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34 New in alpha2.2: Out-of-date manpages updated.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