Ultra Pack/UltraComputing Partner Applications.iso/SunLabs/tclTK/src/tcl7.4/changes

Text File | 1995-06-30 | 50.0 KB | 1,228 lines

Recent user-visible changes to Tcl:

sccsid = %Z% %M% %I% %E% %U%

1. No more [command1] [command2] construct for grouping multiple
commands on a single command line.

2. Semi-colon now available for grouping commands on a line.

3. For a command to span multiple lines, must now use backslash-return
at the end of each line but the last.

4. "Var" command has been changed to "set".

5. Double-quotes now available as an argument grouping character.

6. "Return" may be used at top-level.

7. More backslash sequences available now.  In particular, backslash-newline
may be used to join lines in command files.

8. New or modified built-in commands:  case, return, for, glob, info,
print, return, set, source, string, uplevel.

9. After an error, the variable "errorInfo" is filled with a stack
trace showing what was being executed when the error occurred.

10. Command abbreviations are accepted when parsing commands, but
are not recommended except for purely-interactive commands.

11. $, set, and expr all complain now if a non-existent variable is
referenced.

12. History facilities exist now.  See Tcl.man and Tcl_RecordAndEval.man.

13. Changed to distinguish between empty variables and those that don't
exist at all.  Interfaces to Tcl_GetVar and Tcl_ParseVar have changed
(NULL return value is now possible).  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

14. Changed meaning of "level" argument to "uplevel" command (1 now means
"go up one level", not "go to level 1"; "#1" means "go to level 1").
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

15. 3/19/90 Added "info exists" option to see if variable exists.

16. 3/19/90 Added "noAbbrev" variable to prohibit command abbreviations.

17. 3/19/90 Added extra errorInfo option to "error" command.

18. 3/21/90 Double-quotes now only affect space:  command, variable,
and backslash substitutions still occur inside double-quotes.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

19. 3/21/90 Added support for \r.

20. 3/21/90 List, concat, eval, and glob commands all expect at least
one argument now.  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

21. 3/22/90 Added "?:" operators to expressions.

22. 3/25/90 Fixed bug in Tcl_Result that caused memory to get trashed.

------------------- Released version 3.1 ---------------------

23. 3/29/90 Fixed bug that caused "file a.b/c ext" to return ".b/c".

24. 3/29/90 Semi-colon is not treated specially when enclosed in
double-quotes.

------------------- Released version 3.2 ---------------------

25. 4/16/90 Rewrote "exec" not to use select or signals anymore.
Should be more Sys-V compatible, and no slower in the normal case.

26. 4/18/90 Rewrote "glob" to eliminate GNU code (there's no GNU code
left in Tcl, now), and added Tcl_TildeSubst procedure.  Added automatic
tilde-substitution in many commands, including "glob".

------------------- Released version 3.3 ---------------------

27. 7/11/90 Added "Tcl_AppendResult" procedure.

28. 7/20/90 "History" with no options now defaults to "history info"
rather than to "history redo".  Although this is a backward incompatibility,
it should only be used interactively and thus shouldn't present any
compatibility problems with scripts.

29. 7/20/90 Added "Tcl_GetInteger", "Tcl_GetDouble", and "Tcl_GetBoolean"
procedures.

30. 7/22/90 Removed "Tcl_WatchInterp" procedure:  doesn't seem to be
necessary, since the same effect can be achieved with the deletion
callbacks on individual commands.  *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

31. 7/23/90 Added variable tracing:  Tcl_TraceVar, Tcl_UnTraceVar,
and Tcl_VarTraceInfo procedures, "trace" command.

32. 8/9/90 Mailed out list of all bug fixes since 3.3 release.

33. 8/29/90 Fixed bugs in Tcl_Merge relating to backslashes and
semi-colons.  Mailed out patch.

34. 9/3/90 Fixed bug in tclBasic.c: quotes weren't quoting ]'s.
Mailed out patch.

35. 9/19/90 Rewrote exec to always use files both for input and
output to the process.  The old pipe-based version didn't work if
the exec'ed process forked a child and then exited:  Tcl waited
around for stdout to get closed, which didn't happen until the
grandchild exited.

36. 11/5/90 ERR_IN_PROGRESS flag wasn't being cleared soon enough
in Tcl_Eval, allowing error messages from different commands to
pile up in $errorInfo.  Fixed by re-arranging code in Tcl_Eval that
re-initializes result and ERR_IN_PROGRESS flag.  Didn't mail out
patch:  changes too complicated to describe.

37. 12/19/90 Added Tcl_VarEval procedure as a convenience for
assembling and executing Tcl commands.

38. 1/29/91 Fixed core leak in Tcl_AddErrorInfo.  Also changed procedure
and Tcl_Eval so that first call to Tcl_AddErrorInfo need not come from
Tcl_Eval.

----------------- Released version 5.0 with Tk ------------------

39. 4/3/91 Removed change bars from manual entries, leaving only those
that came after version 3.3 was released.

40. 5/17/91 Changed tests to conform to Mary Ann May-Pumphrey's approach.

41. 5/23/91 Massive revision to Tcl parser to simplify the implementation
of string and floating-point support in expressions.  Newlines inside
[] are now treated as command separators rather than word separators
(this makes newline treatment consistent throughout Tcl).
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

42. 5/23/91 Massive rewrite of expression code to support floating-point
values and simple string comparisons.  The C interfaces to expression
routines have changed (Tcl_Expr is replaced by Tcl_ExprLong, Tcl_ExprDouble,
etc.), but all old Tcl expression strings should be accepted by the new
expression code.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

43. 5/23/91 Modified tclHistory.c to check for negative "keep" value.

44. 5/23/91 Modified Tcl_Backslash to handle backslash-newline.  It now
returns 0 to indicate that a backslash sequence should be replaced by
no character at all.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

45. 5/29/91 Modified to use ANSI C function prototypes.  Must set
"USE_ANSI" switch when compiling to get prototypes.

46. 5/29/91 Completed test suite by providing tests for all of the
built-in Tcl commands.

