=encoding utf8

=head1 NAME

perldelta - what is new for perl v5.38.0

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.36.0 release and the 5.38.0
release.

=head1 Core Enhancements

=head2 New C<class> Feature

A new B<experimental> syntax is now available for defining object classes,
where per-instance data is stored in "field" variables that behave like
lexicals.

    use feature 'class';

    class Point
    {
        field $x;
        field $y;

        method zero { $x = $y = 0; }
    }

This is described in more detail in L<perlclass>.  Notes on the internals of
its implementation and other related details can be found in L<perlclassguts>.

This remains a new and experimental feature, and is very much still under
development. It will be the subject of much further addition, refinement and
alteration in future releases.  As it is experimental, it yields warnings in
the C<experimental::class> category.  These can be silenced by a
C<no warnings> statement.

    use feature 'class';
    no warnings 'experimental::class';

=head2 Unicode 15.0 is supported

See L<https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.0.0/> for details.

=head2 Deprecation warnings now have specific subcategories

All deprecation warnings now have their own specific deprecation category which
can be disabled individually. You can see a list of all deprecated features in
L<perldeprecation>, and in L<warnings>. The following list is from L<warnings>:

         +- deprecated ----+
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::apostrophe_as_package_separator
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::delimiter_will_be_paired
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::dot_in_inc
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::goto_construct
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::smartmatch
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::unicode_property_name
         |                 |
         |                 +- deprecated::version_downgrade

It is still possible to disable all deprecation warnings in a single
statement with

    no warnings 'deprecated';

but now is possible to have a finer grained control. As has historically been
the case these warnings are automatically enabled with

    use warnings;

=head2 %{^HOOK} API introduced

For various reasons it can be difficult to create subroutine wrappers
for some of perls keywords. Any keyword which has an undefined
prototype simply cannot be wrapped with a subroutine, and some keywords
which perl permits to be wrapped are in practice very tricky to wrap.
For example C<require> is tricky to wrap, it is possible but doing so
changes the stack depth, and the standard methods of exporting assume
that they will be exporting to a package at certain stack depth up the
stack, and the wrapper will thus change where functions are exported to
unless implemented with a great deal of care. This can be very awkward
to deal with.

Accordingly we have introduced a new hash called C<%{^HOOK}> which is
intended to facilitate such cases. When a keyword supports any kind of
special hook then the hook will live in this new hash. Hooks in this
hash will be named after the function they are called by, followed by
two underbars and then the phase they are executed in, currently either
before or after the keyword is executed.

In this initial release we support two hooks C<require__before> and
C<require__after>. These are provided to make it easier to perform tasks
before and after a require statement.

See L<perlvar> for more details.

=head2 PERL_RAND_SEED

Added a new environment variable C<PERL_RAND_SEED> which can be used to
cause a perl program which uses C<rand> without using C<srand()>
explicitly or which uses C<srand()> with no arguments to be repeatable.
See L<perlrun>. This feature can be disabled at compile time by passing

    -Accflags=-DNO_PERL_RAND_SEED

to F<Configure> during the build process.

=head2 Defined-or and logical-or assignment default expressions in signatures

The default expression for a subroutine signature parameter can now be
assigned using the C<//=> or C<||=> operators, to apply the defaults whenever
the caller provided an undefined or false value (respectively), rather than
simply when the parameter is missing entirely.  For more detail see the
documentation in L<perlsub>.

=head2 @INC Hook Enhancements and $INC and INCDIR

The internals for C<@INC> hooks have been hardened to handle various
edge cases and should no longer segfault or throw assert failures when
hooks modify C<@INC> during a require operation.  As part of this we
now ensure that any given hook is executed at most once during a require
call, and that any duplicate directories do not trigger additional
directory probes.

To provide developers more control over dynamic module lookup, a new hook
method C<INCDIR> is now supported. An object supporting this method may be
injected into the C<@INC> array, and when it is encountered in the module
search process it will be executed, just like how INC hooks are executed,
and its return value used as a list of directories to search for the
module. Returning an empty list acts as a no-op. Note that since any
references returned by this hook will be stringified and used as strings,
you may not return a hook to be executed later via this API.

When an C<@INC> hook (either C<INC> or C<INCDIR>) is called during
require, the C<$INC> variable will be localized to be the value of the
index of C<@INC> that the hook came from. If the hook wishes to override
what the "next" index in C<@INC> should be it may update C<$INC> to be one
less than the desired index (C<undef> is equivalent to C<-1>). This
allows an C<@INC> hook to completely rewrite the C<@INC> array and have
perl restart its directory probes from the beginning of C<@INC>.

Blessed CODE references in C<@INC> that do not support the C<INC> or
C<INCDIR> methods will no longer trigger an exception, and instead will
be treated the same as unblessed coderefs are, and executed as though
they were an C<INC> hook.

=head2 Forbidden control flow out of C<defer> or C<finally> now detected at compile-time

It is forbidden to attempt to leave a C<defer> or C<finally> block by means
of control flow such as C<return> or C<goto>. Previous versions of perl could
only detect this when actually attempted at runtime.

This version of perl adds compile-time detection for many cases that can be
statically determined. This may mean that code which compiled successfully on
a previous version of perl is now reported as a compile-time error with this
one. This only happens in cases where it would have been an error to actually
execute the code anyway; the error simply happens at an earlier time.

=head2 Optimistic Eval in Patterns

The use of C<(?{ ... })> and C<(??{ ... })> in a pattern disables various
optimisations globally in that pattern. This may or may not be desired by the
programmer. This release adds the C<(*{ ... })>
equivalent. The only difference is that it does not and will never disable
any optimisations in the regex engine. This may make it more unstable in the
sense that it may be called more or less times in the future, however the
number of times it executes will truly match how the regex engine functions.
For example, certain types of optimisation are disabled when C<(?{ ... })> is
included in a pattern, so that patterns which are O(N) in normal use become
O(N*N) with a C<(?{ ... })> pattern in them. Switching to C<(*{ ... })> means
the pattern will stay O(N).

=head2 REG_INF has been raised from 65,536 to 2,147,483,647

Many regex quantifiers used to be limited to C<U16_MAX> in the past, but are
now limited to C<I32_MAX>, thus it is now possible to write
C</(?:word){1000000}/> for example.  Note that doing so may cause the regex
engine to run longer and use more memory.

=head2 New API functions optimize_optree and finalize_optree

There are two new API functions for operating on optree fragments, ensuring
you can invoke the required parts of the optree-generation process that might
otherwise not get invoked (e.g. when creating a custom LOGOP).  To get access
to these functions, you first need to set a C<#define> to opt-in to using
these functions.

  #define PERL_USE_VOLATILE_API

These functions are closely tied to the internals of how the interpreter
works, and could be altered or removed at any time if other internal changes
make that necessary.

=head2 Some C<goto>s are now permitted in C<defer> and C<finally> blocks

Perl version 5.36.0 added C<defer> blocks and permitted the C<finally> keyword
to also add similar behaviour to C<try>/C<catch> syntax.  These did not permit
any C<goto> expression within the body, as it could have caused control flow
to jump out of the block.  Now, some C<goto> expressions are allowed, if they
have a constant target label, and that label is found within the block.

  use feature 'defer';

  defer {
    goto LABEL;
    print "This does not execute\n";
    LABEL: print "This does\n";
  }

=head2 New regexp variable ${^LAST_SUCCESSFUL_PATTERN}

This allows access to the last succesful pattern that matched in the current
scope.  Many aspects of the regex engine refer to the "last successful
pattern". The empty pattern reuses it, and all of the magic regex vars relate
to it. This allows access to its pattern. The following code

    if (m/foo/ || m/bar/) {
        s//PQR/;
    }

can be rewritten as follows

    if (m/foo/ || m/bar/) {
        s/${^LAST_SUCCESSFUL_PATTERN}/PQR/;
    }

and it will do the exactly same thing.

