[4259] in SIPB bug reports
new bash installed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Calvin Clark)
Thu Nov 18 03:12:13 1993
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 03:10:48 -0500
From: Calvin Clark <ckclark@MIT.EDU>
To: sipb-gnu@MIT.EDU
Cc: bug-outland@MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@MIT.EDU
[ As you know, I normally don't announce version updates to sipb gnu
stuff unless they might affect people a lot. Bash is a user shell that
I know some people use. ]
I have installed bash 1.13 (CWRU) in sipb/gnu, outland. Some of the
changes are of interest to general users. Here is an excerpt from Chet
Ramey's announcement. I have placed asteriks in front of the changes I
think are cool or important. I have installed the minimal bash as
bash.mini. (The minimal bash does not have job control, aliases, pushd,
popd, readline, history, restricted shell mode, process substitution, or
prompt string decoding. I.e., it might be reasonable to use for
scripting. This cuts out about 40% of bash.)
Hundreds of bugs have been fixed since version the release of
version 1.12. Some remain, and some new ones have undoubtedly
been introduced.
A short list of changes from version 1.12 follows. This is in
no way comprehensive; when in doubt, check the manual page.
Updated documentation (work performed since the patches) is
available for anonymous FTP from slc2.ins.cwru.edu in /pub/bash.
Changes in version 1.13.4:
The shell is much more portable, both to machines and Unix versions
Many more machine descriptions in machines.h
* Bash and readline are both 8-bit clean and allow ISO-8859-1 characters
The default environment is very close to a superset of Posix 1003.2;
the `POSIXLY_CORRECT' variable gives more conformance
* The shell has been sped up considerably; many inefficient spots have
been rewritten
* Ksh-style process substitution has been implemented
There is a `restricted shell' mode available
* History expansion is no longer performed in single quotes
Readline has non-incremental history searches
* Bash now has interactive comments, on by default for Posix.2 compatibility
Shell arithmetic implements the full Posix.2 set of operators
Readline has some new variables: meta-flag, convert-meta, expand-tilde, etc.
* Brace expansion was cleaned up and quoting within braces was rationalized
* It is now possible to configure and build a `minimal' bash
The `bind' builtin has a -m option to specify the keymap
Quoting was cleaned up in readline key bindings, both input and display
$SHELL is now set to the login shell at startup, if it is unset
Readline resets itself if $TERMINFO changes
The shell now manages the $LINES and $COLUMNS variables
The `ulimit' builtin has new options: -v, -u
The set builtin has a new option: -p (-o privileged)
Completion of command words does directory completion if now executables
are found, but not filename completion
The `command' builtin has the Posix.2 `-v' and `-V' options
