keeping up with the competition

[Richard Coleman <coleman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bash 2.0 has just been released.  It has a bunch of
new features.  We should check it out and see if it
has any features we want to implement in zsh.  I'll attach
the release announcement so everyone can see.

rc



		And what rough beast,
			its hour come round at last,
		slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
					-- Yeats
				
The first open release of bash-2.0 is now available with the URL

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

When unpacking the documentation, make sure to extract the tar
file in the bash-2.0 source directory. 

These files will soon be available for anonymous FTP from the
usual GNU archives. 

No diffs from bash-2.0-beta3 are available.

The file NEWS lists the major new features and changes of note
from the last full release, bash-1.14.7.  A copy is appended to
this announcement. 

The file CHANGES lists the changes from bash-2.0-beta3.  A copy
is also appended.

The bash-2.0 FAQ is in doc/FAQ.  This has undergone considerable
change since it was last posted.  Please read it and send any
comments to chet@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Bug reports concerning bash may be sent to bug-bash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
There is a `bashbug' program in the distribution, built at the same
time as bash, that should be used to report bugs. 

A new release of the standalone readline library will appear within
two weeks.  An announcement will be made when it is available.

Chet

+=========== NEWS ===========+
This is a terse description of the new features added to bash-2.0 since
the release of bash-1.14.7.  As always, the manual page (doc/bash.1) is
the place to look for complete descriptions.

1.  New Features in Bash

a.  There is a new invocation option, -D, that dumps translatable strings
    in a script.

b.  The `long' invocation options must now be prefixed with `--'.

c.  New long invocation options:  --dump-strings, --help, --verbose

d.  The `nolineediting' invocation option was renamed to `noediting'.

e.  The `nobraceexpansion' and `quiet' long invocation options were removed.

f.  The `--help' and `--version' long options now work as the GNU coding
    standards specify.

g.  If invoked as `sh', bash now enters posix mode after reading the
    startup files, and reads and executes commands from the file named
    by $ENV if interactive (as POSIX.2 specifies).  A login shell invoked
    as `sh' reads $ENV after /etc/profile and ~/.profile.

h.  There is a new reserved word, `time', for timing pipelines, builtin
    commands, and shell functions.  It uses the value of the TIMEFORMAT
    variable as a format string describing how to print the timing
    statistics.

i.  The $'...' quoting syntax expands ANSI-C escapes in ... and leaves the
    result single-quoted.

j.  The $"..." quoting syntax performs locale-specific translation of ...
    and leaves the result double-quoted.

k.  LINENO now works correctly in functions.

l.  New variables: DIRSTACK, PIPESTATUS, BASH_VERSINFO, HOSTNAME, SHELLOPTS,
    MACHTYPE.  The first three are array variables.

m.  The BASH_VERSION and BASH_VERSINFO variables now include the shell's
    `release status' (alpha[N], beta[N], release).

n.  Some variables have been removed:  MAIL_WARNING, notify, history_control,
    command_oriented_history, glob_dot_filenames, allow_null_glob_expansion,
    nolinks, hostname_completion_file, noclobber, no_exit_on_failed_exec, and
    cdable_vars.  Most of them are now implemented with the new `shopt'
    builtin; others were already implemented by `set'.

o.  Bash now uses some new variables:  LC_ALL, LC_MESSAGES, LC_CTYPE,
    LC_COLLATE, LANG, GLOBIGNORE, HISTIGNORE.

p.  The shell now supports integer-indexed arrays of unlimited length,
    with a new compound assignment syntax and changes to the appropriate
    builtin commands (declare/typeset, read, readonly, etc.).  The array
    index may be an arithmetic expression.

q.  ${!var}: indirect variable expansion, equivalent to eval \${$var}.

r.  ${paramter:offset[:length]}: variable substring extraction.

s.  ${parameter/pattern[/[/]string]}: variable pattern substitution.

t.  The $[...] arithmetic expansion syntax is no longer supported, in
    favor of $((...)).

u.  Aliases can now be expanded in shell scripts with a shell option
    (shopt expand_aliases).

v.  History and history expansion can now be used in scripts with
    set -o history and set -H.

w.  All builtins now return an exit status of 2 for incorrect usage.