=head2 Locale category LC_NAME now supported on participating platforms

On platforms that have the GNU extension C<LC_NAME> category, you may now use
it as the category parameter to L<POSIX/setlocale> to set and query its locale.

=head1 Incompatible Changes

=head2 readline() no longer clears the stream error and eof flags

C<readline()>, also spelled C<< <> >>, would clear the handle's error
and eof flags after an error occurred on the stream.

In nearly all cases this clear is no longer done, so the error and
eof flags now properly reflect the status of the stream after
readline().

Since the error flag is no longer cleared calling close() on the
stream may fail and if the stream was not explicitly closed, the
implicit close of the stream may produce a warning.

This has resulted in two main types of problems in downstream CPAN
modules, and these may also occur in your code:

=over

=item *

If your code reads to end of file, and then rebinds the handle to a
new file descriptor, previously since the eof flag wasn't set you
could continue to read from the stream.  You now need to clear the eof
flag yourself with C<< $handle->clearerr() >> to continue reading.

=item *

If your code encounters an error on the stream while reading with
readline() you will need to call C<< $handle->clearerr >> to continue
reading.  The one case this occurred the underlying file descriptor was
marked non-blocking, so the read() system call was failing with
C<EAGAIN>, which resulted in the error flag being set on the stream.

=back

The only case where error and eof flags continue to cleared on
error is when reading from the child process for glob() in
F<miniperl>.  This allows it to correctly report errors from the child
process on close().  This is unlikely to be an issue during normal
perl development.

[L<GH #20060|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20060>]

=head2 C<INIT> blocks no longer run after an C<exit()> in C<BEGIN>

C<INIT> blocks will no longer run after an C<exit()> performed inside of
a C<BEGIN>. This means that the combination of the C<-v> option and the
C<-c> option no longer executes a compile check as well as showing the
perl version. The C<-v> option executes an exit(0) after printing the
version information inside of a C<BEGIN> block, and the C<-c> check is
implemented by using C<INIT> hooks, resulting in the C<-v> option taking
precedence.

[L<GH #1537|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/1537>]
[L<GH #20181|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20181>]

=head2 Syntax errors will no longer produce "phantom error messages".

Generally perl will continue parsing the source code even after
encountering a compile error. In many cases this is helpful, for
instance with misspelled variable names it is helpful to show as many
examples of the error as possible. But in the case of syntax errors
continuing often produces bizarre error messages, and may even cause
segmentation faults during the compile process. In this release the
compiler will halt at the first syntax error encountered. This means
that any code expecting to see the specific error messages we used to
produce will be broken. The error that is emitted will be one of the
diagnostics that used to be produced, but in some cases some messages
that used to be produced will no longer be displayed.

See L<Changes to Existing Diagnostics> for more details.

=head2 L<C<utf8::upgrade()>|utf8/Utility functions>

Starting in this release, if the input string is C<undef>, it remains
C<undef>.  Previously it would be changed into a defined, zero-length
string.

=head2 Changes to "thread-safe" locales

Perl 5.28 introduced "thread-safe" locales on systems that supported
them, namely modern Windows, and systems supporting POSIX 2008 locale
operations.  These systems accomplish this by having per-thread locales,
while continuing to support the older global locale operations for code
that doesn't take the steps necessary to use the newer per-thread ones.

It turns out that some POSIX 2008 platforms have or have had buggy
implementations, which forced perl to not use them.  The
C<${^SAFE_LOCALES}> scalar variable contains 0 or 1 to indicate whether
or not the current platform is considered by perl to have a working
thread-safe implementation.  Some implementations have been fixed
already, but FreeBSD and Cygwin have been newly discovered to be
sufficiently buggy that the thread-safe operations are no longer used by
perl, starting in this release.  Hence, C<${^SAFE_LOCALES}> is now 0 for
them.  Older versions of perl can be configured to avoid these buggy
implementations by adding the F<Configure> option
C<-DNO_POSIX_2008_LOCALE>.

And v5.38 fixes a bug in all previous perls that led to locales not
being fully thread-safe.  The first thread that finishes caused
the main thread (named C<thread0>) to revert to the global locale in
effect at startup, discarding whatever the thread's locale had been
previously set to.  If any other thread had switched to the global
locale by calling C<switch_to_global_locale()> in XS code, those threads
would all share the global locale, and C<thread0> would not be
thread-safe.

=head1 Deprecations

=head2 Use of C<'> as a package name separator is deprecated

Using C<'> as package separator in a variable named in a double-quoted
string has warned since 5.28.  It is now deprecated in both string
interpolation and non-interpolated contexts, and will be removed in
Perl 5.42.

=head2 Switch and Smart Match operator

The "switch" feature and the smartmatch operator, C<~~>, were introduced in
v5.10.  Their behavior was significantly changed in v5.10.1.  When the
"experiment" system was added in v5.18.0, switch and smartmatch were
retroactively declared experimental.  Over the years, proposals to fix or
supplement the features have come and gone.

In v5.38.0, we are declaring the experiment a failure.  Some future system may
take the conceptual place of smartmatch, but it has not yet been designed or
built.  

These features will be entirely removed from perl in v5.42.0.

=head1 Performance Enhancements

=over 4

=item *

Additional optree optimizations for common OP patterns. For example, multiple
simple OPs replaced by a single streamlined OP, so as to be more efficient at
runtime. L<[GH #19943]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/19943>,
L<[GH #20063]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/20063>,
L<[GH #20077]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/20077>.

=item *

Creating an anonymous sub no longer generates an C<srefgen> op, the
reference generation is now done in the C<anoncode> or C<anonconst>
op, saving runtime.  [github #20290]

=back

=head1 Modules and Pragmata

=head2 Updated Modules and Pragmata

=over 4

=item *

Added the C<is_tainted()> builtin function. [L<github #19854|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19854>]

=item *

Added the C<export_lexically()> builtin function as per PPC 0020. [L<github #19895|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19895>]

=item *

Support for PPC 0018, C<use feature "module_true";> has been added to
the default feature bundle for v5.38 and later. It may also be used
explicitly. When enabled inside of a module the module does not need
to return true explicitly, and in fact the return will be forced to
a simple true value regardless of what it originally was.

=item *

L<Attribute::Handlers> has been upgraded from version 1.02 to 1.03.

=item *

L<attributes> has been upgraded from version 0.34 to 0.35.

=item *

L<autodie> has been upgraded from version 2.34 to 2.36.

=item *

L<B> has been upgraded from version 1.83 to 1.88.

=item *

L<B::Concise> has been upgraded from version 1.006 to 1.007.

=item *

L<B::Deparse> has been upgraded from version 1.64 to 1.74.

=item *

L<Benchmark> has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.24.

=item *

L<bignum> has been upgraded from version 0.65 to 0.66.

=item *

L<Carp> has been upgraded from version 1.52 to 1.54.

=item *

L<Class::Struct> has been upgraded from version 0.66 to 0.68.

=item *

L<Compress::Raw::Bzip2> has been upgraded from version 2.103 to 2.204_001.

=item *

L<Compress::Raw::Zlib> has been upgraded from version 2.105 to 2.204_001.

=item *

L<Config::Perl::V> has been upgraded from version 0.33 to 0.36.

=item *

L<CPAN> has been upgraded from version 2.33 to 2.36.

=item *

L<Data::Dumper> has been upgraded from version 2.184 to 2.188.

=item *

L<DB_File> has been upgraded from version 1.857 to 1.858.

=item *

L<Devel::Peek> has been upgraded from version 1.32 to 1.33.

=item *

L<Devel::PPPort> has been upgraded from version 3.68 to 3.71.

=item *

L<Digest::MD5> has been upgraded from version 2.58 to 2.58_01.

=item *

L<Digest::SHA> has been upgraded from version 6.02 to 6.04.

=item *

L<DynaLoader> has been upgraded from version 1.52 to 1.54.

