perl5144delta - what is new for perl v5.14.4
This document describes differences between the 5.14.3 release and the 5.14.4 release. If you are upgrading from an earlier release such as 5.12.0, first read perl5140delta, which describes differences between 5.12.0 and 5.14.0.
No changes since 5.14.0.
This release contains one major, and medium, and a number of minor security fixes. The latter are included mainly to allow the test suite to pass cleanly with the clang compiler's address sanitizer facility. CVE-2013-1667: memory exhaustion with arbitrary hash keys With a carefully crafted set of hash keys (for example arguments on a URL), it is possible to cause a hash to consume a large amount of memory and CPU, and thus possibly to achieve a Denial-of-Service. This problem has been fixed. memory leak in Encode The UTF-8 encoding implementation in Encode.xs had a memory leak which has been fixed. [perl #111594] Socket::unpack_sockaddr_un heap-buffer-overflow A read buffer overflow could occur when copying "sockaddr" buffers. Fairly harmless. This problem has been fixed. [perl #111586] SDBM_File: fix off-by-one access to global ".dir" An extra byte was being copied for some string literals. Fairly harmless. This problem has been fixed. off-by-two error in List::Util A string literal was being used that included two bytes beyond the end of the string. Fairly harmless. This problem has been fixed. [perl #115994] fix segv in regcomp.c:S_join_exact() Under debugging builds, while marking optimised-out regex nodes as type "OPTIMIZED", it could treat blocks of exact text as if they were nodes, and thus SEGV. Fairly harmless. This problem has been fixed. [perl #115992] PL_eval_start use-after-free The statement "local $[;", when preceded by an "eval", and when not part of an assignment, could crash. Fairly harmless. This problem has been fixed. wrap-around with IO on long strings Reading or writing strings greater than 2**31 bytes in size could segfault due to integer wraparound. This problem has been fixed.
There are no changes intentionally incompatible with 5.14.0. If any exist, they are bugs and reports are welcome.
There have been no deprecations since 5.14.0.
New Modules and Pragmata None Updated Modules and Pragmata The following modules have just the minor code fixes as listed above in "Security" (version numbers have not changed): Socket SDBM_File List::Util Encode has been upgraded from version 2.42_01 to version 2.42_02. Module::CoreList has been updated to version 2.49_06 to add data for this release. Removed Modules and Pragmata None.
New Documentation None. Changes to Existing Documentation None.
No new or changed diagnostics.
None
No changes.
New Platforms None. Discontinued Platforms None. Platform-Specific Notes VMS 5.14.3 failed to compile on VMS due to incomplete application of a patch series that allowed "userelocatableinc" and "usesitecustomize" to be used simultaneously. Other platforms were not affected and the problem has now been corrected.
* In Perl 5.14.0, "$tainted ~~ @array" stopped working properly. Sometimes it would erroneously fail (when $tainted contained a string that occurs in the array after the first element) or erroneously succeed (when "undef" occurred after the first element) [perl #93590].
None.
Perl 5.14.4 represents approximately 5 months of development since Perl 5.14.3 and contains approximately 1,700 lines of changes across 49 files from 12 authors. Perl continues to flourish into its third decade thanks to a vibrant community of users and developers. The following people are known to have contributed the improvements that became Perl 5.14.4: Andy Dougherty, Chris 'BinGOs' Williams, Christian Hansen, Craig A. Berry, Dave Rolsky, David Mitchell, Dominic Hargreaves, Father Chrysostomos, Florian Ragwitz, Reini Urban, Ricardo Signes, Yves Orton. 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. For a more complete list of all of Perl's historical contributors, please see the AUTHORS file in the Perl source distribution.
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://rt.perl.org/perlbug/ . There may also be information at http://www.perl.org/ , 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. If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
The Changes file for an explanation of how to view 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.
Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.
Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.
Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.
Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.
The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.
Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.
Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.
Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.