47. 5/29/91 Changed Tcl_Concat to eliminate leading and trailing
white-space in each of the things it concatenates and to ignore
elements that are empty or have only white space in them.  This
produces cleaner output from the "concat" command.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

48. 5/31/91 Changed "set" command and Tcl_SetVar procedure to return
new value of variable.

49. 6/1/91 Added "while" and "cd" commands.

50. 6/1/91 Changed "exec" to delete the last character of program
output if it is a newline.  In most cases this makes it easier to
process program-generated output.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

51. 6/1/91 Made sure that pointers are never used after freeing them.

52. 6/1/91 Fixed bug in TclWordEnd where it wasn't dealing with
[] inside quotes correctly.

53. 6/8/91 Fixed exec.test to accept return values of either 1 or
255 from "false" command.

54. 7/6/91 Massive overhaul of variable management.  Associative
arrays now available, along with "unset" command (and Tcl_UnsetVar
procedure).  Variable traces have been completely reworked:
interfaces different both from Tcl and C, and multiple traces may
exist on same variable.  Can no longer redefine existing local
variable to be global.  Calling sequences have changed slightly
for Tcl_GetVar and Tcl_SetVar ("global" is now "flags"). Tcl_SetVar
can fail and return a NULL result.  New forms of variable-manipulation
procedures:  Tcl_GetVar2, Tcl_SetVar2, etc.  Syntax of variable
$-notation changed to support array indexing.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

55. 7/6/91 Added new list-manipulation procedures:  Tcl_ScanElement,
Tcl_ConvertElement, Tcl_AppendElement.

56. 7/12/91 Created new procedure Tcl_EvalFile, which does most of the
work of the "source" command.

57. 7/20/91 Major reworking of "exec" command to allow pipelines,
more redirection, background.  Added new procedures Tcl_Fork,
Tcl_WaitPids, Tcl_DetachPids, and Tcl_CreatePipeline.  The old
"< input" notation has been replaced by "<< input" ("<" is for
redirection from a file).  Also handles error returns and abnormal
terminations (e.g. signals) differently.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

58. 7/21/91 Added "append" and "lappend" commands.

59. 7/22/91 Reworked error messages and manual entries to use
?x? as the notation for an optional argument x, instead of [x].  The
bracket notation was often confused with the use of brackets for
command substitution.  Also modified error messages to be more
consistent.

60. 7/23/91 Tcl_DeleteCommand now returns an indication of whether
or not the command actually existed, and the "rename" command uses
this information to return an error if an attempt is made to delete
a non-existent command.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

61. 7/25/91 Added new "errorCode" mechanism, along with procedures
Tcl_SetErrorCode, Tcl_UnixError, and Tcl_ResetResult.  Renamed
Tcl_Return to Tcl_SetResult, but left a #define for Tcl_Return to
avoid compatibility problems.

62. 7/26/91 Extended "case" command with alternate syntax where all
patterns and commands are together in a single list argument:  makes
it easier to write multi-line case statements.

63. 7/27/91 Changed "print" command to perform tilde-substitution on
the file name.

64. 7/27/91 Added "tolower", "toupper", "trim", "trimleft", and "trimright"
options to "string" command.

65. 7/29/91 Added "atime", "mtime", "size", and "stat" options to "file"
command.

66. 8/1/91 Added "split" and "join" commands.

67. 8/11/91 Added commands for file I/O, including "open", "close",
"read", "gets", "puts", "flush", "eof", "seek", and "tell".

68. 8/14/91 Switched to use a hash table for command lookups.  Command
abbreviations no longer have direct support in the Tcl interpreter, but
it should be possible to simulate them with the auto-load features
described below.  The "noAbbrev" variable is no longer used by Tcl.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

68.5 8/15/91 Added support for "unknown" command, which can be used to
complete abbreviations, auto-load library files, auto-exec shell
commands, etc.

69. 8/15/91 Added -nocomplain switch to "glob" command.

70. 8/20/91 Added "info library" option and TCL_LIBRARY #define.  Also
added "info script" option.

71. 8/20/91 Changed "file" command to take "option" argument as first
argument (before file name), for consistency with other Tcl commands.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

72. 8/20/91 Changed format of information in $errorInfo variable:
comments such as
    ("while" body line 1)
are now on separate lines from commands being executed.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

73. 8/20/91 Changed Tcl_AppendResult so that it (eventually) frees
large buffers that it allocates.

74. 8/21/91 Added "linsert", "lreplace", "lsearch", and "lsort"
commands.

75. 8/28/91 Added "incr" and "exit" commands.

76. 8/30/91 Added "regexp" and "regsub" commands.

77. 9/4/91 Changed "dynamic" field in interpreters to "freeProc" (procedure
address).  This allows for alternative storage managers.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

78. 9/6/91 Added "index", "length", and "range" options to "string"
command.  Added "lindex", "llength", and "lrange" commands.

79. 9/8/91 Removed "index", "length", "print" and "range" commands.
"Print" is redundant with "puts", but less general, and the other
commands are replaced with the new commands described in change 78
above.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

80. 9/8/91 Changed history revision to occur even when history command
is nested;  needed in order to allow "history" to be invoked from
"unknown" procedure.

81. 9/13/91 Changed "panic" not to use vfprintf (it's uglier and less
general now, but makes it easier to run Tcl on systems that don't
have vfprintf).  Also changed "strerror" not to redeclare sys_errlist.

82. 9/19/91 Lots of changes to improve portability to different UNIX
systems, including addition of "config" script to adapt Tcl to the
configuration of the system it's being compiled on.

83. 9/22/91 Added "pwd" command.

84. 9/22/91 Renamed manual pages so that their filenames are no more
than 14 characters in length, moved to "doc" subdirectory.

85. 9/24/91 Redid manual entries so they contain the supplemental
macros that they need;  can just print with "troff -man" or "man"
now.

86. 9/26/91 Created initial version of script library, including
a version of "unknown" that does auto-loading, auto-execution, and
abbreviation expansion.  This library is used by tclTest
automatically.  See the "library" manual entry for details.

----------------- Released version 6.0, 9/26/91 ------------------

87. 9/30/91 Made "string tolower" and "string toupper" check case
before converting:  on some systems, "tolower" and "toupper" assume
that character already has particular case.

