Current outstanding bugs in VMS Perl 5.004 and up (all patchlevels)

No version of any software package is entirely perfect, and Perl on VMS is no exception. Here's a list of the current known bugs. Bug reports not on here are always welcome. If you have a mostly-working installation of the broken Perl version, please use the perlbug script (in the utilities directory of the distribution) to create the bug report. The resulting file, which you can email to either the vmsperl mailing list or the Perl 5 bug reporting address, has your perl configuration in it, and provides more information to help diagnose the problem.

• (5.004_01 and up) Some things aren't properly tainted. Tests 4 and 5 of the taint.t demonstrate these failures. However, as they test security problems that don't affect VMS, the tests are currently skipped and no errors are reported. (This will be fixed mainly so scripts written on VMS will complain about problems they may encounter on Unix systems)
• (5.004_01 and up) When building with the SOCKETSHR library and using NETLIB, the io_udp.t test fails, and UDP sockets don't work. This apparently only happens with Multinet 4.0A and 4.0B, but may affect other users. It is most likely a problem in either the Socketshr or Netlib libraries. This problem does not affect Perl executables built using the DEC C RTL sockets.
• (5.004_03 on VMS 7.1) Times from Jan 1, 1970 midnight until Jan 1, 1970 16:00 are reported as an hour earlier. No other times are reported incorrectly, and it's only for VMS 7.1. (7.0 might be affected, but we've got no bug reports from it) There is a patch for this one.
• (5.004_04, and possibly earlier) $?'s magic isn't triggered by a plain assignment (i.e. $foo = $? doesn't work, but $foo = "$?" or $foo = $? + 0 does)
• (5.004_04, and possibly earlier) File tests (-x and cousins) only check file permissions, not actual file accessibility. (BYPASS, for example, is ignored in checking this stuff)
• (5.004_04 and possibly earlier, VAX only) Sometimes gets an "Insecure dependency" error. Needs a patch to vms.c. Instructions are on the InstallFAQ page.
• (5.004_04 and possibly earlier) Modules with libraries (like SDBM_File or GD) don't build properly
• (5.004_04 and possibly earlier) autosplit.pm doesn't like VMS' case-insensitive file system. Modules with uppercase letters in sub names won't build properly.

Last Update 16-October-1998
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