5 This is a production release that fixes a warning on `gcc` 6 or older, which
6 does not have an attribute that is used.
8 Users do ***NOT*** need to upgrade if they don't use `gcc` 6 or older.
12 This is a production release that fixes a bug in `gen/strgen.sh`. I recently
13 changed `gen/strgen.c`, but I did not change `gen/strgen.sh`.
15 Users that do not use `gen/strgen.sh` do not need to upgrade.
19 This is a production release that fixes a portability bug in `configure.sh`. The
20 bug was using the GNU `find` extension `-wholename`.
24 This is a production release that has one fix for `bcl(3)`. It is technically
25 not a bug fix since the behavior is undefined, but the `BclNumber`s that
26 `bcl_divmod()` returns will be set to `BCL_ERROR_INVALID_NUM` if there is an
27 error. Previously, they were not set.
31 This is a production release that has one bug fix and a major addition.
33 The bug fix was a missing `auto` variable in the bessel `j()` function in the
36 The major addition is a way to build a version of `bc`'s math code as a library.
37 This is done with the `-a` option to `configure.sh`. The API for the library can
38 be read in `./manuals/bcl.3.md` or `man bcl` once the library is installed with
41 This library was requested by developers before I even finished version 1.0, but
42 I could not figure out how to do it until now.
44 If the library has API breaking changes, the major version of `bc` will be
49 This is a production release that fixes a new warning from Clang 12 for FreeBSD
50 and also removes some possible undefined behavior found by UBSan that compilers
51 did not seem to take advantage of.
53 Users do ***NOT*** need to upgrade, if they do not want to.
57 This is a production release that fixes the Chinese locales (which caused `bc`
58 to crash) and a crash caused by `bc` executing code when it should not have been
61 ***ALL USERS SHOULD UPGRADE.***
65 This is a production release that fixes one bug, changes two behaviors, and
66 removes one environment variable.
68 The bug is like the one in the last release except it applies if files are being
69 executed. I also made the fix more general.
71 The behavior that was changed is that `bc` now exits when given `-e`, `-f`,
72 `--expression` or `--file`. However, if the last one of those is `-f-` (using
73 `stdin` as the file), `bc` does not exit. If `-f-` exists and is not the last of
74 the `-e` and `-f` options (and equivalents), `bc` gives a fatal error and exits.
76 Next, I removed the `BC_EXPR_EXIT` and `DC_EXPR_EXIT` environment variables
77 since their use is not needed with the behavior change.
79 Finally, I made it so `bc` does not print the header, though the `-q` and
80 `--quiet` options were kept for compatibility with GNU `bc`.
84 This is a production release that fixes one minor bug: if `bc` was invoked like
85 the following, it would error:
88 echo "if (1 < 3) 1" | bc
91 Unless users run into this bug, they do not need to upgrade, but it is suggested
96 This is a production release that adds a way to install *all* locales. Users do
97 ***NOT*** need to upgrade.
99 For package maintainers wishing to make use of the change, just pass `-l` to
104 This is a production release that adds two Spanish locales. Users do ***NOT***
105 need to upgrade, unless they want those locales.
109 This is a production release that adjusts one behavior, fixes eight bugs, and
110 improves manpages for FreeBSD. Because this release fixes bugs, **users and
111 package maintainers should update to this version as soon as possible**.
113 The behavior that was adjusted was how code from the `-e` and `-f` arguments
114 (and equivalents) were executed. They used to be executed as one big chunk, but
115 in this release, they are now executed line-by-line.
117 The first bug fix in how output to `stdout` was handled in `SIGINT`. If a
118 `SIGINT` came in, the `stdout` buffer was not correctly flushed. In fact, a
119 clean-up function was not getting called. This release fixes that bug.
121 The second bug is in how `dc` handled input from `stdin`. This affected `bc` as
122 well since it was a mishandling of the `stdin` buffer.
124 The third fixed bug was that `bc` and `dc` could `abort()` (in debug mode) when
125 receiving a `SIGTERM`. This one was a race condition with pushing and popping
126 items onto and out of vectors.
128 The fourth bug fixed was that `bc` could leave extra items on the stack and
129 thus, not properly clean up some memory. (The memory would still get
130 `free()`'ed, but it would not be `free()`'ed when it could have been.)