x.  Interactive shells resend SIGHUP to all running or stopped children
    if (and only if) they exit due to a SIGHUP.

y.  New prompting expansions: \a, \e, \H, \T, \@, \v, \V.

z.  Variable expansion in prompt strings is now controllable via a shell
    option (shopt promptvars).

aa. Bash now defaults to using command-oriented history.

bb. The history file ($HISTFILE) is now truncated to $HISTFILESIZE after
    being written.

cc. The POSIX.2 conditional arithmetic evaluation syntax (expr ? expr : expr)
    has been implemented.

dd. Each builtin now accepts `--' to signify the end of the options, except
    as documented (echo, etc.).

ee. All builtins use -p to display values in a re-readable format where
    appropriate, except as documented (echo, type, etc.).

ff. The `alias' builtin has a new -p option.

gg. Changes to the `bind' builtin:
	o has new options: -psPSVr.
	o the `-d' option was renamed to `-p'
	o the `-v' option now dumps variables; the old `-v' is now `-P'

hh. The `bye' synonym for `exit' was removed.

ii. The -L and -P options to `cd' and `pwd' have been documented.

jj. The `cd' builtin now does spelling correction on the directory name
    by default.  This is settable with a shell option (shopt cdspell).

kk. The `declare' builtin has new options: -a, -F, -p.

ll. The `dirs' builtin has new options: -c, -p, -v.

mm. The new `disown' builtin removes jobs from the shell's jobs table
    or inhibits the resending of SIGHUP when the shell receives a
    SIGHUP.

nn. The `echo' builtin has a new escape character: \e.

oo. The `enable' builtin can now load new builtins dynamically from shared
    objects on systems with the dlopen/dlsym interface.  There are a number
    of examples in the examples/loadables directory.  There are also
    new options: -d, -f, -s, -p.

pp. The `-all' option to `enable' was removed in favor of `-a'.

qq. The `exec' builtin has new options: -l, -c, -a.

rr. The `hash' builtin has a new option: -p.

ss. The `history' builtin has new options: -c, -p, -s.

tt. The `jobs' builtin has new options: -r, -s.

uu. The `kill' builtin has new options: -n signum, -l signame.

vv. The `pushd' and `popd' builtins have a new option: -n.

ww. The `read' builtin has new options: -p prompt, -e, -a.

xx. The `readonly' builtin has a new -a option, and the -n option was removed.

yy. Changes to the `set' builtin:
	o new options: -B, -o keyword, -o onecmd, -o history
	o options removed: -l, -d, -o nohash
	o options changed: +o, -h, -o hashall
	o now displays variables in a format that can be re-read as input

zz. The new `shopt' builtin controls shell optional behavior previously
    done by setting and unsetting certain shell variables.

aaa. The `test' builtin has new operators: -o option, s1 == s2, s1 < s2,
     and s1 > s2, where s1 and s2 are strings.

bbb. There is a new trap, DEBUG, executed after every simple command.

ccc. The `trap' builtin has a new -p option.

ddd. The `ulimit' builtin has a new -l option on 4.4BSD-based systems.

eee. The PS1, PS2, PATH, and IFS variables may now be unset.

fff. The restricted shell mode has been expanded and is now documented.

ggg. Security improvements:
	o functions are not imported from the environment if running setuid
	  or with -p
	o no startup files are sourced if running setuid or with -p

hhh. The documentation has been overhauled:  the texinfo manual was
     expanded, and HTML versions of the man page and texinfo manual
     are included.

iii. Changes to Posix mode:
	o Command lookup now finds special builtins before shell functions.
	o Failure of a special builtin causes a non-interactive shell to
	  exit.  Failures are defined in the POSIX.2 specification.
	o If the `cd' builtin finds a directory to change to using $CDPATH,
	  the value assigned to PWD when `cd' completes does not contain
	  any symbolic links.
	o A non-interactive shell exits if a variable assignment error
	  occurs when no command name follows the assignment statements.
	o A non-interactive shell exits if the interation variable in a
	  `for' statement or the selection variable in a `select' statement
	  is read-only or another variable assignment error occurs.
	o The `<>' redirection operator now opens a file for both stdin and
	  stdout by default, not just when in posix mode.
	o Assignment statements preceding special builtins now persist in
	  the shell's environment when the builtin completes.

