Bash-2.05 available for FTP

[Chet Ramey]

Introduction
============
The first public release of bash-2.05 is now available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-2.05.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-2.05.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

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 URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-doc-2.05.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-doc-2.05.tar.gz

When unpacking the documentation, make sure to extract the tar file
in the bash-2.05 source directory.

Diffs from bash-2.04 are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-2.04-2.05.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-2.04-2.05.diff.gz

Make sure to apply the diffs using `patch -p1' from within a
bash-2.04 source directory.

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.

New Features
============

This is primarily a bug fix release (as are all odd-numbered releases). 

This version has once again reverted to using locales and strcoll(3) when
processing pattern matching bracket expressions, as POSIX requires.  Read
the NOTES file for a longer explanation of the change and its effects.

Bash-2.05, when run as `sh' with `shopt -s xpg_echo', is nearly
completely compliant with the latest draft of POSIX.2.  It is also
nearly completely compliant with POSIX.2-1992 when run without
`shopt -s xpg_echo'.  The minor differences are noted in the info manual.
Andrew Pham of IBM was kind enough to run bash-2.04 through the Open Group's
VSC lite POSIX compliance test, and report the results to me.  I fixed
all of the problems (both with bash and the test suite) except the two
mentioned above.

Read the file NEWS in the bash-2.05 distribution for a complete description
of the (few) new features.  Here is a short list:

o Added a new `--init-file' invocation argument as a synonym for `--rcfile',
  per the new GNU coding standards.

o The /dev/tcp and /dev/udp redirections now accept service names as well as
  port numbers.

o `complete' and `compgen' now take a `-o value' option, which controls some
   of the aspects of that compspec.  Valid values are:

        default - perform bash default completion if programmable
                  completion produces no matches
        dirnames - perform directory name completion if programmable
                   completion produces no matches
        filenames - tell readline that the compspec produces filenames,
                    so it can do things like append slashes to
                    directory names and suppress trailing spaces

o A new loadable builtin, realpath, which canonicalizes and expands symlinks
  in pathname arguments.
    
o When `set' is called without options, it prints function defintions in a
  way that allows them to be reused as input.  This affects `declare' and 
  `declare -p' as well.  This only happens when the shell is not in POSIX
  mode, since POSIX.2 forbids this behavior.

Changes have been made to the Readline library being released at
the same time as bash-2.05, readline-4.2, so that Bash can be
linked against an already-installed Readline library rather than
the private version in lib/readline.  Only readline-4.2 is able
to provide all of the symbols that bash-2.05 requires; earlier
versions of the Readline library will not work correctly.

A complete list of changes between bash-2.04 and bash-2.05 is
available in the file CHANGES; the relevant portions are appended.

Readline
========

Also available is a new release of the standalone readline library,
version 4.2, with its own configuration scripts and Makefiles. 
It can be retrieved with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.2.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.2.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

Diffs from readline-4.1 are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.1-4.2.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.1-4.2.diff.gz

Make sure to install the patches using `patch -p1 < patch-file' from
within a readline-4.1 source directory.

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

A separate announcement listing the changes in Readline is being
distributed.

As always, thanks for your help.

Chet

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-release,
and the previous version, bash-2.05-beta2.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Make sure we note that the first line of a multi-line command was not
    saved in the history if the tests for HISTCONTROL succeed, but the
    HISTIGNORE check fails.

b.  Fixed a bug in the pattern matching code that caused `[' to be treated
    as a special character inside a `[...]' bracket expression.

c.  Fixed a bug in the pattern matching code that caused `]' to terminate
    a bracket expression even if it was the first character after the `['
    (or a leading `!' or `^').

d.  Made a small change to report a more user-friendly error message if
    execve(2) fails because of an error with the interpreter in a script
    with a leading `#! interpreter'.

e.  If the OS does not support an exec(2) magic number of `#!', make sure we
    have a non-null interpreter name before attempting to execute it.

f.  Fixed a bug that caused the shell process to end up in a different
    process group than the controlling terminal if a job-control shell was
    run with `exec' in the startup files.

g.  When started in POSIX mode, either by `bash --posix', `bash -o posix', or
    `sh', $SHELLOPTS includes `posix' and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.

h.  Fixed a problem that caused the `\W' prompt string escape sequence to
    expand to nothing when $PWD was `//'.

i.  The `bashbug' shell script no longer uses $(...) command substitution.

j.  When `set' is invoked without options in POSIX mode, it no longer prints
    the names and definitions of shell functions.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  rl_set_paren_blink_timeout() is now documented.

b.  Corrected history.3 man page: `$' is not in the default value of
    history_word_delimiters.

c.  If a hook function assigned to rl_event_hook sets rl_done to a non-zero
    value, rl_read_key() now immediately returns '\n' (which is assumed to
    be bound to accept-line).

