1 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.4-alpha, and
2 the previous version, bash-4.3-release.
6 a. A bug that caused pipelines to be corrupted while running the DEBUG trap
9 b. A bug that accidentally omitted the `-R' unary operator from `test' was
12 c. A bug that could cause the shell to not restore the terminal's process
13 group on shell exit was fixed.
15 d. Several changes were made to programmable completion to accommodate
16 assumptions made by the bash-completion package.
18 e. Bash no longer inhibits C-style escape processing ($'...') while performing
19 pattern substitution word expansions.
21 f. Fixed a bug that caused `return' executed from a trap handler to use the
22 wrong return status when one was not supplied as an argument.
24 g. In Posix mode, defining a function with the same name as a special
25 builtin is now an error, fatal only when the shell is not interactive.
27 h. Fixed a bug that caused compound array assignments to discard unset or null
28 variables used as subscripts, thereby making it appear as if the index was
31 i. Fixed a bug that caused extended glob patterns to incorrectly match
32 filenames with a leading `.'.
34 j. Fixed a bug involving sign extension when reallocating the input line
35 after a history expansion, causing segmentation faults.
37 k. Bash now does a better job at identifying syntax errors during word
38 completion and tailoring completion appropriately.
40 l. Bash now uses the current locale's decimal point in comamnd timing output.
42 m. Fixed a bug that caused segmentation faults while reading here documents if
43 PS2 contains a command substitution.
45 n. There are several changes to how $@ is expanded when unquoted but in a
46 context where word splitting is not performed (e.g., on the rhs of an
47 assignment or in a conditional command).
49 o. Bash now quotes command hash table entries that contain shell metacharacters
50 when displaying hash table contents.
52 p. Fixed a potential file descriptor leak when dup2() fails while performing a
55 q. Fixed a bug that caused directory names evaluated during word completion to
58 r. Fixed several bugs which could result in indirect variable expansion and
59 namerefs creating variables with invalid names or referencing variables
60 set to the empty string.
62 s. Fixed a bug that caused bash to not expand $0 in word expansions where it
65 t. Fixed a bug that caused bash to perform process substitution if <(
66 appeared inside an arithmetic context.
68 u. Fixed a bug in extglob pattern parsing that caused slashes in the pattern
69 to be confused as directory names.
71 v. Fixed several bugs with treatment of invisible variables (variables with
72 attributes that are unset because they have never been assigned values).
74 w. Fixed a bug that caused the `read' builtin to not clean up readline's
75 state when using the -e and -t options together and the read timed out.
77 x. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to exit with the wrong (but non-zero)
78 value if a command was not found or was not executable.
80 y. Fixed a bug that caused the `time' reserved word to not be recognized as
81 such in all contexts where it should have been.
83 z. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to close process subsitution file
84 descriptors when executing a script without the `#!' leading line.
86 aa. Fixed a typo that caused the `compat42' shell option to set the wrong
89 bb. The shell now handles process substitution commands with embedded
90 parentheses the same way as it does when parsing command substitution.
92 cc. Fixed a bug that caused nested pipelines and the `lastpipe' shell option
93 to produce core dumps.
95 dd. Fixed a bug that caused patterns containing `*' to match pathnames in cases
96 where slashes must be matched explicitly.
98 ee. Fixed a problem with patterns containing `:' in colon-separated variables
101 ff. Fixed a bug that caused indirect variable expansion using indexed arrays to
104 gg. Fixed a parsing problem that caused quoted newlines immediately following a
105 command substitution to be mishandled in certain cases.
107 hh. Fixed a potential buffer overflow on systems without locale_charset or the
110 ii. Fixed a bug that caused background processes to modify the terminal's
111 process group under certain circumstances.
113 jj. Asynchronous commands now always set $? to 0 and are not affected by
114 whether or not the command's exit status is being inverted.
116 kk. Fixed a problem that caused a line ending with an escaped newline and
117 containingh a prior `eval' to be incorrectly parsed.
119 ll. Fixed an issue with programmable completion and `!' in extglob patterns
120 used as arguments to `compgen -X'.
122 mm. Word completion now treats the two-character token `>|' as requiring
125 nn. Bash no longer expands tildes in $PATH elements while in Posix mode.
127 oo. Fixed a bug that caused bash to not clean up readline's state, including
128 the terminal settings, if it received a fatal signal while in a readline()
129 call (including `read -e' and `read -s').
131 pp. Fixed bug that caused importing shell functions from the environment to
132 execute additional commands following the function.
134 qq. Fixed a bug that caused the parser to return a lookahead character pushed
135 back by a previous call, even when on another line.
137 rr. Fixed a bug that caused many here-documents or many nested case statements
138 to overflow an internal stack.
140 ss. Changed the way bash encodes exported functions for inclusion in the
141 environment to avoid name collisions with valid variable names and to
142 indicate that they are exported functions.
144 tt. Fixed a bug that could result in an invalid memory access when processing
145 a here document delimited by end of file or end of string.
147 uu. Fixed a bug that could cause an invalid memory access if a command was run
148 before initializing the job control framework.
150 vv. When in Posix mode, bash prints shell function definitions as Posix
151 specifies them, without the leading `function' keyword.
153 ww. The variable attribute display builtins no longer display variables with
154 invalid names that were imported from the environment.
156 xx. Fixed a bug that could allow `break' or `continue' executed from shell
157 functions to affect loops running outside of the function.
159 yy. Fixed a bug that could cause a restricted shell to attempt to import shell
160 functions from the environment.
162 zz. The shell now allows double-quoted identifiers in arithmetic expressions.
164 aaa. Fixed a bug that could allow scalar variables subscripted using [@] in
165 word expansions to be incorrectly quoted.
167 bbb. The shell now makes sure to ignore SIGTSTP/SIGTTIN/SIGTTOU in child
168 processes if they were ignored at shell startup, even if job control is
171 ccc. Fixed a bug that could cause $* to be split on spaces when IFS is set to
174 ddd. Posix says that expanding $* in a pattern context where the expansion is
175 double-quoted should not treat $* as if it were double quoted.
177 eee. Bash now restores getopts' internal state between calls to getopts even if
178 a shell function declares a local copy of OPTIND.
180 fff. Fixed a bug that could cause `history -r' or `history -n' to read identical
181 lines from the history file more than once.
183 ggg. The commands executed by `bind -x' now redisplay at most the final line
184 of a multi-line prompt, and those commands may return 124 to indicate that
185 the entire prompt should be redrawn.
187 hhh. Fixed a bug that could cause `mapfile' to create variables with invalid
190 iii. The shell only goes into debugging mode when --debugger is supplied if
191 the debugger initialization file is present.
193 jjj. Fixed a bug that disallowed an assignment to (implicit) subscript 0 of an
194 existing array in a declare command that set the readonly attribute.
196 kkk. Fixed a bug that inadvertently allowed assignments to FUNCNAME to disable
199 lll. Appending to an existing array variable using the compound assignment
200 syntax (var+=(aaa)) should not affect assignments to existing subscripts
201 appearing in the compound assignment.
203 mmm. Fixed a bug that could cause the shell to crash when a variable with a
204 null value was passed in the temporary environment and the variable's
205 attributes are modified using `declare' while performing a redirection.
207 nnn. Fixed a bug in printf so that a missing precision specifier after a `.'
210 ooo. Fixed a bug that attempted to use the internal command timing to time
211 pipeline components if the pipeline elements are separated by newlines.
213 ppp. Fixed a bug that caused `declare -al foo=(ONE TWO THREE)' to not lowercase
214 the values on assignment.
216 qqq. Bash does a better job of determining whether or not files are executable
217 when running on Windows, since the X_OK flag to access(2) is not supported.
219 rrr. Fixed a bug that caused some of the shell's internal traps (e.g., ERR) to
220 be interrupted (and leave incorrect state) by pending SIGINTs.
222 sss. Fixed a bug in the bash interface to history expansion to avoid attempting
223 expansion if the history expansion character occurs in a command
226 ttt. Fixed a bug that caused the select command to crash if the REPLY variable
227 ends up empty (e.g., if it's made readonly)
229 uuu. Bash handles backslash-quoting of multibyte characters better when quoting
230 output that is intended to be reused.
232 vvv. System-specific changes for: Windows, Cygwin.
234 www. Fixes for upper and lower-casing multibyte characters, some locales have
235 characters whose upper and lowercase versions have different numbers of
238 xxx. Fixed a bug that caused the ERR trap in a shell function to have the
239 right value for $LINENO.
241 yyy. Fixed a bug that resulted in incorrect quoting of regexps for the =~
242 operator when an open brace appears without a close brace.
244 zzz. Fixed a bug in the array unset operation that caused it to attempt to
245 parse embedded single and double quotes.
247 aaaa. Fixed a bug that caused $* to not expand with the first character of
248 $IFS as a separator in a context where word splitting will not take
251 bbbb. Fixed two bugs that could cause the shell to dereference a null pointer
252 while attempting to print an error message from arithmetic expansion.
254 cccc. Fixed a bug that resulted in short-circuited evaluation when reading
255 commands from a string ending in an unquoted backslash, or when sourcing
256 a file that ends with an unquoted backslash.
258 dddd. Fixed a bug that resulted in the no-fork optimization not cleaning up
259 any FIFOs created by process substitution.
261 eeee. If the -T option is not set, allow the source builtin and shell functions
262 to set a DEBUG trap that persists after the sourced file or function
263 returns, instead of restoring the old (unset) value unconditionally.
265 ffff. Fixed a bug that caused redirections to not be undone on some syntax
266 errors, e.g., when parsing a command substitution.
268 gggg. Bash only adds asynchronous commands to the table of background pids
269 whose status it remembers, to avoid it growing too large during scripts
270 that create and reap large numbers of child processes. This means that
271 `wait' no longer works on synchronous jobs, but $? can be used to get
272 the exit status in those cases.
274 hhhh. Bash now checks whether or not a shell script argument is a directory
275 before trying to open it; Posix says implementations may allow open(2)
278 iiii. Fixed a bug that could cause the shell to set the terminal's process
279 group to a background process group when running as part of a pipeline.
281 jjjj. Made a few changes to strings to avoid possible potential negative effects
282 caused by malicious translations.
284 kkkk. Fixed a bug that caused the `unset' builtin to continue to treat its
285 arguments as functions after unsetting a function when invoked with no
288 llll. Fixed a bug that would not replace empty strings using pattern
289 substitution even if the pattern matched the empty string.
291 mmmm. Fixed a bug with word completion that prevented some characters from
292 being backslash-quoted (backquote, dollar sign).
294 nnnn. Fixed a bug that prevented a command from the history re-executed by the
295 `fc' builtin from setting verbose mode.
297 oooo. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not enable and disable function
298 tracing with changes to the `extdebug' shell option.
300 pppp. Fixed a bug that caused assignments to nameref variables pointing to
301 unset variables with attributes but no values to create variables with
304 qqqq. Fixed a bug that caused `unset' on nameref variables (without -n) to
305 unset the wrong variable under certain circumstances.
307 rrrr. Fixed a bug that caused close braces occurring in brace expansions within
308 command substitutions to incorrectly terminate parameter expansions.
310 ssss. Fixed a bug that caused `command -p' to temporarily alter $PATH.
312 tttt. Fixed a bug that caused interactive shells compiled without job control
313 to return incorrect status values for child processes when running a
314 single command that creates enough children to use the entire PID space.
316 uuuu. `esac' should not be recognized as a reserved word when it appears as the
317 second or later pattern in a case statement pattern list.
319 vvvv. Fixed a bug that caused the completion code to read past the end of the
320 readline line buffer while skipping assignment statements to find the
323 wwww. Fixed a bug that caused case statements within loops contained in a
324 command substitution to be parsed incorrectly.
326 2. Changes to Readline
328 a. A bug that caused vi-mode `.' to be unable to redo `c', `d', and `y'
329 commands with modifiers was fixed.
331 b. Fixed a bug that caused callback mode to dump core when reading a
332 multiple-key sequence (e.g., arrow keys).
334 c. Fixed a bug that caused the redisplay code to erase some of the line when
335 using horizontal scrolling with incremental search.
337 d. Readline's input handler now performs signal processing if read(2) is
338 interrupted by SIGALRM or SIGVTALRM.
340 e. Fixed a problem with revert-all-at-newline freeing freed memory.
342 f. Clarified the documentation for the history_quotes_inhibit_expansion
343 variable to note that it inhibits scanning for the history comment
344 character and that it only affects double-quoted strings.
346 g. Fixed an off-by-one error in the prompt printed when performing searches.
348 h. Use pselect(2), if available, to wait for input before calling read(2), so
349 a SIGWINCH can interrupt it, since it doesn't interrupt read(2).
351 i. Some memory leaks caused by signals interrupting filename completion have
354 j. Reading EOF twice on a non-empty line causes EOF to be returned, rather
355 than the partial line. This can cause partial lines to be executed on
358 k. Fixed a bug concerning deleting multibyte characters from the search
359 string while performing an incremental search.
361 l. Fixed a bug with tilde expanding directory names in filename completion.
363 m. Fixed a bug that did not allow binding sequences beginning with a `\'.
365 n. Fixed a redisplay bug involving incorrect line wrapping when the prompt
366 contains a multibyte character in the last screen column.
368 o. Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to disregard characters that are
369 documented to delimit a history event specifier without requiring `:'.
371 p. Fixed a bug that could cause reading past the end of a string when reading
372 the value when binding the set of isearch terminators.
374 q. Fixed a bug that caused readline commands that depend on knowing which
375 key invoked them to misbehave when dispatching key sequences that are
376 prefixes of other key bindings.
378 r. Paren matching now works in vi insert mode.
380 3. New Features in Bash
382 a. There is now a settable configuration #define that will cause the shell
383 to exit if the shell is running setuid without the -p option and setuid
384 to the real uid fails.
386 b. Command and process substitutions now turn off the `-v' option when
387 executing, as other shells seem to do.
389 c. The default value for the `checkhash' shell option may now be set at
390 compile time with a #define.
392 d. The `mapfile' builtin now has a -d option to use an arbitrary character
393 as the record delimiter, and a -t option to strip the delimiter as
396 e. The maximum number of nested recursive calls to `eval' is now settable in
397 config-top.h; the default is no limit.
399 f. The `-p' option to declare and similar builtins will display attributes for
400 named variables even when those variables have not been assigned values
401 (which are technically unset).
403 g. The maximum number of nested recursive calls to `source' is now settable
404 in config-top.h; the default is no limit.
406 h. All builtin commands recognize the `--help' option and print a usage
409 i. Bash does not allow function names containing `/' and `=' to be exported.
411 j. The `ulimit' builtin has new -k (kqueues) and -P (pseudoterminals) options.
413 k. The shell now allows `time ; othercommand' to time null commands.
415 l. There is a new `--enable-function-import' configuration option to allow
416 importing shell functions from the environment; import is enabled by
419 m. `printf -v var ""' will now set `var' to the empty string, as if `var=""'
422 n. GLOBIGNORE, the pattern substitution word expansion, and programmable
423 completion match filtering now honor the value of the `nocasematch' option.
425 o. There is a new ${parameter@spec} family of operators to transform the
426 value of `parameter'.
428 p. Bash no longer attempts to perform compound assignment if a variable on the
429 rhs of an assignment statement argument to `declare' has the form of a
430 compound assignment (e.g., w='(word)' ; declare foo=$w); compound
431 assignments are accepted if the variable was already declared as an array,
434 q. The declare builtin no longer displays array variables using the compound
435 assignment syntax with quotes; that will generate warnings when re-used as
436 input, and isn't necessary.
438 r. Executing the rhs of && and || will no longer cause the shell to fork if
441 s. The `local' builtin takes a new argument: `-', which will cause it to save
442 and the single-letter shell options and restore their previous values at
445 t. `complete' and `compgen' have a new `-o nosort' option, which forces
446 readline to not sort the completion matches.
448 u. Bash now allows waiting for the most recent process substitution, since it
451 v. The `unset' builtin now unsets a scalar variable if it is subscripted with
452 a `0', analogous to the ${var[0]} expansion.
454 w. `set -i' is no longer valid, as in other shells.
456 x. BASH_SUBSHELL is now updated for process substitution and group commands
457 in pipelines, and is available with the same value when running any exit
460 y. Bash now checks $INSIDE_EMACS as well as $EMACS when deciding whether or
461 not bash is being run in a GNU Emacs shell window.
463 z. Bash now treats SIGINT received when running a non-builtin command in a
464 loop the way it has traditionally treated running a builtin command:
465 running any trap handler and breaking out of the loop.
467 aa. New variable: EXECIGNORE; a colon-separate list of patterns that will
468 cause matching filenames to be ignored when searching for commands.
470 bb. Aliases whose value ends in a shell metacharacter now expand in a way to
471 allow them to be `pasted' to the next token, which can potentially change
472 the meaning of a command (e.g., turning `&' into `&&').
474 4. New Features in Readline
476 a. The history truncation code now uses the same error recovery mechansim as
477 the history writing code, and restores the old version of the history file
478 on error. The error recovery mechanism handles symlinked history files.
480 b. There is a new bindable variable, `enable-bracketed-paste', which enables
481 support for a terminal's bracketed paste mode.
483 c. The editing mode indicators can now be strings and are user-settable
484 (new `emacs-mode-string', `vi-cmd-mode-string' and `vi-ins-mode-string'
485 variables). Mode strings can contain invisible character sequences.
486 Setting mode strings to null strings restores the defaults.
488 d. Prompt expansion adds the mode string to the last line of a multi-line
489 prompt (one with embedded newlines).
491 e. There is a new bindable variable, `colored-completion-prefix', which, if
492 set, causes the common prefix of a set of possible completions to be
495 f. There is a new bindable command `vi-yank-pop', a vi-mode version of emacs-
498 g. The redisplay code underwent several efficiency improvements for multibyte
501 h. The insert-char function attempts to batch-insert all pending typeahead
502 that maps to self-insert, as long as it is coming from the terminal.
504 i. rl_callback_sigcleanup: a new application function that can clean up and
505 unset any state set by readline's callback mode. Intended to be used
508 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
509 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-release, and
510 the previous version, bash-4.3-rc2.
514 a. Only Posix-mode shells should exit on an assignment failure in the
515 temporary environment preceding a special builtin. This is how it's been
518 b. Fixed a bug that caused a failed special builtin to not exit a posix-mode
519 shell if the failing builtin was on the LHS of a && or ||.
521 c. Changed the handling of unquoted backslashes in regular expressions to be
524 d. globstar (**) no longer traverses symbolic links that resolve to
525 directories. This eliminates some duplicate entries.
527 e. Fixed a bug that caused a SIGCHLD trap handler to not be able to change the
530 f. Fixed a bug that caused a crash when -x was enabled and a command
531 contained a printable multibyte (wide) character.
533 g. Fixed a bug that caused an interactive shell without line editing enabled
534 to read invalid data after receiving a SIGINT.
536 h. Fixed a bug that caused command word completion to fail if the directory in
537 $PATH where the completion would be found contained single or double quotes.
539 i. Fixed a bug that caused a shell with -v enabled to print commands in $()
542 2. Changes to Readline
544 a. Fixed a bug that caused `undo' to reference freed memory or null pointers.
546 3. New Features in Bash
548 a. The [[ -v ]] option now understands array references (foo[1]) and returns
549 success if the referenced element has a value.
551 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
552 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-rc2, and the
553 previous version, bash-4.3-rc1.
557 a. Fixed a bug that left variables set by printf -v marked as invisible.
559 b. Fixed an off-by-one error in a job control warning message.
561 c. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash after declaring a nameref variable
564 d. Fixed a bug that caused asynchronous commands to not set $? correctly.
566 e. Fixed a bug that caused out-of-order execution when executing aliases with
567 embedded newlines containing `.' commands.
569 f. Fixed a bug that caused error messages generated by expansion errors in
570 `for' commands to have the wrong line number.
572 g. Fixed a bug that caused the `wait' builtin to not be interruptible in an
573 interactive shell with job control enabled.
575 h. Fixed a bug that caused SIGINT and SIGQUIT to not be trappable in
576 asynchronous subshell commands.
578 i. Bash now requires that the value assigned to a nameref variable be a valid
579 shell identifier (variable name or array reference).
581 j. Converting an existing variable to a nameref variable now turns off the
582 -i/-l/-u/-c attributes.
584 k. Displaying a nameref variable with `declare -p' now displays the nameref
585 variable and its value rather than following the nameref chain.
587 l. Fixed a problem with interrupt handling that caused a second and subsequent
588 SIGINT to be ignored by interactive shells.
590 m. Fixed a bug that caused certain positional parameter and array expansions
591 to mishandle (discard) null positional parameters and array elements.
593 n. The shell no longer blocks receipt of signals while running trap handlers
594 for those signals, and allows most trap handlers to be run recursively
595 (running trap handlers while a trap handler is executing).
597 o. The shell now handles backslashes in regular expression arguments to the
598 [[ command's =~ operator slightly differently, resulting in more
601 2. Changes to Readline
603 a. Fixed a bug that could cause readline to crash and seg fault attempting to
604 expand an empty history entry.
606 b. Fixed a bug that caused a bad entry in the $LS_COLORS variable to abort all
607 color processing but leave color enabled.
609 c. Fixed a bug that caused display problems with multi-line prompts containing
610 invisible characters on multiple lines.
612 d. Fixed a bug that caused effects made by undoing changes to a history line to
615 3. New Features in Bash
617 4. New Features in Readline
619 a. When creating shared libraries on Mac OS X, the pathname written into the
620 library (install_name) no longer includes the minor version number.
621 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
622 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-rc1, and the
623 previous version, bash-4.3-beta2.
627 a. Fixed a bug in bash completion that caused a tilde to be expanded even if
628 the `direxpand' option was not enabled.
630 b. Fixed a potential bug that could cause corrupted input in interactive shells
631 running without line editing and with `ignoreeof' enabled.
633 c. Fixed a bug that could cause failures when opening pipes back to shells
634 created to run process substitutions.
636 d. Fixed a bug that caused an assignment to TEXTDOMAIN to require TEXTDOMAINDIR
637 to be set in order to actually change the current text domain.
639 e. Changed the way redirections are printed to avoid confusion when the target
640 of an output redirection is a process substitution beginning with `>'.
642 2. Changes to Readline
644 a. Shared library building is now supported on Mac OS X 10.9 (Darwin 13).
646 3. New Features in Bash
648 a. `cd' has a new `-@' option to browse a file's extended attributes on
649 systems that support O_XATTR.
651 4. New Features in Readline
653 a. There are additional default key bindings for MinGW32
655 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
656 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-beta2, and the
657 previous version, bash-4.3-beta.
661 a. Fixed a bug that caused assignment to an unset variable using a negative
662 subscript to result in a segmentation fault.
664 b. Fixed a bug that caused assignment to a string variable using a negative
665 subscript to use the incorrect index.
667 c. Fixed a bug that caused some strings to be interpreted as invalid
668 extended globbing expressions when used with the help builtin.
670 d. Fixed a bug that caused an attempt to trap a signal whose disposition
671 cannot be changed to reference uninitialized memory.
673 e. Command completion now skips assignment statements preceding a command
674 name and completes the command.
676 f. Fixed a bug that caused `compgen -f' in a non-interactive shell to dump
677 core under certain circumstances.
679 g. Fixed a bug that caused the `read -N' to misbehave when the input stream
682 2. Changes to Readline
684 a. Changed message when an incremental search fails to include "failed" in
685 the prompt and display the entire search string instead of just the last
688 b. Fixed a bug that caused an arrow key typed to an incremental search prompt
689 to process the key sequence incorrectly.
691 c. Additional key bindings for arrow keys on MinGW.
693 3. New Features in Bash
695 a. The help builtin now attempts substring matching (as it did through
696 bash-4.2) if exact string matching fails.
698 b. The fc builtin now interprets -0 as the current command line.
700 c. Completing directory names containing shell variables now adds a trailing
701 slash if the expanded result is a directory.
703 4. New Features in Readline
705 a. rl_change_environment: new application-settable variable that controls
706 whether or not Readline modifies the environment (currently readline
707 modifies only LINES and COLUMNS).
709 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
710 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-beta, and the
711 previous version, bash-4.3-alpha.
715 a. Fixed a bug in the prompt directory name "trimming" code that caused
716 memory corruption and garbled the results.
718 b. Fixed a bug that caused single quotes that resulted from $'...' quoting
719 in the replacement portion of a double-quoted ${word/pat/rep} expansion
720 to be treated as quote characters.
722 c. Fixed a bug that caused assignment statements preceding a command word to
723 result in assignment statements following a declaration command to not be
724 expanded like assignment statements.
726 d. Fixed a bug with variable search order in the presence of local variables
727 with the same name as variables in the temporary environment supplied to
730 e. Fixed a bug that caused constructs like 1<(2) to be interpreted as process
731 substitutions even in an arithmetic context.
733 f. Fixed several cases where `invisible' variables (variables with attributes
734 but no values, which are technically unset) were treated incorrectly.
736 g. Fixed a bug that caused group commands in pipelines that were not the
737 last element to not run the EXIT trap.
739 h. Fixed a bug that caused `unset -n' to not unset a nameref variable in
742 i. Fixed the nameref circular reference checking to be less strict and only
743 disallow a nameref variable with the same value as its name at the global
746 j. Fixed a bug that caused trap handlers to be executed recursively,
747 corrupting internal data structures.
749 k. Fixed a bug that could result in bash not compiling if certain options were
752 l. Fixed a bug that caused the arithmetic expansion code to attempt variable
753 assignments when operator precedence prohibited them.
755 m. Word expansions like ${foo##bar} now understand indirect variable references.
757 n. Fixed a bug that caused `declare -fp name' to not display a function
760 o. Fixed a bug that caused asynchronous child processes to modify the stdin
761 file pointer when bash was using it to read a script, which modified the
762 parent's value as well.
764 2. Changes to Readline
766 a. Fixed a bug in vi mode that caused the arrow keys to set the saved last
767 vi-mode command to the wrong value.
769 b. Fixed a bug that caused double-quoted strings to be scanned incorrectly
770 when being used as the value of a readline variable assignment.
772 c. Fixed a bug with vi mode that prevented `.' from repeating a command
773 entered on a previous line (command).
775 d. Fixed a bug that could cause completion to core dump if it was interrupted
778 e. Readline now sends the meta-key enable string to the terminal if the
779 terminal has been successfully initialized.
781 f. Readline now calls the signal hook after resizing the terminal when it
784 g. Fixed a bug that could cause the history list code to perform an out-of-
785 bounds array reference if the history list is empty.
787 3. New Features in Bash
789 a. Shells started to run process substitutions now run any trap set on EXIT.
791 b. There is now a configure-time option to enable the globasciiranges option
794 c. The read builtin now checks its first variable argument for validity before
795 trying to read any input.
797 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
798 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.3-alpha,
799 and the previous version, bash-4.2-release.
803 a. Fixed several bugs concerning incomplete bracket expressions in filename
804 generation (globbing) patterns.
806 b. Fixed a bug with single quotes and WORD in ${param op WORD} when running
809 c. Fixed a bug that caused the pattern removal and pattern substitution word
810 expansions and case statement word expansion to not match the empty string.
812 d. Fixed a bug that caused the tzset() function to not work after changing
813 the TZ enviroment variable.
815 e. Fixed a bug that caused the RHS of an assignment statement to undergo
816 word splitting when it contained an unquoted $@.
818 f. Fixed bugs that caused the shell to not react to a SIGINT sent while
819 waiting for a child process to exit.
821 g. Bash doesn't try to run things in a signal handler context when it gets a
822 signal (SIGINT/SIGHUP/etc) while reading input using readline but still
823 be responsive to terminating signals.
825 h. Fixed a bug that caused bash to go into an infinite loop if a filename
826 to be matched contained an invalid multibyte character.
828 i. Fixed a bug that caused PS4 to end up being truncated if it is longer
831 j. Fixed a bug that caused brace expansion to not skip over double-quoted
832 command substitution.
834 k. System-specific updates for: DJGPP, HP/UX, Mac OS X
836 l. Fixed a bug in displaying commands that caused redirections to be associated
837 with the wrong part of the command.
839 m. Fixed the coproc cleanup to unset the appropriate shell variables when a
842 n. Fixed a bug that caused `fc' to dump core due to incorrect calculation of
843 the last history entry.
845 o. Added workarounds for FreeBSD's implementation of faccessat/eaccess and
848 p. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not match patterns containing
851 q. Fixed a bug that could result in doubled error messages when the `printf'
852 builtin got a write error.
854 r. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not correctly expand words containing
855 multiple consecutive quoted empty strings (""""""aa).
857 s. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not correctly parse multi-line
858 process substitutions containing comments and quoted strings.
860 t. Fixed a problem with the bash malloc's internal idea of the top of the
861 memory heap that resulted in incorrect decisions to try to reduce the
862 break and give memory back to the kernel.
864 u. There are changes to the expansions peformed on compound array assignments,
865 in an effort to make foo=( [ind1]=bar [ind2]=baz ) identical to
866 foo[ind1]=bar foo[ind2]=baz.
868 v. Bash now reports an error if `read -a name' is used when `name' is an
869 existing associative array.
871 w. Fixed a bug that allowed an attempted assignment to a readonly variable
872 in an arithmetic expression to not return failure.
874 x. Fixed several bugs that caused completion functions to be invoked even when
875 the cursor was before the first word in the command.
877 y. Fixed a bug that caused parsing a command substitution to overwrite the
878 parsing state associated with the complete input line.
880 z. Fixed several bugs with the built-in snprintf replacement and field widths
883 aa. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect offset calculations and input buffer
884 corruption when reading files longer than 2^31 bytes.
886 bb. Fixed several bugs where bash performed arithmetic evaluation in contexts
887 where evaluation is suppressed.
889 cc. Fixed a bug that caused bash to close FIFOs used for process substitution
890 too early when a shell function was executing, but protect against using
891 all file descriptors when the shell functions are invoked inside loops.
893 dd. Added checks for printable (and non-printable) multibyte characters for
894 use in error messages.
896 ee. Fixed a bug that caused ^O (operate-and-get-next) to not work correctly
897 at the end of the history list.
899 ff. Fixed a bug that caused command-oriented history to incorrectly combine
900 here documents into one line.
902 gg. Fixed a bug that caused importing SHELLOPTS from the environment into a
903 Posix-mode shell to print an error message and refuse to parse it.
905 hh. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to delete an extra history entry when
908 ii. Fixed a bug that caused floating-point exceptions and overflow errors
909 for the / and % arithmetic operators when using INTMAX_MIN and -1.
911 jj. Fixed a bug that caused parsing errors when reading an arithmetic for
912 loop inside a command substitution.
914 kk. Fixed a bug that caused a readonly function to be unset when unset was
915 called without the -f or -v option.
917 ll. Fixed several bugs in the code that quotes characters special to regular
918 expressions when used in a quoted string on the RHS of the =~ operator
921 mm. Fixed a bug that caused redirections to fail because the file descriptor
922 limit was set to a value less than 10.
924 nn. Fixed a bug that caused the `read' builtin to execute code in a signal
925 handler context if read timed out.
927 oo. Fixed a bug that caused extended globbing patterns to not match files
928 beginning with `.' correctly when a `.' was explicitly supplied in the
931 pp. Fixed a bug that caused key sequences longer than two characters to not
932 work when used with `bind -x'.
934 qq. Fixed a bug that resulted in redefined functions having the wrong source
935 file names in BASH_SOURCE.
937 rr. Fixed a bug that caused the read builtin to assign null strings to variables
938 when using `read -N', which caused core dumps when referenced
940 ss. Fixed a bug that caused `bash -m script' to not enable job control while
943 tt. Fixed a bug that caused `printf -v var' to dump core when used with the
946 uu. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to exit with the wrong status if -e was
947 active and the shell exited on a substitution error.
949 vv. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to seg fault if an array variable with
950 the same name as an existing associative array was implicitly created by
951 an assignment (declare a[n]=b).
953 ww. Fixed a bug that caused a redirection to misbehave if the number specified
954 for a file descriptor overflows an intmax_t.
956 xx. Fixed several bugs with the handling of valid and invalid unicode character
957 values when used with the \u and \U escape sequences to printf and $'...'.
959 yy. Fixed a bug that caused tildes to not be escaped in expanded filenames,
960 making them subject to later expansion.
962 zz. When using the pattern substitution word expansion, bash now runs the
963 replacement string through quote removal, since it allows quotes in that
964 string to act as escape characters. This is not backwards compatible, so
965 it can be disabled by setting the bash compatibility mode to 4.2.
967 aaa. Fixed the rest of the cases where the shell runs non-allowed code in a
968 signal handler context.
970 bbb. Fixed a bug that caused spurious DEL characters (\177) to appear in
971 double-quoted expansion where the RHS is evaluated to the empty string.
973 ccc. Fixed a bug that caused the use of the shell's internal random number
974 generator for temporary file names to perturb the random number
977 ddd. Fixed several bugs that caused `declare -g' to not set the right global
978 variables or to misbehave when declaring global indexed arrays.
980 eee. Fixed a logic bug that caused extended globbing in a multibyte locale to
981 cause failures when using the pattern substititution word expansions.
983 fff. Fixed a bug that caused the `lastpipe' option to corrupt the file
984 descriptor used to read the script.
986 ggg. Fixed a bug that causes the shell to delete DEL characters in the
987 expanded value of variables used in the same quoted string as variables
988 that expand to nothing.
990 hhh. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to assign the wrong value from an
991 assignment like (( x=7 )) when `x' was an existing array variable.
993 iii. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to misbehave when generating sequences
994 and the boundary values overflow an intmax_t.
996 jjj. Fixed a bug caused expansion errors if an expansion of "$@" appeared
997 next to another expansion (e.g.. "${@}${x}").
999 kkk. Fixed a potential buffer overflow bug when performing /dev/fd expansion.
1001 lll. Fixed a bug that resulted in an extra semicolon being added to compound
1002 assignments when they were added to the history list.
1004 mmm. Fixed a bug that caused mapfile to read one extra line from the input.
1006 nnn. Fixed a bug that caused the mail checking code to use uninitialized
1009 ooo. Fixed a bug that prevented history timestamps from being saved if the
1010 history comment character is unset.
1012 ppp. Fixed a bug that caused the case-modifying expansions to not work with
1013 multibyte characters.
1015 qqq. Fixed a bug that caused the edit-and-execute bindable readline command
1016 to see the wrong data if invoked in the middle of a multi-line quoted
1019 rrr. Fixed a bug that resulted in the shell returning the wrong exit status
1020 for a background command on systems that recycle PIDs very quickly.
1022 sss. Fixed a bug that caused asynchronous group commands to not run any EXIT
1023 trap defined in the body of the command.
1025 ttt. Fixed a bug that caused `eval "... ; return"' to not clean up properly.
1027 uuu. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core if `read' reads an escaped
1028 IFS whitespace character.
1030 vvv. Fixed a bug that caused BASH_COMMAND to be set to an incorrect value when
1031 executing a (...) subshell.
1033 www. Fixed a couple of pointer aliasing bugs with the token string in arithmetic
1036 xxx. Fixed a bug with parsing multi-line command substitutions when reading
1037 the `do' keyword followed by whitespace.
1039 yyy. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to seg fault if the time given to the
1040 printf %(...)T format overflowed the value accepted by localtime(3).
1042 zzz. Fixed a problem with displaying help topics in two columns when the
1043 translated text contained multibyte characters.
1045 aaaa. Fixed a bug with the extended globbing pattern matcher where a `*' was
1046 followed by a negated extended glob pattern.
1048 bbbb. Fixed a race condition with short-lived coproc creation and reaping that
1049 caused the child process to be reaped before the various coproc shell
1050 variables were initialized.
1052 cccc. Fixed a bug where turning off `errexit' in command substitution subshells
1053 was not reflected in $SHELLOPTS.
