Readline-5.0 available for FTP

[Chet Ramey]

The first public release of the GNU Readline library, version
5.0, is now available for FTP with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-5.0.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-5.0.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the
readline library that appears in Bash-3.0 together with an
`autoconf' framework.  The documentation has been updated and
is current.  Postscript, DVI, and Info versions of the Readline
and History manuals are included.  A list of changes in this
release is appended to this announcement.

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

Diffs from readline-4.3 are available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-4.3-5.0.diff.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-4.3-5.0.diff.gz

The diffs should be applied using `patch -p1 patch-file' from within
a patched readline-4.3 source directory.

Please send readline bug reports to bug-readline@gnu.org.

+========== CHANGES ==========+
This document details the changes between this version, readline-5.0,
and the previous version, readline-4.3.

1.  Changes to Readline

a.  Fixes to avoid core dumps because of null pointer references in the
    multibyte character code.

b.  Fix to avoid infinite recursion caused by certain key combinations.

c.  Fixed a bug that caused the vi-mode `last command' to be set incorrectly.

d.  Readline no longer tries to read ahead more than one line of input, even
    when more is available.

e.  Fixed the code that adjusts the point to not mishandle null wide
    characters.

f.  Fixed a bug in the history expansion `g' modifier that caused it to skip
    every other match.

g.  Fixed a bug that caused the prompt to overwrite previous output when the
    output doesn't contain a newline and the locale supports multibyte
    characters.  This same change fixes the problem of readline redisplay
    slowing down dramatically as the line gets longer in multibyte locales.

h.  History traversal with arrow keys in vi insertion mode causes the cursor
    to be placed at the end of the new line, like in emacs mode.

i.  The locale initialization code does a better job of using the right
    precedence and defaulting when checking the appropriate environment
    variables.

j.  Fixed the history word tokenizer to handle <( and >( better when used as
    part of bash.

k.  The overwrite mode code received several bug fixes to improve undo.

l.  Many speedups to the multibyte character redisplay code.

m.  The callback character reading interface should not hang waiting to read
    keyboard input.

n.  Fixed a bug with redoing vi-mode `s' command.

o.  The code that initializes the terminal tracks changes made to the terminal
    special characters with stty(1) (or equivalent), so that these changes
    are reflected in the readline bindings.  New application-callable function
    to make it work:  rl_tty_unset_default_bindings().

p.  Fixed a bug that could cause garbage to be inserted in the buffer when
    changing character case in vi mode when using a multibyte locale.

q.  Fixed a bug in the redisplay code that caused problems on systems
    supporting multibyte characters when moving between history lines when the
    new line has more glyphs but fewer bytes.

r.  Undo and redo now work better after exiting vi insertion mode.

s.  Make sure system calls are restarted after a SIGWINCH is received using
    SA_RESTART.

t.  Improvements to the code that displays possible completions when using
    multibyte characters.

u.  Fixed a problem when parsing nested if statements in inputrc files.

v.  The completer now takes multibyte characters into account when looking for
    quoted substrings on which to perform completion.

w.  The history search functions now perform better bounds checking on the
    history list.

x.  Change to history expansion functions to treat `^' as equivalent to word 
    one, as the documention states.

y.  Some changes to the display code to improve display and redisplay of
    multibyte characters.

z.  Changes to speed up the multibyte character redisplay code.

aa. Fixed a bug in the vi-mode `E' command that caused it to skip over the
    last character of a word if invoked while point was on the word's
    next-to-last character.

bb. Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect filename quoting when
    case-insensitive completion was enabled and the word being completed
    contained backslashes quoting word break characters.

cc. Fixed a bug in redisplay triggered when the prompt string contains
    invisible characters.

dd. Fixed some display (and other) bugs encountered in multibyte locales
    when a non-ascii character was the last character on a line.

ee. Fixed some display bugs caused by multibyte characters in prompt strings.

ff. Fixed a problem with history expansion caused by non-whitespace characters
    used as history word delimiters.

gg. Fixed a problem that could cause readline to refer to freed memory when
    moving between history lines while doing searches.

hh. Improvements to the code that expands and displays prompt strings
    containing multibyte characters.

ii. Fixed a problem with vi-mode not correctly remembering the numeric argument
    to the last `c'hange command for later use with `.'.

jj. Fixed a bug in vi-mode that caused multi-digit count arguments to work   
    incorrectly.

kk. Fixed a problem in vi-mode that caused the last text modification command
    to not be remembered across different command lines.

ll. Fixed problems with changing characters and changing case at the end of
    the line.

2.  New Features in Readline

a.  History expansion has a new `a' modifier equivalent to the `g' modifier
    for compatibility with the BSD csh.

b.  History expansion has a new `G' modifier equivalent to the BSD csh `g'
    modifier, which performs a substitution once per word.

c.  All non-incremental search operations may now undo the operation of
    replacing the current line with the history line.

d.  The text inserted by an `a' command in vi mode can be reinserted with
    `.'.

e.  New bindable variable, `show-all-if-unmodified'.  If set, the readline
    completer will list possible completions immediately if there is more
    than one completion and partial completion cannot be performed.

f.  There is a new application-callable `free_history_entry()' function.

g.  History list entries now contain timestamp information; the history file
    functions know how to read and write timestamp information associated
    with each entry.

h.  Four new key binding functions have been added:

        rl_bind_key_if_unbound()
        rl_bind_key_if_unbound_in_map()
        rl_bind_keyseq_if_unbound()
        rl_bind_keyseq_if_unbound_in_map()

i.  New application variable, rl_completion_quote_character, set to any
    quote character readline finds before it calls the application completion
    function.

j.  New application variable, rl_completion_suppress_quote, settable by an   
    application completion function.  If set to non-zero, readline does not
    attempt to append a closing quote to a completed word.
    
k.  New application variable, rl_completion_found_quote, set to a non-zero
    value if readline determines that the word to be completed is quoted.
    Set before readline calls any application completion function.

l.  New function hook, rl_completion_word_break_hook, called when readline
    needs to break a line into words when completion is attempted.  Allows
    the word break characters to vary based on position in the line.

m.  New bindable command: unix-filename-rubout.  Does the same thing as
    unix-word-rubout, but adds `/' to the set of word delimiters.

n.  When listing completions, directories have a `/' appended if the
    `mark-directories' option has been enabled.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
( ``Discere est Dolere'' -- chet )
                                                Live...Laugh...Love
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@po.cwru.edu    http://tiswww.tis.cwru.edu/~chet/