WHATSNEW revision 1.1 1 1.1 jtc New in alpha3.1: Basically nothing, this release is just a bookkeeping
2 1.1 jtc convenience. Stay tuned.
3 1.1 jtc
4 1.1 jtc New in alpha3.0: Performance is no better, alas, but some fixes have been
5 1.1 jtc made and some functionality has been added. (This is basically the "get
6 1.1 jtc it out the door in time for 4.4" release.) One bug fix: regfree() didn't
7 1.1 jtc free the main internal structure (how embarrassing). It is now possible
8 1.1 jtc to put NULs in either the RE or the target string, using (resp.) a new
9 1.1 jtc REG_PEND flag and the old REG_STARTEND flag. The REG_NOSPEC flag to
10 1.1 jtc regcomp() makes all characters ordinary, so you can match a literal
11 1.1 jtc string easily (this will become more useful when performance improves!).
12 1.1 jtc There are now primitives to match beginnings and ends of words, although
13 1.1 jtc the syntax is disgusting and so is the implementation. The REG_ATOI
14 1.1 jtc debugging interface has changed a bit. And there has been considerable
15 1.1 jtc internal cleanup of various kinds.
16 1.1 jtc
17 1.1 jtc New in alpha2.3: Split change list out of README, and moved flags notes
18 1.1 jtc into Makefile. Macro-ized the name of regex(7) in regex(3), since it has
19 1.1 jtc to change for 4.4BSD. Cleanup work in engine.c, and some new regression
20 1.1 jtc tests to catch tricky cases thereof.
21 1.1 jtc
22 1.1 jtc New in alpha2.2: Out-of-date manpages updated. Regerror() acquires two
23 1.1 jtc small extensions -- REG_ITOA and REG_ATOI -- which avoid debugging kludges
24 1.1 jtc in my own test program and might be useful to others for similar purposes.
25 1.1 jtc The regression test will now compile (and run) without REDEBUG. The
26 1.1 jtc BRE \$ bug is fixed. Most uses of "uchar" are gone; it's all chars now.
27 1.1 jtc Char/uchar parameters are now written int/unsigned, to avoid possible
28 1.1 jtc portability problems with unpromoted parameters. Some unsigned casts have
29 1.1 jtc been introduced to minimize portability problems with shifting into sign
30 1.1 jtc bits.
31 1.1 jtc
32 1.1 jtc New in alpha2.1: Lots of little stuff, cleanup and fixes. The one big
33 1.1 jtc thing is that regex.h is now generated, using mkh, rather than being
34 1.1 jtc supplied in the distribution; due to circularities in dependencies,
35 1.1 jtc you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h". The two known bugs
36 1.1 jtc have been fixed (and the regression test now checks for them), as has a
37 1.1 jtc problem with assertions not being suppressed in the absence of REDEBUG.
38 1.1 jtc No performance work yet.
39 1.1 jtc
40 1.1 jtc New in alpha2: Backslash-anything is an ordinary character, not an
41 1.1 jtc error (except, of course, for the handful of backslashed metacharacters
42 1.1 jtc in BREs), which should reduce script breakage. The regression test
43 1.1 jtc checks *where* null strings are supposed to match, and has generally
44 1.1 jtc been tightened up somewhat. Small bug fixes in parameter passing (not
45 1.1 jtc harmful, but technically errors) and some other areas. Debugging
46 1.1 jtc invoked by defining REDEBUG rather than not defining NDEBUG.
47 1.1 jtc
48 1.1 jtc New in alpha+3: full prototyping for internal routines, using a little
49 1.1 jtc helper program, mkh, which extracts prototypes given in stylized comments.
50 1.1 jtc More minor cleanup. Buglet fix: it's CHAR_BIT, not CHAR_BITS. Simple
51 1.1 jtc pre-screening of input when a literal string is known to be part of the
52 1.1 jtc RE; this does wonders for performance.
53 1.1 jtc
54 1.1 jtc New in alpha+2: minor bits of cleanup. Notably, the number "32" for the
55 1.1 jtc word width isn't hardwired into regexec.c any more, the public header
56 1.1 jtc file prototypes the functions if __STDC__ is defined, and some small typos
57 1.1 jtc in the manpages have been fixed.
58 1.1 jtc
59 1.1 jtc New in alpha+1: improvements to the manual pages, and an important
60 1.1 jtc extension, the REG_STARTEND option to regexec().
61