5 This is a production release that adds `utf8` locale symlinks and removes an
6 unused `auto` variable from the `ceil()` function in the [extended math
9 Users do ***NOT*** need to update unless they want the locales.
13 This is a production release with two small changes. Users do ***NOT*** need to
14 upgrade to this release; however, if they haven't upgraded to `3.0.0` yet, it
15 may be worthwhile to upgrade to this release.
17 The first change is fixing a compiler warning on FreeBSD with strict warnings
20 The second change is to make the new implementation of `ceil()` in `lib2.bc`
25 *Notes for package maintainers:*
27 *First, the `2.7.0` release series saw a change in the option parsing. This made
28 me change one error message and add a few others. The error message that was
29 changed removed one format specifier. This means that `printf()` will seqfault
30 on old locale files. Unfortunately, `bc` cannot use any locale files except the
31 global ones that are already installed, so it will use the previous ones while
32 running tests during install. **If `bc` segfaults while running arg tests when
33 updating, it is because the global locale files have not been replaced. Make
34 sure to either prevent the test suite from running on update or remove the old
35 locale files before updating.** Once this is done, `bc` should install without
38 *Second, **the option to build without signal support has been removed**. See
39 below for the reasons why.*
41 This is a production release with some small bug fixes, a few improvements,
42 three major bug fixes, and a complete redesign of `bc`'s error and signal
43 handling. **Users and package maintainers should update to this version as soon
46 The first major bug fix was in how `bc` executed files. Previously, a whole file
47 was parsed before it was executed, but if a function is defined *after* code,
48 especially if the function definition was actually a redefinition, and the code
49 before the definition referred to the previous function, this `bc` would replace
50 the function before executing any code. The fix was to make sure that all code
51 that existed before a function definition was executed.
53 The second major bug fix was in `bc`'s `lib2.bc`. The `ceil()` function had a
54 bug where a `0` in the decimal place after the truncation position, caused it to
55 output the wrong numbers if there was any non-zero digit after.
57 The third major bug is that when passing parameters to functions, if an
58 expression included an array (not an array element) as a parameter, it was
59 accepted, when it should have been rejected. It is now correctly rejected.
61 Beyond that, this `bc` got several improvements that both sped it up, improved
62 the handling of signals, and improved the error handling.
64 First, the requirements for `bc` were pushed back to POSIX 2008. `bc` uses one
65 function, `strdup()`, which is not in POSIX 2001, and it is in the X/Open System
66 Interfaces group 2001. It is, however, in POSIX 2008, and since POSIX 2008 is
67 old enough to be supported anywhere that I care, that should be the requirement.
69 Second, the BcVm global variable was put into `bss`. This actually slightly
70 reduces the size of the executable from a massive code shrink, and it will stop
71 `bc` from allocating a large set of memory when `bc` starts.
73 Third, the default Karatsuba length was updated from 64 to 32 after making the
74 optimization changes below, since 32 is going to be better than 64 after the
77 Fourth, Spanish translations were added.
79 Fifth, the interpreter received a speedup to make performance on non-math-heavy
80 scripts more competitive with GNU `bc`. While improvements did, in fact, get it
81 much closer (see the [benchmarks][19]), it isn't quite there.
83 There were several things done to speed up the interpreter:
85 First, several small inefficiencies were removed. These inefficiencies included
86 calling the function `bc_vec_pop(v)` twice instead of calling
87 `bc_vec_npop(v, 2)`. They also included an extra function call for checking the
88 size of the stack and checking the size of the stack more than once on several
91 Second, since the current `bc` function is the one that stores constants and
92 strings, the program caches pointers to the current function's vectors of
93 constants and strings to prevent needing to grab the current function in order
94 to grab a constant or a string.
96 Third, `bc` tries to reuse `BcNum`'s (the internal representation of
97 arbitary-precision numbers). If a `BcNum` has the default capacity of
98 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` (32 on 64-bit and 16 on 32-bit) when it is freed, it is added
99 to a list of available `BcNum`'s. And then, when a `BcNum` is allocated with a
100 capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` and any `BcNum`'s exist on the list of reusable
101 ones, one of those ones is grabbed instead.
