This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.3, and the previous version, readline-4.2a. 1. Changes to Readline a. Fixed output of comment-begin character when listing variable values. b. Added some default key bindings for common escape sequences produced by HOME and END keys. c. Fixed the mark handling code to be more emacs-compatible. d. A bug was fixed in the code that prints possible completions to keep it from printing empty strings in certain circumstances. e. Change the key sequence printing code to print ESC as M\- if ESC is a meta-prefix character -- it's easier for users to understand than \e. f. Fixed unstifle_history() to return values that match the documentation. g. Fixed the event loop (rl_event_hook) to handle the case where the input file descriptor is invalidated. h. Fixed the prompt display code to work better when the application has a custom redisplay function. i. Changes to make reading and writing the history file a little faster, and to cope with huge history files without calling abort(3) from xmalloc. j. The vi-mode `S' and `s' commands are now undone correctly. k. Fixed a problem which caused the display to be messed up when the last line of a multi-line prompt (possibly containing invisible characters) was longer than the screen width. 2. New Features in Readline a. Support for key `subsequences': allows, e.g., ESC and ESC-a to both be bound to readline functions. Now the arrow keys may be used in vi insert mode. b. When listing completions, and the number of lines displayed is more than the screen length, readline uses an internal pager to display the results. This is controlled by the `page-completions' variable (default on). c. New code to handle editing and displaying multibyte characters. d. The behavior introduced in bash-2.05a of deciding whether or not to append a slash to a completed name that is a symlink to a directory has been made optional, controlled by the `mark-symlinked-directories' variable (default is the 2.05a behavior). e. The `insert-comment' command now acts as a toggle if given a numeric argument: if the first characters on the line don't specify a comment, insert one; if they do, delete the comment text f. New application-settable completion variable: rl_completion_mark_symlink_dirs, allows an application's completion function to temporarily override the user's preference for appending slashes to names which are symlinks to directories. g. New function available to application completion functions: rl_completion_mode, to tell how the completion function was invoked and decide which argument to supply to rl_complete_internal (to list completions, etc.). h. Readline now has an overwrite mode, toggled by the `overwrite-mode' bindable command, which could be bound to `Insert'. i. New application-settable completion variable: rl_completion_suppress_append, inhibits appending of rl_completion_append_character to completed words. j. New key bindings when reading an incremental search string: ^W yanks the currently-matched word out of the current line into the search string; ^Y yanks the rest of the current line into the search string, DEL or ^H deletes characters from the search string. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.2a, and the previous version, readline-4.2. 1. Changes to Readline a. More `const' and type casting fixes. b. Changed rl_message() to use vsnprintf(3) (if available) to fix buffer overflow problems. c. The completion code no longer appends a `/' or ` ' to a match when completing a symbolic link that resolves to a directory name, unless the match does not add anything to the word being completed. This means that a tab will complete the word up to the full name, but not add anything, and a subsequent tab will add a slash. d. Fixed a trivial typo that made the vi-mode `dT' command not work. e. Fixed the tty code so that ^S and ^Q can be inserted with rl_quoted_insert. f. Fixed the tty code so that ^V works more than once. g. Changed the use of __P((...)) for function prototypes to PARAMS((...)) because the use of __P in typedefs conflicted g++ and glibc. h. The completion code now attempts to do a better job of preserving the case of the word the user typed if ignoring case in completions. i. Readline defaults to not echoing the input and lets the terminal initialization code enable echoing if there is a controlling terminal. j. The key binding code now processes only two hex digits after a `\x' escape sequence, and the documentation was changed to note that the octal and hex escape sequences result in an eight-bit value rather than strict ASCII. k. Fixed a few places where negative array subscripts could have occurred. l. Fixed the vi-mode code to use a better method to determine the bounds of the array used to hold the marks, and to avoid out-of-bounds references. m. Fixed the defines in chardefs.h to work better when chars are signed. n. Fixed configure.in to use the new names for bash autoconf macros. o. Readline no longer attempts to define its own versions of some ctype macros if they are implemented as functions in libc but not as macros in . p. Fixed a problem where rl_backward could possibly set point to before the beginning of the line. q. Fixed Makefile to not put -I/usr/include into CFLAGS, since it can cause include file problems. 2. New Features in Readline a. Added extern declaration for rl_get_termcap to readline.h, making it a public function (it was always there, just not in readline.h). b. New #defines in readline.h: RL_READLINE_VERSION, currently 0x0402, RL_VERSION_MAJOR, currently 4, and RL_VERSION_MINOR, currently 2. c. New readline variable: rl_readline_version, mirrors RL_READLINE_VERSION. d. New bindable boolean readline variable: match-hidden-files. Controls completion of files beginning with a `.' (on Unix). Enabled by default. e. The history expansion code now allows any character to terminate a `:first-' modifier, like csh. f. The incremental search code remembers the last search string and uses it if ^R^R is typed without a search string. h. New bindable variable `history-preserve-point'. If set, the history code attempts to place the user at the same location on each history line retrived with previous-history or next-history. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.2, and the previous version, readline-4.1. 1. Changes to Readline a. When setting the terminal attributes on systems using `struct termio', readline waits for output to drain before changing the attributes. b. A fix was made to the history word tokenization code to avoid attempts to dereference a null pointer. c. Readline now defaults rl_terminal_name to $TERM if the calling application has left it unset, and tries to initialize with the resultant value. d. Instead of calling (*rl_getc_function)() directly to get input in certain places, readline now calls rl_read_key() consistently. e. Fixed a bug in the completion code that allowed a backslash to quote a single quote inside a single-quoted string. f. rl_prompt is no longer assigned directly from the argument to readline(), but uses memory allocated by readline. This allows constant strings to be passed to readline without problems arising when the prompt processing code wants to modify the string. g. Fixed a bug that caused non-interactive history searches to return the wrong line when performing multiple searches backward for the same string. h. Many variables, function arguments, and function return values are now declared `const' where appropriate, to improve behavior when linking with C++ code. i. The control character detection code now works better on systems where `char' is unsigned by default. j. The vi-mode numeric argument is now capped at 999999, just like emacs mode. k. The Function, CPFunction, CPPFunction, and VFunction typedefs have been replaced with a set of specific prototyped typedefs, though they are still in the readline header files for backwards compatibility. m. Nearly all of the (undocumented) internal global variables in the library now have an _rl_ prefix -- there were a number that did not, like screenheight, screenwidth, alphabetic, etc. n. The ding() convenience function has been renamed to rl_ding(), though the old function is still defined for backwards compatibility. o. The completion convenience functions filename_completion_function, username_completion_function, and completion_matches now have an rl_ prefix, though the old names are still defined for backwards compatibility. p. The functions shared by readline and bash (linkage is satisfied from bash when compiling with bash, and internally otherwise) now have an sh_ prefix. q. Changed the shared library creation procedure on Linux and BSD/OS 4.x so that the `soname' contains only the major version number rather than the major and minor numbers. r. Fixed a redisplay bug that occurred when the prompt spanned more than one physical line and contained invisible characters. s. Added a missing `includedir' variable to the Makefile. t. When installing the shared libraries, make sure symbolic links are relative. u. Added configure test so that it can set `${MAKE}' appropriately. v. Fixed a bug in rl_forward that could cause the point to be set to before the beginning of the line in vi mode. w. Fixed a bug in the callback read-char interface to make it work when a readline function pushes some input onto the input stream with rl_execute_next (like the incremental search functions). x. Fixed a file descriptor leak in the history file manipulation code that was tripped when attempting to truncate a non-regular file (like /dev/null). y. Changes to make all of the exported readline functions declared in readline.h have an rl_ prefix (rltty_set_default_bindings is now rl_tty_set_default_bindings, crlf is now rl_crlf, etc.) z. The formatted documentation included in the base readline distribution is no longer removed on a `make distclean'. aa. Some changes were made to avoid gcc warnings with -Wall. bb. rl_get_keymap_by_name now finds keymaps case-insensitively, so `set keymap EMACS' works. cc. The history file writing and truncation functions now return a useful status on error. dd. Fixed a bug that could cause applications to dereference a NULL pointer if a NULL second argument was passed to history_expand(). ee. If a hook function assigned to rl_event_hook sets rl_done to a non-zero value, rl_read_key() now immediately returns '\n' (which is assumed to be bound to accept-line). 2. New Features in Readline a. The blink timeout for paren matching is now settable by applications, via the rl_set_paren_blink_timeout() function. b. _rl_executing_macro has been renamed to rl_executing_macro, which means it's now part of the public interface. c. Readline has a new variable, rl_readline_state, which is a bitmap that encapsulates the current state of the library; intended for use by callbacks and hook functions. d. rlfe has a new -l option to log input and output (-a appends to logfile), a new -n option to set the readline application name, and -v and -h options for version and help information. e. rlfe can now perform filename completion for the inferior process if the OS has a /proc//cwd that can be read with readlink(2) to get the inferior's current working directory. f. A new file, rltypedefs.h, contains the new typedefs for function pointers and is installed by `make install'. g. New application-callable function rl_set_prompt(const char *prompt): expands its prompt string argument and sets rl_prompt to the result. h. New application-callable function rl_set_screen_size(int rows, int cols): public method for applications to set readline's idea of the screen dimensions. i. The history example program (examples/histexamp.c) is now built as one of the examples. j. The documentation has been updated to cover nearly all of the public functions and variables declared in readline.h. k. New function, rl_get_screen_size (int *rows, int *columns), returns readline's idea of the screen dimensions. l. The timeout in rl_gather_tyi (readline keyboard input polling function) is now settable via a function (rl_set_keyboard_input_timeout()). m. Renamed the max_input_history variable to history_max_entries; the old variable is maintained for backwards compatibility. n. The list of characters that separate words for the history tokenizer is now settable with a variable: history_word_delimiters. The default value is as before. o. There is a new history.3 manual page documenting the history library. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.1, and the previous version, readline-4.0. 1. Changes to Readline a. Changed the HTML documents so that the table-of-contents is no longer a separate file. b. Changes to the shared object configuration for: Irix 5.x, Irix 6.x, OSF/1. c. The shared library major and minor versions are now constructed automatically by configure and substituted into the makefiles. d. It's now possible to install the shared libraries separately from the static libraries. e. The history library tries to truncate the history file only if it is a regular file. f. A bug that caused _rl_dispatch to address negative array indices on systems with signed chars was fixed. g. rl-yank-nth-arg now leaves the history position the same as when it was called. h. Changes to the completion code to handle MS-DOS drive-letter:pathname filenames. i. Completion is now case-insensitive by default on MS-DOS. j. Fixes to the history file manipulation code for MS-DOS. k. Readline attempts to bind the arrow keys to appropriate defaults on MS-DOS. l. Some fixes were made to the redisplay code for better operation on MS-DOS. m. The quoted-insert code will now insert tty special chars like ^C. n. A bug was fixed that caused the display code to reference memory before the start of the prompt string. o. More support for __EMX__ (OS/2). p. A bug was fixed in readline's signal handling that could cause infinite recursion in signal handlers. q. A bug was fixed that caused the point to be less than zero when rl_forward was given a very large numeric argument. r. The vi-mode code now gets characters via the application-settable value of rl_getc_function rather than calling rl_getc directly. s. The history file code now uses O_BINARY mode when reading and writing the history file on cygwin32. t. Fixed a bug in the redisplay code for lines with more than 256 line breaks. u. A bug was fixed which caused invisible character markers to not be stripped from the prompt string if the terminal was in no-echo mode. v. Readline no longer tries to get the variables it needs for redisplay from the termcap entry if the calling application has specified its own redisplay function. Readline treats the terminal as `dumb' in this case. w. Fixes to the SIGWINCH code so that a multiple-line prompt with escape sequences is redrawn correctly. x. Changes to the install and install-shared targets so that the libraries and header files are installed separately. 2. New Features in Readline a. A new Readline `user manual' is in doc/rluserman.texinfo. b. Parentheses matching is now always compiled into readline, and enabled or disabled when the value of the `blink-matching-paren' variable is changed. c. MS-DOS systems now use ~/_inputrc as the last-ditch inputrc filename. d. MS-DOS systems now use ~/_history as the default history file. e. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the point at the end of the line when the string to search for is empty, like {reverse,forward}-search-history. f. history-search-{forward,backward} now leave the last history line found in the readline buffer if the second or subsequent search fails. g. New function for use by applications: rl_on_new_line_with_prompt, used when an application displays the prompt itself before calling readline(). h. New variable for use by applications: rl_already_prompted. An application that displays the prompt itself before calling readline() must set this to a non-zero value. i. A new variable, rl_gnu_readline_p, always 1. The intent is that an application can verify whether or not it is linked with the `real' readline library or some substitute. j. Per Bothner's `rlfe' (pronounced `Ralphie') readline front-end program is included in the examples subdirectory, though it is not built by default. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document details the changes between this version, readline-4.0, and the previous version, readline-2.2. 1. Changes to Readline a. The version number is now 4.0, to match the major and minor version numbers on the shared readline and history libraries. Future releases will maintain the identical numbering. b. Fixed a typo in the `make install' recipe that copied libreadline.a to libhistory.old right after installing it. c. The readline and history info files are now installed out of the source directory if they are not found in the build directory. d. The library no longer exports a function named `savestring' -- backwards compatibility be damned. e. There is no longer any #ifdef SHELL code in the source files. f. Some changes were made to the key binding code to fix memory leaks and better support Win32 systems. g. Fixed a silly typo in the paren matching code -- it's microseconds, not milliseconds. h. The readline library should be compilable by C++ compilers. i. The readline.h public header file now includes function prototypes for all readline functions, and some changes were made to fix errors in the source files uncovered by the use of prototypes. j. The maximum numeric argument is now clamped at 1000000. k. Fixes to rl_yank_last_arg to make it behave better. l. Fixed a bug in the display code that caused core dumps if the prompt string length exceeded 1024 characters. m. The menu completion code was fixed to properly insert a single completion if there is only one match. n. A bug was fixed that caused the display code to improperly display tabs after newlines. o. A fix was made to the completion code in which a typo caused the wrong value to be passed to the function that computed the longest common prefix of the list of matches. p. The completion code now checks the value of rl_filename_completion_desired, which is set by application-supplied completion functions to indicate that filename completion is being performed, to decide whether or not to call an application-supplied `ignore completions' function. q. Code was added to the history library to catch history substitutions using `&' without a previous history substitution or search having been performed. 