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Date:      Fri, 6 Jun 1997 12:17:06 -0400
From:      Chet Ramey <chet@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu>
To:        bug-bash@prep.ai.mit.edu
Subject:   Bash-2.01 and Readline-2.1 released
Message-ID:  <9706061617.AA23520.SM@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Resent-Message-ID: <199706061756.NAA27482@odin.INS.CWRU.Edu>

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The first open release of bash-2.01 is now available with the URL

ftp://slc2.ins.cwru.edu/pub/dist/bash-2.01.tar.gz

This tar file does not include the formatted documentation
(postscript, dvi, html, and nroffed versions of the manual pages);
that may be retrieved with the URL

ftp://slc2.ins.cwru.edu/pub/dist/bash-doc-2.01.tar.gz

When unpacking the documentation, make sure to extract the tar file
in the bash-2.01 source directory.

Diffs from bash-2.0 are available with the URL

ftp://slc2.ins.cwru.edu/pub/dist/bash-2.0-2.01.diff.gz

Beware -- the diffs are huge.  Over 330 KB gzipped.

Please use `bashbug' to report bugs with this version.  It is built
and installed at the same time as bash.

Installation
============

Please read the README file first.

Installation instructions are provided in the INSTALL file.

Fixes and New Features
======================

The focus of this release is fixing the bugs found with the
bash-2.0 distribution.  A complete list of changes since bash-2.0
is appended to this message.  There were only a few new features
added; so few, in fact, that I can list them here. 

1.  There is a new builtin array variable:  GROUPS.  Its members
    are the set of groups to which the user belongs.  It is used
    by the test suite.

2.  `Configure' has a new argument:  `--with-curses'.  This forces
    the use of the curses library instead of the termcap library,
    and can be used on systems where the termcap library or database
    is deficient.  I use it on AIX 4.2 and 4.1.4.

3.  There are two new bindable readline commands:  alias-expand-line
    and history-and-alias-expand-line.  The code was always in there;
    there was just no way to bind a key sequence to the functions.

Readline has a single new feature, added as the result of a bug report.

1.  If a key sequence bound to `universal-argument' is read while
    reading a numeric argument started with `universal-argument', it
    terminates the argument but is otherwise ignored.  This provides
    a way to insert multiple instances of a digit string, and is how
    GNU emacs does it.

Dozens of bugs in bash-2.0 have been fixed.  The most-frequently-encountered
ones are listed below.

1.  A construct like $((foo);bar) is now processed as a command substitution
    rather than as a bad arithmetic substitution.

2.  A bug that caused the shell to dump core when performing pattern
    substitutions on variable values was fixed.

3.  The substring expansion code is now more careful about running off the
    ends of the expanded variable value.

4.  A problem that caused the default filename used for mail checking to be
    wrong was fixed.

5.  Fixes were made to the command timing code so that `time' can be
    used in a loop and will correctly time backgrounded commands.

6.  A fix was made to the parser so that `((cmd); cmd2)' is now parsed as
    a nested subshell rather than strictly as an (errnoeous) arithmetic
    command.  Netscape should no longer complain when running helper apps.

7. The special glibc environment variable (NNN_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_)
   is no longer placed into the environment of executed commands -- users
   of glibc had too many problems with it.

User-Visible Changes
====================

There is one user-visible change that bears mentioning.  As
the result of numerous requests, directory name spelling
correction in `cd' is now disabled by default.  You can turn it
on with `shopt -s cdspell'. 

Other user-visible changes are listed in the file COMPAT.

Other Changes and Updates
=========================

The test suite has been greatly expanded, and the shell has been
run through `purify' with the new tests.  Many memory leaks have
been fixed. 

Work was done to speed up non-interactive shell execution, so
shell scripts should run faster now.  I always welcome ideas for
speeding up the shell. 

A Peek at the Future
========================

Work that has been completed and is ready for inclusion in bash-2.02
includes

	o Fixes to the globbing code to fully implement POSIX.2
	  pattern matching (character classes, collating symbols,
	  equivalence classes)

	o A newer version of malloc that provides correct alignment
	  on 64-bit machines and wastes far less memory.  This is
	  much faster than the `gmalloc' included in the distribution
	  and nearly as good about the amount of memory it requests
	  from the kernel, for the bash allocation patterns.

These were not included in bash-2.01 because of the focus on fixing
bugs and increasing stability.