103 In order to support these changes, the `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` was changed. It used to
104 be 16 bytes on all systems, but it was changed to more closely align with the
105 minimum allocation size on Linux, which is either 32 bytes (64-bit musl), 24
106 bytes (64-bit glibc), 16 bytes (32-bit musl), or 12 bytes (32-bit glibc). Since
107 these are the minimum allocation sizes, these are the sizes that would be
108 allocated anyway, making it worth it to just use the whole space, so the value
109 of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` on 64-bit systems was changed to 32 bytes.
111 On top of that, at least on 64-bit, `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` supports numbers with
112 either 72 integer digits or 45 integer digits and 27 fractional digits. This
113 should be more than enough for most cases since `bc`'s default `scale` values
114 are 0 or 20, meaning that, by default, it has at most 20 fractional digits. And
115 45 integer digits are *a lot*; it's enough to calculate the amount of mass in
116 the Milky Way galaxy in kilograms. Also, 72 digits is enough to calculate the
117 diameter of the universe in Planck lengths.
119 (For 32-bit, these numbers are either 32 integer digits or 12 integer digits and
120 20 fractional digits. These are also quite big, and going much bigger on a
121 32-bit system seems a little pointless since 12 digits in just under a trillion
122 and 20 fractional digits is still enough for about any use since `10^-20` light
123 years is just under a millimeter.)
125 All of this together means that for ordinary uses, and even uses in scientific
126 work, the default number size will be all that is needed, which means that
127 nearly all, if not all, numbers will be reused, relieving pressure on the system
130 I did several experiments to find the changes that had the most impact,
131 especially with regard to reusing `BcNum`'s. One was putting `BcNum`'s into
132 buckets according to their capacity in powers of 2 up to 512. That performed
133 worse than `bc` did in `2.7.2`. Another was putting any `BcNum` on the reuse
134 list that had a capacity of `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE * 2` and reusing them for `BcNum`'s
135 that requested `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`. This did reduce the amount of time spent, but
136 it also spent a lot of time in the system allocator for an unknown reason. (When
137 using `strace`, a bunch more `brk` calls showed up.) Just reusing `BcNum`'s that
138 had exactly `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` capacity spent the smallest amount of time in both
139 user and system time. This makes sense, especially with the changes to make
140 `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE` bigger on 64-bit systems, since the vast majority of numbers
141 will only ever use numbers with a size less than or equal to `BC_NUM_DEF_SIZE`.
143 Last of all, `bc`'s signal handling underwent a complete redesign. (This is the
144 reason that this version is `3.0.0` and not `2.8.0`.) The change was to move
145 from a polling approach to signal handling to an interrupt-based approach.
147 Previously, every single loop condition had a check for signals. I suspect that
148 this could be expensive when in tight loops.
150 Now, the signal handler just uses `longjmp()` (actually `siglongjmp()`) to start
151 an unwinding of the stack until it is stopped or the stack is unwound to
152 `main()`, which just returns. If `bc` is currently executing code that cannot be
153 safely interrupted (according to POSIX), then signals are "locked." The signal
154 handler checks if the lock is taken, and if it is, it just sets the status to
155 indicate that a signal arrived. Later, when the signal lock is released, the
156 status is checked to see if a signal came in. If so, the stack unwinding starts.
158 This design eliminates polling in favor of maintaining a stack of `jmp_buf`'s.
159 This has its own performance implications, but it gives better interaction. And
160 the cost of pushing and popping a `jmp_buf` in a function is paid at most twice.
161 Most functions do not pay that price, and most of the rest only pay it once.
162 (There are only some 3 functions in `bc` that push and pop a `jmp_buf` twice.)
164 As a side effect of this change, I had to eliminate the use of `stdio.h` in `bc`
165 because `stdio` does not play nice with signals and `longjmp()`. I implemented
166 custom I/O buffer code that takes a fraction of the size. This means that static
167 builds will be smaller, but non-static builds will be bigger, though they will
168 have less linking time.
170 This change is also good because my history implementation was already bypassing
171 `stdio` for good reasons, and unifying the architecture was a win.
173 Another reason for this change is that my `bc` should *always* behave correctly
174 in the presence of signals like `SIGINT`, `SIGTERM`, and `SIGQUIT`. With the
175 addition of my own I/O buffering, I needed to also make sure that the buffers
176 were correctly flushed even when such signals happened.
