1# $NetBSD: WHATSNEW,v 1.6 1995/02/27 13:28:25 cgd Exp $ 2# @(#)WHATSNEW 8.3 (Berkeley) 3/18/94 3 4New in alpha3.4: The complex bug alluded to below has been fixed (in a 5slightly kludgey temporary way that may hurt efficiency a bit; this is 6another "get it out the door for 4.4" release). The tests at the end of 7the tests file have accordingly been uncommented. The primary sign of 8the bug was that something like a?b matching ab matched b rather than ab. 9(The bug was essentially specific to this exact situation, else it would 10have shown up earlier.) 11 12New in alpha3.3: The definition of word boundaries has been altered 13slightly, to more closely match the usual programming notion that "_" 14is an alphabetic. Stuff used for pre-ANSI systems is now in a subdir, 15and the makefile no longer alludes to it in mysterious ways. The 16makefile has generally been cleaned up some. Fixes have been made 17(again!) so that the regression test will run without -DREDEBUG, at 18the cost of weaker checking. A workaround for a bug in some folks' 19<assert.h> has been added. And some more things have been added to 20tests, including a couple right at the end which are commented out 21because the code currently flunks them (complex bug; fix coming). 22Plus the usual minor cleanup. 23 24New in alpha3.2: Assorted bits of cleanup and portability improvement 25(the development base is now a BSDI system using GCC instead of an ancient 26Sun system, and the newer compiler exposed some glitches). Fix for a 27serious bug that affected REs using many [] (including REG_ICASE REs 28because of the way they are implemented), *sometimes*, depending on 29memory-allocation patterns. The header-file prototypes no longer name 30the parameters, avoiding possible name conflicts. The possibility that 31some clot has defined CHAR_MIN as (say) `-128' instead of `(-128)' is 32now handled gracefully. "uchar" is no longer used as an internal type 33name (too many people have the same idea). Still the same old lousy 34performance, alas. 35 36New in alpha3.1: Basically nothing, this release is just a bookkeeping 37convenience. Stay tuned. 38 39New in alpha3.0: Performance is no better, alas, but some fixes have been 40made and some functionality has been added. (This is basically the "get 41it out the door in time for 4.4" release.) One bug fix: regfree() didn't 42free the main internal structure (how embarrassing). It is now possible 43to put NULs in either the RE or the target string, using (resp.) a new 44REG_PEND flag and the old REG_STARTEND flag. The REG_NOSPEC flag to 45regcomp() makes all characters ordinary, so you can match a literal 46string easily (this will become more useful when performance improves!). 47There are now primitives to match beginnings and ends of words, although 48the syntax is disgusting and so is the implementation. The REG_ATOI 49debugging interface has changed a bit. And there has been considerable 50internal cleanup of various kinds. 51 52New in alpha2.3: Split change list out of README, and moved flags notes 53into Makefile. Macro-ized the name of regex(7) in regex(3), since it has 54to change for 4.4BSD. Cleanup work in engine.c, and some new regression 55tests to catch tricky cases thereof. 56 57New in alpha2.2: Out-of-date manpages updated. Regerror() acquires two 58small extensions -- REG_ITOA and REG_ATOI -- which avoid debugging kludges 59in my own test program and might be useful to others for similar purposes. 60The regression test will now compile (and run) without REDEBUG. The 61BRE \$ bug is fixed. Most uses of "uchar" are gone; it's all chars now. 62Char/uchar parameters are now written int/unsigned, to avoid possible 63portability problems with unpromoted parameters. Some unsigned casts have 64been introduced to minimize portability problems with shifting into sign 65bits. 66 67New in alpha2.1: Lots of little stuff, cleanup and fixes. The one big 68thing is that regex.h is now generated, using mkh, rather than being 69supplied in the distribution; due to circularities in dependencies, 70you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h". The two known bugs 71have been fixed (and the regression test now checks for them), as has a 72problem with assertions not being suppressed in the absence of REDEBUG. 73No performance work yet. 74 75New in alpha2: Backslash-anything is an ordinary character, not an 76error (except, of course, for the handful of backslashed metacharacters 77in BREs), which should reduce script breakage. The regression test 78checks *where* null strings are supposed to match, and has generally 79been tightened up somewhat. Small bug fixes in parameter passing (not 80harmful, but technically errors) and some other areas. Debugging 81invoked by defining REDEBUG rather than not defining NDEBUG. 82 83New in alpha+3: full prototyping for internal routines, using a little 84helper program, mkh, which extracts prototypes given in stylized comments. 85More minor cleanup. Buglet fix: it's CHAR_BIT, not CHAR_BITS. Simple 86pre-screening of input when a literal string is known to be part of the 87RE; this does wonders for performance. 88 89New in alpha+2: minor bits of cleanup. Notably, the number "32" for the 90word width isn't hardwired into regexec.c any more, the public header 91file prototypes the functions if __STDC__ is defined, and some small typos 92in the manpages have been fixed. 93 94New in alpha+1: improvements to the manual pages, and an important 95extension, the REG_STARTEND option to regexec(). 96