88. 9/30/91 Fixed bug in Tcl_SetResult:  wasn't always setting freeProc
correctly when called with NULL value.  This tended to cause memory
allocation errors later.

89. 10/3/91 Added "upvar" command.

90. 10/4/91 Changed "format" so that internally it converts %D to %ld,
%U to %lu, %O to %lo, and %F to %f.  This eliminates some compatibility
problems on some machines without affecting behavior.

91. 10/10/91 Fixed bug in "regsub" that caused core dumps with the -all
option when the last match wasn't at the end of the string.

92. 10/17/91 Fixed problems with backslash sequences:  \r support was
incomplete and \f and \v weren't supported at all.

93. 10/24/91 Added Tcl_InitHistory procedure.

94. 10/24/91 Changed "regexp" to store "-1 -1" in subMatchVars that
don't match, rather than returning an error.

95. 10/27/91 Modified "regexp" to return actual strings in matchVar
and subMatchVars instead of indices.  Added "-indices" switch to cause
indices to be returned.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

96. 10/27/91 Fixed bug in "scan" where it used hardwired constants for
sizes of floats and doubles instead of using "sizeof".

97. 10/31/91 Fixed bug in tclParse.c where parse-related error messages
weren't being storage-managed correctly, causing spurious free's.

98. 10/31/91 Form feed and vertical tab characters are now considered
to be space characters by the parser.

99. 10/31/91 Added TCL_LEAVE_ERR_MSG flag to procedures like Tcl_SetVar.

100. 11/7/91 Fixed bug in "case" where "in" argument couldn't be omitted
if all case branches were embedded in a single list.

101. 11/7/91 Switched to use "pid_t" and "uid_t" and other official
POSIC types and function prototypes.

----------------- Released version 6.1, 11/7/91 ------------------

102. 12/2/91 Modified Tcl_ScanElement and Tcl_ConvertElement in several
ways.  First, allowed caller to request that only backslashes be used
(no braces).  Second, made Tcl_ConvertElement more aggressive in using
backslashes for braces and quotes.

103. 12/5/91 Added "type", "lstat", and "readlink" options to "file"
command, plus added new "type" element to output of "stat" and "lstat"
options.

104. 12/10/91 Manual entries had first lines that caused "man" program
to try weird preprocessor.  Added blank comment lines to fix problem.

105. 12/16/91 Fixed a few bugs in auto_mkindex proc:  wasn't handling
errors properly, and hadn't been upgraded for new "regexp" syntax.

106. 1/2/92 Fixed bug in "file" command where it didn't properly handle
a file names containing tildes where the indicated user doesn't exist.

107. 1/2/92 Fixed lots of cases in tclUnixStr.c where two different
errno symbols (e.g. EWOULDBLOCK and EAGAIN) have the same number;  Tcl
will only use one of them.

108. 1/2/92 Lots of changes to configuration script to handle many more
systems more gracefully.  E.g. should now detect the bogus strtoul that
comes with AIX and substitute Tcl's own version instead.

----------------- Released version 6.2, 1/10/92 ------------------

109. 1/20/92 Config didn't have code to actually use "uid_t" variable
to set TCL_UIT_T #define.

110. 2/10/92 Tcl_Eval didn't properly reset "numLevels" variable when
too-deep recursion occurred.

111. 2/29/92 Added "on" and "off" to keywords accepted by Tcl_GetBoolean.

112. 3/19/92 Config wasn't installing default version of strtod.c for
systems that don't have one in libc.a.

113. 3/23/92 Fixed bug in tclExpr.c where numbers with leading "."s,
like 0.75, couldn't be properly substituted into expressions with
variable or command substitution.

114. 3/25/92 Fixed bug in tclUnixAZ.c where "gets" command wasn't
checking to make sure that it was able to write the variable OK.

115. 4/16/92 Fixed bug in tclUnixAZ.c where "read" command didn't
compute file size right for device files.

116. 4/23/92 Fixed but in tclCmdMZ.c where "trace vinfo" was overwriting
the trace command.

----------------- Released version 6.3, 5/1/92 ------------------

117. 5/1/92 Added Tcl_GlobalEval.

118. 6/1/92 Changed auto-load facility to source files at global level.

119. 6/8/92 Tcl_ParseVar wasn't always setting termPtr after errors, which
sometimes caused core dumps.

120. 6/21/92 Fixed bug in initialization of regexp pattern cache.  This
bug caused segmentation violations in regexp commands under some conditions.

121. 6/22/92 Changed implementation of "glob" command to eliminate
trailing slashes on directory names:  they confuse some systems.  There
shouldn't be any user-visible changes in functionality except for names
in error messages not having trailing slashes.

122. 7/2/92 Fixed bug that caused 'string match ** ""' to return 0.

123. 7/2/92 Fixed bug in Tcl_CreateCmdBuf where it wasn't initializing
the buffer to an empty string.

124. 7/6/92 Fixed bug in "case" command where it used NULL pattern string
after errors in the "default" clause.

125. 7/25/92 Speeded up auto_load procedure:  don't reread all the index
files unless the path has changed.

126. 8/3/92 Changed tclUnix.h to define MAXPATHLEN from PATH_MAX, not
_POSIX_PATH_MAX.

----------------- Released version 6.4, 8/7/92 ------------------

127. 8/10/92 Changed tclBasic.c so that comment lines can be continued by
putting a backslash before the newline.

128. 8/21/92 Modified "unknown" to allow the source-ing of a file for
an auto-load to trigger other nested auto-loads, as long as there isn't
any recursion on the same command name.

129. 8/25/92 Modified "format" command to allow " " and "+" flags, and
allow flags in any order.

130. 9/14/92 Modified Tcl_ParseVar so that it doesn't actually attempt
to look up the variable if "noEval" mode is in effect in the interpreter
(it just parses the name).  This avoids the errors that used to occur
in statements like "expr {[info exists foo] && $foo}".

131. 9/14/92 Fixed bug in "uplevel" command where it didn't output the
correct error message if a level was specified but no command.

132. 9/14/92 Renamed manual entries to have extensions like .3 and .n,
and added "install" target to Makefile.