132 The next two bugs were bugs in `bc`'s parser that caused crashes when executing
135 The last two bugs were crashes in `dc` that resulted from mishandling of
138 The manpage improvement was done by switching from [ronn][20] to [Pandoc][21] to
139 generate manpages. Pandoc generates much cleaner manpages and doesn't leave
140 blank lines where they shouldn't be.
144 This is a production release that adds one new feature: specific manpages.
146 Before this release, `bc` and `dc` only used one manpage each that referred to
147 various build options. This release changes it so there is one manpage set per
148 relevant build type. Each manual only has information about its particular
149 build, and `configure.sh` selects the correct set for install.
153 This is a production release that adds `utf8` locale symlinks and removes an
154 unused `auto` variable from the `ceil()` function in the [extended math
157 Users do ***NOT*** need to update unless they want the locales.
161 This is a production release with two small changes. Users do ***NOT*** need to
162 upgrade to this release; however, if they haven't upgraded to `3.0.0` yet, it
163 may be worthwhile to upgrade to this release.
165 The first change is fixing a compiler warning on FreeBSD with strict warnings
168 The second change is to make the new implementation of `ceil()` in `lib2.bc`
173 *Notes for package maintainers:*
175 *First, the `2.7.0` release series saw a change in the option parsing. This made
176 me change one error message and add a few others. The error message that was
177 changed removed one format specifier. This means that `printf()` will seqfault
178 on old locale files. Unfortunately, `bc` cannot use any locale files except the
179 global ones that are already installed, so it will use the previous ones while
180 running tests during install. **If `bc` segfaults while running arg tests when
181 updating, it is because the global locale files have not been replaced. Make
182 sure to either prevent the test suite from running on update or remove the old
183 locale files before updating.** (Removing the locale files can be done with
184 `make uninstall` or by running the `locale_uninstall.sh` script.) Once this is
185 done, `bc` should install without problems.*
187 *Second, **the option to build without signal support has been removed**. See
188 below for the reasons why.*
190 This is a production release with some small bug fixes, a few improvements,
191 three major bug fixes, and a complete redesign of `bc`'s error and signal
192 handling. **Users and package maintainers should update to this version as soon
195 The first major bug fix was in how `bc` executed files. Previously, a whole file
196 was parsed before it was executed, but if a function is defined *after* code,
197 especially if the function definition was actually a redefinition, and the code
198 before the definition referred to the previous function, this `bc` would replace
199 the function before executing any code. The fix was to make sure that all code
200 that existed before a function definition was executed.
202 The second major bug fix was in `bc`'s `lib2.bc`. The `ceil()` function had a
203 bug where a `0` in the decimal place after the truncation position, caused it to
204 output the wrong numbers if there was any non-zero digit after.
206 The third major bug is that when passing parameters to functions, if an
207 expression included an array (not an array element) as a parameter, it was
208 accepted, when it should have been rejected. It is now correctly rejected.
210 Beyond that, this `bc` got several improvements that both sped it up, improved
211 the handling of signals, and improved the error handling.
213 First, the requirements for `bc` were pushed back to POSIX 2008. `bc` uses one
214 function, `strdup()`, which is not in POSIX 2001, and it is in the X/Open System
215 Interfaces group 2001. It is, however, in POSIX 2008, and since POSIX 2008 is
216 old enough to be supported anywhere that I care, that should be the requirement.
218 Second, the BcVm global variable was put into `bss`. This actually slightly
219 reduces the size of the executable from a massive code shrink, and it will stop
220 `bc` from allocating a large set of memory when `bc` starts.
222 Third, the default Karatsuba length was updated from 64 to 32 after making the
223 optimization changes below, since 32 is going to be better than 64 after the
226 Fourth, Spanish translations were added.
228 Fifth, the interpreter received a speedup to make performance on non-math-heavy
229 scripts more competitive with GNU `bc`. While improvements did, in fact, get it
230 much closer (see the [benchmarks][19]), it isn't quite there.
232 There were several things done to speed up the interpreter:
234 First, several small inefficiencies were removed. These inefficiencies included
235 calling the function `bc_vec_pop(v)` twice instead of calling
236 `bc_vec_npop(v, 2)`. They also included an extra function call for checking the
237 size of the stack and checking the size of the stack more than once on several
240 Second, since the current `bc` function is the one that stores constants and
241 strings, the program caches pointers to the current function's vectors of
242 constants and strings to prevent needing to grab the current function in order
243 to grab a constant or a string.
