environments like
       OS390 (also known as Open Edition MVS) and VM-ESA were
       supported.  Due to changes required by the UTF-8 (Unicode)
       support, the EBCDIC platforms are not supported in Perl
       5.6.0.

   In 64-bit HP-UX the lib/io_multihomed test may hang
       The lib/io_multihomed test may hang in HP-UX if Perl has
       been configured to be 64-bit.  Because other 64-bit
       platforms do not hang in this test, HP-UX is suspect.  All
       other tests pass in 64-bit HP-UX.  The test attempts to
       create and connect to "multihomed" sockets (sockets which
       have multiple IP addresses).

   NEXTSTEP 3.3 POSIX test failure
       In NEXTSTEP 3.3p2 the implementation of the strftime(3) in
       the operating system libraries is buggy: the %j format
       numbers the days of a month starting from zero, which,
       while being logical to programmers, will cause the
       subtests 19 to 27 of the lib/posix test may fail.

   Tru64 (aka Digital UNIX, aka DEC OSF/1) lib/sdbm test failure
       with gcc
       If compiled with gcc 2.95 the lib/sdbm test will fail
       (dump core).  The cure is to use the vendor cc, it comes



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       with the operating system and produces good code.

   UNICOS/mk CC failures during Configure run
       In UNICOS/mk the following errors may appear during the
       Configure run:

               Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
               CC-20 cc: ERROR File = try.c, Line = 3
               ...
                 bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79bad switch yylook 79#ifdef A29K
               ...
               4 errors detected in the compilation of "try.c".

       The culprit is the broken awk of UNICOS/mk.  The effect is
       fortunately rather mild: Perl itself is not adversely
       affected by the error, only the h2ph utility coming with
       Perl, and that is rather rarely needed these days.

   Arrow operator and arrays
       When the left argument to the arrow operator "->" is an
       array, or the "scalar" operator operating on an array, the
       result of the operation must be considered erroneous. For
       example:

           @x->[2]
           scalar(@x)->[2]

       These expressions will get run-time errors in some future
       release of Perl.

   Experimental features
       As discussed above, many features are still experimental.
       Interfaces and implementation of these features are
       subject to change, and in extreme cases, even subject to
       removal in some future release of Perl.  These features
       include the following:

       Threads
       Unicode
       64-bit support
       Lvalue subroutines
       Weak references
       The pseudo-hash data type
       The Compiler suite
       Internal implementation of file globbing
       The DB module
       The regular expression code constructs:
           "(?{ code })" and "(??{ code })"

Obsolete Diagnostics
       Character class syntax [: :] is reserved for future
       extensions
           (W) Within regular expression character classes ([])
           the syntax beginning with "[:" and ending with ":]" is



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           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: "\[:" and ":\]".

       Ill-formed logical name |%s| in prime_env_iter
           (W) A warning peculiar to VMS.  A logical name was
           encountered when preparing to iterate over %ENV which
           violates the syntactic rules governing logical names.
           Because it cannot be translated normally, it is
           skipped, and will not appear in %ENV.  This may be a
           benign occurrence, as some software packages might
           directly modify logical name tables and introduce
           nonstandard names, or it may indicate that a logical
           name table has been corrupted.

       In string, @%s now must be written as \@%s
           The description of this error used to say:

                   (Someday it will simply assume that an unbackslashed @
                    interpolates an array.)

           That day has come, and this fatal error has been
           removed.  It has been replaced by a non-fatal warning
           instead.  See "Arrays now always interpolate into
           double-quoted strings" for details.

       Probable precedence problem on %s
           (W) The compiler found a bareword where it expected a
           conditional, which often indicates that an || or &&
           was parsed as part of the last argument of the
           previous construct, for example:

               open FOO || die;

       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.

       Use of "$$<digit>" to mean "${$}<digit>" is deprecated
           (D) Perl versions before 5.004 misinterpreted any type
           marker followed by "$" and a digit.  For example,
           "$$0" was incorrectly taken to mean "${$}0" instead of
           "${$0}".  This bug is (mostly) fixed in Perl 5.004.

           However, the developers of Perl 5.004 could not fix
           this bug completely, because at least two widely-used
           modules depend on the old meaning of "$$0" in a
           string.  So Perl 5.004 still interprets "$$<digit>" in



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           the old (broken) way inside strings; but it generates
           this message as a warning.  And in Perl 5.005, this
           special treatment will cease.

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.  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.  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 perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl
       porting team.

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 <gsar@activestate.com>, with
       many contributions from The Perl Porters.

       Send omissions or corrections to <perlbug@perl.org>.


























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