5 This is a production release that adds two Spanish locales. Users do ***NOT***
6 need to upgrade, unless they want those locales.
10 This is a production release that adjusts one behavior, fixes eight bugs, and
11 improves manpages for FreeBSD. Because this release fixes bugs, **users and
12 package maintainers should update to this version as soon as possible**.
14 The behavior that was adjusted was how code from the `-e` and `-f` arguments
15 (and equivalents) were executed. They used to be executed as one big chunk, but
16 in this release, they are now executed line-by-line.
18 The first bug fix in how output to `stdout` was handled in `SIGINT`. If a
19 `SIGINT` came in, the `stdout` buffer was not correctly flushed. In fact, a
20 clean-up function was not getting called. This release fixes that bug.
22 The second bug is in how `dc` handled input from `stdin`. This affected `bc` as
23 well since it was a mishandling of the `stdin` buffer.
25 The third fixed bug was that `bc` and `dc` could `abort()` (in debug mode) when
26 receiving a `SIGTERM`. This one was a race condition with pushing and popping
27 items onto and out of vectors.
29 The fourth bug fixed was that `bc` could leave extra items on the stack and
30 thus, not properly clean up some memory. (The memory would still get
31 `free()`'ed, but it would not be `free()`'ed when it could have been.)
33 The next two bugs were bugs in `bc`'s parser that caused crashes when executing
36 The last two bugs were crashes in `dc` that resulted from mishandling of
39 The manpage improvement was done by switching from [ronn][20] to [Pandoc][21] to
40 generate manpages. Pandoc generates much cleaner manpages and doesn't leave
41 blank lines where they shouldn't be.
45 This is a production release that adds one new feature: specific manpages.
47 Before this release, `bc` and `dc` only used one manpage each that referred to
48 various build options. This release changes it so there is one manpage set per
49 relevant build type. Each manual only has information about its particular
50 build, and `configure.sh` selects the correct set for install.
54 This is a production release that adds `utf8` locale symlinks and removes an
55 unused `auto` variable from the `ceil()` function in the [extended math
58 Users do ***NOT*** need to update unless they want the locales.
62 This is a production release with two small changes. Users do ***NOT*** need to
63 upgrade to this release; however, if they haven't upgraded to `3.0.0` yet, it
64 may be worthwhile to upgrade to this release.
66 The first change is fixing a compiler warning on FreeBSD with strict warnings
69 The second change is to make the new implementation of `ceil()` in `lib2.bc`
74 *Notes for package maintainers:*
76 *First, the `2.7.0` release series saw a change in the option parsing. This made
77 me change one error message and add a few others. The error message that was
78 changed removed one format specifier. This means that `printf()` will seqfault
79 on old locale files. Unfortunately, `bc` cannot use any locale files except the
80 global ones that are already installed, so it will use the previous ones while
81 running tests during install. **If `bc` segfaults while running arg tests when
82 updating, it is because the global locale files have not been replaced. Make
83 sure to either prevent the test suite from running on update or remove the old
84 locale files before updating.** (Removing the locale files can be done with
85 `make uninstall` or by running the `locale_uninstall.sh` script.) Once this is
86 done, `bc` should install without problems.*
88 *Second, **the option to build without signal support has been removed**. See
89 below for the reasons why.*
91 This is a production release with some small bug fixes, a few improvements,
92 three major bug fixes, and a complete redesign of `bc`'s error and signal
93 handling. **Users and package maintainers should update to this version as soon
96 The first major bug fix was in how `bc` executed files. Previously, a whole file
97 was parsed before it was executed, but if a function is defined *after* code,
98 especially if the function definition was actually a redefinition, and the code
99 before the definition referred to the previous function, this `bc` would replace
100 the function before executing any code. The fix was to make sure that all code
101 that existed before a function definition was executed.
103 The second major bug fix was in `bc`'s `lib2.bc`. The `ceil()` function had a
104 bug where a `0` in the decimal place after the truncation position, caused it to
105 output the wrong numbers if there was any non-zero digit after.