245 Third, `bc` tries to reuse `BcNum`'s (the internal representation of
246 arbitary-precision numbers). If a `BcNum` has the default capacity of
247 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` (32 on 64-bit and 16 on 32-bit) when it is freed, it is added
248 to a list of available `BcNum`'s. And then, when a `BcNum` is allocated with a
249 capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` and any `BcNum`'s exist on the list of reusable
250 ones, one of those ones is grabbed instead.
252 In order to support these changes, the `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` was changed. It used to
253 be 16 bytes on all systems, but it was changed to more closely align with the
254 minimum allocation size on Linux, which is either 32 bytes (64-bit musl), 24
255 bytes (64-bit glibc), 16 bytes (32-bit musl), or 12 bytes (32-bit glibc). Since
256 these are the minimum allocation sizes, these are the sizes that would be
257 allocated anyway, making it worth it to just use the whole space, so the value
258 of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` on 64-bit systems was changed to 32 bytes.
260 On top of that, at least on 64-bit, `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` supports numbers with
261 either 72 integer digits or 45 integer digits and 27 fractional digits. This
262 should be more than enough for most cases since `bc`'s default `scale` values
263 are 0 or 20, meaning that, by default, it has at most 20 fractional digits. And
264 45 integer digits are *a lot*; it's enough to calculate the amount of mass in
265 the Milky Way galaxy in kilograms. Also, 72 digits is enough to calculate the
266 diameter of the universe in Planck lengths.
268 (For 32-bit, these numbers are either 32 integer digits or 12 integer digits and
269 20 fractional digits. These are also quite big, and going much bigger on a
270 32-bit system seems a little pointless since 12 digits in just under a trillion
271 and 20 fractional digits is still enough for about any use since `10^-20` light
272 years is just under a millimeter.)
274 All of this together means that for ordinary uses, and even uses in scientific
275 work, the default number size will be all that is needed, which means that
276 nearly all, if not all, numbers will be reused, relieving pressure on the system
279 I did several experiments to find the changes that had the most impact,
280 especially with regard to reusing `BcNum`'s. One was putting `BcNum`'s into
281 buckets according to their capacity in powers of 2 up to 512. That performed
282 worse than `bc` did in `2.7.2`. Another was putting any `BcNum` on the reuse
283 list that had a capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE * 2` and reusing them for `BcNum`'s
284 that requested `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`. This did reduce the amount of time spent, but
285 it also spent a lot of time in the system allocator for an unknown reason. (When
286 using `strace`, a bunch more `brk` calls showed up.) Just reusing `BcNum`'s that
287 had exactly `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` capacity spent the smallest amount of time in both
288 user and system time. This makes sense, especially with the changes to make
289 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` bigger on 64-bit systems, since the vast majority of numbers
290 will only ever use numbers with a size less than or equal to `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`.
292 Last of all, `bc`'s signal handling underwent a complete redesign. (This is the
293 reason that this version is `3.0.0` and not `2.8.0`.) The change was to move
294 from a polling approach to signal handling to an interrupt-based approach.
296 Previously, every single loop condition had a check for signals. I suspect that
297 this could be expensive when in tight loops.
299 Now, the signal handler just uses `longjmp()` (actually `siglongjmp()`) to start
300 an unwinding of the stack until it is stopped or the stack is unwound to
301 `main()`, which just returns. If `bc` is currently executing code that cannot be
302 safely interrupted (according to POSIX), then signals are "locked." The signal
303 handler checks if the lock is taken, and if it is, it just sets the status to
304 indicate that a signal arrived. Later, when the signal lock is released, the
305 status is checked to see if a signal came in. If so, the stack unwinding starts.
307 This design eliminates polling in favor of maintaining a stack of `jmp_buf`'s.
308 This has its own performance implications, but it gives better interaction. And
309 the cost of pushing and popping a `jmp_buf` in a function is paid at most twice.
310 Most functions do not pay that price, and most of the rest only pay it once.
311 (There are only some 3 functions in `bc` that push and pop a `jmp_buf` twice.)
313 As a side effect of this change, I had to eliminate the use of `stdio.h` in `bc`
314 because `stdio` does not play nice with signals and `longjmp()`. I implemented
315 custom I/O buffer code that takes a fraction of the size. This means that static
316 builds will be smaller, but non-static builds will be bigger, though they will
317 have less linking time.
