The second release candidate of bash-5.1 is now available with the URL
ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-5.1-rc2.tar.gz
and from the bash-5.1-testing branch in the bash git repository
(http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/log/?h=bash-5.1-testing).
You can use
git clone --branch bash-5.1-testing git://git.savannah.gnu.org/bash.git
to clone the testing branch.
The CWRU FTP site works best if your client supports Extended Passive
(EPSV) mode.
This tar file includes the formatted documentation (you should be able to
generate updated versions yourself).
This release fixes several outstanding bugs in bash-5.0 and introduces
several new features. The most significant change is a return to the
bash-4.4 behavior of not performing pathname expansion on a word that
contains backslashes but does not contain any unquoted globbing special
characters. This comes after a long POSIX discussion that resulted in a
change to the standard. There are several changes regarding trap handling
while reading from the terminal (e.g, for `read' and `select'.) There are a
number of bug fixes, including several bugs that caused the shell to crash.
Details are appended.
The most notable new features are in the random number engine. There is a
new variable, SRANDOM, which gets its random data from the system's entropy
engine and so is not linear and cannot be reseeded to get an identical
random sequence. The PROMPT_COMMANDS array variable can be used to run
multiple commands before printing the primary prompt. Associative arrays may
be assigned using a series of key-value pairs within a compound assignment.
`wait' has a new `-p' option which stores PID information about the process
reaped by `wait -n'. Process substitution is now available in posix mode.
There are new parameter transformation operators. There is no new `compat50'
option; use the BASH_COMPAT variable to select the compatibility level.
All the new features are described below.
The most visible new feature is in Readline: the addition of `faces', which
highlights the text between the point and mark (the region, so this is also
called the 'active region'). This was added to show visibly the text
inserted by bracketed paste, and also marks the text found by incremental
and non-incremental history searches. Faces are currently tied to
bracketed paste and are enabled and disabled along with bracketed paste
mode. Bracketed paste mode is enabled by default.
There are a few incompatible changes between bash-5.0 and bash-5.1. The
change to pathname expansion means that words containing backslashes, but no
special globbing characters, will not undergo pathname expansion. While
the bash-5.0 behavior was POSIX-conformant, the change was not well-received.
Changes to the random number engines mean that seeding RANDOM will produce
a different numeric sequence. Set the compatibility level to 50 to revert
to the bash-5.0 behavior.
`bashbug' may be used to report bugs with this version. It will send
mail to chet.ra...@case.edu if the shell's `release status' is alpha or
beta.
As always, thanks for your help.
Chet
+== CHANGES ==+
This document details the changes between this version, bash-5.1-rc2, and
the previous version, bash-5.1-beta.
1. Changes to Bash
a. Process substitutions started from an interactive shell no longer have their
standard input implicitly redirected from /dev/null.
b. Fixed an issue with setting the SIGINT trap handler in an interactive shell
when temporarily running $PROMPT_COMMAND non-interactively.
2. Changes to Readline
a. Terminals that are named "dumb" or unknown do not enable bracketed paste
by default.
b. Ensure that disabling bracketed paste turns off highlighting the incremental
search string when the search is successful.
3. New Features in Bash
4. New Features in Readline
--
This document details the changes between this version, bash-5.1-rc1, and
the previous version, bash-5.1-beta.
1. Changes to Bash
a. Fixed an inconsistency in the way HISTCMD is calculated when it's expanded
during a multi-line command.
b. Modified the change to here-document expansion containing backslash-quoted
double quotes.
c. Fixed a case where the shells's exit status could be greater than 255.
d. Modified changed to process substitution so the executed command has its
stdin redirected from /dev/null if it was previously interactive and
reading commands from the terminal.
2. New Features in Bash
a. There is a new contributed loadable builtin: asort.
3. Changes to Readline
a. Fixed a bug that could cause an application with an application-specific
redisplay function to crash if the line data structures had not been
initialized.
4. New Features in Readline
--
This document details the changes between this version, bash-5.1-beta, and
th
