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PERLFREEBSD(1)                        Perl Programmers Reference Guide                        PERLFREEBSD(1)



NAME
       README.freebsd - Perl version 5 on FreeBSD systems

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes various features of FreeBSD that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter
       just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.

       FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads

       When perl is configured to use ithreads, it will use re-entrant library calls in preference to non-re-entrant nonre-entrant
       re-entrant versions.  There is a bug in FreeBSD's "readdir_r" function in versions 4.5 and earlier
       that can cause a SEGV when reading large directories. A patch for FreeBSD libc is available (see
       http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=misc/30631 ) which has been integrated into FreeBSD 4.6.

       $^X doesn't always contain a full path in FreeBSD

       perl 5.8.0 sets $^X where possible to a full path by asking the operating system. On FreeBSD the full
       path of the perl interpreter is found by reading the symlink /proc/curproc/file. There is a bug on
       FreeBSD, where the result of reading this symlink is can be wrong in certain circumstances (see
       http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=35703 ).  In these cases perl will fall back to the old
       behaviour of using C's argv[0] value for $^X.

       Perl will no longer be part of "base FreeBSD"

       Not as bad as it sounds--what this means is that Perl will no longer be part of the kernel build sys-
       tem of FreeBSD.  Perl will still very probably be part of the "default install", and in any case the
       latest version will be in the ports system.  The first FreeBSD version this change will affect is
       5.0, all 4.n versions will keep the status quo.

AUTHOR
       Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>, collating wisdom supplied by Slaven Rezic and Tim Bunce.

       Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to perlbug@perl.org.



perl v5.8.8                                      2006-01-07                                   PERLFREEBSD(1)