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Initial revision

    1: This is a terse description of the new features added to readline-6.3 since
    2: the release of readline-6.2.
    3: 
    4: New Features in Readline
    5: 
    6: a.  Readline is now more responsive to SIGHUP and other fatal signals when
    7:     reading input from the terminal or performing word completion but no
    8:     longer attempts to run any not-allowable functions from a signal handler
    9:     context.
   10: 
   11: b.  There are new bindable commands to search the history for the string of
   12:     characters between the beginning of the line and the point
   13:     (history-substring-search-forward, history-substring-search-backward)
   14: 
   15: c.  Readline allows quoted strings as the values of variables when setting
   16:     them with `set'.  As a side effect, trailing spaces and tabs are ignored
   17:     when setting a string variable's value.
   18: 
   19: d.  The history library creates a backup of the history file when writing it
   20:     and restores the backup on a write error.
   21: 
   22: e.  New application-settable variable: rl_filename_stat_hook: a function called
   23:     with a filename before using it in a call to stat(2).  Bash uses it to
   24:     expand shell variables so things like $HOME/Downloads have a slash
   25:     appended.
   26: 
   27: f.  New bindable function `print-last-kbd-macro', prints the most-recently-
   28:     defined keyboard macro in a reusable format.
   29: 
   30: g.  New user-settable variable `colored-stats', enables use of colored text
   31:     to denote file types when displaying possible completions (colored analog
   32:     of visible-stats).
   33: 
   34: h.  New user-settable variable `keyseq-timout', acts as an inter-character
   35:     timeout when reading input or incremental search strings.
   36: 
   37: i.  New application-callable function: rl_clear_history. Clears the history list
   38:     and frees all readline-associated private data.
   39: 
   40: j.  New user-settable variable, show-mode-in-prompt, adds a characters to the
   41:     beginning of the prompt indicating the current editing mode.
   42: 
   43: k.  New application-settable variable: rl_input_available_hook; function to be
   44:     called when readline detects there is data available on its input file
   45:     descriptor.
   46: 
   47: l.  Readline calls an application-set event hook (rl_event_hook) after it gets
   48:     a signal while reading input (read returns -1/EINTR but readline does not
   49:     handle the signal immediately) to allow the application to handle or
   50:     otherwise note it.
   51: 
   52: m.  If the user-settable variable `history-size' is set to a value less than
   53:     0, the history list size is unlimited.
   54: 
   55: n.  New application-settable variable: rl_signal_event_hook; function that is
   56:     called when readline is reading terminal input and read(2) is interrupted
   57:     by a signal.  Currently not called for SIGHUP or SIGTERM.