133. 9/18/92 Modified "unknown" command to emulate !!, !<num>, and
^<old>^<new> csh history substitutions.

134. 9/21/92 Made the config script cleverer about figuring out which
switches to pass to "nm".

135. 9/23/92 Fixed tclVar.c to be sure to copy flags when growing variables.
Used to forget about traces in progress and make extra recursive calls
on trace procs.

136. 9/28/92 Fixed bug in auto_reset where it was unsetting variables
that might not exist.

137. 10/7/92 Changed "parray" library procedure to print any array
accessible to caller, local or global.

138. 10/15/92 Fixed bug where propagation of new environment variable
values among interpreters took N! time if there exist N interpreters.

139. 10/16/92 Changed auto_reset procedure so that it also deletes any
existing procedures that are in the auto_load index (the assumption is
that they should be re-loaded to get the latest versions).

140. 10/21/92 Fixed bug that caused lists to be incorrectly generated
for elements that contained backslash-newline sequences.

141. 12/9/92 Added support for TCL_LIBRARY environment variable:  use
it as library location if it's present.

142. 12/9/92 Added "info complete" command, Tcl_CommandComplete procedure.

143. 12/16/92 Changed the Makefile to check to make sure "config" has been
run (can't run config directly from the Makefile because it modifies the
Makefile;  thus make has to be run again after running config).

----------------- Released version 6.5, 12/17/92 ------------------

144. 12/21/92 Changed config to look in several places for libc file.

145. 12/23/92 Added "elseif" support to if.  Also, "then", "else", and
"elseif" may no longer be abbreviated.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

146. 12/28/92 Changed "puts" and "read" to support initial "-nonewline"
switch instead of additional "nonewline" argument.  The old form is
still supported, but it is discouraged and is no longer documented.
Also changed "puts" to make the file argument default to stdout: e.g.
"puts foo" will print foo on standard output.

147. 1/6/93 Fixed bug whereby backslash-newline wasn't working when
typed interactively, or in "info complete".

148. 1/22/93 Fixed bugs in "lreplace" and "linsert" where close
quotes were being lost from last element before replacement or
insertion.

149. 1/29/93 Fixed bug in Tcl_AssembleCmd where it wasn't requiring
a newline at the end of a line before considering a command to be
complete.  The bug caused some very long lines in script files to
be processed as multiple separate commands.

150. 1/29/93 Various changes in Makefile to add more configuration
options, simplify installation, fix bugs (e.g. don't use -f switch
for cp), etc.

151. 1/29/93 Changed "name1" and "name2" identifiers to "part1" and
"part2" to avoid name conflicts with stupid C++ implementations that
use "name1" and "name2" in a reserved way.

152. 2/1/93 Added "putenv" procedure to replace the standard system
version so that it will work correctly with Tcl's environment handling.

----------------- Released version 6.6, 2/5/93 ------------------

153. 2/10/93 Fixed bugs in config script:  missing "endif" in libc loop,
and tried to use strncasecmp.c instead of strcasecmp.c.

154. 2/10/93 Makefile improvements:  added RANLIB variable for easier
Sys-V configuration, added SHELL variable for SGI systems.

----------------- Released version 6.7, 2/11/93 ------------------

153. 2/6/93 Changes in backslash processing:
    - \Cx, \Mx, \CMx, \e sequences no longer special
    - \<newline> also eats up any space after the newline, replacing
      the whole sequence with a single space character
    - Hex sequences like \x24 are now supported, along with ANSI C's \a.
    - "format" no longer does backslash processing on its format string
    - there is no longer any special meaning to a 0 return value from
      Tcl_Backslash
    - unknown backslash sequences, like (e.g. \*), are replaced with
      the following character (e.g. *), instead of just treating the
      backslash as an ordinary character.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

154. 2/6/93 Updated all copyright notices.  The meaning hasn't changed
at all but the wording does a better job of protecting U.C. from
liability (according to U.C. lawyers, anyway).

155. 2/6/93 Changed "regsub" so that it overwrites the result variable
in all cases, even if there is no match.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

156. 2/8/93 Added support for XPG3 %n$ conversion specifiers to "format"
command.

157. 2/17/93 Fixed bug in Tcl_Eval where errors due to infinite
recursion could result in core dumps.

158. 2/17/93 Improved the auto-load mechanism to deal gracefully (i.e.
return an error) with a situation where a library file that supposedly
defines a procedure doesn't actually define it.

159. 2/17/93 Renamed Tcl_UnixError procedure to Tcl_PosixError, and
changed errorCode variable usage to use POSIX as keyword instead of
UNIX.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

160. 2/19/93 Changes to exec and process control:
    - Added support for >>, >&, >>&, |&, <@, >@, and >&@ forms of redirection.
    - When exec puts processes into background, it returns a list of
      their pids as result.
    - Added support for <file, >file, etc. (i.e. no space between
      ">" and file name.
    - Added -keepnewline option.
    - Deleted Tcl_Fork and Tcl_WaitPids procedures (just use fork and
      waitpid instead).
    - Added waitpid compatibility procedure for systems that don't have
      it.
    - Added Tcl_ReapDetachedProcs procedure.
    - Changed "exec" to return an error if there is stderr output, even
      if the command returns a 0 exit status (it's always been documented
      this way, but the implementation wasn't correct).
    - If a process returns a non-zero exit status but doesn't generate
      any diagnostic output, then Tcl generates an error message for it.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

161. 2/25/93 Fixed two memory-management problems having to do with
managing the old result during variable trace callbacks.

162. 3/1/93 Added dynamic string library:  Tcl_DStringInit, Tcl_DStringAppend,
Tcl_DStringFree, Tcl_DStringResult, etc.

163. 3/1/93 Modified glob command to only return the names of files that
exist, and to only return names ending in "/" if the file is a directory.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

164. 3/19/93 Modified not to use system calls like "read" directly,
but instead to use special Tcl procedures that retry automatically
if interrupted by signals.

