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+Compatibility with previous versions
+====================================
+
+This document details the incompatibilities between this version of bash,
+bash-4.1, and the previous widely-available versions, bash-2.x (which is
+still the `standard' version for a few Linux distributions) and bash-3.x.
+These were discovered by users of bash-2.x and 3.x, so this list is not
+comprehensive. Some of these incompatibilities occur between the current
+version and versions 2.0 and above.
+
+1. Bash uses a new quoting syntax, $"...", to do locale-specific
+ string translation. Users who have relied on the (undocumented)
+ behavior of bash-1.14 will have to change their scripts. For
+ instance, if you are doing something like this to get the value of
+ a variable whose name is the value of a second variable:
+
+ eval var2=$"$var1"
+
+ you will have to change to a different syntax.
+
+ This capability is directly supported by bash-2.0:
+
+ var2=${!var1}
+
+ This alternate syntax will work portably between bash-1.14 and bash-2.0:
+
+ eval var2=\$${var1}
+
+2. One of the bugs fixed in the YACC grammar tightens up the rules
+ concerning group commands ( {...} ). The `list' that composes the
+ body of the group command must be terminated by a newline or
+ semicolon. That's because the braces are reserved words, and are
+ recognized as such only when a reserved word is legal. This means
+ that while bash-1.14 accepted shell function definitions like this:
+
+ foo() { : }
+
+ bash-2.0 requires this:
+
+ foo() { :; }
+
+ This is also an issue for commands like this:
+
+ mkdir dir || { echo 'could not mkdir' ; exit 1; }
+
+ The syntax required by bash-2.0 is also accepted by bash-1.14.
+
+3. The options to `bind' have changed to make them more consistent with
+ the rest of the bash builtins. If you are using `bind -d' to list
+ the readline key bindings in a form that can be re-read, use `bind -p'
+ instead. If you were using `bind -v' to list the key bindings, use
+ `bind -P' instead.
+
+4. The `long' invocation options must now be prefixed by `--' instead
+ of `-'. (The old form is still accepted, for the time being.)
+
+5. There was a bug in the version of readline distributed with bash-1.14
+ that caused it to write badly-formatted key bindings when using
+ `bind -d'. The only key sequences that were affected are C-\ (which
+ should appear as \C-\\ in a key binding) and C-" (which should appear
+ as \C-\"). If these key sequences appear in your inputrc, as, for
+ example,
+
+ "\C-\": self-insert
+
+ they will need to be changed to something like the following:
+
+ "\C-\\": self-insert
+
+6. A number of people complained about having to use ESC to terminate an
+ incremental search, and asked for an alternate mechanism. Bash-2.03
+ uses the value of the settable readline variable `isearch-terminators'
+ to decide which characters should terminate an incremental search. If
+ that variable has not been set, ESC and Control-J will terminate a
+ search.
+
+7. Some variables have been removed: MAIL_WARNING, notify, history_control,
+ command_oriented_history, glob_dot_filenames, allow_null_glob_expansion,
+ nolinks, hostname_completion_file, noclobber, no_exit_on_failed_exec, and
+ cdable_vars. Most of them are now implemented with the new `shopt'
+ builtin; others were already implemented by `set'. Here is a list of
+ correspondences:
+
+ MAIL_WARNING shopt mailwarn
+ notify set -o notify
+ history_control HISTCONTROL
+ command_oriented_history shopt cmdhist
+ glob_dot_filenames shopt dotglob
+ allow_null_glob_expansion shopt nullglob
+ nolinks set -o physical
+ hostname_completion_file HOSTFILE
+ noclobber set -o noclobber
+ no_exit_on_failed_exec shopt execfail
+ cdable_vars shopt cdable_vars
+
+8. `ulimit' now sets both hard and soft limits and reports the soft limit
+ by default (when neither -H nor -S is specified). This is compatible
+ with versions of sh and ksh that implement `ulimit'. The bash-1.14
+ behavior of, for example,
+
+ ulimit -c 0
+
+ can be obtained with
+
+ ulimit -S -c 0
+
+ It may be useful to define an alias:
+
+ alias ulimit="ulimit -S"
+
+9. Bash-2.01 uses a new quoting syntax, $'...' to do ANSI-C string
+ translation. Backslash-escaped characters in ... are expanded and
+ replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.
+
+10. The sourcing of startup files has changed somewhat. This is explained
+ more completely in the INVOCATION section of the manual page.
+
+ A non-interactive shell not named `sh' and not in posix mode reads
+ and executes commands from the file named by $BASH_ENV. A
+ non-interactive shell started by `su' and not in posix mode will read
+ startup files. No other non-interactive shells read any startup files.
+
+ An interactive shell started in posix mode reads and executes commands
+ from the file named by $ENV.
+
+11. The <> redirection operator was changed to conform to the POSIX.2 spec.