107 The third major bug is that when passing parameters to functions, if an
108 expression included an array (not an array element) as a parameter, it was
109 accepted, when it should have been rejected. It is now correctly rejected.
111 Beyond that, this `bc` got several improvements that both sped it up, improved
112 the handling of signals, and improved the error handling.
114 First, the requirements for `bc` were pushed back to POSIX 2008. `bc` uses one
115 function, `strdup()`, which is not in POSIX 2001, and it is in the X/Open System
116 Interfaces group 2001. It is, however, in POSIX 2008, and since POSIX 2008 is
117 old enough to be supported anywhere that I care, that should be the requirement.
119 Second, the BcVm global variable was put into `bss`. This actually slightly
120 reduces the size of the executable from a massive code shrink, and it will stop
121 `bc` from allocating a large set of memory when `bc` starts.
123 Third, the default Karatsuba length was updated from 64 to 32 after making the
124 optimization changes below, since 32 is going to be better than 64 after the
127 Fourth, Spanish translations were added.
129 Fifth, the interpreter received a speedup to make performance on non-math-heavy
130 scripts more competitive with GNU `bc`. While improvements did, in fact, get it
131 much closer (see the [benchmarks][19]), it isn't quite there.
133 There were several things done to speed up the interpreter:
135 First, several small inefficiencies were removed. These inefficiencies included
136 calling the function `bc_vec_pop(v)` twice instead of calling
137 `bc_vec_npop(v, 2)`. They also included an extra function call for checking the
138 size of the stack and checking the size of the stack more than once on several
141 Second, since the current `bc` function is the one that stores constants and
142 strings, the program caches pointers to the current function's vectors of
143 constants and strings to prevent needing to grab the current function in order
144 to grab a constant or a string.
146 Third, `bc` tries to reuse `BcNum`'s (the internal representation of
147 arbitary-precision numbers). If a `BcNum` has the default capacity of
148 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` (32 on 64-bit and 16 on 32-bit) when it is freed, it is added
149 to a list of available `BcNum`'s. And then, when a `BcNum` is allocated with a
150 capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` and any `BcNum`'s exist on the list of reusable
151 ones, one of those ones is grabbed instead.
153 In order to support these changes, the `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` was changed. It used to
154 be 16 bytes on all systems, but it was changed to more closely align with the
155 minimum allocation size on Linux, which is either 32 bytes (64-bit musl), 24
156 bytes (64-bit glibc), 16 bytes (32-bit musl), or 12 bytes (32-bit glibc). Since
157 these are the minimum allocation sizes, these are the sizes that would be
158 allocated anyway, making it worth it to just use the whole space, so the value
159 of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` on 64-bit systems was changed to 32 bytes.
161 On top of that, at least on 64-bit, `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` supports numbers with
162 either 72 integer digits or 45 integer digits and 27 fractional digits. This
163 should be more than enough for most cases since `bc`'s default `scale` values
164 are 0 or 20, meaning that, by default, it has at most 20 fractional digits. And
165 45 integer digits are *a lot*; it's enough to calculate the amount of mass in
166 the Milky Way galaxy in kilograms. Also, 72 digits is enough to calculate the
167 diameter of the universe in Planck lengths.
169 (For 32-bit, these numbers are either 32 integer digits or 12 integer digits and
170 20 fractional digits. These are also quite big, and going much bigger on a
171 32-bit system seems a little pointless since 12 digits in just under a trillion
172 and 20 fractional digits is still enough for about any use since `10^-20` light
173 years is just under a millimeter.)