1055 dddd. Partially fixed an inconsistency in how the shell treated shell
1056 functions run from an EXIT trap.
1058 eeee. Fixed a bug in how the shell invalidated FIFOs used for process
1059 substitution when executing a pipeline (once rather than in every child).
1061 ffff. Fixed a bug that occurred when expanding a special variable ($@, $*)
1062 within double quotes and the expansion resulted in an empty string.
1064 gggg. Fixed bugs with executing a SIGCHLD trap handler to make sure that it's
1065 executed once per exited child.
1067 hhhh. Fixed a bug that caused `declare' and `test' to find variables that
1068 had been given attributes but not assigned values. Such variables are
1071 iiii. Fixed a bug that caused commands in process substitutions to not look in
1072 the local temporary environment when performing word expansions.
1074 jjjj. Fixed several problems with globstar expansions (**/**) returning null
1075 filenames and multiple instances of the same pathname.
1077 kkkk. Fixed an oversight that did not allow the exit status of `coproc' to
1078 be inverted using `!'.
1080 llll. Fixed a bug that caused the -e option to be re-enabled using `set -e'
1081 even when executing in a context where -e is ignored.
1083 mmmm. Fixed a (mostly theoretical) bug with input lines longer than SIZE_MAX.
1085 nnnn. Fixed a bug that could result in double evaluation of command
1086 substitutions when they appear in failed redirections.
1088 oooo. Fixed a bug that could cause seg faults during `mapfile' callbacks if
1089 the callback unsets the array variable mapfile is using.
1091 pppp. Fixed several problems with variable assignments using ${var:=value}
1092 when the variable assignment is supposed to have side effects.
1094 qqqq. Fixed a bug that caused a failure of an assignment statement preceding a
1095 builtin caused the next invocation of a special builtin to exit the shell.
1097 rrrr. Fixed several problems with IFS when it appears in the temporary environment
1098 and is used in redirections.
1100 ssss. Fixed a problem that caused IFS changes using ${IFS:=value} to modify
1101 how preceding expansions were split.
1103 tttt. Fixed a problem that caused subshells to not run an EXIT trap they set.
1105 uuuu. Fixed a problem that caused shells started in posix mode to attempt to
1106 import shell functions with invalid names from the environment. We now
1109 vvvv. Worked around a kernel problem that caused SIGCHLD to interrupt open(2)
1110 on a FIFO used for process substitution, even if the SIGCHLD handler was
1111 installed with the SA_RESTART flag.
1113 wwww. Fixed a problem that resulted in inconsistent expansion of $* and ${a[*]}.
1115 xxxx. Fixed a problem that caused `read -t' to crash when interrupted by
1118 yyyy. Fixed a problem that caused pattern removal to fail randomly because the
1119 pattern matcher read beyond the end of a string.
1121 zzzz. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when shell functions tried to create
1122 local shadow copies of special variables like GROUPS.
1124 aaaaa. Fixed a bug that caused SIGTERM to be occasionally lost by children of
1125 interactive shells when it arrived before the child process reset the
1126 handler from SIG_DFL.
1128 bbbbb. Fixed a bug that caused redirections like <&n- to leave file descriptor
1129 n closed if executed with a builtin command.
1131 ccccc. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect completion quoting when completing a
1132 word containing a globbing character with `show-all-if-ambiguous' set.
1134 ddddd. Fixed a bug that caused printf's %q format specifier not to quote a
1135 tilde even if it appeared in a location where it would be subject to
1138 2. Changes to Readline
1140 a. Fixed a bug that did not allow the `dd', `cc', or `yy' vi editing mode
1141 commands to work on the entire line.
1143 b. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay problems with prompts longer than 128
1144 characters and history searches.
1146 c. Fixed a bug that caused readline to try and run code to modify its idea
1147 of the screen size in a signal handler context upon receiving a SIGWINCH.
1149 d. Fixed a bug that caused the `meta' key to be enabled beyond the duration
1150 of an individual call top readline().
1152 e. Added a workaround for a wcwidth bug in Mac OS X that caused readline's
1153 redisplay to mishandle zero-width combining characters.
1155 f. Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when
1156 a multiple-key sequence caused it to break out of an incremental search.
1158 g. Fixed bugs that caused readline to execute code in a signal handler
1159 context if interrupted while reading from the file system during completion.
1161 h. Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when
1162 reading an unbound multi-character key sequence.
1164 i. Fixed a bug that caused Readline's signal handlers to be installed beyond
1165 the bounds of a single call to readline().
1167 j. Fixed a bug that caused the `.' command to not redo the most recent `R'
1170 k. Fixed a bug that caused ignoring case in completion matches to result in
1171 readline using the wrong match.
1173 l. Paren matching now works in vi insert mode.
1175 m. Fix menu-completion to make show-all-if-ambiguous and menu-complete-display-prefix
1178 n. Fixed a bug that didn't allow the `cc', `dd', or `yy' commands to be redone
1181 o. Fixed a bug that caused the filename comparison code to not compare
1182 multibyte characters correctly when using case-sensitive or case-mapping
1185 p. Fixed the input reading loop to call the input hook function only when there
1186 is no terminal input available.
1188 q. Fixed a bug that caused binding a macro to a multi-character key sequence
1189 where the sequence and macro value share a common prefix to not perform
1190 the macro replacement.
1192 r. Fixed several redisplay errors with multibyte characters and prompts
1193 containing invisible characters when using horizontal scrolling.
1195 s. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay errors when trying to overwrite
1196 existing characters using multibyte characters.
1198 3. New Features in Bash
1200 a. The `helptopic' completion action now maps to all the help topics, not just
1203 b. The `help' builtin no longer does prefix substring matching, so `help read'
1204 does not match `readonly'.
1206 c. The shell can be compiled to not display a message about processes that
1207 terminate due to SIGTERM.
1209 d. Non-interactive shells now react to the setting of checkwinsize and set
1210 LINES and COLUMNS after a foreground job exits.
1212 e. There is a new shell option, `globasciiranges', which, when set to on,
1213 forces globbing range comparisons to use character ordering as if they
1214 were run in the C locale.
1216 f. There is a new shell option, `direxpand', which makes filename completion
1217 expand variables in directory names in the way bash-4.1 did.
1219 g. In Posix mode, the `command' builtin does not change whether or not a
1220 builtin it shadows is treated as an assignment builtin.
1222 h. The `return' and `exit' builtins accept negative exit status arguments.
1224 i. The word completion code checks whether or not a filename containing a
1225 shell variable expands to a directory name and appends `/' to the word
1226 as appropriate. The same code expands shell variables in command names
1227 when performing command completion.
1229 j. In Posix mode, it is now an error to attempt to define a shell function
1230 with the same name as a Posix special builtin.
1232 k. When compiled for strict Posix conformance, history expansion is disabled
1235 l. The history expansion character (!) does not cause history expansion when
1236 followed by the closing quote in a double-quoted string.
1238 m. `complete' and its siblings compgen/compopt now takes a new `-o noquote'
1239 option to inhibit quoting of the completions.
1241 n. Setting HISTSIZE to a value less than zero causes the history list to be
1242 unlimited (setting it 0 zero disables the history list).
1244 o. Setting HISTFILESIZE to a value less than zero causes the history file size
1245 to be unlimited (setting it to 0 causes the history file to be truncated
1248 p. The `read' builtin now skips NUL bytes in the input.
1250 q. There is a new `bind -X' option to print all key sequences bound to Unix
1253 r. When in Posix mode, `read' is interruptible by a trapped signal. After
1254 running the trap handler, read returns 128+signal and throws away any
1255 partially-read input.
1257 s. The command completion code skips whitespace and assignment statements
1258 before looking for the command name word to be completed.
1260 t. The build process has a new mechanism for constructing separate help files
1261 that better reflects the current set of compilation options.
1263 u. The -nt and -ot options to test now work with files with nanosecond
1264 timestamp resolution.
1266 v. The shell saves the command history in any shell for which history is
1267 enabled and HISTFILE is set, not just interactive shells.
1269 w. The shell has `nameref' variables and new -n(/+n) options to declare and
1270 unset to use them, and a `test -R' option to test for them.
1272 x. The shell now allows assigning, referencing, and unsetting elements of
1273 indexed arrays using negative subscripts (a[-1]=2, echo ${a[-1]}) which
1274 count back from the last element of the array.
1276 y. The {x}<word redirection feature now allows words like {array[ind]} and
1277 can use variables with special meanings to the shell (e.g., BASH_XTRACEFD).
1279 z. There is a new CHILD_MAX special shell variable; its value controls the
1280 number of exited child statues the shell remembers.
1282 aa. There is a new configuration option (--enable-direxpand-default) that
1283 causes the `direxpand' shell option to be enabled by default.
1285 bb. Bash does not do anything special to ensure that the file descriptor
1286 assigned to X in {x}<foo remains open after the block containing it
1289 cc. The `wait' builtin has a new `-n' option to wait for the next child to
1292 dd. The `printf' %(...)T format specifier now uses the current time if no
1293 argument is supplied.
1295 ee. There is a new variable, BASH_COMPAT, that controls the current shell
1296 compatibility level.
1298 ff. The `popd' builtin now treats additional arguments as errors.
1300 gg. The brace expansion code now treats a failed sequence expansion as a
1301 simple string and will continue to expand brace terms in the remainder
1304 4. New Features in Readline
1306 a. Readline is now more responsive to SIGHUP and other fatal signals when
1307 reading input from the terminal or performing word completion but no
1308 longer attempts to run any not-allowable functions from a signal handler
1311 b. There are new bindable commands to search the history for the string of
1312 characters between the beginning of the line and the point
1313 (history-substring-search-forward, history-substring-search-backward)
1315 c. Readline allows quoted strings as the values of variables when setting
1316 them with `set'. As a side effect, trailing spaces and tabs are ignored
1317 when setting a string variable's value.
1319 d. The history library creates a backup of the history file when writing it
1320 and restores the backup on a write error.
1322 e. New application-settable variable: rl_filename_stat_hook: a function called
1323 with a filename before using it in a call to stat(2). Bash uses it to
1324 expand shell variables so things like $HOME/Downloads have a slash
1327 f. New bindable function `print-last-kbd-macro', prints the most-recently-
1328 defined keyboard macro in a reusable format.
1330 g. New user-settable variable `colored-stats', enables use of colored text
1331 to denote file types when displaying possible completions (colored analog
1334 h. New user-settable variable `keyseq-timout', acts as an inter-character
1335 timeout when reading input or incremental search strings.
1337 i. New application-callable function: rl_clear_history. Clears the history list
1338 and frees all readline-associated private data.
1340 j. New user-settable variable, show-mode-in-prompt, adds a characters to the
1341 beginning of the prompt indicating the current editing mode.
1343 k. New application-settable variable: rl_input_available_hook; function to be
1344 called when readline needs to check whether there is data available on its
1345 input source. The default hook checks rl_instream.
1347 l. Readline calls an application-set event hook (rl_signal_event_hook) after
1348 it gets a signal while reading input (read returns -1/EINTR but readline
1349 does not handle the signal immediately) to allow the application to handle
1350 or otherwise note it. Not currently called for SIGHUP or SIGTERM.
1352 m. If the user-settable variable `history-size' is set to a value less than
1353 0, the history list size is unlimited.
1355 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1356 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.2-release,
1357 and the previous version, bash-4.2-rc2.
1361 a. Fixed a bug that caused some variables to be clobbered by a longjmp,
1362 resulting in stack corruption.
1364 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1365 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.2-rc2,
1366 and the previous version, bash-4.2-rc1.
1370 a. Changes to bash_directory_completion_hook so that it's assigned to the
1371 readline rl_directory_rewrite_hook variable, which modifies the directory
1372 name passed to opendir without modifying the directory name the user
1375 b. Fixed bug in select builtin that caused it to not terminate correctly if
1376 the read timed out due to $TMOUT.
1378 c. Fixed a problem that resulted in non-repeatable sequences of random
1379 numbers when RANDOM=0.
1381 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1382 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.2-rc1,
1383 and the previous version, bash-4.2-beta.
1387 a. Fixed a bug that caused some redirection errors to leak file descriptors.
1389 b. Fixed a bug that caused unary `+' and `-' arithmetic operators to have a
1390 higher precedence than unary `!' and `~'.
1392 c. Fixed a bug that caused simple commands in a pipeline to affect the exit
1393 status ($?) seen by subsequent pipeline commands.
1395 d. A number of cygwin-specific changes to avoid the use of text-mode files
1396 and file access, and to make sure that \r is handled correctly.
1398 e. Fixed a bug that caused the read builtin to not return failure if an
1399 attempt is made to assign to a readonly variable.
1401 f. Fixed a bug that caused some builtin usage messages to not be translated.
1403 g. Fixed a bug that caused the getopts builtin to not return failure if an
1404 attempt is made to assign to a readonly variable. Now it returns 2.
1406 h. Fixed the cd and pwd builtins to return failure if PWD is readonly and
1407 cannot be assigned to.
1409 i. Added code to check the return value of access(2) on Solaris systems,
1410 since it returns success for executable tests (e.g., `test -x') when
1411 run by root, even if the file permissions don't allow execution.
1413 2. Changes to Readline
1415 a. Fixed a bug that caused directory names in words to be completed to not
1416 be dequoted correctly.
1418 3. New Features in Bash
1420 4. New Features in Readline
1422 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1423 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.2-beta,
1424 and the previous version, bash-4.2-alpha.
1428 a. Fixed a bug that caused the \W prompt string escape to not add a closing
1431 b. Fixed a bug that caused partially-quoted words that were not subject to
1432 word splitting to retained quoted NULLs.
1434 c. Added considerable efficiency speedups when pattern matching in multibyte
1435 locales by skipping multibyte character functions where possible.
1437 d. Added considerable speedups to variable expansion when in multibyte locales.
1439 e. Fixed a bug that caused the expansion of $* when there are no positional
1440 parameters to cause the shell to dump core when used in a pattern
1443 f. Fixed a bug that caused variable expansions preceding regular builtins to
1444 not change the shell environment during their execution.
1446 2. Changes to Readline
1448 a. Fixed a bug that made an explicit argument of 0 to yank-last-arg behave
1449 as if it were a negative argument.
1451 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1452 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.2-alpha,
1453 and the previous version, bash-4.1-release.
1457 a. Fixed a bug in the parser when processing alias expansions containing
1460 b. Fixed a memory leak in associative array expansion.
1462 c. Fixed a bug that caused quoted here-strings to be requoted when printed.
1464 d. Fixed a bug in arithmetic expansion that caused the index in an array
1465 expansion to be evaluated twice under certain circumstances.
1467 e. Fixed several bugs with the expansion and display of variables that have
1468 been given attributes but not values and are technically unset.
1470 f. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when using filename completion that
1471 expands to a filename containing a globbing character.
1473 g. Fixed a bug that caused assignment statements preceding a special builtin
1474 when running in Posix mode to not persist after the builtin completed
1475 when the special builtin was executed in a shell function without any
1478 h. Fixed a bug that caused a command to remain in the hash table even after
1479 `hash command' did not find anything if there was already an existing
1482 i. Fixed several bugs caused by executing unsafe functions from a signal
1483 handler in the cases where a signal handler is executed immediately
1484 rather than setting a flag for later execution.
1486 j. Fixed a bug that caused some internal flag variables to be set
1487 incorrectly if `read -t' timed out.
1489 k. Fixed a Posix compatibility issue by making sure that a backslash escaping
1490 a `}' within a double-quoted ${...} parameter expansion is removed as part
1491 of the parameter expansion.
1493 l. Fixed a bug that caused execution of a trap to overwrite PIPESTATUS.
1495 m. Fixed a bug that caused here documents to not be displayed correctly
1496 when attached to commands inside compound commands.
1498 n. Fixed a bug that caused the printf builtin to use the wrong precision
1499 when using the `*' modifier.
1501 o. Fixed a bug that caused an arriving SIGCHLD to interrupt output functions
1502 like those invoked by echo or printf.
1504 p. Changed to use a more robust mechanism than eaccess(2) when test is
1505 checking filenames for execution permission.
1507 q. Fixed a bug that caused spurious semicolons to be added into the command
1508 history in certain cases.
1510 r. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to free non-allocated memory when
1511 unsetting element 0 of an associative array after it was assigned
1514 s. Fixed a bug that could cause the shell to dump core if using the `v'
1515 vi editing command on a multi-line command.
1517 t. Fixed a bug that left FIFOs opened by process substitutions open long
1518 enough to potentially cause file descriptor exhaustion when running a
1519 shell function or shell builtin.
1521 u. Fixed a bug that caused the history expansion functions to not recognize
1522 process substitution or extended glob patterns as single words.
1524 v. Fixed a bug that caused restricted shells to set a restricted command's
1525 exit status incorrectly.
1527 w. Fixed a bug that caused bash to ignore the wrong set of filenames when
1528 completing a command using the `complete-filename' readline command.
1530 x. Fixed a bug that caused a -PID argument following a -s sig or -n sig to
1531 not be interpreted as a signal specification.
1533 y. Changed posix-mode behavior of a parse error in a `.' script or `eval'
1534 command to exit the shell under Posix-specified conditions. Previous
1535 versions printed a warning.
1537 z. Fixed a bug in \W prompt expansion that resulted in incorrect expansion
1538 in the event of overlapping strings.
1540 aa. Fixed a bug that caused the := parameter expansion operator to return the
1541 wrong value as the result of the expansion.
1543 bb. When in Posix mode, a single quote is not treated specially in a
1544 double-quoted ${...} expansion, unless the expansion operator is
1545 # or % or the non-Posix `//', `^', and `,'. In particular, it does
1546 not define a new quoting context. This is from Posix interpretation 221.
1548 cc. Fixed a bug that inadvertently allowed program names containing slashes
1549 to be entered into the command hash table.
1551 dd. Fixed a bug that caused the select builtin to incorrectly compute the
1552 display width of the arguments in the presence of multibyte characters.
1554 ee. Fixed a bug that caused bash to not change the xtrace file descriptor if
1555 BASH_XTRACEFD was found in the shell environment at startup.
1557 ff. Fixed a memory leak in the pattern removal parameter expansion.
1559 gg. Fixed a bug that caused SIGINT to fail to interrupt a nested loop if the
1560 loop was in a pipeline.
1562 hh. Fixed a problem in $(...) parsing that caused the parser to add an extra
1563 space to a here-document delimiter if the first word contained a `/'.
1565 ii. Fixed a bug that caused functions defined with the `function' reserved
1566 word to require braces around the function body.
1568 jj. Fixed a bug that caused bash to dump core when a variable expansion being
1569 used as an array subscript failed.
1571 kk. Fixed a bug that caused bash to dump core if the case-modification
1572 expansions were used on a variable with a null value.
1574 ll. Fixed a bug that caused partially-quoted strings to be split incorrectly
1575 if a variable with a null value was expanded within double quotes.
1577 mm. The pattern substitution word expansion has been sped up dramatically
1578 when running in a locale with multibyte characters.
1580 nn. Fixed a bug that caused history -a to not write the correct lines to
1581 the history file if all the new lines in the history list were added
1582 since the last time the history file was read or written.
1584 oo. Fixed a bug that caused completion of a word with an unclosed `` command
1585 substitution to set the prompt incorrectly.
1587 pp. Fixed a bug that caused extended globbing patterns in $HISTIGNORE or
1588 $GLOBIGNORE to be incorrectly scanned.
1590 qq. Fixed a bug caused by closing file descriptors 3-20 on shell startup. The
1591 shell now sets them to close-on-exec.
1593 rr. Fixed a bug that caused the exit status of `exec file' to be set incorrectly
1594 if `file' was a directory.
1596 ss. Fixed a bug in the `.' builtin to make a non-interactive posix-mode shell
1597 exit if the file argument to `.' is not found. Prefixing exec with
1598 `command' makes the shell not exit. Posix requires this behavior.
1600 tt. Fixed a bug that caused `sh -c 'command exec; exit 1' to hang.
1602 uu. Fixed a bug in $(...) command substitution parsing that caused the shell
1603 to treat backslash-newline incorrectly when parsing a comment.
1605 vv. Fixed bug that caused brace expansion sequence generation to misbehave
1606 when supplied integers greater than 2**31 - 1.
1608 ww. Fixed a bug that caused failure to save file descriptors for redirections
1609 to corrupt shell file descriptors.
1611 xx. Fixed a bug that caused bash-forward-shellword to not correctly handle
1614 2. Changes to Readline
1616 a. Fixed a bug that caused the unconverted filename to be added to the list of
1617 completions when the application specified filename conversion functions.
1619 b. Fixed a bug that caused the wrong filename to be passed to opendir when the
1620 application has specified a filename dequoting function.
1622 c. Fixed a bug when repeating a character search in vi mode in the case where
1623 there was no search to repeat.
1625 d. When show-all-if-ambiguous is set, the completion routines no longer insert
1626 a common match prefix that is shorter than the text being completed.
1628 e. The full set of vi editing commands may now be used in callback mode.
1630 f. Fixed a bug that caused readline to not update its idea of the terminal
1631 dimensions while running in `no-echo' mode.
1633 h. Fixed a bug that caused readline to dump core if an application called
1634 rl_prep_terminal without setting rl_instream.
1636 i. Fixed a bug that caused meta-prefixed characters bound to incremental
1637 search forward or backward to not be recognized if they were typed
1640 j. The incremental search code treats key sequences that map to the same
1641 functions as (default) ^G, ^W, and ^Y as equivalent to those characters.
1643 k. Fixed a bug in menu-complete that caused it to misbehave with large
1646 l. Fixed a bug that caused vi-mode yank-last-arg to ring the bell when invoked
1647 at the end of the line.
1649 3. New Features in Bash
1651 a. `exec -a foo' now sets $0 to `foo' in an executable shell script without a
1654 b. Subshells begun to execute command substitutions or run shell functions or
1655 builtins in subshells do not reset trap strings until a new trap is
1656 specified. This allows $(trap) to display the caller's traps and the
1657 trap strings to persist until a new trap is set.
1659 c. `trap -p' will now show signals ignored at shell startup, though their
1660 disposition still cannot be modified.
1662 d. $'...', echo, and printf understand \uXXXX and \UXXXXXXXX escape sequences.
1664 e. declare/typeset has a new `-g' option, which creates variables in the
1665 global scope even when run in a shell function.
1667 f. test/[/[[ have a new -v variable unary operator, which returns success if
1668 `variable' has been set.
1670 g. Posix parsing changes to allow `! time command' and multiple consecutive
1671 instances of `!' (which toggle) and `time' (which have no cumulative
1674 h. Posix change to allow `time' as a command by itself to print the elapsed
1675 user, system, and real times for the shell and its children.
1677 j. $((...)) is always parsed as an arithmetic expansion first, instead of as
1678 a potential nested command substitution, as Posix requires.
1680 k. A new FUNCNEST variable to allow the user to control the maximum shell
1681 function nesting (recursive execution) level.
1683 l. The mapfile builtin now supplies a third argument to the callback command:
1684 the line about to be assigned to the supplied array index.
1686 m. The printf builtin has a new %(fmt)T specifier, which allows time values
1687 to use strftime-like formatting.
1689 n. There is a new `compat41' shell option.
1691 o. The cd builtin has a new Posix-mandated `-e' option.
1693 p. Negative subscripts to indexed arrays, previously errors, now are treated
1694 as offsets from the maximum assigned index + 1.
1696 q. Negative length specifications in the ${var:offset:length} expansion,
1697 previously errors, are now treated as offsets from the end of the variable.
1699 r. Parsing change to allow `time -p --'.
1701 s. Posix-mode parsing change to not recognize `time' as a keyword if the
1702 following token begins with a `-'. This means no more Posix-mode
1703 `time -p'. Posix interpretation 267.
1705 t. There is a new `lastpipe' shell option that runs the last command of a
1706 pipeline in the current shell context. The lastpipe option has no
1707 effect if job control is enabled.
1709 u. History expansion no longer expands the `$!' variable expansion.
1711 v. Posix mode shells no longer exit if a variable assignment error occurs
1712 with an assignment preceding a command that is not a special builtin.
1714 w. Non-interactive mode shells exit if -u is enabled and an attempt is made
1715 to use an unset variable with the % or # expansions, the `//', `^', or
1716 `,' expansions, or the parameter length expansion.
1718 x. Posix-mode shells use the argument passed to `.' as-is if a $PATH search
1719 fails, effectively searching the current directory. Posix-2008 change.
1721 4. New Features in Readline
1723 a. The history library does not try to write the history filename in the
1724 current directory if $HOME is unset. This closes a potential security
1725 problem if the application does not specify a history filename.
1727 b. New bindable variable `completion-display-width' to set the number of
1728 columns used when displaying completions.
1730 c. New bindable variable `completion-case-map' to cause case-insensitive
1731 completion to treat `-' and `_' as identical.
1733 d. There are new bindable vi-mode command names to avoid readline's case-
1734 insensitive matching not allowing them to be bound separately.
1736 e. New bindable variable `menu-complete-display-prefix' causes the menu
1737 completion code to display the common prefix of the possible completions
1738 before cycling through the list, instead of after.
1740 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1741 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.1-rc,
1742 and the previous version, bash-4.1-beta.
1746 a. Fixed a bug that caused printf to not return a partial value when it
1747 encountered an error while converting an integer argument.
1749 b. Fixed a bug that caused setting one of the compatNN options to not
1750 turn off the others.
1752 c. The (undocumented) --wordexp option is no longer included by default.
1754 d. Fixed a bug in conditional command execution that caused it to not
1755 correctly ignore the exit status under certain circumstances.
1757 e. Added a configure-time check for correctly-working asprintf/snprintf.
1759 f. Fixed some problems with line number calculation and display when sourcing
1760 a file in an interactive shell.
1762 g. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash when using `declare -A foo=bar'.
1764 h. Fixed a bug that caused an off-by-one error when calculating the directories
1765 to display with the PROMPT_DIRTRIM option.
1767 2. Changes to Readline
1769 a. Fixed a bug that caused applications using the callback interface to not
1770 react to SIGINT (or other signals) until another character arrived.
1772 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1773 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.1-beta,
1774 and the previous version, bash-4.1-alpha.
1778 a. Fixed a bug in mapfile that caused the shell to crash if it was passed the
1779 name of an associative array.
1781 b. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to incorrectly split case patterns if
1782 they contained characters in $IFS.
1784 c. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to set $? to the wrong value when using
1785 a construct ending with a variable assignment with set -x enabled and PS4
1786 containing a command substitution.
1788 d. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to read commands incorrectly if an
1789 expansion error occurred under certain conditions in a user-specified
1792 e. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to set $? incorrectly if a parse error
1793 occurred in an evaluation context ("eval", trap command, dot script, etc.)
1795 f. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to attempt command substitution
1796 completion within a single-quoted string.
1798 g. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to insert an extra single quote during
1801 h. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash if invoked with the environment
1802 variable EMACS having a null value.
1804 i. Fixed a bug that caused bash to incorrectly report the presence of new
1805 mail in a `maildir' environment.
1807 j. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not recognize a here-document ending
1808 delimiter inside a command substitution.
1810 k. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash when a a dynamic array variable
1811 was assigned a scalar value.
1813 2. Changes to Readline
1815 3. New Features in Bash
1817 a. The mapfile/readarray builtin no longer stores the commands it invokes via
1818 callbacks in the history list.
1820 b. There is a new `compat40' shopt option.
1822 c. The < and > operators to [[ do string comparisons using the current locale
1823 only if the compatibility level is greater than 40 (set to 41 by default).
1825 4. New Features in Readline
1827 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1828 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.1-alpha,
1829 and the previous version, bash-4.0-release.
1833 a. Fixed bugs in the parser involving new parsing of the commands contained
1834 in command substitution when the substitution is read.
1836 b. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core when performing programmable
1837 completion using a shell function.
1839 c. Fixed a bug in `mapfile' that caused it to invoke callbacks at the wrong
1842 d. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core when listing jobs in the
1845 e. Fixed several bugs encountered when reading subscripts in associative
1846 array assignments and expansions.
1848 f. Fixed a bug that under some circumstances caused an associative array to
1849 be converted to an indexed array.
1851 g. Fixed a bug that caused syntax errors and SIGINT interrupts to not set
1852 $? to a value > 128.
1854 h. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to remove FIFOs associated with process
1855 substitution inside shell functions.
1857 i. Fixed a bug that caused terminal attributes to not be reset when the
1858 `read' builtin timed out.
1860 j. Fixed a bug in brace expansion that caused unwanted zero padding of the
1863 k. Fixed a bug that prevented the |& construct from working as intended when
1864 used with a simple command with additional redirections.
1866 l. Fixed a bug with the case statment ;& terminator that caused the shell to
1867 dereference a NULL pointer.
1869 m. Fixed a bug that caused assignment statements or redirections preceding
1870 a simple command name to inhibit alias expansion.
1872 n. Fixed the behavior of `set -u' to conform to the latest Posix interpretation:
1873 every expansion of an unset variable except $@ and $* will cause the
1876 o. Fixed a bug that caused double-quoted expansions of $* inside word
1877 expansions like ${x#$*} to not expand properly when $IFS is empty.
1879 p. Fixed a bug that caused traps to set $LINENO to the wrong value when they
1882 q. Fixed a bug that caused off-by-one errors when computing history lines in
1885 r. Fixed a bug that caused some terminating signals to not exit the shell
1886 quickly enough, forcing the kernel to send the signal (e.g., SIGSEGV)
1889 s. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to attempt to add empty lines to the
1890 history list when reading here documents.
1892 t. Made some internal changes that dramatically speeds up sequential indexed
1895 u. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to write past the end of a string when
1896 completing a double-quoted string ending in a backslash.
1898 v. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to replace too many characters when a
1899 pattern match was null in a ${foo//bar} expansion.
1901 w. Fixed bugs in the expansion of ** that caused duplicate directory names
1902 and the contents of the current directory to be omitted.
1904 x. Fixed a bug that caused $? to not be set correctly when referencing an
1905 unset variable with set -u and set -e enabled.
1907 y. Fixed a bug caused by executing an external program from the DEBUG trap
1908 while a pipeline was running. The effect was to disturb the pipeline
1909 state, occasionally causing it to hang.
1911 z. Fixed a bug that caused the ** glob expansion to dump core if it
1912 encountered an unsearchable directory.
1914 aa. Fixed a bug that caused `command -v' and `command -V' to not honor the
1915 path set by the -p option.
1917 bb. Fixed a bug that caused brace expansion to take place too soon in some
1918 compound array assignments.
1920 cc. Fixed a bug that caused programmable completion functions' changes to
1921 READLINE_POINT to not be reflected back to readline.
1923 dd. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core if a trap was executed
1924 during a shell assignment statement.
1926 ee. Fixed an off-by-one error when computing the number of positional
1927 parameters for the ${@:0:n} expansion.
1929 ff. Fixed a problem with setting COMP_CWORD for programmable completion
1930 functions that could leave it set to -1.
1932 gg. Fixed a bug that caused the ERR trap to be triggered in some cases where
1933 `set -e' would not have caused the shell to exit.
1935 hh. Fixed a bug that caused changes made by `compopt' to not persist past the
1936 completion function in which compopt was executed.
1938 ii. Fixed a bug that caused the list of hostname completions to not be cleared
1939 when HOSTNAME was unset.
1941 jj. Fixed a bug that caused variable expansion in here documents to look in
1942 any temporary environment.
1944 kk. Bash and readline can now convert file names between precomposed and
1945 decomposed Unicode on Mac OS X ("keyboard" and file system forms,
1946 respectively). This affects filename completion (using new
1947 rl_filename_rewrite_hook), globbing, and readline redisplay.
1949 ll. The ERR and EXIT traps now see a non-zero value for $? when a parser
1950 error after set -e has been enabled causes the shell to exit.
1952 mm. Fixed a bug that in brace expansion that caused zero-prefixed terms to
1953 not contain the correct number of digits.
1955 nn. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to free non-allocated memory when
1956 unsetting an associative array which had had a value implicitly assigned
1959 oo. Fixed a memory leak in the ${!prefix@} expansion.
1961 pp. Fixed a bug that caused printf to not correctly report all write errors.
1963 qq. Fixed a bug that caused single and double quotes to act as delimiters
1964 when splitting a command line into words for programmable completion.
1966 rr. Fixed a bug that caused ** globbing that caused **/path/* to match every
1967 directory, not just those matching `path'.
1969 ss. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core when running `help' without
1970 arguments if the terminal width was fewer than 7 characters.
1972 2. Changes to Readline
1974 a. The SIGWINCH signal handler now avoids calling the redisplay code if
1975 one arrives while in the middle of redisplay.
1977 b. Changes to the timeout code to make sure that timeout values greater
1978 than one second are handled better.
1980 c. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code that was triggered by a prompt
1981 containing invisible characters exactly the width of the screen.
1983 d. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code encountered when running in horizontal
1986 e. Fixed a bug that prevented menu completion from properly completing
1989 f. Fixed a redisplay bug caused by a multibyte character causing a line to
1992 g. Fixed a bug that caused key sequences of two characters to not be
1993 recognized when a longer sequence identical in the first two characters
1996 h. Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to be attempted on $'...'
1997 single-quoted strings.
1999 i. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect redisplay when the prompt contained
2000 multibyte characters in an `invisible' sequence bracketed by \[ and
2003 j. Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to short-circuit after
2004 encountering a multibyte character.
2006 3. New Features in Bash
2008 a. Here-documents within $(...) command substitutions may once more be
2009 delimited by the closing right paren, instead of requiring a newline.
2011 b. Bash's file status checks (executable, readable, etc.) now take file
2012 system ACLs into account on file systems that support them.
2014 c. Bash now passes environment variables with names that are not valid
2015 shell variable names through into the environment passed to child
2018 d. The `execute-unix-command' readline function now attempts to clear and
2019 reuse the current line rather than move to a new one after the command
2022 e. `printf -v' can now assign values to array indices.
2024 f. New `complete -E' and `compopt -E' options that work on the "empty"
2025 completion: completion attempted on an empty command line.
2027 g. New complete/compgen/compopt -D option to define a `default' completion:
2028 a completion to be invoked on command for which no completion has been
2029 defined. If this function returns 124, programmable completion is
2030 attempted again, allowing a user to dynamically build a set of completions
2031 as completion is attempted by having the default completion function
2032 install individual completion functions each time it is invoked.
2034 h. When displaying associative arrays, subscripts are now quoted.
2036 i. Changes to dabbrev-expand to make it more `emacs-like': no space appended
2037 after matches, completions are not sorted, and most recent history entries
2038 are presented first.
2040 j. The [[ and (( commands are now subject to the setting of `set -e' and the
2043 k. The source/. builtin now removes NUL bytes from the file before attempting
2046 l. There is a new configuration option (in config-top.h) that forces bash to
2047 forward all history entries to syslog.
2049 m. A new variable $BASHOPTS to export shell options settable using `shopt' to
2052 n. There is a new confgure option that forces the extglob option to be
2055 o. New variable $BASH_XTRACEFD; when set to an integer bash will write xtrace
2056 output to that file descriptor.
2058 p. If the optional left-hand-side of a redirection is of the form {var}, the
2059 shell assigns the file descriptor used to $var or uses $var as the file
2060 descriptor to move or close, depending on the redirection operator.
2062 q. The < and > operators to the [[ conditional command now do string
2063 comparison according to the current locale.
2065 r. Programmable completion now uses the completion for `b' instead of `a'
2066 when completion is attempted on a line like: a $(b c.
2068 s. Force extglob on temporarily when parsing the pattern argument to
2069 the == and != operators to the [[ command, for compatibility.
2071 t. Changed the behavior of interrupting the wait builtin when a SIGCHLD is
2072 received and a trap on SIGCHLD is set to be Posix-mode only.
2074 u. The read builtin has a new `-N nchars' option, which reads exactly NCHARS
2075 characters, ignoring delimiters like newline.