165. 4/3/93 Eliminated "noSep" argument to Tcl_AppendElement, plus
TCL_NO_SPACE flag for Tcl_SetVar and Tcl_SetVar2.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

166. 4/3/93 Eliminated "flags" and "termPtr" arguments to Tcl_Eval.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

167. 4/3/93 Changes to expressions:
    - The "expr" command now accepts multiple arguments, which are
      concatenated together with space separators.
    - Integers aren't automatically promoted to floating-point if they
      overflow the word size:  errors are generated instead.
    - Tcl can now handle "NaN" and other special values if the underlying
      library procedures handle them.
    - When printing floating-point numbers, Tcl ensures that there is a "."
      or "e" in the number, so it can't be treated as an integer accidentally.
      The procedure Tcl_PrintDouble is available to provide this function
      in other contexts.  Also, the variable "tcl_precision" can be used
      to set the precision for printing (must be a decimal number giving
      digits of precision).
    - Expressions now support transcendental and other functions, e.g. sin,
      acos, hypot, ceil, and round.  Can add new math functions with
      Tcl_CreateMathFunc().
    - Boolean expressions can now have any of the string values accepted
      by Tcl_GetBoolean, such as "yes" or "no".
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

168. 4/5/93 Changed Tcl_UnsetVar and Tcl_UnsetVar2 to return TCL_OK
or TCL_ERROR instead of 0 or -1.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

169. 4/5/93 Eliminated Tcl_CmdBuf structure and associated procedures;
can use Tcl_DStrings instead.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

170. 4/8/93 Changed interface to Tcl_TildeSubst to use a dynamic
string for buffer space.  This makes the procedure re-entrant and
thread-safe, whereas it wasn't before.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

171. 4/14/93 Eliminated tclHash.h, and moved everything from it to
tcl.h
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

172. 4/15/93 Eliminated Tcl_InitHistory, made "history" command always
be part of interpreter.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

173. 4/16/93 Modified "file" command so that "readable" option always
exists, even on machines that don't support symbolic links (always returns
same error as if the file wasn't a symbolic link).

174. 4/26/93 Fixed bugs in "regsub" where ^ patterns didn't get handled
right (pretended not to match when it really did, and looped infinitely
if -all was specified).

175. 4/29/93 Various improvements in the handling of variables:
    - Can create variables and array elements during a read trace.
    - Can delete variables during traces (note: unset traces will be
      invoked when this happens).
    - Can upvar to array elements.
    - Can retarget an upvar to another variable by re-issuing the
      upvar command with a different "other" variable.

176. 5/3/93 Added Tcl_GetCommandInfo, which returns info about a Tcl
command such as whether it exists and its ClientData.  Also added
Tcl_SetCommandInfo, which allows any of this information to be modified
and also allows a command's delete procedure to have a different
ClientData value than its command procedure.

177. 5/5/93 Added Tcl_RegExpMatch procedure.

178. 5/6/93 Fixed bug in "scan" where it didn't properly handle
%% conversion specifiers.  Also changed "scan" to use Tcl_PrintDouble
for printing real values.

179. 5/7/93 Added "-exact", "-glob", and "-regexp" options to "lsearch"
command to allow different kinds of pattern matching.

180. 5/7/93 Added many new switches to "lsort" to control the sorting
process: "-ascii", "-integer", "-real", "-command", "-increasing",
and "-decreasing".

181. 5/10/93 Changes to file I/O:
    - Modified "open" command to support a list of POSIX access flags
      like {WRONLY CREAT TRUNC} in addition to current fopen-style
      access modes.  Also added "permissions" argument to set permissions
      of newly-created files.
    - Fixed Scott Bolte's bug (can close stdin etc. in application and
      then re-open them with Tcl commands).
    - Exported access to Tcl's file table with new procedures Tcl_EnterFile
      and Tcl_GetOpenFile.

182. 5/15/93 Added new "pid" command, which can be used to retrieve
either the current process id or a list of the process ids in a
pipeline opened with "open |..."

183. 6/3/93 Changed to use GNU autoconfig for configuration instead of
the home-brew "config" script.  Also made many other configuration-related
changes, such as using <unistd.h> instead of explicitly declaring system
calls in tclUnix.h.

184. 6/4/93 Fixed bug where core-dumps could occur if a procedure
redefined itself (the memory for the procedure's body could get
reallocated in the middle of evaluating the body);  implemented
simple reference count mechanism.

185. 6/5/93 Changed tclIndex file format in two ways:  (a) it's now
eval-ed instead of parsed, which makes it 3-4x faster; (b) the entries
in auto_index are now commands to evaluate, which allows commands to
be loaded in different ways such as dynamic-loading of C code.  The
old tclIndex file format is still supported.

186. 6/7/93 Eliminated tclTest program, added new "tclsh" program
that is more like wish (allows script files to be invoked automatically
using "#!/usr/local/bin/tclsh", makes arguments available to script,
etc.).  Added support for Tcl_AppInit plus default version;  this
allows new Tcl applications to be created without modifying the
main program for tclsh.

187. 6/7/93 Fixed bug in TclWordEnd that kept backslash-newline from
working correctly in some cases during interactive input.

188. 6/9/93 Added Tcl_LinkVar and related procedures, which automatically
keep a Tcl variable in sync with a C variable.

189. 6/16/93 Increased maximum nesting depth from 100 to 1000.

190. 6/16/93 Modified "trace var" command so that error messages from
within traces are returned properly as the result of the variable
access, instead of the generic "access disallowed by trace command"
message.

191. 6/16/93 Added Tcl_CallWhenDeleted to provide callbacks when an
interpreter is deleted (same functionality as Tcl_WatchInterp, which
used to exist in versions before 6.0).

193. 6/16/93 Added "-code" argument to "return" command;  it's there
primarily for completeness, so that procedures implementing control
constructs can reflect exceptional conditions back to their callers.

194. 6/16/93 Split up Tcl.n to make separate manual entries for each
Tcl command.  Tcl.n now contains a summary of the language syntax.

195. 6/17/93 Added new "switch" command to replace "case": allows
alternate forms of pattern matching (exact, glob, regexp), replaces
pattern lists with single patterns (but you can use "-" bodies to
share one body among several patterns), eliminates "in" noise word.
"Case" command is now obsolete.

