HP-UX 11i December 2006 Release Notes

Libraries and Programming
Perl
Chapter 10
158
Compatibility
Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier releases of Perl for XS modules. These
modules have to recompiled. (Pure Perl modules should continue to work.)
The major reason for the discontinuity is the new IO architecture called PerlIO. PerlIO is
the default configuration because without it many new features of Perl 5.8 cannot be
used. In other words: you just have to recompile your modules containing XS code.
The new safe signals implementation postpones handling of signals until it’s safe (in
between the execution of low level opcodes). This change may have surprising side effects
because signals no longer interrupt Perl instantly.
Performance
Weak reference creation is now O(1) rather than O(n). Weak reference deletion remains
O(n), but if deletion only happens at program exit, it may be skipped completely.
There are improvements to reduce the memory usage of “sort” and to speed up some
cases.
As much data as possible in the C source files is marked as “static”, to increase the
proportion of the executable file that the operating system can share between process,
and thus reduce real memory usage on multi-user systems.
Documentation
For further information, see the following Web sites:
• http://www.perl.org
• http://www.activestate.com
• http://learn.perl.org
Obsolescence
Not applicable.