2077 4. New Features in Readline
2079 a. New bindable function: menu-complete-backward.
2081 b. In the vi insertion keymap, C-n is now bound to menu-complete by default,
2082 and C-p to menu-complete-backward.
2084 c. When in vi command mode, repeatedly hitting ESC now does nothing, even
2085 when ESC introduces a bound key sequence. This is closer to how
2086 historical vi behaves.
2088 d. New bindable function: skip-csi-sequence. Can be used as a default to
2089 consume key sequences generated by keys like Home and End without having
2092 e. New application-settable function: rl_filename_rewrite_hook. Can be used
2093 to rewite or modify filenames read from the file system before they are
2094 compared to the word to be completed.
2096 f. New bindable variable: skip-completed-text, active when completing in the
2097 middle of a word. If enabled, it means that characters in the completion
2098 that match characters in the remainder of the word are "skipped" rather
2099 than inserted into the line.
2101 g. The pre-readline-6.0 version of menu completion is available as
2102 "old-menu-complete" for users who do not like the readline-6.0 version.
2104 h. New bindable variable: echo-control-characters. If enabled, and the
2105 tty ECHOCTL bit is set, controls the echoing of characters corresponding
2106 to keyboard-generated signals.
2108 i. New bindable variable: enable-meta-key. Controls whether or not readline
2109 sends the smm/rmm sequences if the terminal indicates it has a meta key
2110 that enables eight-bit characters.
2112 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2113 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.0-release,
2114 and the previous version, bash-4.0-rc1.
2118 a. Changed the message printed when setlocale(3) fails to only include the
2119 strerror error text if the call changes errno.
2121 b. Changed trap command execution to reset the line number before running a
2122 trap (except DEBUG and RETURN traps).
2124 c. Fixed behavior of case-modifiying word expansions to not work on
2125 individual words within a variable's value.
2127 d. Fixed a bug that caused mapfile to not be interruptible when run in an
2130 e. Fixed a bug that caused mapfile to not run callbacks for the first line
2133 f. Fixed a bug that caused mapfile to not honor EOF typed in an interactive
2136 g. Fixed the coprocess reaping code to not run straight from a signal handler.
2138 h. Fixed a bug that caused printf -b to ignore the first % conversion specifier
2139 in the format string on 64-bit systems.
2141 i. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect word splitting when `:', `=', or `~'
2144 j. Fixed a bug that caused data corruption in the programmable completion code
2145 when a shell function called from a completion aborted execution.
2147 k. Fixed a bug that caused the CPU usage reported by the `time' builtin to be
2150 l. Changed behavior of shell when -e option is in effect to reflect consensus
2151 of Posix shell standardization working group.
2153 m. Fixed a bug introduced in bash-4.0-alpha that caused redirections to not
2154 be displayed by `type' or `declare' when appearing in functions under
2155 certain circumstances.
2157 2. Changes to Readline
2159 a. Fixed a bug that caused !(...) extended glob patterns to inhibit later
2162 b. Reworked the signal handling to avoid calling disallowed functions from a
2165 3. New Features in Bash
2167 a. `readarray' is now a synonym for `mapfile'.
2168 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2169 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.0-rc1,
2170 and the previous version, bash-4.0-beta2.
2174 a. Fixed a bug that caused parsing errors when a $()-style command
2175 substitution was follwed immediately by a quoted newline.
2177 b. Fixed a bug that caused extended shell globbing patterns beginning with
2178 `*(' to not work when used with pattern substitution word expansions.
2180 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2181 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.0-beta2,
2182 and the previous version, bash-4.0-beta.
2186 a. Fixed a bug that caused failed word expansions to set $? but not
2189 b. Changed filename completion to quote the tilde in a filename with a
2190 leading tilde that exists in the current directory.
2192 c. Fixed a bug that caused a file descriptor leak when performing
2193 redirections attached to a compound command.
2195 d. Fixed a bug that caused expansions of $@ and $* to not exit the shell if
2196 the -u option was enabled and there were no posititional parameters.
2198 e. Fixed a bug that resulted in bash not terminating immediately if a
2199 terminating signal was received while performing output.
2201 f. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash after creating 256 process
2202 substitutions during word completion.
2204 2. Changes to Readline
2206 a. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay errors when using prompts with invisible
2207 characters and numeric arguments to a command in a multibyte locale.
2209 b. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay errors when using prompts with invisible
2210 characters spanning more than two physical screen lines.
2212 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2213 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.0-beta,
2214 and the previous version, bash-4.0-alpha.
2218 a. Fixed a typo that caused a variable to be used before initialization
2219 while parsing Posix-style command substitutions.
2221 b. Fixed a bug that caused stray ^? when the expansion of a parameter used
2222 as part of a pattern removal expansion is empty, but part of a non-
2225 c. Fixed a bug that could cause strings not converted to numbers by strtol
2226 to be treated as if the conversion had been successful.
2228 d. The `return' builtin now accepts no options and requires a `--' before
2229 a negative return value, as Posix requires.
2231 e. Fixed a bug that caused local variables to be created with the empty
2232 string for a value rather than no value.
2234 f. Changed behavior so the shell now acts as if it received an interrupt
2235 when a pipeline is killed by SIGINT while executing a list.
2237 g. Fixed a bug that caused `declare var' and `typeset var' to initialize
2238 `var' to the empty string.
2240 h. Changed `bind' builtin to print a warning but proceed if invoked when
2241 line editing is not active.
2243 i. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to exit when the `errexit' option is
2244 set and a command in a pipeline returns a non-zero exit status.
2246 j. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not run the exit trap in a command
2247 run with `bash -c' under some circumstances.
2249 k. Fixed a bug that caused parser errors to occasionally not set $? when
2250 running commands with `eval'.
2252 l. Fixed a bug that caused stray control characters when evaluating compound
2253 array assignments containing $'\x7f' escapes.
2255 m. Fixed a bug that caused redirections involving file descriptor 10 as the
2256 target to behave incorrectly.
2258 n. Fixed a bug that could cause memory to be freed multiple times when
2259 assigning to COMP_WORDBREAKS.
2261 o. Fixed a bug that could cause NULL pointer dereferences when COMP_WORDBREAKS
2264 2. Changes to Readline
2266 3. New Features in Bash
2268 a. A value of 0 for the -t option to `read' now returns success if there is
2269 input available to be read from the specified file descriptor.
2271 b. CDPATH and GLOBIGNORE are ignored when the shell is running in privileged
2274 c. New bindable readline functions shell-forward-word and shell-backward-word,
2275 which move forward and backward words delimited by shell metacharacters
2276 and honor shell quoting.
2278 d. New bindable readline functions shell-backward-kill-word and shell-kill-word
2279 which kill words backward and forward, but use the same word boundaries
2280 as shell-forward-word and shell-backward-word.
2282 4. New Features in Readline
2284 a. If the kernel supports it, readline displays special characters
2285 corresponding to a keyboard-generated signal when the signal is received.
2287 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2288 This document details the changes between this version, bash-4.0-alpha,
2289 and the previous version, bash-3.2-release.
2293 a. Fixed several bugs in old-style `` command substitution parsing, including
2294 comment parsing and quoted string handling.
2296 b. Fixed problems parsing arguments to the [[ command's =~ regular expression
2297 matching operator: metacharacter and whitespace parsing.
2299 c. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to inappropriately reuse high-numbered
2300 file descriptors it used internally.
2302 d. Fixed a bug in pattern replacement word expansions that caused a `/' as
2303 the first character of an expanded pattern to be mistaken for a global
2304 replacement specifier.
2306 e. Fixed several problems with the asprintf and snprintf replacement functions
2307 that caused hangs and crashes.
2309 f. Fixed a bug in the calculation of the current and previous job that caused
2310 it to refer to incorrect jobs.
2312 g. Fixed a bug in the check for the validity of a hashed command pathname that
2313 caused unnecessary hash table deletions and additions.
2315 h. Fixed a bug that caused child processes to inherit the wrong value for $!.
2317 i. Fixed a bug that caused `.' to fail to read and execute commands from non-
2318 regular files such as devices or named pipes.
2320 j. Fixed a bug in printf formatting for the %x and %X expansions that occurred
2323 k. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash when creating temporary files if
2324 $TMPDIR named a non-writable directory.
2326 l. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to ignore $TMPDIR when creating temporary
2327 files under some circumstances.
2329 m. Fixed a bug that caused named pipes created by process substitution to not
2332 n. Fixed a bug that caused HISTTIMEFORMAT to not be honored when it appeared
2333 in the initial shell environment.
2335 o. Fixed several bugs in the expansion of $* and $@ (quoted and unquoted)
2336 when IFS is null or contains non-whitespace characters; the same changes
2337 apply to arrays subscripted with * or @.
2339 p. Fixed several problems with pattern substitution expansions on the
2340 positional parameters and arrays subscripted with * or @ that occurred
2341 when $IFS was set to the empty string.
2343 q. Made a change to the default locale initialization code that should
2344 result in better behavior from the locale-aware library functions.
2346 r. Fixed a bug that caused compacting the jobs list to drop jobs.
2348 s. Fixed a bug that caused jumps back to the top-level processing loop from
2349 a builtin command to leave the shell in an inconsistent state.
2351 t. Fixed a bug that caused characters that would be escaped internally to be
2352 doubled when escaped with a backslash.
2354 u. Fixed the initialization of mailboxes to not cause maildirs to be read
2355 (and stat(2) called for every message file) at shell startup.
2357 v. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not display $PS2 when the read builtin
2358 reads a line continued with a backslash.
2360 w. Fixed a bug that caused errors in word splitting when $IFS contained
2361 characters used for internal quoting.
2363 x. Fixed bugs that caused problems with output from shell builtins not being
2364 completely displayed on some systems.
2366 y. Fixed a bug that caused output to be lost when a redirection is acting on
2367 the shell's output file descriptor.
2369 z. Fixed bugs caused by shell builtins not checking for all write errors.
2371 aa. Fixed a problem that caused the shell to dump core if expansions on the
2372 pattern passed to the pattern removal word expansions resulted in expansion
2375 bb. Fixed a bug that caused bash to loop infinitely after creating and
2376 waiting for 4096 jobs.
2378 cc. Fixed a bug that caused bash to lose the status of a background job under
2379 certain circumstances.
2381 dd. Fixed a bug that caused bash to not look in the temporary environment
2382 when performing variable lookup under certain circumstances.
2384 ee. Fixed a bug that caused bash to close file descriptors greater than 10
2385 when they were used in redirections.
2387 ff. Fixed a problem that caused the shell to attempt to read from the standard
2388 input when called as `bash -i script'.
2390 gg. Fixed a memory leak and variable initialization problems when the -v option
2391 was supplied to `printf' that could cause incorrect results.
2393 hh. Fixed a bug that caused the `read' builtin to count bytes when the -n option
2394 was supplied, rather than (possibly multibyte) characters.
2396 ii. Fixed a bug when displaying a function due to not converting the function
2397 to an external form.
2399 jj. Changed job control initialization to ensure that the shell has a tty
2400 as its controlling terminal before enabling job control.
2402 kk. Fixed a bug with the `test' builtin that caused it to misinterpret
2403 arguments beginning with `-' but containing more than one character.
2405 ll. Fixed bug that could cause the shell to dump core in certain cases where
2406 a command sets the SIGINT disposition to the default.
2408 mm. Fixed a bug in the pattern replacement (affecting both word expansion
2409 and the `fc' builtin) that occurred when the pattern and replacement
2412 nn. Fixed a bug that caused an arithmetic evaluation error to disable all
2415 oo. Fixed a bug in pathname expansion that caused it to interpret backslashes
2416 in the pathname as quoting characters.
2418 pp. Fixed a bug in the replacement getcwd() implementation that could cause
2419 memory to be overwritten.
2421 qq. When in Posix mode, the `ulimit' builtin now uses a block size of 512 for
2422 the `-c' and `-f' options.
2424 rr. Brace expansion now allows process substitutions to pass through unchanged.
2426 ss. Fixed a problem in the command name completion code to avoid quoting
2427 escaped special characters twice when the command name begins with a tilde.
2429 tt. Fixed a problem in the printf builtin that resulted in single-byte
2430 output for the "'" escape, even when using multibyte characters.
2432 uu. Fixed a bug that caused the failure exit status to be lost when redirections
2433 attached to a compound command failed.
2435 vv. Fixed a bug that caused the internal random number generator to not be
2436 re-seeded correctly when creating a subshell.
2438 ww. Fixed a bug that could cause the bash replacement getcwd to overwrite
2441 xx. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not receive SIGINT if it was sent
2442 while the shell was waiting for a command substitution to terminate, and
2443 make sure the exit status is correct when it does.
2445 yy. Fixed a bug that resulted in the second and subsequent children spawned
2446 by a shell begun to run a command substitution being placed into the
2447 wrong process group.
2449 zz. Fixed a bug that caused the results of successful tilde expansion to be
2450 subject to pathname expansion and word splitting.
2452 aaa. Fixed a bug that could cause the shell to hang if it encountered an
2453 error that caused it to jump back to the top processing loop during a
2454 command substitution or `eval' command.
2456 bbb. Fixed a bug that caused the `read' builtin to use the tty's attributes
2457 instead of those of the file descriptor passed with the -u option when
2458 processing the -n and -d options.
2460 ccc. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect expansion of ${array[@]:foo} if the
2461 first character of $IFS was not whitespace.
2463 ddd. Fixed a bug that occurred when scanning for the ending delimiter of a
2464 ${parameter/pat/sub} expansion.
2466 eee. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to inappropriately expand command
2467 substitutions in words when expanding directory names for completion.
2469 fff. Fixed a bug that caused the `fc' builtin to look too far back in the
2470 history list under certain circumstances.
2472 ggg. Fixed a bug that caused a shell running in Posix mode to search $PWD for
2473 a file specified as an argument to source/. when the file was not found
2476 hhh. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to modify the case of a command word
2477 found via command completion when the shell was performing case-
2478 insensitive completion.
2480 iii. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to search $PATH for an argument to
2481 source/. even when it contained a `/'.
2483 jjj. Fixed a bug that caused brace expansion to misorder expansions when the
2484 locale did not have a collating order like aAbBcC...zZ.
2486 kkk. Fixed a bug that did not allow `set +o history' to have any effect when
2487 run in a startup file or from a sourced file.
2489 lll. Fixed a bug with the precedence of the ?: conditional arithmetic operator.
2491 mmm. Fixed a bug that caused side effects of temporary variable assignments
2492 to persist in the shell environment.
2494 nnn. Fixed a bug that caused the terminal to be left in non-canonical mode
2495 when using editing commands that invoke the an editor on the current
2498 ooo. Fixed a bug that caused globbing characters and characters in $IFS to not
2499 be quoted appropriately when displaying assignment statements.
2501 ppp. Fixed a bug that caused the `-e' option to be inherited when sourcing a
2502 file or evaluating a command with `eval' even if the return value of the
2503 command was supposed to be ignored.
2505 qqq. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to attempt to created variables with
2506 invalid names if such names appeared in the initial environment.
2508 rrr. Fixed a bug with quote removal in strings where the final character is a
2511 sss. Fixed a bug that caused the effects of special variables to persist even
2512 when the variables were unset as part of the shell reinitializing itself
2513 to execute a shell script.
2515 ttt. Fixed a bug that caused the history to not be saved after `history -c' or
2516 `history -d' was executed until a sufficient number of commands had been
2517 saved to the history.
2519 uuu. Bash now parses command substitutions according to Posix rules: parsing
2520 the command contained in $() to find the closing delimiter.
2522 vvv. Fixed a bug that caused traps on SIGCHLD set in a SIGCHLD handler to
2525 www. Fixed a bug that didn't allow SIGCHLD to interrupt the `wait' builtin
2528 xxx. Invalid numeric arguments to shell builtins no longer cause the shell to
2529 short-circuit any executing compound command.
2531 yyy. Fixed a bug that caused the exit status to be lost when `break' was
2532 used to short-circuit a loop's execution.
2534 zzz. Fixed a bug that caused stray ^? characters to be left in expansions of
2537 aaaa. Bash now prints better error messages for here documents terminated by
2538 EOF and for identifying the incorrect token in an invalid arithmetic
2541 bbbb. Fixed a bug in the variable length word expansion that caused it to
2542 incorrectly calculate the number of multibyte characters.
2544 cccc. Fixed a race condition that could result in the top-level shell setting
2545 the terminal's process group to an incorrect value if the process
2546 group was changed by a child of a child of the shell.
2548 dddd. Fixed a bug that caused here documents belonging to commands within a
2549 compound command to be displayed in a syntactially-incorrect form, which
2550 prevented them from being re-read as input.
2552 eeee. The shell displays more warnings about failures to set the locale.
2554 ffff. Fixed a bug that caused the body of a here-document to not be saved to
2557 gggg. Fixed a bug that caused configure to incorrectly conclude that FreeBSD
2558 had /dev/fd available, resulting in problems with process substitution.
2560 2. Changes to Readline
2562 a. Fixed a number of redisplay errors in environments supporting multibyte
2565 b. Fixed bugs in vi command mode that caused motion commands to inappropriately
2568 c. When using the arrow keys in vi insertion mode, readline allows movement
2569 beyond the current end of the line (unlike command mode).
2571 d. Fixed bugs that caused readline to loop when the terminal has been taken
2572 away and reads return -1/EIO.
2574 e. Fixed bugs in redisplay occurring when displaying prompts containing
2575 invisible characters.
2577 f. Fixed a bug that caused the completion append character to not be reset to
2578 the default after an application-specified completion function changed it.
2580 g. Fixed a problem that caused incorrect positioning of the cursor while in
2581 emacs editing mode when moving forward at the end of a line while using
2582 a locale supporting multibyte characters.
2584 h. Fixed an off-by-one error that caused readline to drop every 511th
2585 character of buffered input.
2587 i. Fixed a bug that resulted in SIGTERM not being caught or cleaned up.
2589 j. Fixed redisplay bugs caused by multiline prompts with invisible characters
2590 or no characters following the final newline.
2592 k. Fixed redisplay bug caused by prompts consisting solely of invisible
2595 l. Fixed a bug in the code that buffers characters received very quickly in
2596 succession which caused characters to be dropped.
2598 m. Fixed a bug that caused readline to reference uninitialized data structures
2599 if it received a SIGWINCH before completing initialzation.
2601 n. Fixed a bug that caused the vi-mode `last command' to be set incorrectly
2602 and therefore unrepeatable.
2604 o. Fixed a bug that caused readline to disable echoing when it was being used
2605 with an output file descriptor that was not a terminal.
2607 p. Readline now blocks SIGINT while manipulating internal data structures
2610 q. Fixed a bug in redisplay that caused readline to segfault when pasting a
2611 very long line (over 130,000 characters).
2613 r. Fixed bugs in redisplay when using prompts with no visible printing
2616 3. New Features in Bash
2618 a. When using substring expansion on the positional parameters, a starting
2619 index of 0 now causes $0 to be prefixed to the list.
2621 b. The `help' builtin now prints its columns with entries sorted vertically
2622 rather than horizontally.
2624 c. There is a new variable, $BASHPID, which always returns the process id of
2627 d. There is a new `autocd' option that, when enabled, causes bash to attempt
2628 to `cd' to a directory name that is supplied as the first word of a
2631 e. There is a new `checkjobs' option that causes the shell to check for and
2632 report any running or stopped jobs at exit.
2634 f. The programmable completion code exports a new COMP_TYPE variable, set to
2635 a character describing the type of completion being attempted.
2637 g. The programmable completion code exports a new COMP_KEY variable, set to
2638 the character that caused the completion to be invoked (e.g., TAB).
2640 h. If creation of a child process fails due to insufficient resources, bash
2641 will try again several times before reporting failure.
2643 i. The programmable completion code now uses the same set of characters as
2644 readline when breaking the command line into a list of words.
2646 j. The block multiplier for the ulimit -c and -f options is now 512 when in
2647 Posix mode, as Posix specifies.
2649 k. Changed the behavior of the read builtin to save any partial input received
2650 in the specified variable when the read builtin times out. This also
2651 results in variables specified as arguments to read to be set to the empty
2652 string when there is no input available. When the read builtin times out,
2653 it returns an exit status greater than 128.
2655 l. The shell now has the notion of a `compatibility level', controlled by
2656 new variables settable by `shopt'. Setting this variable currently
2657 restores the bash-3.1 behavior when processing quoted strings on the rhs
2658 of the `=~' operator to the `[[' command.
2660 m. The `ulimit' builtin now has new -b (socket buffer size) and -T (number
2661 of threads) options.
2663 n. The -p option to `declare' now displays all variable values and attributes
2664 (or function values and attributes if used with -f).
2666 o. There is a new `compopt' builtin that allows completion functions to modify
2667 completion options for existing completions or the completion currently
2670 p. The `read' builtin has a new -i option which inserts text into the reply
2671 buffer when using readline.
2673 q. A new `-E' option to the complete builtin allows control of the default
2674 behavior for completion on an empty line.
2676 r. There is now limited support for completing command name words containing
2677 globbing characters.
2679 s. Changed format of internal help documentation for all builtins to roughly
2680 follow man page format.
2682 t. The `help' builtin now has a new -d option, to display a short description,
2683 and a -m option, to print help information in a man page-like format.
2685 u. There is a new `mapfile' builtin to populate an array with lines from a
2688 v. If a command is not found, the shell attempts to execute a shell function
2689 named `command_not_found_handle', supplying the command words as the
2692 w. There is a new shell option: `globstar'. When enabled, the globbing code
2693 treats `**' specially -- it matches all directories (and files within
2694 them, when appropriate) recursively.
2696 x. There is a new shell option: `dirspell'. When enabled, the filename
2697 completion code performs spelling correction on directory names during
2700 y. The `-t' option to the `read' builtin now supports fractional timeout
2703 z. Brace expansion now allows zero-padding of expanded numeric values and
2704 will add the proper number of zeroes to make sure all values contain the
2705 same number of digits.
2707 aa. There is a new bash-specific bindable readline function: `dabbrev-expand'.
2708 It uses menu completion on a set of words taken from the history list.
2710 bb. The command assigned to a key sequence with `bind -x' now sets two new
2711 variables in the environment of the executed command: READLINE_LINE_BUFFER
2712 and READLINE_POINT. The command can change the current readline line
2713 and cursor position by modifying READLINE_LINE_BUFFER and READLINE_POINT,
2716 cc. There is a new &>> redirection operator, which appends the standard output
2717 and standard error to the named file.
2719 dd. The parser now understands `|&' as a synonym for `2>&1 |', which redirects
2720 the standard error for a command through a pipe.
2722 ee. The new `;&' case statement action list terminator causes execution to
2723 continue with the action associated with the next pattern in the
2724 statement rather than terminating the command.
2726 ff. The new `;;&' case statement action list terminator causes the shell to
2727 test the next set of patterns after completing execution of the current
2728 action, rather than terminating the command.
2730 gg. The shell understands a new variable: PROMPT_DIRTRIM. When set to an
2731 integer value greater than zero, prompt expansion of \w and \W will
2732 retain only that number of trailing pathname components and replace
2733 the intervening characters with `...'.
2735 hh. There are new case-modifying word expansions: uppercase (^[^]) and
2736 lowercase (,[,]). They can work on either the first character or
2737 array element, or globally. They accept an optional shell pattern
2738 that determines which characters to modify. There is an optionally-
2739 configured feature to include capitalization operators.
2741 ii. The shell provides associative array variables, with the appropriate
2742 support to create, delete, assign values to, and expand them.
2744 jj. The `declare' builtin now has new -l (convert value to lowercase upon
2745 assignment) and -u (convert value to uppercase upon assignment) options.
2746 There is an optionally-configurable -c option to capitalize a value at
2749 kk. There is a new `coproc' reserved word that specifies a coprocess: an
2750 asynchronous command run with two pipes connected to the creating shell.
2751 Coprocs can be named. The input and output file descriptors and the
2752 PID of the coprocess are available to the calling shell in variables
2753 with coproc-specific names.
2755 4. New Features in Readline
2757 a. A new variable, rl_sort_completion_matches; allows applications to inhibit
2758 match list sorting (but beware: some things don't work right if
2759 applications do this).
2761 b. A new variable, rl_completion_invoking_key; allows applications to discover
2762 the key that invoked rl_complete or rl_menu_complete.
2764 c. The functions rl_block_sigint and rl_release_sigint are now public and
2765 available to calling applications who want to protect critical sections
2768 d. The functions rl_save_state and rl_restore_state are now public and
2769 available to calling applications; documented rest of readline's state
2772 e. A new user-settable variable, `history-size', allows setting the maximum
2773 number of entries in the history list.
2775 f. There is a new implementation of menu completion, with several improvements
2776 over the old; the most notable improvement is a better `completions
2779 g. The menu completion code now uses the rl_menu_completion_entry_function
2780 variable, allowing applications to provide their own menu completion
2783 h. There is support for replacing a prefix of a pathname with a `...' when
2784 displaying possible completions. This is controllable by setting the
2785 `completion-prefix-display-length' variable. Matches with a common prefix
2786 longer than this value have the common prefix replaced with `...'.
2788 i. There is a new `revert-all-at-newline' variable. If enabled, readline will
2789 undo all outstanding changes to all history lines when `accept-line' is
2792 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2793 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.2-release,
2794 and the previous version, bash-3.2-beta.
2798 a. Fixed a bug that caused the temporary environment passed to a command to
2799 affect the shell's environment under certain circumstances.
2801 b. Fixed a bug in the printf builtin that caused the %q format specifier to
2802 ignore empty string arguments.
2804 c. Improved multibyte character environment detection at configuration time.
2806 d. Fixed a bug in the read builtin that left spurious escape characters in the
2807 input after processing backslashes when assigning to an array variable.
2809 2. Changes to Readline
2811 a. Fixed a redisplay bug that occurred in multibyte-capable locales when the
2812 prompt was one character longer than the screen width.
2813 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2814 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.2-beta,
2815 and the previous version, bash-3.2-alpha.
2819 a. Changed the lexical analyzer to treat locale-specific blank characters as
2822 b. Fixed a bug in command printing to avoid confusion between redirections and
2823 process substitution.
2825 c. Fixed problems with cross-compiling originating from inherited environment
2828 d. Added write error reporting to printf builtin.
2830 e. Fixed a bug in the variable expansion code that could cause a core dump in
2831 a multi-byte locale.
2833 f. Fixed a bug that caused substring expansion of a null string to return
2836 g. BASH_COMMAND now retains its previous value while executing commands as the
2837 result of a trap, as the documentation states.
2839 2. Changes to Readline
2841 a. Fixed a bug with prompt redisplay in a multi-byte locale to avoid redrawing
2842 the prompt and input line multiple times.
2844 b. Fixed history expansion to not be confused by here-string redirection.
2846 c. Readline no longer treats read errors by converting them to newlines, as
2847 it does with EOF. This caused partial lines to be returned from readline().
2849 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2850 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.2-alpha,
2851 and the previous version, bash-3.1-release.
2855 a. Fixed a source bug that caused the minimal configuration to not compile.
2857 b. Fixed memory leaks in error handling for the `read' builtin.
2859 c. Changed the [[ and (( compound commands to set PIPESTATUS with their exit
2862 d. Fixed some parsing problems with compound array assignments.
2864 e. Added additional configuration changes for: NetBSD (incomplete multibyte
2867 f. Fixed two bugs with local array variable creation when shadowing a variable
2868 of the same name from a previous context.
2870 g. Fixed the `read' builtin to restore the correct set of completion functions
2871 if a timeout occurs.
2873 h. Added code to defer the initialization of HISTSIZE (and its stifling of the
2874 history list) until the history file is loaded, allowing a startup file to
2875 override the default value.
2877 i. Tightened up the arithmetic expression parsing to produce better error
2878 messages when presented with invalid operators.
2880 j. Fixed the cross-compilation support to build the signal list at shell
2881 invocation rather than compile time if cross-compiling.
2883 k. Fixed multibyte support for non-gcc compilers (or compilers that do not
2884 allow automatic array variable sizing based on a non-constant value).
2886 l. Several fixes to the code that manages the list of terminated jobs and
2887 their exit statuses, and the list of active and recently-terminated jobs
2888 to avoid pid aliasing/wraparound and allocation errors.
2890 m. Fixed a problem that allowed scripts to die due to SIGINT while waiting
2891 for children, even when started in the background or otherwise ignoring
2894 n. Fixed a bug that caused shells invoked as -/bin/bash from not being
2895 recognized as login shells.
2897 o. Fixed a problem that caused shells in the background to give the terminal
2898 to a process group other than the foreground shell process group.
2900 p. Fixed a problem with extracting the `varname' in ${#varname}.
2902 q. Fixed the code that handles SIGQUIT to not exit immediately -- thereby
2903 calling functions that may not be called in a signal handler context --
2904 but set a flag and exit afterward (like SIGINT).
2906 r. Changed the brace expansion code to skip over braces that don't begin a
2907 valid matched brace expansion construct.
2909 s. Fixed `typeset' and `declare' to not require that their shell function
2910 operands to be valid shell identifiers.
2912 t. Changed `test' to use access(2) with a temporary uid/euid swap when testing
2913 file attributes and running setuid, and access(2) in most other cases.
2915 u. Changed completion code to not attempt command name completion on a line
2916 consisting solely of whitespace when no_empty_command_completion is set.
2918 v. The `hash' builtin now prints nothing in posix mode when the hash table is
2919 empty, and prints a message to that effect to stdout instead of stderr
2920 when not in posix mode.
2922 w. Fixed a bug in the extended pattern matching code that caused it to fail to
2923 match periods with certain patterns.
2925 x. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to dump core when performing filename
2926 generation in directories with thousands of files.
2928 y. Returned to the original Bourne shell rules for parsing ``: no recursive
2929 parsing of embedded quoted strings or ${...} constructs.
2931 z. The inheritence of the DEBUG, RETURN, and ERR traps is now dependent only
2932 on the settings of the `functrace' and `errtrace' shell options, rather
2933 than whether or not the shell is in debugging mode.
2935 aa. Fixed a problem with $HOME being converted to ~ in the expansion of
2936 members of the DIRSTACK array.
2938 bb. Fixed a problem with quoted arguments to arithmetic expansions in certain
2941 cc. The command word completion code now no longer returns matching directories
2942 while searching $PATH.
2944 dd. Fixed a bug with zero-padding and precision handling in snprintf()
2947 ee. Fixed a bug that caused the command substitution code not to take embedded
2948 shell comments into account.
2950 ff. Fixed a bug that caused $((...);(...)) to be misinterpreted as an
2951 arithmetic substitution.
2953 gg. Fixed a bug in the prompt expansion code that inappropriately added a
2954 \001 before a \002 under certain circumstances.
2956 hh. Fixed a bug that caused `unset LANG' to not properly reset the locale
2957 (previous versions would set the locale back to what it was when bash
2958 was started rather than the system's "native" locale).
2960 ii. Fixed a bug that could cause file descriptors > 10 to not be closed even
2961 when closed explicitly by a script.
2963 jj. Fixed a bug that caused single quotes to be stripped from ANSI-C quoting
2964 inside double-quoted command substitutions.
2966 kk. Fixed a bug that could cause core dumps when `return' was executed as the
2967 last element of a pipeline inside a shell function.
2969 ll. Fixed a bug that caused DEBUG trap strings to overwrite commands stored in
2972 2. Changes to Readline
2974 a. Fixed a problem that caused segmentation faults when using readline in
2975 callback mode and typing consecutive DEL characters on an empty line.
2977 b. Fixed several redisplay problems with multibyte characters, all having to
2978 do with the different code paths and variable meanings between single-byte
2979 and multibyte character redisplay.
2981 c. Fixed a problem with key sequence translation when presented with the
2984 d. Fixed a problem that prevented the `a' command in vi mode from being
2985 undone and redone properly.
2987 e. Fixed a problem that prevented empty inserts in vi mode from being undone
2990 f. Fixed a problem that caused readline to initialize with an incorrect idea
2991 of whether or not the terminal can autowrap.
2993 g. Fixed output of key bindings (like bash `bind -p') to honor the setting of
2994 convert-meta and use \e where appropriate.
2996 h. Changed the default filename completion function to call the filename
2997 dequoting function if the directory completion hook isn't set. This means
2998 that any directory completion hooks need to dequote the directory name,
2999 since application-specific hooks need to know how the word was quoted,
3000 even if no other changes are made.
3002 i. Fixed a bug with creating the prompt for a non-interactive search string
3003 when there are non-printing characters in the primary prompt.
3005 j. Fixed a bug that caused prompts with invisible characters to be redrawn
3006 multiple times in a multibyte locale.
3008 k. Fixed a bug that could cause the key sequence scanning code to return the
3011 l. Fixed a problem with the callback interface that caused it to fail when
3012 using multi-character keyboard macros.
3014 m. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when an edited history entry was
3015 re-executed under certain conditions.
3017 n. Fixed a bug that caused readline to reference freed memory when attmpting
3018 to display a portion of the prompt.
3020 3. New Features in Bash
3022 a. Changed the parameter pattern replacement functions to not anchor the
3023 pattern at the beginning of the string if doing global replacement - that
3024 combination doesn't make any sense.
3026 b. When running in `word expansion only' mode (--wordexp option), inhibit
3027 process substitution.
3029 c. Loadable builtins now work on MacOS X 10.[34].
3031 d. Shells running in posix mode no longer set $HOME, as POSIX requires.
3033 e. The code that checks for binary files being executed as shell scripts now
3034 checks only for NUL rather than any non-printing character.
3036 f. Quoting the string argument to the [[ command's =~ operator now forces
3037 string matching, as with the other pattern-matching operators.
3039 4. New Features in Readline
3041 a. Calling applications can now set the keyboard timeout to 0, allowing
3044 b. The value of SYS_INPUTRC (configurable at compilation time) is now used as
3045 the default last-ditch startup file.
3047 c. The history file reading functions now allow windows-like \r\n line
3050 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3051 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.1-release,
3052 and the previous version, bash-3.1-rc2.
3054 1. Changes to Readline
3056 a. Several changes to the multibyte redisplay code to fix problems with
3057 prompts containing invisible characters.
3059 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3060 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.1-rc2,
3061 and the previous version, bash-3.1-rc1.
3065 a. Fixed a bug that caused a DEBUG trap to overwrite a command string that's
3066 eventually attached to a background job.
3068 b. Changed some code so that filenames with leading tildes with spaces in the
3069 name aren't tilde-expanded by the bash completion code.
3071 c. Fixed a bug that caused the pushd builtin to fail to change to
3072 directories with leading `-'.
3074 d. Fixed a small memory leak in the programmable completion code.
3076 2. Changes to Readline
3078 a. Fixed a redisplay bug caused by moving the cursor vertically to a line
3079 with invisible characters in the prompt in a multibyte locale.
3081 b. Fixed a bug that could cause the terminal special chars to be bound in the
3082 wrong keymap in vi mode.
3084 3. New Features in Bash
3086 a. If compiled for strict POSIX conformance, LINES and COLUMNS may now
3087 override the true terminal size.
3089 4. New Features in Readline
3091 a. A new external application-controllable variable that allows the LINES
3092 and COLUMNS environment variables to set the window size regardless of
3093 what the kernel returns.
3095 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3096 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.1-rc1,
3097 and the previous version, bash-3.1-beta1.
3101 a. Fixed a bug that could cause core dumps due to accessing the current
3102 pipeline while in the middle of modifying it.
3104 b. Fixed a bug that caused pathnames with backslashes still quoting characters
3105 to be passed to opendir().
3107 c. Command word completion now obeys the setting of completion-ignore-case.
3109 d. Fixed a problem with redirection that caused file descriptors greater than
3110 2 to be inappropriately marked as close-on-exec.
3112 e. In Posix mode, after `wait' is called to wait for a particular process
3113 explicitly, that process is removed from the list of processes known to
3114 the shell, and subsequent attempts to wait for it return errors.
