------------- Version 5.003 -------------
***> IMPORTANT NOTICE: <*** The main reason for
this release was to fix a security bug affecting suidperl on some
systems. If you build suidperl on your system, it is strongly
recommended that you replace any existing copies with version
5.003 or later immediately.
The changes in 5.003 have been held to a minimum, in the hope
that this will simplify installation and testing at sites which
may be affected by the security hole in suidperl. In brief,
5.003 does the following:
- Plugs security hole in suidperl mechanism on affected systems
- MakeMaker was also updated to version 5.34, and extension Make-
file.PLs
were modified to match it.
- The following hints files were updated: bsdos.sh, hpux.sh, lin-
ux.sh,
machten.sh, solaris_2.sh
- A fix was added to installperl to insure that file permissions
were
set correctly for the installed C header files.
- t/op/stat.t was modified to work around MachTen's belief that
/dev/null
is a terminal device.
- Incorporation of Perl version information into the VMS' version
of
config.h was changed to make it compatible with the older VAXC.
- Minor fixes were made to VMS-specific C code, and the routine
VMS::Filespec::rmsexpand was added.
---------------- Version 5.002_01 ----------------
- The EMBED namespace changes are now used by default, in order
to better
segregate Perl's C global symbols from those belonging to em-
bedding
applications or to libraries. This makes it necessary to re-
build dynamic
extensions built under previous versions of Perl without the
EMBED option.
The default use of EMBED can be overridden by placing -DNO_EM-
BED on the
cc command line.
The EMBED change is the beginning of a general cleanup of C
global
symbols used by Perl, so binary compatibility with previously
compiled dynamic extensions may be broken again in the next few
releases.
- Several bugs in the core were fixed, including the following:
- made sure FILE * for -e temp file was closed only once
- improved form of single-statement macro definitions to keep
as many ccs as possible happy
- fixed file tests to insure that signed values were used when
computing differences between times.
- fixed toke.c so implicit loop isn't doubled when perl is
invoked with both the -p and -n switches
- The new SUBVERSION number has been included in the default val-
ue for
architecture-specific library directories, so development and
production architecture-dependent libraries can coexist.
- Two new magic variables, $^E and $^O, have been added. $^E
contains the
OS-specific equivalent of $!. $^O contains the name of the op-
erating
system, in order to make it easily available to Perl code whose
behavior
differs according to its environment. The standard library
files have
been converted to use $^O in preference to $Config{'osname'}.
- A mechanism was added to allow listing of locally applied
patches
in the output of perl -v.
- Miscellaneous minor corrections and updates were made to the
documentation.
- Extensive updates were made to the OS/2 and VMS ports
- The following hints file were updated: bsdos.sh, dynixptx.sh,
irix_6_2.sh, linux.sh, os2.sh
- Several changes were made to standard library files:
- reduced use of English.pm and $`, $', and $& in library mod-
ules,
since these degrade module loading and evaluation of regular
expressions,
respectively.
- File/Basename.pm: Added path separator to dirname('.')
- File/Copy.pm: Added support for VMS and OS/2 system-level
copy
- MakeMaker updated to v5.26
- Symbol.pm now accepts old (') and new (::) package delim-
iters
- Sys/Syslog.pm uses Sys::Hostname only when necessary
- chat2.pl picks up necessary constants from socket.ph
- syslog.pl: Corrected thinko 'Socket' --> 'Syslog'
- xsubpp updated to v1.935
- The perlbug utility is now more cautious about sending mail, in
order
to reduce the chance of accidentally send a bug report by giv-
ing the
wrong response to a prompt.
- The -m switch has been added to perldoc, causing it to display
the
Perl code in target file as well as any documentation.