=item *

L<Encode> has been upgraded from version 3.17 to 3.19.

=item *

L<encoding::warnings> has been upgraded from version 0.13 to 0.14.

=item *

L<Env> has been upgraded from version 1.05 to 1.06.

=item *

L<Errno> has been upgraded from version 1.36 to 1.37.

=item *

L<experimental> has been upgraded from version 0.028 to 0.031.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::CBuilder> has been upgraded from version 0.280236 to 0.280238.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::Install> has been upgraded from version 2.20 to 2.22.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker> has been upgraded from version 7.64 to 7.70.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::Miniperl> has been upgraded from version 1.11 to 1.13.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::ParseXS> has been upgraded from version 3.45 to 3.51.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::PL2Bat> has been upgraded from version 0.004 to 0.005.

=item *

L<ExtUtils::Typemaps> has been upgraded from version 3.45 to 3.51.

=item *

L<feature> has been upgraded from version 1.72 to 1.82.

=item *

L<File::Basename> has been upgraded from version 2.85 to 2.86.

=item *

L<File::Copy> has been upgraded from version 2.39 to 2.41.

=item *

L<File::Find> has been upgraded from version 1.40 to 1.43.

=item *

L<File::Glob> has been upgraded from version 1.37 to 1.40.

=item *

L<File::Spec> has been upgraded from version 3.84 to 3.89.

=item *

L<File::stat> has been upgraded from version 1.12 to 1.13.

=item *

L<FileHandle> has been upgraded from version 2.03 to 2.05.

=item *

L<Filter::Util::Call> has been upgraded from version 1.60 to 1.64.

=item *

L<GDBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.23 to 1.24.

=item *

L<Getopt::Long> has been upgraded from version 2.52 to 2.54.

=item *

L<Hash::Util> has been upgraded from version 0.28 to 0.30.

=item *

L<HTTP::Tiny> has been upgraded from version 0.080 to 0.083.

=item *

L<I18N::Langinfo> has been upgraded from version 0.21 to 0.22.

=item *

L<IO> has been upgraded from version 1.50 to 1.52.

=item *

IO-Compress has been upgraded from version 2.106 to 2.204.

=item *

L<IO::Socket::IP> has been upgraded from version 0.41 to 0.41_01.

On DragonflyBSD, detect setsockopt() not actually clearing
C<IPV6_V6ONLY> even when setsockopt() returns success.  [L<cpan
#148293|https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=148293>]

=item *

L<IO::Zlib> has been upgraded from version 1.11 to 1.14.

=item *

L<JSON::PP> has been upgraded from version 4.07 to 4.16.

=item *

libnet has been upgraded from version 3.14 to 3.15.

=item *

L<Locale::Maketext> has been upgraded from version 1.31 to 1.33.

=item *

L<Math::BigInt> has been upgraded from version 1.999830 to 1.999837.

=item *

L<Math::BigInt::FastCalc> has been upgraded from version 0.5012 to 0.5013.

=item *

L<Math::BigRat> has been upgraded from version 0.2621 to 0.2624.

=item *

L<Math::Complex> has been upgraded from version 1.5902 to 1.62.

=item *

L<Memoize> has been upgraded from version 1.03_01 to 1.16.

=item *

L<MIME::Base64> has been upgraded from version 3.16 to 3.16_01.

=item *

L<Module::CoreList> has been upgraded from version 5.20220520 to 5.20230520.

=item *

L<mro> has been upgraded from version 1.26 to 1.28.

=item *

L<NDBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.15 to 1.16.

=item *

L<Net::Ping> has been upgraded from version 2.74 to 2.76.

=item *

L<ODBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.

=item *

L<Opcode> has been upgraded from version 1.57 to 1.64.

=item *

L<overload> has been upgraded from version 1.35 to 1.37.

=item *

L<parent> has been upgraded from version 0.238 to 0.241.

=item *

L<PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint> has been upgraded from version 0.09 to 0.10.

=item *

L<Pod::Checker> has been upgraded from version 1.74 to 1.75.

=item *

L<Pod::Html> has been upgraded from version 1.33 to 1.34.

=item *

L<Pod::Usage> has been upgraded from version 2.01 to 2.03.

=item *

L<podlators> has been upgraded from version 4.14 to 5.01.

=item *

L<POSIX> has been upgraded from version 2.03 to 2.13.

=item *

L<re> has been upgraded from version 0.43 to 0.44.

=item *

L<Safe> has been upgraded from version 2.43 to 2.44.

=item *

L<Scalar::Util> has been upgraded from version 1.62 to 1.63.

=item *

L<SDBM_File> has been upgraded from version 1.15 to 1.17.

=item *

L<Socket> has been upgraded from version 2.033 to 2.036.

=item *

L<Storable> has been upgraded from version 3.26 to 3.32.

=item *

L<Sys::Hostname> has been upgraded from version 1.24 to 1.25.

=item *

L<Term::Cap> has been upgraded from version 1.17 to 1.18.

=item *

L<Test::Simple> has been upgraded from version 1.302190 to 1.302194.

=item *

L<Text::Balanced> has been upgraded from version 2.04 to 2.06.

=item *

L<threads> has been upgraded from version 2.27 to 2.36.

=item *

L<threads::shared> has been upgraded from version 1.64 to 1.68.

=item *

L<Tie::File> has been upgraded from version 1.06 to 1.07.

=item *

L<Time::HiRes> has been upgraded from version 1.9770 to 1.9775.

=item *

L<Time::Piece> has been upgraded from version 1.3401 to 1.3401_01.

=item *

L<Unicode::Normalize> has been upgraded from version 1.31 to 1.32.

=item *

L<UNIVERSAL> has been upgraded from version 1.14 to 1.15.

=item *

L<User::grent> has been upgraded from version 1.03 to 1.04.

=item *

L<User::pwent> has been upgraded from version 1.01 to 1.02.

=item *

L<utf8> has been upgraded from version 1.24 to 1.25.

=item *

L<warnings> has been upgraded from version 1.58 to 1.65.

=item *

L<XS::APItest> has been upgraded from version 1.22 to 1.32.

=item *

L<XSLoader> has been upgraded from version 0.31 to 0.32.

=back

=head1 Documentation

=head2 New Documentation

=head3 L<perlclass>

Describes the new C<class> feature.

=head3 L<perlclassguts>

Describes the internals of the new C<class> feature.

=head2 Changes to Existing Documentation

We have attempted to update the documentation to reflect the changes
listed in this document.  If you find any we have missed, open an issue
at L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.

Additionally, the following selected changes have been made:

=head3 L<perlapi>

=over 4

=item *

Documented L<C<hv_ksplit>|perlapi/hv_ksplit>

=item *

Documented L<C<hv_name_set>|perlapi/hv_name_set>

=item *

L<C<hv_store>|perlapi/hv_store> and L<C<hv_stores>|perlapi/hv_stores>
documentation have been greatly improved.

=item *

Documented L<C<gv_autoload_pv>|perlapi/gv_autoload_pv>

=item *

Documented L<C<gv_autoload_pvn>|perlapi/gv_autoload_pvn>

=item *

Documented L<C<gv_autoload_sv>|perlapi/gv_autoload_sv>

=item *

Documented L<C<gv_name_set>|perlapi/gv_name_set>

=item *

Documented L<C<start_subparse>|perlapi/start_subparse>

=item *

Documented L<C<SV_CHECK_THINKFIRST_COW_DROP>|perlapi/SV_CHECK_THINKFIRST_COW_DROP>

=item *

Documented L<C<SV_CHECK_THINKFIRST>|perlapi/SV_CHECK_THINKFIRST>

=item *

Documented L<C<SvPV_shrink_to_cur>|perlapi/SvPV_shrink_to_cur>

=item *

Documented L<C<save_aelem>|perlapi/save_aelem>

=item *

Documented L<C<save_aelem_flags>|perlapi/save_aelem_flags>

=item *

Documented L<C<save_helem>|perlapi/save_helem>

=item *

Documented L<C<save_helem_flags>|perlapi/save_helem_flags>

=back

=head3 L<perldeprecation>

=over 4

=item *

Added information about unscheduled deprecations and their categories.

