merged tcl 8.1 branch back into the main trunk

1 files changed, 576 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/changes b/changes
index e46d87f..7ee8d72 100644
--- a/changes
+++ b/changes
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Recent user-visible changes to Tcl:
 
-RCS: @(#) $Id: changes,v 1.42 1999/04/15 22:40:33 stanton Exp $
+RCS: @(#) $Id: changes,v 1.43 1999/04/16 00:46:29 stanton Exp $
 
 1. No more [command1] [command2] construct for grouping multiple
 commands on a single command line.
@@ -2547,7 +2547,7 @@ changes are to expressions and lists.
       incorrect programs that took advantage of behavior of the old
       implementation that was not documented in the man pages.
 Other changes to Tcl scripts are discussed in the web page at
-http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/compiler.html. (BL)
+http://www.scriptics.com/doc/compiler.html. (BL)
 *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
 
 10/21/96 (new feature) In earlier versions of Tcl, strings were used as a
@@ -3115,7 +3115,7 @@ activity.  A refcount bug triggered a panic in Tcl_ListObjAppendElement. (BW)
 
 7/8/97 (bug fix) Relaxed the pattern matching on http_get so you do not
 need a trailing path component.  You can now get away with just
-http_get sunscript.sun.com					(BW)
+http_get www.scriptics.com					(BW)
 
 7/9/97 (bug fix) Creating anonymous interpreters no longer smashes existing
 commands with names similar to the generated name. Previously creating an
@@ -3655,7 +3655,7 @@ to update them to n32 for them to work with Tcl.  (RJ)
 pathnames it searched for the initialization script.  tclInitScript.h
 was incorrectly adding the parent of tcl_library to tcl_pkgPath.  This
 logic was moved into init.tcl, and the initialization of auto_path was
-documented. Thanks to Donald Porter and Tom Silva for related
+documented.  Thanks to Donald Porter and Tom Silva for related
 patches. (BW)
 
 10/29/98 (bug fix) Fixed Tcl_NotifyChannel to use Tcl_Preserve instead
@@ -3668,18 +3668,18 @@ command. (BW)
 package requires and packages split among scripts and binary files.
 Also fixed ommision of global for errorInfo in tcl_findLibrary. (BW)
 
-11/08/98 (bug fix) Fixed the resource command to always detect the
-case where a file is opened a second time with the same permissions.
-IM claims that this will always cause the same FileRef to be returned,
-but in MacOS 8.1+, this is no longer the case, so we have to test for
-this equality explicitly. (JI)
+11/08/98 (bug fix) Fixed the resource command to always detect
+the case where a file is opened a second time with the same
+permissions.  IM claims that this will always cause the same
+FileRef to be returned, but in MacOS 8.1+, this is no longer the case,
+so we have to test for this explicitly. (JI)
 
 11/10/98 (feature change) When compiling with Metrowerk's MSL, use the
 exit function from MSL rather than ExitToShell.  This allows MSL to
 clean up its temporary files. Thanks to Vince Darley for this
 improvement. (JI)
 
------------------ Released 8.0.4, 11/19/98 -----------------------
+----------------- Released 8.0.4, 11/19/98 -------------------------
 
 11/20/98 (bug fix) Handle possible NULL return in TclGetStdFiles. (RJ)
 
@@ -3741,4 +3741,569 @@ extension" so that it splits at the last period.  Now the extension of
 a file like "foo..o" is ".o" instead of "..o" as in previous versions. 
 *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
 