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  The `>&word' redirection now works in POSIX mode as it does by default,
    since POSIX.2 leaves it unspecified.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-beta2,
and the previous version, bash-2.05-beta1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Fixed a bug in the arithmetic evaluation code so that a^=b is supported.

b.  Fixed startup so posixly_correct is retained across subshells begun to
    execute scripts without a leading `#!'.

c.  Fixed a bug that caused $(< file) to not work in a (...) subshell.

d.  Added config support for Linux running on the IBM S390.

e.  Fixed a bug that caused bash to get its input pointer out of sync when
    reading commands through a pipe and running a command with standard
    input redirected from a file.

f.  Made a change so that command completion now makes about half as many
    stat(2) calls when searching the $PATH.

g.  Fixed a bug that caused variable assignments preceding `return' to not
    be propagated to the shell environment in POSIX mode.

h.  Fixed a bug with ${parameter[:]?word} -- tilde expansion was not performed
    on `word'.

i.  In POSIX mode, `break' and `continue' do not complain and return success
    if called when the shell is not executing a loop.

j.  Fixed `bash -o posix' to work the same as `bash --posix'.

k.  Fixed a bug where variable assignments preceding `eval' or `source/.'
    would not show up in the environment exported to subshells run by the
    commands.

l.  In POSIX mode, shells started to execute command substitutions inherit
    the value of the `-e' option from their parent shell.

m.  In POSIX mode, aliases are expanded even in non-interactive shells.

n.  Changed some of the job control messages to display the text required by
    POSIX.2 when the shell is in POSIX mode.

o.  Fixed a bug in `test' that caused it to occasionally return incorrect
    results when non-numeric arguments were supplied to `-t'.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  Some changes were made to avoid gcc warnings with -Wall.

b.  rl_get_keymap_by_name now finds keymaps case-insensitively, so
    `set keymap EMACS' works.

c.  The history file writing and truncation functions now return a useful
    status on error.

d.  Fixed a bug that could cause applications to dereference a NULL pointer
    if a NULL second argument was passed to history_expand().

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  doc/readline.3 has been moved to the readline distribution.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  New function, rl_get_screen_size (int *rows, int *columns), returns
    readline's idea of the screen dimensions.

b.  The timeout in rl_gather_tyi (readline keyboard input polling function)
    is now settable via a function (rl_set_keyboard_input_timeout()).

c.  Renamed the max_input_history variable to history_max_entries; the old
    variable is maintained for backwards compatibility.

d.  The list of characters that separate words for the history tokenizer is
    now settable with a variable:  history_word_delimiters.  The default
    value is as before.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-beta1,
and the previous version, bash-2.05-alpha1.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  Changes to allow shared library and object building on the GNU Hurd.

b.  Fixes to the way exported functions are placed into the environment and
    cached.

c.  The globbing library once again respects locales when processing ranges
    in bracket expressions while doing pattern matching.

d.  System-specific configuration changes for:  Tru 64, Interix

e.  Bashbug now uses /usr/bin/editor as one of the editing alternatives, and
    will use mktemp(1) or tempfile(1), if present, for temporary file creation.

f.  Bash no longer performs a binary file check on a script argument that's
    really a tty (like /dev/fd/0 or /dev/stdin).

g.  Fixed a bug in the execution of shell scripts that caused the effects of
    $BASH_ENV to be undone in some cases.

h.  Fixed several bugs that made `bash [-i] /dev/stdin' not work correctly.

i.  Several changes to the job control code to avoid some signal state
    manipulation.

j.  The Bash malloc no longer blocks signals as often, which should make it
    faster.

k.  Fixed a parsing bug that did not allow backslash to escape a single quote
    inside a $'...' construct.

l.  Fixed a bug that caused things like ${var:=$'value'} to be parsed
    incorrectly.  This showed up in newer versions of autoconf.

m.  Fixed a bug in the bash-specific readline initialization that caused
    key bindings to bash-specific function names appearing in .inputrc to
    not be honored.

n.  Bash now sets the file descriptor it uses to save the file descriptor
    opened on a shell script to close on exec.