3116 f. Fixed a bug that caused extended pattern matching to incorrectly scan
3117 backslash-escaped pattern characters.
3119 g. Fixed a synchronization problem that could cause core dumps when handling
3122 h. Fixed a bug that caused an unmatched backquote to be accepted without an
3123 error when processing here documents.
3125 i. Fixed a small memory leak in the `cd' builtin.
3127 j. Fix for MacOS X so it gets the values for the HOSTTYPE, MACHTYPE, and
3128 OSTYPE variables at build time, to support universal binaries.
3130 k. Fixed a bug that could cause an exit trap to return the exit status of
3131 the trap command rather than the status as it was before the trap was
3132 run as the shell's exit status.
3134 2. New Features in Bash
3136 3. Changes to Readline
3138 a. Fixed a bug that caused reversing the incremental search direction to
3141 b. Fixed the vi-mode `U' command to only undo up to the first time insert mode
3142 was entered, as Posix specifies.
3144 c. Fixed a bug in the vi-mode `r' command that left the cursor in the wrong
3147 4. New Features in Readline
3149 a. New application-callable auxiliary function, rl_variable_value, returns
3150 a string corresponding to a readline variable's value.
3152 b. When parsing inputrc files and variable binding commands, the parser
3153 strips trailing whitespace from values assigned to boolean variables
3154 before checking them.
3157 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3158 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.1-beta1,
3159 and the previous version, bash-3.1-alpha1.
3163 a. Added some system-specific signal names.
3165 b. Fixed a typo in the ulimit builtin to make `x' the right option to
3166 maniuplate the limit on file locks.
3168 c. Fixed a problem with using += to append to index 0 of an array variable
3169 when not using subscript syntax.
3171 d. A few changes to configure.in to remove calls to obsolete or outdated
3174 e. Make sure changes to variables bash handles specially (e.g., LC_ALL) are
3175 made when the variable is set in the temporary environment to a command.
3177 f. Make sure changes to variables bash handles specially (e.g., LC_ALL) are
3178 made when the variable is modified using `printf -v'.
3180 g. The export environment is now remade on cygwin when HOME is changed, so
3181 DLLs bash is linked against pick up the new value. This fixes problems
3182 with tilde expansion when linking against and already-installed readline.
3184 h. Small fix to the logic for performing tilde expansion in posix mode, so
3185 expansion on the right-hand side of an assignment statement takes place.
3187 i. Fixed a bug that prevented redirections associated with a shell function
3188 from being executed when in a subshell.
3190 j. Fixed `source' and `.' builtins to not require an executable file when
3191 searching $PATH for a file to source.
3193 k. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect word splitting in a function when IFS
3194 was declared local, then unset.
3196 l. Fixed a problem with the `kill' builtin that prevented sending signals
3197 to a process group under certain circumstances when providing a pid < 0.
3199 m. When in POSIX mode, `pwd' now checks that the value it prints is the same
3200 directory as `.', even when displaying $PWD.
3202 n. Fixed a problem with the `read' builtin when reading a script from standard
3203 input and reading data from the same file.
3205 o. Fixed a problem with the `type' and `command' builtins that caused absolute
3206 pathnames to be displayed incorrectly.
3208 p. Some changes to the `bg' builtin for POSIX conformance.
3210 q. The `fc' builtin now removes the `fc' command that caused it to invoke an
3211 editor on specified history entries from the history entirely, rather than
3214 r. When in POSIX mode, the `v' command in vi editing mode simply invokes vi
3215 on the current command, rather than checking $FCEDIT and $EDITOR.
3217 s. Fixed a small memory leak in the pathname canonicalization code.
3219 t. Fixed a bug that caused the expanded value of a $'...' string to be
3220 incorrectly re-quoted if it occurred within a double-quoted ${...}
3221 parameter expansion.
3223 u. Restored default emacs-mode key binding of M-TAB to dynamic-complete-history.
3225 v. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when interrupting loops running builtins
3228 w. Make sure that some of the functions bash provides replacements for are
3231 x. The code that scans embedded commands for the parser (`...` and $(...)) is
3232 now more aware of embedded comments and their effect on quoted strings.
3234 y. Changed the `-n' option to the `history' builtin to not reset the number of
3235 history lines read in the current session after reading the new lines from
3236 the history file if the history is being appended when it is written to
3237 the file, since the appending takes care of the problem that the adjustment
3238 was intended to solve.
3240 z. Improved the error message displayed when a shell script fails to execute
3241 because the environment and size of command line arguments are too large.
3243 aa. A small fix to make sure that $HISTCMD is evaluated whenever the shell is
3244 saving commands to the history list, not just when HISTSIZE is defined.
3246 2. Changes to Readline
3248 a. The `change-case' command now correctly changes the case of multibyte
3251 b. Changes to the shared library construction scripts to deal with Windows
3252 DLL naming conventions for Cygwin.
3254 c. Fixed the redisplay code to avoid core dumps resulting from a poorly-timed
3257 d. Fixed the non-incremental search code in vi mode to dispose of any current
3258 undo list when copying a line from the history into the current editing
3261 e. The variable assignment code now ignores whitespace at the end of lines
3262 when assigning to boolean variables.
3264 f. The `C-w' binding in incremental search now understands multibyte
3267 3. New Features in Bash
3269 a. A new configuration option, `--enable-strict-posix-default', which will
3270 build bash to be POSIX conforming by default.
3272 4. New Features in Readline
3274 a. If the rl_completion_query_items is set to a value < 0, readline never
3275 asks the user whether or not to view the possible completions.
3277 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3278 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.1-alpha1,
3279 and the previous version, bash-3.0-release.
3283 a. Fixed a bug that caused bash to crash if referencing an unset local array.
3285 b. Fixed a problem that caused tilde expansion to not be performed before
3286 attempting globbing word completion.
3288 c. Fixed an incompatibility so that a first argument to trap that's a valid
3289 signal number will be trated as a signal rather than a command to execute.
3291 d. Fixed ${#word} expansion to correctly compute the length of a string
3292 containing multibyte characters.
3294 e. Fixed a bug that caused bash to not pass the correct flags for signal
3295 disposition to child processes.
3297 f. Fixed a bug that caused `fc -l' to list one too many history entries.
3299 g. Some fixes to `fc' for POSIX conformance.
3301 h. Some fixes to job status display for POSIX conformance.
3303 i. Fixed a bug that caused `command -v' to display output if a command was not
3304 found -- it should be silent.
3306 j. In POSIX mode, `type' and `command -[vV]' do not report non-executable
3307 files, even if the shell will attempt to execute them.
3309 k. Fixed a bug that caused the `==' operator to the [[ command to not attempt
3310 extended pattern matching.
3312 l. Fixed the brace expansion code to handle characters whose value exceeds 128.
3314 m. Fixed `printf' to handle strings with a leading `\0' whose length is
3317 n. Fixed a couple of problems with brace expansion where `${' was handled
3320 o. Fixed off-by-one error when calculating the upper bound of `offset' when
3321 processing the ${array[@]:offset:length} expansion.
3323 p. System-specific configuration changes for: FreeBSD 5.x, Interix, MacOS X
3324 10.4, Linux 2.4+ kernels, Linux 3.x kernels, Dragonfly BSD, QNX 6.x,
3327 q. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to ignore the status of the rightmost
3328 command in a pipeline when the `pipefail' option was enabled.
3330 r. Fixed a completion bug that caused core dumps when expanding a directory
3333 s. Fixed a bug that prevented `hash -d' from removing commands from the hash
3336 t. Fixed word splitting to avoid really bad quadratic performance when
3337 expanding long lists.
3339 u. Fixed a bug that caused negative offsets in substring expansion to use the
3342 v. Fixed a bug in printf that caused it to not return failure on write errors.
3344 w. Fixed a bug that caused commands in subshells to not be properly timed.
3346 x. The shell parser no longer attempts to parse a compound assignment specially
3347 unless in a position where an assignment statement is acceptable or parsing
3348 arguments to a builtin that accepts assignment statements.
3350 y. Fixed a problem that caused a `case' statement to be added to the history
3351 incorrectly as a single command if the `case word' was on one line and the
3354 z. Fixed a problem that caused internal shell quoting characters to be
3355 incorrectly quoted with backslashes under some circumstances.
3357 aa. The shell now performs correct word splitting when IFS contains multibyte
3360 bb. The mail checking code now resets the cached file information if the size
3361 drops to 0, even if the times don't change.
3363 cc. A completed command name that is found in $PATH as well as the name of a
3364 directory in the current directory no longer has a slash appended in certain
3365 circumstances: a single instance found in $PATH when `.' is not in $PATH,
3366 and multiple instances found in $PATH, even when `.' is in $PATH.
3368 dd. Incorporated tilde expansion into the word expansion code rather than as a
3369 separately-called function, fixing some cases where it was performed
3370 inappropriately (e.g., after the second `=' in an assignment statement or
3371 in a double-quoted parameter expansion).
3373 ee. Fixed several bugs encountered when parsing compound assignment statements,
3374 so that compound assignments appearing as arguments to builtins are no
3375 longer double-expanded.
3377 ff. Fixed a bug in the command execution code that caused asynchronous commands
3378 containing command substitutions to not put the terminal in the wrong
3381 gg. Bash now handles the case where the WCONTINUED flag causes waitpid() to
3382 return -1/EINVAL at runtime as well as configuration time.
3384 hh. Fixed parser to generate an error when the pipeline `argument' to `!' or
3387 ii. The shell now takes a little more care when manipulating file descriptors
3388 greater than 9 with the `exec' builtin.
3390 jj. Fixed a bug that caused variable assignments preceding the `command' builtin
3391 preceding a special builtin to be preserved after the command completed in
3394 kk. Fixed a bug that allowed variables beginning with a digit to be created.
3396 ll. Fixed a bug that caused a \<newline> to be removed when parsing a $'...'
3399 mm. A shell whose name begins with `-' will now be a restricted shell if the
3400 remainder of the name indicates it should be restricted.
3402 nn. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump if FUNCNAME were changed or unset
3403 during a function's execution.
3405 oo. Fixed a bug that caused executing a `return' in a function to not execute
3406 a RETURN trap. The RETURN trap is inherited by shell functions only if
3407 function tracing is globally enabled or has been enabled for that function.
3409 pp. Fixed cases where var[@] was not handled exactly like var, when var is a
3412 qq. Fixed a bug that caused the first character after a SIGINT to be discarded
3413 under certain circumstances.
3415 rr. Fixed exit status code so that a suspended job returns 128+signal as its
3416 exit status (preventing commands after it in `&&' lists from being
3419 ss. Fixed a bug that caused the shell parser state to be changed by executing
3420 a shell function as a result of word completion.
3422 tt. Fixed a long-standing bug that caused '\177' characters in variable
3423 values to be discarded when expanded in double-quoted strings.
3425 uu. Fixed a bug that caused $RANDOM to be re-seeded multiple times in a
3426 subshell environment.
3428 vv. Extensive changes to the job management code to avoid the pid-reuse and
3429 pid-aliasing problems caused by retaining the exit status of too many jobs,
3430 but still retain as many background job statuses as POSIX requires.
3432 ww. Fixed a parser bug in processing \<newline> that caused things like
3437 to not work correctly.
3439 xx. `pwd -P' now sets $PWD to a directory name containing no symbolic links
3440 when in posix mode, as POSIX requires.
3442 yy. In posix mode, bash no longer sets $PWD to a name containing no symbolic
3443 links if a directory is chosen from $CDPATH.
3445 zz. The word splitting code now treats an IFS character that is not space,
3446 tab, or newline and any adjacent IFS white space as a single delimiter, as
3449 aaa. The `read' builtin now checks whether or not the number of fields read is
3450 exactly the same as the number of variables instead of just assigning the
3451 rest of the line (minus any trailing IFS white space) to the last
3452 variable. This is what POSIX/SUS/XPG all require.
3454 bbb. Fixed a bug that caused `read' to always check whether or not fd 0 was a
3455 pipe, even when reading from another file descriptor.
3457 ccc. Fixed a bug that caused short-circuiting of execution even if the return
3458 value was being inverted.
3460 ddd. Fixed a bug that caused a core dump while decoding \W escapes in PS1 if
3463 eee. Fixed a bug in `read' that counted internal quoting characters for the
3464 purposes of `read -n'.
3466 fff. Fixed a bug so that a function definition in a pipeline causes a child
3467 process to be forked at the right time.
3469 ggg. Bash will not attempt to link against a readline library that doesn't
3470 have rl_gnu_readline_p == 1.
3472 hhh. Fixed a bug that caused `read' to consume one too many characters when
3473 reading a fixed number of characters and the Nth character is a backslash.
3475 iii. Fixed a bug that caused `unset' on variables in the temporary environment
3476 to leave them set when `unset' completed.
3478 jjj. Fixed a bug that caused bash to close fd 2 if an `exec' failed and the
3481 kkk. The completion code is more careful to not turn `/' or `///' into `//',
3482 for those systems on which `//' has special meaning.
3484 lll. Fixed a bug that caused command substitution in asynchronous commands to
3485 close the wrong file descriptors.
3487 mmm. The shell no longer prints status messages about terminated background
3488 processes unless job control is active.
3490 nnn. Fixed a bug that prevented multiple consecutive invocations of `history -s'
3491 from adding all the commands to the history list.
3493 ooo. Added a couple of changes to make arithmetic expansion more consistent in
3494 all its contexts (still not perfect).
3496 ppp. Fixed a bug that caused the parser to occasionally not find the right
3497 terminating "`" in an old-style command substitution.
3499 qqq. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when the shell was reading its non-
3500 interactive input from fd 0 and fd 0 was duplicated and restored using a
3501 combination of `exec' (to save) and redirection (to restore).
3503 rrr. Fixed a problem that caused loops in sourced scripts to not be cleaned
3504 up properly when a `return' is executed.
3506 sss. Change internal command substitution completion function to append a slash
3507 to directory names in the command.
3509 2. Changes to Readline
3511 a. Fixed a bug that caused multiliine prompts to be wrapped and displayed
3514 b. Fixed a bug that caused ^P/^N in emacs mode to fail to display the current
3517 c. Fixed a problem in computing the number of invisible characters on the first
3518 line of a prompt whose length exceeds the screen width.
3520 d. Fixed vi-mode searching so that failure preserves the current line rather
3521 than the last line in the history list.
3523 e. Fixed the vi-mode `~' command (change-case) to have the correct behavior at
3524 end-of-line when manipulating multibyte characters.
3526 f. Fixed the vi-mode `r' command (change-char) to have the correct behavior at
3527 end-of-line when manipulating multibyte characters.
3529 g. Fixed multiple bugs in the redisplay of multibyte characters: displaying
3530 prompts longer than the screen width containing multibyte characters,
3532 h. Fix the calculation of the number of physical characters in the prompt
3533 string when it contains multibyte characters.
3535 i. A non-zero value for the `rl_complete_suppress_append' variable now causes
3536 no `/' to be appended to a directory name.
3538 j. Fixed forward-word and backward-word to work when words contained
3539 multibyte characters.
3541 k. Fixed a bug in finding the delimiter of a `?' substring when performing
3542 history expansion in a locale that supports multibyte characters.
3544 l. Fixed a memory leak caused by not freeing the timestamp in a history entry.
3546 m. Fixed a bug that caused "\M-x" style key bindings to not obey the setting
3547 of the `convert-meta' variable.
3549 n. Fixed saving and restoring primary prompt when prompting for incremental
3550 and non-incremental searches; search prompts now display multibyte
3551 characters correctly.
3553 o. Fixed a bug that caused keys originally bound to self-insert but shadowed
3554 by a multi-character key sequence to not be inserted.
3556 p. Fixed code so rl_prep_term_function and rl_deprep_term_function aren't
3557 dereferenced if NULL (matching the documentation).
3559 q. Extensive changes to readline to add enough state so that commands
3560 requiring additional characters (searches, multi-key sequences, numeric
3561 arguments, commands requiring an additional specifier character like
3562 vi-mode change-char, etc.) work without synchronously waiting for
3565 r. Lots of changes so readline builds and runs on MinGW.
3567 s. Readline no longer tries to modify the terminal settings when running in
3570 t. The Readline display code no longer sets the location of the last invisible
3571 character in the prompt if the \[\] sequence is empty.
3573 3. New Features in Bash
3575 a. Bash now understands LC_TIME as a special variable so that time display
3576 tracks the current locale.
3578 b. BASH_ARGC, BASH_ARGV, BASH_SOURCE, and BASH_LINENO are no longer created
3579 as `invisible' variables and may not be unset.
3581 c. In POSIX mode, if `xpg_echo' option is enabled, the `echo' builtin doesn't
3582 try to interpret any options at all, as POSIX requires.
3584 d. The `bg' builtin now accepts multiple arguments, as POSIX seems to specify.
3586 e. Fixed vi-mode word completion and glob expansion to perform tilde
3589 f. The `**' mathematic exponentiation operator is now right-associative.
3591 g. The `ulimit' builtin has new options: -i (max number of pending signals),
3592 -q (max size of POSIX message queues), and -x (max number of file locks).
3594 h. A bare `%' once again expands to the current job when used as a job
3597 i. The `+=' assignment operator (append to the value of a string or array) is
3598 now supported for assignment statements and arguments to builtin commands
3599 that accept assignment statements.
3601 j. BASH_COMMAND now preserves its value when a DEBUG trap is executed.
3603 k. The `gnu_errfmt' option is enabled automatically if the shell is running
3604 in an emacs terminal window.
3606 l. New configuration option: --single-help-strings. Causes long help text
3607 to be written as a single string; intended to ease translation.
3609 m. The COMP_WORDBREAKS variable now causes the list of word break characters
3610 to be emptied when the variable is unset.
3612 n. An unquoted expansion of $* when $IFS is empty now causes the positional
3613 parameters to be concatenated if the expansion doesn't undergo word
3616 o. Bash now inherits $_ from the environment if it appears there at startup.
3618 p. New shell option: nocasematch. If non-zero, shell pattern matching ignores
3619 case when used by `case' and `[[' commands.
3621 q. The `printf' builtin takes a new option: -v var. That causes the output
3622 to be placed into var instead of on stdout.
3624 r. By default, the shell no longer reports processes dying from SIGPIPE.
3626 s. Bash now sets the extern variable `environ' to the export environment it
3627 creates, so C library functions that call getenv() (and can't use the
3628 shell-provided replacement) get current values of environment variables.
3630 4. New Features in Readline
3632 a. The key sequence sent by the keypad `delete' key is now automatically
3633 bound to delete-char.
3635 b. A negative argument to menu-complete now cycles backward through the
3638 c. A new bindable readline variable: bind-tty-special-chars. If non-zero,
3639 readline will bind the terminal special characters to their readline
3640 equivalents when it's called (on by default).
3642 d. New bindable command: vi-rubout. Saves deleted text for possible
3643 reinsertion, as with any vi-mode `text modification' command; `X' is bound
3644 to this in vi command mode.
3646 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3647 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.0-release,
3648 and the previous version, bash-3.0-rc1.
3652 a. Fixed a boundary overrun that could cause segmentation faults when the
3653 completion code hands an incomplete construct to the word expansion
3656 b. Changed posix mode behavior so that an error in a variable assignment
3657 preceding a special builtin causes a non-interactive shell to exit.
3659 c. Change the directory expansion portion of the completion code to not
3660 expand embedded command substitutions if the directory name appears in
3663 d. Fixed a problem that caused `bash -r' to turn on restrictions before
3664 reading the startup files.
3666 e. Fixed a problem with the default operation of the `umask' builtin.
3668 2. Changes to Readline
3670 a. Fixed a problem with readline saving the contents of the current line
3671 before beginning a non-interactive search.
3673 b. Fixed a problem with EOF detection when using rl_event_hook.
3675 c. Fixed a problem with the vi mode `p' and `P' commands ignoring numeric
3678 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3679 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.0-rc1,
3680 and the previous version, bash-3.0-beta1.
3684 a. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect behavior when referecing element 0 of
3685 an array using $array, element 0 was unset, and `set -u' was enabled.
3687 b. System-specific changes for: SCO Unix 3.2, Tandem.
3689 c. Fixed a bug that caused inappropriate word splitting when a variable was
3690 expanded within a double-quoted string that also included $@.
3692 d. Fixed a bug that caused `pwd' to not display anything in physical mode
3693 when the file system had changed underneath the shell.
3695 e. Fixed a bug in the pre- and post- increment and decrement parsing in the
3696 expression evaluator that caused errors when the operands and corresponding
3697 operators were separated by whitespace.
3699 f. Fixed a bug that caused `history -p' to add an entry to the history list,
3700 counter to the documentation. (Keeps the history expansions invoked by
3701 emacs-mode command line editing from doing that as well.)
3703 g. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump if `cd' is asked to print out a
3704 pathname longer than PATH_MAX characters.
3706 h. Fixed a bug that caused jobs to be put into the wrong process group under
3707 some circumstances after enabling job control with `set -m'.
3709 i. `unalias' now returns failure if no alias name arguments are supplied.
3711 j. Documented the characters not allowed to appear in an alias name.
3713 k. $* is no longer expanded as if in double quotes when it appears in the
3714 body of a here document, as the SUS seems to require.
3716 l. The `bashbug' script now uses a directory in $TMPDIR for exclusive
3717 access rather than trying to guess how the underlying OS provides for
3718 secure temporary file creation.
3720 m. Fixed a few problems with `cd' and `pwd' when asked to operate on pathnames
3721 longer than PATH_MAX characters.
3723 n. Fixed a memory leak caused when creating multiple local array variables
3724 with identical names.
3726 o. Fixed a problem with calls to getcwd() so that bash now operates better
3727 when the full pathname to the current directory is longer than PATH_MAX
3730 p. The `trap' builtin now reports an error if a single non-signal argument
3733 q. Fixed a bug that caused `umask' to not work correctly when presented
3734 with a mask of all 0s.
3736 r. When `getopts' reaches the end of options, OPTARG is unset, as POSIX
3739 s. Interactive mode now depends on whether or not stdin and stderr are
3740 connected to a tty; formerly it was stdin and stdout. POSIX requires
3743 t. Fixed vi-mode completion to work more as POSIX specifies (e.g., doing the
3744 right kind of filename generation).
3746 2. Changes to Readline
3748 a. Fixed a problem that could cause readline to refer to freed memory when
3749 moving between history lines while doing searches.
3751 b. Improvements to the code that expands and displays prompt strings
3752 containing multibyte characters.
3754 c. Fixed a problem with vi-mode not correctly remembering the numeric argument
3755 to the last `c'hange command for later use with `.'.
3757 d. Fixed a bug in vi-mode that caused multi-digit count arguments to work
3760 e. Fixed a problem in vi-mode that caused the last text modification command
3761 to not be remembered across different command lines.
3763 f. Fixed problems with changing characters and changing case at the end of
3766 3. New Features in Bash
3768 a. The `jobs', `kill', and `wait' builtins now accept job control notation
3769 even if job control is not enabled.
3771 b. The historical behavior of `trap' that allows a missing `action' argument
3772 to cause each specified signal's handling to be reset to its default is
3773 now only supported when `trap' is given a single non-option argument.
3775 4. New Features in Readline
3777 a. When listing completions, directories have a `/' appended if the
3778 `mark-directories' option has been enabled.
3780 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3781 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.0-beta1,
3782 and the previous version, bash-3.0-alpha.
3786 a. Fixes to build correctly when arrays are not compiled into the shell.
3788 b. Fixed command substitution to run any exit trap defined in the command
3789 substitution before returning; the exit trap is not inherited from the
3792 c. Fixes to process group synchronization code so that every child process
3793 attempts to set the terminal's process group; fixes some synchronization
3794 problems on Linux kernels that schedule the child to always run before
3797 d. Fixed processing of octal and hex constants in printf builtin for POSIX.2
3800 e. Fixed a couple of core dumps in the pattern removal code.
3802 f. Fixes to the array subrange extraction code to deal better with sparse
3805 g. Parser errors and other errors that result in the shell exiting now cause
3806 the exit trap to be run.
3808 h. Change the command substitution completion functions to not append any
3809 closing quote, because it would be inserted a closing "`" or ")".
3811 i. Fix history initialization so assignments to $histchars made in startup
3814 j. If an exit trap does not contain a call to `exit', the shell now uses
3815 the exit status of the last command executed before the trap as the exit
3816 status of the shell.
3818 k. The parser now prompts with $PS2 if it reads a newline while parsing a
3819 compound array assignment statement.
3821 l. When performing a compound array assignment, the parser doesn't treat
3822 words of the form [index]=value as assignments if they're the result of
3825 m. Fixed a bug that caused `return' executed in a trap command to make the
3826 shell think it was still running the trap.
3828 n. Fixed the value of errno set by the pathname canonicalization functions.
3830 o. Changed the grammar so that `time' alone on a line times a null command
3831 rather than being a syntax error.
3833 p. The pattern substitution code no longer performs quote removal on the
3834 pattern before trying to match it, as the pattern removal functions do.
3836 q. Fixed a bug that could cause core dumps when checking whether a quoted
3837 command name was being completed.
3839 r. Fixes to the pattern removal and pattern replacement expansions to deal
3840 with multibyte characters better (and faster).
3842 s. Fix to the substring expansion (${param:off[:len]}) to deal with (possibly
3843 multibyte) characters instead of raw bytes.
3845 t. Fixed a bug that caused some key bindings set in an inputrc to be ignored
3848 u. Fixed a bug that caused unsetting a local variable within a function to
3851 v. Fixed a bug that caused invalid variables to be created when using
3854 w. Fixed a bug that caused "$@" to expand incorrectly when used as the right
3855 hand side of a parameter expansion such as ${word:="$@"} if the first
3856 character of $IFS was not a space.
3858 x. Fixed a slight cosmetic problem when printing commands containing a
3859 `>&word' redirection.
3861 y. Fixed a problem that could cause here documents to not be created correctly
3862 if the system temporary directory did not allow writing.
3864 2. Changes to Readline
3866 a. Change to history expansion functions to treat `^' as equivalent to word
3867 one, as the documention states.
3869 b. Some changes to the display code to improve display and redisplay of
3870 multibyte characters.
3872 c. Changes to speed up the multibyte character redisplay code.
3874 d. Fixed a bug in the vi-mode `E' command that caused it to skip over the
3875 last character of a word if invoked while point was on the word's
3876 next-to-last character.
3878 e. Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect filename quoting when
3879 case-insensitive completion was enabled and the word being completed
3880 contained backslashes quoting word break characters.
3882 f. Fixed a bug in redisplay triggered when the prompt string contains
3883 invisible characters.
3885 g. Fixed some display (and other) bugs encountered in multibyte locales
3886 when a non-ascii character was the last character on a line.
3888 h. Fixed some display bugs caused by multibyte characters in prompt strings.
3890 i. Fixed a problem with history expansion caused by non-whitespace characters
3891 used as history word delimiters.
3893 3. New Features in Bash
3895 a. printf builtin understands two new escape sequences: \" and \?.
3897 b. `echo -e' understands two new escape sequences: \" and \?.
3899 c. The GNU `gettext' package and libintl have been integrated; the shell's
3900 messages can be translated into different languages.
3902 d. The `\W' prompt expansion now abbreviates $HOME as `~', like `\w'.
3904 e. The error message printed when bash cannot open a shell script supplied
3905 as argument 1 now includes the name of the shell, to better identify
3906 the error as coming from bash.
3908 4. New Features in Readline
3910 a. New application variable, rl_completion_quote_character, set to any
3911 quote character readline finds before it calls the application completion
3914 b. New application variable, rl_completion_suppress_quote, settable by an
3915 application completion function. If set to non-zero, readline does not
3916 attempt to append a closing quote to a completed word.
3918 c. New application variable, rl_completion_found_quote, set to a non-zero
3919 value if readline determines that the word to be completed is quoted.
3920 Set before readline calls any application completion function.
3922 d. New function hook, rl_completion_word_break_hook, called when readline
3923 needs to break a line into words when completion is attempted. Allows
3924 the word break characters to vary based on position in the line.
3926 e. New bindable command: unix-filename-rubout. Does the same thing as
3927 unix-word-rubout, but adds `/' to the set of word delimiters.
3929 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3930 This document details the changes between this version, bash-3.0-alpha,
3931 and the previous version, bash-2.05b-release.
3935 a. Fixes so that the shell will compile without some of the default options
3938 b. Fixed an error message that did not pass enough arguments to printf.
3940 c. Fixed a bug that caused input redirection to a builtin inside a script
3941 being read from standard input to result in the rest of the already-
3942 read and buffered script to be discarded.
3944 d. Fixed a bug that caused subshell initialization to close the file
3945 descriptor from which the shell was reading a script under certain
3948 e. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to not advance a string pointer over
3949 a null wide character when doing string operations.
3951 f. Fixed the internal logout code so that shells that time out waiting for
3952 input (using $TMOUT) run ~/.bash_logout.
3954 g. Portability and configuration changes for: cygwin, HP/UX, GNU/FreeBSD.
3956 h. The parser no longer adds implicit double quotes to ((...)) arithmetic
3959 i. The ((...)) arithmetic command evaluation code was fixed to not dump core
3960 when the expanded string is null.
3962 j. The ((...)) arithmetic command evaluation code was fixed to not perform
3963 variable assignments while expanding the expression.
3965 k. Fixed a bug that caused word splitting to be performed incorrectly when
3966 IFS is set, but null.
3968 l. Fixed a bug in brace expansion that caused a quoted `$' preceding an
3969 open brace to inhibit brace expansion.
3971 m. Fixed a bug that caused a leading `-' in the shell's name to cause it to
3972 not be recognized as a restricted shell.
3974 n. Fixed a bug in the arithmetic evaluation code that could cause longjmps
3975 to an invalid location and result in a core dump.
3977 o. Fixed a bug in the calculation of how many history lines are new in a
3978 single shell session when reading new history lines from a file with
3981 p. Fixed a bug in pathname canonicalization that caused the shell to dump
3982 core when presented with a pathname longer than PATH_MAX.
3984 q. Fixed the parser so that it doesn't try to compare a char variable to
3985 EOF, which fails when chars are unsigned.
3987 r. Fixed a bug in the simple command execution code that caused occasional
3990 s. The shell does a better job of saving any partial parsing state during
3991 operations which cause a command to be executed while a line is being
3994 t. The completion code now splits words more like the expansion code when
3995 $IFS is used to split.
3997 u. The locale code does a better job of recomputing the various locale
3998 variable values when LC_ALL is unset.
4000 v. The programmable completion code does a better job of dequoting expanded
4001 word lists before comparing them against the word to be matched.
4003 w. The shell no longer seg faults if the expanded value of $PS4 is null
4004 and `set -x' is enabled.
4006 x. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when a here string expanded to NULL.
4008 y. The mail checking code now makes sure the mailbox is bigger before
4009 reporting the existence of new mail.
4011 z. The parser does not try to expand $'...' and $"..." when the appear
4012 within double quotes unless the `extquote' option has been enabled with
4013 `shopt'. For backwards compatibility, it is enabled by default.
4015 aa. Fixed a bug that caused `for x; do ...' and `select x; do ... to use
4016 $@ instead of "$@" for the implicit list of arguments.
4018 bb. Fixed a bug that caused a subshell of a restricted shell (e.g., one
4019 spawned to execute a pipeline) to not exit immediately if attempting
4020 to use a command containing a slash.
4022 cc. Fixed a problem with empty replacements for a pattern that doesn't match
4023 when performing ${param/word/} expansion.
4025 dd. Word expansions performed while expanding redirections no longer search
4026 a command's temporary environment to expand variable values.
4028 ee. Improvements to the alias expansion code when expanding subsequent words
4029 because an aliase's value ends with a space.
4031 ff. `cd -' now prints the current working directory after a successful chdir
4032 even when the shell is not interactive, as the standard requires.
4034 gg. The shell does a better job of ensuring a child process dies of SIGINT
4035 before resending SIGINT to itself.
4037 hh. The arithmetic expansion variable assignment code now does the right
4038 thing when assigning to `special' variables like OPTIND.
4040 ii. When history expansion verification is enabled, the bash readline helper
4041 functions that do history expansion on the current line don't print
4044 jj. Fixed bugs with multiple consecutive alias expansion when one of the
4045 expansions ends with a space.
4047 kk. Fixed a problem in the programmable completion code that could cause core
4048 dumps when trying to initialize a set of possible completions from a
4051 ll. The \[ and \] escape characters are now ignored when decoding the prompt
4052 string if the shell is started with editing disabled.
4054 mm. Fixed a bug that could leave extra characters in a string when doing
4055 quoted null character removal.
4057 nn. Command substitution and other subshell operations no longer reset the
4058 line number (aids the bash debugger).
4060 oo. Better line number management when executing simple commands, conditional
4061 commands, for commands, and select commands.
4063 pp. The globbing code now uses malloc, with its better failure properties,
4064 rather than alloca().
4066 qq. Fixed a bug that caused expansions like #{a[2]:=value} to create the
4067 appropriate array element instead of a variable named `a[2]'.
4069 rr. Fixed a bug in the handling of a `?(...)' pattern immediately following
4070 a `*' when extglob is enabled.
4072 ss. Fixed a bug that caused a `return' invoked in an exit trap when exit is
4073 invoked in a function to misbehave.
4075 tt. Fixed a bug that caused CTLESC and CTLNUL characters to not be escaped
4076 by the internal shell string quoting functions.
4078 uu. Fixed a bug that caused quoted null characters in an expanded word list
4079 to be inappropriately assigned to an array variable when using `read -a'.
4081 vv. Fixed a bug that caused redirections accompanying a null command to persist
4082 in the current shell.
4084 ww. Fixed a bug that caused the prompt to be printed when the shell was
4085 expanding a multiline alias.
4087 xx. Fixed a bug that resulted in core dumps when the completion for a command
4088 changed the compspec.
4090 yy. Fixed a bug that caused evaluation of programmable completions to print
4091 notifications of completed jobs.
4093 zz. Bash now disables line editing when $EMACS == `t' and $TERM == `dumb'
4094 (which is what emacs shell windows do).
4096 aaa. In posix mode, `kill -l' causes signal names to be displayed without
4099 bbb. Clear error flag on standard output so it doesn't persist across multiple
4102 ccc. In posix mode, `alias' displays alias values without the leading `alias',
4103 so the output cannot be used as subsequent input.
4105 ddd. In posix mode, the `trap' builtin doesn't check whether or not its
4106 first argument is a signal specification and revert the signal handling
4107 to its original disposition if it is.
4109 eee. Fixed several bugs in the handling of "$*" and "${array[*]}" by the
4110 pattern substitution and removal expansions.
4112 fff. Fixed several problems with the handling of ${array[@]}, ${array[*]},
4113 $@, and $* by the indirect variable expansion code.
4115 ggg. Fixed a bug that did not allow `time' to be aliased.
4117 hhh. Improved the mail checking code so it won't check (and possibly cause an
4118 NFS file system mount) until MAILPATH or MAIL is given a value -- there
4119 is no default if DEFAULT_MAIL_DIRECTORY is not defined at compile time.
4120 (It is computed by configure, but can be #undef'd in config-bot.h.)
4122 iii. If the `chkwinsize' option is enabled, the shell checks for window size
4123 changes if a child process exits due to a signal.
4125 jjj. Removed the attempts to avoid adding a slash at the end of a completed
4126 executable name if there was a directory with the same name in the
4129 kkk. Fixed PATH lookup code so it treats the permission bits separately for
4130 owner, group, and other, rather than checking them all.
4132 lll. Fixed the locale code to reset the parser's idea of the character class
4133 <blank>, which controls how it splits tokens, when the locale changes.
4135 mmm. The shell now binds its special readline functions and key bindings only
4136 if the user's inputrc file has not already bound them.
4138 nnn. The shell now reports on processes that dump core due to signals when
4139 invoked as `-c command'.