Other things under consideration for bash-2.02 are

	o An implementation of programmable completion for the bash
	  readline interface

	o ksh egrep-style extended pattern matching

Readline
========

Also available is the release of the standalone readline library,
version 2.1, with its own configuration scripts and Makefiles. 
It can be retrieved with the URL

ftp://slc2.ins.cwru.edu/pub/dist/readline-2.1.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

The formatted readline documentation is included in the readline
distribution tar file.

As always, thanks for your help.

Chet

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-release,
and the previous version, bash-2.01-beta2.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  The `distclean' target should remove the `printenv' executable if it
    has been created.

b.  The test suite was changed slightly to ensure that the error messages
    are printed in English.

c.  A bug that caused the shell to dump core when a filename containing a
    `/' was passed to `hash' was fixed.

d.  Pathname canonicalization now leaves a leading `//' intact, as POSIX.1
    requires.

e.  A memory leak when completing commands was fixed.

f.  A memory leak that occurred when checking the hash table for commands
    with relative paths was fixed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-beta2,
and the previous version, bash-2.01-beta1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  The `ulimit' builtin translates RLIM_INFINITY to the hard limit only if
    the current (soft) limit is less than or equal to the hard limit.

b.  Fixed a bug that caused the bash emulation of strcasecmp to produce
    incorrect results.

c.  A bug that caused memory to be freed twice when a trap handler resets
    the trap more than once was fixed.

d.  A bug that caused machines where sizeof (pointer) > sizeof (int) to
    fail (and possibly dump core) when trying to unwind-protect a null
    pointer was fixed.

e.  The startup files should not be run with job control enabled.  This fix
    allows SIGINT to once again interrupt startup file execution.

f.  Bash should not change the SIGPROF handler if it is set to something
    other than SIG_DFL.

g.  The completion code that provides bash-specific completions for readline
    now quotes characters that the readline code would treat as word break
    characters if they appear in a file name.

h.  The completion code now correctly quotes filenames containing a `!',
    even if the user attempted to use double quotes when attempting
    completion.

i.  A bug that caused the shell to dump core when `disown' was called without
    arguments and there was no current job was fixed.

j.  A construct like $((foo);bar) is now processed as a command substitution
    rather than as a bad arithmetic substitution.

k.  A couple of bugs that caused `fc' to not obey the `cmdhist' and `lithist'
    shell options when editing and re-executing a series of commands were
    fixed.

l.  A fix was made to the grammar -- the list of commands between `do' and
    `done' in the body of a `for' command should be treated the same as a
    while loop.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  A couple of bugs that caused the history search functions to attempt to
    free a NULL pointer were fixed.

b.  If the C library provides setlocale(3), readline does not need to look
    at various environment variables to decide whether or not to go into
    eight-bit mode automatically -- just check whether the current locale
    is not `C' or `POSIX'.

c.  If the filename completion function finds that a directory was not closed
    by a previous (interrupted) completion, it closes the directory with
    closedir().

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  New bindable readline commands:  history-and-alias-expand-line and
    alias-expand-line.  The code was always in there, there was just no
    way to execute it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-beta1,
and the previous version, bash-2.01-alpha1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fixed a problem that could cause file descriptors used for process
    substitution to conflict with those used explicitly in redirections.

b.  Made it easier to regenerate configure if the user changes configure.in.

c.  ${GROUPS[0]} should always be the primary group, even on systems without
    multiple groups.

d.  Spelling correction is no longer enabled by default.

e.  Fixes to quoting problems in `bashbug'.

f.  OS-specific configuration changes were made for: Irix 6.

g.  OS-specific code changes were made for: QNX.

h.  A more meaningful message is now printed when the file in /tmp for a
    here document cannot be created.

i.  Many changes to the shell's variable initialization code to speed
    non-interactive startup.

j.  Changes to the non-job-control code so that it does not try to open
    /dev/tty.

k.  The output of `set' and `export' is once again sorted, as POSIX wants.

l.  Fixed a problem caused by a recursive call reparsing the value of
    $SHELLOPTS.

m.  The tilde code no longer calls getenv() when it's compiled as part of
    the shell, which should eliminate problems on systems that cannot
    redefine getenv(), like the NeXT OS.

n.  Fixed a problem that caused `bash -o' or `bash +o' to not list all
    the shell options.

o.  Fixed `ulimit' to convert RLIM_INFINITY to the appropriate hard limit
    only if the hard limit is greater than the current (soft) limit.