175 All of this together means that for ordinary uses, and even uses in scientific
176 work, the default number size will be all that is needed, which means that
177 nearly all, if not all, numbers will be reused, relieving pressure on the system
180 I did several experiments to find the changes that had the most impact,
181 especially with regard to reusing `BcNum`'s. One was putting `BcNum`'s into
182 buckets according to their capacity in powers of 2 up to 512. That performed
183 worse than `bc` did in `2.7.2`. Another was putting any `BcNum` on the reuse
184 list that had a capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE * 2` and reusing them for `BcNum`'s
185 that requested `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`. This did reduce the amount of time spent, but
186 it also spent a lot of time in the system allocator for an unknown reason. (When
187 using `strace`, a bunch more `brk` calls showed up.) Just reusing `BcNum`'s that
188 had exactly `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` capacity spent the smallest amount of time in both
189 user and system time. This makes sense, especially with the changes to make
190 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` bigger on 64-bit systems, since the vast majority of numbers
191 will only ever use numbers with a size less than or equal to `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`.
193 Last of all, `bc`'s signal handling underwent a complete redesign. (This is the
194 reason that this version is `3.0.0` and not `2.8.0`.) The change was to move
195 from a polling approach to signal handling to an interrupt-based approach.
197 Previously, every single loop condition had a check for signals. I suspect that
198 this could be expensive when in tight loops.
200 Now, the signal handler just uses `longjmp()` (actually `siglongjmp()`) to start
201 an unwinding of the stack until it is stopped or the stack is unwound to
202 `main()`, which just returns. If `bc` is currently executing code that cannot be
203 safely interrupted (according to POSIX), then signals are "locked." The signal
204 handler checks if the lock is taken, and if it is, it just sets the status to
205 indicate that a signal arrived. Later, when the signal lock is released, the
206 status is checked to see if a signal came in. If so, the stack unwinding starts.
208 This design eliminates polling in favor of maintaining a stack of `jmp_buf`'s.
209 This has its own performance implications, but it gives better interaction. And
210 the cost of pushing and popping a `jmp_buf` in a function is paid at most twice.
211 Most functions do not pay that price, and most of the rest only pay it once.
212 (There are only some 3 functions in `bc` that push and pop a `jmp_buf` twice.)
214 As a side effect of this change, I had to eliminate the use of `stdio.h` in `bc`
215 because `stdio` does not play nice with signals and `longjmp()`. I implemented
216 custom I/O buffer code that takes a fraction of the size. This means that static
217 builds will be smaller, but non-static builds will be bigger, though they will
218 have less linking time.
220 This change is also good because my history implementation was already bypassing
221 `stdio` for good reasons, and unifying the architecture was a win.
223 Another reason for this change is that my `bc` should *always* behave correctly
224 in the presence of signals like `SIGINT`, `SIGTERM`, and `SIGQUIT`. With the
225 addition of my own I/O buffering, I needed to also make sure that the buffers
226 were correctly flushed even when such signals happened.
228 For this reason, I **removed the option to build without signal support**.
230 As a nice side effect of this change, the error handling code could be changed
231 to take advantage of the stack unwinding that signals used. This means that
232 signals and error handling use the same code paths, which means that the stack
233 unwinding is well-tested. (Errors are tested heavily in the test suite.)
235 It also means that functions do not need to return a status code that
236 ***every*** caller needs to check. This eliminated over 100 branches that simply
237 checked return codes and then passed that return code up the stack if necessary.
238 The code bloat savings from this is at least 1700 bytes on `x86_64`, *before*
239 taking into account the extra code from removing `stdio.h`.
243 This is a production release with one major bug fix.
245 The `length()` built-in function can take either a number or an array. If it
246 takes an array, it returns the length of the array. Arrays can be passed by
247 reference. The bug is that the `length()` function would not properly
248 dereference arrays that were references. This is a bug that affects all users.
250 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
254 This is a production release with fixes for new locales and fixes for compiler
259 This is a production release with a bug fix for Linux, new translations, and new
264 * Option parsing in `BC_ENV_ARGS` was broken on Linux in 2.6.1 because `glibc`'s
265 `getopt_long()` is broken. To get around that, and to support long options on
266 every platform, an adapted version of [`optparse`][17] was added. Now, `bc`
267 does not even use `getopt()`.
