XPost: comp.unix.shell

Announcing: KornShell 93u+m 1.0.0-beta.1
https://github.com/ksh93/ksh

In May 2020, when every KornShell (ksh93) development project was
abandoned, development was rebooted in a new fork based on the last
stable AT&T version: ksh 93u+. Now, one year and hundreds of bug fixes
later, the first beta version is ready, and KornShell lives again. This
new fork is called ksh 93u+m as a permanent nod to its origin; a standard semantic version number is added starting at 1.0.0-beta.1. Please test
the beta and report any bugs you find, or help us fix known bugs.

Main developers: Martijn Dekker, Johnothan King, hyenias

Contributors: Andy Fiddaman, Anuradha Weeraman, Chase, Gordon Woodhull,
Govind Kamat, Harald van Dijk, Lev Kujawski, Marc Wilson, Sterling Jensen

HOW TO GET IT

Please download the source code tarball from our GitHub releases page:

https://github.com/ksh93/ksh/releases

To build, follow the instructions in README.md or src/cmd/ksh93/README. Hopefully, OS/distro packagers will make ksh 93u+m packages available soon.
If you would like to have a binary for your OS from us, ask and we'll try
to build one and add it to the releases page.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

To report a bug, please open an issue at our GitHub page (see above). Alternatively, email me at martijn@inlv.org with your report.
To get involved in development, read the brief policy information in
README.md and then jump right in with a pull request or email a patch.
See the TODO file in the top-level directory for a to-do list.

MAIN CHANGES SINCE KSH 93U+ 2012-08-01

Hundreds of bugs have been fixed, including many serious/critical bugs.
This includes upstreamed patches from OpenSUSE, Red Hat, and Solaris, fixes backported from the abandoned 93v- beta and ksh2020 fork, as well as many
new fixes from the community. See the NEWS file for more information, and
the git commit log for complete documentation of every fix. Incompatible changes have been minimised, but not at the expense of fixing bugs. For a
list of potentially incompatible changes, see src/cmd/ksh93/COMPATIBILITY.

Though there was a "no new features, bugfixes only" policy, some new
features were found necessary, either to fix serious design flaws or to complete functionality that was evidently intended, but not finished.
Below is a summary of these new features.

New command line editor features:

- The forward-delete and End keys are now handled as expected in the
emacs and vi built-in line editors.

- In the vi and emacs line editors, repeat count parameters can now also
be used for the arrow keys and the forward-delete key. E.g., in emacs
mode, <ESC> 7 <left-arrow> will now move the cursor seven positions to
the left. In vi control mode, this would be entered as: 7 <left-arrow>.

New shell language features:

- The &>file redirection shorthand (for >file 2>&1) is now available for
all scripts and interactive sessions and not only for profile/login
scripts, bringing ksh 93u+m in line with mksh, bash, and zsh.

- File name generation (a.k.a. pathname expansion, a.k.a. globbing) now
never matches the special navigational names '.' (current directory)
and '..' (parent directory). This change makes a pattern like .*
useful; it now matches all hidden files (dotfiles) in the current
directory, without the harmful inclusion of '.' and '..'.

- Tilde expansion can now be extended or modified by defining a
.sh.tilde.get or .sh.tilde.set discipline function. This replaces a
2004 undocumented attempt to add this functionality via a .sh.tilde
command, which never worked and crashed the shell. See the manual for
details on the new method.

New features in built-in commands:

- Usage error messages now show the --help/--man self-documentation options.

- Path-bound built-ins (such as /opt/ast/bin/cat) can now be executed by
invoking the canonical path, so the following will now work as expected:
$ /opt/ast/bin/cat --version
version cat (AT&T Research) 2012-05-31

- 'command -x' now looks for external commands only, skipping built-ins.
In addition, its xargs-like functionality no longer freezes the shell on
Linux and macOS, making it effectively a new feature on these systems.

- 'redirect' now checks if all arguments are valid redirections before
performing them. If an error occurs, it issues an error message instead
of terminating the shell.

- 'suspend' now refuses to suspend a login shell, as there is probably no
parent shell to return to and the login session would freeze.

- 'times' now gives high precision output in a POSIX compliant format.

- 'typeset' now gives an informative error message if an incompatible
combination of options is given.

- 'whence -v/-a' now reports the location of autoloadable functions.

New features in shell options:

- A new --globcasedetect shell option is added on OSs where we can
check for a case-insensitive file system (currently Windows/Cygwin,
macOS, Linux and QNX 7.0+). When this option is turned on, file name
generation (globbing), as well as file name tab completion on
interactive shells, automatically become case-insensitive on file
systems where the difference between upper and lower case is ignored
for file names. This is transparently determined for each directory, so
a path pattern that spans multiple file systems can be part
case-sensitive and part case-insensitive.

- A new --nobackslashctrl shell option disables the special escaping
behaviour of the backslash character in the emacs and vi built-in
editors. Particularly in the emacs editor, this makes it much easier to
go backward, insert a forgotten backslash into a command, and then
continue editing without having your next cursor key replace your
backslash with garbage. Note that Ctrl+V (or whatever other character
was set using 'stty lnext') always escapes all control characters in
either editing mode.

- A new --posix shell option has been added to ksh 93u+m that makes the
ksh language more compatible with other shells by following the POSIX
standard more closely. See the manual page for details. It is enabled by
default if ksh is invoked as sh, otherwise it is disabled by default.

- Enhancement to -G/--globstar: symbolic links to directories are now
followed if they match a normal (non-**) glob pattern. For example, if
'/lnk' is a symlink to a directory, '/lnk/**' and '/l?k/**' now work as
you would expect.

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