=item *

Added category information for existing scheduled deprecations.

=item *

Added smartmatch and apostrophe as a package separator deprecation data.

=back

=head3 L<perlintern>

=over 4

=item *

Documented L<C<save_pushptr>|perlintern/save_pushptr>

=item *

Documented L<C<save_scalar_at>|perlintern/save_scalar_at>

=item *

Entries have been added to L<perlguts> for the new C<newAV_alloc_x>, C<newAV_alloc_xz> and
C<*_simple> functions.

=item *

References to the now-defunct PrePAN service have been removed from
L<perlcommunity> and L<perlmodstyle>.

=item *

A section on symbol naming has been added to L<perlhacktips>.

=item *

L<perlexperiment> has been edited to properly reference the warning categories
for the defer block modifier and extra paired delimiters for quote-like
operators.

=back

=head3 L<perlexperiment>

=over 4

=item *

Smartmatch has been moved from experimental status to deprecated status.
Unfortunately the experiment did not work out.

=back

=head3 L<perlfunc>

=over 4

=item *

Some wording improvements have been made for the C<ucfirst>, C<push>,
C<unshift> and C<bless> functions, as well as additional examples added.

=back

=head3 perlhacktips

=over 4

=item *

A new section, L<perlhacktips/Writing safer macros> has been added to discuss
pitfalls and solutions to using C macros in C and XS code.

=item *

A new section, L<perlhacktips/Choosing good symbol names>, has been added to
discuss unexpected gotchas with names.

=back

=head3 L<perlop>

=over 4

=item *

Document the behavior of matching the empty pattern better and specify
its relationship to the new C<${^LAST_SUCCESSFUL_PATTERN}> properly.

=back

=cut

=head3 L<perlvar>

=over 4

=item *

Added a section on "Scoping Rules of Regex Variables", and other wording
improvements made throughout.

=item *

Added information on the new C<%{^HOOK}> interface, and the new
C<require__before> and C<require__after> hooks which it exposes.

=item *

Correct information on the regex variables C<${^PREMATCH}>, C<${^MATCH}>
and C<${^POSTMATCH}>, all of which were incorrectly documented due to an
oversight. Specifically they only work properly after a regex operation
that used the /p modifier to enable them.

=item *

Added information on the new regex variable C<${^LAST_SUCCESSFUL_PATTERN}>,
which represents the pattern of the last successful regex match in scope.

=back

=head1 Diagnostics

The following additions or changes have been made to diagnostic output,
including warnings and fatal error messages.  For the complete list of
diagnostic messages, see L<perldiag>.

=head2 New Diagnostics

=head3 New Errors

=over 4

=item *

A new syntax error has been added for the error that a C<catch> block does
not have its required variable declaration. See
L<catch block requires a (VAR)|perldiag/"catch block requires a (VAR)">

=item *

L<Too many nested BEGIN blocks, maximum of %d allowed|perldiag/"Too many nested BEGIN blocks, maximum of %d allowed">

=item *

L<Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.|perldiag/"Execution of %s aborted due to compilation errors.">

=item *

L<Can't locate object method "INC", nor "INCDIR" nor string overload via
package "%s" %s in @INC|perldiag/"Can't locate object method "INC", nor
"INCDIR" nor string overload via package "%s" %s in @INC">

=item *

L<Attempt to bless into a class|perldiag/"Attempt to bless into a class">

(F) You are attempting to call C<bless> with a package name that is a
new-style C<class>.  This is not necessary, as instances created by the
constructor are already in the correct class.  Instances cannot be created
by other means, such as C<bless>.

=item *

L<Cannot assign :param(%s) to field %s because that name is already in use|perldiag/"Cannot assign :param(%s) to field %s because that name is already in use">

(F) An attempt was made to apply a parameter name to a field, when the name
is already being used by another field in the same class, or one of its
parent classes. This would cause a name clash so is not allowed.

=item *

L<Cannot create class %s as it already has a non-empty @ISA|perldiag/"Cannot create class %s as it already has a non-empty @ISA">

(F) An attempt was made to create a class out of a package that already has
an C<@ISA> array, and the array is not empty.  This is not permitted, as it
would lead to a class with inconsistent inheritance.

=item *

L<Cannot invoke a method of "%s" on an instance of "%s"|perldiag/"Cannot invoke a method of "%s" on
an instance of "%s"">

(F) You tried to directly call a C<method> subroutine of one class by passing
in a value that is an instance of a different class.  This is not permitted,
as the method would not have access to the correct instance fields.

=item *

L<Cannot invoke method on a non-instance|perldiag/"Cannot invoke method on a non-instance">

(F) You tried to directly call a C<method> subroutine of a class by passing
in a value that is not an instance of that class.  This is not permitted, as
the method would not then have access to its instance fields.

=item *

L<Cannot '%s' outside of a 'class'|perldiag/"Cannot '%s' outside of a 'class'">

(F) You attempted to use one of the keywords that only makes sense inside
a C<class> definition, at a location that is not inside such a class.

=item *

L<Cannot reopen existing class "%s"|perldiag/"Cannot reopen existing class "%s"">

(F) You tried to begin a C<class> definition for a class that already exists.
A class may only have one definition block.

=item *

L<Can't bless an object reference|perldiag/"Can't bless an object reference">

(F) You attempted to call C<bless> on a value that already refers to a real
object instance.

=item *

L<can't convert empty path|perldiag/"can't convert empty path">

(F) On Cygwin, you called a path conversion function with an empty path.
Only non-empty paths are legal.

=item *

L<Class already has a superclass, cannot add another|perldiag/"Class already has a superclass, cannot add another">

(F) You attempted to specify a second superclass for a C<class> by using
the C<:isa> attribute, when one is already specified.  Unlike classes
whose instances are created with C<bless>, classes created via the
C<class> keyword cannot have more than one superclass.

=item *

L<Class attribute %s requires a value|perldiag/"Class attribute %s requires a value">

(F) You specified an attribute for a class that would require a value to
be passed in parentheses, but did not provide one.  Remember that
whitespace is B<not> permitted between the attribute name and its value;
you must write this as

    class Example::Class :attr(VALUE) ...

=item *

L<Class :isa attribute requires a class but "%s" is not one|perldiag/"Class :isa attribute requires a class but "%s" is not one">

(F) When creating a subclass using the C<class> C<:isa> attribute, the
named superclass must also be a real class created using the C<class>
keyword.

=item *

L<Field already has a parameter name, cannot add another|perldiag/"Field already has a parameter name, cannot add another">

(F) A field may have at most one application of the C<:param> attribute to
assign a parameter name to it; once applied a second one is not allowed.

=item *

L<Field attribute %s requires a value|perldiag/"Field attribute %s requires a value">

(F) You specified an attribute for a field that would require a value to
be passed in parentheses, but did not provide one.  Remember that
whitespace is B<not> permitted between the attribute name and its value;
you must write this as

    field $var :attr(VALUE) ...

=item *

L<Field %s is not accessible outside a method|perldiag/"Field %s is not accessible outside a method">

(F) An attempt was made to access a field variable of a class from code
that does not appear inside the body of a C<method> subroutine.  This is not
permitted, as only methods will have access to the fields of an instance.

=item *

L<Field %s of "%s" is not accessible in a method of "%s"|perldiag/"Field %s of "%s" is not accessible in a method of "%s"">

(F) An attempt was made to access a field variable of a class, from a
method of another class nested inside the one that actually defined it.
This is not permitted, as only methods defined by a given class are
permitted to access fields of that class.

