Perl 5.44.0

Release Date: July 15, 2026

Perl 5.44.0 just dropped. First new stable major since 5.42.0. Big one. Let's rap it up.

Signature Switch-up 📝

Named Parameters in Signatures — callers pass arguments by name/value pairs instead of position (sub f ($x, :$alpha = undef)). Spec: PPC0024. Experimental for now.
Aliased multi-var foreach — reference aliasing (5.22) and multi-variable loops (5.36) finally work together. foreach my ($key, \@items) (%hash).
Faster signatures — runtime signature processing is more efficient.

Security Slam 🔒

CVE-2026-8376 — buffer overflow in Perl_study_chunk; size checked in characters, not bytes. OOB writes on 32-bit builds.
CVE-2026-57432 — pack/unpack integer overflow on oversized structure sizes. Buffer overflow territory.
CVE-2026-13221 — regex trie 16-bit field overflow with alternations over ~65k branches. False positives and negatives.
Archive::Tar 3.04 → 3.12 — fixes CVE-2026-9538, CVE-2026-42496, CVE-2026-42497.

Unicode Uplift 🌍

Unicode 17.0 is fully supported. Identifier and regex group names now strictly enforce the XID_Start/XID_Continue rules — that's the one breaking change, so check exotic identifiers before upgrading.

Regex Refresh ✨

The experimental /xx modifier gets an upgrade: bracketed character classes can span multiple lines, hold comments, and warn about accidental comment swallowing. Opt in via use feature "enhanced_xx".

Entropy Everywhere 🎲

PRNG seeding now prefers the getentropy() syscall (Linux, BSD, macOS) over raw /dev/urandom reads, with a state-hash fallback. Better randomness, fewer file descriptors.

Performance Push ⚡

Faster integer +, -, * when the C compiler cooperates.
Faster hash population from compile-time constant string keys.
More efficient signature processing at subroutine entry.

Parting Shots 👋

Deprecated: jumping into a loop or block body via goto is finally dead, and unescaped # or literal vertical space in /xx character classes now warn. Modules updated across the board — B, B::Concise, B::Deparse, charnames, Compress::Raw::Bzip2 and more.

Upgrade at your own pace, but don't delay. The security list is real and the features are worth it.