4141 2. Changes to Readline
4143 a. Fixes to avoid core dumps because of null pointer references in the
4144 multibyte character code.
4146 b. Fix to avoid infinite recursion caused by certain key combinations.
4148 c. Fixed a bug that caused the vi-mode `last command' to be set incorrectly.
4150 d. Readline no longer tries to read ahead more than one line of input, even
4151 when more is available.
4153 e. Fixed the code that adjusts the point to not mishandle null wide
4156 f. Fixed a bug in the history expansion `g' modifier that caused it to skip
4159 g. Fixed a bug that caused the prompt to overwrite previous output when the
4160 output doesn't contain a newline and the locale supports multibyte
4161 characters. This same change fixes the problem of readline redisplay
4162 slowing down dramatically as the line gets longer in multibyte locales.
4164 h. History traversal with arrow keys in vi insertion mode causes the cursor
4165 to be placed at the end of the new line, like in emacs mode.
4167 i. The locale initialization code does a better job of using the right
4168 precedence and defaulting when checking the appropriate environment
4171 j. Fixed the history word tokenizer to handle <( and >( better when used as
4174 k. The overwrite mode code received several bug fixes to improve undo.
4176 l. Many speedups to the multibyte character redisplay code.
4178 m. The callback character reading interface should not hang waiting to read
4181 n. Fixed a bug with redoing vi-mode `s' command.
4183 o. The code that initializes the terminal tracks changes made to the terminal
4184 special characters with stty(1) (or equivalent), so that these changes
4185 are reflected in the readline bindings. New application-callable function
4186 to make it work: rl_tty_unset_default_bindings().
4188 p. Fixed a bug that could cause garbage to be inserted in the buffer when
4189 changing character case in vi mode when using a multibyte locale.
4191 q. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code that caused problems on systems
4192 supporting multibyte characters when moving between history lines when the
4193 new line has more glyphs but fewer bytes.
4195 r. Undo and redo now work better after exiting vi insertion mode.
4197 s. Make sure system calls are restarted after a SIGWINCH is received using
4200 t. Improvements to the code that displays possible completions when using
4201 multibyte characters.
4203 u. Fixed a problem when parsing nested if statements in inputrc files.
4205 v. The completer now takes multibyte characters into account when looking for
4206 quoted substrings on which to perform completion.
4208 w. The history search functions now perform better bounds checking on the
4211 3. New Features in Bash
4213 a. ANSI string expansion now implements the \x{hexdigits} escape.
4215 b. There is a new loadable `strftime' builtin.
4217 c. New variable, COMP_WORDBREAKS, which controls the readline completer's
4218 idea of word break characters.
4220 d. The `type' builtin no longer reports on aliases unless alias expansion
4221 will actually be performed.
4223 e. HISTCONTROL is now a colon-separated list of values, which permits
4224 more extensibility and backwards compatibility.
4226 f. HISTCONTROL may now include the `erasedups' option, which causes all lines
4227 matching a line being added to be removed from the history list.
4229 g. `configure' has a new `--enable-multibyte' argument that permits multibyte
4230 character support to be disabled even on systems that support it.
4232 h. New variables to support the bash debugger: BASH_ARGC, BASH_ARGV,
4233 BASH_SOURCE, BASH_LINENO, BASH_SUBSHELL, BASH_EXECUTION_STRING,
4236 i. FUNCNAME has been changed to support the debugger: it's now an array
4239 j. for, case, select, arithmetic commands now keep line number information
4242 k. There is a new `RETURN' trap executed when a function or sourced script
4243 returns (not inherited child processes; inherited by command substitution
4244 if function tracing is enabled and the debugger is active).
4246 l. New invocation option: --debugger. Enables debugging and turns on new
4247 `extdebug' shell option.
4249 m. New `functrace' and `errtrace' options to `set -o' cause DEBUG and ERR
4250 traps, respectively, to be inherited by shell functions. Equivalent to
4251 `set -T' and `set -E' respectively. The `functrace' option also controls
4252 whether or not the DEBUG trap is inherited by sourced scripts.
4254 n. The DEBUG trap is run before binding the variable and running the action
4255 list in a `for' command, binding the selection variable and running the
4256 query in a `select' command, and before attempting a match in a `case'
4259 o. New `--enable-debugger' option to `configure' to compile in the debugger
4262 p. `declare -F' now prints out extra line number and source file information
4263 if the `extdebug' option is set.
4265 q. If `extdebug' is enabled, a non-zero return value from a DEBUG trap causes
4266 the next command to be skipped, and a return value of 2 while in a
4267 function or sourced script forces a `return'.
4269 r. New `caller' builtin to provide a call stack for the bash debugger.
4271 s. The DEBUG trap is run just before the first command in a function body is
4272 executed, for the debugger.
4274 t. `for', `select', and `case' command heads are printed when `set -x' is
4277 u. There is a new {x..y} brace expansion, which is shorthand for {x.x+1,
4278 x+2,...,y}. x and y can be integers or single characters; the sequence
4279 may ascend or descend; the increment is always 1.
4281 v. New ksh93-like ${!array[@]} expansion, expands to all the keys (indices)
4284 w. New `force_fignore' shopt option; if enabled, suffixes specified by
4285 FIGNORE cause words to be ignored when performing word completion even
4286 if they're the only possibilities.
4288 x. New `gnu_errfmt' shopt option; if enabled, error messages follow the `gnu
4289 style' (filename:lineno:message) format.
4291 y. New `-o bashdefault' option to complete and compgen; if set, causes the
4292 whole set of bash completions to be performed if the compspec doesn't
4295 z. New `-o plusdirs' option to complete and compgen; if set, causes directory
4296 name completion to be performed and the results added to the rest of the
4297 possible completions.
4299 aa. `kill' is available as a builtin even when the shell is built without
4302 bb. New HISTTIMEFORMAT variable; value is a format string to pass to
4303 strftime(3). If set and not null, the `history' builtin prints out
4304 timestamp information according to the specified format when displaying
4305 history entries. If set, bash tells the history library to write out
4306 timestamp information when the history file is written.
4308 cc. The [[ ... ]] command has a new binary `=~' operator that performs
4309 extended regular expression (egrep-like) matching.
4311 dd. `configure' has a new `--enable-cond-regexp' option (enabled by default)
4312 to enable the =~ operator and regexp matching in [[ ... ]].
4314 ee. Subexpressions matched by the =~ operator are placed in the new
4315 BASH_REMATCH array variable.
4317 ff. New `failglob' option that causes an expansion error when pathname
4318 expansion fails to produce a match.
4320 gg. New `set -o pipefail' option that causes a pipeline to return a failure
4321 status if any of the processes in the pipeline fail, not just the last
4324 4. New Features in Readline
4326 a. History expansion has a new `a' modifier equivalent to the `g' modifier
4327 for compatibility with the BSD csh.
4329 b. History expansion has a new `G' modifier equivalent to the BSD csh `g'
4330 modifier, which performs a substitution once per word.
4332 c. All non-incremental search operations may now undo the operation of
4333 replacing the current line with the history line.
4335 d. The text inserted by an `a' command in vi mode can be reinserted with
4338 e. New bindable variable, `show-all-if-unmodified'. If set, the readline
4339 completer will list possible completions immediately if there is more
4340 than one completion and partial completion cannot be performed.
4342 f. There is a new application-callable `free_history_entry()' function.
4344 g. History list entries now contain timestamp information; the history file
4345 functions know how to read and write timestamp information associated
4348 h. Four new key binding functions have been added:
4350 rl_bind_key_if_unbound()
4351 rl_bind_key_if_unbound_in_map()
4352 rl_bind_keyseq_if_unbound()
4353 rl_bind_keyseq_if_unbound_in_map()
4355 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4356 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-release,
4357 and the previous version, bash-2.05b-beta2.
4361 a. Fixed an off-by-one error in the function that translates job
4364 b. Note that we're running under Emacs and disable line editing if
4367 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4368 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-beta2,
4369 and the previous version, bash-2.05b-beta1.
4373 a. Fixed the /= and %= arithmetic operators to catch division by zero.
4375 b. Added putenv, setenv, unsetenv to getenv replacement for completeness.
4377 c. Fixed a bug that could cause the -O expand_aliases invocation option
4380 d. Fixed a problem with process substitution that resulted in incorrect
4381 behavior when the number of process substitutions in an individual
4382 command approached 64.
4384 2. Changes to Readline
4386 a. Fixed a problem with backward-char-search when on a system with support
4387 for multibyte characters when running in a locale without any multibyte
4390 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4391 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-beta1,
4392 and the previous version, bash-2.05b-alpha1.
4396 a. Fixed a problem when parsing a POSIX.2 character class name while
4397 evaluating a bracket expression containing multibyte characters.
4399 b. Changed the help text for `bind' to make it clear that any command
4400 that may be placed in ~/.inputrc is a valid argument to `bind'.
4402 c. Added `help' builtin entries for `((', `[[', and arithmetic for.
4404 d. malloc updated again:
4405 o slightly better overflow and underflow detection by putting the
4406 chunk size at the beginning and end of the chunk and making
4407 sure they match in free/realloc
4408 o partial page allocated to make things page-aligned no longer
4410 o block coalescing now enabled by default
4411 o splitting and coalescing enabled for 32-byte chunks, the most
4412 common size requested
4413 o fixed a problem that resulted in spurious underflow messages and
4415 o bin sizes are precomputed and stored in an array rather than
4416 being computed at run time
4417 o malloc will return memory blocks back to the system if the block
4418 being freed is at the top of the heap and of sufficient size to
4420 o malloc/free/realloc now inline memset instead of calling the
4421 libc function; uses Duff's device for good performance
4423 e. Check for getservent(); make the service name completion code dependent
4426 f. Changed the readline callback that executes a command bound to a key
4427 sequence to not save the executed command on the history list and to
4428 save and restore the parsing state.
4430 g. Changes to lib/sh/snprintf.c: fixed some bugs in the `g' and `G'
4431 floating point format display; implemented the "'" flag character
4432 that turns on thousands' grouping; fixed behavior on systems where
4433 MB_CUR_MAX does not evaluate to a constant.
4435 h. The `unset' builtin no longer returns a failure status when asked to
4436 unset a previously-unset variable or function.
4438 i. Changes to the build system to make it easier to cross-compile bash
4439 for different systems.
4441 j. Added `,' to the characters that are backslash-escaped during filename
4442 completion, to avoid problems with complete-into-braces and RCS filenames
4445 k. Some changes to the multibyte character support code to avoid many calls
4448 l. Bash now correctly honors setting LANG to some value when LC_ALL does not
4449 already have a value.
4451 m. Fixed a bug that could cause SIGSEGV when processing nested traps with
4454 n. The `source/.' builtin now restores the positional parameters when it
4455 returns unless they were changed using the `set' builtin during the file's
4458 o. Fixed a bug that caused a syntax error when a command was terminated by
4461 2. New Features in Bash
4463 a. There is now support for placing the long help text into separate files
4464 installed into ${datadir}/bash. Not enabled by default; can be turned
4465 on with `--enable-separate-helpfiles' option to configure.
4467 b. All builtins that take operands accept a `--' pseudo-option, except
4470 c. The `echo' builtin now accepts \0xxx (zero to three octal digits following
4471 the `0') in addition to \xxx (one to three octal digits) for SUSv3/XPG6/
4472 POSIX.1-2001 compliance.
4474 3. Changes to Readline
4476 a. Fixed a small problem in _rl_insert_char with multibyte characters.
4478 b. Fixes from IBM for line wrapping problems when using multibyte characters.
4480 c. Fixed a problem which caused the display to be messed up when the last
4481 line of a multi-line prompt (possibly containing invisible characters)
4482 was longer than the screen width.
4484 d. Fixed a problem with the vi-mode `r' command that ocurred on systems with
4485 support for multibyte characters when running in a locale without any
4486 multibyte characters.
4488 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4489 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05b-alpha1,
4490 and the previous version, bash-2.05a-release.
4494 a. Some changes to work around inlining differences between compilers.
4496 b. Added more prototypes for internal shell typedefs, to catch argument
4497 passing errors when using pointers to functions.
4499 c. The `cd' builtin now fails in posix mode when a valid directory cannot be
4500 constructed from a relative pathname argument and the $PWD using pathname
4501 canonicalization, and the -P option has not been supplied. Previously,
4502 the shell would attempt to use what the user typed, leading to weird
4503 values for $PWD and discrepancies between the value of $PWD and the
4504 actual working directory.
4506 d. The `cd' builtin now resets $PWD when canonicalization fails but a chdir
4507 to the pathname passed as an argument succeeds (when not in posix mode).
4509 e. The `fc' builtin has been fixed, as POSIX requires, to use the closest
4510 history position in range when given an out-of-range argument.
4512 f. The history file loading code was changed to allow lines to be saved in
4513 the history list from the shell startup files.
4515 g. `history -s args' now works better in compound commands.
4517 h. The tilde expansion code was fixed to better recognize when it's being
4518 invoked in an assignment context, which enables expansion after `='
4521 i. Fixed the command name completion code so a slash is no longer appended
4522 to a single match if there happens to be a directory with that name in
4525 j. Fixed compound array assignment to no longer perform alias expansion, to
4526 allow reserved words as array members, and to not produce extra output
4527 when the `-v' option had been enabled.
4529 k. Fixed the programmable completion code to better handle newlines in lists
4530 of possible completions (e.g., `complete -W').
4532 l. Removed the reserved words from the `bash-builtins' manual page.
4534 m. Parser error reporting now attempts to do a better job of identifying the
4535 token in error rather than doing straight textual analysis.
4537 n. Fixes for Inf/NaN, locales, wide/multibyte characters and zero-length
4538 arguments in the library snprintf(3) replacement.
4540 o. `read -e' no longer does command name completion on the first word on
4541 the line being read.
4543 p. `select' now returns failure if the read of the user's selection fails.
4545 q. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when setting $PIPESTATUS.
4547 r. Fixes to not allocate so many job slots when the shell is running a loop
4548 with job control enabled in a subshell of an interactive shell.
4550 s. Fixed a bug in the trap code that caused traps to be inherited by
4551 command substitutions in some cases.
4553 t. Fixed a bug that could cause alias expansion to inappropriately expand
4554 the word following the alias.
4556 u. Fixed a bug in the `kill' builtin that mishandled negative pid arguments.
4558 v. The parser is less lenient when parsing assignment statements where the
4559 characters before the `=' don't comprise a valid identifier.
4561 w. The arithmetic expression evaluation code now honors the setting of the
4562 `-u' option when expanding variable names.
4564 x. Fixed the arithmetic evaluation code to allow array subscripts to be
4565 assigned (`let b[7]=42') and auto-incremented and auto-decremented
4568 y. Reimplemented the existing prompt string date and time expansions using
4569 strftime(3), which changed the output of \@ in some locales.
4571 z. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when a special shell variable
4572 (like RANDOM) was converted to an array with a variable assignment.
4574 aa. Fixed a bug that would reset the handler for a signal the user had
4575 trapped to a function that would exit the shell when setting the exit
4576 trap in a non-interactive shell.
4578 bb. Changed the execve(2) wrapper code to check whether or not a failing
4579 command is a directory before looking at whether a `#!' interpreter
4580 failed for some reason.
4582 cc. Fixed a bug in the command printing code so it no longer inserts a `;'
4583 after a newline, which produces a syntax error when reused as input.
4585 dd. The code that expands $PS4 no longer inherits the `-x' flag.
4587 ee. The bash-specific completion functions may now take advantage of the
4588 double-TAB and M-? features of the standard readline completion
4591 ff. The mail checking code no longer prints a message if the checked file's
4592 size has not increased, even if the access time is less than the modification time.
4594 gg. Rewrote the variable symbol table code: there is now a stack of
4595 contexts, each possibly including a separate symbol table; there can
4596 be more than one temporary environment supplied to nested invocations
4597 of `./source'; the temporary environments no longer require so much
4598 special-case code; shell functions now handle the temporary environment
4599 and local variables more consistently; function scope exit is faster now
4600 that the entire symbol table does not have to be traversed to dispose of
4601 local variables; it is now easier to push vars from the temporary
4602 environment to the shell's variable table in posix mode; some duplicated
4603 code has been removed.
4605 hh. Regularized the error message printing code; builtin_error is now called
4606 more consistently, and common error message strings are handled by small
4607 functions. This should make eventual message translation easier.
4609 ii. Error messages now include the line number in a script when the shell
4612 jj. Array subscript expansion now takes place even when the array variable is
4613 unset, so side effects will take place.
4615 kk. Fixed a bug in the SICGHLD child-reaping code so that it won't find
4616 jobs already marked as terminated if the OS reuses pids quickly enough.
4618 ll. Fixed a bug that could cause a signal to not interrupt the `wait'
4619 builtin while it was waiting for a background process to terminate.
4621 mm. A couple of changes to make it easier for multiple shells to share history
4622 files using `history -n', `history -r', and `history -w'.
4624 nn. The `getopts' builtin always increments OPTIND to point to the next
4625 option to be handled when an option is returned, whether it's valid
4626 or not, as POSIX 1003.x-2001 requires.
4628 oo. Changed some parts of the expansion code to avoid allocating and
4629 immediately freeing memory without using the results for anything.
4631 pp. The shell now keeps track of $IFS internally, updating its internal map
4632 each time the variable is assigned a new value (or at local scope exit).
4633 This saves thousands of hash lookups for IFS, which, while individually
4636 qq. Rewrote the hash table code: searching and insertion are much faster now,
4637 and it uses a better string hashing function; augmented the function
4638 interface to simplify other parts of the code and remove duplicated code
4640 rr. The shell now uses a simple, generic `object cache' for allocating and
4641 caching words and word lists, which were the major users of
4644 ss. Fixed the assignment statement parsing code to allow whitespace and
4645 newlines in subscripts when performing array element assignment.
4647 tt. The shell now issues many fewer calls to sigprocmask and other signal
4648 masking system calls.
4650 uu. Fixed the `test' and conditional command file comparison operators to
4651 work right when one file has a non-positive timestamp and the other
4654 vv. Fixed some cases where the special characters '\001' and '\177' in the
4655 values of variables or positional parameters caused incorrect expansion
4658 2. Changes to Readline
4660 a. Fixed output of comment-begin character when listing variable values.
4662 b. Added some default key bindings for common escape sequences produced by
4665 c. Fixed the mark handling code to be more emacs-compatible.
4667 d. A bug was fixed in the code that prints possible completions to keep it
4668 from printing empty strings in certain circumstances.
4670 e. Change the key sequence printing code to print ESC as M\- if ESC is a
4671 meta-prefix character -- it's easier for users to understand than \e.
4673 f. Fixed unstifle_history() to return values that match the documentation.
4675 g. Fixed the event loop (rl_event_hook) to handle the case where the input
4676 file descriptor is invalidated.
4678 h. Fixed the prompt display code to work better when the application has a
4679 custom redisplay function.
4681 i. Changes to make reading and writing the history file a little faster, and
4682 to cope with huge history files without calling abort(3) from xmalloc.
4684 j. The vi-mode `S' and `s' commands are now undone correctly.
4686 3. New Features in Bash
4688 a. If set, TMOUT is the default timeout for the `read' builtin.
4690 b. `type' has two new options: `-f' suppresses shell function lookup, and
4691 `-P' forces a $PATH search.
4693 c. New code to handle multibyte characters.
4695 d. `select' was changed to be more ksh-compatible, in that the menu is
4696 reprinted each time through the loop only if REPLY is set to NULL.
4697 The previous behavior is available as a compile-time option.
4699 e. `complete -d' and `complete -o dirnames' now force a slash to be
4700 appended to names which are symlinks to directories.
4702 f. There is now a bindable edit-and-execute-command readline command,
4703 like the vi-mode `v' command, bound to C-xC-e in emacs mode.
4705 g. Added support for ksh93-like [:word:] character class in pattern matching.
4707 h. The $'...' quoting construct now expands \cX to Control-X.
4709 i. A new \D{...} prompt expansion; passes the `...' to strftime and inserts
4710 the result into the expanded prompt.
4712 j. The shell now performs arithmetic in the largest integer size the
4713 machine supports (intmax_t), instead of long.
4715 k. If a numeric argument is supplied to one of the bash globbing completion
4716 functions, a `*' is appended to the word before expansion is attempted.
4718 l. The bash globbing completion functions now allow completions to be listed
4719 with double tabs or if `show-all-if-ambiguous' is set.
4721 m. New `-o nospace' option for `complete' and `compgen' builtins; suppresses
4722 readline's appending a space to the completed word.
4724 n. New `here-string' redirection operator: <<< word.
4726 o. When displaying variables, function attributes and definitions are shown
4727 separately, allowing them to be re-used as input (attempting to re-use
4728 the old output would result in syntax errors).
4730 p. There is a new configuration option `--enable-mem-scramble', controls
4731 bash malloc behavior of writing garbage characters into memory at
4732 allocation and free time.
4734 q. The `complete' and `compgen' builtins now have a new `-s/-A service'
4735 option to complete on names from /etc/services.
4737 r. `read' has a new `-u fd' option to read from a specified file descriptor.
4739 s. Fix the completion code so that expansion errors in a directory name
4740 don't cause a longjmp back to the command loop.
4742 t. Fixed word completion inside command substitution to work a little more
4745 u. The `printf' %q format specifier now uses $'...' quoting to print the
4746 argument if it contains non-printing characters.
4748 v. The `declare' and `typeset' builtins have a new `-t' option. When applied
4749 to functions, it causes the DEBUG trap to be inherited by the named
4750 function. Currently has no effect on variables.
4752 w. The DEBUG trap is now run *before* simple commands, ((...)) commands,
4753 [[...]] conditional commands, and for ((...)) loops.
4755 x. The expansion of $LINENO inside a shell function is only relative to the
4756 function start if the shell is interactive -- if the shell is running a
4757 script, $LINENO expands to the line number in the script. This is as
4758 POSIX-2001 requires.
4760 y. The bash debugger in examples/bashdb has been modified to work with the
4761 new DEBUG trap semantics, the command set has been made more gdb-like,
4762 and the changes to $LINENO make debugging functions work better. Code
4765 z. New [n]<&word- and [n]>&word- redirections from ksh93 -- move fds (dup
4768 aa. There is a new `-l' invocation option, equivalent to `--login'.
4770 bb. The `hash' builtin has a new `-l' option to list contents in a reusable
4771 format, and a `-d' option to remove a name from the hash table.
4773 4. New Features in Readline
4775 a. Support for key `subsequences': allows, e.g., ESC and ESC-a to both
4776 be bound to readline functions. Now the arrow keys may be used in vi
4779 b. When listing completions, and the number of lines displayed is more than
4780 the screen length, readline uses an internal pager to display the results.
4781 This is controlled by the `page-completions' variable (default on).
4783 c. New code to handle editing and displaying multibyte characters.
4785 d. The behavior introduced in bash-2.05a of deciding whether or not to
4786 append a slash to a completed name that is a symlink to a directory has
4787 been made optional, controlled by the `mark-symlinked-directories'
4788 variable (default is the 2.05a behavior).
4790 e. The `insert-comment' command now acts as a toggle if given a numeric
4791 argument: if the first characters on the line don't specify a
4792 comment, insert one; if they do, delete the comment text
4794 f. New application-settable completion variable:
4795 rl_completion_mark_symlink_dirs, allows an application's completion
4796 function to temporarily override the user's preference for appending
4797 slashes to names which are symlinks to directories.
4799 g. New function available to application completion functions:
4800 rl_completion_mode, to tell how the completion function was invoked
4801 and decide which argument to supply to rl_complete_internal (to list
4804 h. Readline now has an overwrite mode, toggled by the `overwrite-mode'
4805 bindable command, which could be bound to `Insert'.
4807 i. New application-settable completion variable:
4808 rl_completion_suppress_append, inhibits appending of
4809 rl_completion_append_character to completed words.
4811 j. New key bindings when reading an incremental search string: ^W yanks
4812 the currently-matched word out of the current line into the search
4813 string; ^Y yanks the rest of the current line into the search string,
4814 DEL or ^H deletes characters from the search string.
4816 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4817 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05a-release,
4818 and the previous version, bash-2.05a-rc1.
4822 a. Fixed the `printf' builtin so that the variable name supplied as an
4823 argument to a %n conversion must be a valid shell identifier.
4825 b. Improved the random number generator slightly.
4827 c. Changes to configuration to not put -I/usr/include into $CFLAGS, since
4828 it messes up some includes.
4830 d. Corrected description of POSIXLY_CORRECT in man page and info manual.
4832 e. Fixed a couple of cases of incorrect function prototypes that sneaked
4833 through and caused compilation problems.
4835 f. A few changes to avoid potential core dumps in the programmable completion
4838 g. Fixed a configure problem that could cause a non-existent file to show
4841 h. Fixed a configure problem that could cause siglist.o to not be built when
4844 i. Changes to the strtoimax and strtoumax replacement functions to work
4845 around buggy compilers.
4847 j. Fixed a problem with the snprintf replacement function that could
4848 potentially cause a core dump.
4850 2. Changes to Readline
4852 a. Fixed a locale-specific problem in the vi-mode `goto mark' command.
4854 b. Fixed Makefile to not put -I/usr/include into CFLAGS, since it can cause
4855 include file problems.
4857 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4858 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05a-rc1,
4859 and the previous version, bash-2.05a-beta1.
4863 a. Fixed the snprintf replacement to correctly implement the `alternate form'
4864 of the %g and %G conversions.
4866 b. Fixed snprintf to correctly handle the optional precision with the %g and
4869 c. Fixed the arithmetic evaluation code to correct the values of `@' and `_'
4870 when translating base-64 constants (they were backwards).
4872 d. New library functions for formatting long and long long ints.
4874 e. Fixed a few places where negative array subscripts could have occurred,
4875 mostly as the result of systems using signed characters.
4877 f. Fixed a few places that assumed a pid_t was no wider than an int.
4879 g. Fixed the `maildir' mail checking code to work on systems where a
4880 `struct stat' doesn't include an `st_blocks' member.
4882 h. Fixed snprintf to make `unsigned long long' conversion formats (%llu)
4885 i. Fixed snprintf to not print a sign when asked to do an unsigned conversion.
4887 j. Made configure changes to avoid compiling empty source files in lib/sh.
4889 k. New replacement functions (if necessary) for strtoull, strtoll, strtoimax,
4892 l. The `printf' builtin now handles the `ll' and `j' length modifiers
4893 directly, since they can affect the type and width of the argument
4894 passed to printf(3).
4896 m. Renamed a number of the bash-specific autoconf macros in aclocal.m4 to
4897 have more sytematic naming, with accompanying changes to configure.in.
4899 n. Fixed snprintf to handle long doubles and the %a/%A conversions by
4900 falling back to sprintf, as long as sprintf supports them.
4902 o. Fixed return value from vsnprintf/snprintf to be the number of characters
4903 that would have been printed, even if that number exceeds the buffer
4904 size passed as an argument.
4906 p. Bash no longer attempts to define its own versions of some ctype macros
4907 if they are implemented as functions in libc but not as macros in
4910 q. Changed the variable printing code (used by `set', `export', etc.) to
4911 not use the $'...' syntax when in posix mode, since that caused
4912 interoperability problems with other shells (most notably with autoconf).
4913 When not in posix mode, it uses $'...' if the string to be printed
4914 contains non-printing characters and regular single quotes otherwise.
4916 r. snprintf now recognizes the %F conversion.
4918 s. Fixed a bug that could cause the wrong status to be returned by a shell
4919 function when the shell is compiled without job control and a null
4920 command containing a command substutition was executed in the function.
4922 t. When in posix mode, the default value for MAILCHECK is 600.
4924 u. Bash only initializes FUNCNAME, GROUPS, and DIRSTACK as special variables
4925 if they're not in the initial environment.
4927 v. If SECONDS appears in the initial environment with a valid integer value,
4928 bash uses that as the starting value, as if an assignment had been
4931 w. Bash no longer auto-exports HOME, PATH, SHELL, or TERM, even though it
4932 gives them default values if they don't appear in the initial environment.
4934 x. Bash no longer auto-exports HOSTNAME, HOSTTYPE, MACHTYPE, or OSTYPE,
4935 even if it assigns them default values.
4937 y. Bash no longer removes the export attribute from SSH_CLIENT or SSH2_CLIENT
4938 if they appear in the initial environment.
4940 z. Bash no longer attempts to discover if it's being run by sshd in order to
4941 run the startup files. If the SSH_SOURCE_BASHRC is uncommented in
4942 config-top.h it will attempt to do so as previously, but that's commented
4943 out in the distributed version.
4945 aa. Fixed a typo in the code that tests for LC_NUMERIC.
4947 bb. The POSIXLY_CORRECT shell variable and its effects are now documented.
4949 cc. Some changes to several of the support shell scripts included in the
4950 definitions to try to avoid race conditions and attacks.
4952 dd. Several changes to avoid warnings from `gcc -Wall'.
4954 ee. Fixed a problem with the `unset' builtin that could cause incorrect
4955 results if asked to unset a variable and an array subscript in the
4958 ff. A few changes to the shell's temporary file creation code to avoid
4959 potential file descriptor leaks and to prefer the system's idea of
4960 the temporary directory to use.
4962 gg. Fixes to build with the C alloca in lib/malloc/alloca.c if the system
4963 requires it but the shell has been configured --without-bash-malloc.
4965 hh. Updated the documentation to note that only interactive shells resend
4966 SIGHUP to all jobs before exiting.
4968 ii. Fixes to only pass unquoted tilde words to tilde_expand, rather than
4969 rely on tilde_expand or getpwnam(3) to handle the quotes (MacOS 10.x
4970 will remove backslashes in any login name passed to getpwnam(3)).
4972 jj. Small change from Paul Eggert to make LINENO right in commands run with
4975 2. New Features in Bash
4977 a. The `printf' builtin now handles the %a and %A conversions if they're
4978 implemented by printf(3).
4980 b. The `printf' builtin now handles the %F conversion (just about like %f).
4982 c. The `printf' builtin now handles the %n conversion like printf(3). The
4983 corresponding argument is the name of a shell variable to which the
4986 3. Changes to Readline
4988 a. Fixed a few places where negative array subscripts could have occurred.
4990 b. Fixed the vi-mode code to use a better method to determine the bounds of
4991 the array used to hold the marks.
4993 c. Fixed the defines in chardefs.h to work better when chars are signed.
4995 d. Fixed configure.in to use the new names for bash autoconf macros.
4997 e. Readline no longer attempts to define its own versions of some ctype
4998 macros if they are implemented as functions in libc but not as macros in
5001 f. Fixed a problem where rl_backward could possibly set point to before
5002 the beginning of the line.
5004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5005 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05a-beta1,
5006 and the previous version, bash-2.05a-alpha1.
5010 a. Fixed a bug in the evalution of arithmetic `for' statements when the
5011 expanded expression is NULL.
5013 b. Fixed an unassigned variable problem in the redirection printing code.
5015 c. Added more prototypes to extern function declarations in the header
5016 files and to static function declarations in C source files.
5018 d. Make sure called functions have a prototype in scope, to get the arguments
5019 and return values right instead of casting. Removed extern function
5020 declarations from C source files that were already included in header
5023 e. Changed some function arguments to use function typedefs in general.h so
5024 the prototypes can be checked. The only use of Function and VFunction
5025 now is for unwind-protects.
5027 f. More const changes to function arguments and appropriate variables.
5029 g. Changed the mail checking support to handle `maildir'-style mail
5032 h. Augmented the bash malloc to pass in the file and line number information
5033 for each malloc, realloc, and free. This should result in better error
5036 i. The `old' gnu malloc is no longer a configuration option.
5038 j. Augmented the bash malloc with optional tracing and registering allocated
5041 k. Prompt string decoding now saves and restores the value of $? when it
5042 expands the prompt string, so command substitutions don't change $?.
5044 i. Array indices are now `long', since shell arithmetic is performed as long,
5045 and the internal arrayind_t type is used consistently.
5047 j. Some more `unsigned char *' fixes from Paul Eggert.
5049 k. Fixed a bad call to builtin_error that could cause core dumps when making
5052 l. `return' may no longer be used to terminate a `select' command, for
5053 compatibility with ksh.
5055 m. Changed code that reads octal numbers to do a better job of detecting
5058 n. The time formatting code no longer uses absolute indices into a buffer,
5059 because the buffer size changes depending on the size of a `time_t'.
5061 o. `umask' now prints four digits when printing in octal mode, for
5062 compatibility with other shells.
5064 p. Lots of changes to the `printf' builtin from Paul Eggert: it handles `L'
5065 formats and long doubles better, and internal functions have been
5066 simpified where appropriate.
5068 q. Some `time_t' fixes for machines were a time_t is bigger than a long.
5070 r. Replaced some bash-specific autoconf macros with standard equivalents.
5072 s. Improvmed the code that constructs temporary filenames to make the
5073 generated names a bit more random.
5075 t. Added code that checks for ascii before calling any of the is* ctype
5078 u. Changed some places where a `char' was used as an array subscript to use
5079 `unsigned char', since a `char' can be negative if it's signed by default.
5081 v. Lots of changes to the `ulimit' builtin from Paul Eggert to add support
5082 for the new POSIX-200x RLIM_SAVED_CUR and RLIM_SAVED_MAX values and
5085 w. `ulimit' now prints the description of a resource in any error message
5086 relating to fetching or setting that resource's limits.
5088 x. The `snprintf' replacement now computes maximum values at compile
5089 time rather than using huge constants for things like long long.
5091 y. Interactive shells now ignore `set -n'.
5093 z. Changed the malloc bookkeeping information so that it's now 8 bytes
5094 instead of 12 on most 32-bit machines (saving 4 bytes per allocation),
5095 restoring 8-byte alignment.
5097 aa. The malloc error reporting code now attempts to print the file and line
5098 number of the call that caused the error.
5100 bb. Changed the redirection error reporting code to catch EBADF errors and
5101 report the file descriptor number rather than the file being redirected
5102 to or from (e.g., things like `exec 4242<x' where 4242 is an out-of-range
5105 cc. `printf', `echo -e', and the $'...' code now process only two hex digits
5106 after a `\x' escape sequence for compatibility with other shells, and
5107 the documentation was changed to note that the octal and hex escape
5108 sequences result in an eight-bit value rather than strict ASCII.
5110 2. Changes to Readline
5112 a. The completion code now attempts to do a better job of preserving the
5113 case of the word the user typed if ignoring case in completions.
5115 b. Readline defaults to not echoing the input and lets the terminal
5116 initialization code enable echoing if there is a controlling terminal.
5118 c. The key binding code now processes only two hex digits after a `\x'
5119 escape sequence, and the documentation was changed to note that the
5120 octal and hex escape sequences result in an eight-bit value rather
5123 3. New Features in Bash
5125 a. The builtin `ulimit' now takes two new non-numeric arguments: `hard',
5126 meaning the current hard limit, and `soft', meaning the current soft
5127 limit, in addition to `unlimited'
5129 b. `ulimit' now prints the option letter associated with a particular
5130 resource when printing more than one limit.
5132 c. `ulimit' prints `hard' or `soft' when a value is not `unlimited' but is
5133 one of RLIM_SAVED_MAX or RLIM_SAVED_CUR, respectively.
5135 4. New Features in Readline
5137 a. New bindable variable `history-preserve-point'. If set, the history
5138 code attempts to place the user at the same location on each history
5139 line retrived with previous-history or next-history.
5141 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5142 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05a-alpha1,
5143 and the previous version, bash-2.05-release.
5147 a. Better checks in the redirection code for write errors.
5149 b. bashbug now uses $TMPDIR, defaulting to /tmp, and uses mktemp(1) more
5152 c. System-specific configuration changes for: Interix, OpenBSD, FreeBSD,
5155 d. Some more `const' cleanups through the code.