=item *

L<Only scalar fields can take a :param attribute|perldiag/"Only scalar fields can take a :param attribute">

(F) You tried to apply the C<:param> attribute to an array or hash field.
Currently this is not permitted.

=item *

L<Required parameter '%s' is missing for %s constructor|perldiag/"Required parameter '%s' is missing for %s constructor">

(F) You called the constructor for a class that has a required named
parameter, but did not pass that parameter at all.

=item *

L<Unexpected characters while parsing class :isa attribute: %s|perldiag/"Unexpected characters while parsing class :isa attribute: %s">

(F) You tried to specify something other than a single class name with an
optional trailing version number as the value for a C<class> C<:isa>
attribute.  This confused the parser.

=item *

L<Unrecognized class attribute %s|perldiag/"Unrecognized class attribute %s">

(F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a C<class> definition, but
perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute.

=item *

L<Unrecognized field attribute %s|perldiag/"Unrecognized field attribute %s">

(F) You attempted to add a named attribute to a C<field> definition, but
perl does not recognise the name of the requested attribute.

=item *

L<${^HOOK}{%s} may only be a CODE reference or undef|perldiag/"${^HOOK}{%s} may only be a CODE reference or undef">

=item *

L<Attempt to set unknown hook '%s' in %{^HOOK}|perldiag/"Attempt to set unknown hook '%s' in %{^HOOK}">

=item *

L<Missing or undefined argument to %s via %{^HOOK}{require__before}|perldiag/"Missing or undefined argument to %s via %{^HOOK}{require__before}">

=item *

L<Too many capture groups (limit is %d) in regex mE<sol>%sE<sol>|perldiag/"Too many capture groups (limit is %d) in regex m/%s/">

=back

=head3 New Warnings

=over 4

=item *

L<Unknown locale category %d|perldiag/"Unknown locale category %d">

This is a shortened form of an already existing diagnostic, for use when
there is no new locale being switched to.  The previous diagnostic was
misleading in such circumstances.

=item *

L<Locale '%s' is unsupported, and may crash the interpreter.|perldiag/"Locale '%s' is unsupported, and may crash the interpreter.">

=item *

L<Treating %s::INIT block as BEGIN block as workaround|perldiag/"Treating %s::INIT block as BEGIN block as workaround">

=item *

L<Filehandle STD%s reopened as %s only for input|perldiag/"Filehandle STD%s reopened as %s only for input">

=item *

L<%s on BEGIN block ignored|perldiag/"%s on BEGIN block ignored">

=item *

L<ADJUST is experimental|perldiag/"ADJUST is experimental">

(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C<ADJUST>
keyword of C<use feature 'class'>.  This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl.

=item *

L<class is experimental|perldiag/"class is experimental">

(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C<class>
keyword of C<use feature 'class'>.  This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl.

=item *

L<Method %s redefined|perldiag/"Method %s redefined">

(W redefine) You redefined a method.  To suppress this warning, say

    {
       no warnings 'redefine';
       *name = method { ... };
    }

=item *

L<Odd number of elements in hash field initialization|perldiag/"Odd number of elements in hash field initialization">

(W misc) You specified an odd number of elements to initialise a hash
field of an object.  Hashes are initialised from a list of key/value
pairs so there must be a corresponding value to every key.  The final
missing value will be filled in with undef instead.

=item *

L<Old package separator "'" deprecated|perldiag/"Old package separator "'" deprecated">

(W deprecated, syntax) You used the old package separator "'" in a
variable, subroutine or package name.  Support for the old package
separator will be removed in Perl 5.40.

=item *

L<field is experimental|perldiag/"field is experimental">

(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C<field>
keyword of C<use feature 'class'>.  This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl.

=item *

L<method is experimental|perldiag/"method is experimental">

(S experimental::class) This warning is emitted if you use the C<method>
keyword of C<use feature 'class'>.  This keyword is currently
experimental and its behaviour may change in future releases of Perl.

=item *

L<Can't call destructor for 0x%p in global destruction|perldiag/"Can't call destructor for 0x%p in global destruction">


=back

=head2 Changes to Existing Diagnostics

=over 4

=item *

The compiler will now stop parsing on the first syntax error it
encounters. Historically the compiler would attempt to "skip past" the
error and continue parsing so that it could list multiple errors. For
things like undeclared variables under strict this makes sense. For
syntax errors however it has been found that continuing tends to result
in a storm of unrelated or bizarre errors that mostly just obscure the
true error. In extreme cases it can even lead to segfaults and other
incorrect behavior.

Therefore we have reformed the continuation logic so that the parse will
stop after the first seen syntax error. Semantic errors like undeclared
variables will not stop the parse, so you may still see multiple errors
when compiling code. However if there is a syntax error it will be the
last error message reported by perl and all of the errors that you see
will be something that actually needs to be fixed.

=item *

Error messages that output class or package names have been modified to
output double quoted strings with various characters escaped so as to
make the exact value clear to a reader. The exact rules on which
characters are escaped may change over time but currently are that
printable ASCII codepoints, with the exception of C<"> and C<\>, and
unicode word characters whose codepoint is over 255 are output raw, and
any other symbols are escaped much as Data::Dumper might escape them,
using C<\n> for newline and C<\"> for double quotes, etc. Codepoints in
the range 128-255 are always escaped as they can cause trouble on
unicode terminals when output raw.

In older versions of perl the one liner

    $ perl -le'"thing\n"->foo()'

would output the following error message exactly as shown here, with
text spread over multiple lines because the "\n" would be emitted as
a raw newline character:

    Can't locate object method "foo" via package "thing
    " (perhaps you forgot to load "thing
    "?) at -e line 1.

As of this release we would output this instead (as one line):

    Can't locate object method "foo" via package "thing\n"
      (perhaps you forgot to load "thing\n"?) at -e line 1.

Notice the newline in the package name has been quoted and escaped, and
thus the error message is a single line. The text is shown here wrapped
to two lines only for readability.

=item *

When package or class names in errors are very large the middle excess
portion will be elided from the message. As of this release error messages
will show only up to the first 128 characters and the last 128 characters
in a package or class name in error messages. For example

 $ perl -le'("Foo" x 1000)->new()'

will output the following as one line:

 Can't locate object method "new" via package "FooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFo"..."oFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo" (perhaps you forgot to load
 "FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFo"...
 "oFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo
 FooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFooFoo"?)
 at -e line 1.

Notice the C< "prefix"..."suffix" > form of the package name in this case.
In previous versions of perl the complete string would have been shown
making the error message over 6k long and there was no upper limit on the
length of the error message at all. If you accidentally used a 1MB string
as a class name then the error message would be over 2MB long. In this perl
the upper limit should be around 2k when eliding and escaping are taken into
account.

=item *

Removed C<< Complex regular subexpression recursion limit (%d) exceeded >>

The regular expresion engine has not used recursion in some time. This
warning no longer makes sense.

See [L<GH #19636|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/19636>].

=item *

Various warnings that used to produce parenthesized hints underneath the
main warning message and after its "location data" were chanaged to put
the hint inline with the main message. For instance:

 Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "foo bar"
     (Do you need to predeclare foo?)

will now look like this but as one line:

 Bareword found where operator expected (Do you need to predeclare
 foo?) at -e line 1, near "foo bar"

as a result such warnings will no longer trigger C<$SIG{__WARN__}>
twice, and the hint will be visible when fatal warnings is in effect.

=item *

The error message that is produced when a C<require> or C<use> statement
fails has been changed. It used to contain the words C<@INC contains:>,
and it used to show the state of C<@INC> *after* the require had
completed and failed. The error message has been changed to say C<@INC
entries checked:> and to reflect the actual directories or hooks that
were executed during the require statement. For example:

    perl -e'push @INC, sub {@INC=()}; eval "require Frobnitz"
        or die $@'
    Can't locate Frobnitz.pm in @INC (you may need to install the
    Frobnitz module) (@INC contains:) at (eval 1) line 1.

