Announcing rc-1.3beta

[Byron Rakitzis <byron>]

This is to announce the availability of rc-1.3beta. I don't expect
many problems with this shell, but just in case I would like readers
of this list to have a first crack at using this shell before it
is released to the public at large.

Even though the number of bug fixes between 1.2 and 1.3 are not
astronomical, the code has undergone considerable change (in part
because I work more and more from a 2400 baud connection, so things
are more bunched up now :-) The CHANGES file is included at the
end of this note. Also some of the changes which fix one bug,
e.g., poor handling of signals, in fact required quite a lot
of work.

Included with rc this time is a readline-compatible (called
"editline") package written by Simmy Turner (simmy@capitol.com).
Please refer any problems with it to him, not to me, at least for
the duration of this beta test. I will try to get a good version
from Simmy by the time rc-1.3 is out, but I don't really have
anything to do with his code.

Anyway, that aside, it should be noted that Simmy's package weighs
in at about 1/10th the size of GNU readline!! On my NeXT, it fit
in under a page of text, so happened that rc-1.3 with and without
the new editing code had the same text and data sizes! (Though I
think it's fair to say that GNU's code is probably more feature-
laden.)

Well, enough talk. Enjoy.

Byron.

(As usual, mail-only people mail me for a copy, or use ftpcmd)

======

Changes since 1.2: (Too many to count!)

A memory stomping bug was fixed (provoked by assigning a variable
to its old value plus something else).

Better signal handling; a real signal handler which manages a queue
of pending signals was added.

rc now ignores SIGQUIT and traps SIGINT even in non-interactive
mode. Thus,

	rc ed.sh

will not do mysterious things if the shell script "ed.sh" calls a
command like "ed" and then you hit ^C.

rc now opens 0, 1, 2 on /dev/null if they are inherited closed.
rc -o prevents this.

A couple of stupid O(n^2) string appends were replaced with O(n)
loops. This should make foo=`{cat /etc/termcap} bar=$^foo a little
faster :-)

Returning a list of signals from a function is now legal, so "return
$status" should always work.

The code has been revised, new printing routines have been added.

rc no longer uses redundant braces when exporting functions.

A first stab at a verification suite has been added (trip.rc).
(someone, please help me make this comprehensive!)

rc -p now does not initialize functions from the environment. This
should make it easier to write shell scripts that don't need to
assume anything about the environment.

Inherited ignored signals are now ignored in the current shell and
passed on ignored to the child processes. whatis -s also reflects
this information.

A file descriptor leak in the /dev/fd implementation of >{} was
fixed.

A variable set to '' was not imported from the environment; this
has been fixed.