Return to WHATSNEW CVS log

Up to [cvs.NetBSD.org] / src / lib / libc / regex

Annotation of src/lib/libc/regex/WHATSNEW, Revision 1.6

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