Will change to (with some output elided for clarity):

    perl -e'push @INC, sub {@INC=()}; eval "require Frobnitz"
        or die $@'
    Can't locate Frobnitz.pm in @INC (you may need to install the
    Frobnitz module) (@INC entries checked:
    .../site_perl/5.38.0/x86_64-linux .../site_perl/5.38.0
    .../5.38.0/x86_64-linux .../5.38.0 CODE(0x562745e684b8))
    at (eval 1) line 1.

thus showing the actual directories checked. Code that checks for
C<@INC contains:> in error messages should be hardened against any future
wording changes between the C<@INC> and C<:>, for instance use
C<qr/\@INC[ \w]+:/> instead of using C<qr/\@INC contains:/> or
C<qr/\@INC entries checked:/> in tests as this will ensure both forward
and backward compatibility.

=item *

L<Old package separator used in string|perldiag/"Old package separator used in string">

This diagnostic is now also part of the C<deprecated> category.

=item *

L<given is deprecated|perldiag/"given is deprecated"> replaces C<given is experimental>.

=item *

L<when is deprecated|perldiag/"when is deprecated"> replaces C<when is experimental>.

=item *

L<Smartmatch is deprecated|perldiag/"Smartmatch is deprecated"> replaces C<Smartmatch is experimental>.

=back

=head1 Configuration and Compilation

=over 4

=item *

C<make -j6 minitest> could fail due to a build conflict in building
C<$(MINIPERL_EXE)> between the main make process and a child process.
[github #19829]

=item *

Properly populate osvers on Dragonfly BSD when the hostname isn't set.

=item *

Fix typos for C99 macro name C<PRIX64>.

=item *

Remove ancient and broken GCC for VMS support

=item *

Remove vestigial reference to C</VAXC> qualifier

=item *

Remove sharedperl option on VMS

=item *

VMS now has mkostemp

=item *

C<Configure> now properly handles quoted elements outputted by gcc.
[L<GH #20606|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20606>]

=item *

C<Configure> probed for the return type of malloc() and free() by
testing whether declarations for those functions produced a function
type mismatch with the implementation.  On Solaris, with a C++
compiler, this check always failed, since Solaris instead imports
malloc() and free() from C<std::> with C<using> for C++ builds.  Since
the return types of malloc() and free() are well defined by the C
standard, skip probing for them.  C<Configure> command-line arguments
and hints can still override these type in the unlikely case that is
needed.  [L<GH #20806|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20806>]

=back

=head1 Testing

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

=over 4

=item *

Unicode normalization tests have been added.

=item *

t/test.pl: Add ability to cancel an watchdog timer

=back

=head1 Platform Support

=head2 Discontinued Platforms

=over 4

=item Ultrix

Support code for DEC Ultrix has been removed.  Ultrix was the native
Unix-like operating system for various Digital Equipment Corporation
machines.  Its final release was in 1995.

=back

=head2 Platform-Specific Notes

=over 4

=item DragonflyBSD

Skip tests to workaround an apparent bug in setproctitle().  [L<github #19894|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19894>]

=item FreeBSD

FreeBSD no longer uses thread-safe locale operations, to avoid L<a bug in
FreeBSD|https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=265950>

Replace the first part of archname with `uname -p` [L<github #19791|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19791>]

=item Solaris

Avoid some compiler and compilation issues on NetBSD/Solaris from regexec.c and regcomp.c.

=item Synology

Update Synology Readme for DSM 7.

=item Windows

Fix win32 memory alignment needed for gcc-12 from vmem.h.

utimes() on Win32 would print a message to stderr if it failed to
convert a supplied C<time_t> to to a C<FILETIME>. [github #19668]

In some cases, timestamps returned by L<stat()|perlfunc/stat> and
L<lstat()|perlfunc/lstat> failed to take daylight saving time into account.
[L<GH #20018|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20018>]
[L<GH #20061|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20061>]

stat() now works on AF_UNIX socket files. [github #20204]

readlink() now returns the C<PrintName> from a symbolic link reparse
point instead of the C<SubstituteName>, which should make it better
match the name the link was created with.  [github #20271]

lstat() on Windows now returns the length of the link target as the
size of the file, as it does on POSIX systems.  [github #20476]

symlink() on Windows now replaces any C</> in the target with C<\>,
since Windows does not recognise C</> in symbolic links.  The reverse
translation is B<not> done by readlink().  [github #20506]

symlink() where the target was an absolute path to a directory was
incorrectly created as a file symbolic link.  [github #20533]

C<POSIX::dup2> no longer creates broken sockets. [L<GH
#20920|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20920>]

Closing a busy pipe could cause Perl to hang. [L<GH
#19963|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19963>]

=back

=head1 Internal Changes

=over 4

=item *

Removed many deprecated C functions.

These have been deprecated for a long time. See
L<https://github.com/perl/perl5/commit/7008caa915ad99e650acf2aea40612b5e48b7ba2>
for a full list.

=item *

C<get_op_descs>, C<get_op_names>, C<get_opargs>, C<get_no_modify> and
C<get_ppaddr> have been marked deprecated.

=item *

C<hv_free_ent> has been marked as internal API.

=item *

C<save_pushptr>, C<save_pushptrptr>, and C<save_pushi32ptr> have been marked
as internal API.

=item *

New bool related functions and macros have been added to complement the new
bool type introduced in 5.36:

The functions are:

=over 4

=item L<C<newSVbool(const bool bool_val)>|perlapi/newSVbool>

=item L<C<newSV_true()>|perlapi/newSV_true>

=item L<C<newSV_false()>|perlapi/newSV_false>

=item L<C<sv_set_true(SV *sv)>|perlapi/sv_set_true>

=item L<C<sv_set_false(SV *sv)>|perlapi/sv_set_false>

=item L<C<sv_set_bool(SV *sv, const bool bool_val)>|perlapi/sv_set_bool>

=back

The macros are:

=over 4

=item L<C<SvIandPOK(sv)>|perlapi/SvIandPOK>

=item L<C<SvIandPOK_off(sv)>|perlapi/SvIandPOK_off>

=item L<C<SvIandPOK_on>|perlapi/SvIandPOK_on>

=back

=item *

Perl is no longer manipulating the C<environ> array directly. The variable
C<PL_use_safe_putenv> has been removed and C<PERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV> is always
defined. This means XS modules can now call C<setenv> and C<putenv> without
causing segfaults. [L<perl #19399|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19399>]

=item *

Internal C API functions are now hidden with C<__attribute__((hidden))> on the
platforms that support it. This means they are no longer callable from XS
modules on those platforms.

It should be noted that those functions have always been hidden on Windows. This
change merely brings that to the other platforms.
[L<perl #19655|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/19655>]

=item *

New formatting symbols were added for printing values declared as C<U32> or
C<I32>:

=over

=item I32df -- Like %d

=item U32of -- Like %o

=item U32uf -- Like %u

=item U32xf -- Like %x

=item U32Xf -- Like %X

=back

These are used in the same way already existing similar symbols, such as
C<IVdf>, are used.  See L<perlapi/I/O Formats>.

=item *

new 'HvHasAUX' macro

=item *

regexec.c: Add some branch predictions reorder conds

=item *

locale: Change macro name to be C conformant

=item *

Rename the C<PADNAMEt_*> constants to C<PADNAMEf_*>

=item *

Changes all the API macros that retrieve a PV into a call to an
inline function so as to evaluate the parameter just once.

=item *

regexec.c: multiple code refactor to make the code more readable

=item *

perl.h: Change macro name to be C conformant
(remove leading _ from NOT_IN_NUMERIC macros)

=item *

regcomp.h: add new C<BITMAP_BIT> macro in addition to the existing C<BITMAP_BYTE>
and C<BITMAP_TEST> ones.