319 This change is also good because my history implementation was already bypassing
320 `stdio` for good reasons, and unifying the architecture was a win.
322 Another reason for this change is that my `bc` should *always* behave correctly
323 in the presence of signals like `SIGINT`, `SIGTERM`, and `SIGQUIT`. With the
324 addition of my own I/O buffering, I needed to also make sure that the buffers
325 were correctly flushed even when such signals happened.
327 For this reason, I **removed the option to build without signal support**.
329 As a nice side effect of this change, the error handling code could be changed
330 to take advantage of the stack unwinding that signals used. This means that
331 signals and error handling use the same code paths, which means that the stack
332 unwinding is well-tested. (Errors are tested heavily in the test suite.)
334 It also means that functions do not need to return a status code that
335 ***every*** caller needs to check. This eliminated over 100 branches that simply
336 checked return codes and then passed that return code up the stack if necessary.
337 The code bloat savings from this is at least 1700 bytes on `x86_64`, *before*
338 taking into account the extra code from removing `stdio.h`.
342 This is a production release with one major bug fix.
344 The `length()` built-in function can take either a number or an array. If it
345 takes an array, it returns the length of the array. Arrays can be passed by
346 reference. The bug is that the `length()` function would not properly
347 dereference arrays that were references. This is a bug that affects all users.
349 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
353 This is a production release with fixes for new locales and fixes for compiler
358 This is a production release with a bug fix for Linux, new translations, and new
363 * Option parsing in `BC_ENV_ARGS` was broken on Linux in 2.6.1 because `glibc`'s
364 `getopt_long()` is broken. To get around that, and to support long options on
365 every platform, an adapted version of [`optparse`][17] was added. Now, `bc`
366 does not even use `getopt()`.
367 * Parsing `BC_ENV_ARGS` with quotes now works. It isn't the smartest, but it
368 does the job if there are spaces in file names.
370 The following new languages are supported:
378 All of these translations were generated using [DeepL][18], so improvements are
381 There is only one new feature: **`bc` now has a built-in pseudo-random number
384 The PRNG is seeded, making it useful for applications where
385 `/dev/urandom` does not work because output needs to be reproducible. However,
386 it also uses `/dev/urandom` to seed itself by default, so it will start with a
387 good seed by default.
389 It also outputs 32 bits on 32-bit platforms and 64 bits on 64-bit platforms, far
390 better than the 15 bits of C's `rand()` and `bash`'s `$RANDOM`.
392 In addition, the PRNG can take a bound, and when it gets a bound, it
393 automatically adjusts to remove bias. It can also generate numbers of arbitrary
394 size. (As of the time of release, the largest pseudo-random number generated by
395 this `bc` was generated with a bound of `2^(2^20)`.)
397 ***IMPORTANT: read the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] to find out
398 exactly what guarantees the PRNG provides. The underlying implementation is not
399 guaranteed to stay the same, but the guarantees that it provides are guaranteed
400 to stay the same regardless of the implementation.***
402 On top of that, four functions were added to `bc`'s [extended math library][16]
403 to make using the PRNG easier:
405 * `frand(p)`: Generates a number between `[0,1)` to `p` decimal places.
406 * `ifrand(i, p)`: Generates an integer with bound `i` and adds it to `frand(p)`.
407 * `srand(x)`: Randomizes the sign of `x`. In other words, it flips the sign of
408 `x` with probability `0.5`.
409 * `brand()`: Returns a random boolean value (either `0` or `1`).
413 This is a production release with a bug fix for FreeBSD.
415 The bug was that when `bc` was built without long options, it would give a fatal
416 error on every run. This was caused by a mishandling of `optind`.
420 This release is a production release ***with no bugfixes***. If you do not want
421 to upgrade, you don't have to.
423 No source code changed; the only thing that changed was `lib2.bc`.
425 This release adds one function to the [extended math library][16]: `p(x, y)`,
426 which calculates `x` to the power of `y`, whether or not `y` is an integer. (The
427 `^` operator can only accept integer powers.)
429 This release also includes a couple of small tweaks to the [extended math
430 library][16], mostly to fix returning numbers with too high of `scale`.
