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perl5005delta - what's new for perl5.005
This document describes differences between the 5.004 release and this one.
Perl is now developed on two tracks: a maintenance track that makes small, safe updates to
released production versions with emphasis on compatibility; and a development track that
pursues more aggressive evolution. Maintenance releases (which should be considered production
quality) have subversion numbers that run from 1 to 49, and
development releases (which should be considered "alpha" quality) run from 50
to 99.
Perl 5.005 is the combined product of the new dual-track development scheme.
Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes to the language
internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004,
you can continue to use them with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those
extensions to use them 5.005. See INSTALL for detailed instructions on how to upgrade.
The new Configure defaults are designed to allow a smooth upgrade from 5.004 to 5.005, but
you should read INSTALL for a detailed discussion of the changes in order to adapt them
to your system.
When none of the experimental features are enabled, there should be very few user-visible
Perl source compatibility issues.
If threads are enabled, then some caveats apply. @_ and $_ become
lexical variables. The effect of this should be largely transparent to the user, but there are
some boundary conditions under which user will need to be aware of the issues. For example, local(@_)
results in a "Can't localize lexical variable @_ ..." message. This may be enabled
in a future version.
Some new keywords have been introduced. These are generally expected to have very little
impact on compatibility. See New INIT keyword, New lock keyword, and New qr//
operator.
Certain barewords are now reserved. Use of these will provoke a warning if you have asked
for them with the -w switch. See our
is now a reserved word.
There have been a large number of changes in the internals to support the new features in
this release.
-
Core sources now require ANSI C compiler
An ANSI C compiler is now required to build perl. See INSTALL.
-
All Perl global variables must now be referenced with an explicit prefix
All Perl global variables that are visible for use by extensions now have a PL_
prefix. New extensions should not refer to perl globals by their unqualified
names. To preserve sanity, we provide limited backward compatibility for globals that are
being widely used like sv_undef and na (which should now be
written as PL_sv_undef, PL_na etc.)
If you find that your XS extension does not compile anymore because a perl global is
not visible, try adding a PL_ prefix to the global and rebuild.
It is strongly recommended that all functions in the Perl API that don't begin with perl
be referenced with a Perl_ prefix. The bare function names without the Perl_
prefix are supported with macros, but this support may cease in a future release.
See perlguts/"API
LISTING".
-
Enabling threads has source compatibility issues
Perl built with threading enabled requires extensions to use the new dTHR
macro to initialize the handle to access per-thread data. If you see a compiler error that
talks about the variable thr not being declared (when building a module that
has XS code), you need to add dTHR; at the beginning of the block that
elicited the error.
The API function perl_get_sv("@",FALSE) should be used instead
of directly accessing perl globals as GvSV(errgv). The API call is backward
compatible with existing perls and provides source compatibility with threading is
enabled.
See "C Source Compatibility" for more
information.
This version is NOT binary compatible with older versions. All extensions will need to be
recompiled. Further binaries built with threads enabled are incompatible with binaries built
without. This should largely be transparent to the user, as all binary incompatible
configurations have their own unique architecture name, and extension binaries get installed
at unique locations. This allows coexistence of several configurations in the same directory
hierarchy. See INSTALL.
A few taint leaks and taint omissions have been corrected. This may lead to
"failure" of scripts that used to work with older versions. Compiling with -DINCOMPLETE_TAINTS
provides a perl with minimal amounts of changes to the tainting behavior. But note that the
resulting perl will have known insecurities.
Oneliners with the -e switch do not create temporary files anymore.
Many new warnings that were introduced in 5.004 have been made optional. Some of these
warnings are still present, but perl's new features make them less often a problem. See New Diagnostics.
Perl has a new Social Contract for contributors. See Porting/Contract.
The license included in much of the Perl documentation has changed. Most of the Perl
documentation was previously under the implicit GNU General Public License or the Artistic
License (at the user's choice). Now much of the documentation unambiguously states the terms
under which it may be distributed. Those terms are in general much less restrictive than the
GNU GPL. See perl and the
individual perl manpages listed therein.
WARNING: Threading is considered an experimental feature. Details of the
implementation may change without notice. There are known limitations and some bugs. These are
expected to be fixed in future versions.