178 For this reason, I **removed the option to build without signal support**.
180 As a nice side effect of this change, the error handling code could be changed
181 to take advantage of the stack unwinding that signals used. This means that
182 signals and error handling use the same code paths, which means that the stack
183 unwinding is well-tested. (Errors are tested heavily in the test suite.)
185 It also means that functions do not need to return a status code that
186 ***every*** caller needs to check. This eliminated over 100 branches that simply
187 checked return codes and then passed that return code up the stack if necessary.
188 The code bloat savings from this is at least 1700 bytes on `x86_64`, *before*
189 taking into account the extra code from removing `stdio.h`.
193 This is a production release with one major bug fix.
195 The `length()` built-in function can take either a number or an array. If it
196 takes an array, it returns the length of the array. Arrays can be passed by
197 reference. The bug is that the `length()` function would not properly
198 dereference arrays that were references. This is a bug that affects all users.
200 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
204 This is a production release with fixes for new locales and fixes for compiler
209 This is a production release with a bug fix for Linux, new translations, and new
214 * Option parsing in `BC_ENV_ARGS` was broken on Linux in 2.6.1 because `glibc`'s
215 `getopt_long()` is broken. To get around that, and to support long options on
216 every platform, an adapted version of [`optparse`][17] was added. Now, `bc`
217 does not even use `getopt()`.
218 * Parsing `BC_ENV_ARGS` with quotes now works. It isn't the smartest, but it
219 does the job if there are spaces in file names.
221 The following new languages are supported:
229 All of these translations were generated using [DeepL][18], so improvements are
232 There is only one new feature: **`bc` now has a built-in pseudo-random number
235 The PRNG is seeded, making it useful for applications where
236 `/dev/urandom` does not work because output needs to be reproducible. However,
237 it also uses `/dev/urandom` to seed itself by default, so it will start with a
238 good seed by default.
240 It also outputs 32 bits on 32-bit platforms and 64 bits on 64-bit platforms, far
241 better than the 15 bits of C's `rand()` and `bash`'s `$RANDOM`.
243 In addition, the PRNG can take a bound, and when it gets a bound, it
244 automatically adjusts to remove bias. It can also generate numbers of arbitrary
245 size. (As of the time of release, the largest pseudo-random number generated by
246 this `bc` was generated with a bound of `2^(2^20)`.)
248 ***IMPORTANT: read the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] to find out
249 exactly what guarantees the PRNG provides. The underlying implementation is not
250 guaranteed to stay the same, but the guarantees that it provides are guaranteed
251 to stay the same regardless of the implementation.***
253 On top of that, four functions were added to `bc`'s [extended math library][16]
254 to make using the PRNG easier:
256 * `frand(p)`: Generates a number between `[0,1)` to `p` decimal places.
257 * `ifrand(i, p)`: Generates an integer with bound `i` and adds it to `frand(p)`.
258 * `srand(x)`: Randomizes the sign of `x`. In other words, it flips the sign of
259 `x` with probability `0.5`.
260 * `brand()`: Returns a random boolean value (either `0` or `1`).
264 This is a production release with a bug fix for FreeBSD.
266 The bug was that when `bc` was built without long options, it would give a fatal
267 error on every run. This was caused by a mishandling of `optind`.
271 This release is a production release ***with no bugfixes***. If you do not want
272 to upgrade, you don't have to.
274 No source code changed; the only thing that changed was `lib2.bc`.
276 This release adds one function to the [extended math library][16]: `p(x, y)`,
277 which calculates `x` to the power of `y`, whether or not `y` is an integer. (The
278 `^` operator can only accept integer powers.)
280 This release also includes a couple of small tweaks to the [extended math
281 library][16], mostly to fix returning numbers with too high of `scale`.
285 This release is a production release which addresses inconsistencies in the
286 Portuguese locales. No `bc` code was changed.
288 The issues were that the ISO files used different naming, and also that the
289 files that should have been symlinks were not. I did not catch that because
290 GitHub rendered them the exact same way.
294 This release is a production release.
296 No code was changed, but the build system was changed to allow `CFLAGS` to be
297 given to `CC`, like this:
300 CC="gcc -O3 -march=native" ./configure.sh
303 If this happens, the flags are automatically put into `CFLAGS`, and the compiler
304 is set appropriately. In the example above this means that `CC` will be "gcc"
305 and `CFLAGS` will be "-O3 -march=native".