o.  Fixed a bug in the prompt string decoding that caused it to misbehave
    when presented an octal sequence of fewer than three characters.

p.  Fixed the `test' builtin to return an error if `[' is supplied a single
    argument that is not `]'.

q.  Fixed a bug that caused subshells started to run executable shell scripts
    without a leading `#!' to incorrectly inherit an argument list preceding
    a shell builtin (like such a script called from a script sourced with `.',
    where there were variable assignments preceding the `.' command)

r.  Fixed a bug that caused changes to variables supplied in an assignment
    statement preceding a shell builtin to not be honored (like a script
    run with `.').

s.  HOSTTYPE, OSTYPE, and MACHTYPE are set only if they do not have values
    when the shell is started.

t.  Fixed a bug that caused SIGINT to kill shell scripts after the script
    called `wait'.

u.  The `fc' builtin now tries to create its temporary files in the directory
    named by $TMPDIR.

v.  Bash no longer calls any Readline functions or uses any Readline variables
    not declared in readline.h.

w.  Fixed a bug that caused some substitutions involving $@ to not be split
    correctly, especially expansions of the form ${paramterOPword}.

x.  SSH2_CLIENT is now treated like SSH_CLIENT and not auto-exported if it
    appears in the initial environment.

y.  Fixed a couple of problems with shell scripts without a leading `#!'
    being executed out of shell functions that could cause core dumps if
    such a script attempted to execute `return'.

z.  Fixed a problem with the `-nt' and `-ot' binary operators for the
    `test/[' builtin and the `[[' conditional command that caused wrong
    return values if one of the file arguments did not exist.

aa. Fixed a bug that caused non-interactive shells which had previously
    executed `shopt -s expand_aliases' to fail to expand aliases in a
    command like `(command) &'.
 
2.  Changes to Readline

a.  Changes to make most (but not yet all -- there is still crlf()) of the
    exported readline functions declared in readline.h have an rl_ prefix.

b.  More `const' changes in function arguments, mostly for completion
    functions.

c.  Fixed a bug in rl_forward that could cause the point to be set to before
    the beginning of the line in vi mode.

d.  Fixed a bug in the callback read-char interface to make it work when a
    readline function pushes some input onto the input stream with
    rl_execute_next (like the incremental search functions).

e.  Fixed a file descriptor leak in the history file manipulation code that
    was tripped when attempting to truncate a non-regular file (like
    /dev/null).

f.  Some existing variables are now documented and part of the public
    interface (declared in readline.h):  rl_explict_arg, rl_numeric_arg,
    rl_editing_mode, rl_last_func.

g.  Renamed rltty_set_default_bindings to rl_tty_set_default_bindings and
    crlf to rl_crlf, so there are no public functions declared in readline.h
    without an `rl_' prefix.  The old functions still exist for backwards
    compatibility.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  A new loadable builtin, realpath, which canonicalizes and expands symlinks
    in pathname arguments.

b.  When `set' is called without options, it prints function defintions in a
    way that allows them to be reused as input.  This affects `declare' and
    `declare -p' as well.

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  New application-callable function rl_set_prompt(const char *prompt):
    expands its prompt string argument and sets rl_prompt to the result.

b.  New application-callable function rl_set_screen_size(int rows, int cols):
    public method for applications to set readline's idea of the screen
    dimensions.

c.  The history example program (examples/histexamp.c) is now built as one
    of the examples.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-alpha1,
and the previous version, bash-2.04-release.

1.  Changes to Bash

a.  A fix was made to allow newlines in compond array assignments.

b.  configure now checks for real-time signals with unusable values.

c.  Interactive shells no longer exit if a substitution fails because of an
    unset variable within a sourced file.

d.  Fixed a problem with incorrect matching of extended glob patterns when
    doing pattern substitution.

e.  `{' is now quoted by the completion code when it appears in a filename.

f.  Fixed an error in pattern matching that caused the matcher to not
    correctly skip the rest of a bracket expression after a character
    matched.

g.  Fixed a bug in the IFS word splitting code to make a non-whitespace IFS
    character preceded by IFS whitespace part of the current delimiter rather
    than generating a separate field.

h.  The {!prefix@} expansion now generates separate words, analogous to $@,
    when double-quoted.

i.  Command substitution now ignores NUL bytes in the command output, and the
    parser ignores them on input.

j.  A fix was made to the job control code to prevent hanging processes when
    the shell thinks background processes are running but the kernel returns
    -1/ECHILD from waitpid().