See README.threads.
WARNING: The Compiler and related tools are considered experimental. Features may
change without notice, and there are known limitations and bugs. Since the compiler is fully
external to perl, the default configuration will build and install it.
The Compiler produces three different types of transformations of a perl program. The C
backend generates C code that captures perl's state just before execution begins. It
eliminates the compile-time overheads of the regular perl interpreter, but the run-time
performance remains comparatively the same. The CC backend generates optimized C code
equivalent to the code path at run-time. The CC backend has greater potential for big
optimizations, but only a few optimizations are implemented currently. The Bytecode backend
generates a platform independent bytecode representation of the interpreter's state just
before execution. Thus, the Bytecode back end also eliminates much of the compilation overhead
of the interpreter.
The compiler comes with several valuable utilities.
B::Lint is an experimental module to detect and warn about suspicious code,
especially the cases that the -w switch does not detect.
B::Deparse can be used to demystify perl code, and understand how perl
optimizes certain constructs.
B::Xref generates cross reference reports of all definition and use of
variables, subroutines and formats in a program.
B::Showlex show the lexical variables used by a subroutine or file at a
glance.
perlcc is a simple frontend for compiling perl.
See ext/B/README, B,
and the respective compiler modules.
Perl's regular expression engine has been seriously overhauled, and many new constructs are
supported. Several bugs have been fixed.
Here is an itemized summary:
- Many new and improved optimizations
-
Changes in the RE engine:
Unneeded nodes removed;
Substrings merged together;
New types of nodes to process (SUBEXPR)* and similar expressions
quickly, used if the SUBEXPR has no side effects and matches
strings of the same length;
Better optimizations by lookup for constant substrings;
Better search for constants substrings anchored by $ ;
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Changes in Perl code using RE engine:
More optimizations to s/longer/short/;
study() was not working;
/blah/ may be optimized to an analogue of index() if $& $` $' not seen;
Unneeded copying of matched-against string removed;
Only matched part of the string is copying if $` $' were not seen;
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- Many bug fixes
-
Note that only the major bug fixes are listed here. See Changes for others.
Backtracking might not restore start of $3.
No feedback if max count for * or + on "complex" subexpression
was reached, similarly (but at compile time) for {3,34567}
Primitive restrictions on max count introduced to decrease a
possibility of a segfault;
(ZERO-LENGTH)* could segfault;
(ZERO-LENGTH)* was prohibited;
Long REs were not allowed;
/RE/g could skip matches at the same position after a
zero-length match;
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- New regular expression constructs
-
The following new syntax elements are supported:
(?<=RE)
(?<!RE)
(?{ CODE })
(?i-x)
(?i:RE)
(?(COND)YES_RE|NO_RE)
(?>RE)
\z
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- New operator for precompiled
regular expressions
- See New
qr//
operator.
- Other improvements
-
Better debugging output (possibly with colors),
even from non-debugging Perl;
RE engine code now looks like C, not like assembler;
Behaviour of RE modifiable by `use re' directive;
Improved documentation;
Test suite significantly extended;
Syntax [:^upper:] etc., reserved inside character classes;
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- Incompatible changes
-
(?i) localized inside enclosing group;
$( is not interpolated into RE any more;
/RE/g may match at the same position (with non-zero length)
after a zero-length match (bug fix).
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See perlre and perlop.
See banner at the beginning of malloc.c for details.
Perl now contains its own highly optimized qsort() routine. The new qsort() is resistant to
inconsistent comparison functions, so Perl's sort() will not provoke coredumps
any more when given poorly written sort subroutines. (Some C library qsort()s
that were being used before used to have this problem.) In our testing, the new qsort()
required the minimal number of pair-wise compares on average, among all known qsort()
implementations.
See perlfunc/sort.
Perl's signal handling is susceptible to random crashes, because signals arrive
asynchronously, and the Perl runtime is not reentrant at arbitrary times.
However, one experimental implementation of reliable signals is available when threads are
enabled. See Thread::Signal. Also see INSTALL for how to build a Perl
capable of threads.
