path: root/Etc/NEWS-4.3

This file describes changes made during the 4.3 series of releases;
it is superseded by the description of changes between 4.2 and 5.0
in the main NEWS file.


Changes since 4.3.15
--------------------

The option HASH_EXECUTABLES_ONLY has been added.  When this is set,
directories in the command path will be checked for executables before
they are added to the command table (hash); otherwise, all files in the
directory are added.  The effect of this option was present in 4.3.15,
which could cause significant delays when hashing on systems with
network directories in the path.

Changes since 4.3.12
--------------------

There are no significant feature changes to the shell itself, although
many bug fixes and improvements to functions.

Changes since 4.3.11
--------------------

The zsh/parameter module has a new readonly associative array
$usergroups whose keys are the names of system groups of which the
current user is a member and whose values are the corresponding
group identifiers.

The region_highlight array, which controls highlighting of the
command line from zle widgets, is now updated dynamically as
the command line is edited.

In POSIX emulation ("emulate sh") the shell is more accurate about
when it should or should not exit on errors.

The ${NAME:OFFSET:LENGTH} syntax now supports negative LENGTH, which
counts back from the end of the string.

The (g:opts:) flag in parameter expansion processes escape sequences like
the echo and print builtins.  opts can be any combination of o, e and c.
With e, acts like print rather than echo except for octal escapes which
are controlled separately by the o option.  With c, interpret control
sequences like "^X" as bindkey does.  Regardless of the opts, \c is not
interpreted.

Changes between versions 4.3.10 and 4.3.11
------------------------------------------

When the shell is invoked with the base name of a script, for example as
`zsh scriptname', previous versions of zsh have used the name directly,
whereas other shells use the value of $PATH to find the script.  The
option PATH_SCRIPT has been added to provide the alternative behaviour.
This is turned on where appropriate in compatibility modes.

Parameters, globbing, etc.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Parameter expansion has been enhanced to provide the ${NAME:OFFSET} and
${NAME:OFFSET:LENGTH} syntax for substrings and subarrays present in
several other shells.  OFFSET always uses zero-based indexing.  The only
clash with existing zsh syntax occurs if OFFSET begins with an
alphabetic character or `&', which is not likely.

The (D) flag in parameter expansion abbreviates directories in the
substituted value.  The (q-) flag does minimal shell quotation of arguments
for maximum human readability of the result.

The (Z) flag in parameter expansion is an enhanced version of the (z)
flag that takes an argument indicating how the string to be split
is treated. (Z:c:) parses comments as strings; (Z:C:) parses comments
and strips them; (Z:n:) treats newlines as ordinary whitespace: (z)
has always treated unquoted newlines as shell delimiters and turned them
into semicolons, though this was not previously documented.

Numeric expansion with braces has been extended so that a step may be
given, as in {3..9..2}.  The step may be negative as may the start and
end of the range (this is also new).

The glob qualifier P can be used to add a separate word before each
match.  For example, *(P:-f:) produces the command line
`-f file1 -f file2 ...'.

Regular expression matches now use the same variables for storing matched
components as shell pattern matching.  The function system now provides the
function regexp-replace for replacing text using regular expressions.  The
zle widget functions replace-string, replace-string-again, if defined with
regex in the name (e.g. "zle -N replace-regexp replace-string"), perform
regular expression matches.  In replacement text \& and \1 have the
standard meaning.

Line editor and completion
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The completion system now has a style path-completion.  Setting this to
false inhibits completion of paths before the current path component,
e.g. /u/b/z no longer completes to /usr/bin/zsh.  This is useful on systems
where this form of completion is pathologically slow due to network
performance.

With the MULTIBYTE option, the line editor now highlights bytes in the
input that are not part of a valid character in the current locale in hex
as <XX> for hex digits X; highlighting is controlled by the "special"
keyword in the zle_highlight array.  These can be distinguished from
unprintable Unicode characters which also use "special" highlighting as the
latter are always two or four bytes long, e.g. <XXXX>, <XXXXXXXX>.

zle_highlight also controls highlighting of a removable completion
suffix, e.g. the "/" automatically appended to directories.  This uses
the keyword "suffix".

The line editor now sets the variable ZLE_LINE_ABORTED if there is
an error when editing the line.  The following code can be used
to create a bindable editor widget to restore the aborted line:
  recover-line() { LBUFFER=$ZLE_LINE_ABORTED RBUFFER=; }
  zle -N recover-line
and then either bind recover-line to a key sequence or use
`M-x recover-line <RET>'.

The parameter ZLE_STATE, available in user-defined line editor widgets,
gives information on the state of the line editor.  Currently this is
whether the line editor is in insert or overwrite mode.