p.  Fixed a problem that arose when building bash in a different directory
    than the source and y.tab.[ch] were remade with something other than
    bison.  This came up most often on NetBSD.

q.  Fixed a problem with completion -- it thought that `pwd`/[TAB] indicated
    an unfinished command completion (`/), which generated errors.

r.  The bash special tilde expansions (~-, ~+) are now attempted before
    calling the standard tilde expansion code, which should eliminate the
    problems people have been seeing with this on Solaris 2.5.1.

s.  Added support for <stdarg.h> to places where it was missing.

t.  Changed the code that reads the output of a command substitution to not
    go through stdio.  This reduces the memory requirements and is faster.

u.  A number of changes to speed up export environment creation were made.

v.  A number of memory leaks were fixed as the result of running the test
    scripts through Purify.

w.  Fixed a bug that caused subshells forked to interpret executable
    scripts without a leading `#!' to not reinitialize the values of
    the shell options.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  History library has less `#ifdef SHELL' code -- abstracted stuff out
    into application-specific function hooks.

b.  Readline no longer calls getenv() if it's compiled as part of the shell,
    which should eliminate problems on systems that cannot redefine getenv(),
    like the NeXT OS.

c.  Fixed translation of ESC when `untranslating' macro values.

d.  The region kill operation now fixes the mark if it ends up beyond the
    boundaries of the line after the region is deleted.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  New argument for `configure':  `--with-curses'.  This can be used to
    override the selection of the termcap library on systems where it is
    deficient.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-alpha1,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-release.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  System-specific configuration changes for: FreeBSD, SunOS4, Irix,
    MachTen, QNX 4.2, Harris Night Hawk, SunOS5.

b.  System-specific code changes were made for: Linux, 4.4 BSD, QNX 4.2,
    HP-UX, AIX 4.2.

c.  A bug that caused the exec builtin to fail because the full pathname of
    the command could not be found was fixed.

d.  The code that performs output redirections is now more resistant to
    race conditions and possible security exploits.

e.  A bug that caused the shell to dump core when performing pattern
    substitutions on variable values was fixed.

f.  More hosts are now recognized by the auto-configuration mechanism
    (OpenBSD, QNX, others).

g.  Assignments to read-only variables that attempt to convert them to
    arrays are now errors.

h.  A bug that caused shell scripts using array assignments in POSIX mode
    to exit after the assignment was performed was fixed.

i.  The substring expansion code is now more careful about running off the
    ends of the expanded variable value.

j.  A bug that caused completion to fail if a backquoted command substitution
    appeared anywhere on the line was fixed.

k.  The `source' builtin no longer turns off history if it has been enabled
    in a non-interactive shell.

l.  A bug that caused the shell to crash when `disown' was given a pid
    instead of a job number was fixed.

m.  The `cd' spelling correction code will not try to change to `.' if no
    directory entries match a single-character argument.

n.  A bad variable name supplied to `declare', `export', or `readonly' no
    longer causes a non-interactive shell in POSIX mode to exit.

o.  Some fixes were made to the test suite to handle peculiarities of
    various Unix versions.

p.  The bash completion code now quotes characters that readline would
    treat as word breaks for completion but are not shell metacharacters.

q.  Bad options supplied at invocation now cause a usage message to be
    displayed.

r.  Fixes were made to the code that handles DEBUG traps so that the trap
    string is not freed inappropriately.

s.  Some changes were made to the bash debugger in examples/bashdb -- it
    should be closer to working now.

t.  A problem that caused the default filename used for mail checking to be
    wrong was fixed.

u.  A fix was made to the `echo' builtin so that NUL characters printed with
    `echo -e' do not cause the output to be truncated.

v.  A fix was made to the job control code so that the shell behaves better
    when monitor mode is enabled in a non-interactive shell.

w.  Bash no longer catches all of the terminating signals in a non-
    interactive shell until a trap is set on EXIT, which should result in
    quicker startup.

x.  A fix was made to the command timing code so that `time' can be used in
    a loop.

y.  A fix was made to the parser so that `((cmd); cmd2)' is now parsed as
    a nested subshell rather than strictly as an (errnoeous) arithmetic
    command.

z.  A fix was made to the globbing code so that it correctly matches quoted
    filenames beginning with a `.'.

