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Development

Bash 4.0 brings new capabilities

By Forrest Cook
February 25, 2009

On February 23, 2009 version 4.0 of the BASH shell, a.k.a. the Bourne-Again SHell, was announced (see the initial LWN article for reader comments). For Linux users, at least those users who use the command line, BASH and its associated built-in commands could easily make up the most frequently run suite of Linux utilities. The BASH version 4.0 release announcement states:

This is the fourth major release of bash. This release fixes the remaining serious bugs in the bash version 3 branch and introduces significant new features. The most notable new features are associative arrays, improvements to the programmable completion functionality, case-modifying word expansions, co-processes, support for the '**' special glob pattern, and additions to the shell syntax and redirections. The shell has been changed to be more rigorous about parsing commands inside command substitutions, fixing one piece of Posix non-compliance.

A long list of new capabilities have been added to BASH, here are some of the highlights:

  • The new autocd option causes bash to change to the directory that is the first word in a command.
  • The new checkjobs option makes BASH report running and stopped jobs when it exits.
  • New shell variables include BASHPID (the BASH process ID), COMP_TYPE (type of completion) and COMP_KEY (completion invocation character).
  • BASH now supports a settable compatibility level for emulating older versions of the shell.
  • New ulimit options are available for setting the socket buffer size and the number of threads.
  • A new mapfile builtin can be used to populate an array with lines from a given file.
  • Limited support has been added for completing command name words with globbing characters.
  • The new globstar shell option allows ** to recursively match directories and files.
  • The new dirspell shell option makes the filename completion code perform spelling correction on directory names.
  • The read builtin's new -t option adds support for fractional timeout values.
  • The new &>> redirection operator appends both standard output and standard error to a named file.
  • Several new capabilities have been added to the case statement.
  • New uppercase (^[^]) and lowercase (,[,]) case-modifying word expansions are available.
  • Support has been added for associative array variables.
  • A new coproc reserved word can specify a coprocess, which is an asynchronous command run with two pipes connected to the creating shell.
  • A long list of new readline capabilities have been added.
  • Much more...

The latest version of BASH has acquired some of the advanced features found in newer projects such as the Z shell and the Python language. The user experience is enhanced and new capabilities are available for those who write BASH scripts. Hopefully the backwards-compatibility considerations have been adequately dealt with. BASH 4.0 shows that even an old dog can sometimes learn a few new tricks.

Comments (4 posted)

System Applications

Database Software

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The February 22, 2009 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

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Filesystem Utilities

initramfs-tools 0.93 status report

A status report has been published for initramfs-tools 0.93. "initramfs-tools is an hookable initramfs generator. It can boot on NFS, LVM2, md, LUKS, dmraid, oldstyle devices, .. The generated initramfs is generic, but can explicitly be tuned for small. It is actively deployed in Debian and Ubuntu. It is written in POSIX shell. It has an "end-user" friendly invocation with update-initramfs and the low level mkinitramfs. klibc is used for minimal initramfs. The initramfs comes together with a rescue shell. It is possible to ssh into it."

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Interoperability

Samba 3.3.1 is available

Version 3.3.1 of Samba has been announced. "This is the latest stable release of the Samba 3.3 series". See the release notes for more information.

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Networking Tools

conntrack-tools 0.9.11 released

Version 0.9.11 of conntrack-tools has been announced. "The netfilter project presents another development release of the conntrack-tools that includes accumulated fixes, one improvement for the polling approach and a couple of new features".

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Web Site Development

Django 1.1 alpha 1 released

Version 1.1 alpha 1 of the Django web platform has been announced. "As part of the Django 1.1 release process, tonight we've released Django 1.1 alpha 1, a preview/testing package that gives a little taste of some of the new features coming in Django 1.1. As with all alpha and beta packages, this is not for production use, but if you'd like to try out some of the new goodies coming in 1.1, or if you'd like to pitch in and help us fix bugs before the final 1.1 release (due in April), feel free to grab a copy and give it a spin."

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web2py 1.56.4 released

Version 1.56.4 of web2py, a Python-based web framework, has been announced. "New features In 1.56: - Authentication - Authorization (Role Based Access Controller) - CRUD - portable url fetch function - portable geocoding function - PEP8 compliant - Python 2.5 - Runs on Jython (although without db drivers) - Runs on IronPython (although without CSV, db drivers and internal web-server) - DAL shortcuts - SQLFORM has default image preview - new generic.html view - more examples and documentation - always backward compatible".

