branch.
Major changes between versions 4.2 and 4.3
------------------------------------------
- There is support for multibyte character sets in the line editor,
though not the main shell. See Multibyte Character Support in INSTALL.
- The shell can now run an installation function for a new user
(one with no .zshrc, .zshenv, .zprofile or .zlogin file) without any
additional setting up by the administrator.
- 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, to work around the problem that the
line editor can overwrite output with no newline at the end.
- New option HIST_SAVE_BY_COPY (on by default): history is saved by
copying and renaming instead of directly overwriting.
- 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).
- 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). Note the pattern
code doesn't yet handle multibyte characters.
- The idiom =(<<<...) is optimised so that the shell internally turns
the ... into the contents of a file whose name is then substituted.
- Supplied functions catch and throw provide limited support for
exception handling using the `{ ... } always { ... }' syntax.
- 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.
- As always, there are many enhancements to completion functions.
Use INSTALL_TARGET to install info files: this gives a proper
environment for USE_NEW_TEXINFO framework to work.
Fix makeinfo invocation for zsh-current via patch file so that
only _one_ info file is generated as PLIST seems to want it.
This is a development version of Zsh having more features than 4.0.x releases.
New features between zsh versions 4.0 and 4.1.1
-----------------------------------------------
Configuration:
- upgraded to use autoconf post-2.50
- improved compatibility with other shells through shell options,
builtin arguments and improved builtin option parsing
Syntax and builtins:
- new printf builtin
- `+=' to append to parameters which works for scalars, arrays and (with
pairs) associative arrays.
- enhanced multiple parameter `for' loops:
for key value in key1 value1 key2 value2 ...
maintaining full compatibility with POSIX syntax
Add-on modules and functions:
- zsh/net/tcp module provides builtin interface to TCP through ztcp
builtin. Function suite for interactive and script use with expect-style
pattern matching.
- zsh/net/socket module provides zsocket builtin.
- zcalc calculator function with full line editing.
- builtin interface to pcre library
- zsh/zselect module provides zselect builtin as interface to select
system call
Completion system:
- general improvements to command and context support, low-level functions,
display code.
- in verbose mode, matches with the same description are grouped
- highly configurable completions for values of specific parameters,
specific redirections for specific commands
- support for bash completion functions (typically zsh native functions are
more powerful where available)
- New completions provided for (some of these may be in later 4.0
releases): valgrind, tidy, texinfo, infocmp, Java classes, larch, limit,
locale parameters, netcat, mysqldiff, mt, lsof, elinks, ant, debchange
(dch), email addresses, file system types, Perforce, xsltproc.
Line editor:
- special parameters $PREDISPLAY, $POSTDISPLAY available in function
widgets to configure uneditable text (for narrowing)
- recursive editing
- supplied widgets read-from-minibuffer, replace-string use these features
(more intuitive prompting and argument reading than 4.0)
- access to killed text via $CUTBUFFER and $killring
- supplied highly configurable word widgets forward-word-match etc., can
set what constitutes a word interactively or in startup script
(implement bash-style behaviour, replacing previous bash-* word widgets)
- interface to incremental search via $LASTSEARCH
- better handling of keymaps in zle and widgets
- better support for output from user-defined widgets while zle is active
- tetris game which runs entirely in zle
Local internal improvements:
- disowned jobs are automatically restarted
- \u and \U print escapes for Unicode
- line numbers in error messages and $PS4 output are more consistent
- `=prog' expands only paths, no longer aliases for consistency
- job display in prompts; `jobs' command output can be piped
- prompts: new $RPROMPT2, %^, %j, %y, enhanced %{, %}, %_.
- rand48() function for better randomness in arithmetic
(if the corresponding math library function is present)
- $SECONDS parameter can be made floating point via `typeset -F SECONDS'
for better timing accuracy
- improvements to command line history mechanism
- many bugfixes