307 This behavior was added to conform to GNU autotools practices.
311 This is a production release which addresses portability concerns discovered
312 in the `bc` build system. No `bc` code was changed.
314 * Support for Solaris SPARC and AIX were added.
315 * Minor documentations edits were performed.
316 * An option for `configure.sh` was added to disable long options if
317 `getopt_long()` is missing.
321 This is a production release with new translations. No code changed.
323 The translations were contributed by [bugcrazy][15], and they are for
324 Portuguese, both Portugal and Brazil locales.
328 This is a production release primarily aimed at improving `dc`.
330 * A couple of copy and paste errors in the [`dc` manual][10] were fixed.
331 * `dc` startup was optimized by making sure it didn't have to set up `bc`-only
333 * The `bc` `&&` and `||` operators were made available to `dc` through the `M`
334 and `m` commands, respectively.
335 * `dc` macros were changed to be tail call-optimized.
337 The last item, tail call optimization, means that if the last thing in a macro
338 is a call to another macro, then the old macro is popped before executing the
339 new macro. This change was made to stop `dc` from consuming more and more memory
340 as macros are executed in a loop.
342 The `q` and `Q` commands still respect the "hidden" macros by way of recording
343 how many macros were removed by tail call optimization.
347 This is a production release meant to fix warnings in the Gentoo `ebuild` by
348 making it possible to disable binary stripping. Other users do *not* need to
353 This is a production release. It fixes a bug that caused `-1000000000 < -1` to
354 return `0`. This only happened with negative numbers and only if the value on
355 the left was more negative by a certain amount. That said, this bug *is* a bad
356 bug, and needs to be fixed.
358 **ALL USERS SHOULD UPDATE `bc`**.
362 This is a production release with changes to the build system.
366 This release is a production release. It only has new features and performance
369 1. The performance of `sqrt(x)` was improved.
370 2. The new function `root(x, n)` was added to the extended math library to
371 calculate `n`th roots.
372 3. The new function `cbrt(x)` was added to the extended math library to
373 calculate cube roots.
377 This is a non-critical release; it just changes the build system, and in
380 1. Linked locale files were changed to link to their sources with a relative
382 2. A bug in `configure.sh` that caused long option parsing to fail under `bash`
387 This release is not a critical release.
389 1. A few codes were added to history.
390 2. Multiplication was optimized a bit more.
391 3. Addition and subtraction were both optimized a bit more.
395 This release contains a fix for the test suite made for Linux from Scratch: now
396 the test suite prints `pass` when a test is passed.
398 Other than that, there is no change in this release, so distros and other users
399 do not need to upgrade.
403 This release is a production release.
405 The following bugs were fixed:
407 1. A `dc` bug that caused stack mishandling was fixed.
408 2. A warning on OpenBSD was fixed.
409 3. Bugs in `ctrl+arrow` operations in history were fixed.
410 4. The ability to paste multiple lines in history was added.
411 5. A `bc` bug, mishandling of array arguments to functions, was fixed.
412 6. A crash caused by freeing the wrong pointer was fixed.
413 7. A `dc` bug where strings, in a rare case, were mishandled in parsing was
416 In addition, the following changes were made:
418 1. Division was slightly optimized.
419 2. An option was added to the build to disable printing of prompts.
420 3. The special case of empty arguments is now handled. This is to prevent
421 errors in scripts that end up passing empty arguments.
422 4. A harmless bug was fixed. This bug was that, with the pop instructions
423 (mostly) removed (see below), `bc` would leave extra values on its stack for
424 `void` functions and in a few other cases. These extra items would not
425 affect anything put on the stack and would not cause any sort of crash or
426 even buggy behavior, but they would cause `bc` to take more memory than it
429 On top of the above changes, the following optimizations were added:
431 1. The need for pop instructions in `bc` was removed.
432 2. Extra tests on every iteration of the interpreter loop were removed.
433 3. Updating function and code pointers on every iteration of the interpreter
434 loop was changed to only updating them when necessary.
435 4. Extra assignments to pointers were removed.
437 Altogether, these changes sped up the interpreter by around 2x.
439 ***NOTE***: This is the last release with new features because this `bc` is now
440 considered complete. From now on, only bug fixes and new translations will be
445 This is a production, bug-fix release.
447 Two bugs were fixed in this release:
449 1. A rare and subtle signal handling bug was fixed.
