Readline5.2 available for FTP

The first public release of the GNU Readline library, version 5.2, is now available for FTP with the URLs

ftp:--ftp.cwru.edu-pub-bash-readline-5.2.tar.gz ftp:--ftp.gnu.org-pub-gnu-readline-readline-5.2.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This distribution is essentially a standalone version of the readline library that appears in Bash-3.2 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.

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 library as well as separately.

Diffs from readline-5.1 are not available.

+========== CHANGES ==========+ This document details the changes between this version, readline-5.2, and the previous version, readline-5.1.

1. Changes to Readline

a. Fixed a problem that caused segmentation faults when using readline in callback mode and typing consecutive DEL characters on an empty line.

b. Fixed several redisplay problems with multibyte characters, all having to do with the different code paths and variable meanings between single-byte and multibyte character redisplay.

c. Fixed a problem with key sequence translation when presented with the sequenceM--C-x.

d. Fixed a problem that prevented the `a' command in vi mode from being undone and redone properly.

e. Fixed a problem that prevented empty inserts in vi mode from being undone properly.

f. Fixed a problem that caused readline to initialize with an incorrect idea of whether or not the terminal can autowrap.

g. Fixed output of key bindings (like bash `bind -p') to honor the setting of convert-meta and usee where appropriate.

h. Changed the default filename completion function to call the filename dequoting function if the directory completion hook isn't set. This means that any directory completion hooks need to dequote the directory name, since application-specific hooks need to know how the word was quoted, even if no other changes are made.

i. Fixed a bug with creating the prompt for a non-interactive search string when there are non-printing characters in the primary prompt.

j. Fixed a bug that caused prompts with invisible characters to be redrawn multiple times in a multibyte locale.

k. Fixed a bug that could cause the key sequence scanning code to return the wrong function.

l. Fixed a problem with the callback interface that caused it to fail when using multi-character keyboard macros.

m. Fixed a bug that could cause a core dump when an edited history entry was re-executed under certain conditions.

n. Fixed a bug that caused readline to reference freed memory when attmpting to display a portion of the prompt.

o. Fixed a bug with prompt redisplay in a multi-byte locale to avoid redrawing the prompt and input line multiple times.

p. Fixed history expansion to not be confused by here-string redirection.

q. Readline no longer treats read errors by converting them to newlines, as it does with EOF. This caused partial lines to be returned from readline().

r. Fixed a redisplay bug that occurred in multibyte-capable locales when the prompt was one character longer than the screen width.

2. New Features in Readline

a. Calling applications can now set the keyboard timeout to 0, allowing poll-like behavior.

b. The value of SYSINPUTRC (configurable at compilation time) is now used as the default last-ditch startup file.

c. The history file reading functions now allow windows-liker-n line terminators.