🚀 go-pugleaf

James sent me this message, and I thought that the answer would be of
general interest.

   Date: Fri, 22 Sep 89 11:58:58 EDT
   From: James J Dempsey <jjd@alexander.bbn.com>

   When bash 1.03 first came out I sent a message describing several
   bugs, one of which was that often bash drops the first few characters
   on a line or even misorders them.

   Later you sent out a message in reply to a reply to my message which
   said something like "I fixed these and will send patches" but I am
   confused if this dropped characters bug was included in that
   statement.  I haven't seen any patches for it.

   Is this one of the bugs you found and will be fixed in 1.04?

Yes, I found and fixed this bug right away.  I didn't post patches right
away, which had indeed been my intent.  Since then I have completed a
major rewrite of the readline library, and the patches would be
meaningless.

I tend to be slow to release a piece of software unless I think it is
perfect.  Since I know that Bash is not yet perfect, I am slow to
release it.  Then, people yell at me to release something, anything, and
I rush to get in the last new feature.  This invariably means that the
last new feature has bugs in it, and the cycle starts over again.

I believe that I am getting better about this, but it is happening
slowly, over time, so please bear with me.

The rewrite of readline contains:

	* Multi-level keymaps (e.g. C-x 4 f).  Among other things,
	  this means that the arrow-key people will be able to make
	  key bindings.

	* Keyboard macros.  C-x ( and C-x ), and syntax for binding
	  keys to a macro.

	* Reasonably full Vi mode (can be #ifdef'd out).  This was
	  mostly written by Jeff Sparkes (jeff1@garfield.mun.edu),
	  with minimal modifications and merging by me.  This Vi
	  mode "feels" like Vi to me; it drives me nuts in the ways
	  that I am used to Vi driving me nuts.

	* More flexibilty in init files.  This includes:

		conditional parsing of key bindings dependent on which
	  	program is running (e.g. Bash, Gdb).

		binding of arbitrary length key sequences, and binding
		to macros.

	  The syntax for init files has expanded to include Emacs style
	  key specifications:

		"\C-x\C-r":	re-read-init-file

	* Yes, you can re-read your init file now.


   P.S. The other day I had a file named something like 'foo bar' and I
   was real impressed when I typed:

   rm "foo<tab>

   and it completed to 

   rm "foo bar"

   Great!

Thanks!

Brian