------------------ Released 8.0.5, 3/9/99 -----------------------
+----------------- Released 8.0.5, 3/9/99 -------------------------
+
+======== Changes for 8.0 go above this line ========
+======== Changes for 8.1 go below this line ========
+
+6/18/97 (new feature) Tcl now supports international character sets:
+    - All C APIs now accept UTF-8 strings instead of iso8859-1 strings,
+      wherever you see "char *", unless explicitly noted otherwise.
+    - All Tcl strings represented in UTF-8, which is a convenient
+      multi-byte encoding of Unicode.  Variable names, procedure names,
+      and all other values in Tcl may include arbitrary Unicode characters.
+      For example, the Tcl command "string length" returns how many
+      Unicode characters are in the argument string.
+    - For Java compatibility, embedded null bytes in C strings are
+      represented as \xC080 in UTF-8 strings, but the null byte at the end
+      of a UTF-8 string remains \0.  Thus Tcl strings once again do not
+      contain null bytes, except for termination bytes.
+    - For Java compatibility, "\uXXXX" is used in Tcl to enter a Unicode
+      character.  "\u0000" through "\uffff" are acceptable Unicode 
+      characters.  
+    - "\xXX" is used to enter a small Unicode character (between 0 and 255)
+      in Tcl.
+    - Tcl automatically translates between UTF-8 and the normal encoding for
+      the platform during interactions with the system.
+    - The fconfigure command now supports a -encoding option for specifying
+      the encoding of an open file or socket.  Tcl will automatically
+      translate between the specified encoding and UTF-8 during I/O. 
+      See the directory library/encoding to find out what encodings are
+      supported (eventually there will be an "encoding" command that
+      makes this information more accessible).
+    - There are several new C APIs that support UTF-8 and various encodings.
+      See Utf.3 for procedures that translate between Unicode and UTF-8
+      and manipulate UTF-8 strings. See Encoding.3 for procedures that
+      create new encodings and translate between encodings.  See
+      ToUpper.3 for procedures that perform case conversions on UTF-8
+      strings.
+
+9/18/97 (enhancement) Literal objects are now shared by the ByteCode
+structures created when compiled different scripts. This saves up to 45%
+of the total memory needed for all literals. (BL)
+
+9/24/97 (bug fixes) Fixed Tcl_ParseCommand parsing of backslash-newline
+sequences at start of command words. Suppressed Tcl_EvalDirect error logging
+if non-TCL_OK result wasn't an error. (BL)
+
+10/17/97 (feature enhancement) "~username" now refers to the users' home
+directory on Windows (previously always returned failure). (CCS)
+
+10/20/97 (implementation change) The Tcl parser has been completely rewritten
+to make it more modular.  It can now be used to parse a script without actually
+executing it.  The APIs for the new parser are not correctly exported, but
+they will eventually be exported and augmented with Tcl commands so that
+Tcl scripts can parse other Tcl scripts. (JO)
+
+10/21/97 (API change) Added "flags" argument to Tcl_EvalObj, removed
+Tcl_GlobalEvalObj procedure.  Added new procedures Tcl_Eval2 and
+Tcl_EvalObjv. (JO)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+10/22/97 (API change) Renamed Tcl_ObjSetVar2 and Tcl_ObjGetVar2 to
+Tcl_SetObjVar2 and Tcl_GetObjVar2 (for consistency with other C APIs)
+and changed the name arguments to be strings instead of objects.  (JO)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+10/27/97 (enhancement) Bytecode compiler rewritten to use the new Tcl
+parser. (BL)
+
+11/3/97 (New routines) Added Tcl_AppendObjToObj, which appends the
+string rep of one Tcl_Obj to another. Added Tcl_GetIndexFromObjStruct,
+which is similar to Tcl_GetIndexFromObj, except that you can give an
+offset between strings. This allows Tcl_GetIndexFromObjStruct to be
+called with a table of records which have strings in them. (SRP)
+
+12/4/97 (enhancement) New Tcl expression parser added. Added new procedure
+Tcl_ParseExpr and new token types TCL_TOKEN_SUB_EXPR and
+TCL_TOKEN_OPERATOR. Expression compiler is reimplemented to use this
+parser. (BL)
+
+12/9/97 (bug fix) Tcl_EvalObj() increments/decrements the refcount of the
+script object to prevent the object from deleting itself while in the
+middle of being evaluated. (CCS)
+
+12/9/97 (bug fix) Memory leak in Tcl_GetsObjCmd(). (CCS)
+
+12/11/97 (bug fix) Environment array leaked memory when compiled with
+Visual C++. (SS)
+
+12/11/97 (bug fix) File events and non-blocking I/O did not work on