268 * Parsing `BC_ENV_ARGS` with quotes now works. It isn't the smartest, but it
269 does the job if there are spaces in file names.
271 The following new languages are supported:
279 All of these translations were generated using [DeepL][18], so improvements are
282 There is only one new feature: **`bc` now has a built-in pseudo-random number
285 The PRNG is seeded, making it useful for applications where
286 `/dev/urandom` does not work because output needs to be reproducible. However,
287 it also uses `/dev/urandom` to seed itself by default, so it will start with a
288 good seed by default.
290 It also outputs 32 bits on 32-bit platforms and 64 bits on 64-bit platforms, far
291 better than the 15 bits of C's `rand()` and `bash`'s `$RANDOM`.
293 In addition, the PRNG can take a bound, and when it gets a bound, it
294 automatically adjusts to remove bias. It can also generate numbers of arbitrary
295 size. (As of the time of release, the largest pseudo-random number generated by
296 this `bc` was generated with a bound of `2^(2^20)`.)
298 ***IMPORTANT: read the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] to find out
299 exactly what guarantees the PRNG provides. The underlying implementation is not
300 guaranteed to stay the same, but the guarantees that it provides are guaranteed
301 to stay the same regardless of the implementation.***
303 On top of that, four functions were added to `bc`'s [extended math library][16]
304 to make using the PRNG easier:
306 * `frand(p)`: Generates a number between `[0,1)` to `p` decimal places.
307 * `ifrand(i, p)`: Generates an integer with bound `i` and adds it to `frand(p)`.
308 * `srand(x)`: Randomizes the sign of `x`. In other words, it flips the sign of
309 `x` with probability `0.5`.
310 * `brand()`: Returns a random boolean value (either `0` or `1`).
314 This is a production release with a bug fix for FreeBSD.
316 The bug was that when `bc` was built without long options, it would give a fatal
317 error on every run. This was caused by a mishandling of `optind`.
321 This release is a production release ***with no bugfixes***. If you do not want
322 to upgrade, you don't have to.
324 No source code changed; the only thing that changed was `lib2.bc`.
326 This release adds one function to the [extended math library][16]: `p(x, y)`,
327 which calculates `x` to the power of `y`, whether or not `y` is an integer. (The
328 `^` operator can only accept integer powers.)
330 This release also includes a couple of small tweaks to the [extended math
331 library][16], mostly to fix returning numbers with too high of `scale`.
335 This release is a production release which addresses inconsistencies in the
336 Portuguese locales. No `bc` code was changed.
338 The issues were that the ISO files used different naming, and also that the
339 files that should have been symlinks were not. I did not catch that because
340 GitHub rendered them the exact same way.
344 This release is a production release.
346 No code was changed, but the build system was changed to allow `CFLAGS` to be
347 given to `CC`, like this:
350 CC="gcc -O3 -march=native" ./configure.sh
353 If this happens, the flags are automatically put into `CFLAGS`, and the compiler
354 is set appropriately. In the example above this means that `CC` will be "gcc"
355 and `CFLAGS` will be "-O3 -march=native".
357 This behavior was added to conform to GNU autotools practices.
361 This is a production release which addresses portability concerns discovered
362 in the `bc` build system. No `bc` code was changed.
364 * Support for Solaris SPARC and AIX were added.
365 * Minor documentations edits were performed.
366 * An option for `configure.sh` was added to disable long options if
367 `getopt_long()` is missing.
371 This is a production release with new translations. No code changed.
373 The translations were contributed by [bugcrazy][15], and they are for
374 Portuguese, both Portugal and Brazil locales.
378 This is a production release primarily aimed at improving `dc`.
380 * A couple of copy and paste errors in the [`dc` manual][10] were fixed.
381 * `dc` startup was optimized by making sure it didn't have to set up `bc`-only
383 * The `bc` `&&` and `||` operators were made available to `dc` through the `M`
384 and `m` commands, respectively.
385 * `dc` macros were changed to be tail call-optimized.
