This Fortnight on perl5-porters - 21 June-5 July 2008 (unfinished) Topics of Interest Why $@ makes me cry http://xrl.us/kkynu "IPC::Run" http://xrl.us/kkynw How to dig through symbol tables http://xrl.us/kkyny Old perls in production http://xrl.us/kkyn2 A Project to get Perl supported on Google App Engine http://xrl.us/kkyn4 Incorrect variable reported in uninitialized value warning http://xrl.us/kkyn6 Wrong version in META.yml http://xrl.us/kkyn8 AIX Hints file (libm package) - awaiting comments http://xrl.us/kkyoa Compiling on Solaris 8 and/or Solaris 2.6 http://xrl.us/kkyoc Failure to load binary modules found via PERL5LIB for tests on Fedora Core using -T http://xrl.us/kkyoe http://xrl.us/kkyog "print": wrong order of evaluation http://xrl.us/kkyoi TODO of the week: installman cachegrind profile http://xrl.us/kkyok UTF-8 smoke http://xrl.us/kkyon Split smoke for threaded "-DDEBUGGING" builds http://xrl.us/kkyop utils/prove loses @INC settings http://xrl.us/kkyor Common test code for timed bail out http://xrl.us/kkyot http://xrl.us/kkyov smartmatch and overloaded objects in blead http://xrl.us/kkyox "my $@" - a proposal http://xrl.us/kkyoz http://xrl.us/kkyo3 cygwin Config{libperl} going dynamic? http://xrl.us/kkyo5 Shared hashes fail to preserve utf-8ness of keys http://xrl.us/kkyo7 Which test files need to use the watchdog() function? http://xrl.us/kkyo9 "tar" problems under armv5tejl-linux http://xrl.us/kkypb Some more missing "isGV_with_GP()"s http://xrl.us/kkypd Control flow ops, dead code, warnings http://xrl.us/kkypf HP-UX 11.11: Your OS does not support locking http://xrl.us/kkyph Dual-lifing "test.pl" http://xrl.us/kkypj http://xrl.us/kkypm "File::Spec->case_tolerant" works only on systems where one filesystem type is installed http://xrl.us/kkypo http://xrl.us/kkypq A long mess http://xrl.us/kkyps "use less 'memory'" http://xrl.us/kkypu Dual-life and autodie (Pumpking input appreciated) http://xrl.us/kkypw "pp_mapwhile", "pp_iter" http://xrl.us/kkypy Strictly no indirect object syntax? http://xrl.us/kkyp2 t/op/exec.t fails on Fedora http://xrl.us/kkyp4 POD overhaul in "perlguts" http://xrl.us/kkyp6 http://xrl.us/kkyp8 Patches of Interest "perlsyn": equivalent code for HASH ~~ ARRAY http://xrl.us/kkyqa Put every pattern in .gitignore files on a single line http://xrl.us/kkyqc F<.gitignore> for DynaLoader http://xrl.us/kkyqe "TAP::Parser" should be *easier* to subclass http://xrl.us/kkyqg Fix malloc.c warning http://xrl.us/kkyqi Documentation on taint/environment interactions for perlrun.pod http://xrl.us/kkyqk Fix debop with pad const http://xrl.us/kkyqn More comprehensive smartmatch.t supersedes smobj.t http://xrl.us/kkyqp add eval and error support http://xrl.us/kkyqr add undef tests http://xrl.us/kkyqt ppd target gets ARCHITECTURE NAME wrong in 5.10 http://xrl.us/kkyqv common test code for timed bail http://xrl.us/kkyqx shared hashes fail to preserve utf-8ness of keys http://xrl.us/kkyqz watchdog should not execute END block http://xrl.us/kkyq3 http://xrl.us/kkyq5 version in test.pl http://xrl.us/kkyq7 http://xrl.us/kkyq9 and more updates http://xrl.us/kkyrb http://xrl.us/kkyrd Silence some C++ warnings with "PERL_POISON" http://xrl.us/kkyrf "perltodo" http://xrl.us/kkyrh New and old bugs from RT Security of ARGV using 2-argument open - It's a feature (#2783) The fact that there are some people out there who take perverse pleasure in writing log-munger.pl log.0 'gunzip -c log.1.gz |' and having it Do The Right Thing led Paul Fenwick to conclude that the reported bug is a feature. eww http://xrl.us/kkyrj "Pod::HTML" problem (#9385) Renée Bäcker added a small patch and test case to solve a long-standing problem in "Pod::HTML". http://xrl.us/kkyrm Bug in "format"/"write" (#22977) There is a problem with "format" and "write" and forward declarations, due to a jumbo closure patch from Dave Mitchell in 2003. Apparently, due to the rewrite of the closure and lexical code in 5.10, what used to be simply a wrong result now become a core dump. http://xrl.us/kkyro "=cut" toggles POD/code compilation rather than forcing code (#24483) Renée wrote some code to solve the fact that a "=cut" following code will case the parser to flip into POD mode, rather than generating a warning. Abigail and Rafaël both admitted to having relied in the existing behaviour, and that it was more likely a task for "Perl::Critic" or "Pod::Checker" to solve. Renée therefore declared that the ticket should be rejected. And so it was. http://xrl.us/kkyrq for any perl thing, "perldoc -f" should cough up some tip (#27886) Renée also set about making "perldoc -f" return something useful for things like operators (such as "tr"), and welcomed people's suggestions. http://xrl.us/kkyrs "perldoc lib" doesn't describe actual behaviour of "use lib" (#34339) Renée added some documentation to address the concern. Steffen Müller updated the CPAN dual-lifed version, and hinted that blead's version needs to be bumped up a couple of notches. http://xrl.us/kkyru open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=$fd") + dupping in memory files (#50756) Bram looked at this report, and suggested that part of the problem was that the original submitter made a mistake, and the remaining problem was more a documentation issue than anything else. http://xrl.us/kkyrw "File::Glob" fails to set error (#51410) Nicholas Clark