=item *

Create new regnode type ANYOFH.
populate_ANYOF_from_invlist was renamed to populate_bitmap_from_invlist

=item *

regex: Refactor bitmap vs non-bitmap of qr/[]/

=item *

regcomp.c: add new functions to convert from an inversion list to a bitmap (and vice versa)
C<populate_bitmap_from_invlist> and C<populate_invlist_from_bitmap>.

=item *

Add C<newAVav()> to create an AV from an existing AV.
Add C<newAVhv()> to create an AV using keys and values from an existing HV.

=item *

Fix definition of C<Perl_atof>.

=item *

Fix undefined behavior with overflow related C<OPTIMIZE_INFTY> and delta
in F<regcomp.c>.

=item *

Fix regnode pointer alignment issue in F<regcomp.h>.

=item *

The C<CVf_METHOD> CV flag and associated C<CvMETHOD> macro has been renamed to
C<CVf_NOWARN_AMBIGUOUS> and C<CvNOWARN_AMBIGUOUS>. This closer reflects its
actual behaviour (it suppresses a warning that would otherwise be generated
about ambiguous names), in order to be less confusing with C<CvIsMETHOD>,
which indicates that a CV is a C<method> subroutine relating to the C<class>
feature.

=item *

The C<OPf_SPECIAL> flag is no longer set on the C<OP_ENTERSUB> op
constructed to call the C<VERSION>, C<import> and C<unimport> methods
as part of a C<use> statement and attribute application, nor when
assigning to an C<:lvalue> subroutine.

=item *

A new CV flag C<CVf_REFCOUNTED_ANYSV> has been added, which indicates that the
CV is an XSUB and stores an SV pointer in the C<CvXSUBANY.any_sv> union field.
Perl core operations such as cloning or destroying the CV will maintain the
reference count of the pointed-to SV, destroying it when required.

=item *

A new API function L<perlapi/C<Perl_localeconv>> is added.  This is the
same as L<C<POSIX::localeconv>|POSIX/localeconv> (returning a hash of
the C<localeconv()> fields), but directly callable from XS code.

=item *

A new API function, L<perlapi/C<Perl_langinfo8>> is added.  This is the
same as plain L<perlapi/C<Perl_langinfo>>, but with an extra parameter
that allows the caller to simply and reliably know if the returned
string is UTF-8.

=item *

We have introduced a limit on the number of nested C<eval EXPR>/C<BEGIN>
blocks and C<require>/C<BEGIN> (and thus C<use> statements as well) to
prevent C stack overflows. This variable can also be used to forbid
C<BEGIN> blocks from executing during C<eval EXPR> compilation. The
limit defaults to C<1000> but can be overridden by setting the
C<${^MAX_NESTED_EVAL_BEGIN_BLOCKS}> variable. The default itself can be
changed at compile time with

    -Accflags='-DPERL_MAX_NESTED_EVAL_BEGIN_BLOCKS_DEFAULT=12345'

Note that this value relates to the size of your C stack and if you
choose an inappropriately large value Perl may segfault, be conservative
about what you choose.

=item *

A new magic type C<PERL_MAGIC_extvalue> has been added. This is available for
use like C<PERL_MAGIC_ext>, but is a value magic: upon localization the new
value will not be magical.

=item *

The C<SSNEW()>, C<SSNEWt()>, C<SSNEWa()> and C<SSNEWat()> APIs now
return a C<SSize_t> value.  The C<SSPTR()> and C<SSPTRt()> macros now
expect a C<SSize_t> parameter, and enforce that on debugging builds.
[github #20411]

=item *

Filenames in cops are now refcounted under threads.
Under threads we were copying the filenames into each opcode. This is because in
theory opcodes created in one thread can be destroyed in another.
The change adds a new struct/type C<RCPV>, which is a refcounted
string using shared memory. This is implemented in such a way that code
that previously used a char * can continue to do so, as the refcounting
data is located a specific offset before the char * pointer itself.

=item *

Added C<HvNAMEf> and C<HvNAMEf_QUOTEDPREFIX> special formats. They take an
C<HV *> as an argument and use C<HvNAME()> and related macros to determine the
string, its length, and whether it is utf8.

=item *

The underlying C<Perl_dowantarray> function implementing the
long-deprecated L<C<GIMME>|perlapi/GIMME> macro has been marked as
deprecated, so that use of the macro emits a compile-time warning.
C<GIMME> has been documented as deprecated in favour of
L<C<GIMME_V>|perlapi/GIMME_V> since Perl v5.6.0, but had not
previously issued a warning.

=item *

The API function L<perlapi/utf8_length> is now more efficient.

=item *

Added C<SAVERCPV()> and C<SAVEFREERCPV()> for better support for working
with C<RCPV> (reference counted string/pointer value) structures which
currently are used in opcodes to share filename and warning bit data in
a memory efficient manner.

=item *

Added C<MORTALSVFUNC_SV()> and C<MORTALDESTRUCTOR_SV()> macros, which
make it possible to create a destructor which is fired at the end of
the current statement. This uses the C<PERL_MAGIC_destruct> magic to
use "free" magic to trigger an action when a variable is freed. The
action can be specified as a C function or as a Perl code reference.

=item *

Added the C<%{^HOOK}> api and related C<PERL_MAGIC_hook> and
C<PERL_MAGIC_hookelem> for providing ways to hook selected perl functions
which for one reason or another are problematic to wrap with a customized
subroutine.

=item *

Added support for C<${^HOOK}{require__before}> which can be used to
rewrite the filename that C<require> will try to load, and also to block
C<require> from loading a specific module, even via fully qualified
filename. The hook can also be used to perform "pre-require" and
"post-require" actions.

=item *

Added support for C<${^HOOK}{require__after}> which can be used to
track what modules have been required after the fact.

=item *

Regular expression opcodes (regops) now use a standardized structure
layout that uses unions to expose data in different format. This means
it should be much easier to extend or modify regops to use more memory.
This has been used to make a number of regops track how many parens
they contain.

=back

=head1 Selected Bug Fixes

=over 4

=item *

Avoid recursion and stack overflow parsing 'pack' template

[L<GH #16319|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/16319>]

=item *

An eval() as the last statement in a regex code block could trigger an
interpreter panic; e.g.

    /(?{ ...; eval {....}; })/

[L<GH #19680|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19680>]

=item *

Disabling the C<bareword_filehandles> feature no longer treats C<< print
Class->method >> as an error.  [L<github #19704|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19704>]

=item *

When a Perl subroutine tail-calls an XS subroutine using C<goto &xs_sub>,
the XS subroutine can now correctly determine its calling context.
Previously it was always reported as scalar.

In addition, where the Perl subroutine is freed at the same time:

    sub foo { *foo = sub {}; goto &xs_sub }

this formerly could lead to crashes if the XS subroutine tried to use the
value of C<PL_op>, since this was being set to NULL. This is now fixed.

[L<github #19936|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19936>]

=item *

setsockopt() now uses the mechanism added in 5.36 to better
distinguish between numeric and string values supplied as the
C<OPTVAL> parameter.  [L<github #18761|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/18761>]

=item *

4-argument C<select()> now rejects strings with code points above
255. Additionally, for code points 128-255, this operator will now always
give the corresponding octet to the OS, regardless of how Perl stores
such code points in memory. (Previously Perl leaked its internal string
storage to the OS.) [L<github #19882|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19882>]

=item *

Fix panic issue from C<val {} inside /(?{...})/> [L<github #19390|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19390>]

=item *

Fix multiple compiler warnings from regexp.c., locale.c [L<github #19915|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19915>]

=item *

Fix a bug with querying locales on platforms that don't have C<LC_NUMERIC>
[L<github #19890|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/19890>]

=item *

Prevent undefined behaviour in C<S_maybe_multideref()>.

=item *

Avoid signed integer overflow in C<use integer> ops.

=item *

Avoid adding an offset to a NULL pointer in C<hv_delete_common>.

