$Id: README,v 1.15 1998/10/20 21:34:26 vons Exp $
DESCRIPTION
This is version 1.3 of 'vrl', a library that allows
an application to read a line from the terminal, giving the user
additional editing capabilities like cursor movement, filename
completion and command history.
It is a kind of a lightweight version of the GNU readline library,
having the necessary functions but smaller and faster (like Rick Salz'
editline library). It has been developed to work with the rc-shell,
but may be useful for other things as well.
Compared to editline, vrl lacks a number of editing cmds (the ones
I never use :-), but adds the following:
- the cmdline will scroll if it is longer than the screen is wide.
- automatically lists all possible completions when given prefix
is ambiguous.
- history mgmnt has a no-dups mode (see manpage).
- A .vrlrc allows the user to configure the auto-complete,
history mgmnt, ... behavior.
- knows about terminal's home/end/insert/delete keys
For more information, see the vrl(1) manpage.
COPYRIGHT
Vrl is copyright (C)1996-1998 by Gert-Jan Vons <vons@usa.net>.
You can re-use this code if you want, as long as you give me credit.
BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS
Vrl has been written using ANSI-C, but will compile with older non-ANSI
compilers as well.
Vrl should work fine on most UNIX systems, it is regularly tested
on current FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, and OpenBSD releases.
Compilation is simple: run the configure script and type make.
Gert-Jan
E-MAIL
vons@usa.net
DEBUGGING
Compiling with -DDEBUG will include assert()'s, verbose msgs, and some
additional debugging code.
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KNOWN PROBLEMS
- UnixWare 2.1.2 Terminal/xterm: first line of output of a started program
seems to miss characters (i.e. the first line of an 'ls' is not ok). This
is caused by a bug in their xterm which eats all space characters after
receiving the keypad disable code, up to and including the first non-space.
It works ok with TERM=xterm (the UnixWare xterm termcap entry no longer
has the ks/ke entries), but fails with TERM=vt100 or when using an rlogin
to another system (where xterm does have ks/ke).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CURRENT VERSION: 1.3
1.3 1998/10/20
- bugfix: a crashing pthread application under FreeBSD 2.2.6 leaves
the tty in non-blocking mode, resulting in EAGAIN on a read() in
vrl, which caused the shell to die. Vrl now forces the tty to back
to blocking I/O if needed.
- bugfix: although doc says 1024 bytes should do for a termcap buffer,
sometimes more is needed. Buffer size doubled.
- bugfix: ospeed could overflow for high tty speeds.
- added rltest.c to distrib.
- Improved comments.
1.2 1998/07/20
- changed library name from readline.a to libvrl.a
1.1 1998/02/15
- fixed (from <broman@nosc.mil>): RANLIB was not correctly defined
in Makefile.
- fixed/changed (from <broman@nosc.mil>): ^D is now bound to the
delete-char function, instead of acting like a return. A ^D on
an empty line indicates EOF, provided that the last char typed
just before was not a ^D.
- fixed: vrl leaked memory during a filename completion that didn't
match anything.
- fixed: manpage mentioned tilde-expansion, but that isn't implemented.
- added: ESC-? lists possible matches (like ESC-ESC)
- added: ESC-* now puts _all_ matches on the cmdline
- changed: "*.c[TAB]" will no longer match "config.cache", i.e. if
the (last part of) the expression already contains a wildcard, it
should match the whole filename and not just be a prefix of it.
- changed: timeout for multi-byte keys/commands increased from 0.5
to 1 second.
1.0 1998/01/04
- changed: the backspace key was dead on ttys where it generated the
code '\177' (e.g. vt220). Was the consequence of having '\177' bound
to the delete-char function and thus not allowing it to be redefined,
causing the tty's backspace key to remain un-bound. Removed this
association, delete-char function will be bound to tty's DEL key
(and ^D). However, some termcap entries lack the DEL key entry.
If it is missing, and \177 is not generated by another key, assume
there is a DEL key after all, and that it generates '\177'.