     Posix mode is now completely POSIX.2-compliant (modulo bugs).  When
     invoked as sh, bash should be completely POSIX.2-compliant.

jjj. The default value of PS1 is now "\s-\v\$ ".

kkk. The ksh-like ((...)) arithmetic command syntax has been implemented.
     This is exactly equivalent to `let "..."'.

lll. Integer constants have been extended to base 64.

mmm. The `ulimit' builtin now sets both hard and soft limits and reports the
     soft limit by default.

2.  New Features in Readline

a.  New variables:  enable-keypad, input-meta (new name for meta-flag),
    mark-directories, visible-stats (now documented), disable-completion,
    comment-begin.

b.  New bindable commands:  kill-region, copy-region-as-kill,
    copy-backward-word, copy-forward-word, set-mark, exchange-point-and-mark,
    character-search, character-search-backward, insert-comment,
    glob-expand-word, glob-list-expansions, dump-variables, dump-macros.

c.  New emacs keybindings:  delete-horizontal-space (M-\),
    insert-completions (M-*), possible-completions (M-=).

d.  The history-search-backward and history-search-forward commands were
    modified to be the same as previous-line and next-line if point is at
    the start of the line.

e.  More file types are available for the visible-stats mode.

3.  Changes of interest in the Bash implementation

a.  There is a new autoconf-based configuration mechanism.

b.  More things have been moved from Posix mode to standard shell behavior.

c.  The trace output (set -x) now inserts quotes where necessary so it can
    be reused as input.

d.  There is a compile-time option for a system-wide interactive shell
    startup file (disabled by default).

e.  The YACC grammar is smaller and tighter, and all 66 shift-reduce
    conflicts are gone.  Several parsing bugs have been fixed.

f.  Builtin option parsing has been regularized (using internal_getopt()),
    with the exception of `echo', `type', and `set'.

g.  Builtins now return standard usage messages constructed from the
    `short doc' used by the help builtin.

h.  Completion now quotes using backslashes by default, but honors
    user-supplied quotes.

i.  The GNU libc malloc is available as a configure-time option.

j.  There are more internationalization features; bash uses gettext if
    it is available.  The $"..." translation syntax uses the current
    locale and gettext.

k.  There is better reporting of job termination when the shell is not
    interactive.

l.  The shell is somewhat more efficient: it uses a little less memory and
    makes fewer system calls.

4.  Changes of interest in the Readline implementation

a.  There is now support for readline `callback' functions.

b.  There is now support for user-supplied input, redisplay, and terminal
    preparation functions.

c.  Most of the shell-specific code in readline has been generalized or
    removed.

d.  Most of the annoying redisplay bugs have been fixed, notably the problems
    with incremental search and excessive redrawing when special characters
    appear in the prompt string.

e.  There are new library functions and variables available to application
    writers, most having to do with completion and quoting.

f.  The NEWLINE character (^J) is now treated as a search terminator by the
    incremental search functions.


+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-release,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta3.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fix to the `getopts' builtin so that it does the right thing when a
    required option argument is not present.

b.  The completion code now updates the common prefix of matched names
    after FIGNORE processing is done, since any names that were removed
    may have changed the common prefix.

c.  Fixed a bug that made messages in MAILPATH entries not work correctly.

d.  Fixed a serious documentation error in the description of the new
    ${parameter:offset[:length]} expansion.

e.  Fixes to make parameter substring expansion ({$param:offset[:length]})
    work when within double quotes.

f.  Fixes to make ^A (CTLESC) survive an unquoted expansion of positional
    parameters.

g.  Corrected a misspelling of `unlimited' in the output of `ulimit'.

h.  Fixed a bug that caused executable scripts without a leading `#!' to
    occasionally pick up the wrong set of positional parameters.

i.  Linux systems now have a working `ulimit -v', using RLIMIT_AS.

j.  Updated config.guess so that many more machine types are recognized.

k.  Fixed a bug with backslash-quoted slashes in the ${param/pat[/sub]}
    expansion.

