---
name: "perl573delta"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "perl-doc"
version: "5.14.2-21+deb7u3"
release: "Debian 7 (Wheezy)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/perl573delta"
---

# perl573delta(1)

what's new for perl v5.7.3

## NAME

perl573delta - what's new for perl v5.7.3

## 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 perl570delta.  To view the differences between the 5.7.0 release and the 5.7.1 release, see perl571delta.  To view the differences between the 5.7.1 release and the 5.7.2 release, see perl572delta.)

## Changes

This is just a selected list of some of the more notable changes. The numbers refer to the Perl repository change numbers; see Changes58 (or 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.

- 11362

  add LC\_MESSAGES to POSIX :locale\_h export tag

- 11371

  add DEL to \[:cntrl:\]

- 11375

  make h2ph understand constants like 1234L and 5678LL

- 11405

  Win32: fix bugs in handling of the virtualized environment

- 11410

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

- 11423

  make perl *fork()* safe even on platforms that don't have *pthread\_atfork()*

- 11459

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

- 11475

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

- 11485

  Search::Dict: allow transforming lines before comparing

- 11490

  allow installing extra modules or bundles when building Perl

- 11516

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

- 11541

  pluggable optimizer

- 11549

  WinCE: integrate the port

- 11589

  Win32: 4-arg select was broken

- 11594

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

- 11623

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

- 111631

  remove Time::Piece

- 11643

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

- 11656

  allow building 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)

- 11725

  division preserving 64-bit integers

- 11743

  document the coderef-in-@INC feature

- 11794

  modulo (%) preserving 64-bit integers

- 11825

  update to Unicode 3.1.1

- 11865

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

- 11874

  *oct()* and *hex()* in glorious 64 bit

- 11877

  Class::Struct: allow recursive classes

- 11993

  fix unpack U to be the reverse of pack U

- 12056

  VMS: waitpid enhancements

- 12180

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

- 12243

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

- 12288

  Data::Dumper: option to sort hashes

- 12542

  add perlpodspec

- 12652

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

- 12756

  support BeOS better

- 12874

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

- 13162

  add Devel::PPPort

- 13179

  add the sort pragma

- 13326

  VMS: fix perl -P

- 13358

  add perlpacktut

- 13452

  SUPER-UX: add hints file

- 13575

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

- 13684

  introduce the -t option for gentler taint checking

- 14694

  add the if pragma

- 14832

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

- 14854

  document the new taint behaviour of exec LIST and system LIST

## 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 **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 `"perl -V"`, will be sent off to perlbug@perl.org to be analysed by the Perl porting team.

## SEE ALSO

The *Changes* file for exhaustive details on what changed.

The *INSTALL* file for how to build Perl.

The *README* file for general stuff.

The *Artistic* and *Copying* files for copyright information.

## HISTORY

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

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