+pipes under Windows.  Changed to use threads to achieve non-blocking
+behavior. (SS)
+
+12/18/97 (bug fixes) Fixed segfault in "namespace import"; importing a
+procedure that causes a cycle now returns an error. Modified "info procs",
+"info args", "info body", and "info default" to return information about
+imported procedures as well as procedures defined in a namespace. (BL)
+
+12/19/97 (enhancement) Added new Tcl_GetString() procedure that can be used
+in place of Tcl_GetStringFromObj() if the string representation's length
+isn't needed. (BL)
+
+12/18/97 (bug fix) In the opt argument parsing package: if the description 
+had only flags, the "too many arguments" case was not detected. The default
+value was not used for the special "args" ending argument. (DL)
+
+1/7/98 (clean up) Moved everything not absolutly necessary out of init.tcl
+procs now in auto.tcl and package.tcl can be autoloaded if needed. (DL)
+
+1/7/98 (enhancement) tcltest made at install time will search for it's
+init.tcl where it is, even when using virtual path compilation. (DL)
+
+1/8/98 (os bug workaround) when needed, using a replacement for memcmp so 
+string compare "char with high bit set" "char w/o high bit set" returns
+the expected value on all platforms. (DL)
+
+1/8/98 (unix portability/configure) building from .../unix/targetName/ 
+subdirectories and simply using "../configure" should now work fine. (DL)
+
+1/14/98 (enhancement) Added new regular expression package that
+supports AREs, EREs, and BREs.  The new package includes new escape
+characters, meta-syntax, and character classes inside brackets.
+Regexps involving backslashes may behave differently.  (MH)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+1/16/98 (os workaround) Under windows, "file volume" was causing chatter
+and/or several seconds of hanging when querying empty floppy drives.
+Changed implementation to call an empirically-derived function that doesn't
+cause this. (CCS)
+
+1/16/98 (enhancement) Converted regular expressions to a Tcl_Obj type so
+their compiled form gets cached automatically.  Reduced NSUBEXP from 100
+to 20. (BW)
+
+1/16/98 (documentation) Change unclear documentation and comments for
+functions like Tcl_TranslateFileName() and Tcl_ExternalToUtfDString().  Now
+it explicitly says they take an uninitialized or free DString.  A DString
+that is "empty" or "not holding anything" could have been interpreted as one
+currently with a zero length, but with a large dynamically allocated buffer.
+(CCS)
+
+----------------- Released 8.1a1, 1/22/98 -----------------------
+
+1/28/98 (new feature) Added a "-direct" optional flag to pkg_mkIndex
+to generate direct loading package indexes (such those you need
+if you use namespaces and plan on using namespace import just after
+package require). pkg_mkIndex still has limitations regarding
+package dependencies but errors are now ignored and with -direct, correct
+package indexes can be generated even if there are dependencies as long 
+as the "package provide" are done early enough in the files. (DL)
+
+1/28/98 (enhancement) Performance tuning of regexp and regsub. (CCS)
+
+1/28/98 (bug fix) regexp and regsub with "-indices" returned the byte-offsets
+of the characters in the UTF-8 representation, not the character offsets
+themselves. (CCS)
+
+1/28/98 (bug fix) "clock format 0 -format %Z -gmt 1" would return the local
+timezone string instead of "GMT" on Solaris and Windows.
+
+1/28/98 (bug fix) Restore tty settings when closing serial device on Unix.
+This is good behavior when closing real serial devices, essential when
+closing the pseudo-device /dev/tty because the user's terminal settings
+would be left useless, in raw mode, when tcl quit. (CCS)
+
+1/28/98 (bug fix) Tcl_OpenCommandChannel() was modifying the contents of the
+argv array passed to it, causing problems for any caller that wanted to
+continue to use the argv array after calling Tcl_OpenCommandChannel(). (CCS)
+
+2/1/98 (bug fix) More bugs with %Z in format string argument to strftime():
+1. Borland always returned empty string.
+2. MSVC always returned the timezone string for the current time, not the
+   timezone string for the specified time.  
+3. With MSVC, "clock format 0 -format %Z -gmt 1" would return "GMT" the first
+   time it was called, but would return the current timezone string on all
+   subsequent calls. (CCS)
+
+2/1/98 (bug fix) "file stat" was broken on Windows.
+1. "file stat" of a root directory (local or network) or a relative path that
+   resolved to a root directory (c:. when in pwd was c:/) was returning error.
+2. "file stat" on a regular file (S_IFREG), the st_mode was sign extended to
