# pperl 0.6.20

*2026-09-27, 21 commits.*

- **Static binaries** start again. Every statically linked (musl)
  pperl stopped with a segmentation fault before running a line: the
  code that records the program's arguments, which an assignment to
  `$0` rewrites, received none from musl and read garbage. They also
  build again: POSIX's six locale categories that only glibc defines
  (`LC_ADDRESS`, `LC_IDENTIFICATION`, `LC_MEASUREMENT`, `LC_NAME`,
  `LC_PAPER`, `LC_TELEPHONE`) are reported on musl as perl5 built on
  musl reports them, "Your vendor has not defined POSIX macro".
- **Peta::Dict** no longer crashes in a compiled loop that counts
  numeric-string keys, such as `for my $k (@keys) { $h{$k}++ }`. A key
  that grew the table during the loop left the compiled code reading
  the table's freed memory.
- **Regular expressions** compiled by ReJIT search each string once
  instead of twice. Regex-redux runs 9% fewer instructions; scans for a
  long literal and for a pattern that starts with `.` take about half
  and under a third of the cycles they took. No measured pattern got slower.
- **Release archives**: every binary of a release is built with
  profile-guided optimisation, and a release is one archive holding the
  binaries, their SHA-256 sums and a build record (commit, target,
  features). Before it is packed, each binary must print the locale and
  format numbers under four locale settings exactly as perl5 built
  against the same C library does.