l.  If the shell is named `-su', and `-c command' is supplied, read and
    execute the login shell startup files even though the shell is not
    interactive.  This is to support the `-' option to `su'.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixed a bug that caused a numeric argument of 1024 to be ignored when
    inserting text.

b.  Fixed the display code so that the numeric argument is displayed as it's
    being entered.

c.  Fixed the numeric argument reading code so that `M-- command' is
    equivalent to `M--1 command', as the prompt implies.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  `ulimit' now sets both hard and soft limits and reports the soft limit
    by default (when neither -H nor -S is specified).  This is compatible
    with versions of sh and ksh that implement `ulimit'.

b.  Integer constants have been extended to base 64.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  The `home' and `end' keys are now bound to beginning-of-line and
    end-of-line, respectively, if the corresponding termcap capabilities
    are present.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta3,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta2.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  System-specific changes for: AIX 4.2, SCO 3.2v[45], HP-UX.

b.  When in POSIX mode, variable assignments preceding a special builtin
    persist in the shell environment after the builtin completes.

c.  Changed all calls to getwd() to getcwd().  Improved check for systems
    where the libc getcwd() calls popen(), since that breaks on some
    systems when job control is being used.

d.  Fixed a bug that caused seg faults when executing scripts with the
    execute bit set but without a leading `#!'.

e.  The environment passed to executed commands is never sorted.

f.  A bug was fixed in the code that expands ${name[@]} to the number of
    elements in an array variable.

g.  A bug was fixed in the array compound assignment code ( A=( ... ) ).

h.  Window size changes now correctly propagate down to readline if
    the shopt `checkwinsize' option is enabled.

i.  A fix was made in the code that expands to the length of a variable
    value (${#var}).

j.  A fix was made to the command builtin so that it did not turn on the
    `no fork' flag inappropriately.

k.  A fix was made to make `set -n' work more reliably.

l.  A fix was made to the job control initialization code so that the
    terminal process group is set to the shell's process group if the
    shell changes its own process group.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  System-specific changes for: SCO 3.2v[45].

b.  The behavior of the vi-mode `.' when redoing an `i' command was changed
    to insert the text previously inserted by the `i' command rather than
    simply entering insert mode.

3.  New features in Bash

a.  There is a new version of the autoload function package, in
    examples/functions/autoload.v2, that uses arrays and provides more
    functionality.

b.  Support for LC_COLLATE and locale-specific sorting of the results of
    pathname expansion if strcoll() is available.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  Support for locale-specific sorting of completion possibilities if
    strcoll() is available.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta2,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  `pushd -' is once again equivalent to `pushd $OLDPWD'.

b.  OS-specific changes for: SCO 3.2v[45].

c.  A change was made to the fix for the recently-reported security hole
    when reading characters with octal value 255 to make it work better on
    systems with restartable system calls when not using readline.

d.  Some changes were made to the test suite so that it works if you
    configure bash with --enable-usg-echo-default.

e.  A fix was made to the parsing of conditional arithmetic expressions.

f.  Illegal arithmetic bases now cause an arithmetic evaluation error rather
    than being silently reset.

g.  Multiple arithmetic bases now cause an arithmetic evaluation error
    instead of being ignored.

h.  A fix was made to the evaluation of ${param?word} to conform to POSIX.2.

i.  A bug that sometimes caused array indices to be evaluated twice (which
    would cause errors when they contained assignment statements) was fixed.

j.  `ulimit' was rewritten to avoid problems with getrlimit(2) returning
    unsigned values and to simplify the code.

k.  A bug in the command-oriented-history code that caused it to sometimes
    put semicolons after right parens inappropriately was fixed.

l.  The values inserted into the prompt by the \w and \W escape sequences
    are now quoted to prevent further expansion.

m.  An interactive shell invoked as `sh' now reads and executes commands
    from the file named by $ENV when it starts up.  If it's a login shell,
    it does this after reading /etc/profile and ~/.profile.

n.  The file named by $ENV is never read by non-interactive shells.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  A few changes were made to hide some macros and functions that should not
    be public.

b.  An off-by-one error that caused seg faults in the history expansion code
    was fixed.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  The ksh-style ((...)) arithmetic command was implemented.  It is exactly
    identical to let "...".  This is controlled by a new option to configure,
    `--enable-dparen-arithmetic', which is on by default.