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Miscellaneous

OpenHPI: 2.13.3 has been released (SourceForge)

Version 2.13.3 of OpenHPI has been announced. "Open HPI is an open source implementation of the SA Forum's Hardware Platform Interface (HPI). HPI provides an abstracted interface to managing computer hardware, typically for chassis and rack based servers."

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systemtap release 0.9

Version 0.9 of systemtap, a system information gathering utility, has been announced. Many new capabilities have been added.

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

Ardour: tempo-based time for MIDI regions

The Ardour multi-track audio workstation project has added a new capability, tempo-based time for MIDI regions. "Hi all; I’ve recently done a lot of work on MIDI support (and many other things) in 3.0, and thought it might be time for an update. One often requested thing that’s been missing in 3.0 is flexible tempo-based time for MIDI regions. Until recently, MIDI (like everything else in Ardour) was based on audio time. This has been reworked so the time of MIDI events is stored in tempo units everywhere, which is much nicer for working ’musically’."

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Ardour's Spanish translation ready for testing

A Spanish translation of the Ardour multi-track audio workstation has been announced. "We would like comments from as many Spanish speakers as possible, before we commit to using it in future releases of Ardour. Translation from one language to another is always a tricky process, and musical terminology - despite music "being the universal language" - varies wildly between cultures."

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CAD

Kicad 2009-02-16-RC2 released

Version 2009-02-16-RC2 of Kicad, an electronic CAD application, has been announced. A number of new capabilities have been added, see the Change Log for details.

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Sweet Home 3D: version 1.6 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.6 of Sweet Home 3D has been announced. "Sweet Home 3D is an interior design application that helps you place your furniture on a house 2D plan, with a 3D preview... The version 1.6 provides help localized in Italian, miscellaneous enhancements and bug fixes".

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Data Visualization

python-graph 1.4.2 released

Version 1.4.2 of python-graph has been announced, it includes a bug fix. "python-graph is a library for working with graphs in Python. This software provides a suitable data structure for representing graphs and a whole set of important algorithms."

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Desktop Environments

compiz 0.8.0 announced

Version 0.8.0 of compiz, a composite window manager, is out. Changes include: "New plugin "commands" that handles the bindings for arbitrary commands that previously were handled in core. In addition to the previously present key bindings button and edge bindings were added as well. New plugin "gnomecompat" which handles bindings that are exclusively used in the Gnome desktop environment and removed the corresponding bindings from core. This change fixes main menu and run dialog bindings for KDE users as those previously were conflicting between compiz and KDE. Gnome users upgrading should make sure to enable this plugin..."

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GNOME 2.25.91 beta released

Beta version 2.25.91 of the GNOME desktop environment has been released. "This is the seventh development release, and the second beta, towards our 2.26 release that will happen in March 2009. By now most things are in place, and your mission is easy: Go download it. Go compile it. Go test it. And go hack on it, document it, translate it, fix it."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week: More information can be found on the X.Org Foundation wiki.

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Financial Applications

GnuCash 2.2.9 Released

Version 2.2.9 of GnuCash has been announced. "The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.2.9 aka "Mirror-like", the ninth bug fix release in a series of stable releases of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software."

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KMyMoney 0.9.3 released

Version 0.9.3 of KMyMoney has been announced. "The KMyMoney Development Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of version 0.9.3 of "the BEST personal finance manager for FREE users". This offers many new features and improvements over the existing, stable, 0.8 series; and the previous development version 0.9".

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Geographical Software

NovaRS: 1.3.1 is out (SourceForge)

Version 1.3.1 of NovaRS has been announced. "NovaRS is a GNSS station controlling software, which supports NovAtel GPS/GLONASS receivers (OEMV3, OEM4). Added automatic leap seconds setup. Debian/Ubuntu repository is repaired."

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GUI Packages

wxPython 2.8.9.2 released

Version 2.8.9.2 of wxPython, a python interface to the wxWindows GUI toolkit, has been announced. "The wxWidgets team is in the early stages of preparing for a 2.8.10 release, but I already had a set of 2.8.9.2 release candidate files that I made a few days ago. Since it's still possible that there could be delays in the 2.8.10 release I thought that it would be nice to go ahead and release the 2.8.9.2 binaries."