196. 6/17/93 Changed the "exec", "glob", "regexp", and "regsub" commands
to include a "--" switch.  All initial arguments starting with "-" are now
treated as switches unless a "--" switch is present to end the list.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

197. 6/17/93 Changed auto-exec so that the subprocess gets stdin, stdout,
and stderr from the parent.  This allows truly interactive sub-processes
(e.g. vi) to be auto-exec'ed from a tcl shell command line.

198. 6/18/93 Added patchlevel.h, for use in coordinating future patch
releases, and also added "info patchlevel" command to make the patch
level available to Tcl scripts.

199. 6/19/93 Modified "glob" command so that a leading "//" in a name
gets left as is (this is needed for systems like Apollos where "//" is
the super-root;  Tcl used to collapse the two slashes into a single
slash).

200. 7/7/93 Added Tcl_SetRecursionLimit procedure so that the maximum
allowable nesting depth can be controlled for an interpreter from C.

----------------- Released version 7.0 Beta 1, 7/9/93 ------------------

201. 7/12/93 Modified Tcl_GetInt and tclExpr.c so that full-precision
unsigned integers can be specified without overflow errors.

202. 7/12/93 Configuration changes:  eliminate leading blank line in
configure script;  provide separate targets in Makefile for installing
binary and non-binary information; check for size_t and a few other
potentially missing typedefs; don't put tclAppInit.o into libtcl.a;
better checks for matherr support.

203. 7/14/93 Changed tclExpr.c to check the termination pointer before
errno after strtod calls, to avoid problems with some versions of
strtod that set errno in unexpected ways.

204. 7/16/93 Changed "scan" command to be more ANSI-conformant:
eliminated %F, %D, etc., added code to ignore "l", "h", and "L"
modifiers but always convert %e, %f, and %g with implicit "l";
also added support for %u and %i.  Also changed "format" command
to eliminate %D, %U, %O, and add %i.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

205. 7/17/93 Changed "uplevel" and "upvar" so that they can be used
from global level to global level:  this used to generate an error.

206. 7/19/93 Renamed "setenv", "putenv", and "unsetenv" procedures
to avoid conflicts with system procedures with the same names.  If
you want Tcl's procedures to override the system procedures, do it
in the Makefile (instructions are in the Makefile).
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

----------------- Released version 7.0 Beta 2, 7/21/93 ------------------

207. 7/21/93 Fixed bug in tclVar.c where freed memory was accidentally
used if a procedure returned an element of a local array.

208. 7/22/93 Fixed bug in "unknown" where it didn't properly handle
errors occurring in the "auto_load" procedure, leaving its state
inconsistent.

209. 7/23/93 Changed exec's ">2" redirection operator to "2>" for
consistency with sh.  This is incompatible with earlier beta releases
of 7.0 but not with pre-7.0 releases, which didn't support either
operator.

210. 7/28/93 Changed backslash-newline handling so that the resulting
space character *is* treated as a word separator unless the backslash
sequence is in quotes or braces.  This is incompatible with 7.0b1
and 7.0b2 but is more compatible with pre-7.0 versions that the b1
and b2 releases were.

211. 7/28/93 Eliminated Tcl_LinkedVarWritable, added TCL_LINK_READ_ONLY to
Tcl_LinkVar to accomplish same purpose.  This change is incompatible
with earlier beta releases, but not with releases before Tcl 7.0.

212. 7/29/93 Renamed regexp C functions so they won't clash with POSIX
regexp functions that use the same name.

213. 8/3/93 Added "-errorinfo" and "-errorcode" options to "return"
command: these allow for much better handling of the errorInfo
and errorCode variables in some cases.

214. 8/12/93 Changed "expr" so that % always returns a remainder with
the same sign as the divisor and absolute value smaller than the
divisor.

215. 8/14/93 Turned off auto-exec in "unknown" unless the command
was typed interactively.  This means you must use "exec" when
invoking subprocesses, unless it's a command that's typed interactively.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

216. 8/14/93 Added support for tcl_prompt1 and tcl_prompt2 variables
to tclMain.c:  makes prompts user-settable.

217. 8/14/93 Added asynchronous handlers (Tcl_AsyncCreate etc.) so
that signals can be taken cleanly by Tcl applications.

218. 8/16/93 Moved information about open files from the interpreter
structure to global variables so that a file can be opened in one
interpreter and read or written in another.

219. 8/16/93 Removed ENV_FLAGS from Makefile, so that there's no
official support for overriding setenv, unsetenv, and putenv.

220. 8/20/93 Various configuration improvements:  coerce chars
to unsigned chars before using macros like isspace;  source ~/.tclshrc
file during initialization if it exists and program is running
interactively;  allow there to be directories in auto_path that don't
exist or don't have tclIndex files (ignore them); added Tcl_Init
procedure and changed Tcl_AppInit to call it.

221. 8/21/93 Fixed bug in expr where "+", "-", and " " were all
getting treated as integers with value 0.

222. 8/26/93 Added "tcl_interactive" variable to tclsh.

223. 8/27/93 Added procedure Tcl_FilePermissions to return whether a
given file can be read or written or both.  Modified Tcl_EnterFile
to take a permissions mask rather than separate read and write arguments.

224. 8/28/93 Fixed performance bug in "glob" command (unnecessary call
to "access" for each file caused a 5-10x slow-down for big directories).

----------------- Released version 7.0 Beta 3, 8/28/93 ------------------

225. 9/9/93 Renamed regexp.h to tclRegexp.h to avoid conflicts with system
include file by same name.

226. 9/9/93 Added Tcl_DontCallWhenDeleted.

227. 9/16/93 Changed not to call exit C procedure directly;  instead
always invoke "exit" Tcl command so that application can redefine the
command to do additional cleanup.

228. 9/17/93 Changed auto-exec to handle names that contain slashes
(i.e. don't use PATH for them).

229. 9/23/93 Fixed bug in "read" and "gets" commands where they didn't
clear EOF conditions.

----------------- Released version 7.0, 9/29/93 ------------------

230. 10/7/93 "Scan" command wasn't properly aligning things in memory,
so segmentation faults could arise under some circumstances.

