1# @(#)WHATSNEW 8.2 (Berkeley) 03/16/94 2 3New in alpha3.3: The definition of word boundaries has been altered 4slightly, to more closely match the usual programming notion that "_" 5is an alphabetic. Stuff used for pre-ANSI systems is now in a subdir, 6and the makefile no longer alludes to it in mysterious ways. The 7makefile has generally been cleaned up some. Fixes have been made 8(again!) so that the regression test will run without -DREDEBUG, at 9the cost of weaker checking. A workaround for a bug in some folks' 10<assert.h> has been added. And some more things have been added to 11tests, including a couple right at the end which are commented out 12because the code currently flunks them (complex bug; fix coming). 13Plus the usual minor cleanup. 14 15New in alpha3.2: Assorted bits of cleanup and portability improvement 16(the development base is now a BSDI system using GCC instead of an ancient 17Sun system, and the newer compiler exposed some glitches). Fix for a 18serious bug that affected REs using many [] (including REG_ICASE REs 19because of the way they are implemented), *sometimes*, depending on 20memory-allocation patterns. The header-file prototypes no longer name 21the parameters, avoiding possible name conflicts. The possibility that 22some clot has defined CHAR_MIN as (say) `-128' instead of `(-128)' is 23now handled gracefully. "uchar" is no longer used as an internal type 24name (too many people have the same idea). Still the same old lousy 25performance, alas. 26 27New in alpha3.1: Basically nothing, this release is just a bookkeeping 28convenience. Stay tuned. 29 30New in alpha3.0: Performance is no better, alas, but some fixes have been 31made and some functionality has been added. (This is basically the "get 32it out the door in time for 4.4" release.) One bug fix: regfree() didn't 33free the main internal structure (how embarrassing). It is now possible 34to put NULs in either the RE or the target string, using (resp.) a new 35REG_PEND flag and the old REG_STARTEND flag. The REG_NOSPEC flag to 36regcomp() makes all characters ordinary, so you can match a literal 37string easily (this will become more useful when performance improves!). 38There are now primitives to match beginnings and ends of words, although 39the syntax is disgusting and so is the implementation. The REG_ATOI 40debugging interface has changed a bit. And there has been considerable 41internal cleanup of various kinds. 42 43New in alpha2.3: Split change list out of README, and moved flags notes 44into Makefile. Macro-ized the name of regex(7) in regex(3), since it has 45to change for 4.4BSD. Cleanup work in engine.c, and some new regression 46tests to catch tricky cases thereof. 47 48New in alpha2.2: Out-of-date manpages updated. Regerror() acquires two 49small extensions -- REG_ITOA and REG_ATOI -- which avoid debugging kludges 50in my own test program and might be useful to others for similar purposes. 51The regression test will now compile (and run) without REDEBUG. The 52BRE \$ bug is fixed. Most uses of "uchar" are gone; it's all chars now. 53Char/uchar parameters are now written int/unsigned, to avoid possible 54portability problems with unpromoted parameters. Some unsigned casts have 55been introduced to minimize portability problems with shifting into sign 56bits. 57 58New in alpha2.1: Lots of little stuff, cleanup and fixes. The one big 59thing is that regex.h is now generated, using mkh, rather than being 60supplied in the distribution; due to circularities in dependencies, 61you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h". The two known bugs 62have been fixed (and the regression test now checks for them), as has a 63problem with assertions not being suppressed in the absence of REDEBUG. 64No performance work yet. 65 66New in alpha2: Backslash-anything is an ordinary character, not an 67error (except, of course, for the handful of backslashed metacharacters 68in BREs), which should reduce script breakage. The regression test 69checks *where* null strings are supposed to match, and has generally 70been tightened up somewhat. Small bug fixes in parameter passing (not 71harmful, but technically errors) and some other areas. Debugging 72invoked by defining REDEBUG rather than not defining NDEBUG. 73 74New in alpha+3: full prototyping for internal routines, using a little 75helper program, mkh, which extracts prototypes given in stylized comments. 76More minor cleanup. Buglet fix: it's CHAR_BIT, not CHAR_BITS. Simple 77pre-screening of input when a literal string is known to be part of the 78RE; this does wonders for performance. 79 80New in alpha+2: minor bits of cleanup. Notably, the number "32" for the 81word width isn't hardwired into regexec.c any more, the public header 82file prototypes the functions if __STDC__ is defined, and some small typos 83in the manpages have been fixed. 84 85New in alpha+1: improvements to the manual pages, and an important 86extension, the REG_STARTEND option to regexec(). 87