aa. A bug in `fc' that caused some multi-line commands to not be stored as
    one command in the history when they were re-executed after editing
    (with `fc -e') was fixed.

bb. The `ulimit' builtin now attempts to catch some classes of integer
    overflows.

cc. The command-oriented-history code no longer attempts to add `;'
    inappropriately when a newline appears while reading a $(...) command
    substitution.

dd. A bug that caused the shell to dump core when `help --' was executed
    was fixed.

ee. A bug that caused the shell to crash when an unset variable appeared
    in the body of a here document after `set -u' had been executed was
    fixed.

ff. Implicit input redirections from /dev/null for asynchronous commands
    are now handled better.

gg. A bug that caused the shell to fail to compile when configured with
    `--disable-readline' was fixed.

hh. The globbing code should now be interruptible.

ii. Bash now notices when the `kill' builtin is used to send SIGCONT to a
    stopped job and adjusts the data structures accordingly, as if `bg' had
    been executed instead.

jj. A bug that caused the shell to crash when mixing calls to `getopts'
    and `shift' on the same set of positional parameters was fixed.

kk. The command printing code now preserves the `-p' flag to `time'.

ll. The command printing code now handles here documents better when there
    are other redirections associated with the command.

mm. The special glibc environment variable (NNN_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_)
    is no longer placed into the environment of executed commands -- users
    of glibc had too many problems with it.

nn. Reorganized the code that generates signames.h.  The signal_names list
    is now more complete but may be slightly different (SIGABRT is favored
    over SIGIOT, for example).  The preferred signal names are those
    listed in the POSIX.2 standard.

oo. `bashbug' now uses a filename shorter than 14 characters for its
    temporary file, and asks for confirmation before sending the bug
    report.

pp. A bug that caused TAB completion in vi editing mode to not be turned
    off when `set -o posix' was executed or back on when `set +o posix'
    was executed was fixed.

qq. A bug in the brace expansion code that caused brace expansions appearing
    in new-style $(...) command substitutions to be inappropriately expanded
    was fixed.

rr. A bug in the readline hook shell-expand-line that could cause memory to
    be inappropriately freed was fixed.

ss. A bug that caused some arithmetic expressions containing `&&' and `||'
    to be parsed with the wrong precedence has been fixed.

tt. References to unbound variables after `set -u' has been executed now
    cause the shell to exit immediately, as they should.

uu. A bug that caused the shell to exit inappropriately when `set -e' had
    been executed and a command's return status was being inverted with the
    `!' reserved word was fixed.

vv. A bug that could occasionally cause the shell to crash with a
    divide-by-zero error when timing a command was fixed.

ww. A bug that caused parameter pattern substitution to leave stray
    backslashes in the replacement string when the expression is in
    double quotes was fixed.

xx. The `break' and `continue' builtins now break out of all loops when an
    invalid count argument is supplied.

yy. Fixed a bug that caused PATH to be set to the empty string if
    `command -p' is executed with PATH unset.

zz. Fixed `kill -l signum' to print the signal name without the `SIG' prefix,
    as POSIX specifies.

aaa. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash while setting $SHELLOPTS
     if there were no shell options set.

bbb. Fixed `export -p' and `readonly -p' so that when the shell is in POSIX
     mode, their output is as POSIX.2 specifies.

ccc. Fixed a bug in `readonly' so that `readonly -a avar=(...)' actually
     creates an array variable.

ddd. Fixed a bug that prevented `time' from correctly timing background
     pipelines.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  A bug that caused an extra newline to be printed when the cursor was on
    an otherwise empty line was fixed.

b.  An instance of memory being used after it was freed was corrected.

c.  The redisplay code now works when the prompt is longer than the screen
    width.

d.  `dump-macros' is now a bindable name, as it should have been all along.

e.  Non-printable characters are now expanded when displaying macros and
    their values.

f.  The `dump-variables' and `dump-macros' commands now output a leading
    newline if they're called as the result of a key sequence, rather
    than directly by an application.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  There is a new builtin array variable: GROUPS, the set of groups to which
    the user belongs.  This is used by the test suite.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  If a key sequence bound to `universal-argument' is read while reading a
    numeric argument started with `universal-argument', it terminates the
    argument but is otherwise ignored.  This provides a way to insert multiple
    instances of a digit string, and is how GNU emacs does it.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University	Internet: chet@po.CWRU.Edu


-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University	Internet: chet@po.CWRU.Edu



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