The first public release of the GNU Readline library, version 6.3, is now available for FTP with the URLs
ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.3.tar.gz ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/readline/readline-6.3.tar.gz and from the usual GNU mirror sites. This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the readline library that appears in Bash-4.3 together with an `autoconf' framework. The documentation has been updated and is current. Postscript, DVI, and Info versions of the Readline and History manuals are included. A list of changes in this release is appended to this announcement. This release accompanies the simultaneous release of bash-4.3. There are more improvements in the programming interface and new user-visible variables and bindable commands. The signal handling has been reworked to not run code in a signal handler context, and there are a new application-settable hooks that are called when a read(2) is interrupted by a signal that readline does not handle immediately. The inter-character key sequence timeout is now user-settable. An application using readline can specify a hook function to modify a filename before readline calls stat(2) (e.g., to perform variable expansion). There is a user-settable option to have readline print possible completions using various colors to denote different file types. GNU Readline is a library which provides programs with an input facility including command-line editing and history. Editing commands similar to both emacs and vi are included. The GNU History library, which provides facilities for managing a list of previously-typed command lines and an interactive command line recall facility similar to that provided by csh, is also present. The history library is built as part of the readline as well as separately. Please send readline bug reports to bug-readl...@gnu.org. As always, thanks for your help. Chet +========== CHANGES ==========+ This document details the changes between this version, readline-6.3, and the previous version, readline-6.2. 1. Changes to Readline a. Fixed a bug that did not allow the `dd', `cc', or `yy' vi editing mode commands to work on the entire line. b. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay problems with prompts longer than 128 characters and history searches. c. Fixed a bug that caused readline to try and run code to modify its idea of the screen size in a signal handler context upon receiving a SIGWINCH. d. Fixed a bug that caused the `meta' key to be enabled beyond the duration of an individual call top readline(). e. Added a workaround for a wcwidth bug in Mac OS X that caused readline's redisplay to mishandle zero-width combining characters. f. Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when a multiple-key sequence caused it to break out of an incremental search. g. Fixed bugs that caused readline to execute code in a signal handler context if interrupted while reading from the file system during completion. h. Fixed a bug that caused readline to `forget' part of a key sequence when reading an unbound multi-character key sequence. i. Fixed a bug that caused Readline's signal handlers to be installed beyond the bounds of a single call to readline(). j. Fixed a bug that caused the `.' command to not redo the most recent `R' command in vi mode. k. Fixed a bug that caused ignoring case in completion matches to result in readline using the wrong match. l. Paren matching now works in vi insert mode. m. Fix menu-completion to make show-all-if-ambiguous and menu-complete-display-prefix work together. n. Fixed a bug that didn't allow the `cc', `dd', or `yy' commands to be redone in vi editing mode. o. Fixed a bug that caused the filename comparison code to not compare multibyte characters correctly when using case-sensitive or case-mapping comparisons. p. Fixed the input reading loop to call the input hook function only when there is no terminal input available. q. Fixed a bug that caused binding a macro to a multi-character key sequence where the sequence and macro value share a common prefix to not perform the macro replacement. r. Fixed several redisplay errors with multibyte characters and prompts containing invisible characters when using horizontal scrolling. s. Fixed a bug that caused redisplay errors when trying to overwrite existing characters using multibyte characters. t. Fixed a bug in vi mode that caused the arrow keys to set the saved last vi-mode command to the wrong value. u. Fixed a bug that caused double-quoted strings to be scanned incorrectly when being used as the value of a readline variable assignment. v. Fixed a bug with vi mode that prevented `.' from repeating a command entered on a previous line (command). w. Fixed a bug that could cause completion to core dump if it was interrupted by a signal. 2. New Features in Readline a. Readline is now more responsive to SIGHUP and other fatal signals when reading input from the terminal or performing word completion but no longer attempts to run any not-allowable functions from a signal handler context. b. There are new bindable commands to search the history for the string of characters between the beginning of the line and the point (history-substring-search-forward, history-substring-search-backward) c. Readline allows quoted strings as the values of variables when setting them with `set'. As a side effect, trailing spaces and tabs are ignored when setting a string variable's value. d. The history library creates a backup of the history file when writing it and restores the backup on a write error. e. New application-settable variable: rl_filename_stat_hook: a function called with a filename before using it in a call to stat(2). Bash uses it to expand shell variables so things like $HOME/Downloads have a slash appended. f. New bindable function `print-last-kbd-macro', prints the most-recently- defined keyboard macro in a reusable format. g. New user-settable variable `colored-stats', enables use of colored text to denote file types when displaying possible completions (colored analog of visible-stats). h. New user-settable variable `keyseq-timout', acts as an inter-character timeout when reading input or incremental search strings. i. New application-callable function: rl_clear_history. Clears the history list and frees all readline-associated private data. j. New user-settable variable, show-mode-in-prompt, adds a characters to the beginning of the prompt indicating the current editing mode. k. New application-settable variable: rl_input_available_hook; function to be called when readline detects there is data available on its input file descriptor. l. Readline calls an application-set event hook (rl_signal_event_hook) after it gets a signal while reading input (read returns -1/EINTR but readline does not handle the signal immediately) to allow the application to handle or otherwise note it. Not currently called for SIGHUP or SIGTERM. m. If the user-settable variable `history-size' is set to a value less than 0, the history list size is unlimited. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU c...@case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