387 The last item, tail call optimization, means that if the last thing in a macro
388 is a call to another macro, then the old macro is popped before executing the
389 new macro. This change was made to stop `dc` from consuming more and more memory
390 as macros are executed in a loop.
392 The `q` and `Q` commands still respect the "hidden" macros by way of recording
393 how many macros were removed by tail call optimization.
397 This is a production release meant to fix warnings in the Gentoo `ebuild` by
398 making it possible to disable binary stripping. Other users do *not* need to
403 This is a production release. It fixes a bug that caused `-1000000000 < -1` to
404 return `0`. This only happened with negative numbers and only if the value on
405 the left was more negative by a certain amount. That said, this bug *is* a bad
406 bug, and needs to be fixed.
408 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
412 This is a production release with changes to the build system.
416 This release is a production release. It only has new features and performance
419 1. The performance of `sqrt(x)` was improved.
420 2. The new function `root(x, n)` was added to the extended math library to
421 calculate `n`th roots.
422 3. The new function `cbrt(x)` was added to the extended math library to
423 calculate cube roots.
427 This is a non-critical release; it just changes the build system, and in
430 1. Linked locale files were changed to link to their sources with a relative
432 2. A bug in `configure.sh` that caused long option parsing to fail under `bash`
437 This release is not a critical release.
439 1. A few codes were added to history.
440 2. Multiplication was optimized a bit more.
441 3. Addition and subtraction were both optimized a bit more.
445 This release contains a fix for the test suite made for Linux from Scratch: now
446 the test suite prints `pass` when a test is passed.
448 Other than that, there is no change in this release, so distros and other users
449 do not need to upgrade.
453 This release is a production release.
455 The following bugs were fixed:
457 1. A `dc` bug that caused stack mishandling was fixed.
458 2. A warning on OpenBSD was fixed.
459 3. Bugs in `ctrl+arrow` operations in history were fixed.
460 4. The ability to paste multiple lines in history was added.
461 5. A `bc` bug, mishandling of array arguments to functions, was fixed.
462 6. A crash caused by freeing the wrong pointer was fixed.
463 7. A `dc` bug where strings, in a rare case, were mishandled in parsing was
466 In addition, the following changes were made:
468 1. Division was slightly optimized.
469 2. An option was added to the build to disable printing of prompts.
470 3. The special case of empty arguments is now handled. This is to prevent
471 errors in scripts that end up passing empty arguments.
472 4. A harmless bug was fixed. This bug was that, with the pop instructions
473 (mostly) removed (see below), `bc` would leave extra values on its stack for
474 `void` functions and in a few other cases. These extra items would not
475 affect anything put on the stack and would not cause any sort of crash or
476 even buggy behavior, but they would cause `bc` to take more memory than it
479 On top of the above changes, the following optimizations were added:
481 1. The need for pop instructions in `bc` was removed.
482 2. Extra tests on every iteration of the interpreter loop were removed.
483 3. Updating function and code pointers on every iteration of the interpreter
484 loop was changed to only updating them when necessary.
485 4. Extra assignments to pointers were removed.
487 Altogether, these changes sped up the interpreter by around 2x.
489 ***NOTE***: This is the last release with new features because this `bc` is now
490 considered complete. From now on, only bug fixes and new translations will be
495 This is a production, bug-fix release.
497 Two bugs were fixed in this release:
499 1. A rare and subtle signal handling bug was fixed.
500 2. A misbehavior on `0` to a negative power was fixed.
502 The last bug bears some mentioning.
504 When I originally wrote power, I did not thoroughly check its error cases;
505 instead, I had it check if the first number was `0` and then if so, just return
506 `0`. However, `0` to a negative power means that `1` will be divided by `0`,
509 I caught this, but only after I stopped being cocky. You see, sometime later, I
510 had noticed that GNU `bc` returned an error, correctly, but I thought it was
511 wrong simply because that's not what my `bc` did. I saw it again later and had a
512 double take. I checked for real, finally, and found out that my `bc` was wrong
515 That was bad on me. But the bug was easy to fix, so it is fixed now.
517 There are two other things in this release:
519 1. Subtraction was optimized by [Stefan Eßer][14].