434 This release is a production release which addresses inconsistencies in the
435 Portuguese locales. No `bc` code was changed.
437 The issues were that the ISO files used different naming, and also that the
438 files that should have been symlinks were not. I did not catch that because
439 GitHub rendered them the exact same way.
443 This release is a production release.
445 No code was changed, but the build system was changed to allow `CFLAGS` to be
446 given to `CC`, like this:
449 CC="gcc -O3 -march=native" ./configure.sh
452 If this happens, the flags are automatically put into `CFLAGS`, and the compiler
453 is set appropriately. In the example above this means that `CC` will be "gcc"
454 and `CFLAGS` will be "-O3 -march=native".
456 This behavior was added to conform to GNU autotools practices.
460 This is a production release which addresses portability concerns discovered
461 in the `bc` build system. No `bc` code was changed.
463 * Support for Solaris SPARC and AIX were added.
464 * Minor documentations edits were performed.
465 * An option for `configure.sh` was added to disable long options if
466 `getopt_long()` is missing.
470 This is a production release with new translations. No code changed.
472 The translations were contributed by [bugcrazy][15], and they are for
473 Portuguese, both Portugal and Brazil locales.
477 This is a production release primarily aimed at improving `dc`.
479 * A couple of copy and paste errors in the [`dc` manual][10] were fixed.
480 * `dc` startup was optimized by making sure it didn't have to set up `bc`-only
482 * The `bc` `&&` and `||` operators were made available to `dc` through the `M`
483 and `m` commands, respectively.
484 * `dc` macros were changed to be tail call-optimized.
486 The last item, tail call optimization, means that if the last thing in a macro
487 is a call to another macro, then the old macro is popped before executing the
488 new macro. This change was made to stop `dc` from consuming more and more memory
489 as macros are executed in a loop.
491 The `q` and `Q` commands still respect the "hidden" macros by way of recording
492 how many macros were removed by tail call optimization.
496 This is a production release meant to fix warnings in the Gentoo `ebuild` by
497 making it possible to disable binary stripping. Other users do *not* need to
502 This is a production release. It fixes a bug that caused `-1000000000 < -1` to
503 return `0`. This only happened with negative numbers and only if the value on
504 the left was more negative by a certain amount. That said, this bug *is* a bad
505 bug, and needs to be fixed.
507 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
511 This is a production release with changes to the build system.
515 This release is a production release. It only has new features and performance
518 1. The performance of `sqrt(x)` was improved.
519 2. The new function `root(x, n)` was added to the extended math library to
520 calculate `n`th roots.
521 3. The new function `cbrt(x)` was added to the extended math library to
522 calculate cube roots.
526 This is a non-critical release; it just changes the build system, and in
529 1. Linked locale files were changed to link to their sources with a relative
531 2. A bug in `configure.sh` that caused long option parsing to fail under `bash`
536 This release is not a critical release.
538 1. A few codes were added to history.
539 2. Multiplication was optimized a bit more.
540 3. Addition and subtraction were both optimized a bit more.
544 This release contains a fix for the test suite made for Linux from Scratch: now
545 the test suite prints `pass` when a test is passed.
547 Other than that, there is no change in this release, so distros and other users
548 do not need to upgrade.
552 This release is a production release.
554 The following bugs were fixed:
556 1. A `dc` bug that caused stack mishandling was fixed.
557 2. A warning on OpenBSD was fixed.
558 3. Bugs in `ctrl+arrow` operations in history were fixed.
559 4. The ability to paste multiple lines in history was added.
560 5. A `bc` bug, mishandling of array arguments to functions, was fixed.
561 6. A crash caused by freeing the wrong pointer was fixed.
562 7. A `dc` bug where strings, in a rare case, were mishandled in parsing was
565 In addition, the following changes were made:
567 1. Division was slightly optimized.
568 2. An option was added to the build to disable printing of prompts.
569 3. The special case of empty arguments is now handled. This is to prevent
570 errors in scripts that end up passing empty arguments.
571 4. A harmless bug was fixed. This bug was that, with the pop instructions
572 (mostly) removed (see below), `bc` would leave extra values on its stack for
573 `void` functions and in a few other cases. These extra items would not
574 affect anything put on the stack and would not cause any sort of crash or
575 even buggy behavior, but they would cause `bc` to take more memory than it
578 On top of the above changes, the following optimizations were added:
580 1. The need for pop instructions in `bc` was removed.