k.  `pwd' now prints an error message if the write fails when displaying the
    current directory.

l.  When in POSIX mode, the shell prints trap dispostions without a leading
    `SIG' in the signal specification.

m.  Fixed a parser bug that caused the current command's line count to be
    messed up by a compound array assignment.

n.  Fixed a bug in the unwind-protect code that caused bad behavior on machines
    where ints and pointers are not the same size.

o.  System-specific configure changes for:  MacOS X.

p.  Changes for Cygwin to translate \r\n and \r to \n and to set file
    descriptors used for reading input to text mode in various places.

q.  Fixed a bug that caused `!' to occasionally not be honored when in
    a (...) subshell.

r.  Bash no longer assumes that getcwd() will return any useful error message
    in the buffer passed as an argument if the call fails.

s.  The `source', `.', and `fc' builtins no longer check whether a file is
    binary before reading commands from it.

t.  Subshells no longer turn off job control when they exit, since that
    sometimes resulted in the terminal being reset to the wrong process
    group.

u.  The history code no longer tries to save the second and subsequent lines
    of a multi-line command if the first line was not saved.

v.  The history saving code now does a better job of saving blank lines in a
    multi-line command.

w.  Removed a `feature' that made `ulimit' silently translate `unlimited' to
    the current hard limit, which obscured some kernel error returns.

x.  Fixed the grammar so that `}' is recognized as a reserved word after
    another reserved word, rather than requiring a `;' or newline.  This
    means that constructs like

        { { echo a b c ; } }

    work as expected.

y.  Conditional commands ([[...]]) now perform tilde expansion on their
    arguments.

z.  Noted in the documentation that `set -a' will cause functions to be
    exported if they are defined after `set -a' is executed.

aa. When an interactive login shell starts, if $PWD and $HOME refer to the
    same directory but are not the same string, $PWD is set to $HOME.

bb. Fixed `printf' to handle invalid floating point numbers better.

cc. Temporary files are now created with random filenames, to improve security.

dd. The readline initialization code now binds the custom bash functions and
    key bindings after the readline defaults are set up.

ee. Fixed the `source' builtin to no longer overwrite a shell function's
    argument list, even if the sourced file changes the positional parameters.

ff. A bug fix was made in the expansion of `$*' in contexts where it should
    not be split, like assignment statements.

gg. Fixed a bug in the parameter substring expansion to handle conditional
    arithmetic expressions ( exp ? val1 : val2 ) without cutting the expression
    off at the wrong `:'.

hh. The `<>' redirection is no longer subject to the current setting of
    `noclobber', as POSIX.2 specifies.

ii. Fixed a bug in the conditional command parsing code that caused expressions
    in parentheses to occasionally be parsed incorrectly.

jj. Fixed a bug in the ((...)) arithmetic command to allow do...done or
    {...} to follow the )) without an intervening list terminator.

kk. `printf' now treats `\E' the same as `\e' when performing backslash escape
    expansion for the `%b' format specifier.

ll. When in POSIX mode, the shell no longer searches the current directory for
    a file to be sourced with `.' or `source' if `.' is not in $PATH.

mm. Interactive comments are no longer turned off when POSIX mode is disabled.

nn. The UID, EUID, HOSTNAME variables are not set if they are in the shell's
    environment when it starts up.

oo. Fixed a bug in the `command' builtin so the effect of a command like
    `command exec 4<file' is as if the `command' had been omitted.

pp. ${foo[@]} and ${foo[*]} now work as in ksh93 if `foo' is not an array
    variable.

qq. ${#foo[X]}, where X is 0, @, or *, now work as in ksh93 if `foo' is not
    an array variable.

rr. The shell's idea of an absolute pathname now takes into account a
    possible drive specification on Cygwin and other Windows systems.

ss. Fixed a bug which caused incorrect parsing of some multi-character
    constructs if they were split across input lines with backslash-newline
    line continuation.

tt. Fixed a bug that caused restricted shell mode to be set inappropriately
    when trying to execute a shell script without a leading `#!'.

uu. Shell function definitions no longer require that the body be a group
    command ( {...} ), as POSIX.2 requires.

vv. The `cd' and `pwd' builtins now process symlinks in pathnames internally
    and should require many fewer calls to getcwd().

ww. Fixed a bug that caused a pipeline's process group to be set incorrectly
    if one of the pipeline elements contained a command substitution.

xx. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when expanding the value of HISTIGNORE.