Miscellaneous options
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

The new shell option HIST_LEX_WORDS causes history lines read in from
a file to be split in the same way as normal shell lines, instead of
simply on whitespace.  It's an option as although the result is more
accurate it can take a long time when the history size is large.

The shell option MONITOR can be set in non-interactive shells, and also in
subshells (as created by surrounding commands with parentheses), turning on
job control for that subshell.  The initial behaviour of a subshell is
still to turn job control off, however if the new POSIX_JOBS option is set
MONITOR remains active in subshells.

The new shell option POSIX_CD, active in emulations of POSIX-based shells,
makes the cd builtin POSIX-compatible.

The POSIX_JOBS option already referred to has various other
compatibility enhancements.

The new shell option POSIX_STRINGS makes a null character in $'...'
expansion terminate the string, as is already the case in bash.  This is
not particularly useful behaviour but may become a POSIX requirement.

The new shell option POSIX_TRAPS causes the EXIT trap to behave in the same
way as in other shells, i.e. it is only run when the shell exits.

The new shell option SOURCE_TRACE causes the shell to report files
containing shell code that the shell executes directly, i.e. startup files
or files run with the `source' or `.' builtins.

The shell option SUN_KEYBOARD_HACK has been supplemented by a more general
mechanism: the KEYBOARD_HACK variable defines the character to be ignored.

Add-on modules and function
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

The module zsh/system has a new "zsystem" builtin whose subcommands perform
system level tasks.  Currently "zsystem flock" performs advisory file
locking (for aficionados, this uses the fcntl() system call so works over
the network on Linux).  This is a particularly convenient way of locking
files for the length of a subshell.  "zsystem supports flock" provides a
test for this feature.

There is now a function system for recording and restoring recently
entered directories in a persistent fashion, with support in completion
and (if explicitly installed) dynamic directory expansion.  See the
entry for cdr in the zshcontrib manual page.


Changes between versions 4.3.9 and 4.3.10
-----------------------------------------

The command "emulate <mode> -c ..." evaluates an expression in a given
emulation.  The emulation is sticky for functions defined within the
expression.

The variable CORRECT_IGNORE gives a pattern that can be ignored
in spelling correction.  CORRECT_IGNORE='_*' ignores completion functions.

The option POSIX_ALIASES improves compatibility of aliases with other
shells.

The variable ZSH_PATCHLEVEL can be used to test for unreleased versions of
the shell; it is present but less useful in released versions.

The variables ZLE_REMOVE_SUFFIX_CHARS and ZLE_SPACE_SUFFIX_CHARS allow more
control over the way automatically removed suffixes are treated in
completion.

Major changes between versions 4.3.6 and 4.3.9
----------------------------------------------

The option COMBINING_CHARS has been added.  When it is set, the
line editor assumes the terminal is capable of displaying zero-width
combining characters (typically accents) correctly as modifications
to the base character, and will act accordingly.  Note it is not set
by default owing to vagaries of terminals.  The system is reported
to work on MacOS, where this is particularly important as accented
characters in file names are stored in their decomposed form (i.e.
with base and combining characters).

The option HIST_FCNTL_LOCK has been added to provide locking of history
files using the system call fcntl().  On recent NFS implementations this
may provide better reliability.

The syntax ~[...] provides a dynamic form of directory naming,
supplementing the existing static ~name syntax.  A user-defined shell
function, zsh_directory_name, is used to handle both expansion of names to
directories and contraction of directories to names.

Patterns can now be used in incremental searches with the new widgets
history-incremental-pattern-search-backward and
history-incremental-pattern-search-forward.  These are not bound to
keys by default.

Highlighting and colouring of sections of the command line is now
supported, controlled by the array parameter zle_highlight and the ZLE
special parameter region_highlight.

Colouring of prompts is now supported within the shell by prompt
escapes.  The prompt theme system has been updated.

Various changes have been added to make debugging of shell code easier:
  - As noted in README, the option DEBUG_BEFORE_CMD is now set by default.
  - In DEBUG traps, $ZSH_DEBUG_CMD gives the code for which the trap is
    called as a string.
  - "setopt ERR_EXIT" in a DEBUG trap causes the code not to be executed.
  - $ZSH_SUBSHELL indicates the subshell level at which code is being
    executed.
  - The zsh/parameter module has various additional arrays similar to
    the existing $funcstack and $functrace, namely $funcsourcetrace
    and $funcfiletrace.  The consistency and informativeness of
    the output of all these arrays has been improved.
  - Prompt escapes %x and %I show the source file and line number in
    debug prompts (compare %N and %i which show names and line numbers
    in the execution environment).
  - The option NO_MULTI_FUNCDEF can turn off multiple definition of
    functions at once, a rarely used feature that can cause problems
    with misplaced "()".
  - The "fc" builtin has been enhanced to make non-interactive use possible
    and output consistent when the history is manipulated with "print -s".