+ In the absence of any file descriptor specification preceding the `<>',
+ file descriptor 0 is used. In bash-1.14, this was the behavior only
+ when in POSIX mode. The bash-1.14 behavior may be obtained with
+
+ <>filename 1>&0
+
+12. The `alias' builtin now checks for invalid options and takes a `-p'
+ option to display output in POSIX mode. If you have old aliases beginning
+ with `-' or `+', you will have to add the `--' to the alias command
+ that declares them:
+
+ alias -x='chmod a-x' --> alias -- -x='chmod a-x'
+
+13. The behavior of range specificiers within bracket matching expressions
+ in the pattern matcher (e.g., [A-Z]) depends on the current locale,
+ specifically the value of the LC_COLLATE environment variable. Setting
+ this variable to C or POSIX will result in the traditional ASCII behavior
+ for range comparisons. If the locale is set to something else, e.g.,
+ en_US (specified by the LANG or LC_ALL variables), collation order is
+ locale-dependent. For example, the en_US locale sorts the upper and
+ lower case letters like this:
+
+ AaBb...Zz
+
+ so a range specification like [A-Z] will match every letter except `z'.
+ Other locales collate like
+
+ aAbBcC...zZ
+
+ which means that [A-Z] matches every letter except `a'.
+
+ The portable way to specify upper case letters is [:upper:] instead of
+ A-Z; lower case may be specified as [:lower:] instead of a-z.
+
+ Look at the manual pages for setlocale(3), strcoll(3), and, if it is
+ present, locale(1).
+
+ You can find your current locale information by running locale(1):
+
+ caleb.ins.cwru.edu(2)$ locale
+ LANG=en_US
+ LC_CTYPE="en_US"
+ LC_NUMERIC="en_US"
+ LC_TIME="en_US"
+ LC_COLLATE="en_US"
+ LC_MONETARY="en_US"
+ LC_MESSAGES="en_US"
+ LC_ALL=en_US
+
+ My advice is to put
+
+ export LC_COLLATE=C
+
+ into /etc/profile and inspect any shell scripts run from cron for
+ constructs like [A-Z]. This will prevent things like
+
+ rm [A-Z]*
+
+ from removing every file in the current directory except those beginning
+ with `z' and still allow individual users to change the collation order.
+ Users may put the above command into their own profiles as well, of course.
+
+14. Bash versions up to 1.14.7 included an undocumented `-l' operator to
+ the `test/[' builtin. It was a unary operator that expanded to the
+ length of its string argument. This let you do things like
+
+ test -l $variable -lt 20
+
+ for example.
+
+ This was included for backwards compatibility with old versions of the
+ Bourne shell, which did not provide an easy way to obtain the length of
+ the value of a shell variable.
+
+ This operator is not part of the POSIX standard, because one can (and
+ should) use ${#variable} to get the length of a variable's value.
+ Bash-2.x does not support it.
+
+15. Bash no longer auto-exports the HOME, PATH, SHELL, TERM, HOSTNAME,
+ HOSTTYPE, MACHTYPE, or OSTYPE variables. If they appear in the initial
+ environment, the export attribute will be set, but if bash provides a
+ default value, they will remain local to the current shell.
+
+16. Bash no longer initializes the FUNCNAME, GROUPS, or DIRSTACK variables
+ to have special behavior if they appear in the initial environment.
+
+17. Bash no longer removes the export attribute from the SSH_CLIENT or
+ SSH2_CLIENT variables, and no longer attempts to discover whether or
+ not it has been invoked by sshd in order to run the startup files.
+
+18. Bash no longer requires that the body of a function be a group command;
+ any compound command is accepted.
+
+19. As of bash-3.0, the pattern substitution operators no longer perform
+ quote removal on the pattern before attempting the match. This is the
+ way the pattern removal functions behave, and is more consistent.
+
+20. After bash-3.0 was released, I reimplemented tilde expansion, incorporating
+ it into the mainline word expansion code. This fixes the bug that caused
+ the results of tilde expansion to be re-expanded. There is one
+ incompatibility: a ${paramOPword} expansion within double quotes will not
+ perform tilde expansion on WORD. This is consistent with the other
+ expansions, and what POSIX specifies.
+
+21. A number of variables have the integer attribute by default, so the +=
+ assignment operator returns expected results: RANDOM, LINENO, MAILCHECK,
+ HISTCMD, OPTIND.
+
+22. Bash-3.x is much stricter about $LINENO correctly reflecting the line
+ number in a script; assignments to LINENO have little effect.
+
+23. By default, readline binds the terminal special characters to their
+ readline equivalents. As of bash-3.1/readline-5.1, this is optional and
+ controlled by the bind-tty-special-chars readline variable.
+
+24. The \W prompt string expansion abbreviates $HOME as `~'. The previous
+ behavior is available with ${PWD##/*/}.
+
+25. The arithmetic exponentiation operator is right-associative as of bash-3.1.
+
+26. The rules concerning valid alias names are stricter, as per POSIX.2.
+
+27. The Readline key binding functions now obey the convert-meta setting active
+ when the binding takes place, as the dispatch code does when characters
+ are read and processed.