yy. The output of `set' is now quoted using $'...' so invisible characters are
    displayed as escape sequences.

zz. Fixed the help text for `unset', since PATH and IFS may both be unset.

aaa. The shell no longer puts directory names into the command hash table.

bbb. Fixed a bug in `read' that caused it to occasionally free memory twice if
     it was interrupted after reading a large amount of data.

ccc. Assignment statements that attempt to assign values to readonly variables
     now cause the command to return an error status.

ddd. Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect output if a $(<file) construct was
     interrupted.

eee. GROUPS and FUNCNAME now return an error status when assignment is
     attempted, but may be unset (in which case they lose their special
     properties).  In all respects except unsetting, they are readonly.

fff. The string-to-integer conversion code now ignores trailing whitespace in
     the string, even if strtol(3) does not.

ggg. The tcsh magic-space function now does a better job of inserting the
     space close to where the point was before the history expansion, rather
     than just appending it.

hhh. Fixed a bug which caused a file sourced from an interactive shell to
     fill up the jobs table if it ran lots of jobs.

iii. Fixed a bug in the parameter pattern substitution code to avoid infinite
     recursion on zero-length matches.

2.  Changes to Readline

a.  When setting the terminal attributes on systems using `struct termio',
    readline waits for output to drain before changing the attributes.

b.  A fix was made to the history word tokenization code to avoid attempts to
    dereference a null pointer.

c.  Readline now defaults rl_terminal_name to $TERM if the calling application
    has left it unset, and tries to initialize with the resultant value.

d.  Instead of calling (*rl_getc_function)() directly to get input in certain
    places, readline now calls rl_read_key() consistently.

e.  Fixed a bug in the completion code that allowed a backslash to quote a
    single quote inside a single-quoted string.

f.  rl_prompt is no longer assigned directly from the argument to readline(),
    but uses memory allocated by readline.  This allows constant strings to
    be passed to readline without problems arising when the prompt processing
    code wants to modify the string.

g.  Fixed a bug that caused non-interactive history searches to return the
    wrong line when performing multiple searches backward for the same string.

h.  Many variables, function arguments, and function return values are now
    declared `const' where appropriate, to improve behavior when linking with
    C++ code.

i.  The control character detection code now works better on systems where
    `char' is unsigned by default.

j.  The vi-mode numeric argument is now capped at 999999, just like emacs mode.

k.  The Function, CPFunction, CPPFunction, and VFunction typedefs have been
    replaced with a set of specific prototyped typedefs, though they are
    still in the readline header files for backwards compatibility.

m.  Nearly all of the (undocumented) internal global variables in the library
    now have an _rl_ prefix -- there were a number that did not, like
    screenheight, screenwidth, alphabetic, etc.

n.  The ding() convenience function has been renamed to rl_ding(), though the
    old function is still defined for backwards compatibility.

o.  The completion convenience functions filename_completion_function,
    username_completion_function, and completion_matches now have an rl_
    prefix, though the old names are still defined for backwards compatibility.

p.  The functions shared by readline and bash (linkage is satisfied from bash
    when compiling with bash, and internally otherwise) now have an sh_ prefix.

q.  Changed the shared library creation procedure on Linux and BSD/OS 4.x so
    that the `soname' contains only the major version number rather than the
    major and minor numbers.

r.  Fixed a redisplay bug that occurred when the prompt spanned more than one
    physical line and contained invisible characters.

3.  New Features in Bash

a.  Added a new `--init-file' invocation argument as a synonym for `--rcfile',
    per the new GNU coding standards.

b.  The /dev/tcp and /dev/udp redirections now accept service names as well as
    port numbers.

c.  `complete' and `compgen' now take a `-o value' option, which controls some
    of the aspects of that compspec.  Valid values are:

        default - perform bash default completion if programmable
                  completion produces no matches
        dirnames - perform directory name completion if programmable
                   completion produces no matches
        filenames - tell readline that the compspec produces filenames,
                    so it can do things like append slashes to
                    directory names and suppress trailing spaces

4.  New Features in Readline

a.  The blink timeout for paren matching is now settable by applications.

b.  _rl_executing_macro has been renamed to rl_executing_macro, which means
    it's now part of the public interface.

c.  Readline has a new variable, rl_readline_state, which is a bitmap that
    encapsulates the current state of the library; intended for use by
    callbacks and hook functions.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
( ``Discere est Dolere'' -- chet)

Chet Ramey, CWRU    chet@po.CWRU.Edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/