b.  There is a new #define available in config.h.top: SYS_BASH_LOGOUT.  If
    defined to a filename, bash reads and executes commands from that file
    when a login shell exits.  It's commented out by default.

c.  `ulimit' has a `-l' option that reports the maximum amount of data that
    may be locked into memory on 4.4BSD-based systems.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta1,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha4.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  A bug that sometimes caused traps to be ignored on signals the
    shell treats specially was fixed.

b.  The internationalization code was changed to track the values of
    LC_* variables and call setlocale() as appropriate.  The TEXTDOMAIN
    and TEXTDOMAINDIR variables are also tracked; changes cause calls
    to textdomain() and bindtextdomain(), if available.

c.  A bug was fixed that sometimes caused double-quoted strings to be
    parsed incorrectly.

d.  Changes were made so that the siglist code compiles correctly on
    Solaris 2.5.

e.  Added `:' to the set of characters that cause word breaks for the
    completion code so that pathnames in assignments to $PATH can be
    completed.

f.  The `select' command was fixed to print $PS3 to stderr.

g.  Fixed an error in the manual page section describing the effect that
    setting and unsetting GLOBIGNORE has on the setting of the `dotglob'
    option.

h.  The time conversion code now uses CLK_TCK rather than CLOCKS_PER_SEC
    on systems without gettimeofday() and resources.

i.  The getopt static variables are now initialized each time a subshell
    is started, so subshells using `getopts' work right.

j.  A sign-extension bug that caused a possible security hole was fixed.

k.  The parser now reads characters between backquotes within a double-
    quoted string as a single word, so double quotes in the backquoted
    string don't terminate the enclosing double-quoted string.

l.  A bug that caused `^O' to work incorrectly when typed as the first
    thing to an interactive shell was fixed.

m.  A rarely-exercised off-by-one error in the code that quotes variable
    values was fixed.

n.  Some memory and file descriptor leaks encountered when running a
    shell script that is executable but does not have a leading `#!'
    were plugged.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  A bug that sometimes caused incorrect results when trying to read
    typeahead on systems without FIONREAD was fixed.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  The command timing code now uses the value of the TIMEFORMAT variable
    to format and display timing statistics.

b.  The `time' reserved word now accepts a `-p' option to force the
    POSIX.2 output format.

c.  There are a couple of new and updated scripts to convert csh startup
    files to bash format.

d.  There is a new builtin array variable: BASH_VERSINFO.  The various
    members hold the parts of the version information in BASH_VERSION,
    plus the value of MACHTYPE.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  Setting LANG to `en_US.ISO8859-1' now causes readline to enter
    eight-bit mode.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha4,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha3.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  There is better detection of rsh connections on Solaris 2.

b.  Assignments to read-only variables preceding a command name are now
    variable assignment errors.  Variable assignment errors cause
    non-interactive shells running in posix mode to exit.

c.  The word tokenizer was rewritten to handle nested quotes and pairs
    ('', "", ``, ${...}, $(...), $[...], $'...', $"...", <(...), >(...))
    correctly.  Some of the parameter expansion code was updated as a
    consequence.

d.  A fix was made to `test' when given three arguments so that a binary
    operator is checked for first, before checking that the first argument
    is `!'.

e.  2''>/dev/null is no longer equivalent to 2>/dev/null.

f.  Parser error messages were regularized, and in most cases the name of
    the shell script being read by a non-interactive shell is not printed
    twice.

g.  A fix was made to the completion code so that it no longer removes the
    text the user typed in some cases.

h.  The special glibc `getopt' environment variable is no longer put into
    the environment on machines with small values of ARG_MAX.

i.  The expansion of ${...} now follows the POSIX.2 rules for finding the
    closing `}'.

j.  The shell no longer displays spurious status messages for background
    jobs in shell scripts that complete successfully when the script is
    run from a terminal.

k.  `shopt -o' now correctly updates $SHELLOPTS.

l.  A bug that caused the $PATH searching code to return a non-executable
    file even when an executable file with the same name appeared later in
    $PATH was fixed.

m.  The shell now does tilde expansions on unquoted `:~' in assignment
    statements when not in posix mode.