450 2. A misbehavior on `0` to a negative power was fixed.
452 The last bug bears some mentioning.
454 When I originally wrote power, I did not thoroughly check its error cases;
455 instead, I had it check if the first number was `0` and then if so, just return
456 `0`. However, `0` to a negative power means that `1` will be divided by `0`,
459 I caught this, but only after I stopped being cocky. You see, sometime later, I
460 had noticed that GNU `bc` returned an error, correctly, but I thought it was
461 wrong simply because that's not what my `bc` did. I saw it again later and had a
462 double take. I checked for real, finally, and found out that my `bc` was wrong
465 That was bad on me. But the bug was easy to fix, so it is fixed now.
467 There are two other things in this release:
469 1. Subtraction was optimized by [Stefan Eßer][14].
470 2. Division was also optimized, also by Stefan Eßer.
474 This release contains a fix for a possible overflow in the signal handling. I
475 would be surprised if any users ran into it because it would only happen after 2
476 billion (`2^31-1`) `SIGINT`'s, but I saw it and had to fix it.
480 This release contains very few things that will apply to any users.
482 1. A slight bug in `dc`'s interactive mode was fixed.
483 2. A bug in the test suite that was only triggered on NetBSD was fixed.
484 3. **The `-P`/`--no-prompt` option** was added for users that do not want a
486 4. A `make check` target was added as an alias for `make test`.
487 5. `dc` got its own read prompt: `?> `.
491 This release is a production release.
493 This release is also a little different from previous releases. From here on
494 out, I do not plan on adding any more features to this `bc`; I believe that it
495 is complete. However, there may be bug fix releases in the future, if I or any
496 others manage to find bugs.
498 This release has only a few new features:
500 1. `atan2(y, x)` was added to the extended math library as both `a2(y, x)` and
502 2. Locales were fixed.
503 3. A **POSIX shell-compatible script was added as an alternative to compiling
504 `gen/strgen.c`** on a host machine. More details about making the choice
505 between the two can be found by running `./configure.sh --help` or reading
506 the [build manual][13].
507 4. Multiplication was optimized by using **diagonal multiplication**, rather
508 than straight brute force.
509 5. The `locale_install.sh` script was fixed.
510 6. `dc` was given the ability to **use the environment variable
512 7. `dc` was also given the ability to **use the `-i` or `--interactive`**
514 8. Printing the prompt was fixed so that it did not print when it shouldn't.
515 9. Signal handling was fixed.
516 10. **Handling of `SIGTERM` and `SIGQUIT`** was fixed.
517 11. The **built-in functions `maxibase()`, `maxobase()`, and `maxscale()`** (the
518 commands `T`, `U`, `V` in `dc`, respectively) were added to allow scripts to
519 query for the max allowable values of those globals.
520 12. Some incompatibilities with POSIX were fixed.
522 In addition, this release is `2.0.0` for a big reason: the internal format for
523 numbers changed. They used to be a `char` array. Now, they are an array of
524 larger integers, packing more decimal digits into each integer. This has
525 delivered ***HUGE*** performance improvements, especially for multiplication,
528 This `bc` should now be the fastest `bc` available, but I may be wrong.
532 This release contains a fix for a harmless bug (it is harmless in that it still
533 works, but it just copies extra data) in the [`locale_install.sh`][12] script.
537 This version contains fixes for the build on Arch Linux.
541 This release removes the use of `local` in shell scripts because it's not POSIX
542 shell-compatible, and also updates a man page that should have been updated a
543 long time ago but was missed.
547 This release contains some missing locale `*.msg` files.
551 This release contains a few bug fixes and new French translations.
555 This release contains a fix for a bug: use of uninitialized data. Such data was
556 only used when outputting an error message, but I am striving for perfection. As
557 Michelangelo said, "Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle."
561 This release contains fixes for OpenBSD.
565 This release contains bug fixes for some rare bugs.
569 This is a production release.
571 There have been several changes since `1.1.0`:
573 1. The build system had some changes.
574 2. Locale support has been added. (Patches welcome for translations.)
575 3. **The ability to turn `ibase`, `obase`, and `scale` into stacks** was added
576 with the `-g` command-line option. (See the [`bc` manual][9] for more
578 4. Support for compiling on Mac OSX out of the box was added.