The internals now reallocate the perl stack only at predictable times. In particular, magic
calls never trigger reallocations of the stack, because all reentrancy of the runtime is
handled using a "stack of stacks". This should improve reliability of cached stack
pointers in the internals and in XSUBs.
Perl used to complain if it encountered literal carriage returns in scripts. Now they are
mostly treated like whitespace within program text. Inside string literals and here documents,
literal carriage returns are ignored if they occur paired with linefeeds, or get interpreted
as whitespace if they stand alone. This behavior means that literal carriage returns in files
should be avoided. You can get the older, more compatible (but less generous) behavior by
defining the preprocessor symbol PERL_STRICT_CR when building perl. Of course,
all this has nothing whatever to do with how escapes like \r are handled within
strings.
Note that this doesn't somehow magically allow you to keep all text files in DOS format.
The generous treatment only applies to files that perl itself parses. If your C compiler
doesn't allow carriage returns in files, you may still be unable to build modules that need a
C compiler.
substr, pos and vec don't leak memory anymore when
used in lvalue context. Many small leaks that impacted applications that embed multiple
interpreters have been fixed.
The build-time option -DMULTIPLICITY has had many of the details reworked.
Some previously global variables that should have been per-interpreter now are. With care,
this allows interpreters to call each other. See the PerlInterp extension on CPAN.
See perlsub/"Temporary
Values via local()".
See perlvar, and Errno.
See perlref.
See perlsyn.
See perlsub.
See perlvar.
foreach (1..1000000) is now optimized into a counting loop. It does not try to
allocate a 1000000-size list anymore.
Barewords caused unintuitive behavior when a subroutine with the same name as a package
happened to be defined. Thus, new Foo @args, use the result of the call to Foo()
instead of Foo being treated as a literal. The recommended way to write barewords
in the indirect object slot is new Foo:: @args. Note that the method new()
is called with a first argument of Foo, not Foo:: when you do that.
It was impossible to test for the existence of a package without actually creating it
before. Now exists $Foo::{Bar::} can be used to test if the Foo::Bar
namespace has been created.
See perllocale.
Perl5 has always had 64-bit support on systems with 64-bit longs. Starting with 5.005, the
beginnings of experimental support for systems with 32-bit long and 64-bit 'long long'
integers has been added. If you add -DUSE_LONG_LONG to your ccflags in config.sh (or manually
define it in perl.h) then perl will be built with 'long long' support. There will be many
compiler warnings, and the resultant perl may not work on all systems. There are many other
issues related to third-party extensions and libraries. This option exists to allow people to
work on those issues.
See perlfunc/prototype.
die() now accepts a reference value, and $@ gets set to that
value in exception traps. This makes it possible to propagate exception objects. This is an
undocumented experimental feature.
See perlobj/Destructors.
See perlfunc/printf.
INIT subs are like BEGIN and END, but they get run
just before the perl runtime begins execution. e.g., the Perl Compiler makes use of INIT
blocks to initialize and resolve pointers to XSUBs.
The lock keyword is the fundamental synchronization primitive in threaded perl.
When threads are not enabled, it is currently a noop.
To minimize impact on source compatibility this keyword is "weak", i.e., any
user-defined subroutine of the same name overrides it, unless a use Thread has
been seen.
The qr// operator, which is syntactically similar to the other quote-like
operators, is used to create precompiled regular expressions. This compiled form can now be
explicitly passed around in variables, and interpolated in other regular expressions. See perlop.
Calling a subroutine with the name our will now provoke a warning when using
the -w switch.
See Tie::Array.
Several missing hooks have been added. There is also a new base class for TIEARRAY
implementations. See Tie::Array.
substr() can now both return and replace in one operation. The optional 4th argument is the
replacement string. See perlfunc/substr.
splice() with a negative LENGTH argument now work similar to what the LENGTH did for substr().
Previously a negative LENGTH was treated as 0. See perlfunc/splice.
