usually the system malloc on such platforms are much better optimized
for such large memory models than the Perl malloc.
-=head2 Future Deprecations
+=head2 AIX Dynaloading
+
+The AIX dynaloading now uses the native dlopen interface of AIX,
+(given the AIX is recent enough) instead of the old emulated interface.
+This will probably break backward compatibility with compiled modules.
+
+=head2 Socket Extension Dynamic in VMS
+
+The Socket extension is now dynamically loaded instead of being
+statically built in. This may or may not be a problem with ancient
+TCP/IP stacks of VMS: we do not know since we weren't able to test
+Perl in such configurations.
+
+=head2 Deprecations
The current user-visible implementation of pseudo-hashes (the weird
use of the first array element) is deprecated starting from Perl 5.8.0
-and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be implemented
-differently. Not only is the current interface rather ugly, but the
-current implementation slows down normal array and hash use quite
-noticeably. The 'fields' pragma interface will remain available.
+and will be removed in Perl 5.10.0, and the feature will be
+implemented differently. Not only is the current interface rather
+ugly, but the current implementation slows down normal array and hash
+use quite noticeably. The 'fields' pragma interface will remain
+available.
+
+The syntaxes C<@a->[...]> and C<@h->{...}> have now been deprecated.
The suidperl is also considered to be too much a risk to continue
maintaining and the suidperl code is likely to be removed in a future
=head1 Core Enhancements
-In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's understanding
-of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in many systems the
-standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()> and C<atof()> seem
-to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their deficiencies. This results
-hopefully in more accurate numbers.
+In general a lot of fixing has happened in the area of Perl's
+understanding of numbers, both integer and floating point. Since in
+many systems the standard number parsing functions like C<strtoul()>
+and C<atof()> seem to have bugs, Perl tries to work around their
+deficiencies. This results hopefully in more accurate numbers.
=over 4
=item *
-VMS now works under PerlIO.
+GMAGIC (right-hand side magic) could in many cases such as concatenation
+of string be invoked too many times.
=item *
-GMAGIC (right-hand side magic) could in many cases such as concatenation
-of string be invoked too many times.
+Lexicals I: lexicals outside an eval "" weren't resolved
+correctly inside a subroutine definition inside the eval "" if they
+were not already referenced in the top level of the eval""ed code.
+
+=item *
+
+Lexicals II: lexicals leaked at file scope into subroutines that
+were declared before the lexicals.
+
+=item *
+
+Lvalue subroutines can now return C<undef> in list context.
=item *
=item *
L<utime> now supports C<utime undef, undef, @files> to change the
-times to the current time.
+file timestamps to the current time.
=item *
The Perl parser has been stress tested using both random input and
Markov chain input.
+=item *
+
+C<eval "v200"> now works.
+
+=item *
+
+VMS now works under PerlIO.
+
=back
=head1 Modules and Pragmata
L<libnet> - a collection of perl5 modules related to network programming
+Perl installation leaves libnet unconfigured, use F<libnetcfg> to configure.
+
=item *
L<List::Util> - selection of general-utility list subroutines
L<Time::Piece> - Object Oriented time objects
+(Previously known as L<Time::Object>.)
+
=back
=head2 Updated And Improved Modules and Pragmata
=item *
-L<vars> now supports declaring qualified variables.
+L<IO::Socket::INET> now supports C<LocalPort> of zero (usually meaning
+that the operating system will make one up.)
+
+=item *
+
+The L<vars> pragma now supports declaring fully qualified variables.
+(Something that C<our()> does not and will not support.)
=back
=item *
+L<h2ph> now supports C trigraphs.
+
+=item *
+
L<h2xs> uses the new L<ExtUtils::Constant> module which will affect
newly created extensions that define constants. Since the new code is
more correct (if you have two constants where the first one is a
L<perlhack>. There is a make target "perl.gprof" for generating a
gprofiled Perl executable.
+=item *
+
+(Code documentation) F<perly.c> and F<sv.c> have now been extensively
+commented.
+
=back
=head1 Installation and Configuration Improvements
=back
+=head2 Amiga Perl Invoking Mystery
+
+One cannot call Perl using the C<volume:> syntax, that is, C<perl -v>
+works, but for example C<bin:perl -v> doesn't. The exact reason is
+known but the current suspect is the F<ixemul> library.
+
=head2 lib/ftmp-security tests warn 'system possibly insecure'
Don't panic. Read INSTALL 'make test' section instead.