231. 10/7/93 Fixed bug in Tcl_ConvertElement where it forgot to
backslash leading curly brace when creating lists.

232. 10/7/93 Eliminated dependency of tclMain.c on tclInt.h and
tclUnix.h, so that people can copy the file out of the Tcl source
directory to make modified private versions.

233. 10/8/93 Fixed bug in auto-loader that reversed the priority order
of entries in auto_path for new-style index files.  Now things are
back to the way they were before 3.0:  first in auto_path is always
highest priority.

234. 10/13/93 Fixed bug where Tcl_CommandComplete didn't recognize
comments and treat them as such.  Thus if you typed the line
    # {
interactively, Tcl would think that the command wasn't complete and
wait for more input before evaluating the script.

235. 10/14/93 Fixed bug where "regsub" didn't set the output variable
if the input string was empty.

236. 10/23/93 Fixed bug where Tcl_CreatePipeline didn't close off enough
file descriptors in child processes, causing children not to exit
properly in some cases.

237. 10/28/93 Changed "list" and "concat" commands not to generate
errors if given zero arguments, but instead to just return an empty
string.

----------------- Released version 7.1, 11/4/93 ------------------

Note: there is no 7.2 release.  It was flawed and was thus withdrawn
shortly after it was released.

238. 11/10/93 TclMain.c didn't compile on some systems because of
R_OK in call to "access".  Changed to eliminate call to "access".

----------------- Released version 7.3, 11/26/93 ------------------

239. 11/6/93 Modified "lindex", "linsert", "lrange", and "lreplace"
so that "end" can be specified as an index.

240. 11/6/93 Modified "append" and "lappend" to allow only two
words total (i.e., nothing to append) without generating an error.

241. 12/2/93 Changed to use EAGAIN as the errno for non-blocking
I/O instead of EWOULDBLOCK:  this should fix problem where non-blocking
I/O didn't work correctly on System-V systems.

242. 12/22/93 Fixed bug in expressions where cancelled evaluation
wasn't always working correctly (e.g. "set one 1; eval {1 || 1/$one}"
failed with a divide by zero error).

243. 1/6/94 Changed TCL_VOLATILE definition from -1 to the address of
a dummy procedure Tcl_Volatile, since -1 causes portability problems on
some machines (e.g., Crays).

244. 2/4/94 Added support for unary plus.

245. 2/17/94 Changed Tcl_RecordAndEval and "history" command to
call Tcl_GlobalEval instead of Tcl_Eval.  Otherwise, invocation of
these facilities in nested procedures can cause unwanted results.

246. 2/17/94 Fixed bug in tclExpr.c where an expression such as
"expr {"12398712938788234-1298379" != ""}" triggers an integer
overflow error for the number in quotes, even though it isn't really
a proper integer anyway.

247. 2/19/94 Added new procedure Tcl_DStringGetResult to move result
from interpreter to a dynamic string.

248. 2/19/94 Fixed bug in Tcl_DStringResult that caused it to overwrite
the contents of a static result in some situations.  This can cause
bizarre errors such as variables suddenly having empty values.

249. 2/21/94 Fixed bug in Tcl_AppendElement, Tcl_DStringAppendElement,
and the "lappend" command that caused improper omission of a separator
space in some cases.  For example, the script
    set x "abc{"; lappend x "def"
used to return the result "abc{def" instead of "abc{ def".

250. 3/3/94 Tcl_ConvertElement was outputting empty elements as \0 if
TCL_DONT_USE_BRACES was set.  This depends on old pre-7.0 meaning of
\0, which is no longer in effect, so it didn't really work.  Changed
to output empty elements as {} always.

251. 3/3/94 Renamed Tcl_DStringTrunc to Tcl_DStringSetLength and extended
it so that it can be used to lengthen a string as well as shorten it.
Tcl_DStringTrunc is defined as a macro for backward compatibility, but
it is deprecated.

252. 3/3/94 Added Tcl_AllowExceptions procedure.

253. 3/13/94 Fixed bug in Tcl_FormatCmd that could cause "format"
to mis-behave on 64-bit Big-Endian machines.

254. 3/13/94 Changed to use vfork instead of fork on systems where
vfork exists.

255. 3/23/94 Fixed bug in expressions where ?: didn't associate
right-to-left as they should.

256. 4/3/94 Fixed "exec" to flush any files used in >@ or >&@
redirection in exec, so that data buffered for them is written
before any new data added by the subprocess.

257. 4/3/94 Added "subst" command.

258. 5/20/94 The tclsh main program is now called Tcl_Main;  tclAppInit.c
has a "main" procedure that calls Tcl_Main.  This makes it easier to use
Tcl with C++ programs, which need their own main programs, and it also
allows an application to prefilter the argument list before calling
Tcl_Main.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

259. 6/6/94 Fixed bug in procedure returns where the errorInfo variable
could get truncated if an unset trace was invoked as part of returning
from the procedure.

260. 6/13/94 Added "wordstart" and "wordend" options to "string" command.

261. 6/27/94 Fixed bug in expressions where they didn't properly cancel
the evaluation of math functions in &&, ||, and ?:.

262. 7/11/94 Incorrect boolean values, like "ogle", weren't being
handled properly.

263. 7/15/94 Added Tcl_RegExpCompile, Tcl_RegExpExec, and Tcl_RegExpRange,
which provide lower-level access to regular expression pattern matching.

264. 7/22/94 Fixed bug in "glob" command where "glob -nocomplain ~bad_user"
would complain about a missing user.  Now it doesn't complain anymore.

265. 8/4/94 Fixed bug with linked variables where they didn't behave
correctly when accessed via upvars.

266. 8/17/94 Fixed bug in Tcl_EvalFile where it didn't clear interp->result.

267. 8/31/94 Modified "open" command so that errors in exec-ing
subprocesses are returned by the open immediately, rather than
being delayed until the "close" is executed.

268. 9/9/94 Modified "expr" command to generate errors for integer
overflow (includes addition, subtraction, negation, multiplication,
division).

269. 9/23/94 Modified "regsub" to return a count of the number of
matches and replacements, rather than 0/1.