The completion style accept-exact-dirs has been added.  When true, this
suppresses attempts to complete non-final directory segments of a filename
path when the directory exists.  (For example, /home/pws/src/zsh/<TAB>
discovers that /home/pws/src/zsh exists and leaves the directory component
alone, while /h/p/s/z/<TAB> completes to /home/pws/src/zsh/... as before.)
This should improve completion behaviour noticeably in special cases, such
as remote paths under Cygwin.

Major changes between versions 4.3.5 and 4.3.6
----------------------------------------------

cd, chdir, pushd and popd now take a -q option to suppress side effects
including printing the directory stack (for pushd and popd) and executing
the chpwd hook functions (for all four).

The parameter subscript (e) flag now forces the argument to be treated
as a string where it would previously have been treated as a pattern,
for example ${array[(ie)*]} substitutes the index of the element whose
value is "*".

Major changes between versions 4.3.4 and 4.3.5
----------------------------------------------

- The new extended globbing flag (#cN,M) behaves similarly to the extended
  regular expression syntax {N,M}.

- The zsh/datetime module has been enhanced and a calendar function
  system has been added along the lines of (but much enhanced from)
  the traditional Unix "calendar" utility.  This is still under
  development.  See the zshcalsys manual.  (The calendar functions
  were in 4.3.4 but were not listed in this file.  There have been
  significant enhancements since 4.3.4.)

- A new module zsh/curses provides a builtin zcurses for access to
  to the curses screen manipulation package.  See the entry for zsh/curses
  in the zshmodules manual.

- The module system has been enhanced to support the notion of "features"
  that give more control over which builtins, parameters, conditions
  and math functions are loaded from a module.  In particular,
  "zmodload -F zsh/stat b:zstat" makes the builtin previously called
  "stat" available as "zstat" (only) to avoid clashes with a system
  command named "stat".

Major changes between versions 4.2 and 4.3.4
--------------------------------------------

- There is support for multibyte character sets.  This is now reasonably
  close to complete, although Unicode combining characters don't work
  properly.  See Multibyte Character Support in INSTALL.

- The shell can now run an installation function for a new user
  (a user with no .zshrc, .zshenv, .zprofile or .zlogin file) without
  any additional setting up by the administrator.  See "THE ZSH/NEWUSER
  MODULE" in the zshmodules manual page.

- The manual now has a Roadmap section (manual page zshroadmap) to
  give new users an indication of the most interesting parts of the
  manual.

- New option PROMPT_SP (on by default): works around the problem that the
  line editor can overwrite output with no newline at the end.  See the
  zshoptions manual page.

- New option HIST_SAVE_BY_COPY (on by default): history is saved by
  copying and renaming instead of directly overwriting.  See the
  zshoptions manual page.

- New redirection syntax e.g. {myfd}>file opens a new file descriptor
  and stores the number in $myfd, so that >&$myfd will work.  Chosen
  not to break existing code (and to be compatible with proposals for the
  Korn shell).  See the section REDIRECTION in the zshmisc manual page.

- Substitutions of the form ${var:-"$@"}, ${var:+"$@"} and similar where
  word-splitting is applied to the text after the :- or :+ (in particular,
  where the SH_WORD_SPLIT option is in effect for compatibility) now
  behave as in other Bourne- and POSIX-compatible shells when in the
  appropriate emulation mode.

- New Posix-style zsh-specific tests [[:IDENT:]], [[:IFS:]],
  [[:IFSSPACE:]], [[:WORD:]] test if character can appear in identifier,
  is an IFS character, is an IFS whitespace character, or is considered
  as part of a word (is alphanumeric or appears in $WORDCHARS).  These
  works correctly on multibyte characters if the appropriate support
  is present.  See the section FILENAME GENERATION in the zshexpn
  manual page.

- Time comparisons on files when sorting or using test operators will
  use high-resolution timestamps when available.  This gives a
  resolution of a nanosecond instead of a second.

- The idiom =(<<<...) is optimised so that the shell internally turns
  the ... into the contents of a file whose name is then substituted.
  The syntax has always been usable by means of the NULLCMD feature,
  but previously it generated an intermediate process; it has now
  been rewritten along the same lines as the optimisation for $(<...)
  that inserts a file into the command line without the use of an
  external programme.

- Supplied functions catch and throw provide limited support for
  exception handling using the `{ ... } always { ... }' syntax.
  See the section EXCEPTION HANDLING in the zshcontrib manual page.

- Signals now accept the SIG as part of the name for compatibility with
  other shells.

- Editor function argument-base allows non-decimal arguments for
  editor widgets.  See the entry in the zshzle manual page.

- As always, there are many enhancements to completion functions.