1# @(#)WHATSNEW 8.3 (Berkeley) 3/18/94 2 3New in alpha3.4: The complex bug alluded to below has been fixed (in a 4slightly kludgey temporary way that may hurt efficiency a bit; this is 5another "get it out the door for 4.4" release). The tests at the end of 6the tests file have accordingly been uncommented. The primary sign of 7the bug was that something like a?b matching ab matched b rather than ab. 8(The bug was essentially specific to this exact situation, else it would 9have shown up earlier.) 10 11New in alpha3.3: The definition of word boundaries has been altered 12slightly, to more closely match the usual programming notion that "_" 13is an alphabetic. Stuff used for pre-ANSI systems is now in a subdir, 14and the makefile no longer alludes to it in mysterious ways. The 15makefile has generally been cleaned up some. Fixes have been made 16(again!) so that the regression test will run without -DREDEBUG, at 17the cost of weaker checking. A workaround for a bug in some folks' 18<assert.h> has been added. And some more things have been added to 19tests, including a couple right at the end which are commented out 20because the code currently flunks them (complex bug; fix coming). 21Plus the usual minor cleanup. 22 23New in alpha3.2: Assorted bits of cleanup and portability improvement 24(the development base is now a BSDI system using GCC instead of an ancient 25Sun system, and the newer compiler exposed some glitches). Fix for a 26serious bug that affected REs using many [] (including REG_ICASE REs 27because of the way they are implemented), *sometimes*, depending on 28memory-allocation patterns. The header-file prototypes no longer name 29the parameters, avoiding possible name conflicts. The possibility that 30some clot has defined CHAR_MIN as (say) `-128' instead of `(-128)' is 31now handled gracefully. "uchar" is no longer used as an internal type 32name (too many people have the same idea). Still the same old lousy 33performance, alas. 34 35New in alpha3.1: Basically nothing, this release is just a bookkeeping 36convenience. Stay tuned. 37 38New in alpha3.0: Performance is no better, alas, but some fixes have been 39made and some functionality has been added. (This is basically the "get 40it out the door in time for 4.4" release.) One bug fix: regfree() didn't 41free the main internal structure (how embarrassing). It is now possible 42to put NULs in either the RE or the target string, using (resp.) a new 43REG_PEND flag and the old REG_STARTEND flag. The REG_NOSPEC flag to 44regcomp() makes all characters ordinary, so you can match a literal 45string easily (this will become more useful when performance improves!). 46There are now primitives to match beginnings and ends of words, although 47the syntax is disgusting and so is the implementation. The REG_ATOI 48debugging interface has changed a bit. And there has been considerable 49internal cleanup of various kinds. 50 51New in alpha2.3: Split change list out of README, and moved flags notes 52into Makefile. Macro-ized the name of regex(7) in regex(3), since it has 53to change for 4.4BSD. Cleanup work in engine.c, and some new regression 54tests to catch tricky cases thereof. 55 56New in alpha2.2: Out-of-date manpages updated. Regerror() acquires two 57small extensions -- REG_ITOA and REG_ATOI -- which avoid debugging kludges 58in my own test program and might be useful to others for similar purposes. 59The regression test will now compile (and run) without REDEBUG. The 60BRE \$ bug is fixed. Most uses of "uchar" are gone; it's all chars now. 61Char/uchar parameters are now written int/unsigned, to avoid possible 62portability problems with unpromoted parameters. Some unsigned casts have 63been introduced to minimize portability problems with shifting into sign 64bits. 65 66New in alpha2.1: Lots of little stuff, cleanup and fixes. The one big 67thing is that regex.h is now generated, using mkh, rather than being 68supplied in the distribution; due to circularities in dependencies, 69you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h". The two known bugs 70have been fixed (and the regression test now checks for them), as has a 71problem with assertions not being suppressed in the absence of REDEBUG. 72No performance work yet. 73 74New in alpha2: Backslash-anything is an ordinary character, not an 75error (except, of course, for the handful of backslashed metacharacters 76in BREs), which should reduce script breakage. The regression test 77checks *where* null strings are supposed to match, and has generally 78been tightened up somewhat. Small bug fixes in parameter passing (not 79harmful, but technically errors) and some other areas. Debugging 80invoked by defining REDEBUG rather than not defining NDEBUG. 81 82New in alpha+3: full prototyping for internal routines, using a little 83helper program, mkh, which extracts prototypes given in stylized comments. 84More minor cleanup. Buglet fix: it's CHAR_BIT, not CHAR_BITS. Simple 85pre-screening of input when a literal string is known to be part of the 86RE; this does wonders for performance. 87 88New in alpha+2: minor bits of cleanup. Notably, the number "32" for the 89word width isn't hardwired into regexec.c any more, the public header 90file prototypes the functions if __STDC__ is defined, and some small typos 91in the manpages have been fixed. 92 93New in alpha+1: improvements to the manual pages, and an important 94extension, the REG_STARTEND option to regexec(). 95