- configure: added lookup of lint program
- configure: also look at curses lib for termcap stuff
- configure: termcap var test now accesses variables, only linking
using tgoto() was not enough.
0.92 1997/06/26
- bugfix: MIN()/MAX() macros conflicted with system includes.
Removed them, they were no longer used anyway.
- updated configure.in for autoconf 2.12.
- removed the BROKEN_TIOCGWINSZ test from configure.in, simply include
the TIOCGWINSZ if it exists on the system. If it doesn't work at
runtime, we'll deal with it then.
- EINVAL from TIOCGWINSZ is now ignored. It happens all the time
on a UnixWare console, where EINVAL means that the ioctl() is not
supported by the tty driver (it does work in a Terminal/xterm window
however).
- change: VWERASE, VREPRINT, and VLNEXT are not available on all Unix
systems (like SCO OpenServer, ...), they are now only included if
they exist.
- UnixWare cc doesn't like "cc -c foo.c -o foo.o"; removed all the
"-o foo.o" from the makefile, hoping it doesn't break on other systems.
0.91 1996/10/02
- bugfix: rc specifies a NULL-ptr when it doesn't want a prompt,
which caused a core-dump.
0.9 1996/10/02
- bugfix: filename completion didn't work on dead symlinks (was bug
in wildexp()).
0.8 1996/09/01
- Removed msg about setting tty size under solaris. Problem only
occurs when running Solaris 1.x binaries under Solaris 2.5, a
native Solaris 2.5 binary will fix the problem (looks like
a solaris bug though...)
- Fixed problem when the screen was incorrectly updated when
moving from a long to a short line in the cmd history.
- integrated update of wildexp(), corrects bug where a symlink
to a directory was treated as a file by the completion code,
i.e. a space was added to it instead of a DIRSEP.
0.7 1996/08/07
- fix: Under Solaris 2.5, the TIOCGWINSZ ioctl() apparently fails
if the tty width/height are not correctly set with stty ?!?!?
Anyway, vrl didn't handle this correctly, causing the shell to hang.
- fix: version display looked bad when it overwrote a long line/prompt,
added a clr2eol()
- replaced glob() with wildexp()
0.6 1996/05/22
- use STDOUT_FILENO for tty writes
- fix: error msgs no longer mess up the cmdline
- fix: errors when parsing .vrlrc were detected, but the msgs
were never generated
- fix: ESC-ESC and ESC-v were missing from manpage
0.5 1996/05/20
- fix: cursor-key type-ahead failed on vt100
- fix: configure didn't test for memmove()
- ESC-v will display version
- lint fixes
0.4 1996/05/17
- filename completion failed when curdir had only one file.
- after completion, cursor position was not optimal if there already
was a space after the expression.
- some error msgs lacked the trailing \n.
- added ^T (transpose chars).
- added ^O (re-read the $HOME/.vrlrc file).
- lot of improvements to screen update, prompt now stays in place.
- ospeed takes Bxxx, not the actual value.
- sigwinch was broken (include file was missing)
- stayed up too late, the pushback in sym.c requires a lifo, not a fifo.
- added ansicursorkeys option to enable type-ahead of cursor keys on
some terminals (xterm, vt100, ...).
- completed manpage
0.3 1996/05/13
- tested on Sun, fixed number of lint-style warnings all over the place
- added CC=@CC@ and CFLAGS=@CFLAGS@ to Makefile.in. latter defaults
to -O if not set in env.
- cleaned up history search stuff
- configure tested for strerror(), but util.c didn't contain it
- added test for strstr() to configure, and the code to util.c
0.2 1996/05/12
- added code behind rl_reset_terminal().
- SIGWINCH is now handled (and passed to the application just
before readline() returns).
- fixed some problems in the filename completion.
- started work on manpage.
- When completing or using word-delete, the word no longer
ends at the cursor.
- various other fixes.
0.1 1996/05/10
- Initial revision. It works, doesn't crash, but the todo list
is still quite long...