5157 e. Fixed a typo in the /dev/fd redirection code, better checks for valid
5158 numeric fds in /dev/fd.
5160 f. Fixed many parts of the shell to handle integer overflow more gracefully
5161 and to do more stringent checks for valid numbers.
5163 g. Fixed mksignames to include config.h.
5165 h. Fixed an uninitialized variable problem that could cause the shell to core
5166 dump when replacing characters in a string.
5168 i. New mechanism for updating the patch level when official patches are
5169 released (patchlevel.h).
5171 j. configure.in changed to no longer require external files _distribution and
5174 k. Fixed non-interactive shell initialization problem when bash started as
5177 l. Fixed printf builtin conversion error handling to be POSIX.2-conformant.
5179 m. autoconf-2.52 is now used to build configure; autoconf-2.50 or newer is
5180 required. Some of the bash-specific macros were removed, since they are
5183 n. Startup files and files read with source or `.' are no longer required to
5186 o. Fixed core dump in builtin printf when user-supplied precision or field
5189 p. Fixed builtin printf to treat a negative field width as a positive field
5190 width with left-justification.
5192 r. New unwind-protect implementation from Paul Eggert.
5194 s. Fixed an inadvertently-unclosed comment in the bash completion code that
5195 caused programmable completions to not add trailing slashes or spaces to
5198 t. Fixed the process substitution code to cope better when stdin is closed.
5200 v. Fixes, mostly from Paul Eggert, for a few possible buffer overflows in
5203 w. Fixes from Paul Eggert to avoid most of the type casts in the shell code,
5204 and use more appropriate types for a number of variables.
5206 x. Command substition no longer inherits the DEBUG trap.
5208 y. Some fixes to the process substition code on machines without /dev/fd so
5209 that named pipes are not removed inappropriately.
5211 z. The loadable `getconf' builtin is now much more complete, and will become
5212 part of the shell in the future.
5214 aa. The select command no longer terminates on a `return', so it can be used
5215 to return from an enclosing function (as ksh does it).
5217 bb. Fixed the extended pattern matching code to behave better when presented
5218 with incorrectly-formed patterns.
5220 cc. Some changes were made with the intent of making cross-compilation easier.
5222 dd. The network code (/dev/tcp and /dev/udp redirections) uses getaddrinfo(3)
5223 if it's available, which adds support for IPv6.
5225 ee. Subshells of login shells no longer source ~/.bash_logout when they exit.
5227 ff. Fixes so that subshells don't exit inappropriately if the -e option has
5230 gg. Restricted shells no longer allow functions to be exported.
5232 hh. Changes to the pattern matching code so extended pattern matching works
5233 on systems with deficient shared library implementations, like MacOS X.
5235 ii. Better error messages when a script with a leading `#!interp' fails
5236 to execute because of problems with `interp'.
5238 jj. Fixed `compgen' to handle the `-o default' option better.
5240 kk. Fixed the job control code to force an asynchronous process's standard
5241 input to /dev/null only if job control is not active.
5243 ll. Fixed a possible infinite recursion problem when `fc ""=abc' (a null
5244 pattern) is used to re-execute a previous command.
5246 mm. Fixed `declare [-a] var=value' to assign VALUE to element 0 if VAR is an
5247 array variable. Similarly for `declare [-a] var[N]=value'. This is like
5250 nn. Fixed a bug that caused `read -a aname' to work even if ANAME had been
5253 oo. Fixed a possible integer overflow problem when constructing names for
5256 2. New Features in Bash
5258 a. Added support for DESTDIR installation root prefix, so you can do a
5259 `make install DESTDIR=bash-root' and do easier binary packaging.
5261 b. Added support for builtin printf "'" flag character as per latest POSIX
5264 c. Support for POSIX.2 printf(1) length specifiers `j', `t', and `z' (from
5267 d. New autoconf macro, RL_LIB_READLINE_VERSION, for use by other applications
5268 (bash doesn't use very much of what it returns).
5270 e. `set [-+]o nolog' is recognized as required by the latest POSIX drafts,
5273 f. New read-only `shopt' option: login_shell. Set to non-zero value if the
5274 shell is a login shell.
5276 g. New `\A' prompt string escape sequence; expands to time in 24 HH:MM format.
5278 h. New `-A group/-g' option to complete and compgen; does group name
5281 i. New `-t' option to `hash' to list hash values for each filename argument.
5283 j. New [-+]O invocation option to set and unset `shopt' options at startup.
5285 k. configure's `--with-installed-readline' option now takes an optional
5286 `=PATH' suffix to set the root of the tree where readline is installed
5289 l. The ksh-like `ERR' trap has been added. The `ERR' trap will be run
5290 whenever the shell would have exited if the -e option were enabled.
5291 It is not inherited by shell functions.
5293 m. `readonly', `export', and `declare' now print variables which have been
5294 given attributes but not set by assigning a value as just a command and
5295 a variable name (like `export foo') when listing, as the latest POSIX
5298 n. `bashbug' now requires that the subject be changed from the default.
5300 o. configure has a new `--enable-largefile' option, like other GNU utilities.
5302 p. `for' loops now allow empty word lists after `in', like the latest POSIX
5305 3. Changes to Readline
5307 a. More `const' and type casting fixes.
5309 b. Changed rl_message() to use vsnprintf(3) (if available) to fix buffer
5312 c. The completion code no longer appends a `/' or ` ' to a match when
5313 completing a symbolic link that resolves to a directory name, unless
5314 the match does not add anything to the word being completed. This
5315 means that a tab will complete the word up to the full name, but not
5316 add anything, and a subsequent tab will add a slash.
5318 d. Fixed a trivial typo that made the vi-mode `dT' command not work.
5320 e. Fixed the tty code so that ^S and ^Q can be inserted with rl_quoted_insert.
5322 f. Fixed the tty code so that ^V works more than once.
5324 g. Changed the use of __P((...)) for function prototypes to PARAMS((...))
5325 because the use of __P in typedefs conflicted g++ and glibc.
5327 4. New Features in Readline
5329 a. Added extern declaration for rl_get_termcap to readline.h, making it a
5330 public function (it was always there, just not in readline.h).
5332 b. New #defines in readline.h: RL_READLINE_VERSION, currently 0x0402,
5333 RL_VERSION_MAJOR, currently 4, and RL_VERSION_MINOR, currently 2.
5335 c. New readline variable: rl_readline_version, mirrors RL_READLINE_VERSION.
5337 d. New bindable boolean readline variable: match-hidden-files. Controls
5338 completion of files beginning with a `.' (on Unix). Enabled by default.
5340 e. The history expansion code now allows any character to terminate a
5341 `:first-' modifier, like csh.
5343 f. The incremental search code remembers the last search string and uses
5344 it if ^R^R is typed without a search string.
5346 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5347 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-release,
5348 and the previous version, bash-2.05-beta2.
5352 a. Make sure we note that the first line of a multi-line command was not
5353 saved in the history if the tests for HISTCONTROL succeed, but the
5354 HISTIGNORE check fails.
5356 b. Fixed a bug in the pattern matching code that caused `[' to be treated
5357 as a special character inside a `[...]' bracket expression.
5359 c. Fixed a bug in the pattern matching code that caused `]' to terminate
5360 a bracket expression even if it was the first character after the `['
5361 (or a leading `!' or `^').
5363 d. Made a small change to report a more user-friendly error message if
5364 execve(2) fails because of an error with the interpreter in a script
5365 with a leading `#! interpreter'.
5367 e. If the OS does not support an exec(2) magic number of `#!', make sure we
5368 have a non-null interpreter name before attempting to execute it.
5370 f. Fixed a bug that caused the shell process to end up in a different
5371 process group than the controlling terminal if a job-control shell was
5372 run with `exec' in the startup files.
5374 g. When started in POSIX mode, either by `bash --posix', `bash -o posix', or
5375 `sh', $SHELLOPTS includes `posix' and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
5377 h. Fixed a problem that caused the `\W' prompt string escape sequence to
5378 expand to nothing when $PWD was `//'.
5380 i. The `bashbug' shell script no longer uses $(...) command substitution.
5382 j. When `set' is invoked without options in POSIX mode, it no longer prints
5383 the names and definitions of shell functions.
5385 2. Changes to Readline
5387 a. rl_set_paren_blink_timeout() is now documented.
5389 b. Corrected history.3 man page: `$' is not in the default value of
5390 history_word_delimiters.
5392 c. If a hook function assigned to rl_event_hook sets rl_done to a non-zero
5393 value, rl_read_key() now immediately returns '\n' (which is assumed to
5394 be bound to accept-line).
5396 3. New Features in Bash
5398 a. The `>&word' redirection now works in POSIX mode as it does by default,
5399 since POSIX.2 leaves it unspecified.
5401 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5402 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-beta2,
5403 and the previous version, bash-2.05-beta1.
5407 a. Fixed a bug in the arithmetic evaluation code so that a^=b is supported.
5409 b. Fixed startup so posixly_correct is retained across subshells begun to
5410 execute scripts without a leading `#!'.
5412 c. Fixed a bug that caused $(< file) to not work in a (...) subshell.
5414 d. Added config support for Linux running on the IBM S390.
5416 e. Fixed a bug that caused bash to get its input pointer out of sync when
5417 reading commands through a pipe and running a command with standard
5418 input redirected from a file.
5420 f. Made a change so that command completion now makes about half as many
5421 stat(2) calls when searching the $PATH.
5423 g. Fixed a bug that caused variable assignments preceding `return' to not
5424 be propagated to the shell environment in POSIX mode.
5426 h. Fixed a bug with ${parameter[:]?word} -- tilde expansion was not performed
5429 i. In POSIX mode, `break' and `continue' do not complain and return success
5430 if called when the shell is not executing a loop.
5432 j. Fixed `bash -o posix' to work the same as `bash --posix'.
5434 k. Fixed a bug where variable assignments preceding `eval' or `source/.'
5435 would not show up in the environment exported to subshells run by the
5438 l. In POSIX mode, shells started to execute command substitutions inherit
5439 the value of the `-e' option from their parent shell.
5441 m. In POSIX mode, aliases are expanded even in non-interactive shells.
5443 n. Changed some of the job control messages to display the text required by
5444 POSIX.2 when the shell is in POSIX mode.
5446 o. Fixed a bug in `test' that caused it to occasionally return incorrect
5447 results when non-numeric arguments were supplied to `-t'.
5449 2. Changes to Readline
5451 a. Some changes were made to avoid gcc warnings with -Wall.
5453 b. rl_get_keymap_by_name now finds keymaps case-insensitively, so
5454 `set keymap EMACS' works.
5456 c. The history file writing and truncation functions now return a useful
5459 d. Fixed a bug that could cause applications to dereference a NULL pointer
5460 if a NULL second argument was passed to history_expand().
5462 3. New Features in Bash
5464 a. doc/readline.3 has been moved to the readline distribution.
5466 4. New Features in Readline
5468 a. New function, rl_get_screen_size (int *rows, int *columns), returns
5469 readline's idea of the screen dimensions.
5471 b. The timeout in rl_gather_tyi (readline keyboard input polling function)
5472 is now settable via a function (rl_set_keyboard_input_timeout()).
5474 c. Renamed the max_input_history variable to history_max_entries; the old
5475 variable is maintained for backwards compatibility.
5477 d. The list of characters that separate words for the history tokenizer is
5478 now settable with a variable: history_word_delimiters. The default
5481 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5482 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-beta1,
5483 and the previous version, bash-2.05-alpha1.
5487 a. Changes to allow shared library and object building on the GNU Hurd.
5489 b. Fixes to the way exported functions are placed into the environment and
5492 c. The globbing library once again respects locales when processing ranges
5493 in bracket expressions while doing pattern matching.
5495 d. System-specific configuration changes for: Tru 64, Interix
5497 e. Bashbug now uses /usr/bin/editor as one of the editing alternatives, and
5498 will use mktemp(1) or tempfile(1), if present, for temporary file creation.
5500 f. Bash no longer performs a binary file check on a script argument that's
5501 really a tty (like /dev/fd/0 or /dev/stdin).
5503 g. Fixed a bug in the execution of shell scripts that caused the effects of
5504 $BASH_ENV to be undone in some cases.
5506 h. Fixed several bugs that made `bash [-i] /dev/stdin' not work correctly.
5508 i. Several changes to the job control code to avoid some signal state
5511 j. The Bash malloc no longer blocks signals as often, which should make it
5514 k. Fixed a parsing bug that did not allow backslash to escape a single quote
5515 inside a $'...' construct.
5517 l. Fixed a bug that caused things like ${var:=$'value'} to be parsed
5518 incorrectly. This showed up in newer versions of autoconf.
5520 m. Fixed a bug in the bash-specific readline initialization that caused
5521 key bindings to bash-specific function names appearing in .inputrc to
5524 n. Bash now sets the file descriptor it uses to save the file descriptor
5525 opened on a shell script to close on exec.
5527 o. Fixed a bug in the prompt string decoding that caused it to misbehave
5528 when presented an octal sequence of fewer than three characters.
5530 p. Fixed the `test' builtin to return an error if `[' is supplied a single
5531 argument that is not `]'.
5533 q. Fixed a bug that caused subshells started to run executable shell scripts
5534 without a leading `#!' to incorrectly inherit an argument list preceding
5535 a shell builtin (like such a script called from a script sourced with `.',
5536 where there were variable assignments preceding the `.' command)
5538 r. Fixed a bug that caused changes to variables supplied in an assignment
5539 statement preceding a shell builtin to not be honored (like a script
5542 s. HOSTTYPE, OSTYPE, and MACHTYPE are set only if they do not have values
5543 when the shell is started.
5545 t. Fixed a bug that caused SIGINT to kill shell scripts after the script
5548 u. The `fc' builtin now tries to create its temporary files in the directory
5551 v. Bash no longer calls any Readline functions or uses any Readline variables
5552 not declared in readline.h.
5554 w. Fixed a bug that caused some substitutions involving $@ to not be split
5555 correctly, especially expansions of the form ${paramterOPword}.
5557 x. SSH2_CLIENT is now treated like SSH_CLIENT and not auto-exported if it
5558 appears in the initial environment.
5560 y. Fixed a couple of problems with shell scripts without a leading `#!'
5561 being executed out of shell functions that could cause core dumps if
5562 such a script attempted to execute `return'.
5564 z. Fixed a problem with the `-nt' and `-ot' binary operators for the
5565 `test/[' builtin and the `[[' conditional command that caused wrong
5566 return values if one of the file arguments did not exist.
5568 aa. Fixed a bug that caused non-interactive shells which had previously
5569 executed `shopt -s expand_aliases' to fail to expand aliases in a
5570 command like `(command) &'.
5572 2. Changes to Readline
5574 a. Changes to make most (but not yet all -- there is still crlf()) of the
5575 exported readline functions declared in readline.h have an rl_ prefix.
5577 b. More `const' changes in function arguments, mostly for completion
5580 c. Fixed a bug in rl_forward that could cause the point to be set to before
5581 the beginning of the line in vi mode.
5583 d. Fixed a bug in the callback read-char interface to make it work when a
5584 readline function pushes some input onto the input stream with
5585 rl_execute_next (like the incremental search functions).
5587 e. Fixed a file descriptor leak in the history file manipulation code that
5588 was tripped when attempting to truncate a non-regular file (like
5591 f. Some existing variables are now documented and part of the public
5592 interface (declared in readline.h): rl_explict_arg, rl_numeric_arg,
5593 rl_editing_mode, rl_last_func.
5595 g. Renamed rltty_set_default_bindings to rl_tty_set_default_bindings and
5596 crlf to rl_crlf, so there are no public functions declared in readline.h
5597 without an `rl_' prefix. The old functions still exist for backwards
5600 3. New Features in Bash
5602 a. A new loadable builtin, realpath, which canonicalizes and expands symlinks
5603 in pathname arguments.
5605 b. When `set' is called without options, it prints function defintions in a
5606 way that allows them to be reused as input. This affects `declare' and
5607 `declare -p' as well.
5609 4. New Features in Readline
5611 a. New application-callable function rl_set_prompt(const char *prompt):
5612 expands its prompt string argument and sets rl_prompt to the result.
5614 b. New application-callable function rl_set_screen_size(int rows, int cols):
5615 public method for applications to set readline's idea of the screen
5618 c. The history example program (examples/histexamp.c) is now built as one
5621 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5622 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.05-alpha1,
5623 and the previous version, bash-2.04-release.
5627 a. A fix was made to allow newlines in compond array assignments.
5629 b. configure now checks for real-time signals with unusable values.
5631 c. Interactive shells no longer exit if a substitution fails because of an
5632 unset variable within a sourced file.
5634 d. Fixed a problem with incorrect matching of extended glob patterns when
5635 doing pattern substitution.
5637 e. `{' is now quoted by the completion code when it appears in a filename.
5639 f. Fixed an error in pattern matching that caused the matcher to not
5640 correctly skip the rest of a bracket expression after a character
5643 g. Fixed a bug in the IFS word splitting code to make a non-whitespace IFS
5644 character preceded by IFS whitespace part of the current delimiter rather
5645 than generating a separate field.
5647 h. The {!prefix@} expansion now generates separate words, analogous to $@,
5650 i. Command substitution now ignores NUL bytes in the command output, and the
5651 parser ignores them on input.
5653 j. A fix was made to the job control code to prevent hanging processes when
5654 the shell thinks background processes are running but the kernel returns
5655 -1/ECHILD from waitpid().
5657 k. `pwd' now prints an error message if the write fails when displaying the
5660 l. When in POSIX mode, the shell prints trap dispostions without a leading
5661 `SIG' in the signal specification.
5663 m. Fixed a parser bug that caused the current command's line count to be
5664 messed up by a compound array assignment.
5666 n. Fixed a bug in the unwind-protect code that caused bad behavior on machines
5667 where ints and pointers are not the same size.
5669 o. System-specific configure changes for: MacOS X.
5671 p. Changes for Cygwin to translate \r\n and \r to \n and to set file
5672 descriptors used for reading input to text mode in various places.
5674 q. Fixed a bug that caused `!' to occasionally not be honored when in
5677 r. Bash no longer assumes that getcwd() will return any useful error message
5678 in the buffer passed as an argument if the call fails.
5680 s. The `source', `.', and `fc' builtins no longer check whether a file is
5681 binary before reading commands from it.
5683 t. Subshells no longer turn off job control when they exit, since that
5684 sometimes resulted in the terminal being reset to the wrong process
5687 u. The history code no longer tries to save the second and subsequent lines
5688 of a multi-line command if the first line was not saved.
5690 v. The history saving code now does a better job of saving blank lines in a
5693 w. Removed a `feature' that made `ulimit' silently translate `unlimited' to
5694 the current hard limit, which obscured some kernel error returns.
5696 x. Fixed the grammar so that `}' is recognized as a reserved word after
5697 another reserved word, rather than requiring a `;' or newline. This
5698 means that constructs like
5700 { { echo a b c ; } }
5704 y. Conditional commands ([[...]]) now perform tilde expansion on their
5707 z. Noted in the documentation that `set -a' will cause functions to be
5708 exported if they are defined after `set -a' is executed.
5710 aa. When an interactive login shell starts, if $PWD and $HOME refer to the
5711 same directory but are not the same string, $PWD is set to $HOME.
5713 bb. Fixed `printf' to handle invalid floating point numbers better.
5715 cc. Temporary files are now created with random filenames, to improve security.
5717 dd. The readline initialization code now binds the custom bash functions and
5718 key bindings after the readline defaults are set up.
5720 ee. Fixed the `source' builtin to no longer overwrite a shell function's
5721 argument list, even if the sourced file changes the positional parameters.
5723 ff. A bug fix was made in the expansion of `$*' in contexts where it should
5724 not be split, like assignment statements.
5726 gg. Fixed a bug in the parameter substring expansion to handle conditional
5727 arithmetic expressions ( exp ? val1 : val2 ) without cutting the expression
5728 off at the wrong `:'.
5730 hh. The `<>' redirection is no longer subject to the current setting of
5731 `noclobber', as POSIX.2 specifies.
5733 ii. Fixed a bug in the conditional command parsing code that caused expressions
5734 in parentheses to occasionally be parsed incorrectly.
5736 jj. Fixed a bug in the ((...)) arithmetic command to allow do...done or
5737 {...} to follow the )) without an intervening list terminator.
5739 kk. `printf' now treats `\E' the same as `\e' when performing backslash escape
5740 expansion for the `%b' format specifier.
5742 ll. When in POSIX mode, the shell no longer searches the current directory for
5743 a file to be sourced with `.' or `source' if `.' is not in $PATH.
5745 mm. Interactive comments are no longer turned off when POSIX mode is disabled.
5747 nn. The UID, EUID, HOSTNAME variables are not set if they are in the shell's
5748 environment when it starts up.
5750 oo. Fixed a bug in the `command' builtin so the effect of a command like
5751 `command exec 4<file' is as if the `command' had been omitted.
5753 pp. ${foo[@]} and ${foo[*]} now work as in ksh93 if `foo' is not an array
5756 qq. ${#foo[X]}, where X is 0, @, or *, now work as in ksh93 if `foo' is not
5759 rr. The shell's idea of an absolute pathname now takes into account a
5760 possible drive specification on Cygwin and other Windows systems.
5762 ss. Fixed a bug which caused incorrect parsing of some multi-character
5763 constructs if they were split across input lines with backslash-newline
5766 tt. Fixed a bug that caused restricted shell mode to be set inappropriately
5767 when trying to execute a shell script without a leading `#!'.
5769 uu. Shell function definitions no longer require that the body be a group
5770 command ( {...} ), as POSIX.2 requires.
5772 vv. The `cd' and `pwd' builtins now process symlinks in pathnames internally
5773 and should require many fewer calls to getcwd().
5775 ww. Fixed a bug that caused a pipeline's process group to be set incorrectly
5776 if one of the pipeline elements contained a command substitution.
5778 xx. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when expanding the value of HISTIGNORE.
5780 yy. The output of `set' is now quoted using $'...' so invisible characters are
5781 displayed as escape sequences.
5783 zz. Fixed the help text for `unset', since PATH and IFS may both be unset.
5785 aaa. The shell no longer puts directory names into the command hash table.
5787 bbb. Fixed a bug in `read' that caused it to occasionally free memory twice if
5788 it was interrupted after reading a large amount of data.
5790 ccc. Assignment statements that attempt to assign values to readonly variables
5791 now cause the command to return an error status.
5793 ddd. Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect output if a $(<file) construct was
5796 eee. GROUPS and FUNCNAME now return an error status when assignment is
5797 attempted, but may be unset (in which case they lose their special
5798 properties). In all respects except unsetting, they are readonly.
5800 fff. The string-to-integer conversion code now ignores trailing whitespace in
5801 the string, even if strtol(3) does not.
5803 ggg. The tcsh magic-space function now does a better job of inserting the
5804 space close to where the point was before the history expansion, rather
5805 than just appending it.
5807 hhh. Fixed a bug which caused a file sourced from an interactive shell to
5808 fill up the jobs table if it ran lots of jobs.
5810 iii. Fixed a bug in the parameter pattern substitution code to avoid infinite
5811 recursion on zero-length matches.
5813 2. Changes to Readline
5815 a. When setting the terminal attributes on systems using `struct termio',
5816 readline waits for output to drain before changing the attributes.
5818 b. A fix was made to the history word tokenization code to avoid attempts to
5819 dereference a null pointer.
5821 c. Readline now defaults rl_terminal_name to $TERM if the calling application
5822 has left it unset, and tries to initialize with the resultant value.
5824 d. Instead of calling (*rl_getc_function)() directly to get input in certain
5825 places, readline now calls rl_read_key() consistently.
5827 e. Fixed a bug in the completion code that allowed a backslash to quote a
5828 single quote inside a single-quoted string.
5830 f. rl_prompt is no longer assigned directly from the argument to readline(),
5831 but uses memory allocated by readline. This allows constant strings to
5832 be passed to readline without problems arising when the prompt processing
5833 code wants to modify the string.
5835 g. Fixed a bug that caused non-interactive history searches to return the
5836 wrong line when performing multiple searches backward for the same string.
5838 h. Many variables, function arguments, and function return values are now
5839 declared `const' where appropriate, to improve behavior when linking with
5842 i. The control character detection code now works better on systems where
5843 `char' is unsigned by default.
5845 j. The vi-mode numeric argument is now capped at 999999, just like emacs mode.
5847 k. The Function, CPFunction, CPPFunction, and VFunction typedefs have been
5848 replaced with a set of specific prototyped typedefs, though they are
5849 still in the readline header files for backwards compatibility.
5851 m. Nearly all of the (undocumented) internal global variables in the library
5852 now have an _rl_ prefix -- there were a number that did not, like
5853 screenheight, screenwidth, alphabetic, etc.
5855 n. The ding() convenience function has been renamed to rl_ding(), though the
5856 old function is still defined for backwards compatibility.
5858 o. The completion convenience functions filename_completion_function,
5859 username_completion_function, and completion_matches now have an rl_
5860 prefix, though the old names are still defined for backwards compatibility.
5862 p. The functions shared by readline and bash (linkage is satisfied from bash
5863 when compiling with bash, and internally otherwise) now have an sh_ prefix.
5865 q. Changed the shared library creation procedure on Linux and BSD/OS 4.x so
5866 that the `soname' contains only the major version number rather than the
5867 major and minor numbers.
5869 r. Fixed a redisplay bug that occurred when the prompt spanned more than one
5870 physical line and contained invisible characters.
5872 3. New Features in Bash
5874 a. Added a new `--init-file' invocation argument as a synonym for `--rcfile',
5875 per the new GNU coding standards.
5877 b. The /dev/tcp and /dev/udp redirections now accept service names as well as
5880 c. `complete' and `compgen' now take a `-o value' option, which controls some
5881 of the aspects of that compspec. Valid values are:
5883 default - perform bash default completion if programmable
5884 completion produces no matches
5885 dirnames - perform directory name completion if programmable
5886 completion produces no matches
5887 filenames - tell readline that the compspec produces filenames,
5888 so it can do things like append slashes to
5889 directory names and suppress trailing spaces
5891 4. New Features in Readline
5893 a. The blink timeout for paren matching is now settable by applications.
5895 b. _rl_executing_macro has been renamed to rl_executing_macro, which means
5896 it's now part of the public interface.
5898 c. Readline has a new variable, rl_readline_state, which is a bitmap that
5899 encapsulates the current state of the library; intended for use by
5900 callbacks and hook functions.
5902 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5903 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-release,
5904 and the previous version, bash-2.04-beta5.
5908 a. Better compile-time and configure-time checks for the necessity of
5911 b. A bug was fixed in the expansion of "${@:-}" when there are positional
5914 c. A typo was fixed in the output of `complete'.
5916 d. The matches generated for a word by the `-W' argument to complete and
5917 compgen are now matched against the word being completed, and only
5918 matches are returned as the result.
5920 e. Some fixes were made for systems which do not restart read(2) when a
5921 signal caught by bash is received.
5923 f. A bug was fixed which caused the umask to be set to 0 when an invalid
5924 symbolic mode mask was parsed.
5926 g. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump if a SIGCHLD was received while
5927 performing an assignment statement using command substitution.
5929 h. Changed the word splitting function for programmable completion so cases
5930 in which the cursor is between words are handled a bit better.
5932 2. Changes to Readline
5934 a. rl_funmap_names() is now documented.
5936 3. New Features in Bash
5938 a. The LC_NUMERIC variable is now treated specially, and used to set the
5939 LC_NUMERIC locale category for number formatting, e.g., when `printf'
5940 displays floating-point numbers.
5942 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5943 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-beta5,
5944 and the previous version, bash-2.04-beta4.
5948 a. A couple of changes were made to the Makefiles for easier building on
5951 b. Fixed a bug where the current prompt would be set to $PS2 at startup.
5953 c. The shell script that tests an already-installed version was changed to
5954 remove the directory it created its test programs in at exit.
5956 d. Several changes were made to the code that tokenizes an input line for
5957 the programmable completion code. Shell metacharacters will now appear
5958 as individual words in the word list passed to the completion functions.
5959 Some of the example completion shell functions were changed to understand
5960 redirection operators.
5962 e. A bug was fixed that, under obscure circumstances, could confuse the
5963 parser when a shell function was run by the programmable completion code.
5965 f. A bug was fixed in the ulimit builtin for systems not using getrlimit().
5967 g. The execution code now propagates the correct exit status back to the rest
5968 of the code if the return value of a subshell command was being inverted.
5969 Some new test cases for inverting return values with the `!' reserved
5970 word have been added.
5972 h. Negative exponents in the arithmetic evaluation of v**e now return an
5975 i. A bug that caused bash to check the wrong process in a pipeline for
5976 abnormal termination (and consequently resetting the terminal attributes)
5979 j. Fixed a bug that caused $PS2 to be displayed after PROMPT_COMMAND was
5982 2. Changes to Readline
5984 1. Fixed a bug in a C preprocessor define that caused the keypad control
5985 functions to be compiled out for all platforms except DJGPP.
5987 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5988 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-beta4,
5989 and the previous version, bash-2.04-beta3.
5993 a. A couple of changes were made to the redirection to attempt to avoid
5994 race conditions and malicious file replacement.
5996 2. A change was made to the string evaluation code (used for command
5997 substitution, `eval', and the `.' builtin) to fix an obscure core
5998 dump on alpha machines.
6000 3. A bug that caused $LINENO to be wrong when executing arithmetic for
6003 4. A couple of memory leaks in the programmable completion code were fixed.
6005 5. A bug that could cause a core dump by freeing memory twice during a call
6006 to `eval' if `set -u' had been enabled and an undefined variable was
6007 referenced was fixed.
6009 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6010 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-beta3,
6011 and the previous version, bash-2.04-beta2.
6015 a. Bash should run the appropriate startup files when invoked by ssh2.
6017 b. Fixed a bug in the parsing of conditional commands that could cause a
6020 c. Fixed a bug in parsing job specifications that occasionally caused
6021 core dumps when an out-of-range job was referenced.
6023 d. Fixed the `type' and `command' builtins to do better reporting of
6024 commands that are not found in $PATH or the hash table.
6026 e. Fixed a POSIX.2 compliance problem in the command builtin -- commands
6027 are supposed to be reported as full pathnames.
6029 f. The `echo' builtin now returns failure if a write error occurs.
6031 g. Fixed a bug which caused the locale to not be reset correctly when
6034 h. Changed description of `getopts' in man page and reference manual to make
6035 it clear that option characters may be characters other than letters.
6037 i. If the shell exits while in a function, make sure that any trap on EXIT
6038 doesn't think the function is still executing.
6040 j. Bashbug now tries harder to find a usable editor if $EDITOR is not set,
6041 rather than simply defaulting to `emacs'.
6043 k. Changes to the scripts that guess and canonicalize the system type, from
6044 the latest `automake' distribution via Debian.
6046 l. When using named pipes for process substitution, make sure the file
6047 descriptors opened for reading are set to non-blocking mode.
6049 m. Fixed a bug that caused termination of pipelines that are killed by a
6050 signal to not be reported in some cases.
6052 n. When not in literal-history mode, shell comment lines are not added to
6055 o. When running in POSIX.2 mode, bash no longer performs word splitting on
6056 the expanded value of the word supplied as the filename argument to
6057 redirection operators.
6059 p. The prompt string decoding code now backslash-quotes only characters that
6060 are special within double quotes when expanding the \w and \W escape
6063 q. Fixed a bug in the prompt decoding code that could cause a non-interactive
6064 shell to seg fault if `\u' was used in PS4 and the shell was in xtrace
6067 r. Fixed a bug that caused function definitions to be printed with any
6068 redirections that should be attached to the entire function before the
6071 s. Changed the tilde expansion code for Cygwin systems to avoid creating
6072 pathnames beginning with `//' if $HOME == `/'.
6074 t. Fixed a couple of autoconf tests to avoid creating files with fixed names
6077 u. The `trap' and `kill' builtins now know the names of the POSIX.1b real-
6078 time signals on systems which support them.
6080 2. Changes to Readline
6082 a. Fixed a problem with the single-quote quoting function that could cause
6085 b. Fixed a bug that caused incorrect `stat characters' to be printed if
6086 the files being completed were in the root directory and visible-stats
6089 3. New Features in Bash
6091 a. There is a new `rbash.1' manual page, from the Debian release.
6093 b. The `--enable-usg-echo-default' option to `configure' has been renamed to
6094 `--enable-xpg-echo-default'. The old option is still there for backwards
6097 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6098 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-beta2,
6099 and the previous version, bash-2.04-beta1.
6103 a. Fixed a bug that could cause pipes to be closed inappropriately in
6106 b. Fixed a bug that caused creation of the exported environment to clobber
6107 the current command string if there were any exported shell functions.
6109 c. Some changes were made to reduce bash's memory usage.
6111 d. Fixed a problem with programmable completion and filenames to be
6112 completed containing quote characters.
6114 e. Changed the code the removes named pipes created for the <(...) and >(...)
6115 expansions to defer removal until after any current shell function has
6118 f. Fixed a bug in `select' which caused it to not handle the `continue'
6121 g. Autoconf tests added for cygwin32 and mingw32.
6123 2. New Features in Bash
6125 a. The `--with-bash-malloc' configure option replaces `--with-gnu-malloc'
6126 (which is still there for backwards compatibility).
6128 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6129 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-beta1,
6130 and the previous version, bash-2.04-alpha1.
6134 a. Fixed a bug in the programmable completion code that occurred when
6135 trying to complete command lines containing a `;' or `@'.
6137 b. The file descriptor from which the shell is reading a script is now
6138 moved to a file descriptor above the user-addressible range.
6140 c. Changes to `printf' so that it can handle integers beginning with 0
6141 or 0x as octal and hex, respectively.
6143 d. Fixes to the programmable completion code so it handles nonsense like
6144 `compgen -C xyz' gracefully.
6146 e. The shell no longer modifies the signal handler for SIGPROF, allowing
6147 profiling again on certain systems.
6149 f. The shell checks for a new window size, if the user has requested it,
6150 after a process exits due to a signal.
6152 g. Fixed a bug with variables with null values in a program's temporary
6153 environment and the bash getenv() replacement.
6155 h. `declare' and the other builtins that take variable assignments as
6156 arguments now honor `set -a' and mark modified variables for export.
6158 i. Some changes were made for --dump-po-strings mode when writing strings
6159 with embedded newlines.
6161 j. The code that caches export strings from the initial environment now
6162 duplicates the string rather than just pointing into the environment.
6164 k. The filename completion quoting code now uses single quotes by default
6165 if the filename being completed contains newlines, since \<newline>
6166 has a special meaning to the parser.
6168 l. Bash now uses typedefs bits32_t and u_bits32_t instead of int32_t and
6169 u_int32_t, respectively to avoid conflicts on certain Unix versions.
6171 m. Configuration changes were made for: Rhapsody, Mac OS, FreeBSD-3.x.
6173 n. Fixed a problem with hostname-to-ip-address translation in the
6174 /dev/(tcp|udp)/hostname/port redirection code.
6176 o. The texinfo manual has been reorganized slightly.
6178 p. Filename generation (globbing) range comparisons in bracket expressions
6179 no longer use strcoll(3) even if it is available, since it has unwanted
6180 effects in certain locales.
6182 q. Fixed a cosmetic problem in the source that caused the shell to not
6183 compile if DPAREN_ARITHMETIC was not defined but ARITH_FOR_COMMAND was.
6185 r. Fixed a bug in the here-document code tripped when the file descriptor
6186 opened to the file containing the text of the here document was the
6187 same as a redirector specified by the user.
6189 s. Fixed a bug where the INVERT_RETURN flag was not being set for `pipeline'
6190 in `time ! pipeline'.
6192 t. Fixed a bug with the `wait' builtin which manifested itself when an
6193 interrupt was received while the shell was waiting for asynchronous
6194 processes in a shell script.
6196 u. Fixed the DEBUG trap code so that it has the correct value of $?.