+   a negative int if the platform-dependant type "mode_t" was declared as a
+   short instead of an unsigned short.
+3. "file stat" of a network directory, the st_dev was incorrectly reported
+   as the id of the last accessed local drive rather than the id of the
+   network drive. (CCS)
+
+2/1/98 (bug fix) "file attributes" of a relative path that resolved to a
+root directory was returning error. (CCS)
+
+2/1/98 (bug fix) Change error message when "file attribute" could not
+determine the attributes for a file.  Previously it would return different
+error messages on Unix vs.  Windows vs. Mac. (CCS)
+
+2/4/98 (bug fixes) Fixed several instances of bugs where the parser/compiler 
+would reach outside the range of allocated memory. Improved the array
+lookup algorithm in set compilation. (DL)
+
+2/5/98 (change) The TCL_PARSE_PART1 flag for Set/Get(Obj)Var2 C APIs is now
+deprecated and ignored. The part1 is always parsed when the part2 argument
+is NULL. This is to avoid a pattern of errors for extension writers converting
+from string based Tcl_SetVar() to new Tcl_SetObjVar2() and who could easily
+forget to provide the flag and thus get code working for normal variables 
+but not for array elements. The performance hit is minimal. A side effect
+of that change is that is is no longer possible to create scalar variables
+that can't be accessed by tcl scripts because of their invalid name 
+(ending with parenthesis). Likewise it is also parsed and checked to 
+ensure that you don't create array elements of array whose name is a valid 
+array element because they would not be accessible from scripts anyway. 
+Note: There is still duplicate array elements parsing code. (DL)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Sharing objects between interps, such as by "interp
+eval" or "send" could cause a crash later when dereferencing an interp
+that had been deleted, given code such as:
+	set a {set x y}
+	interp create foo
+	interp eval foo $a
+	interp delete foo
+	unset a
+Interp "foo" was gone, but "a" had a internal rep consisting of bytecodes
+containing a dangling pointer to "foo".  Unsetting "a" would attempt to
+return resources back to "foo", causing a crash as random memory was
+accessed.  The lesson is that that if an object's internal rep depends on
+an interp (or any other data structure) it must preserve that data in
+some fashion. (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (enhancement) The "interp" command was returning inconsistent error
+messages when the specified slave interp could not be found. (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Result codes like TCL_BREAK and TCL_CONTINUE were not
+propagating through the master/slave interp boundaries, such as "interp
+eval" and "interp alias".  TCL_OK, TCL_ERROR, and non-standard codes like
+teh integer 57 work.  There is still a question as to whether TCL_RETURN
+can/should propagate. (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) TclCompileScript() was derefering memory 1 byte before
+start of the string to compile, looking for ']'. (CCS,DL)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Tcl_Eval2() was derefering memory 1 byte before start
+of the string to eval, looking for ']'. (CCS,DL)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Compiling "set a(b" was running off end of string. (CCS,DL)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Windows initialization code was dereferencing
+uninitialized memory if TCL_LIBRARY environment didn't exist. (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Windows "registry" command was dereferencing
+uninitialized memory when constructing the $errorCode for a failed
+registry call. (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (enhancement) Eliminate the TCL_USE_TIMEZONE_VAR definition from
+configure.in, because it was the same information as the already existing
+HAVE_TM_ZONE definition.  The lack of HAVE_TM_ZONE is used to work around a
+Solaris and Windows bug where "clock format [clock sec] -format %Z -gmt 1" 
+produces the local timezone string instead of "GMT". (CCS)
+
+2/11/98 (bug fix) Memleaks and dereferencing of uninitialized memory in
+regexp if an error occurred while compiling a regular expression. (CCS).
+
+2/18/98 (new feature) Added mutexes and thread local storage in order
+to make Tcl thread safe.  For testing purposes, there is a testthread
+command that creates a new thread and an interpreter inside it.  See
+thread.test for examples, but this script-level interface is not fixed.
+Each thread has its own notifier instance to manage its own events,
+and threads can post messages to each other's message queue.
+This uses pthreads on UNIX, and native thread support on other platforms.