When you say something like substr($x, 5) = "hi", the scalar
returned by substr() is special, in that any modifications to it affect $x. (This is called a
'magic lvalue' because an 'lvalue' is something on the left side of an assignment.) Normally,
this is exactly what you would expect to happen, but Perl uses the same magic if you use
substr(), pos(), or vec() in a context where they might be modified, like taking a reference
with \ or as an argument to a sub that modifies @_. In previous
versions, this 'magic' only went one way, but now changes to the scalar the magic refers to
($x in the above example) affect the magic lvalue too. For instance, this code now acts
differently:
$x = "hello";
sub printit {
$x = "g'bye";
print $_[0], "\n";
}
printit(substr($x, 0, 5));
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In previous versions, this would print "hello", but it now prints "g'bye".
If $/ is a reference to an integer, or a scalar that holds an integer,
<> will read in records instead of lines. For more info, see perlvar/$/.
Configure has many incremental improvements. Site-wide policy for building perl can now be
made persistent, via Policy.sh. Configure also records the command-line arguments used in config.sh.
BeOS is now supported. See README.beos.
DOS is now supported under the DJGPP tools. See README.dos (installed as perldos on some systems).
MiNT is now supported. See README.mint.
MPE/iX is now supported. See README.mpeix.
MVS (aka OS390, aka Open Edition) is now supported. See README.os390 (installed as perlos390 on some systems).
Stratus VOS is now supported. See README.vos.
Win32 support has been vastly enhanced. Support for Perl Object, a C++ encapsulation of
Perl. GCC and EGCS are now supported on Win32. See README.win32, aka perlwin32.
VMS configuration system has been rewritten. See README.vms (installed as README_vms on some systems).
The hints files for most Unix platforms have seen incremental improvements.
- B
- Perl compiler and tools. See B.
- Data::Dumper
- A module to pretty print Perl data. See Data::Dumper.
- Dumpvalue
- A module to dump perl values to the screen. See Dumpvalue.
- Errno
- A module to look up errors more conveniently. See Errno.
- File::Spec
- A portable API for file operations.
- ExtUtils::Installed
- Query and manage installed modules.
- ExtUtils::Packlist
- Manipulate .packlist files.
- Fatal
- Make functions/builtins succeed or die.
- IPC::SysV
- Constants and other support infrastructure for System V IPC operations in perl.
- Test
- A framework for writing testsuites.
- Tie::Array
- Base class for tied arrays.
- Tie::Handle
- Base class for tied handles.
- Thread
- Perl thread creation, manipulation, and support.
- attrs
- Set subroutine attributes.
- fields
- Compile-time class fields.
- re
- Various pragmata to control behavior of regular expressions.
- Benchmark
-
You can now run tests for x seconds instead of guessing the right number of
tests to run.
Keeps better time.
- Carp
- Carp has a new function cluck(). cluck() warns, like carp(), but also adds a stack
backtrace to the error message, like confess().
- CGI
- CGI has been updated to version 2.42.
- Fcntl
- More Fcntl constants added: F_SETLK64, F_SETLKW64, O_LARGEFILE for large (more than 4G)
file access (the 64-bit support is not yet working, though, so no need to get overly
excited), Free/Net/OpenBSD locking behaviour flags F_FLOCK, F_POSIX, Linux F_SHLCK, and
O_ACCMODE: the mask of O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, and O_RDWR.
- Math::Complex
- The accessors methods Re, Im, arg, abs, rho, theta, methods can ($z->Re()) now also
act as mutators ($z->Re(3)).
- Math::Trig
- A little bit of radial trigonometry (cylindrical and spherical) added, for example the
great circle distance.
- POSIX
- POSIX now has its own platform-specific hints files.
- DB_File
- DB_File supports version 2.x of Berkeley DB. See
ext/DB_File/Changes.
- MakeMaker
-
MakeMaker now supports writing empty makefiles, provides a way to specify that site
umask() policy should be honored. There is also better support for manipulation of .packlist
files, and getting information about installed modules.
Extensions that have both architecture-dependent and architecture-independent files are
now always installed completely in the architecture-dependent locations. Previously, the
shareable parts were shared both across architectures and across perl versions and were
therefore liable to be overwritten with newer versions that might have subtle
incompatibilities.
- CPAN
- See perlmodinstall
and CPAN.