6198 v. Fixed a bug in the parameter pattern substitution code that could cause
6199 the shell to attempt to free unallocated memory if the pattern started
6200 with `/' and an expansion error occurs.
6202 w. Fixed a bug in the positional parameter substring code that could
6203 cause the shell to loop freeing freed memory.
6205 x. Fixed a bug in the positional parameter pattern substitution code so
6206 that it correctly handles null replacement strings with a pattern
6207 string prefixed with `%' or `#'.
6209 y. The shell no longer attempts to import functions from the environment if
6212 z. Fixed a bug that caused `return' in a command substitution executed in
6213 a shell function to return from the function in a subshell and continue
6216 aa. `hash -p /pathname/with/slashes name' is no longer allowed when the shell
6219 bb. The wait* job control functions now behave better if called when there
6220 are no unwaited-for children.
6222 cc. Command substitution no longer unconditionally disables job control in
6223 the subshell started to run the command.
6225 dd. A bug was fixed that occasionally caused traps to mess up the parser
6228 ee. `bashbug' now honors user headers in the mail message it sends.
6230 ff. A bug was fixed that caused the `:p' history modifier to not print the
6231 history expansion if the `histverify' option was set.
6233 2. Changes to Readline
6235 a. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code for lines with more than 256 line
6238 b. A bug was fixed which caused invisible character markers to not be
6239 stripped from the prompt string if the terminal was in no-echo mode.
6241 c. Readline no longer tries to get the variables it needs for redisplay
6242 from the termcap entry if the calling application has specified its
6243 own redisplay function. Readline treats the terminal as `dumb' in
6246 d. Fixes to the SIGWINCH code so that a multiple-line prompt with escape
6247 sequences is redrawn correctly.
6249 3. New Features in Bash
6251 a. `bashbug' now accepts `--help' and `--version' options.
6253 b. There is a new `xpg_echo' option to `shopt' that controls the behavior
6254 of echo with respect to backslash-escaped characters at runtime.
6256 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6257 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-alpha1,
6258 and the previous version, bash-2.04-devel.
6262 a. Fixed a bug that could cause core dumps when performing substring
6265 b. Shared object configuration changes for: Solaris, OSF/1
6267 c. The POSIX_GLOB_LIBRARY code that uses the POSIX.2 globbing facilities
6268 for pathname expansion now understands GLOBIGNORE.
6270 d. The code that implements `eval' was changed to save the value of the
6271 current prompt, so an eval in a shell function called by the programmable
6272 completion code will not change the prompt to $PS2.
6274 e. Restored the undocumented NON_INTERACTIVE_LOGIN_SHELLS #define to
6275 config-top.h. If this is defined, all login shells will read the
6276 startup files, not just interactive and non-interactive started with
6277 the `--login' option.
6279 f. Fixed a bug that caused the expansion code to occasionally dump core if
6280 IFS contained characters > 128.
6282 g. Fixed a problem with the grammar so that a newline is not required
6283 after the `))' in the new-style arithmetic for statement; a semicolon
6284 may be used as expected.
6286 h. Variable indirection may now reference the shell's special variables.
6288 i. The $'...' and $"..." constructs are now added to the history correctly
6289 if they contain newlines and command-oriented history is enabled.
6291 j. It is now an error to try to assign a value to a function-local copy
6292 of a readonly shell variable (declared with the `local' builtin).
6294 2. Changes to Readline
6296 a. The history file code now uses O_BINARY mode when reading and writing
6297 the history file on cygwin32.
6299 3. New Features in Bash
6301 a. A new programmable completion facility, with two new builtin commands:
6302 complete and compgen.
6304 b. configure has a new option, `--enable-progcomp', to compile in the
6305 programmable completion features (enabled by default).
6307 c. `shopt' has a new option, `progcomp', to enable and disable programmable
6308 completion at runtime.
6310 d. Unsetting HOSTFILE now clears the list of hostnames used for completion.
6312 4. New Features in Readline
6314 a. A new variable, rl_gnu_readline_p, always 1. The intent is that an
6315 application can verify whether or not it is linked with the `real'
6316 readline library or some substitute.
6318 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6319 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.04-devel,
6320 and the previous version, bash-2.03-release.
6324 a. System-specific configuration and source changes for: Interix, Rhapsody
6326 b. Fixed a bug in execute_cmd.c that resulted in a compile-time error if
6327 JOB_CONTROL was not defined.
6329 c. An obscure race condition in the trap code was fixed.
6331 d. The string resulting from $'...' is now requoted to avoid any further
6334 e. The $'...' quoting syntax now allows backslash to escape a single quote,
6335 for ksh-93 compatibility.
6337 f. The $"..." quoting syntax now escapes backslashes and double quotes in
6338 the translated string when displaying them with the --dump-po-strings
6341 g. `echo -e' no longer converts \' to '.
6343 h. Fixes were made to the extended globbing code to handle embedded (...)
6346 i. Some improvements were made to the code that unsets `nodelay' mode on
6347 the file descriptor from which bash is reading input.
6349 j. Some changes were made to the replacement termcap library for better
6350 operation on MS-DOS.
6352 k. Some changes were made to the tilde expansion code to handle backslash
6353 as a pathname separator on MS-DOS.
6355 l. The source has been reorganized a little bit -- there is now an `include'
6356 subdirectory, and lib/posixheaders has been removed.
6358 m. Improvements were made to the `read' builtin so that it makes many
6359 fewer read(2) system calls.
6361 n. The expansion of $- will include `c' and `s' when those options are
6362 supplied at shell invocation.
6364 o. Several improvments were made to the completion code: variable completion
6365 now works better when there are unterminated expansions, command
6366 completion understands quotes better, and completion now works in certain
6367 unclosed $(... constructs.
6369 p. The arithmetic expansion code was fixed to not need the value of a
6370 variable being assigned a value (fixes the "ss=09; let ss=10" bug).
6372 q. Some changes were made to make exported environment creation faster.
6374 r. The html documentation will be installed into $(htmldir) if that variable
6375 has a value when `make install' is run.
6377 s. Fixed a bug that would cause the bashrc file to be sourced inappropriately
6378 when bash is started by sshd.
6380 t. The SSH_CLIENT environment variable is no longer auto-exported.
6382 u. A bug that caused redirections with (...) subshells to be performed in
6383 the wrong order was fixed.
6385 v. A bug that occasionally caused inappropriate expansion of assignment
6386 statements in compound array assignments was fixed.
6388 w. The code that parses the words in a compound array assignment was
6389 simplified considerably and should work better now.
6391 x. Fixes to the non-job-control code in nojobs.c to make it POSIX.2-compliant
6392 when a user attempts to retrieve the status of a terminated background
6395 y. Fixes to the `printf' builtin so that it doesn't try to expand all
6396 backslash escape sequences in the format string before parsing it for
6397 % format specifiers.
6399 2. Changes to Readline
6401 a. The history library tries to truncate the history file only if it is a
6404 b. A bug that caused _rl_dispatch to address negative array indices on
6405 systems with signed chars was fixed.
6407 c. rl-yank-nth-arg now leaves the history position the same as when it was
6410 d. Changes to the completion code to handle MS-DOS drive-letter:pathname
6413 e. Completion is now case-insensitive by default on MS-DOS.
6415 f. Fixes to the history file manipulation code for MS-DOS.
6417 g. Readline attempts to bind the arrow keys to appropriate defaults on MS-DOS.
6419 h. Some fixes were made to the redisplay code for better operation on MS-DOS.
6421 i. The quoted-insert code will now insert tty special chars like ^C.
6423 j. A bug was fixed that caused the display code to reference memory before
6424 the start of the prompt string.
6426 k. More support for __EMX__ (OS/2).
6428 l. A bug was fixed in readline's signal handling that could cause infinite
6429 recursion in signal handlers.
6431 m. A bug was fixed that caused the point to be less than zero when rl_forward
6432 was given a very large numeric argument.
6434 n. The vi-mode code now gets characters via the application-settable value
6435 of rl_getc_function rather than calling rl_getc directly.
6437 3. New Features in Bash
6439 a. The history builtin has a `-d offset' option to delete the history entry
6440 at position `offset'.
6442 b. The prompt expansion code has two new escape sequences: \j, the number of
6443 active jobs; and \l, the basename of the shell's tty device name.
6445 c. The `bind' builtin has a new `-x' option to bind key sequences to shell
6448 d. There is a new shell option, no_empty_command_completion, which, when
6449 enabled, disables command completion when TAB is typed on an empty line.
6451 e. The `help' builtin has a `-s' option to just print a builtin's usage
6454 f. There are several new arithmetic operators: id++, id-- (variable
6455 post-increment/decrement), ++id, --id (variabl pre-increment/decrement),
6456 expr1 , expr2 (comma operator).
6458 g. There is a new ksh-93 style arithmetic for command:
6459 for ((expr1 ; expr2; expr3 )); do list; done
6461 h. The `read' builtin has a number of new options:
6462 -t timeout only wait timeout seconds for input
6463 -n nchars only read nchars from input instead of a full line
6464 -d delim read until delim rather than newline
6465 -s don't echo input chars as they are read
6467 i. The redirection code now handles several filenames specially:
6468 /dev/fd/N, /dev/stdin, /dev/stdout, and /dev/stderr, whether or
6469 not they are present in the file system.
6471 j. The redirection code now recognizes pathnames of the form
6472 /dev/tcp/host/port and /dev/udp/host/port, and tries to open a socket
6473 of the appropriate type to the specified port on the specified host.
6475 k. The ksh-93 ${!prefix*} expansion, which expands to the names of all
6476 shell variables whose names start with prefix, has been implemented.
6478 l. There is a new dynamic variable, FUNCNAME, which expands to the name of
6479 a currently-executing function. Assignments to FUNCNAME have no effect.
6481 m. The GROUPS variable is no longer readonly; assignments to it are silently
6482 discarded. This means it can be unset.
6484 4. New Features in Readline
6486 a. Parentheses matching is now always compiled into readline, and enabled
6487 or disabled when the value of the `blink-matching-paren' variable is
6490 b. MS-DOS systems now use ~/_inputrc as the last-ditch inputrc filename.
6492 c. MS-DOS systems now use ~/_history as the default history file.
6494 d. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the point at the end of the
6495 line when the string to search for is empty, like
6496 {reverse,forward}-search-history.
6498 e. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the last history line found
6499 in the readline buffer if the second or subsequent search fails.
6501 f. New function for use by applications: rl_on_new_line_with_prompt, used
6502 when an application displays the prompt itself before calling readline().
6504 g. New variable for use by applications: rl_already_prompted. An application
6505 that displays the prompt itself before calling readline() must set this to
6508 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6509 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.03-release,
6510 and the previous version, bash-2.03-beta2.
6514 a. A file descriptor leak in the `fc' builtin was fixed.
6516 b. A bug was fixed in the `read' builtin that caused occasional spurious
6517 failures when using `read -e'.
6519 c. The version code needed to use the value of the cpp variable
6520 CONF_MACHTYPE rather than MACHTYPE.
6522 d. A new test was added to exercise the command printing and copying code.
6524 e. A bug was fixed that caused `time' to be recognized as a reserved word
6525 if it was the first pattern in a `case' statement pattern list.
6527 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6528 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.03-beta2,
6529 and the previous version, bash-2.03-beta1.
6533 a. Slight additions to support/shobj-conf, mostly for the benefit of AIX 4.2.
6535 b. config.{guess,sub} support added for the NEC SX4.
6537 c. Changed some of the cross-compiling sections of the configure macros in
6538 aclocal.m4 so that configure won't abort.
6540 d. Slight changes to how the HTML versions of the bash and readline manuals
6543 e. Fixed conditional command printing to avoid interpreting printf `%'-escapes
6546 f. Don't include the bash malloc on all variants of the alpha processor.
6548 g. Changes to configure to make --enable-profiling work on Solaris 2.x.
6550 h. Fixed a bug that manifested itself when shell functions were called
6551 between calls to `getopts'.
6553 i. Fixed pattern substitution so that a bare `#'as a pattern causes the
6554 replacement string to be prefixed to the search string, and a bare
6555 `%' causes the replacement string to be appended to the search string.
6557 j. Fixed a bug in the command execution code that caused child processes
6558 to occasionally have the wrong value for $!.
6560 2. Changes to Readline
6562 a. Added code to the history library to catch history substitutions using
6563 `&' without a previous history substitution or search having been
6566 3. New Features in Bash
6568 4. New Features in Readline
6570 a. New bindable variable: `isearch-terminators'.
6572 b. New bindable function: `forward-backward-delete-char' (unbound by default).
6574 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6575 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.03-beta1,
6576 and the previous version, bash-2.03-alpha.
6580 a. A change was made to the help text for `{...}' to make it clear that a
6581 semicolon is required before the closing brace.
6583 b. A fix was made to the `test' builtin so that syntax errors cause test
6584 to return an exit status > 1.
6586 c. Globbing is no longer performed on assignment statements that appear as
6587 arguments to `assignment builtins' such as `export'.
6589 d. System-specific configuration changes were made for: Rhapsody,
6590 AIX 4.2/gcc, BSD/OS 4.0.
6592 e. New loadable builtins: ln, unlink.
6594 f. Some fixes were made to the globbing code to handle extended glob patterns
6595 which immediately follow a `*'.
6597 g. A fix was made to the command printing code to ensure that redirections
6598 following compound commands have a space separating them from the rest
6601 h. The pathname canonicalization code was changed to produce fewer leading
6602 `//' sequences, since those are interpreted as network file system
6603 pathnames on some systems.
6605 i. A fix was made so that loops containing `eval' commands in commands passed
6606 to `bash -c' would not exit prematurely.
6608 j. Some changes were made to the job reaping code when the shell is not
6609 interactive, so the shell will retain exit statuses longer for examination
6612 k. A fix was made so that `jobs | command' works again.
6614 l. The erroneous compound array assignment var=((...)) is now a syntax error.
6616 m. A change was made to the dynamic loading code in `enable' to support
6619 n. A fix was made to the globbing code so that extended globbing patterns
6620 will correctly match `.' in a bracket expression.
6622 2. Changes to Readline
6624 a. A fix was made to the completion code in which a typo caused the wrong
6625 value to be passed to the function that computed the longest common
6626 prefix of the list of matches.
6628 b. The completion code now checks the value of rl_filename_completion_desired,
6629 which is set by application-supplied completion functions to indicate
6630 that filename completion is being performed, to decide whether or not to
6631 call an application-supplied `ignore completions' function.
6633 3. New Features in Bash
6635 a. A change was made to the startup file code so that any shell begun with
6636 the `--login' option, even non-interactive shells, will source the login
6637 shell startup files.
6639 4. New Features in Readline
6641 a. A new variable, rl_erase_empty_line, which, if set by an application using
6642 readline, will cause readline to erase, prompt and all, lines on which the
6643 only thing typed was a newline.
6645 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6646 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.03-alpha,
6647 and the previous version, bash-2.02.1-release.
6651 a. System-specific configuration changes were made for: Irix 6.x, Unixware 7.
6653 b. The texi2dvi and texi2html scripts were updated to the latest versions
6656 c. The configure tests that determine which native type is 32 bits were
6657 changed to not require a compiled program.
6659 d. Fixed a bug in shell_execve that could cause memory to be freed twice
6660 after a failed exec.
6662 e. The `printf' test uses `diff -a' if it's available to prevent confusion
6663 due to the non-ascii output.
6665 f. Shared object configuration is now performed by a shell script,
6666 support/shobj-conf, which generates values to be substituted into
6667 makefiles by configure.
6669 g. Some changes were made to `ulimit' to avoid the use of RLIM_INVALID as a
6672 h. Changes were made to `ulimit' to work around HPUX 9.x's peculiar
6673 handling of RLIMIT_FILESIZE.
6675 i. Some new loadable builtins were added: id, printenv, sync, whoami, push,
6676 mkdir. `pushd', `popd', and `dirs' can now be built as regular or
6677 loadable builtins from the same source file.
6679 j. Changes were made to `printf' to handle NUL bytes in the expanded format
6682 k. The various `make clean' Makefile targets now descend into lib/sh.
6684 l. The `type' builtin was changed to use the internal `getopt' so that things
6685 like `type -ap' work as expected.
6687 m. There is a new configuration option, --with-installed-readline, to link
6688 bash with a locally-installed version of readline. Only readline version
6689 4.0 and later releases can support this. Shared and static libraries
6690 are supported. The installed include files are used.
6692 n. There is a new autoconf macro used to find which basic type is 64 bits.
6694 o. Dynamic linking and loadable builtins should now work on SCO 3.2v5*,
6695 AIX 4.2 with gcc, Unixware 7, and many other systems using gcc, where
6696 the `-shared' options works correctly.
6698 p. A bug was fixed in the bash filename completion code that caused memory to
6699 be freed twice if a directory name containing an unset variable was
6700 completed and the -u option was set.
6702 q. The prompt expansion code now quotes the `$' in the `\$' expansion so it
6703 is not processed by subsequent parameter expansion.
6705 r. Fixed a parsing bug that caused a single or double quote after a `$$' to
6706 trigger ANSI C expansion or locale translation.
6708 s. Fixed a bug in the globbing code that caused quoted filenames containing
6709 no globbing characters to sometimes be incorrectly expanded.
6711 t. Changes to the default prompt strings if prompt string decoding is not
6712 compiled into the shell.
6714 u. Added `do', `then', `else', `{', and `(' to the list of keywords that may
6715 precede the `time' reserved word.
6717 v. The shell may now be cross-built for BeOS as well as cygwin32.
6719 w. The conditional command execution code now treats `=' the same as `=='
6720 for deciding when to perform pattern matching.
6722 x. The `-e' option no longer causes the shell to exit if a command exits
6723 with a non-zero status while running the startup files.
6725 y. The `printf' builtin no longer dumps core if a modifier is supplied in
6726 the format string without a conversion character (e.g. `%h').
6728 z. Array assignments of the form a=(...) no longer show up in the history
6731 aa. The parser was fixed to obey the POSIX.2 rules for finding the closing
6732 `}' in a ${...} expression.
6734 bb. The history file is now opened with mode 0600 rather than 0666, so bash
6735 no longer relies on the user's umask being set appropriately.
6737 cc. Setting LANG no longer causes LC_ALL to be assigned a value; bash now
6738 relies on proper behavior from the C library.
6740 dd. Minor changes were made to allow quoted variable expansions using
6741 ${...} to be completed correctly if there is no closing `"'.
6743 ee. Changes were made to builtins/Makefile.in so that configuring the shell
6744 with `--enable-profiling' works right and builtins/mkbuiltins is
6747 2. Changes to Readline
6749 a. The version number is now 4.0.
6751 b. There is no longer any #ifdef SHELL code in the source files.
6753 c. Some changes were made to the key binding code to fix memory leaks and
6754 better support Win32 systems.
6756 d. Fixed a silly typo in the paren matching code -- it's microseconds, not
6759 e. The readline library should be compilable by C++ compilers.
6761 f. The readline.h public header file now includes function prototypes for
6762 all readline functions, and some changes were made to fix errors in the
6763 source files uncovered by the use of prototypes.
6765 g. The maximum numeric argument is now clamped at 1000000.
6767 h. Fixes to rl_yank_last_arg to make it behave better.
6769 i. Fixed a bug in the display code that caused core dumps if the prompt
6770 string length exceeded 1024 characters.
6772 j. The menu completion code was fixed to properly insert a single completion
6773 if there is only one match.
6775 k. A bug was fixed that caused the display code to improperly display tabs
6778 3. New Features in Bash
6780 a. New `shopt' option, `restricted_shell', indicating whether or not the
6781 shell was started in restricted mode, for use in startup files.
6783 b. Filename generation is now performed on the words between ( and ) in
6784 array assignments (which it probably should have done all along).
6786 c. OLDPWD is now auto-exported, as POSIX.2 seems to require.
6788 d. ENV and BASH_ENV are read-only variables in a restricted shell.
6790 4. New Features in Readline
6792 a. Many changes to the signal handling:
6793 o Readline now catches SIGQUIT and cleans up the tty before returning;
6794 o A new variable, rl_catch_signals, is available to application writers
6795 to indicate to readline whether or not it should install its own
6796 signal handlers for SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGQUIT, SIGALRM, SIGTSTP,
6797 SIGTTIN, and SIGTTOU;
6798 o A new variable, rl_catch_sigwinch, is available to application
6799 writers to indicate to readline whether or not it should install its
6800 own signal handler for SIGWINCH, which will chain to the calling
6801 applications's SIGWINCH handler, if one is installed;
6802 o There is a new function, rl_free_line_state, for application signal
6803 handlers to call to free up the state associated with the current
6804 line after receiving a signal;
6805 o There is a new function, rl_cleanup_after_signal, to clean up the
6806 display and terminal state after receiving a signal;
6807 o There is a new function, rl_reset_after_signal, to reinitialize the
6808 terminal and display state after an application signal handler
6809 returns and readline continues
6811 b. There is a new function, rl_resize_terminal, to reset readline's idea of
6812 the screen size after a SIGWINCH.
6814 c. New public functions: rl_save_prompt and rl_restore_prompt. These were
6815 previously private functions with a `_' prefix.
6817 d. New function hook: rl_pre_input_hook, called just before readline starts
6818 reading input, after initialization.
6820 e. New function hook: rl_display_matches_hook, called when readline would
6821 display the list of completion matches. The new function
6822 rl_display_match_list is what readline uses internally, and is available
6823 for use by application functions called via this hook.
6825 f. New bindable function, delete-char-or-list, like tcsh.
6827 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6828 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.02.1-release,
6829 and the previous version, bash-2.02-release.
6833 a. A bug that caused the bash readline support to not compile unless aliases
6834 and csh-style history were configured into the shell was fixed.
6836 b. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when here documents contained
6837 more than 1000 characters.
6839 c. Fixed a bug that caused a CDPATH entry of "" to not be treated the same
6840 as the current directory when in POSIX mode.
6842 d. Fixed an alignment problem with the memory returned by the bash malloc,
6843 so returned memory is now 64-bit aligned.
6845 e. Fixed a bug that caused command substitutions executed within pipelines
6846 to put the terminal in the wrong process group.
6848 f. Fixes to support/config.sub for: alphas, SCO Open Server and Open Desktop,
6849 Unixware 2, and Unixware 7.
6851 g. Fixes to the pattern matching code to make it work correctly for eight-bit
6854 h. Fixed a problem that occasionally caused the shell to display the wrong
6855 value for the new working directory when changing to a directory found
6856 in $CDPATH when in physical mode.
6858 i. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when using conditional commands in
6861 j. Fixed a bug that caused the printf builtin to loop forever if the format
6862 string did not consume any of the arguments.
6864 k. Fixed a bug in the parameter expansion code that caused "$@" to be
6865 incorrectly split if $IFS did not contain a space character.
6867 l. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when completing hostnames if
6868 the number of matching hostnames was an exact multiple of 16.
6870 m. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to fork too early when a command
6871 such as `%2 &' was given.
6873 2. Changes to Readline
6875 a. Fixed a problem with redisplay that showed up when the prompt string was
6876 longer than the screen width and the prompt contained invisible characters.
6878 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6879 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.02-release,
6880 and the previous version, bash-2.02-beta2.
6884 a. A bug was fixed that caused the terminal process group to be set
6885 incorrectly when performing command substitution of builtins in a
6888 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6889 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.02-beta2,
6890 and the previous version, bash-2.02-beta1.
6894 a. Attempting to `wait' for stopped jobs now generates a warning message.
6896 b. Pipelines which exit due to SIGPIPE in non-interactive shells are now
6897 not reported if the shell is compiled -DDONT_REPORT_SIGPIPE.
6899 c. Some changes were made to builtins/psize.sh and support/bashbug.sh to
6900 attempt to avoid some /tmp file races and surreptitious file
6903 d. Fixed a bug that caused the shell not to compile if configured with
6904 dparen arithmetic but without aliases.
6906 e. Fixed a bug that caused the input stream to be switched when assigning
6907 empty arrays with `bash -c'.
6909 f. A bug was fixed in the readline expansion glue code that caused bash to
6910 dump core when expanding lines with an unclosed single quote.
6912 g. A fix was made to the `cd' builtin so that using a non-empty directory
6913 from $CDPATH results in an absolute pathname of the new current working
6914 directory to be displayed after the current directory is changed.
6916 h. Fixed a bug in the variable assignment code that caused the shell to
6917 dump core when referencing an unset variable with `set -u' enabled in
6918 an assignment statement preceding a command.
6920 i. Fixed a bug in the exit trap code that caused reserved words to not be
6921 recognized under certain circumstances.
6923 j. Fixed a bug in the parameter pattern substitution code so that quote
6924 removal is performed.
6926 k. The shell should now configure correctly on Apple Rhapsody systems.
6928 l. The `kill' builtin now prints a usage message if it is not passed any
6931 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6932 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.02-beta1,
6933 and the previous version, bash-2.02-alpha1.
6937 a. A few compilation bugs were fixed in the new extended globbing code.
6939 b. Executing arithmetic commands now sets the command name to `((' so
6940 error messages look right.
6942 c. Fixed some build problems with various configuration options.
6944 d. The `printf' builtin now aborts immediately if an illegal format
6945 character is encountered.
6947 e. The code that creates here-documents now behaves better if the file it's
6948 trying to create already exists for some reason.
6950 f. Fixed a problem with the extended globbing code that made patterns like
6951 `x+*' expand incorrectly.
6953 g. The prompt string expansion code no longer quotes tildes with backslashes.
6955 h. The bash getcwd() implementation in lib/sh/getcwd.c now behaves better in
6956 the presence of lstat(2) failures.
6958 i. Fixed a bug with strsub() that caused core dumps when executing `fc -s'.
6960 j. The mail checking code now ensures that it has a valid default mailpath.
6962 k. A bug was fixed that caused local variables to be unset inappropriately
6963 when sourcing a script from within another sourced script.
6965 l. A bug was fixed in the history saving code so that functions are saved
6966 in the history list correctly if `cmdhist' is enabled, but `lithist'
6969 m. A bug was fixed that caused printf overflows when displaying error
6972 n. It should be easier to build the loadble builtins in examples/loadables,
6973 though some manual editing of the generated Makefile is still required.
6975 o. The user's primary group is now always ${GROUPS[0]}.
6977 p. Some updates were made to support/config.guess from the GNU master copy.
6979 q. Some changes were made to the autoconf support for Solaris 2.6 large
6982 r. The `command' builtins now does the right thing when confstr(3) cannot
6983 find a value for _CS_PATH.
6985 s. Extended globbing expressions like `*.!(c)' are not history expanded if
6986 `extglob' is enabled.
6988 t. Using the `-P' option to `cd' will force the value that is assigned to
6989 PWD to not contain any symbolic links.
6991 2. Changes to Readline
6993 a. The code that prints completion listings now behaves better if one or
6994 more of the filenames contains non-printable characters.
6996 b. The time delay when showing matching parentheses is now 0.5 seconds.
6998 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6999 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.02-alpha1,
7000 and the previous version, bash-2.01.1-release.
7004 a. OS-specific configuration changes for: BSD/OS 3.x, Minix 2.x,
7005 Solaris 2.6, SINIX SVR4.
7007 b. Changes were made to the generated `info' files so that `install-info'
7010 c. PWD is now auto-exported.
7012 d. A fix was made to the pipeline code to make sure that the shell forks
7013 to execute simple commands consisting solely of assignment statements.
7015 e. Changes to the test suite for systems with 14-character filenames.
7017 f. The default sizes of some internal hash tables have been made smaller
7018 to reduce the shell's memory footprint.
7020 g. The `((...))' arithmetic command is now executed directly instead of
7021 being translated into `let "..."'.
7023 h. Fixes were made to the expansion code so that "$*", "$@", "${array[@]}",
7024 and "${array[@]}" expand correctly when IFS does not contain a space
7025 character, is unset, or is set to NULL.
7027 i. The indirect expansion code (${!var}) was changed so that the only
7028 valid values of `var' are variable names, positional parameters, `#',
7031 j. An arithmetic expression error in a $((...)) expansion now causes a
7032 non-interactive shell running in posix mode to exit.
7034 k. Compound array assignment now splits the words within the parentheses
7035 on shell metacharacters like the parser would before expansing them
7036 and performing the assignment. This is for compatibility with ksh-93.
7038 l. The internal shell backslash-quoting code (used in the output of `set'
7039 and completion) now quotes tildes if they appear at the start of the
7040 string or after a `=' or `:'.
7042 m. A couple of bugs with `shopt -o' were fixed.
7044 n. `bash +o' now displays the same output as `set +o' before starting an
7047 o. A bug that caused command substitution and the `eval' builtin to
7048 occasionally free memory twice when an error was encountered was fixed.
7050 p. The filename globbing code no longer requires read permission for a
7051 directory when the filename to be matched does not contain any globbing
7052 characters, as POSIX.2 specifies.
7054 q. A bug was fixed so that the job containing the last asynchronous
7055 process is not removed from the job table until a `wait' is executed
7056 for that process or another asynchronous process is started. This
7057 satisfies a POSIX.2 requirement.
7059 r. A `select' bug was fixed so that a non-numeric user response is treated
7060 the same as a numeric response that is out of range.
7062 s. The shell no longer parses the value of SHELLOPTS from the environment
7063 if it is restricted, running setuid, or running in `privileged mode'.
7065 t. Fixes were made to enable large file support on systems such as
7066 Solaris 2.6, where the size of a file may be larger than can be held
7069 u. The filename hashing code was fixed to not add `./' to the beginning of
7070 filenames which already begin with `./'.
7072 v. The configure script was changed so that the GNU termcap library is not
7073 compiled in if `prefer-curses' has been specified.
7075 w. HISTCONTROL and HISTIGNORE are no longer applied to the second and
7076 subsequent lines of a multi-line command.
7078 x. A fix was made to `disown' so that it does a better job of catching
7081 y. Non-interactive shells no longer report the status of processes terminated
7082 due to SIGINT, even if the standard output is a terminal.
7084 z. A bug that caused the output of `jobs' to have extra carriage returns
7087 aa. A bug that caused PIPESTATUS to not be set when builtins or shell
7088 functions were executed in the foreground was fixed.
7090 bb. Bash now attempts to detect when it is being run by sshd, and treats
7091 that case identically to being run by rshd.
7093 cc. A bug that caused `set -a' to export SHELLOPTS when one of the shell
7094 options was changed was fixed.
7096 dd. The `kill' builtin now disallows empty or missing process id arguments
7097 instead of treating them as identical to `0', which means the current
7100 ee. `var=value declare -x var' now behaves identically to
7101 `var=value export var'. Similarly for `var=value declare -r var' and
7102 `var=value readonly var'.
7104 ff. A few memory leaks were fixed.
7106 gg. `alias' and `unalias' now print error messages when passed an argument
7107 that is not an alias for printing or deletion, even when the shell is
7108 not interactive, as POSIX.2 specifies.
7110 hh. `alias' and `alias -p' now return a status of 0 when no aliases are
7111 defined, as POSIX.2 specifes.
7113 ii. `cd -' now prints the pathname of the new working directory if the shell
7116 jj. A fix was made so that the code that binds $PWD now copes with getcwd()
7119 kk. `unset' now checks whether or not a function name it's trying to unset
7120 is a valid shell identifier only when the shell is running in posix mode.
7122 ll. A change was made to the code that generates filenames for here documents
7123 to make them less prone to name collisions.
7125 mm. The parser was changed so that `time' is recognized as a reserved word
7126 only at the beginning of a pipeline.
7128 nn. The pathname canonicalization code was changed so that `//' is converted
7129 into `/', but all other pathnames beginning with `//' are left alone, as
7132 oo. The `logout' builtin will no longer exit a non-interactive non-login
7135 2. Changes to Readline
7137 a. Fixed a problem in the readline test program rltest.c that caused a core
7140 b. The code that handles parser directives in inputrc files now displays
7141 more error messages.
7143 c. The history expansion code was fixed so that the appearance of the
7144 history comment character at the beginning of a word inhibits history
7145 expansion for that word and the rest of the input line.
7147 3. New Features in Bash
7149 a. A new version of malloc, based on the older GNU malloc, that has many
7150 changes, is more page-based, is more conservative with memory usage,
7151 and does not `orphan' large blocks when they are freed.
7153 b. A new version of gmalloc, based on the old GLIBC malloc, with many
7154 changes and range checking included by default.
7156 c. A new implementation of fnmatch(3) that includes full POSIX.2 Basic
7157 Regular Expression matching, including character classes, collating
7158 symbols, equivalence classes, and support for case-insensitive pattern
7161 d. ksh-88 egrep-style extended pattern matching ([@+*?!](patlist)) has been
7162 implemented, controlled by a new `shopt' option, `extglob'.
7164 e. There is a new ksh-like `[[' compound command, which implements
7165 extended `test' functionality.
7167 f. There is a new `printf' builtin, implemented according to the POSIX.2
7170 g. There is a new feature for command substitution: $(< filename) now expands
7171 to the contents of `filename', with any trailing newlines removed
7172 (equivalent to $(cat filename)).
7174 h. There are new tilde prefixes which expand to directories from the
7177 i. There is a new `**' arithmetic operator to do exponentiation.
7179 j. There are new configuration options to control how bash is linked:
7180 `--enable-profiling', to allow bash to be profiled with gprof, and
7181 `--enable-static-link', to allow bash to be linked statically.
7183 k. There is a new configuration option, `--enable-cond-command', which
7184 controls whether or not the `[[' command is included. It is on by
7187 l. There is a new configuration option, `--enable-extended-glob', which
7188 controls whether or not the ksh extended globbing feature is included.
7189 It is enabled by default.
7191 m. There is a new configuration #define in config.h.top that, when enabled,
7192 will cause all login shells to source /etc/profile and one of the user-
7193 specific login shell startup files, whether or not the shell is
7196 n. There is a new invocation option, `--dump-po-strings', to dump
7197 a shell script's translatable strings ($"...") in GNU `po' format.
7199 o. There is a new `shopt' option, `nocaseglob', to enable case-insensitive
7200 pattern matching when globbing filenames and using the `case' construct.
7202 p. There is a new `shopt' option, `huponexit', which, when enabled, causes
7203 the shell to send SIGHUP to all jobs when an interactive login shell
7206 q. `bind' has a new `-u' option, which takes a readline function name as an
7207 argument and unbinds all key sequences bound to that function in a
7210 r. `disown' now has `-a' and `-r' options, to limit operation to all jobs
7211 and running jobs, respectively.
7213 s. The `shopt' `-p' option now causes output to be displayed in a reusable
7216 t. `test' has a new `-N' option, which returns true if the filename argument
7217 has been modified since it was last accessed.
7219 u. `umask' now has a `-p' option to print output in a reusable format.
7221 v. A new escape sequence, `\xNNN', has been added to the `echo -e' and $'...'
7222 translation code. It expands to the character whose ascii code is NNN
7225 w. The prompt string expansion code has a new `\r' escape sequence.
7227 x. The shell may now be cross-compiled for the CYGWIN32 environment on
7230 4. New Features in Readline
7232 a. There is now an option for `iterative' yank-last-arg handline, so a user
7233 can keep entering `M-.', yanking the last argument of successive history
7236 b. New variable, `print-completions-horizontally', which causes completion
7237 matches to be displayed across the screen (like `ls -x') rather than up
7238 and down the screen (like `ls').
7240 c. New variable, `completion-ignore-case', which causes filename completion
7241 and matching to be performed case-insensitively.
7243 d. There is a new bindable command, `magic-space', which causes history
7244 expansion to be performed on the current readline buffer and a space to
7245 be inserted into the result.
7247 e. There is a new bindable command, `menu-complete', which enables tcsh-like
7248 menu completion (successive executions of menu-complete insert a single
7249 completion match, cycling through the list of possible completions).