+You enable this by configuring with --enable-threads.  Note that at
+this time *Tk* is still not thread safe. Special thanks to
+Richard Hipp: his earlier implementation inspired this work. (BW, SS, JI)
+
+2/18/98 (hidden feature change) The way the env() array is shared among
+interpreters changed.  Updates to env used to trigger write traces in
+other interpreters.  This undocumented feature is no longer implemented.
+Instead, variable tracing is used to keep the C-level environ array in sync
+with the Tcl-level env array. This required adding TCL_TRACE_ARRAY support
+to Tcl_TraceVar2 so that array names works properly. (BW)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+2/18/98 (enhancement) Conditional compilation for unix systems (e.g.,
+IRIX, SCO) that use f_bsize instead of st_blksize to determine disk block
+size. (CCS)
+
+2/23/98 (bug fix) Fixed the emulation of polling selects in the threaded
+version of the Unix notifier.  The bug was showing up on a multiprocessor
+as starvation of the notifier thread. (BW)
+
+----------------- Released 8.1a2, Feb 23 1998 -----------------------
+
+9/22/98 (bug fix) Changed the value of TCL_TRACE_ARRAY so it no longer
+conflicts with the deprecated TCL_PARSE_PART1 flag.  This should
+improve portability of C code. (stanton)
+
+10/6/98 (bug fix) The compile procedure for "if" incorrectly attempted
+to match against the literal string "if", resulting in a stack
+overflow when "::if" was compiled.  It also would incorrectly accept
+"if" instead of "elsif" in later clauses.  (stanton)
+
+10/15/98 (new feature) Added a "totitle" subcommand to the "string"
+command to convert strings to capitalize the first character of a string
+and lowercase all of the other characters. (stanton)
+
+10/15/98 (bug fix) Changed regexp and string commands to properly
+handle case folding according to the Unicode character
+tables. (stanton)
+
+10/21/98 (new feature) Added an "encoding" command to facilitate
+translations of strings between different character encodings.  See
+the encoding.n manual entry for more details. (stanton)
+
+11/3/98 (bug fix) The regular expression character classification
+syntax now includes Unicode characters in the supported
+classes. (stanton)
+
+11/6/98 (bug fix) Variable traces were causing crashes when upvar
+variables went out of scope. [Bug: 796] (stanton)
+
+11/9/98 (bug fix) "format" now correctly handles multibyte characters
+in %s format strings. (stanton)
+
+11/10/98 (new feature) "regexp" now accepts three new switches
+("-line", "-lineanchor", and "-linestop") that control how regular
+expressions treat line breaks. See the regexp manual entry for more
+details. (stanton)
+
+11/17/98 (bug fix) "scan" now correctly handles Unicode
+characters. (stanton)
+
+11/17/98 (new feature) "scan" now supports XPG3 position specifiers
+and the "%n" conversion character.  See the "scan" manual entry for
+more details. (stanton)
+
+11/17/98 (bug fix) The Tcl memory allocator now returns 8-byte aligned
+chunks of memory which improves performance on Windows and avoids
+crashes on other platforms. [Bug: 834] (stanton)
+
+11/23/98 (bug fix) Applied various regular expression performance bug
+fixes supplied by Henry Spencer. (stanton)
+
+11/30/98 (bug fix) Fixed various thread related race conditions. [Bug:
+880 & 607] (stanton)
+
+11/30/98 (bug fix) Fixed a number of memory overflow and leak
+bugs. [Bug: 584] (stanton)
+
+12/1/98 (new feaure) Added support for Korean encodings. (stanton)
+
+12/1/98 (feature change) Changed the Tcl_EvalObjv interface to remove
+the string and length arguments.
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous alpha releases ***
+
+12/2/98 (bug fix) Fixed various bugs related to line feed
+translation. [Bug: 887] (stanton)
+
+12/4/98 (new feature) Added a message catalog facility to help with
+localizing Tcl scripts.  Thanks to Mark Harrison for contributing the
+initial implementation of the "msgcat" package. (stanton)
+
+12/7/98 (bug fix) The memory allocator was failing to update the
+block list for large memory blocks that were reallocated into a
+different address. [Bug: 933] (stanton)
+
+----------------- Released 8.1b1, Dec 10 1998 -----------------------
+
+12/22/98 (performance improvement) Improved the -command option of the
+lsort command to better use the object system for improved
+performance (about 5x speed up).  Thanks to Syd Polk for suppling the
+patch. [RFE: 726] (rjohnson)
+
+2/10/99 (bug fix) Restored the Tcl_ObjSetVar2/Tcl_ObjGetVar2
+interfaces from 8.0 and renamed the Tcl_GetObjVar2/Tcl_SetObjVar2
+interfaces to Tcl_GetVar2Ex and Tcl_SetVar2Ex.  This should provide