520 2. Division was also optimized, also by Stefan Eßer.
524 This release contains a fix for a possible overflow in the signal handling. I
525 would be surprised if any users ran into it because it would only happen after 2
526 billion (`2^31-1`) `SIGINT`'s, but I saw it and had to fix it.
530 This release contains very few things that will apply to any users.
532 1. A slight bug in `dc`'s interactive mode was fixed.
533 2. A bug in the test suite that was only triggered on NetBSD was fixed.
534 3. **The `-P`/`--no-prompt` option** was added for users that do not want a
536 4. A `make check` target was added as an alias for `make test`.
537 5. `dc` got its own read prompt: `?> `.
541 This release is a production release.
543 This release is also a little different from previous releases. From here on
544 out, I do not plan on adding any more features to this `bc`; I believe that it
545 is complete. However, there may be bug fix releases in the future, if I or any
546 others manage to find bugs.
548 This release has only a few new features:
550 1. `atan2(y, x)` was added to the extended math library as both `a2(y, x)` and
552 2. Locales were fixed.
553 3. A **POSIX shell-compatible script was added as an alternative to compiling
554 `gen/strgen.c`** on a host machine. More details about making the choice
555 between the two can be found by running `./configure.sh --help` or reading
556 the [build manual][13].
557 4. Multiplication was optimized by using **diagonal multiplication**, rather
558 than straight brute force.
559 5. The `locale_install.sh` script was fixed.
560 6. `dc` was given the ability to **use the environment variable
562 7. `dc` was also given the ability to **use the `-i` or `--interactive`**
564 8. Printing the prompt was fixed so that it did not print when it shouldn't.
565 9. Signal handling was fixed.
566 10. **Handling of `SIGTERM` and `SIGQUIT`** was fixed.
567 11. The **built-in functions `maxibase()`, `maxobase()`, and `maxscale()`** (the
568 commands `T`, `U`, `V` in `dc`, respectively) were added to allow scripts to
569 query for the max allowable values of those globals.
570 12. Some incompatibilities with POSIX were fixed.
572 In addition, this release is `2.0.0` for a big reason: the internal format for
573 numbers changed. They used to be a `char` array. Now, they are an array of
574 larger integers, packing more decimal digits into each integer. This has
575 delivered ***HUGE*** performance improvements, especially for multiplication,
578 This `bc` should now be the fastest `bc` available, but I may be wrong.
582 This release contains a fix for a harmless bug (it is harmless in that it still
583 works, but it just copies extra data) in the [`locale_install.sh`][12] script.
587 This version contains fixes for the build on Arch Linux.
591 This release removes the use of `local` in shell scripts because it's not POSIX
592 shell-compatible, and also updates a man page that should have been updated a
593 long time ago but was missed.
597 This release contains some missing locale `*.msg` files.
601 This release contains a few bug fixes and new French translations.
605 This release contains a fix for a bug: use of uninitialized data. Such data was
606 only used when outputting an error message, but I am striving for perfection. As
607 Michelangelo said, "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."
611 This release contains fixes for OpenBSD.
615 This release contains bug fixes for some rare bugs.
619 This is a production release.
621 There have been several changes since `1.1.0`:
623 1. The build system had some changes.
624 2. Locale support has been added. (Patches welcome for translations.)
625 3. **The ability to turn `ibase`, `obase`, and `scale` into stacks** was added
626 with the `-g` command-line option. (See the [`bc` manual][9] for more
628 4. Support for compiling on Mac OSX out of the box was added.
629 5. The extended math library got `t(x)`, `ceil(x)`, and some aliases.
630 6. The extended math library also got `r2d(x)` (for converting from radians to
631 degrees) and `d2r(x)` (for converting from degrees to radians). This is to
632 allow using degrees with the standard library.
