LXR perl/Changes5.003

   1-------------
   2Version 5.003
   3-------------
   4
   5                  ***>  IMPORTANT NOTICE:  <***
   6The main reason for this release was to fix a security bug affecting
   7suidperl on some systems.  If you build suidperl on your system, it
   8is strongly recommended that you replace any existing copies with
   9version 5.003 or later immediately.
  10
  11The changes in 5.003 have been held to a minimum, in the hope that this
  12will simplify installation and testing at sites which may be affected
  13by the security hole in suidperl.  In brief, 5.003 does the following:
  14
  15- Plugs security hole in suidperl mechanism on affected systems
  16
  17- MakeMaker was also updated to version 5.34, and extension Makefile.PLs
  18  were modified to match it.
  19
  20- The following hints files were updated: bsdos.sh, hpux.sh, linux.sh,
  21  machten.sh, solaris_2.sh
  22
  23- A fix was added to installperl to insure that file permissions were
  24  set correctly for the installed C header files.
  25
  26- t/op/stat.t was modified to work around MachTen's belief that /dev/null
  27  is a terminal device.
  28
  29- Incorporation of Perl version information into the VMS' version of
  30  config.h was changed to make it compatible with the older VAXC.
  31
  32- Minor fixes were made to VMS-specific C code, and the routine
  33  VMS::Filespec::rmsexpand was added.
  34
  35----------------
  36Version 5.002_01
  37----------------
  38
  39- The EMBED namespace changes are now used by default, in order to better
  40  segregate Perl's C global symbols from those belonging to embedding
  41  applications or to libraries.  This makes it necessary to rebuild dynamic
  42  extensions built under previous versions of Perl without the EMBED option.
  43  The default use of EMBED can be overridden by placing -DNO_EMBED on the
  44  cc command line.
  45
  46  The EMBED change is the beginning of a general cleanup of C global
  47  symbols used by Perl, so binary compatibility with previously
  48  compiled dynamic extensions may be broken again in the next few
  49  releases.
  50
  51- Several bugs in the core were fixed, including the following:
  52   - made sure FILE * for -e temp file was closed only once
  53   - improved form of single-statement macro definitions to keep
  54     as many ccs as possible happy
  55   - fixed file tests to insure that signed values were used when
  56     computing differences between times.
  57   - fixed toke.c so implicit loop isn't doubled when perl is
  58     invoked with both the -p and -n switches
  59
  60- The new SUBVERSION number has been included in the default value for
  61  architecture-specific library directories, so development and
  62  production architecture-dependent libraries can coexist.
  63
  64- Two new magic variables, $^E and $^O, have been added.  $^E contains the
  65  OS-specific equivalent of $!.  $^O contains the name of the operating
  66  system, in order to make it easily available to Perl code whose behavior
  67  differs according to its environment.  The standard library files have
  68  been converted to use $^O in preference to $Config{'osname'}.
  69
  70- A mechanism was added to allow listing of locally applied patches
  71  in the output of perl -v.
  72
  73- Miscellaneous minor corrections and updates were made to the documentation.
  74
  75- Extensive updates were made to the OS/2 and VMS ports
  76
  77- The following hints file were updated: bsdos.sh, dynixptx.sh,
  78  irix_6_2.sh, linux.sh, os2.sh
  79
  80- Several changes were made to standard library files:
  81   - reduced use of English.pm and $`, $', and $& in library modules,
  82     since these degrade module loading and evaluation of regular expressions,
  83     respectively.
  84   - File/Basename.pm: Added path separator to dirname('.')
  85   - File/Copy.pm: Added support for VMS and OS/2 system-level copy
  86   - MakeMaker updated to v5.26
  87   - Symbol.pm now accepts old (') and new (::) package delimiters
  88   - Sys/Syslog.pm uses Sys::Hostname only when necessary
  89   - chat2.pl picks up necessary constants from socket.ph
  90   - syslog.pl: Corrected thinko 'Socket' --> 'Syslog'
  91   - xsubpp updated to v1.935
  92
  93
  94- The perlbug utility is now more cautious about sending mail, in order
  95  to reduce the chance of accidentally send a bug report by giving the
  96  wrong response to a prompt.
  97
  98- The -m switch has been added to perldoc, causing it to display the 
  99  Perl code in target file as well as any documentation.
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