[Bug-readline] Readline-6.3-rc2 available for FTP

[Chet Ramey]

The second release candidate of the GNU Readline library, version 6.3,
is now available for FTP with the URL

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.3-rc2.tar.gz

This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the
readline library that appears in bash-4.3-rc2 together with
an `autoconf' framework.  The documentation has been updated and
is current.  Postscript, DVI, and Info versions of the Readline
and History manuals are included.  A list of changes in this
release is appended to this announcement.

This release accompanies the simultaneous release of bash-4.3-rc2.
There are more improvements in the programming interface and new
user-visible variables and bindable commands.

The signal handling has been reworked to not run code in a signal
handler context, and there is a new application-settable hook that is
called when a read(2) is interrupted by a signal that readline does
not handle immediately.  The inter-character key sequence timeout is
now user-settable.  An application using readline can specify a hook
function to modify a filename before readline calls stat(2) (e.g., to
perform variable expansion).  There is a user-settable option to have
readline print possible completions using various colors to denote
different file types.

GNU Readline is a library which provides programs with an input
facility including command-line editing and history.  Editing
commands similar to both emacs and vi are included.  The GNU
History library, which provides facilities for managing a list of
previously-typed command lines and an interactive command line
recall facility similar to that provided by csh, is also present.
The history library is built as part of the readline as well as
separately.

Since this is an beta release, please send readline bug reports to
address@hidden

As always, thanks for your help.

Chet

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, readline-6.3, and the
previous version, readline-6.2.

1.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixed a bug that did not allow the `dd', `cc', or `yy' vi editing mode
    commands to work on the entire line.

b.  Fixed a bug that caused redisplay problems with prompts longer than 128
    characters and history searches.

c.  Fixed a bug that caused readline to try and run code to modify its idea
    of the screen size in a signal handler context upon receiving a SIGWINCH.

d.  Fixed a bug that caused the `meta' key to be enabled beyond the duration
    of an individual call top readline().
    
e.  Added a workaround for a wcwidth bug in Mac OS X that caused readline's
    redisplay to mishandle zero-width combining characters.

f.  Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when
    a multiple-key sequence caused it to break out of an incremental search.

g.  Fixed bugs that caused readline to execute code in a signal handler
    context if interrupted while reading from the file system during completion.

h.  Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when
    reading an unbound multi-character key sequence.

i.  Fixed a bug that caused Readline's signal handlers to be installed beyond
    the bounds of a single call to readline().

j.  Fixed a bug that caused the `.' command to not redo the most recent `R'
    command in vi mode.

k.  Fixed a bug that caused ignoring case in completion matches to result in
    readline using the wrong match.

l.  Paren matching now works in vi insert mode.

m.  Fix menu-completion to make show-all-if-ambiguous and 
menu-complete-display-prefix
    work together.

n.  Fixed a bug that didn't allow the `cc', `dd', or `yy' commands to be redone
    in vi editing mode.

o.  Fixed a bug that caused the filename comparison code to not compare
    multibyte characters correctly when using case-sensitive or case-mapping
    comparisons.

p.  Fixed the input reading loop to call the input hook function only when there
    is no terminal input available.

q.  Fixed a bug that caused binding a macro to a multi-character key sequence
    where the sequence and macro value share a common prefix to not perform
    the macro replacement.

r.  Fixed several redisplay errors with multibyte characters and prompts
    containing invisible characters when using horizontal scrolling.

s.  Fixed a bug that caused redisplay errors when trying to overwrite
    existing characters using multibyte characters.

t.  Fixed a bug in vi mode that caused the arrow keys to set the saved last
    vi-mode command to the wrong value.

u.  Fixed a bug that caused double-quoted strings to be scanned incorrectly
    when being used as the value of a readline variable assignment.

v.  Fixed a bug with vi mode that prevented `.' from repeating a command
    entered on a previous line (command).

w.  Fixed a bug that could cause completion to core dump if it was interrupted
    by a signal.

x. Fixed a bug that could cause readline to crash and seg fault attempting to
   expand an empty history entry.

y. Fixed a bug that caused display problems with multi-line prompts containing
   invisible characters on multiple lines.
   
z. Fixed a bug that caused effects made by undoing changes to a history line to
   be discarded.

2.  New Features in Readline

a.  Readline is now more responsive to SIGHUP and other fatal signals when
    reading input from the terminal or performing word completion but no
    longer attempts to run any not-allowable functions from a signal handler
    context.

b.  There are new bindable commands to search the history for the string of
    characters between the beginning of the line and the point
    (history-substring-search-forward, history-substring-search-backward)

c.  Readline allows quoted strings as the values of variables when setting
    them with `set'.  As a side effect, trailing spaces and tabs are ignored
    when setting a string variable's value.

d.  The history library creates a backup of the history file when writing it
    and restores the backup on a write error.

e.  New application-settable variable: rl_filename_stat_hook: a function called
    with a filename before using it in a call to stat(2).  Bash uses it to
    expand shell variables so things like $HOME/Downloads have a slash
    appended.

f.  New bindable function `print-last-kbd-macro', prints the most-recently-
    defined keyboard macro in a reusable format.

g.  New user-settable variable `colored-stats', enables use of colored text
    to denote file types when displaying possible completions (colored analog
    of visible-stats).

h.  New user-settable variable `keyseq-timout', acts as an inter-character
    timeout when reading input or incremental search strings.

i.  New application-callable function: rl_clear_history. Clears the history list
    and frees all readline-associated private data.

j.  New user-settable variable, show-mode-in-prompt, adds a characters to the
    beginning of the prompt indicating the current editing mode.

k.  New application-settable variable: rl_input_available_hook; function to be
    called when readline detects there is data available on its input file
    descriptor.

l.  Readline calls an application-set event hook (rl_signal_event_hook) after
    it gets a signal while reading input (read returns -1/EINTR but readline    
    does not handle the signal immediately) to allow the application to handle
    or otherwise note it.  Not currently called for SIGHUP or SIGTERM.
    
m.  If the user-settable variable `history-size' is set to a value less than
    0, the history list size is unlimited.

n.  When creating shared libraries on Mac OS X, the pathname written into the
    library (install_name) no longer includes the minor version number.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/