7251 f. There is a new bindable command, `paste-from-clipboard', for use on Win32
7252 systems, to insert the text from the Win32 clipboard into the editing
7255 g. The key sequence translation code now understands printf-style backslash
7256 escape sequences, including \NNN octal escapes. These escape sequences
7257 may be used in key sequence definitions or macro values.
7259 h. An `$include' inputrc file parser directive has been added.
7261 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7262 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01.1-release,
7263 and the previous version, bash-2.01-release.
7267 a. The select command was fixed to check the validity of the user's
7268 input more strenuously.
7270 b. A bug was fixed that prevented `time' from timing commands correctly
7271 when supplied as an argument to `bash -c'.
7273 c. A fix was made to the mail checking code to keep from adding the same
7274 mail file to the list of files to check multiple times when parsing
7277 d. Fixed an off-by-one error in the tilde expansion library.
7279 e. When using the compound array assignment syntax, the old value of
7280 the array is cleared before assigning the new value.
7282 f. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when a trap handler was reset
7283 to the default in the trap command associated with that signal.
7285 g. Fixed a bug in the locale code that occurred when assigning a value
7288 h. A change was made to the parser so that words of the form xxx=(...)
7289 are not considered compound assignment statements unless there are
7290 characters before the `='.
7292 i. A fix was made to the command tracing code to correctly quote each
7295 j. Some changes were made to the bash-specific autoconf tests to make them
7298 k. Completion of words with globbing characters now correctly quotes the
7301 l. The directory /var/spool/mail is now preferred to /usr/spool/mail when
7302 configure is deciding on the default mail directory.
7304 m. The brace completion code was fixed to not quote the `{' and `}'.
7306 n. Some fixes were made to make $RANDOM more random in subshells.
7308 o. System-specific changes were made to configure for: SVR4.2
7310 p. Changes were made so that completion of words containing globbing chars
7311 substitutes the result only if a single filename was matched.
7313 q. The window size is now recomputed after a job is stopped with SIGTSTP if
7314 the user has set `checkwinsize' with `shopt'.
7316 r. When doing substring expansion, out-of-range substring specifiers now
7317 cause nothing to be substituted rather than an expansion error.
7319 s. A fix was made so that you can no longer trap `SIGEXIT' or `SIGDEBUG' --
7320 only `EXIT' and `DEBUG' are accepted.
7322 t. The display of trapped signals now uses the signal number if signals
7323 for which bash does not know the name are trapped.
7325 u. A fix was made so that `bash -r' does not turn on restricted mode until
7326 after the startup files are executed.
7328 v. A bug was fixed that occasionally caused a core dump when a variable
7329 found in the temporary environment of export/declare/readonly had a
7332 w. A bug that occasionally caused unallocated memory to be passed to free()
7333 when doing arithmetic substitution was fixed.
7335 x. A bug that caused a buffer overrun when expanding a prompt string
7336 containing `\w' and ${#PWD} exceeded PATH_MAX was fixed.
7338 y. A problem with the completion code that occasionally caused it to
7339 refer to a character before the beginning of the readline line buffer
7342 z. A bug was fixed so that the `read' builtin restarts reads when
7343 interrupted by signals other than SIGINT.
7345 aa. Fixed a bug that caused a command to be freed twice when there was
7346 an evaluation error in the `eval' command.
7348 2. Changes to Readline
7350 a. Added a missing `extern' to a declaration in readline.h that kept
7351 readline from compiling cleanly on some systems.
7353 b. The history file is now opened with mode 0600 when it is written for
7356 c. Changes were made to the SIGWINCH handling code so that prompt redisplay
7359 d. ^G now interrupts incremental searches correctly.
7361 e. A bug that caused a core dump when the set of characters to be quoted
7362 when completing words was empty was fixed.
7364 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7365 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-release,
7366 and the previous version, bash-2.01-beta2.
7370 a. The `distclean' target should remove the `printenv' executable if it
7373 b. The test suite was changed slightly to ensure that the error messages
7374 are printed in English.
7376 c. A bug that caused the shell to dump core when a filename containing a
7377 `/' was passed to `hash' was fixed.
7379 d. Pathname canonicalization now leaves a leading `//' intact, as POSIX.1
7382 e. A memory leak when completing commands was fixed.
7384 f. A memory leak that occurred when checking the hash table for commands
7385 with relative paths was fixed.
7387 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7388 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-beta2,
7389 and the previous version, bash-2.01-beta1.
7393 a. The `ulimit' builtin translates RLIM_INFINITY to the hard limit only if
7394 the current (soft) limit is less than or equal to the hard limit.
7396 b. Fixed a bug that caused the bash emulation of strcasecmp to produce
7399 c. A bug that caused memory to be freed twice when a trap handler resets
7400 the trap more than once was fixed.
7402 d. A bug that caused machines where sizeof (pointer) > sizeof (int) to
7403 fail (and possibly dump core) when trying to unwind-protect a null
7406 e. The startup files should not be run with job control enabled. This fix
7407 allows SIGINT to once again interrupt startup file execution.
7409 f. Bash should not change the SIGPROF handler if it is set to something
7412 g. The completion code that provides bash-specific completions for readline
7413 now quotes characters that the readline code would treat as word break
7414 characters if they appear in a file name.
7416 h. The completion code now correctly quotes filenames containing a `!',
7417 even if the user attempted to use double quotes when attempting
7420 i. A bug that caused the shell to dump core when `disown' was called without
7421 arguments and there was no current job was fixed.
7423 j. A construct like $((foo);bar) is now processed as a command substitution
7424 rather than as a bad arithmetic substitution.
7426 k. A couple of bugs that caused `fc' to not obey the `cmdhist' and `lithist'
7427 shell options when editing and re-executing a series of commands were
7430 l. A fix was made to the grammar -- the list of commands between `do' and
7431 `done' in the body of a `for' command should be treated the same as a
7434 2. Changes to Readline
7436 a. A couple of bugs that caused the history search functions to attempt to
7437 free a NULL pointer were fixed.
7439 b. If the C library provides setlocale(3), readline does not need to look
7440 at various environment variables to decide whether or not to go into
7441 eight-bit mode automatically -- just check whether the current locale
7442 is not `C' or `POSIX'.
7444 c. If the filename completion function finds that a directory was not closed
7445 by a previous (interrupted) completion, it closes the directory with
7448 3. New Features in Bash
7450 a. New bindable readline commands: history-and-alias-expand-line and
7451 alias-expand-line. The code was always in there, there was just no
7454 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7455 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-beta1,
7456 and the previous version, bash-2.01-alpha1.
7460 a. Fixed a problem that could cause file descriptors used for process
7461 substitution to conflict with those used explicitly in redirections.
7463 b. Made it easier to regenerate configure if the user changes configure.in.
7465 c. ${GROUPS[0]} should always be the primary group, even on systems without
7468 d. Spelling correction is no longer enabled by default.
7470 e. Fixes to quoting problems in `bashbug'.
7472 f. OS-specific configuration changes were made for: Irix 6.
7474 g. OS-specific code changes were made for: QNX.
7476 h. A more meaningful message is now printed when the file in /tmp for a
7477 here document cannot be created.
7479 i. Many changes to the shell's variable initialization code to speed
7480 non-interactive startup.
7482 j. Changes to the non-job-control code so that it does not try to open
7485 k. The output of `set' and `export' is once again sorted, as POSIX wants.
7487 l. Fixed a problem caused by a recursive call reparsing the value of
7490 m. The tilde code no longer calls getenv() when it's compiled as part of
7491 the shell, which should eliminate problems on systems that cannot
7492 redefine getenv(), like the NeXT OS.
7494 n. Fixed a problem that caused `bash -o' or `bash +o' to not list all
7497 o. Fixed `ulimit' to convert RLIM_INFINITY to the appropriate hard limit
7498 only if the hard limit is greater than the current (soft) limit.
7500 p. Fixed a problem that arose when building bash in a different directory
7501 than the source and y.tab.[ch] were remade with something other than
7502 bison. This came up most often on NetBSD.
7504 q. Fixed a problem with completion -- it thought that `pwd`/[TAB] indicated
7505 an unfinished command completion (`/), which generated errors.
7507 r. The bash special tilde expansions (~-, ~+) are now attempted before
7508 calling the standard tilde expansion code, which should eliminate the
7509 problems people have been seeing with this on Solaris 2.5.1.
7511 s. Added support for <stdarg.h> to places where it was missing.
7513 t. Changed the code that reads the output of a command substitution to not
7514 go through stdio. This reduces the memory requirements and is faster.
7516 u. A number of changes to speed up export environment creation were made.
7518 v. A number of memory leaks were fixed as the result of running the test
7519 scripts through Purify.
7521 w. Fixed a bug that caused subshells forked to interpret executable
7522 scripts without a leading `#!' to not reinitialize the values of
7525 2. Changes to Readline
7527 a. History library has less `#ifdef SHELL' code -- abstracted stuff out
7528 into application-specific function hooks.
7530 b. Readline no longer calls getenv() if it's compiled as part of the shell,
7531 which should eliminate problems on systems that cannot redefine getenv(),
7534 c. Fixed translation of ESC when `untranslating' macro values.
7536 d. The region kill operation now fixes the mark if it ends up beyond the
7537 boundaries of the line after the region is deleted.
7539 3. New Features in Bash
7541 a. New argument for `configure': `--with-curses'. This can be used to
7542 override the selection of the termcap library on systems where it is
7545 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7546 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.01-alpha1,
7547 and the previous version, bash-2.0-release.
7551 a. System-specific configuration changes for: FreeBSD, SunOS4, Irix,
7552 MachTen, QNX 4.2, Harris Night Hawk, SunOS5.
7554 b. System-specific code changes were made for: Linux, 4.4 BSD, QNX 4.2,
7557 c. A bug that caused the exec builtin to fail because the full pathname of
7558 the command could not be found was fixed.
7560 d. The code that performs output redirections is now more resistant to
7561 race conditions and possible security exploits.
7563 e. A bug that caused the shell to dump core when performing pattern
7564 substitutions on variable values was fixed.
7566 f. More hosts are now recognized by the auto-configuration mechanism
7567 (OpenBSD, QNX, others).
7569 g. Assignments to read-only variables that attempt to convert them to
7570 arrays are now errors.
7572 h. A bug that caused shell scripts using array assignments in POSIX mode
7573 to exit after the assignment was performed was fixed.
7575 i. The substring expansion code is now more careful about running off the
7576 ends of the expanded variable value.
7578 j. A bug that caused completion to fail if a backquoted command substitution
7579 appeared anywhere on the line was fixed.
7581 k. The `source' builtin no longer turns off history if it has been enabled
7582 in a non-interactive shell.
7584 l. A bug that caused the shell to crash when `disown' was given a pid
7585 instead of a job number was fixed.
7587 m. The `cd' spelling correction code will not try to change to `.' if no
7588 directory entries match a single-character argument.
7590 n. A bad variable name supplied to `declare', `export', or `readonly' no
7591 longer causes a non-interactive shell in POSIX mode to exit.
7593 o. Some fixes were made to the test suite to handle peculiarities of
7594 various Unix versions.
7596 p. The bash completion code now quotes characters that readline would
7597 treat as word breaks for completion but are not shell metacharacters.
7599 q. Bad options supplied at invocation now cause a usage message to be
7602 r. Fixes were made to the code that handles DEBUG traps so that the trap
7603 string is not freed inappropriately.
7605 s. Some changes were made to the bash debugger in examples/bashdb -- it
7606 should be closer to working now.
7608 t. A problem that caused the default filename used for mail checking to be
7611 u. A fix was made to the `echo' builtin so that NUL characters printed with
7612 `echo -e' do not cause the output to be truncated.
7614 v. A fix was made to the job control code so that the shell behaves better
7615 when monitor mode is enabled in a non-interactive shell.
7617 w. Bash no longer catches all of the terminating signals in a non-
7618 interactive shell until a trap is set on EXIT, which should result in
7621 x. A fix was made to the command timing code so that `time' can be used in
7624 y. A fix was made to the parser so that `((cmd); cmd2)' is now parsed as
7625 a nested subshell rather than strictly as an (erroneous) arithmetic
7628 z. A fix was made to the globbing code so that it correctly matches quoted
7629 filenames beginning with a `.'.
7631 aa. A bug in `fc' that caused some multi-line commands to not be stored as
7632 one command in the history when they were re-executed after editing
7633 (with `fc -e') was fixed.
7635 bb. The `ulimit' builtin now attempts to catch some classes of integer
7638 cc. The command-oriented-history code no longer attempts to add `;'
7639 inappropriately when a newline appears while reading a $(...) command
7642 dd. A bug that caused the shell to dump core when `help --' was executed
7645 ee. A bug that caused the shell to crash when an unset variable appeared
7646 in the body of a here document after `set -u' had been executed was
7649 ff. Implicit input redirections from /dev/null for asynchronous commands
7650 are now handled better.
7652 gg. A bug that caused the shell to fail to compile when configured with
7653 `--disable-readline' was fixed.
7655 hh. The globbing code should now be interruptible.
7657 ii. Bash now notices when the `kill' builtin is used to send SIGCONT to a
7658 stopped job and adjusts the data structures accordingly, as if `bg' had
7659 been executed instead.
7661 jj. A bug that caused the shell to crash when mixing calls to `getopts'
7662 and `shift' on the same set of positional parameters was fixed.
7664 kk. The command printing code now preserves the `-p' flag to `time'.
7666 ll. The command printing code now handles here documents better when there
7667 are other redirections associated with the command.
7669 mm. The special glibc environment variable (NNN_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_)
7670 is no longer placed into the environment of executed commands -- users
7671 of glibc had too many problems with it.
7673 nn. Reorganized the code that generates signames.h. The signal_names list
7674 is now more complete but may be slightly different (SIGABRT is favored
7675 over SIGIOT, for example). The preferred signal names are those
7676 listed in the POSIX.2 standard.
7678 oo. `bashbug' now uses a filename shorter than 14 characters for its
7679 temporary file, and asks for confirmation before sending the bug
7682 pp. A bug that caused TAB completion in vi editing mode to not be turned
7683 off when `set -o posix' was executed or back on when `set +o posix'
7684 was executed was fixed.
7686 qq. A bug in the brace expansion code that caused brace expansions appearing
7687 in new-style $(...) command substitutions to be inappropriately expanded
7690 rr. A bug in the readline hook shell-expand-line that could cause memory to
7691 be inappropriately freed was fixed.
7693 ss. A bug that caused some arithmetic expressions containing `&&' and `||'
7694 to be parsed with the wrong precedence has been fixed.
7696 tt. References to unbound variables after `set -u' has been executed now
7697 cause the shell to exit immediately, as they should.
7699 uu. A bug that caused the shell to exit inappropriately when `set -e' had
7700 been executed and a command's return status was being inverted with the
7701 `!' reserved word was fixed.
7703 vv. A bug that could occasionally cause the shell to crash with a
7704 divide-by-zero error when timing a command was fixed.
7706 ww. A bug that caused parameter pattern substitution to leave stray
7707 backslashes in the replacement string when the expression is in
7708 double quotes was fixed.
7710 xx. The `break' and `continue' builtins now break out of all loops when an
7711 invalid count argument is supplied.
7713 yy. Fixed a bug that caused PATH to be set to the empty string if
7714 `command -p' is executed with PATH unset.
7716 zz. Fixed `kill -l signum' to print the signal name without the `SIG' prefix,
7719 aaa. Fixed a bug that caused the shell to crash while setting $SHELLOPTS
7720 if there were no shell options set.
7722 bbb. Fixed `export -p' and `readonly -p' so that when the shell is in POSIX
7723 mode, their output is as POSIX.2 specifies.
7725 ccc. Fixed a bug in `readonly' so that `readonly -a avar=(...)' actually
7726 creates an array variable.
7728 ddd. Fixed a bug that prevented `time' from correctly timing background
7731 2. Changes to Readline
7733 a. A bug that caused an extra newline to be printed when the cursor was on
7734 an otherwise empty line was fixed.
7736 b. An instance of memory being used after it was freed was corrected.
7738 c. The redisplay code now works when the prompt is longer than the screen
7741 d. `dump-macros' is now a bindable name, as it should have been all along.
7743 e. Non-printable characters are now expanded when displaying macros and
7746 f. The `dump-variables' and `dump-macros' commands now output a leading
7747 newline if they're called as the result of a key sequence, rather
7748 than directly by an application.
7750 3. New Features in Bash
7752 a. There is a new builtin array variable: GROUPS, the set of groups to which
7753 the user belongs. This is used by the test suite.
7755 4. New Features in Readline
7757 a. If a key sequence bound to `universal-argument' is read while reading a
7758 numeric argument started with `universal-argument', it terminates the
7759 argument but is otherwise ignored. This provides a way to insert multiple
7760 instances of a digit string, and is how GNU emacs does it.
7762 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7763 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-release,
7764 and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta3.
7768 a. Fix to the `getopts' builtin so that it does the right thing when a
7769 required option argument is not present.
7771 b. The completion code now updates the common prefix of matched names
7772 after FIGNORE processing is done, since any names that were removed
7773 may have changed the common prefix.
7775 c. Fixed a bug that made messages in MAILPATH entries not work correctly.
7777 d. Fixed a serious documentation error in the description of the new
7778 ${parameter:offset[:length]} expansion.
7780 e. Fixes to make parameter substring expansion ({$param:offset[:length]})
7781 work when within double quotes.
7783 f. Fixes to make ^A (CTLESC) survive an unquoted expansion of positional
7786 g. Corrected a misspelling of `unlimited' in the output of `ulimit'.
7788 h. Fixed a bug that caused executable scripts without a leading `#!' to
7789 occasionally pick up the wrong set of positional parameters.
7791 i. Linux systems now have a working `ulimit -v', using RLIMIT_AS.
7793 j. Updated config.guess so that many more machine types are recognized.
7795 k. Fixed a bug with backslash-quoted slashes in the ${param/pat[/sub]}
7798 l. If the shell is named `-su', and `-c command' is supplied, read and
7799 execute the login shell startup files even though the shell is not
7800 interactive. This is to support the `-' option to `su'.
7802 m. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps when the DEBUG trap was ignored
7803 with `trap "" DEBUG' and a shell function was subsequently executed.
7805 n. Fixed a bug that caused core dumps in the read builtin when IFS was
7806 set to the null string and the input had leading whitespace.
7808 2. Changes to Readline
7810 a. Fixed a bug that caused a numeric argument of 1024 to be ignored when
7813 b. Fixed the display code so that the numeric argument is displayed as it's
7816 c. Fixed the numeric argument reading code so that `M-- command' is
7817 equivalent to `M--1 command', as the prompt implies.
7819 3. New Features in Bash
7821 a. `ulimit' now sets both hard and soft limits and reports the soft limit
7822 by default (when neither -H nor -S is specified). This is compatible
7823 with versions of sh and ksh that implement `ulimit'.
7825 b. Integer constants have been extended to base 64.
7827 4. New Features in Readline
7829 a. The `home' and `end' keys are now bound to beginning-of-line and
7830 end-of-line, respectively, if the corresponding termcap capabilities
7833 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7834 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta3,
7835 and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta2.
7839 a. System-specific changes for: AIX 4.2, SCO 3.2v[45], HP-UX.
7841 b. When in POSIX mode, variable assignments preceding a special builtin
7842 persist in the shell environment after the builtin completes.
7844 c. Changed all calls to getwd() to getcwd(). Improved check for systems
7845 where the libc getcwd() calls popen(), since that breaks on some
7846 systems when job control is being used.
7848 d. Fixed a bug that caused seg faults when executing scripts with the
7849 execute bit set but without a leading `#!'.
7851 e. The environment passed to executed commands is never sorted.
7853 f. A bug was fixed in the code that expands ${name[@]} to the number of
7854 elements in an array variable.
7856 g. A bug was fixed in the array compound assignment code ( A=( ... ) ).
7858 h. Window size changes now correctly propagate down to readline if
7859 the shopt `checkwinsize' option is enabled.
7861 i. A fix was made in the code that expands to the length of a variable
7864 j. A fix was made to the command builtin so that it did not turn on the
7865 `no fork' flag inappropriately.
7867 k. A fix was made to make `set -n' work more reliably.
7869 l. A fix was made to the job control initialization code so that the
7870 terminal process group is set to the shell's process group if the
7871 shell changes its own process group.
7873 2. Changes to Readline
7875 a. System-specific changes for: SCO 3.2v[45].
7877 b. The behavior of the vi-mode `.' when redoing an `i' command was changed
7878 to insert the text previously inserted by the `i' command rather than
7879 simply entering insert mode.
7881 3. New features in Bash
7883 a. There is a new version of the autoload function package, in
7884 examples/functions/autoload.v2, that uses arrays and provides more
7887 b. Support for LC_COLLATE and locale-specific sorting of the results of
7888 pathname expansion if strcoll() is available.
7890 4. New Features in Readline
7892 a. Support for locale-specific sorting of completion possibilities if
7893 strcoll() is available.
7895 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7896 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta2,
7897 and the previous version, bash-2.0-beta1.
7901 a. `pushd -' is once again equivalent to `pushd $OLDPWD'.
7903 b. OS-specific changes for: SCO 3.2v[45].
7905 c. A change was made to the fix for the recently-reported security hole
7906 when reading characters with octal value 255 to make it work better on
7907 systems with restartable system calls when not using readline.
7909 d. Some changes were made to the test suite so that it works if you
7910 configure bash with --enable-usg-echo-default.
7912 e. A fix was made to the parsing of conditional arithmetic expressions.
7914 f. Illegal arithmetic bases now cause an arithmetic evaluation error rather
7915 than being silently reset.
7917 g. Multiple arithmetic bases now cause an arithmetic evaluation error
7918 instead of being ignored.
7920 h. A fix was made to the evaluation of ${param?word} to conform to POSIX.2.
7922 i. A bug that sometimes caused array indices to be evaluated twice (which
7923 would cause errors when they contained assignment statements) was fixed.
7925 j. `ulimit' was rewritten to avoid problems with getrlimit(2) returning
7926 unsigned values and to simplify the code.
7928 k. A bug in the command-oriented-history code that caused it to sometimes
7929 put semicolons after right parens inappropriately was fixed.
7931 l. The values inserted into the prompt by the \w and \W escape sequences
7932 are now quoted to prevent further expansion.
7934 m. An interactive shell invoked as `sh' now reads and executes commands
7935 from the file named by $ENV when it starts up. If it's a login shell,
7936 it does this after reading /etc/profile and ~/.profile.
7938 n. The file named by $ENV is never read by non-interactive shells.
7940 2. Changes to Readline
7942 a. A few changes were made to hide some macros and functions that should not
7945 b. An off-by-one error that caused seg faults in the history expansion code
7948 3. New Features in Bash
7950 a. The ksh-style ((...)) arithmetic command was implemented. It is exactly
7951 identical to let "...". This is controlled by a new option to configure,
7952 `--enable-dparen-arithmetic', which is on by default.
7954 b. There is a new #define available in config.h.top: SYS_BASH_LOGOUT. If
7955 defined to a filename, bash reads and executes commands from that file
7956 when a login shell exits. It's commented out by default.
7958 c. `ulimit' has a `-l' option that reports the maximum amount of data that
7959 may be locked into memory on 4.4BSD-based systems.
7961 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7962 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-beta1,
7963 and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha4.
7967 a. A bug that sometimes caused traps to be ignored on signals the
7968 shell treats specially was fixed.
7970 b. The internationalization code was changed to track the values of
7971 LC_* variables and call setlocale() as appropriate. The TEXTDOMAIN
7972 and TEXTDOMAINDIR variables are also tracked; changes cause calls
7973 to textdomain() and bindtextdomain(), if available.
7975 c. A bug was fixed that sometimes caused double-quoted strings to be
7978 d. Changes were made so that the siglist code compiles correctly on
7981 e. Added `:' to the set of characters that cause word breaks for the
7982 completion code so that pathnames in assignments to $PATH can be
7985 f. The `select' command was fixed to print $PS3 to stderr.
7987 g. Fixed an error in the manual page section describing the effect that
7988 setting and unsetting GLOBIGNORE has on the setting of the `dotglob'
7991 h. The time conversion code now uses CLK_TCK rather than CLOCKS_PER_SEC
7992 on systems without gettimeofday() and resources.
7994 i. The getopt static variables are now initialized each time a subshell
7995 is started, so subshells using `getopts' work right.
7997 j. A sign-extension bug that caused a possible security hole was fixed.
7999 k. The parser now reads characters between backquotes within a double-
8000 quoted string as a single word, so double quotes in the backquoted
8001 string don't terminate the enclosing double-quoted string.
8003 l. A bug that caused `^O' to work incorrectly when typed as the first
8004 thing to an interactive shell was fixed.
8006 m. A rarely-exercised off-by-one error in the code that quotes variable
8009 n. Some memory and file descriptor leaks encountered when running a
8010 shell script that is executable but does not have a leading `#!'
8013 2. Changes to Readline
8015 a. A bug that sometimes caused incorrect results when trying to read
8016 typeahead on systems without FIONREAD was fixed.
8018 3. New Features in Bash
8020 a. The command timing code now uses the value of the TIMEFORMAT variable
8021 to format and display timing statistics.
8023 b. The `time' reserved word now accepts a `-p' option to force the
8024 POSIX.2 output format.
8026 c. There are a couple of new and updated scripts to convert csh startup
8027 files to bash format.
8029 d. There is a new builtin array variable: BASH_VERSINFO. The various
8030 members hold the parts of the version information in BASH_VERSION,
8031 plus the value of MACHTYPE.
8033 4. New Features in Readline
8035 a. Setting LANG to `en_US.ISO8859-1' now causes readline to enter
8038 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8039 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha4,
8040 and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha3.
8044 a. There is better detection of rsh connections on Solaris 2.
8046 b. Assignments to read-only variables preceding a command name are now
8047 variable assignment errors. Variable assignment errors cause
8048 non-interactive shells running in posix mode to exit.
8050 c. The word tokenizer was rewritten to handle nested quotes and pairs
8051 ('', "", ``, ${...}, $(...), $[...], $'...', $"...", <(...), >(...))
8052 correctly. Some of the parameter expansion code was updated as a
8055 d. A fix was made to `test' when given three arguments so that a binary
8056 operator is checked for first, before checking that the first argument
8059 e. 2''>/dev/null is no longer equivalent to 2>/dev/null.
8061 f. Parser error messages were regularized, and in most cases the name of
8062 the shell script being read by a non-interactive shell is not printed
8065 g. A fix was made to the completion code so that it no longer removes the
8066 text the user typed in some cases.
8068 h. The special glibc `getopt' environment variable is no longer put into
8069 the environment on machines with small values of ARG_MAX.
8071 i. The expansion of ${...} now follows the POSIX.2 rules for finding the
8074 j. The shell no longer displays spurious status messages for background
8075 jobs in shell scripts that complete successfully when the script is
8076 run from a terminal.
8078 k. `shopt -o' now correctly updates $SHELLOPTS.
8080 l. A bug that caused the $PATH searching code to return a non-executable
8081 file even when an executable file with the same name appeared later in
8084 m. The shell now does tilde expansions on unquoted `:~' in assignment
8085 statements when not in posix mode.
8087 n. Variable assignment errors when a command consists only of assignments
8088 now cause non-interactive shells to exit when in posix mode.
8090 o. If the variable in a `for' or `select' command is read-only, or not a
8091 legal shell identifier, a variable assignment error occurs.
8093 p. `test' now handles `-a' and `-o' as binary operators when three arguments
8094 are supplied, and correctly parses `( word )' as equivalent to `word'.
8096 q. `test' was fixed so that file names of the form /dev/fd/NN mean the same
8097 thing on all systems, even Linux.
8099 r. Fixed a bug in the globbing code that caused patterns with multiple
8100 consecutive `*'s to not be matched correctly.
8102 s. Fixed a bug that caused $PS2 to not be printed when an interactive shell
8103 not using readline is reading a here document.
8105 t. Fixed a bug that caused history expansion to be performed inappropriately
8106 when a single-quoted string spanned more than one line.
8108 u. `getopts' now checks that the variable name passed by the user as the
8109 second argument is a legal shell identifier and that the variable is
8112 v. Fixed `getopts' to obey POSIX.2 rules for setting $OPTIND when it
8113 encounters an error.
8115 w. Fixed `set' to display variable values in a form that can be re-read.
8117 x. Fixed a bug in the code that keeps track of whether or not local variables
8118 have been declared at the current level of function nesting.
8120 y. Non-interactive shells in posix mode now exit if the name in a function
8121 declaration is not a legal identifier.
8123 z. The job control code now ignores stopped children when the shell is not
8126 aa. The `cd' builtin no longer attempts spelling correction on the directory
8127 name if the shell is not interactive, regardless of the setting of the
8130 bb. Some OS-specific changes were made for SCO 3.2v[45] and AIX 4.2.
8132 cc. `time' now prints its output to stderr, as POSIX.2 specifies.
8134 2. Fixes to Readline
8136 a. After printing possible completions, all lines of a multi-line prompt
8139 b. Some changes were made to the terminal handling code in rltty.c to
8140 work around AIX 4.2 bugs.
8142 3. New Features in Bash
8144 a. There is a new loadable builtin: sprintf, with calling syntax
8145 sprintf var format [args]
8146 This provides an easy way to simulate ksh left- and right-justified
8149 b. The expansions of \h and \H in prompt strings were swapped. \h now
8150 expands to the hostname up to the first `.', as in bash-1.14.
8152 4. New Features in Readline
8154 a. The bash-1.14 behavior when ^M is typed while doing an incremental
8155 search was restored. ^J may now be used to terminate the search without
8158 b. There is a new bindable variable: disable-completion. This inhibits
8159 word completion and causes the completion character to be inserted as
8160 if it had been bound to self-insert.
8162 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8163 This document details the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha3,
8164 and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha2.
8166 There is now a file `COMPAT' included in the distribution that lists the
8167 user-visible incompatibilities between 1.14 and 2.0.
8171 a. Some work was done so that word splitting of the rhs of assignment
8172 statements conforms more closely to historical practice.
8174 b. A couple of errant memory frees were fixed.
8176 c. A fix was made to the test builtin so it recognizes `<' and `>' as
8179 d. The GNU malloc in lib/malloc/malloc.c now scrambles memory as it's
8180 allocated and freed. This is to catch callers that refer to freed
8181 memory or assume something about newly-allocated memory.
8183 e. Fixed a problem with conversion to 12-hour time in the prompt
8186 f. Fixed a problem with configure's argument parsing order. Now you can
8187 correctly turn on specific options after using --enable-minimal-config.
8189 g. The configure script now automatically disables the use of GNU malloc
8190 on systems where it's appropriate (better than having people read the
8191 NOTES file and do it manually).
8193 h. There are new prompt expansions (\v and \V) to insert version information
8194 into the prompt strings.
8196 i. The default prompt string now includes the version number.
8198 j. Most of the builtins that take no options were changed to use the
8199 internal getopt so they can produce proper error messages for -?
8200 and incorrect options.
8202 k. Some system-specific changes were made for SVR4.2 and Solaris 2.5.
8204 l. Bash now uses PATH_MAX instead of MAXPATHLEN and NAME_MAX instead of
8207 m. A couple of problems caused by uninitialized variables were fixed.
8209 n. There are a number of new loadable builtin examples: logname, basename,
8210 dirname, tty, pathchk, tee, head, and rmdir. All of these conform to
8213 o. Bash now notices changes in TZ and calls tzset() if present, so
8214 changing TZ will alter the time printed by prompt expansions.
8216 p. The source was reorganized a bit so I don't have to wait so long for
8217 some files to compile, and to facilitate the creation of a `shell
8218 library' at some future point.
8220 q. Bash no longer turns off job control if called as `sh', since the
8221 POSIX.2 spec includes job control as a standard feature.
8223 r. `bash -o posix' now works as intended.
8225 s. Fixed a problem with the completion code: when completing a filename
8226 that contained globbing characters, if show-all-if-ambiguous was set,
8227 the completion code would remove the user's text.
8229 t. Fixed ulimit so that (hopefully) the full range of limits is available
8232 u. A new `shopt' option (`hostcomplete') enables and disables hostname
8235 v. The shell no longer attempts to save the history on an abort(),
8236 which is usually called by programming_error().
8238 w. The `-s' option to `fc' was changed to echo the command to be executed
8239 to stderr instead of stdout.
8241 x. If the editor invoked by `fc -e' exits with a non-zero status, no
8242 commands are executed.
8244 y. Fixed a bug that made the shopt `histverify' option work incorrectly.
8246 z. There is a new variable `MACHTYPE' whose value is the GNU-style
8247 `cpu-company-system' system description as set by configure. (The
8248 values of MACHTYPE and HOSTTYPE should really be swapped.)
8250 aa. The `ulimit' builtin now allows the maximum virtual memory size to be
8251 set via setrlimit(2) if RLIMIT_VMEM is defined.
8253 bb. `bash -nc 'command'' no longer runs `command'.
8255 2. Changes to Readline
8257 a. Fixed a typo in the code that checked for FIONREAD in input.c.
8259 b. Fixed a bug in the code that outputs keybindings, so things like C-\
8260 are quoted properly.
8262 c. Fixed a bug in the inputrc file parsing code to handle the problems
8263 caused by inputrc files created from the output of `bind -p' in
8264 previous versions of bash. The problem was due to the bug fixed
8267 d. Readline no longer turns off the terminal's meta key, and turns it on
8268 once the first time it's called.
8270 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8271 This file documents the changes between this version, bash-2.0-alpha2,
8272 and the previous version, bash-2.0-alpha.
8276 a. The shell no longer thinks directories are executable.
8278 b. `disown' has a new option, `h', which inhibits the resending of SIGHUP
8279 but does not remove the job from the jobs table.
8281 c. The varargs functions in error.c now use ANSI-C `stdarg' if available.
8283 d. The build process now treats the `build version' in .build as local to
8284 the build directory, so different versions built from the same source
8285 tree have different `build versions'.
8287 e. Some problems with the grammar have been fixed. (It used `list' in a few
8288 productions where `compound_list' was needed. A `list' must be terminated
8289 with a newline or semicolon; a `compound_list' need not be.)
8291 f. A fix was made to keep `wait' from hanging when waiting for all background
8294 g. `bash --help' now writes its output to stdout, like the GNU Coding Standards
8295 specify, and includes the machine type (the value of MACHTYPE).
8297 h. `bash --version' now prints more information and exits successfully, like
8298 the GNU Coding Standards specify.
8300 i. The output of `time' and `times' now prints fractional seconds with three
8301 places after the decimal point.
8303 j. A bug that caused process substitutions to screw up the pipeline printed
8304 by `jobs' was fixed.
8306 k. Fixes were made to the code that implements $'...' and $"..." so they
8309 l. The process substitution code now opens named pipes for reading with
8310 O_NONBLOCK to avoid hanging.
8312 m. Fixes were made to the trap code so the shell cleans up correctly if the
8313 trap command contains a `return' and we're executing a function or
8314 sourcing a script with `.'.
8316 n. Fixes to doc/Makefile.in so that it doesn't try to remake all of the
8317 documentation (ps, dvi, etc.) on a `make install'.
8319 o. Fixed an auto-increment error that caused bash -c args to sometimes dump
8322 p. Fixed a bug that caused $HISTIGNORE to fail when the history line
8323 contained globbing characters.
8325 2. Changes to Readline
8327 a. There is a new string variable, rl_library_version, available for use by
8328 applications. The current value is "2.1".
8330 b. A bug encountered when expand-tilde was enabled and file completion was
8331 attempted on a word beginning with `~/' was fixed.
8333 c. A slight change was made to the incremental search termination behavior.
8334 ESC still terminates the search, but if input is pending or arrives
8335 within 0.1 seconds (on systems with select(2)), it is used as a prefix
8336 character. This is intented to allow users to terminate searches with
8337 the arrow keys and get the behavior they expect.