source: trunk/third/perl/pod/perl573delta.pod @ 20075

=head1 NAME

perl573delta - what's new for perl v5.7.3

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This document describes differences between the 5.7.2 release and the
5.7.3 release.  

(To view the differences between the 5.6.0 release and the 5.7.0
release, see L<perl570delta>.  To view the differences between the
5.7.0 release and the 5.7.1 release, see L<perl571delta>.  To view
the differences between the 5.7.1 release and the 5.7.2 release,
see L<perl572delta>.)

=head1 Changes

This is just a selected list of some of the more notable changes.
The numbers refer to the Perl repository change numbers; see
L<Changes58> (or L<Changes> in Perl 5.8.1).  In addition to these
changes, lots of work took place in integrating threads, PerlIO, and
Unicode; general code cleanup; and last but not least porting to
non-UNIX lands such as Win32, VMS, Cygwin, DJGPP, VOS, MacOS Classic,
and EBCDIC.

=over 4

=item 11362

add LC_MESSAGES to POSIX :locale_h export tag

=item 11371

add DEL to [:cntrl:]

=item 11375

make h2ph understand constants like 1234L and 5678LL

=item 11405

Win32: fix bugs in handling of the virtualized environment

=item 11410

fix a bug in the security taint checking of open()

=item 11423

make perl fork() safe even on platforms that don't have pthread_atfork()

=item 11459

make switching optimization and debugging levels during Perl builds
easier via the OPTIMIZE environment variable

=item 11475

make split()'s unused captures to be undef, not ''

=item 11485

Search::Dict: allow transforming lines before comparing 

=item 11490

allow installing extra modules or bundles when building Perl

=item 11516

add -Wall in cflags when compiling with gcc to weed out dubious
C practices

=item 11541

pluggable optimizer

=item 11549

WinCE: integrate the port

=item 11589

Win32: 4-arg select was broken

=item 11594

introduce the perlivp utility for verifying the Perl installation
(IVP = Installation Verification Procedure)

=item 11623

rename lib/unicode to lib/unicore to avoid case-insensitivity problems
with lib/Unicode

=item 111631

remove Time::Piece

=item 11643

document that use utf8 is not the right way most of the time

=item 11656

allow builing perl with -DUSE_UTF8_SCRIPTS which makes UTF-8
the default script encoding (not the default since that would
break all scripts having legacy eight-bit data in them)

=item 11725

division preserving 64-bit integers

=item 11743

document the coderef-in-@INC feature

=item 11794

modulo (%) preserving 64-bit integers

=item 11825

update to Unicode 3.1.1

=item 11865

add the \[$@%&*] prototype support

=item 11874

oct() and hex() in glorious 64 bit

=item 11877

Class::Struct: allow recursive classes

=item 11993

fix unpack U to be the reverse of pack U

=item 12056

VMS: waitpid enhancements

=item 12180

unpack("Z*Z*", pack("Z*Z*", ..)) was broken

=item 12243

Devel::Peek: display UTF-8 SVs also also as \x{...}

=item 12288

Data::Dumper: option to sort hashes

=item 12542

add perlpodspec

=item 12652

threadsafe DynaLoader, re, Opcode, File::Glob, and B

=item 12756

support BeOS better

=item 12874

read-only hashes (user-level interface is Hash::Util)

=item 13162

add Devel::PPPort

=item 13179

add the sort pragma

=item 13326

VMS: fix perl -P

=item 13358

add perlpacktut

=item 13452

SUPER-UX: add hints file

=item 13575

Win32: non-blocking waitpid(-1,WNOHANG)

=item 13684

introduce the -t option for gentler taint checking

=item 14694

add the if pragma

=item 14832

implement IV/UV/NV/long double un/packing with j/J/F/D

=item 14854

document the new taint behaviour of exec LIST and system LIST

=back

=head1 Reporting Bugs

If you find what you think is a bug, you might check the articles
recently posted to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup and the perl
bug database at http://bugs.perl.org.  There may also be
information at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page.

If you believe you have an unreported bug, please run the B<perlbug>
program included with your release.  Be sure to trim your bug down
to a tiny but sufficient test case.  Your bug report, along with the
output of C<perl -V>, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be
analysed by the Perl porting team.

=head1 SEE ALSO

The F<Changes> file for 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.

=head1 HISTORY

Written by Jarkko Hietaniemi <F<jhi@iki.fi>>, with many contributions
from The Perl Porters and Perl Users submitting feedback and patches.

Send omissions or corrections to <F<perlbug@perl.org>>.

=cut