=item *

PerlIO::get_layers will now accept IO references too

Previously it would only take glob references or names of globs. Now it will
also accept IO references.

=item *

Fixes to memory handling for C<PL_splitstr>:

=over

=item *

If a thread was created the allocated string would be freed twice.

=item *

If two C<-F> switches were supplied the memory allocated for the first
switch wouldn't be freed.

=back

=item *

Correctly handle C<OP_ANONCODE> ops generated by CPAN modules that
don't include the OPf_REF flag when propagating lvalue context.
L<[GH #20532]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/20532>

=item *

L<POSIX::strxfrm|POSIX/strxfrm> now uses the C<LC_CTYPE> locale category
to specify its collation, ignoring any differing C<LC_COLLATE>.  It
doesn't make sense for a string to be encoded in one locale (say,
ISO-8859-6, Arabic) and to collate it based on another (like ISO-8859-7,
Greek).  Perl assumes that the current C<LC_CTYPE> locale correctly
represents the encoding, and collates accordingly.

Also, embedded C<NUL> characters are now allowed in the input.

If locale collation is not enabled on the platform (C<LC_COLLATE>), the
input is returned unchanged.

=item *

Double FETCH during stringification of tied scalars returning an
overloaded object have been fixed. The FETCH method should only be
called once, but prior to this release was actually called twice.
L<[GH #20574]|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/20574>

=item *

Writing to a magic variables associated with the selected output
handle, C<$^>, C<$~>, C<$=>, C<$-> and C<$%>, no longer crashes perl
if the IO object has been cleared from the selected output
handle. [L<GH #20733|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20733>]

=item *

Redefining a C<use constant> list constant with C<use constant> now
properly warns.  This changes the behaviour of C<use constant> but is
a core change, not a change to F<constant.pm>.  [L<GH #20742|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20742>]

=item *

Redefining a C<use constant> list constant with an empty prototype
constant sub would result in an assertion failure.  [L<GH #20742|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20742>]

=item *

Fixed a regression where the C<INC> method for objects in C<@INC>
would not be resolved by C<AUTOLOAD>, while it was in 5.36.  The
C<INCDIR> method for objects in C<@INC> cannot be resolved by
C<AUTOLOAD> as C<INC> would have been resolved first.  [L<GH #20665|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/20665>]

=item *

C<$SIG{__DIE__}> will now be called from eval when the code dies during
compilation regardless of how it dies. This means that code expecting to
be able to upgrade C<$@> into an object will be called consistently. In
earlier versions of perl C<$SIG{__DIE__}> would not be called for
certain compilation errors, for instance undeclared variables. For other
errors it might be called if there were more than a certain number of
errors, but not if there were less. Now you can expect that it will be
called in every case.

=item *

Compilation of code with errors used to inconsistently stop depending on
the count and type of errors encountered. The intent was that after 10
errors compilation would halt, but bugs in this logic meant that certain
types of error would be counted, but would not trigger the threshold
check to stop compilation. Other errors would. With this release after
at most 10 errors compilation will terminate, regardless of what type of
error they were.

Note that you can change the maximum count by defining
C<PERL_STOP_PARSING_AFTER_N_ERRORS> to be something else during the
configuration process. For instance

    ./Configure ... -Accflags='-DPERL_STOP_PARSING_AFTER_N_ERRORS=100'

would allow up to 100 errors.

=item *

The API function L<perlapi/my_snprintf> now prints a non-dot decimal
point if the perl code it ultimately is called from is in the scope of
C<use locale> and the locale in effect calls for that.

=item *

A number of bugs related to capture groups in quantified groups in regular
expression have been fixed, especially in alternations. For example in
a pattern like:

	"foobazfoobar" =~ /((foo)baz|foo(bar))+/

the regex variable C<$2> will not be "foo" as it once was, it will be undef.

=item *

Bugs with regex backreference operators that are inside of a capture
group have been fixed. For instance:

    "xa=xaaa" =~ /^(xa|=?\1a){2}\z/

will now correctly not match. [L<GH #10073|https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues/10073>]

=item *

C<SSGROW()> and C<SSCHECK()> have been reworked to ensure that the requested
space is actually allocated. C<SSCHECK()> is now an alias for C<SSGROW()>.

=back

=head1 Acknowledgements

Perl 5.38.0 represents approximately 12 months of development since Perl
5.36.0 and contains approximately 290,000 lines of changes across 1,500
files from 100 authors.

Excluding auto-generated files, documentation and release tools, there were
approximately 190,000 lines of changes to 970 .pm, .t, .c and .h files.

Perl continues to flourish into its fourth decade thanks to a vibrant
community of users and developers. The following people are known to have
contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.38.0:

Alex, Alexander Nikolov, Alex Davies, Andreas König, Andrew Fresh, Andrew
Ruthven, Andy Lester, Aristotle Pagaltzis, Arne Johannessen, A. Sinan Unur,
Bartosz Jarzyna, Bart Van Assche, Benjamin Smith, Bram, Branislav
Zahradník, Brian Greenfield, Bruce Gray, Chad Granum, Chris 'BinGOs'
Williams, chromatic, Clemens Wasser, Craig A. Berry, Dagfinn Ilmari
Mannsåker, Dan Book, danielnachun, Dan Jacobson, Dan Kogai, David Cantrell,
David Golden, David Mitchell, E. Choroba, Ed J, Ed Sabol, Elvin Aslanov,
Eric Herman, Felipe Gasper, Ferenc Erki, Firas Khalil Khana, Florian Weimer,
Graham Knop, Håkon Hægland, Harald Jörg, H.Merijn Brand, Hugo van der
Sanden, James E Keenan, James Raspass, jkahrman, Joe McMahon, Johan Vromans,
Jonathan Stowe, Jon Gentle, Karen Etheridge, Karl Williamson, Kenichi
Ishigaki, Kenneth Ölwing, Kurt Fitzner, Leon Timmermans, Li Linjie, Loren
Merritt, Lukas Mai, Marcel Telka, Mark Jason Dominus, Mark Shelor, Matthew
Horsfall, Matthew O. Persico, Mattia Barbon, Max Maischein, Mohammad S
Anwar, Nathan Mills, Neil Bowers, Nicholas Clark, Nicolas Mendoza, Nicolas
R, Paul Evans, Paul Marquess, Peter John Acklam, Peter Levine, Philippe
Bruhat (BooK), Reini Urban, Renee Baecker, Ricardo Signes, Richard Leach,
Russ Allbery, Scott Baker, Sevan Janiyan, Sidney Markowitz, Sisyphus, Steve
Hay, TAKAI Kousuke, Todd Rinaldo, Tomasz Konojacki, Tom Stellard, Tony Cook,
Tsuyoshi Watanabe, Unicode Consortium, vsfos, Yves Orton, Zakariyya Mughal,
Zefram, 小鸡.

The list above is almost certainly incomplete as it is automatically
generated from version control history. In particular, it does not include
the names of the (very much appreciated) contributors who reported issues to
the Perl bug tracker.

Many of the changes included in this version originated in the CPAN modules
included in Perl's core. We're grateful to the entire CPAN community for
helping Perl to flourish.

For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please
see the F<AUTHORS> file in the Perl source distribution.

=head1 Reporting Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the perl bug database
at L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.  There may also be information at
L<http://www.perl.org/>, the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please open an issue at
L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.  Be sure to trim your bug down to a
tiny but sufficient test case.

If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it
inappropriate to send to a public issue tracker, then see
L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>
for details of how to report the issue.

=head1 Give Thanks

If you wish to thank the Perl 5 Porters for the work we had done in Perl 5,
you can do so by running the C<perlthanks> program:

    perlthanks

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

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file for an explanation of how to view exhaustive details on
what changed.

The F<INSTALL> file for how to build Perl.

The F<README> file for general stuff.

The F<Artistic> and F<Copying> files for copyright information.

=cut