xref: /PHP-5.3/ext/ereg/regex/WHATSNEW (revision aa3eee1d)
1New in alpha3.4:  The complex bug alluded to below has been fixed (in a
2slightly kludgey temporary way that may hurt efficiency a bit; this is
3another "get it out the door for 4.4" release).  The tests at the end of
4the tests file have accordingly been uncommented.  The primary sign of
5the bug was that something like a?b matching ab matched b rather than ab.
6(The bug was essentially specific to this exact situation, else it would
7have shown up earlier.)
8
9New in alpha3.3:  The definition of word boundaries has been altered
10slightly, to more closely match the usual programming notion that "_"
11is an alphabetic.  Stuff used for pre-ANSI systems is now in a subdir,
12and the makefile no longer alludes to it in mysterious ways.  The
13makefile has generally been cleaned up some.  Fixes have been made
14(again!) so that the regression test will run without -DREDEBUG, at
15the cost of weaker checking.  A workaround for a bug in some folks'
16<assert.h> has been added.  And some more things have been added to
17tests, including a couple right at the end which are commented out
18because the code currently flunks them (complex bug; fix coming).
19Plus the usual minor cleanup.
20
21New in alpha3.2:  Assorted bits of cleanup and portability improvement
22(the development base is now a BSDI system using GCC instead of an ancient
23Sun system, and the newer compiler exposed some glitches).  Fix for a
24serious bug that affected REs using many [] (including REG_ICASE REs
25because of the way they are implemented), *sometimes*, depending on
26memory-allocation patterns.  The header-file prototypes no longer name
27the parameters, avoiding possible name conflicts.  The possibility that
28some clot has defined CHAR_MIN as (say) `-128' instead of `(-128)' is
29now handled gracefully.  "uchar" is no longer used as an internal type
30name (too many people have the same idea).  Still the same old lousy
31performance, alas.
32
33New in alpha3.1:  Basically nothing, this release is just a bookkeeping
34convenience.  Stay tuned.
35
36New in alpha3.0:  Performance is no better, alas, but some fixes have been
37made and some functionality has been added.  (This is basically the "get
38it out the door in time for 4.4" release.)  One bug fix:  regfree() didn't
39free the main internal structure (how embarrassing).  It is now possible
40to put NULs in either the RE or the target string, using (resp.) a new
41REG_PEND flag and the old REG_STARTEND flag.  The REG_NOSPEC flag to
42regcomp() makes all characters ordinary, so you can match a literal
43string easily (this will become more useful when performance improves!).
44There are now primitives to match beginnings and ends of words, although
45the syntax is disgusting and so is the implementation.  The REG_ATOI
46debugging interface has changed a bit.  And there has been considerable
47internal cleanup of various kinds.
48
49New in alpha2.3:  Split change list out of README, and moved flags notes
50into Makefile.  Macro-ized the name of regex(7) in regex(3), since it has
51to change for 4.4BSD.  Cleanup work in engine.c, and some new regression
52tests to catch tricky cases thereof.
53
54New in alpha2.2:  Out-of-date manpages updated.  Regerror() acquires two
55small extensions -- REG_ITOA and REG_ATOI -- which avoid debugging kludges
56in my own test program and might be useful to others for similar purposes.
57The regression test will now compile (and run) without REDEBUG.  The
58BRE \$ bug is fixed.  Most uses of "uchar" are gone; it's all chars now.
59Char/uchar parameters are now written int/unsigned, to avoid possible
60portability problems with unpromoted parameters.  Some unsigned casts have
61been introduced to minimize portability problems with shifting into sign
62bits.
63
64New in alpha2.1:  Lots of little stuff, cleanup and fixes.  The one big
65thing is that regex.h is now generated, using mkh, rather than being
66supplied in the distribution; due to circularities in dependencies,
67you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h".  The two known bugs
68have been fixed (and the regression test now checks for them), as has a
69problem with assertions not being suppressed in the absence of REDEBUG.
70No performance work yet.
71
72New in alpha2:  Backslash-anything is an ordinary character, not an
73error (except, of course, for the handful of backslashed metacharacters
74in BREs), which should reduce script breakage.  The regression test
75checks *where* null strings are supposed to match, and has generally
76been tightened up somewhat.  Small bug fixes in parameter passing (not
77harmful, but technically errors) and some other areas.  Debugging
78invoked by defining REDEBUG rather than not defining NDEBUG.
79
80New in alpha+3:  full prototyping for internal routines, using a little
81helper program, mkh, which extracts prototypes given in stylized comments.
82More minor cleanup.  Buglet fix:  it's CHAR_BIT, not CHAR_BITS.  Simple
83pre-screening of input when a literal string is known to be part of the
84RE; this does wonders for performance.
85
86New in alpha+2:  minor bits of cleanup.  Notably, the number "32" for the
87word width isn't hardwired into regexec.c any more, the public header
88file prototypes the functions if __STDC__ is defined, and some small typos
89in the manpages have been fixed.
90
91New in alpha+1:  improvements to the manual pages, and an important
92extension, the REG_STARTEND option to regexec().
93