ksh 93u+m/1.0.0
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| |/ / __| '_ \ | (_) ||_ \| | | |_| |_| '_ ` _ \ / /| || | | | | | |
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It may have been exactly a decade since the last one, but here it is at last: a proper new ksh release. :) Many thanks to all contributors for their hard work! Compared to an unpatched ksh 93u+ 2012-08-01, this release has roughly a thousand bugs fixed. It incorporates a fair number of enhancements as well.
This being an initial release, not all known bugs have been worked out yet. Let's hope this release will rekindle interest and attract more bug hunters.
Download the source code: https://github.com/ksh93/ksh/archive/refs/tags/v1.0.0.tar.gz
Full Changelog: reboot...v1.0.0
CONTRIBUTORS
Work on ksh 93u+m started in May 2020.
Main developers: Martijn Dekker, Johnothan King, hyenias
Direct contributors: Andy Fiddaman, Anuradha Weeraman, atheik, Chase, Govind Kamat, Harald van Dijk, K. Eugene Carlson, Lev Kujawski, Marc Wilson, Ryan Schmidt, Sterling Jensen, Trey Valenta, Vincent Mihalkovic
Also includes backported contributions by: David Korn, Glenn Fowler, Lefteris Koutsofios, Siteshwar Vashisht, Kurtis Rader, Roland Mainz, Finnbarr P. Murphy, Lijo George, OpenSUSE ksh 93u+ patch authors, Red Hat ksh 93u+ path authors, Solaris ksh 93u+ patch authors, Debian ksh 93u+ patch authors, Apple ksh 93u+ patch authors
Many fixes have also been backported from the AT&T 93v- beta as well as the former ksh2020 project lead by Kurtis Rader and Siteshwar Vashisht; we appreciate and benefit from their work. Many thanks also to Siteshwar for graciously donating his 'ksh93' GitHub organisation account!
HOW TO GET IT
Please download the source code tarball below.
To build, follow the instructions in README.md or src/cmd/ksh93/README.
Or ask your distribution package manager to upgrade ksh93 to this version.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
To report a bug, please open an issue at our GitHub page (see above). Alternatively, email me at [email protected] with your report. To get involved in development, read the brief policy information in README.md and then jump right in with a pull request or email a patch. See the TODO file in the top-level directory for a to-do list.
MAIN CHANGES between ksh 93u+ 2012-08-01 and 93u+m/1.0.0
Roughly a thousand bugs have been fixed, including many serious/critical bugs. See the NEWS file for more information, and the git commit log for complete documentation of every fix. Incompatible changes have been minimised, but not at the expense of fixing bugs. For a list of potentially incompatible changes, see src/cmd/ksh93/COMPATIBILITY.
Though there was a "no new features, bugfixes only" policy, some new features were found necessary, either to fix serious design flaws or to complete functionality that was evidently intended, but not finished. Below is a summary of these new features.
New command line editor features:
- The forward-delete and End keys are now handled as expected in the
emacs and vi built-in line editors.
- In the vi and emacs line editors, repeat counts can now also be used for
arrow keys and the forward-delete key, e.g., <ESC> 7 <left-arrow> works.
- Various keys on extended PC keyboards are now handled as expected in the
emacs and vi built-in line editors.
New shell language features:
- Pathname expansion (a.k.a. globbing) now never matches the special names
'.' (current directory) and '..' (parent directory). This change makes a
pattern like .* useful; it now matches all hidden files (dotfiles) in the
current directory, without the harmful inclusion of '.' and '..'.
- Tilde expansion can now be extended or modified by defining a .sh.tilde.get
or .sh.tilde.set discipline function. See the manual for details.
- The &>file redirection shorthand (for >file 2>&1) is now available for all
scripts and interactive sessions and not only for profile/login scripts.
- Arithmetic expressions in native ksh mode no longer interpret a number
with a leading zero as octal in any context. Use 8#octalnumber instead
(e.g. 8#400 == 256). Arithmetic expressions now also behave identically
within and outside ((...)) and $((...)). If the POSIX mode is turned on,
a leading zero now denotes an octal number in all arithmetic contexts.
New features in built-in commands:
- Usage error messages now show the --help/--man self-documentation options.
