Re: HISTCHARS

[Zoltan Hidvegi <hzoli@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> 2.6:		First, VERSION numbers changed from "X.Y.Z beta" to
> 		"X.Y-betaZ".  Next, VERSION variable became ZSH_NAME
> 		and ZSH_VERSION.  Broke all my tests *twice*.  Make
> 		up your minds, willya?

I plan to call the next stable line as 3.0.X and the next beta line to
3.1.X.

> 2.6:		HOSTTYPE iris4d became irix?? where ?? is OS version.
> 		Did other HOSTTYPEs change, too?  I haven't compiled 2.6
> 		on any other platforms yet, except Linux, for which I
> 		have no earlier examples.

HOSTTYPE is obsolate.  There is $MACHTYPE $VENDOR $OSTYPE instead.  This
comes from GNU autoconf.

> 2.2:		HISTCHARS="\!=#" broke; had to change to HISTCHARS="!=#".

"\!=# still works.  You probably wanted to write '\!=#'.  I mentioned this
change in my previous mail.

> 2.5:		CSH_JUNKIE_PAREN showed up, CSH_JUNKIE_TILDE went away.
> 		This wouldn't have been a problem if CSH_JUNKIE_PAREN
> 		had been *set* by default, rather than *un*set, but as
> 		it was it broke every .zshrc in our entire organization.
> 		We now setopt CSH_JUNKIE_PAREN in /etc/zshenv.

That's because sh compatibility has higher preference now.

> A couple of other changes that I recall are that SHLVL doesn't act the way
> it used to (but I don't remember when that changed), and that "exec" causes
> history files to be written (which I *really* can't stand).  I believe the
> SHLVL thing is "exec"-related too, come to think of it.

Yes, SHLVL is exec related.  Again it is for better sh compatibility.

For exec, you can now alias exec to 'unset HISTFILE ; exec'.

>From what you describe it turns out that zsh was under heavy development.
2.5 was still very buggy.  I hope that zsh now stabilized a bit by now.

Zoltan