579 5. The extended math library got `t(x)`, `ceil(x)`, and some aliases.
580 6. The extended math library also got `r2d(x)` (for converting from radians to
581 degrees) and `d2r(x)` (for converting from degrees to radians). This is to
582 allow using degrees with the standard library.
583 7. Both calculators now accept numbers in **scientific notation**. See the
584 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
585 8. Both calculators can **output in either scientific or engineering
586 notation**. See the [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for details.
587 9. Some inefficiencies were removed.
588 10. Some bugs were fixed.
589 11. Some bugs in the extended library were fixed.
590 12. Some defects from [Coverity Scan][11] were fixed.
594 This release contains a fix to the build system that allows it to build on older
599 This release contains a fix for a bug in the test suite where `bc` tests and
600 `dc` tests could not be run in parallel.
604 This release has a fix for a history bug; the down arrow did not work.
608 This release fixes a bug in the `1.1.0` build system. The source is exactly the
611 The bug that was fixed was a failure to install if no `EXECSUFFIX` was used.
615 This is a production release. However, many new features were added since `1.0`.
617 1. **The build system has been changed** to use a custom, POSIX
618 shell-compatible configure script ([`configure.sh`][6]) to generate a POSIX
619 make-compatible `Makefile`, which means that `bc` and `dc` now build out of
620 the box on any POSIX-compatible system.
621 2. Out-of-memory and output errors now cause the `bc` to report the error,
622 clean up, and die, rather than just reporting and trying to continue.
623 3. **Strings and constants are now garbage collected** when possible.
624 4. Signal handling and checking has been made more simple and more thorough.
625 5. `BcGlobals` was refactored into `BcVm` and `BcVm` was made global. Some
626 procedure names were changed to reflect its difference to everything else.
627 6. Addition got a speed improvement.
628 7. Some common code for addition and multiplication was refactored into its own
630 8. A bug was removed where `dc` could have been selected, but the internal
631 `#define` that returned `true` for a query about `dc` would not have
633 9. Useless calls to `bc_num_zero()` were removed.
634 10. **History support was added.** The history support is based off of a
635 [UTF-8 aware fork][7] of [`linenoise`][8], which has been customized with
636 `bc`'s own data structures and signal handling.
637 11. Generating C source from the math library now removes tabs from the library,
638 shrinking the size of the executable.
639 12. The math library was shrunk.
640 13. Error handling and reporting was improved.
641 14. Reallocations were reduced by giving access to the request size for each
643 15. **`abs()` (`b` command for `dc`) was added as a builtin.**
644 16. Both calculators were tested on FreeBSD.
645 17. Many obscure parse bugs were fixed.
646 18. Markdown and man page manuals were added, and the man pages are installed by
648 19. Executable size was reduced, though the added features probably made the
649 executable end up bigger.
650 20. **GNU-style array references were added as a supported feature.**
651 21. Allocations were reduced.
652 22. **New operators were added**: `$` (`$` for `dc`), `@` (`@` for `dc`), `@=`,
653 `<<` (`H` for `dc`), `<<=`, `>>` (`h` for `dc`), and `>>=`. See the
654 [`bc` manual][9] and the [`dc` manual][10] for more details.
655 23. **An extended math library was added.** This library contains code that
656 makes it so I can replace my desktop calculator with this `bc`. See the
657 [`bc` manual][3] for more details.
658 24. Support for all capital letters as numbers was added.
659 25. **Support for GNU-style void functions was added.**
660 26. A bug fix for improper handling of function parameters was added.
661 27. Precedence for the or (`||`) operator was changed to match GNU `bc`.
662 28. `dc` was given an explicit negation command.
663 29. `dc` was changed to be able to handle strings in arrays.
665 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 3
667 This release is the eighth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
668 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
669 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
671 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 2
673 This release is the seventh release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
674 release candidate meant as a general release candidate. The new code has not
675 been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
677 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 5
679 This release is the sixth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fifth
680 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
681 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
683 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 4
685 This release is the fifth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the fourth
686 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
687 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
689 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 3
691 This release is the fourth release candidate for 1.1, though it is the third
692 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
693 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
695 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 2
697 This release is the third release candidate for 1.1, though it is the second
698 release candidate meant specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new
699 code has not been tested as thoroughly as it should for release.