- Cwd
- Cwd::cwd is faster on most platforms.
h2ph and related utilities have been vastly overhauled.
perlcc, a new experimental front end for the compiler is available.
The crude GNU configure emulator is now called configure.gnu to
avoid trampling on Configure under case-insensitive filesystems.
perldoc used to be rather slow. The slower features are now optional. In
particular, case-insensitive searches need the -i switch, and recursive searches
need -r. You can set these switches in the PERLDOC environment
variable to get the old behavior.
Config.pm now has a glossary of variables.
Porting/patching.pod has detailed instructions on how to create and submit patches
for perl.
perlport specifies
guidelines on how to write portably.
perlmodinstall
describes how to fetch and install modules from CPAN sites.
Some more Perl traps are documented now. See perltrap.
perlopentut gives a
tutorial on using open().
perlreftut gives a
tutorial on references.
perlthrtut gives a
tutorial on threads.
- Ambiguous
call resolved as CORE::%s(), qualify as such or use &
-
(W) A subroutine you have declared has the same name as a Perl keyword, and you have
used the name without qualification for calling one or the other. Perl decided to call the
builtin because the subroutine is not imported.
To force interpretation as a subroutine call, either put an ampersand before the
subroutine name, or qualify the name with its package. Alternatively, you can import the
subroutine (or pretend that it's imported with the use subs pragma).
To silently interpret it as the Perl operator, use the CORE:: prefix on
the operator (e.g. CORE::log($x)) or by declaring the subroutine to be an
object method (see attrs).
- Bad index while coercing array into
hash
- (F) The index looked up in the hash found as the 0'th element of a pseudo-hash is not
legal. Index values must be at 1 or greater. See perlref.
- Bareword "%s" refers
to nonexistent package
- (W) You used a qualified bareword of the form
Foo::, but the compiler saw
no other uses of that namespace before that point. Perhaps you need to predeclare a
package?
- Can't call method
"%s" on an undefined value
-
(F) You used the syntax of a method call, but the slot filled by the object reference
or package name contains an undefined value. Something like this will reproduce the error:
$BADREF = 42;
process $BADREF 1,2,3;
$BADREF->process(1,2,3);
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- Can't check filesystem of
script "%s" for nosuid
- (P) For some reason you can't check the filesystem of the script for nosuid.
- Can't coerce array into hash
- (F) You used an array where a hash was expected, but the array has no information on how
to map from keys to array indices. You can do that only with arrays that have a hash
reference at index 0.
- Can't goto subroutine from an eval-string
- (F) The "goto subroutine" call can't be used to jump out of an eval
"string". (You can use it to jump out of an eval {BLOCK}, but you probably don't
want to.)
- Can't localize pseudo-hash element
- (F) You said something like
local $ar->{'key'}, where $ar is a reference
to a pseudo-hash. That hasn't been implemented yet, but you can get a similar effect by
localizing the corresponding array element directly -- local $ar->[$ar->[0]{'key'}].
- Can't use %%! because
Errno.pm is not available
- (F) The first time the %! hash is used, perl automatically loads the Errno.pm module.
The Errno module is expected to tie the %! hash to provide symbolic names for
$!
errno values.
- Cannot find an opnumber for "%s"
- (F) A string of a form
CORE::word was given to prototype(), but there is no
builtin with the name word.
- Character
class syntax [. .] is reserved for future extensions
- (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning with
"[." and ending with ".]" is 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: "\[." and ".\]".
- Character
class syntax [: :] is reserved for future extensions
- (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning with
"[:" and ending with ":]" is 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: "\[:" and ":\]".
- Character
class syntax [= =] is reserved for future extensions
- (W) Within regular expression character classes ([]) the syntax beginning with
"[=" and ending with "=]" is 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: "\[=" and "=\]".
- %s: Eval-group in insecure
regular expression
- (F) Perl detected tainted data when trying to compile a regular expression that contains
the
(?{ ... }) zero-width assertion, which is unsafe. See perlre/(?{ code }),
and perlsec.
- %s: Eval-group not allowed, use
re 'eval'
- (F) A regular expression contained the
(?{ ... }) zero-width assertion, but
that construct is only allowed when the use re 'eval' pragma is in effect.
