Perl 5.42.1-RC1 is now available!

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the
hutch-god.  Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight he
asked a boon.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
The thing was not specified.  As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be
supposed to know.  And choking back a sob as he looked at the other
empty corner Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

  -- "Saki" (H. H. Munro), "Sredni Vashtar" (in "Alfred Hitchcock
     presents: 'Stories they wouldn't let me do on TV'")

We are pleased to announce the first release candidate of version 42.1,
the first maintenance release of version 42 of Perl 5.

You will soon be able to download Perl 5.42.1-RC1 from your favourite
CPAN mirror or find it at:

  https://metacpan.org/release/SHAY/perl-5.42.1-RC1/

SHA256 digests for this release are:

  *perl-5.42.1-RC1.tar.gz:
  f4b8cc53772b8b63b6bc098edb1ffb12f936a7545fdd8e1131531dc145e8c7be

  *perl-5.42.1-RC1.tar.xz:
  a3f045dd0500d24ecb6aa05462a2a002166ba650ae58f871e250f3d4718ee7b4

You can find a full list of changes in the file "perldelta.pod" located
in the "pod" directory inside the release and on the web.

***Please, please, please*** test your code against perl-5.42.1-RC1.
This is your last chance to point out any critical regressions before
v5.42.1 ships "for real," and we'd rather fix things for v5.42.1 than
for v5.42.2!

The final v5.42.1 is expected to ship on 8 March.

Steve Hay