633 7. Both calculators now accept numbers in **scientific notation**. See the
634 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
635 8. Both calculators can **output in either scientific or engineering
636 notation**. See the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
637 9. Some inefficiencies were removed.
638 10. Some bugs were fixed.
639 11. Some bugs in the extended library were fixed.
640 12. Some defects from [Coverity Scan][11] were fixed.
644 This release contains a fix to the build system that allows it to build on older
649 This release contains a fix for a bug in the test suite where `bc` tests and
650 `dc` tests could not be run in parallel.
654 This release has a fix for a history bug; the down arrow did not work.
658 This release fixes a bug in the `1.1.0` build system. The source is exactly the
661 The bug that was fixed was a failure to install if no `EXECSUFFIX` was used.
665 This is a production release. However, many new features were added since `1.0`.
667 1. **The build system has been changed** to use a custom, POSIX
668 shell-compatible configure script ([`configure.sh`][6]) to generate a POSIX
669 make-compatible `Makefile`, which means that `bc` and `dc` now build out of
670 the box on any POSIX-compatible system.
671 2. Out-of-memory and output errors now cause the `bc` to report the error,
672 clean up, and die, rather than just reporting and trying to continue.
673 3. **Strings and constants are now garbage collected** when possible.
674 4. Signal handling and checking has been made more simple and more thorough.
675 5. `BcGlobals` was refactored into `BcVm` and `BcVm` was made global. Some
676 procedure names were changed to reflect its difference to everything else.
677 6. Addition got a speed improvement.
678 7. Some common code for addition and multiplication was refactored into its own
680 8. A bug was removed where `dc` could have been selected, but the internal
681 `#define` that returned `true` for a query about `dc` would not have
683 9. Useless calls to `bc_num_zero()` were removed.
684 10. **History support was added.** The history support is based off of a
685 [UTF-8 aware fork][7] of [`linenoise`][8], which has been customized with
686 `bc`'s own data structures and signal handling.
687 11. Generating C source from the math library now removes tabs from the library,
688 shrinking the size of the executable.
689 12. The math library was shrunk.
690 13. Error handling and reporting was improved.
691 14. Reallocations were reduced by giving access to the request size for each
693 15. **`abs()` (`b` command for `dc`) was added as a builtin.**
694 16. Both calculators were tested on FreeBSD.
695 17. Many obscure parse bugs were fixed.
696 18. Markdown and man page manuals were added, and the man pages are installed by
698 19. Executable size was reduced, though the added features probably made the
699 executable end up bigger.
700 20. **GNU-style array references were added as a supported feature.**
701 21. Allocations were reduced.
702 22. **New operators were added**: `$` (`$` for `dc`), `@` (`@` for `dc`), `@=`,
703 `<<` (`H` for `dc`), `<<=`, `>>` (`h` for `dc`), and `>>=`. See the
704 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for more details.
705 23. **An extended math library was added.** This library contains code that
706 makes it so I can replace my desktop calculator with this `bc`. See the
707 [`bc` manual][3] for more details.
708 24. Support for all capital letters as numbers was added.
709 25. **Support for GNU-style void functions was added.**
710 26. A bug fix for improper handling of function parameters was added.
711 27. Precedence for the or (`||`) operator was changed to match GNU `bc`.
712 28. `dc` was given an explicit negation command.
713 29. `dc` was changed to be able to handle strings in arrays.
715 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 3
717 This release is the eighth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
718 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
719 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
721 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 2
723 This release is the seventh release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
724 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
725 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
727 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 5
729 This release is the sixth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fifth
730 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
731 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
733 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 4
735 This release is the fifth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fourth
736 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
737 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
739 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 3
741 This release is the fourth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
742 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
743 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
745 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 2
747 This release is the third release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
748 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
749 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
751 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 1
753 This release is the second release candidate for 1.1, though it is meant
754 specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new code has not been tested as
755 thoroughly as it should for release.