n.  Variable assignment errors when a command consists only of assignments
    now cause non-interactive shells to exit when in posix mode.

o.  If the variable in a `for' or `select' command is read-only, or not a
    legal shell identifier, a variable assignment error occurs.

p.  `test' now handles `-a' and `-o' as binary operators when three arguments
    are supplied, and correctly parses `( word )' as equivalent to `word'.

q.  `test' was fixed so that file names of the form /dev/fd/NN mean the same
    thing on all systems, even Linux.

r.  Fixed a bug in the globbing code that caused patterns with multiple
    consecutive `*'s to not be matched correctly.

s.  Fixed a bug that caused $PS2 to not be printed when an interactive shell
    not using readline is reading a here document.

t.  Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to be performed inappropriately
    when a single-quoted string spanned more than one line.

u.  `getopts' now checks that the variable name passed by the user as the
    second argument is a legal shell identifier and that the variable is
    not read-only.

v.  Fixed `getopts' to obey POSIX.2 rules for setting $OPTIND when it
    encounters an error.

w.  Fixed `set' to display variable values in a form that can be re-read.

x.  Fixed a bug in the code that keeps track of whether or not local variables
    have been declared at the current level of function nesting.

y.  Non-interactive shells in posix mode now exit if the name in a function
    declaration is not a legal identifier.

z.  The job control code now ignores stopped children when the shell is not
    interactive.

aa. The `cd' builtin no longer attempts spelling correction on the directory
    name if the shell is not interactive, regardless of the setting of the
    `cdspell' option.

bb. Some OS-specific changes were made for SCO 3.2v[45] and AIX 4.2.

cc. `time' now prints its output to stderr, as POSIX.2 specifies.

2.  Fixes to Readline

a.  After printing possible completions, all lines of a multi-line prompt
    are redisplayed.

b.  Some changes were made to the terminal handling code in rltty.c to
    work around AIX 4.2 bugs.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  There is a new loadable builtin: sprintf, with calling syntax
		sprintf var format [args]
    This provides an easy way to simulate ksh left- and right-justified
    variable values.

b.  The expansions of \h and \H in prompt strings were swapped.  \h now
    expands to the hostname up to the first `.', as in bash-1.14.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  The bash-1.14 behavior when ^M is typed while doing an incremental
    search was restored.  ^J may now be used to terminate the search without
    accepting the line.

b.  There is a new bindable variable: disable-completion.  This inhibits
    word completion and causes the completion character to be inserted as
    if it had been bound to self-insert.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha3,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha2.

There is now a file `COMPAT' included in the distribution that lists the
user-visible incompatibilities between 1.14 and 2.0.

1. Changes to Bash

a. Some work was done so that word splitting of the rhs of assignment
   statements conforms more closely to historical practice.

b. A couple of errant memory frees were fixed.

c. A fix was made to the test builtin so it recognizes `<' and `>' as
   binary operators.

d. The GNU malloc in lib/malloc/malloc.c now scrambles memory as it's
   allocated and freed.  This is to catch callers that refer to freed
   memory or assume something about newly-allocated memory.

e. Fixed a problem with conversion to 12-hour time in the prompt
   expansion code.

f. Fixed a problem with configure's argument parsing order.  Now you can
   correctly turn on specific options after using --enable-minimal-config.

g. The configure script now automatically disables the use of GNU malloc
   on systems where it's appropriate (better than having people read the
   NOTES file and do it manually).

h. There are new prompt expansions (\v and \V) to insert version information
   into the prompt strings.

i. The default prompt string now includes the version number.

j. Most of the builtins that take no options were changed to use the
   internal getopt so they can produce proper error messages for -?
   and incorrect options.

k. Some system-specific changes were made for SVR4.2 and Solaris 2.5.

l. Bash now uses PATH_MAX instead of MAXPATHLEN and NAME_MAX instead of
   MAXNAMLEN.

m. A couple of problems caused by uninitialized variables were fixed.

n. There are a number of new loadable builtin examples: logname, basename,
   dirname, tty, pathchk, tee, head, and rmdir.  All of these conform to
   POSIX.2.

o. Bash now notices changes in TZ and calls tzset() if present, so
   changing TZ will alter the time printed by prompt expansions.