581 2. Extra tests on every iteration of the interpreter loop were removed.
582 3. Updating function and code pointers on every iteration of the interpreter
583 loop was changed to only updating them when necessary.
584 4. Extra assignments to pointers were removed.
586 Altogether, these changes sped up the interpreter by around 2x.
588 ***NOTE***: This is the last release with new features because this `bc` is now
589 considered complete. From now on, only bug fixes and new translations will be
594 This is a production, bug-fix release.
596 Two bugs were fixed in this release:
598 1. A rare and subtle signal handling bug was fixed.
599 2. A misbehavior on `0` to a negative power was fixed.
601 The last bug bears some mentioning.
603 When I originally wrote power, I did not thoroughly check its error cases;
604 instead, I had it check if the first number was `0` and then if so, just return
605 `0`. However, `0` to a negative power means that `1` will be divided by `0`,
608 I caught this, but only after I stopped being cocky. You see, sometime later, I
609 had noticed that GNU `bc` returned an error, correctly, but I thought it was
610 wrong simply because that's not what my `bc` did. I saw it again later and had a
611 double take. I checked for real, finally, and found out that my `bc` was wrong
614 That was bad on me. But the bug was easy to fix, so it is fixed now.
616 There are two other things in this release:
618 1. Subtraction was optimized by [Stefan Eßer][14].
619 2. Division was also optimized, also by Stefan Eßer.
623 This release contains a fix for a possible overflow in the signal handling. I
624 would be surprised if any users ran into it because it would only happen after 2
625 billion (`2^31-1`) `SIGINT`'s, but I saw it and had to fix it.
629 This release contains very few things that will apply to any users.
631 1. A slight bug in `dc`'s interactive mode was fixed.
632 2. A bug in the test suite that was only triggered on NetBSD was fixed.
633 3. **The `-P`/`--no-prompt` option** was added for users that do not want a
635 4. A `make check` target was added as an alias for `make test`.
636 5. `dc` got its own read prompt: `?> `.
640 This release is a production release.
642 This release is also a little different from previous releases. From here on
643 out, I do not plan on adding any more features to this `bc`; I believe that it
644 is complete. However, there may be bug fix releases in the future, if I or any
645 others manage to find bugs.
647 This release has only a few new features:
649 1. `atan2(y, x)` was added to the extended math library as both `a2(y, x)` and
651 2. Locales were fixed.
652 3. A **POSIX shell-compatible script was added as an alternative to compiling
653 `gen/strgen.c`** on a host machine. More details about making the choice
654 between the two can be found by running `./configure.sh --help` or reading
655 the [build manual][13].
656 4. Multiplication was optimized by using **diagonal multiplication**, rather
657 than straight brute force.
658 5. The `locale_install.sh` script was fixed.
659 6. `dc` was given the ability to **use the environment variable
661 7. `dc` was also given the ability to **use the `-i` or `--interactive`**
663 8. Printing the prompt was fixed so that it did not print when it shouldn't.
664 9. Signal handling was fixed.
665 10. **Handling of `SIGTERM` and `SIGQUIT`** was fixed.
666 11. The **built-in functions `maxibase()`, `maxobase()`, and `maxscale()`** (the
667 commands `T`, `U`, `V` in `dc`, respectively) were added to allow scripts to
668 query for the max allowable values of those globals.
669 12. Some incompatibilities with POSIX were fixed.
671 In addition, this release is `2.0.0` for a big reason: the internal format for
672 numbers changed. They used to be a `char` array. Now, they are an array of
673 larger integers, packing more decimal digits into each integer. This has
674 delivered ***HUGE*** performance improvements, especially for multiplication,
677 This `bc` should now be the fastest `bc` available, but I may be wrong.
681 This release contains a fix for a harmless bug (it is harmless in that it still
682 works, but it just copies extra data) in the [`locale_install.sh`][12] script.
686 This version contains fixes for the build on Arch Linux.
690 This release removes the use of `local` in shell scripts because it's not POSIX
691 shell-compatible, and also updates a man page that should have been updated a
692 long time ago but was missed.
