CONTENTS

• NAME
• DESCRIPTION
  • FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads
  • $^X doesn't always contain a full path in FreeBSD
• AUTHOR

#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 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. FreeBSD has a bug where reading this symlink sometimes returns an incorrect value (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.

#AUTHOR

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

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