See perlre/(?{
code }).
- %s: Eval-group not allowed at run
time
- (F) Perl tried to compile a regular expression containing the
(?{ ... })
zero-width assertion at run time, as it would when the pattern contains interpolated
values. Since that is a security risk, it is not allowed. If you insist, you may still do
this by explicitly building the pattern from an interpolated string at run time and using
that in an eval(). See perlre/(?{ code }).
- Explicit blessing to ''
(assuming package main)
- (W) You are blessing a reference to a zero length string. This has the effect of
blessing the reference into the package main. This is usually not what you want. Consider
providing a default target package, e.g. bless($ref, $p || 'MyPackage');
- Illegal hex digit ignored
- (W) You may have tried to use a character other than 0 - 9 or A - F in a hexadecimal
number. Interpretation of the hexadecimal number stopped before the illegal character.
- No such array field
- (F) You tried to access an array as a hash, but the field name used is not defined. The
hash at index 0 should map all valid field names to array indices for that to work.
- No such field
"%s" in variable %s of type %s
- (F) You tried to access a field of a typed variable where the type does not know about
the field name. The field names are looked up in the %FIELDS hash in the type package at
compile time. The %FIELDS hash is usually set up with the 'fields' pragma.
- Out of memory during
ridiculously large request
- (F) You can't allocate more than 2^31+"small amount" bytes. This error is most
likely to be caused by a typo in the Perl program. e.g.,
$arr[time] instead
of $arr[$time].
- Range iterator outside integer range
- (F) One (or both) of the numeric arguments to the range operator ".." are
outside the range which can be represented by integers internally. One possible workaround
is to force Perl to use magical string increment by prepending "0" to your
numbers.
- Recursive
inheritance detected while looking for method '%s' %s
- (F) More than 100 levels of inheritance were encountered while invoking a method.
Probably indicates an unintended loop in your inheritance hierarchy.
- Reference found where
even-sized list expected
-
(W) You gave a single reference where Perl was expecting a list with an even number of
elements (for assignment to a hash). This usually means that you used the anon hash
constructor when you meant to use parens. In any case, a hash requires key/value pairs.
%hash = { one => 1, two => 2, }; # WRONG
%hash = [ qw/ an anon array / ]; # WRONG
%hash = ( one => 1, two => 2, ); # right
%hash = qw( one 1 two 2 ); # also fine
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- Undefined value assigned to typeglob
- (W) An undefined value was assigned to a typeglob, a la
*foo = undef. This
does nothing. It's possible that you really mean undef *foo.
- Use of reserved word "%s"
is deprecated
- (D) The indicated bareword is a reserved word. Future versions of perl may use it as a
keyword, so you're better off either explicitly quoting the word in a manner appropriate
for its context of use, or using a different name altogether. The warning can be
suppressed for subroutine names by either adding a
& prefix, or using a
package qualifier, e.g. &our(), or Foo::our().
- perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
-
(S) The whole warning message will look something like:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
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Exactly what were the failed locale settings varies. In the above the settings were
that the LC_ALL was "En_US" and the LANG had no value. This error means that
Perl detected that you and/or your system administrator have set up the so-called variable
system but Perl could not use those settings. This was not dead serious, fortunately:
there is a "default locale" called "C" that Perl can and will use, the
script will be run. Before you really fix the problem, however, you will get the same
error message each time you run Perl. How to really fix the problem can be found in perllocale/"LOCALE
PROBLEMS".
- Can't mktemp()
-
(F) The mktemp() routine failed for some reason while trying to process a -e
switch. Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
- Can't write to temp file for -e:
%s
-
(F) The write routine failed for some reason while trying to process a -e
switch. Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
- Cannot open temporary file
-
(F) The create routine failed for some reason while trying to process a -e
switch. Maybe your /tmp partition is full, or clobbered.
Removed because -e doesn't use temporary files any more.
- 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.
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.
If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the headers of recently posted
articles in 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. Make sure you 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.com>
to be analysed by the Perl porting team.
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.
Written by Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>, with many contributions
from The Perl Porters.
Send omissions or corrections to <perlbug@perl.com>.
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