696 This release contains some missing locale `*.msg` files.
700 This release contains a few bug fixes and new French translations.
704 This release contains a fix for a bug: use of uninitialized data. Such data was
705 only used when outputting an error message, but I am striving for perfection. As
706 Michelangelo said, "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."
710 This release contains fixes for OpenBSD.
714 This release contains bug fixes for some rare bugs.
718 This is a production release.
720 There have been several changes since `1.1.0`:
722 1. The build system had some changes.
723 2. Locale support has been added. (Patches welcome for translations.)
724 3. **The ability to turn `ibase`, `obase`, and `scale` into stacks** was added
725 with the `-g` command-line option. (See the [`bc` manual][9] for more
727 4. Support for compiling on Mac OSX out of the box was added.
728 5. The extended math library got `t(x)`, `ceil(x)`, and some aliases.
729 6. The extended math library also got `r2d(x)` (for converting from radians to
730 degrees) and `d2r(x)` (for converting from degrees to radians). This is to
731 allow using degrees with the standard library.
732 7. Both calculators now accept numbers in **scientific notation**. See the
733 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
734 8. Both calculators can **output in either scientific or engineering
735 notation**. See the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
736 9. Some inefficiencies were removed.
737 10. Some bugs were fixed.
738 11. Some bugs in the extended library were fixed.
739 12. Some defects from [Coverity Scan][11] were fixed.
743 This release contains a fix to the build system that allows it to build on older
748 This release contains a fix for a bug in the test suite where `bc` tests and
749 `dc` tests could not be run in parallel.
753 This release has a fix for a history bug; the down arrow did not work.
757 This release fixes a bug in the `1.1.0` build system. The source is exactly the
760 The bug that was fixed was a failure to install if no `EXECSUFFIX` was used.
764 This is a production release. However, many new features were added since `1.0`.
766 1. **The build system has been changed** to use a custom, POSIX
767 shell-compatible configure script ([`configure.sh`][6]) to generate a POSIX
768 make-compatible `Makefile`, which means that `bc` and `dc` now build out of
769 the box on any POSIX-compatible system.
770 2. Out-of-memory and output errors now cause the `bc` to report the error,
771 clean up, and die, rather than just reporting and trying to continue.
772 3. **Strings and constants are now garbage collected** when possible.
773 4. Signal handling and checking has been made more simple and more thorough.
774 5. `BcGlobals` was refactored into `BcVm` and `BcVm` was made global. Some
775 procedure names were changed to reflect its difference to everything else.
776 6. Addition got a speed improvement.
777 7. Some common code for addition and multiplication was refactored into its own
779 8. A bug was removed where `dc` could have been selected, but the internal
780 `#define` that returned `true` for a query about `dc` would not have
782 9. Useless calls to `bc_num_zero()` were removed.
783 10. **History support was added.** The history support is based off of a
784 [UTF-8 aware fork][7] of [`linenoise`][8], which has been customized with
785 `bc`'s own data structures and signal handling.
786 11. Generating C source from the math library now removes tabs from the library,
787 shrinking the size of the executable.
788 12. The math library was shrunk.
789 13. Error handling and reporting was improved.
790 14. Reallocations were reduced by giving access to the request size for each
792 15. **`abs()` (`b` command for `dc`) was added as a builtin.**
793 16. Both calculators were tested on FreeBSD.
794 17. Many obscure parse bugs were fixed.
795 18. Markdown and man page manuals were added, and the man pages are installed by
797 19. Executable size was reduced, though the added features probably made the
798 executable end up bigger.
799 20. **GNU-style array references were added as a supported feature.**
800 21. Allocations were reduced.
801 22. **New operators were added**: `$` (`$` for `dc`), `@` (`@` for `dc`), `@=`,
802 `<<` (`H` for `dc`), `<<=`, `>>` (`h` for `dc`), and `>>=`. See the
803 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for more details.
804 23. **An extended math library was added.** This library contains code that
805 makes it so I can replace my desktop calculator with this `bc`. See the
806 [`bc` manual][3] for more details.
807 24. Support for all capital letters as numbers was added.
808 25. **Support for GNU-style void functions was added.**
809 26. A bug fix for improper handling of function parameters was added.
810 27. Precedence for the or (`||`) operator was changed to match GNU `bc`.
811 28. `dc` was given an explicit negation command.
812 29. `dc` was changed to be able to handle strings in arrays.