filed this report a couple of months ago, in an attempt to nail down an intermittent failure with "File::Glob". Bram wondered whether running the test a few more times might trigger a smoke failure on some other platform. http://xrl.us/kkyry "s///" on tied hashes (#51514) Bram saw that the failure that cropped up in 5.10 is now fixed in blead, at least on his machine, and so he asked the original submitter to confirm that it was indeed the case for them. http://xrl.us/kkyr2 "PERL_NO_SHORT_NAMES" incompatible with perl.h (#51762) Bram thought that this problem that affected 5.8 should be fixed in 5.10. http://xrl.us/kkyr4 "eval"'ing a certain format string segfaults perl (#55668) Nicholas Clark reported that the bug was still with us, and pointed to the exact section of code that was no doubt responsible for the problem. http://xrl.us/kkyr6 return return (#56150) At the end of this thread from the week before, Reini Urban achieved the impressive feat of getting the tokeniser and the peep-hole optimiser to emit a warning when a doubled-up return was used. Having done that, he wasn't sure what to do with it; certainly no-one had the courage to apply the patch. the pig and and and and and whistle http://xrl.us/kkyr8 "(((??{1 + $^N})))" behaves differently in 5.10.0 to blead (#56194) Bram noted that reverting change #32857 was sufficient to restore the previous behaviour. http://xrl.us/kkysa Unexpected UTF-8 flag in ascii strings (#56336) This bug report fell out of a thread on Perlmonks, but Rafaël Garcia-Suarez was disinclined to act upon it, considering it as a minor implementation detail. and people who call utf8::is_utf8 get what they deserve http://xrl.us/kkysc "encode()" with FB_CROAK may destroy its argument (#56340) Alex Kapranoff found a problem in "Encode::encode" when playing with UTF-7 strings, and suggested a fix. http://xrl.us/kkyse Alex also found that the UTF-7 codec in Encode uses "m/\G/g" without resetting "pos()" (bug #56342). so he reset it http://xrl.us/kkysg "glob()" with spaces - documentation unclear (#56348) Ed Avis tripped over the behaviour of spaces in glob parameters, but Paul Fenwick was quick to point out that it's a very desirable feature. He tightened up the documentation in "File::Glob", which Rafaël applied. what would Lassie do? http://xrl.us/kkysi odd segmentation fault with overload.pm in perl 5.8.8 (#56376) Paul Miller reported a bug in overload.pm, only to discover that the porters had already encountered the error in an earlier incarnation and it was already fixed in blead. http://xrl.us/kkysk Odd behavior of given {when (... or ...) ...} (#56416) "Polynomial" posted a question over at Perlmonks regarding some mysteriously inconsistent results for smart matching. Since none of the answers solved the matter conclusively, a bug report was filed. http://www.perlmonks.com/?node_id=693370 http://xrl.us/kkysn Perl 5.10 breaks "\N{}" in regex interpolated inside regex (with charnames) (#56444) Chris Pirazzi found a problem in 5.10 that Andreas Knig traced to a patch from Yves Orton back in September 2006. Rafaël discovered that a judicious use of "eval" could sweep the problem under the carpet, thus leading him to conclude that there was some problem involving the order of loading afoot. http://xrl.us/kkysp "%+" still untaints data when "use re qw(taint)" is in scope (#56490) http://xrl.us/kkysr perl5.10.0: caching environment causes panic in some modules (esp. Term::ReadLine::Gnu) (#56500) http://xrl.us/kkyst Empty list elements in list context (#56524) http://xrl.us/kkysv "m/a{1,0}/" compiles but doesn't match a literal string (#56526) http://xrl.us/kkysx used only once: possible typo (#56530) http://xrl.us/kkysz "pad_alloc" and "fold_constants" are not members of public API (#56536) http://xrl.us/kkys3 5.10.0 crash on serialised v-strings (#56606) http://xrl.us/kkys5 "Math::BigInt" gives completely when "Math::BigInt::GMP" is used (#56608) http://xrl.us/kkys7 Perl 5.10.0 double-free bug with regular expressions (#56610) http://xrl.us/kkys9 Perl5 Bug Summary http://xrl.us/kkytb http://xrl.us/kkytd http://rt.perl.org/rt3/NoAuth/perl5/Overview.html New Core Modules podlators 2.1.1 released http://xrl.us/kkytf threads::shared 1.24 http://xrl.us/kkyth http://xrl.us/kkytj In Brief Renée Bäcker wondered what to do about really old tickets in RT that appear to contain wrong information, and the issuer never replied to a request for more information in over four years. Bram suggested that such tickets should be rejected, on the grounds that if it were a serious problem, someone would have filed a better bug report in the meantime. http://xrl.us/kkytm Juerd Waalboer wrapped up the Perl 5.8 and perl 5.10 differences on UTF/Pack things thread with a useful review for dealing with legacy code that deals poorly with UTF-8 strings. http://xrl.us/kkyto Last week's summary This Week on perl5-porters - 7-13 June 2008 http://xrl.us/kkytq This Week on perl5-porters - 14-20 June 2008 http://xrl.us/kkyts feedback http://xrl.us/kkytu About this summary This summary was written by David Landgren. Weekly summaries are published on http://use.perl.org/ and posted on a mailing list, (subscription: perl5-summary-subscribe@perl.org). The archive is at http://dev.perl.org/perl5/list-summaries/. Corrections and comments are welcome. 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