Andrew Pattison wrote:
>
> I read recently (within the past few weeks) about a project to add command
> completion and command history (a bit like bash has) to ksh93 on Solaris. I'm
> hoping this is so that future Solaris has these features "out of the box".
> Can anyone tell me if this is the case, and also what the status of this
> project is?
These features should be working "out of the box". So far the ksh93
which will be integrated into Solaris should come with the following
improvements (just couting them out of my head, AFAIK there are much
more improvents) over the old (ksh88-based) Solaris /usr/bin/ksh:
- A global /etc/ksh.kshrc (which is executed before ~/.kshrc (both files
are for interactive shells only)) was added which allows a machine- or
site-admin to provide system-wide defaults (like a default editor mode)
- Solaris will come with a default /etc/ksh.kshrc which sets "gmacs" as
default editor mode (this can be overridden via setting the ${EDITOR} or
${VISUAL} environment variables, in the per-user ~/.kshrc file or via
editing /etc/ksh.kshrc)
- <CTRL-V><key> now prints <key>, even if it is a special character
(e.g. <CTRL-V><tab> will insert a TAB character, <CTRL-C><esc> will
insert a ESCAPE character). The same feature can be found in tcsh, tsh
and bash3.
The old ksh88 behavour to print the shell version number can be obtained
via <esc><CTRL-V> or $ echo ${.sh.version} #
- <tab> tries to complete a filename/environment variable/etc.,
<tab><tab> shows a list of choices of there are multiple items when
trying a completion, note that the list as index numbers which can be
used to select a choice, e.g. <tab><tab> displays a list and an
immediately following <number><tab> selects item "number" from this
list.
- ~(E)pattern, ~(Ei}pattern etc. can now be used to specify extended
regular patterns (either case-sensitive or case-insensitive) instead of
normal shell patterns
- A "multiline" option exists since ksh93r which allows that a input
line in emacs/gmacs/vi input modes wraps at the end of the line into a
new line instead of scrolling one line forward/backwards (this is
currenty not enabled in /etc/ksh.kshrc by default on Solaris but you can
put this option into your ~/.kshrc).
- The default history size was increased to a more usefull value (512
entries).
... AFAIK there are more items... :-)
----
Bye,
Roland
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