814 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 3
816 This release is the eighth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
817 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
818 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
820 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 2
822 This release is the seventh release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
823 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
824 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
826 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 5
828 This release is the sixth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fifth
829 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
830 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
832 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 4
834 This release is the fifth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fourth
835 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
836 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
838 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 3
840 This release is the fourth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
841 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
842 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
844 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 2
846 This release is the third release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
847 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
848 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
850 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 1
852 This release is the second release candidate for 1.1, though it is meant
853 specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new code has not been tested as
854 thoroughly as it should for release.
856 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 1
858 This is the first release candidate for 1.1. The new code has not been tested as
859 thoroughly as it should for release.
863 This is the first non-beta release. `bc` is ready for production use.
865 As such, a lot has changed since 0.5.
867 1. `dc` has been added. It has been tested even more thoroughly than `bc` was
868 for `0.5`. It does not have the `!` command, and for security reasons, it
869 never will, so it is complete.
870 2. `bc` has been more thoroughly tested. An entire section of the test suite
871 (for both programs) has been added to test for errors.
872 3. A prompt (`>>> `) has been added for interactive mode, making it easier to
873 see inputs and outputs.
874 4. Interrupt handling has been improved, including elimination of race
875 conditions (as much as possible).
876 5. MinGW and [Windows Subsystem for Linux][1] support has been added (see
877 [xstatic][2] for binaries).
878 6. Memory leaks and errors have been eliminated (as far as ASan and Valgrind
880 7. Crashes have been eliminated (as far as [afl][3] can tell).
881 8. Karatsuba multiplication was added (and thoroughly) tested, speeding up
882 multiplication and power by orders of magnitude.
883 9. Performance was further enhanced by using a "divmod" function to reduce
884 redundant divisions and by removing superfluous `memset()` calls.
885 10. To switch between Karatsuba and `O(n^2)` multiplication, the config variable
886 `BC_NUM_KARATSUBA_LEN` was added. It is set to a sane default, but the
887 optimal number can be found with [`karatsuba.py`][4] (requires Python 3)
888 and then configured through `make`.
889 11. The random math test generator script was changed to Python 3 and improved.
890 `bc` and `dc` have together been run through 30+ million random tests.
891 12. All known math bugs have been fixed, including out of control memory
892 allocations in `sine` and `cosine` (that was actually a parse bug), certain
893 cases of infinite loop on square root, and slight inaccuracies (as much as
894 possible; see the [README][5]) in transcendental functions.
895 13. Parsing has been fixed as much as possible.
896 14. Test coverage was improved to 94.8%. The only paths not covered are ones
897 that happen when `malloc()` or `realloc()` fails.
898 15. An extension to get the length of an array was added.
899 16. The boolean not (`!`) had its precedence change to match negation.
900 17. Data input was hardened.
901 18. `bc` was made fully compliant with POSIX when the `-s` flag is used or
902 `POSIXLY_CORRECT` is defined.
903 19. Error handling was improved.
904 20. `bc` now checks that files it is given are not directories.
906 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 7
908 This is the seventh release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0
911 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 6
913 This is the sixth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
916 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 5
918 This is the fifth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
921 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 4
923 This is the fourth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
926 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 3
928 This is the third release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
931 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 2
933 This is the second release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
936 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 1
938 This is the first Release Candidate for 1.0. `bc` is complete, with `dc`, but it
943 This beta release completes more features, but it is still not complete nor
944 tested as thoroughly as necessary.
948 This beta release fixes a few bugs in 0.4.
952 This is a beta release. It does not have the complete set of features, and it is
953 not thoroughly tested.
955 [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
956 [2]: https://pkg.musl.cc/bc/
957 [3]: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/
961 [7]: https://github.com/rain-1/linenoise-mob
962 [8]: https://github.com/antirez/linenoise
963 [9]: ./manuals/bc/A.1.md
964 [10]: ./manuals/dc/A.1.md
965 [11]: https://scan.coverity.com/projects/gavinhoward-bc
966 [12]: ./locale_install.sh
967 [13]: ./manuals/build.md
968 [14]: https://github.com/stesser
969 [15]: https://github.com/bugcrazy
970 [16]: ./manuals/bc/A.1.md#extended-library
971 [17]: https://github.com/skeeto/optparse
972 [18]: https://www.deepl.com/translator
973 [19]: ./manuals/benchmarks.md
974 [20]: https://github.com/apjanke/ronn-ng
975 [21]: https://pandoc.org/