+
+28. The historical behavior of `trap' reverting signal disposition to the
+ original handling in the absence of a valid first argument is implemented
+ only if the first argument is a valid signal number.
+
+29. In versions of bash after 3.1, the ${parameter//pattern/replacement}
+ expansion does not interpret `%' or `#' specially. Those anchors don't
+ have any real meaning when replacing every match.
+
+30. Beginning with bash-3.1, the combination of posix mode and enabling the
+ `xpg_echo' option causes echo to ignore all options, not looking for `-n'
+
+31. Beginning with bash-3.2, bash follows the Bourne-shell-style (and POSIX-
+ style) rules for parsing the contents of old-style backquoted command
+ substitutions. Previous versions of bash attempted to recursively parse
+ embedded quoted strings and shell constructs; bash-3.2 uses strict POSIX
+ rules to find the closing backquote and simply passes the contents of the
+ command substitution to a subshell for parsing and execution.
+
+32. Beginning with bash-3.2, bash uses access(2) when executing primaries for
+ the test builtin and the [[ compound command, rather than looking at the
+ file permission bits obtained with stat(2). This obeys restrictions of
+ the file system (e.g., read-only or noexec mounts) not available via stat.
+
+33. Bash-3.2 adopts the convention used by other string and pattern matching
+ operators for the `[[' compound command, and matches any quoted portion
+ of the right-hand-side argument to the =~ operator as a string rather
+ than a regular expression.
+
+34. Bash-4.0 allows the behavior in the previous item to be modified using
+ the notion of a shell `compatibility level'. If the compat31 shopt
+ option is set, quoting the pattern has no special effect.
+
+35. Bash-3.2 (patched) and Bash-4.0 fix a bug that leaves the shell in an
+ inconsistent internal state following an assignment error. One of the
+ changes means that compound commands or { ... } grouping commands are
+ aborted under some circumstances in which they previously were not.
+ This is what Posix specifies.
+
+36. Bash-4.0 now allows process substitution constructs to pass unchanged
+ through brace expansion, so any expansion of the contents will have to be
+ separately specified, and each process subsitution will have to be
+ separately entered.
+
+37. Bash-4.0 now allows SIGCHLD to interrupt the wait builtin, as Posix
+ specifies, so the SIGCHLD trap is no longer always invoked once per
+ exiting child if you are using `wait' to wait for all children.
+
+38. Since bash-4.0 now follows Posix rules for finding the closing delimiter
+ of a $() command substitution, it will not behave as previous versions
+ did, but will catch more syntax and parsing errors before spawning a
+ subshell to evaluate the command substitution.
+
+39. The programmable completion code uses the same set of delimiting characters
+ as readline when breaking the command line into words, rather than the
+ set of shell metacharacters, so programmable completion and readline
+ should be more consistent.
+
+40. When the read builtin times out, it attempts to assign any input read to
+ specified variables, which also causes variables to be set to the empty
+ string if there is not enough input. Previous versions discarded the
+ characters read.
+
+41. Beginning with bash-4.0, when one of the commands in a pipeline is killed
+ by a SIGINT while executing a command list, the shell acts as if it
+ received the interrupt. This can be disabled by setting the compat31 or
+ compat32 shell options.
+
+42. Bash-4.0 changes the handling of the set -e option so that the shell exits
+ if a pipeline fails (and not just if the last command in the failing
+ pipeline is a simple command). This is not as Posix specifies. There is
+ work underway to update this portion of the standard; the bash-4.0
+ behavior attempts to capture the consensus at the time of release.
+
+43. Bash-4.0 fixes a Posix mode bug that caused the . (source) builtin to
+ search the current directory for its filename argument, even if "." is
+ not in $PATH. Posix says that the shell shouldn't look in $PWD in this
+ case.
+
+44. Bash-4.1 uses the current locale when comparing strings using the < and
+ > operators to the `[[' command. This can be reverted to the previous
+ behavior by setting one of the `compatNN' shopt options.
+
+Shell Compatibility Level
+=========================
+
+Bash-4.0 introduced the concept of a `shell compatibility level', specified
+as a set of options to the shopt builtin (compat31, compat32, compat40 at
+this writing). There is only one current compatibility level -- each
+option is mutually exclusive. This list does not mention behavior that is
+standard for a particular version (e.g., setting compat32 means that quoting
+the rhs of the regexp matching operator quotes special regexp characters in
+the word, which is default behavior in bash-3.2 and above).
+
+compat31 set
+ - the < and > operators to the [[ command do not consider the current
+ locale when comparing strings
+ - quoting the rhs of the regexp matching operator (=~) has no
+ special effect
+
+compat32 set
+ - the < and > operators to the [[ command do not consider the current
+ locale when comparing strings
+
+compat40 set
+ - the < and > operators to the [[ command do not consider the current
+ locale when comparing strings
+ - interrupting a command list such as "a ; b ; c" causes the execution
+ of the entire list to be aborted
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
+are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
+notice and this notice are preserved. This file is offered as-is,
+without any warranty.