- 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 testsuite 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.
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- 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}})
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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)
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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 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 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 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);
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instead of
$fullname = File::Spec->catfile($dir1, $dir2, $file);
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- 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
-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
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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.
- 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.
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).
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.
- 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
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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
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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.
use attrs is now obsolete, and is only provided for backward-compatibility.
It's been replaced by the sub : attributes syntax. See perlsub/"Subroutine
Attributes" 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 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".
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