- Path-bound built-ins (such as /opt/ast/bin/cat) can now be executed by
invoking the canonical path, so the following will now work as expected:
$ /opt/ast/bin/cat --version
version cat (AT&T Research) 2012-05-31
- 'cd' now supports an -e option that, when combined with -P, verifies
that $PWD is correct after changing directories; this helps detect
access permission problems. See:
https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=253
- 'command -x' now looks for external commands only, skipping built-ins.
In addition, its xargs-like functionality no longer freezes the shell on
Linux and macOS, making it effectively a new feature on these systems.
- 'printf' now supports a -v option as in bash. This assigns formatted
output directly to variables, which is very fast and will not strip
final newline (\n) characters.
- 'redirect' now checks if all arguments are valid redirections before
performing them. If an error occurs, it issues an error message instead
of terminating the shell.
- 'return', when used to return from a function, can now return any
status value in the 32-bit signed integer range, like on zsh. However,
due to a traditional Unix kernel limitation, $? is still trimmed to its
least significant 8 bits whenever a shell or subshell exits.
- 'suspend' now refuses to suspend a login shell, as there is probably no
parent shell to return to and the login session would freeze.
- 'test'/'[' now supports all the same operators as [[ (including =~,
\<, \>) except for the different 'and'/'or' operators. Note that
'test'/'[' remains deprecated due to its unfixable pitfalls;
[[ ... ]] is recommended instead.
- 'times' now gives high precision output in a POSIX compliant format.
- 'type'/'whence': Two bash-like flags were backported from ksh 93v-:
- 'whence -P/type -P' is an alias to the existing -p flag.
- 'whence -t/type -t' will print only the type of a command in a
simple format that is designed to be easy to use for scripts.
- 'typeset' has a new '-g' flag that forces variables to be created or
modified at the global scope regardless of context, as on bash 4.2+.
- 'typeset' now gives an informative error message if an incompatible
combination of options is given.
- 'ulimit': Added three options inspired by bash:
- 'ulimit -k' sets the maximum number of kqueues.
- 'ulimit -P' sets the maximum number of pseudo-terminals.
- 'ulimit -R' sets the maximum time in microseconds a real-time process
can run before blocking.
Note that not all operating systems support the limits set by these options.
- 'whence -v/-a' now reports the location of autoloadable functions.
New features in shell options:
- When the -b/--notify shell option is on and the vi or emacs/gmacs shell
line editor is in use, 'Done' and similar notifications from completed
background jobs are now inserted directly above the line you're typing,
without affecting your command line display.
- A new --functrace long-form shell option causes the -x/--xtrace option's
state and the DEBUG trap action to be inherited by function scopes instead
of being reset to default. Changes made to them within a function scope
still do not propagate back to the parent scope. Similarly, this option
also causes the DEBUG trap action to be inherited by subshells.
- A new --globcasedetect shell option is added on operating systems where
we can check for a case-insensitive file system (currently Linux, macOS,
QNX 7.0+, and Windows/Cygwin). When this option is turned on, pathname
expansion (globbing), as well as tab completion on interactive shells,
automatically become case-insensitive depending on the file system.
This is separately determined for each pathname component.
- Enhancement to -G/--globstar: symbolic links to directories are now
followed if they match a normal (non-**) glob pattern. For example, if
'/lnk' is a symlink to a directory, '/lnk/**' and '/l?k/**' now work as
you would expect.
- The new --histreedit and --histverify options modify history expansion
(--histexpand). If --histreedit is on and a history expansion fails, the
command line is reloaded into the next prompt's edit buffer, allowing
corrections. If --histverify is on, the results of a history expansion are
not immediately executed but instead loaded into the next prompt's edit
buffer, allowing further changes.
- A new --nobackslashctrl shell option disables the special escaping
behaviour of the backslash character in the emacs and vi built-in editors.
Particularly in the emacs editor, this makes it much easier to go back,
insert a forgotten backslash into a command, and then continue editing
without having your next arrow key replace your backslash with garbage.
- A new --posix shell option has been added to ksh 93u+m that makes the
ksh language more compatible with other shells by following the POSIX
standard more closely. See the manual page for details. It is enabled by
default if ksh is invoked as sh, otherwise it is disabled by default.