p. The source was reorganized a bit so I don't have to wait so long for
   some files to compile, and to facilitate the creation of a `shell
   library' at some future point.

q. Bash no longer turns off job control if called as `sh', since the
   POSIX.2 spec includes job control as a standard feature.

r. `bash -o posix' now works as intended.

s. Fixed a problem with the completion code: when completing a filename
   that contained globbing characters, if show-all-if-ambiguous was set,
   the completion code would remove the user's text.

t. Fixed ulimit so that (hopefully) the full range of limits is available
   on HPUX systems.

u. A new `shopt' option (`hostcomplete') enables and disables hostname
   completion.

v. The shell no longer attempts to save the history on an abort(),
   which is usually called by programming_error().

w. The `-s' option to `fc' was changed to echo the command to be executed
   to stderr instead of stdout.

x. If the editor invoked by `fc -e' exits with a non-zero status, no
   commands are executed.

y. Fixed a bug that made the shopt `histverify' option work incorrectly.

z. There is a new variable `MACHTYPE' whose value is the GNU-style
   `cpu-company-system' system description as set by configure.  (The
   values of MACHTYPE and HOSTTYPE should really be swapped.)

aa. The `ulimit' builtin now allows the maximum virtual memory size to be
    set via setrlimit(2) if RLIMIT_VMEM is defined.

bb. `bash -nc 'command'' no longer runs `command'.

2. Changes to Readline

a. Fixed a typo in the code that checked for FIONREAD in input.c.

b. Fixed a bug in the code that outputs keybindings, so things like C-\
   are quoted properly.

c. Fixed a bug in the inputrc file parsing code to handle the problems
   caused by inputrc files created from the output of `bind -p' in
   previous versions of bash.  The problem was due to the bug fixed
   in item b above.

d. Readline no longer turns off the terminal's meta key, and turns it on
   once the first time it's called.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This file documents the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha2,
and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha.

1. Changes to Bash

a. The shell no longer thinks directories are executable.

b. `disown' has a new option, `h', which inhibits the resending of SIGHUP
   but does not remove the job from the jobs table.

c. The varargs functions in error.c now use ANSI-C `stdarg' if available.

d. The build process now treats the `build version' in .build as local to
   the build directory, so different versions built from the same source
   tree have different `build versions'.

e. Some problems with the grammar have been fixed. (It used `list' in a few
   productions where `compound_list' was needed.  A `list' must be terminated
   with a newline or semicolon; a `compound_list' need not be.)

f. A fix was made to keep `wait' from hanging when waiting for all background
   jobs.

g. `bash --help' now writes its output to stdout, like the GNU Coding Standards
   specify, and includes the machine type (the value of MACHTYPE).

h. `bash --version' now prints more information and exits successfully, like
   the GNU Coding Standards specify.

i. The output of `time' and `times' now prints fractional seconds with three
   places after the decimal point.

j. A bug that caused process substitutions to screw up the pipeline printed
   by `jobs' was fixed.

k. Fixes were made to the code that implements $'...' and $"..." so they
   work as documented.

l. The process substitution code now opens named pipes for reading with
   O_NONBLOCK to avoid hanging.

m. Fixes were made to the trap code so the shell cleans up correctly if the
   trap command contains a `return' and we're executing a function or
   sourcing a script with `.'.

n. Fixes to doc/Makefile.in so that it doesn't try to remake all of the
   documentation (ps, dvi, etc.) on a `make install'.

o. Fixed an auto-increment error that caused bash -c args to sometimes dump
   core.

p. Fixed a bug that caused $HISTIGNORE to fail when the history line
   contained globbing characters.

2. Changes to Readline

a. There is a new string variable, rl_library_version, available for use by
   applications.  The current value is "2.1".

b. A bug encountered when expand-tilde was enabled and file completion was
   attempted on a word beginning with `~/' was fixed.

c. A slight change was made to the incremental search termination behavior.
   ESC still terminates the search, but if input is pending or arrives
   within 0.1 seconds (on systems with select(2)), it is used as a prefix
   character.  This is intented to allow users to terminate searches with
   the arrow keys and get the behavior they expect.
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer

Chet Ramey, Case Western Reserve University	Internet: chet@xxxxxxxxxxx