5.17.3 introduced changes to assignment to values in %ENV. For one thing, values are stringified immediately. This has been discussed, and should stay. For another thing, assigning undef to an entry in %ENV deletes the entry. This has been discussed, and should be reverted. The original patch author agrees, but we still have no reversion. This is a blocker. https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=114504 Patch needed. -- rjbs