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Medical Applications

Freemed-YiRC V1.10 released (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews covers the release of Freemed-YiRC 1.10. "Freemed-YiRC V1.10 has been officially released. The major news is this new release incorporates foster care/adoption/respite functionality, increasing the scope of FMYiRC beyond just Youth in Residential Care. Other major new features include PDF creation capability, as well as a much improved calendaring system (with internal e-mail alert capability)."

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OpenSource LIS - Laboratory Information System (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews has announced the OpenELIS project. "OpenELIS is a robust Enterprise Laboratory Information System built around an extensible and scalable framework. OpenELIS is designed and developed through the collaborative efforts of Public Health Laboratories to accommodate business processes that are common to all public health laboratories; encompassing clinical, environmental, newborn screening, and animal testing."

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Multimedia

Elisa Media Center 0.5.29 released

Version 0.5.29 of Elisa Media Center has been announced. "This release is a "light weight" release, which means it is supposed to be pushed to the users through our automatic plugin update system. That is why there is no new Elisa installer nor any new packages from our side".

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Peer to Peer

MLDonkey: New release 3.0.0 (SourceForge)

Version 3.0.0 of MLDonkey has been announced. "MLDonkey is a multi-platform multi-network peer-to-peer client. This is an urgent security update, it will also reduce CPU and memory usage due to optimized storage of the IP blocklist."

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Miscellaneous

Animal Shelter Manager: 2.3.6 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.3.6 of Animal Shelter Manager has been announced. "Animal Shelter Manager is a complete computer solution for animal sanctuaries and shelters. Features complete animal management, document generation, full reporting, charts, internet publishing, pet search engine integration and more. This release adds easy networking support for existing users with local databases, diagnostic for fixing broken codes in historical data, much improved applet functionality and support for Windows 95 and 98."

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BleachBit 0.4.0 released

Version 0.4.0 of BleachBit has been announced. "BleachBit is a Internet history, locale, registry, privacy, and temporary file cleaner for Linux on Python v2.4 - v2.6. Notable changes for 0.4.0: * Introduce CleanerML, a system for creating cleaners in XML. * Add cleaners for aMSN, CrossOver Chromium (Google Chrome), ELinks, emesene, GL-117, Hippo OpenSim Viewer, Midnight Commander, Recoll, Rhythmbox, Tremulous, Vuze (formerly Azureus), and WINE. * Update Bulgarian, French, and Spanish translations. * Add Russian translation."

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OpenSSH 5.2 released

Version 5.2 of OpenSSH has been announced. "The focus of this release has been on bugfixes as the previous openssh-5.1 release introduced many new features and made some invasive changes."

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Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The February 24, 2009 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

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Python

Hypy 0.8.3 released

Version 0.8.3 of Hypy has been announced. "All my fans of detailed example documentation are gonna love this release. If you've been wondering whether Hypy has the feature you want for your searching, check out the examples page and see for yourself. Hypy is a fulltext search interface for Python applications. Use it to index and search your documents from Python code. Hypy is based on the estraiernative bindings by Yusuke Yoshida."

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Miros: a hierarchical state machine module

The Miros for Python project has been announced. "Miros is a module that implements a Hierarchical State Machine (HSM) class (i.e. one that implements behavioral inheritance). It is based on the excellent work of Miro Samek (hence the module name "miros"). This implementation closely follows an older C/C++ implementation..."

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pytemplate 1.5: template for python developers

Version 1.5 of pytemplate has been announced. "I'm pleased to announce the new release (1.5) of pytemplate project, major step in its young life. pytemplate project is a framework helping python developers at starting their program with a lightweight template, managing basic options like configuration file, logging, daemon capabilities, signal management. I believe that this project is able to help to bring development quality and speed leverage to a lot of small programs."

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Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The February 19, 2009 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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XML

Announcing py-dom-xpath, a pure Python XPath implementation

The py-dom-xpath project has been announced. "py-dom-xpath is a pure Python implementation of XPath 1.0. It supports almost all XPath 1.0, and works well with xml.dom.minidom."

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IDEs

Pydev 1.4.4 released

Version 1.4.4 of Pydev, an Eclipse IDE plugin for Python and Jython, has been announced. "This release fixes a critical bug when configuring the interpreter (if no environment variables were specified, it was not possible to configure an interpreter)".

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Profilers

line_profiler and kernprof 1.0b2 announced

Version 1.0b2 of line_profiler and kernprof has been announced. "line_profiler is a module for doing line-by-line profiling of functions. kernprof is a convenient script for running either line_profiler or the standard library's cProfile module."

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