701 ## 1.1 FreeBSD Beta 1
703 This release is the second release candidate for 1.1, though it is meant
704 specifically to test if `bc` works on FreeBSD. The new code has not been tested as
705 thoroughly as it should for release.
707 ## 1.1 Release Candidate 1
709 This is the first release candidate for 1.1. The new code has not been tested as
710 thoroughly as it should for release.
714 This is the first non-beta release. `bc` is ready for production use.
716 As such, a lot has changed since 0.5.
718 1. `dc` has been added. It has been tested even more thoroughly than `bc` was
719 for `0.5`. It does not have the `!` command, and for security reasons, it
720 never will, so it is complete.
721 2. `bc` has been more thoroughly tested. An entire section of the test suite
722 (for both programs) has been added to test for errors.
723 3. A prompt (`>>> `) has been added for interactive mode, making it easier to
724 see inputs and outputs.
725 4. Interrupt handling has been improved, including elimination of race
726 conditions (as much as possible).
727 5. MinGW and [Windows Subsystem for Linux][1] support has been added (see
728 [xstatic][2] for binaries).
729 6. Memory leaks and errors have been eliminated (as far as ASan and Valgrind
731 7. Crashes have been eliminated (as far as [afl][3] can tell).
732 8. Karatsuba multiplication was added (and thoroughly) tested, speeding up
733 multiplication and power by orders of magnitude.
734 9. Performance was further enhanced by using a "divmod" function to reduce
735 redundant divisions and by removing superfluous `memset()` calls.
736 10. To switch between Karatsuba and `O(n^2)` multiplication, the config variable
737 `BC_NUM_KARATSUBA_LEN` was added. It is set to a sane default, but the
738 optimal number can be found with [`karatsuba.py`][4] (requires Python 3)
739 and then configured through `make`.
740 11. The random math test generator script was changed to Python 3 and improved.
741 `bc` and `dc` have together been run through 30+ million random tests.
742 12. All known math bugs have been fixed, including out of control memory
743 allocations in `sine` and `cosine` (that was actually a parse bug), certain
744 cases of infinite loop on square root, and slight inaccuracies (as much as
745 possible; see the [README][5]) in transcendental functions.
746 13. Parsing has been fixed as much as possible.
747 14. Test coverage was improved to 94.8%. The only paths not covered are ones
748 that happen when `malloc()` or `realloc()` fails.
749 15. An extension to get the length of an array was added.
750 16. The boolean not (`!`) had its precedence change to match negation.
751 17. Data input was hardened.
752 18. `bc` was made fully compliant with POSIX when the `-s` flag is used or
753 `POSIXLY_CORRECT` is defined.
754 19. Error handling was improved.
755 20. `bc` now checks that files it is given are not directories.
757 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 7
759 This is the seventh release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0
762 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 6
764 This is the sixth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
767 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 5
769 This is the fifth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
772 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 4
774 This is the fourth release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
777 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 3
779 This is the third release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
782 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 2
784 This is the second release candidate for 1.0. It fixes a few bugs in 1.0 Release
787 ## 1.0 Release Candidate 1
789 This is the first Release Candidate for 1.0. `bc` is complete, with `dc`, but it
794 This beta release completes more features, but it is still not complete nor
795 tested as thoroughly as necessary.
799 This beta release fixes a few bugs in 0.4.
803 This is a beta release. It does not have the complete set of features, and it is
804 not thoroughly tested.
806 [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
807 [2]: https://pkg.musl.cc/bc/
808 [3]: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/
812 [7]: https://github.com/rain-1/linenoise-mob
813 [8]: https://github.com/antirez/linenoise
814 [9]: ./manuals/bc.1.ronn
815 [10]: ./manuals/dc.1.ronn
816 [11]: https://scan.coverity.com/projects/gavinhoward-bc
817 [12]: ./locale_install.sh
818 [13]: ./manuals/build.md
819 [14]: https://github.com/stesser
820 [15]: https://github.com/bugcrazy
821 [16]: ./manuals/bc.1.ronn#extended-library
822 [17]: https://github.com/skeeto/optparse
823 [18]: https://www.deepl.com/translator
824 [19]: ./manuals/benchmarks.md