757 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 1
759 This is the first release candidate for 1.1. The new code has not been tested as
760 thoroughly as it should for release.
764 This is the first non-beta release. `bc` is ready for production use.
766 As such, a lot has changed since 0.5.
768 1. `dc` has been added. It has been tested even more thoroughly than `bc` was
769 for `0.5`. It does not have the `!` command, and for security reasons, it
770 never will, so it is complete.
771 2. `bc` has been more thoroughly tested. An entire section of the test suite
772 (for both programs) has been added to test for errors.
773 3. A prompt (`>>> `) has been added for interactive mode, making it easier to
774 see inputs and outputs.
775 4. Interrupt handling has been improved, including elimination of race
776 conditions (as much as possible).
777 5. MinGW and [Windows Subsystem for Linux][1] support has been added (see
778 [xstatic][2] for binaries).
779 6. Memory leaks and errors have been eliminated (as far as ASan and Valgrind
781 7. Crashes have been eliminated (as far as [afl][3] can tell).
782 8. Karatsuba multiplication was added (and thoroughly) tested, speeding up
783 multiplication and power by orders of magnitude.
784 9. Performance was further enhanced by using a "divmod" function to reduce
785 redundant divisions and by removing superfluous `memset()` calls.
786 10. To switch between Karatsuba and `O(n^2)` multiplication, the config variable
787 `BC_NUM_KARATSUBA_LEN` was added. It is set to a sane default, but the
788 optimal number can be found with [`karatsuba.py`][4] (requires Python 3)
789 and then configured through `make`.
790 11. The random math test generator script was changed to Python 3 and improved.
791 `bc` and `dc` have together been run through 30+ million random tests.
792 12. All known math bugs have been fixed, including out of control memory
793 allocations in `sine` and `cosine` (that was actually a parse bug), certain
794 cases of infinite loop on square root, and slight inaccuracies (as much as
795 possible; see the [README][5]) in transcendental functions.
796 13. Parsing has been fixed as much as possible.
797 14. Test coverage was improved to 94.8%. The only paths not covered are ones
798 that happen when `malloc()` or `realloc()` fails.
799 15. An extension to get the length of an array was added.
800 16. The boolean not (`!`) had its precedence change to match negation.
801 17. Data input was hardened.
802 18. `bc` was made fully compliant with POSIX when the `-s` flag is used or
803 `POSIXLY_CORRECT` is defined.
804 19. Error handling was improved.
805 20. `bc` now checks that files it is given are not directories.
807 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 7
809 This is the seventh release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0
812 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 6
814 This is the sixth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
817 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 5
819 This is the fifth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
822 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 4
824 This is the fourth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
827 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 3
829 This is the third release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
832 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 2
834 This is the second release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
837 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 1
839 This is the first Release Candidate for 1.0. `bc` is complete, with `dc`, but it
844 This beta release completes more features, but it is still not complete nor
845 tested as thoroughly as necessary.
849 This beta release fixes a few bugs in 0.4.
853 This is a beta release. It does not have the complete set of features, and it is
854 not thoroughly tested.
856 [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
857 [2]: https://pkg.musl.cc/bc/
858 [3]: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/
862 [7]: https://github.com/rain-1/linenoise-mob
863 [8]: https://github.com/antirez/linenoise
864 [9]: ./manuals/bc/A.1.md
865 [10]: ./manuals/dc/A.1.md
866 [11]: https://scan.coverity.com/projects/gavinhoward-bc
867 [12]: ./locale_install.sh
868 [13]: ./manuals/build.md
869 [14]: https://github.com/stesser
870 [15]: https://github.com/bugcrazy
871 [16]: ./manuals/bc/A.1.md#extended-library
872 [17]: https://github.com/skeeto/optparse
873 [18]: https://www.deepl.com/translator
874 [19]: ./manuals/benchmarks.md
875 [20]: https://github.com/apjanke/ronn-ng
876 [21]: https://pandoc.org/