2. New Features in Readline a. There is a new script, support/shobj-conf, to do system-specific shared object and library configuration. It generates variables for configure to substitute into makefiles. The README file provides a detailed explanation of the shared library creation process. b. Shared libraries and objects are now built in the `shlib' subdirectory. There is a shlib/Makefile.in to control the build process. `make shared' from the top-level directory is still the right way to build shared versions of the libraries. c. rlconf.h is now installed, so applications can find out which features have been compiled into the installed readline and history libraries. d. rlstdc.h is now an installed header file. e. Many changes to the signal handling: o Readline now catches SIGQUIT and cleans up the tty before returning; o A new variable, rl_catch_signals, is available to application writers to indicate to readline whether or not it should install its own signal handlers for SIGINT, SIGTERM, SIGQUIT, SIGALRM, SIGTSTP, SIGTTIN, and SIGTTOU; o A new variable, rl_catch_sigwinch, is available to application writers to indicate to readline whether or not it should install its own signal handler for SIGWINCH, which will chain to the calling applications's SIGWINCH handler, if one is installed; o There is a new function, rl_free_line_state, for application signal handlers to call to free up the state associated with the current line after receiving a signal; o There is a new function, rl_cleanup_after_signal, to clean up the display and terminal state after receiving a signal; o There is a new function, rl_reset_after_signal, to reinitialize the terminal and display state after an application signal handler returns and readline continues f. There is a new function, rl_resize_terminal, to reset readline's idea of the screen size after a SIGWINCH. g. New public functions: rl_save_prompt and rl_restore_prompt. These were previously private functions with a `_' prefix. These functions are used when an application wants to write a message to the `message area' with rl_message and have the prompt restored correctly when the message is erased. h. New function hook: rl_pre_input_hook, called just before readline starts reading input, after initialization. i. New function hook: rl_display_matches_hook, called when readline would display the list of completion matches. The new function rl_display_match_list is what readline uses internally, and is available for use by application functions called via this hook. j. New bindable function, delete-char-or-list, like tcsh. k. A new variable, rl_erase_empty_line, which, if set by an application using readline, will cause readline to erase, prompt and all, lines on which the only thing typed was a newline. l. There is a new script, support/shlib-install, to install and uninstall the shared readline and history libraries. m. A new bindable variable, `isearch-terminators', which is a string containing the set of characters that should terminate an incremental search without being executed as a command. n. A new bindable function, forward-backward-delete-char. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document details the changes between this version, readline-2.2, and the previous version, readline-2.1. 1. Changes to Readline a. Added a missing `extern' to a declaration in readline.h that kept readline from compiling cleanly on some systems. b. The history file is now opened with mode 0600 when it is written for better security. c. Changes were made to the SIGWINCH handling code so that prompt redisplay is done better. d. ^G now interrupts incremental searches correctly. e. A bug that caused a core dump when the set of characters to be quoted when completing words was empty was fixed. f. Fixed a problem in the readline test program rltest.c that caused a core dump. g. The code that handles parser directives in inputrc files now displays more error messages. h. The history expansion code was fixed so that the appearance of the history comment character at the beginning of a word inhibits history expansion for that word and the rest of the input line. i. The code that prints completion listings now behaves better if one or more of the filenames contains non-printable characters. j. The time delay when showing matching parentheses is now 0.5 seconds. 2. New Features in Readline a. There is now an option for `iterative' yank-last-arg handline, so a user can keep entering `M-.', yanking the last argument of successive history lines. b. New variable, `print-completions-horizontally', which causes completion matches to be displayed across the screen (like `ls -x') rather than up and down the screen (like `ls'). c. New variable, `completion-ignore-case', which causes filename completion and matching to be performed case-insensitively. d. There is a new bindable command, `magic-space', which causes history expansion to be performed on the current readline buffer and a space to be inserted into the result. e. There is a new bindable command, `menu-complete', which enables tcsh-like menu completion (successive executions of menu-complete insert a single completion match, cycling through the list of possible completions). f. There is a new bindable command, `paste-from-clipboard', for use on Win32 systems, to insert the text from the Win32 clipboard into the editing buffer. g. The key sequence translation code now understands printf-style backslash escape sequences, including \NNN octal escapes. These escape sequences may be used in key sequence definitions or macro values. h. An `$include' inputrc file parser directive has been added.