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BASH 4.0 Released
An anonymous reader writes "The widely used Bourne-Again Shell (BASH) version 4.0 is out. The new major release fixes several remaining bugs in the 3.x releases, and introduces a bunch of 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. Most of us will probably wait for the distros to test the new version and upgrade gradually, but you always have the option of grabbing the source and compiling it yourself. Enjoy."
Perhaps this year, Linux will be ready for the desktop.
Already there. Just type 'csh' and bash will enter csh-compatibility mode. For scripting, just replace your #!/bin/bash with #!/bin/csh and away you go.
sig: sauer
i'll wait for 4.2
So, I'm gonna grab the source to BASH and compile it using GCC under BASH? My brain hurts :).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
The new major release fixes several remaining bugs in the 3.x releases
That's great, but they forgot to mention how many new bugs were introduced.
Still gay.
Don't bash it dude.
So now I can make a BASH hash, sweet!
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Does anyone have any screenshots? I always hate that when they post some great new upgrade without any screenshots.
More
With your production boxes, it's generally recommended that you wait for Bash 4.0 SP1 before deploying.
#DeleteChrome
This is great, but I find the csh syntax easier to use from the command line (however unsafe it is to use in scripts). Will they add a csh compatability mode to bash?
ln -s /bin/false /bin/csh
99% of the functionality of csh, without the bugs!
After bootstrapping the new compiler with the old compiler, you can then use your new compiler to compile the new compiler code.
If this bothers you, stay away from recursion!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Please, no more GNU bashing.
Excellent post. I look forward to the ensuing flame war.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
BASH doesn't like it when you anthropomorphize it. ;-)
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Wait a minute, you just said BASH doesn't like it when you anthropomorphize it.
We'll never get out of this one you know...
Tru64. That's three off the top of my head.
What, three users or three installed servers?
Tru64 has been abandonware for four long years and will have no commercial support in only three years.
To quote the great wikipedia:
In December 2004, HP announced a change of plan; they would instead use the Veritas file system and abandon the Tru64 advanced features. In the process, many of the remaining Tru64 developers were laid off.[8]
In July 2007, HP stated that they would continue to support Tru64 UNIX until at least 2012.
You'd get more support by complaining that VMS, MVS/370, and TRS-DOS 1.3 don't come with BASH.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I also found the vi mode in zsh to be inferior to the equivalent in bash last time I tried it, but maybe it's improved since then.
That's because Emacs's bindings are far more logical than Vi's, especially when running on FreeBSD instead of Linux. Oh, and indent with spaces.
Did I miss anything?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Vroaam.
Instead of rm -rf /, we can now just say
rm -f /**
Now that's an improvement!
æeee!
Are you smoking something? This is a GNU project. The "web page" is actually a facade to appease the unenlightened. Here is a Web 1.0 concept mapping for you:
news page -> "announce" mailing list
wiki -> "user" mailing list, documentation
developer forum -> "dev" mailing list
release notes -> in the tarball!
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
This is definitely the turning point; the Register just last week published an article indicating that the one thing stopping most users from migrating from Windows was the lack of support for the `**' special glob pattern.
What's the point? It's worthless on my multi-touch screen. Only crusted headed, unbathed, girlfriendless uber geeks need to use the CLI.CLI's are so 1940's Get with the times you gezzers.
Hey, I am not an "uber"!
#DeleteChrome
Use i.e. as a stand-in for "that is."
I prefer to use Firefox.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
WHOOOSH
I was following this discussion of bash, sh, csh and tcsh perfectly well, but now I'm lost. What shell are you talking about?
Gentoo uses bash for their init scripts citing reasons of speed.
Weird, because Debian moving away from bash to dash for exactly the same reasons.
Like the way Red Hat uses nash?
Or the way Microsoft uses cash?
I apologize, but I saw the opening and had to take the shot.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.