279. 10/4/94 Added new features to "array" command:
    - added "get" and "set" commands for easy conversion between arrays
      and lists.
    - added "exists" command to see if a variable is an array, changed
      "names" and "size" commands to treat a non-existent array (or scalar
      variable) just like an empty one.
    - added pattern option to "names" command.

280. 10/6/94 Modified Tcl_SetVar2 so that read traces on variables get
called during append operations.

281. 10/20/94 Fixed bug in "read" command where reading from stdin
required two control-D's to stop the reading.

282. 11/3/94 Changed "expr" command to use longs for division just like
all other expr operators;  it previously used ints for division.

283. 11/4/94 Fixed bugs in "unknown" procedure:  it wasn't properly
handling exception returns from commands that were executed after
being auto-loaded.

----------------- Released version 7.4b1, 12/23/94 ------------------

284. 12/26/94 Fixed "install" target in Makefile (couldn't always
find install program).

285. 12/26/94 Added strcncasecmp procedure to compat directory.

286. 1/3/95 Fixed all procedure calls to explicitly cast arguments:
implicit conversions from prototypes (especially integer->double)
don't work when compiling under non-ANSI compilers.  Tcl is now clean
under gcc -Wconversion.

287. 1/4/95 Fixed problem in Tcl_ArrayCmd where same name was used for
both a label and a variable;  caused problems on several older compilers,
making array command misbehave and causing many errors in Tcl test suite.

----------------- Released version 7.4b2, 1/12/95 ------------------

288. 2/9/95 Modified Tcl_CreateCommand to return a token, and added
Tcl_GetCommandName procedure.  Together, these procedures make it possible
to track renames of a command.

289. 2/13/95 Fixed bug in expr where "089" was interpreted as a
floating-point number rather than a bogus octal number.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

290. 2/14/95 Added code to Tcl_GetInt and Tcl_GetDouble to check for
overflows when reading in numbers.

291. 2/18/95 Changed "array set" to stop after first error, rather than
continuing after error.

292. 2/20/95 Upgraded to use autoconf version 2.2.

293. 2/20/95 Fixed core dump that could occur in "scan" command if a
close bracket was omitted.

294. 2/27/95 Changed Makefile to always use install-sh for installations:
there's just too much variation among "install" system programs, which
makes installation flakey.

----------------- Released version 7.4b3, 3/24/95 ------------------

3/25/95 (bug fix) Changed "install" to "./install" in Makefile so that
"make install" will work even when "." isn't in the search path.

3/29/95 (bug fix) Fixed bug where the auto-loading mechanism wasn't
protecting the values of the errorCode and errorInfo variables.

3/29/95 (new feature) Added optional pattern argument to "parray" procedure.

3/29/95 (bug fix) Made the full functionality of
    "return -code ... -errorcode ..."
work not just inside procedures, but also in sourced files and at
top level.

4/6/95 (new feature) Added "pattern" option to "array names" command.

4/18/95 (bug fix) Fixed bug in parser where it didn't allow backslash-newline
immediately after an argument in braces or quotes.

4/19/95 (new feature) Added tcl_library variable, which application can
set to override default library directory.

4/30/95 (bug fix) During trace callbacks for array elements, the variable
name used in the original reference would be temporarily modified to
separate the array name and element name;  if the trace callback used
the same name string, it would get the wrong name (the array name without
element).  Fixed to restore the variable name before making trace
callbacks.

4/30/95 (new feature) Added -nobackslashes, -nocommands, and -novariables
switches to "subst" command.

5/4/95 (new feature) Added TCL_EVAL_GLOBAL flag to Tcl_RecordAndEval.

5/5/95 (bug fix)  Format command would overrun memory when printing
integers with very large precision, as in "format %.1000d 0".

5/5/95 (portability improvement) Changed to use BSDgettimeofday on
IRIX machines, to avoid compilation problems with the gettimeofday
declaration.

5/6/95 (bug fix) Changed manual entries to use the standard .TH
macro instead of a custom .HS macro;  the .HS macro confuses index
generators like makewhatis.

5/9/95 (bug fix) Modified configure script to check for Solaris bug
that makes vfork unreliable (core dumps result if vforked child
changes a signal handler);  will use fork instead of vfork if the
bug is present.

6/5/95 (bug fix) Modified "lsort" command to disallow recursive calls
to lsort from a comparison function.  This is needed because qsort
is not reentrant.

6/5/95 (bug fix) Undid change 243 above:  changed TCL_VOLATILE and
TCL_DYNAMIC back to integer constants rather than procedure addresses.
This was needed because procedure addresses can have multiple values
under some dynamic loading systems (e.g. SunOS 4.1 and Windows).

6/8/95 (feature change) Modified interface to Tcl_Main to pass in the
address of the application-specific initialization procedure.
Tcl_AppInit is no longer hardwired into Tcl_Main.  This is needed
in order to make Tcl a shared library.

6/8/95 (feature change) Modified Makefile so that the installed versions
of tclsh and libtcl.a have version number in them (e.g. tclsh7.4 and
libtcl7.4.a) and the library directory name also has an embedded version
number (e.g., /usr/local/lib/tcl7.4).  This should make it easier for
Tcl 7.4 to coexist with earlier versions.

----------------- Released version 7.4b4, 6/16/95 ------------------

6/19/95 (bug fix) Fixed bugs in tclCkalloc.c that caused core dumps
if TCL_MEM_DEBUG was enabled on word-addressed machines such as Crays.

6/21/95 (feature removal) Removed overflow checks for integer arithmetic:
they just cause too much trouble (e.g. for random  number generators).

6/28/95 (new features) Added tcl_patchLevel and tcl_version variables,
for consistency with Tk.

6/29/95 (bug fix) Fixed problem in Tcl_Eval where it didn't record
the right termination character if a script ended with a comment.  This
caused erroneous output for the following command, among others:
puts "[
expr 1+1
# duh!
]"

6/29/95 (message change) Changed the error message for ECHILD slightly
to provide a hint about why the problem is occurring.

----------------- Released version 7.4, 7/1/95 ------------------