+better compatibility with 8.0. (stanton)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous alpha/beta releases ***
+
+2/10/99 (bug fix) Made the eval interfaces compatible with 8.0 by
+renaming Tcl_EvalObj to Tcl_EvalObjEx, renaming Tcl_Eval2 to
+Tcl_EvalEx and restoring Tcl_EvalObj and Tcl_GlobalEvalObj interfaces
+so they match Tcl 8.0. (stanton)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous alpha/beta releases ***
+
+2/25/99 (bug fix/new feature) On Windows, the channel drivers for
+consoles and serial ports now completely support file events. (redman)
+
+3/5/99 (bug fix) Integrated patches to fix various configure problems
+that affected HP-UX-11, 64-bit IRIX, Linux, and Solaris. (stanton)
+
+3/9/99 (bug fix) Integrated various AIX related patches to improve
+support for shared libraries. (stanton)
+
+3/9/99 (new feature) Added tcl_platform(user) to provide a portable
+way to get the name of the current user. (welch)
+
+3/9/99 (new feature) Integrated the stub library mechanism contributed
+by Jan Nijtmans, Paul Duffin, and Jean-Claude Wippler.  This feature
+should make it possible to write extensions that support multiple
+versions of Tcl simultaneously.  It also makes it possible to
+dynamically load extensions into statically linked interpreters.  This
+patch includes the following changes:
+      -	Added a Tcl_InitStubs() interface
+      -	Added Tcl_PkgProvideEx, Tcl_PkgRequireEx, Tcl_PkgPresentEx,
+      	and Tcl_PkgPresent.
+      - Added va_list versions of all VARARGS functions so they can be
+	invoked from wrapper functions.
+See the manual for more information. (stanton)
+
+
+3/10/99 (feature change) Replaced Tcl_AlertNotifier with
+Tcl_ThreadAlert since the Tcl_AlertNotifier function relied on passing
+internal data structures. (stanton)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous alpha/beta releases ***
+
+3/10/99 (new feature) Added a Tcl_GetVersion API to make it easier to
+check the Tcl version and patch level from C. (redman)
+
+3/14/99 (feature change) Tried to unify the TclpInitLibrary path
+routines to look in similar places from Windows to UNIX.  The new
+library search path is: TCL_LIBRARY, TCL_LIBRARY/../tcl8.1, relative
+to DLL (Windows Only) relative to installed executable, relative to
+develop executable, and relative to compiled-in in location (UNIX
+Only.)  This fix included:
+    - Defining a TclpFindExecutable
+    - Moving Tcl_FindExecutable to a common area in tclEncoding.c
+    - Modifying the TclpInitLibraryPath routines.
+(surles)
+
+3/14/99 (feature change) Added hooks for TclPro Wrapper to initialize
+the location of the encoding files and libraries.  This fix included:
+    - Adding the TclSetPerInitScript routine.
+    - Modifying the Tcl_Init routines to evaluate the non-NULL
+      pre-init script.
+    - Adding the Tcl_SetdefaultEncodingDir and Tcl_GetDefaultEncodingDir
+      routines.
+    - Modifying the TclpInitLibrary routines to append the default
+      encoding dir.
+(surles)
+
+3/14/99 (feature change) Test suite now uses "test" namespace to
+define the test procedure and other auxiliary procedures as well as
+global variables.
+    - Global array testConfige is now called ::test::testConfig.
+    - Global variable VERBOSE is now called ::test::verbose, and
+      ::test::verbose no longer works with numerical values.  We've
+      switched to a bitwise character string.  You can set
+      ::test::verbose by using the -verbose option on the Tcl command
+      line.
+    - Global variable TESTS is now called ::test::matchingTests, and
+      can be set on the Tcl command line via the -match option.
+    - There is now a ::test::skipTests variable (works similarly to
+      ::test::matchTests) that can be set on the Tcl command line via
+      the -match option.
+    - The test suite can now be run in any working directory.  When
+      you run "make test", the working directory is nolonger switched
+      to ../tests.
+(hirschl)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+--------------- Released 8.1b2, March 16, 1999 ----------------------
+
+3/18/99 (bug fix) Fixed missing/incorrect characters in shift-jis table
+(stanton)
+
+3/18/99 (feature change) The glob command ignores the
+FS_CASE_IS_PRESERVED bit on file systesm and always returns
+exactly what it gets from the system. (stanton)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+3/19/99 (new feature) Added support for --enable-64bit.  For now,
+this is only supported on Solaris 7 64bit (SunOS 5.7) using the Sun
+compiler. (redman)
+
+3/23/99 (bug fix) Fixed fileevents and gets on Windows consoles and
+serial devices so that non-blocking channels do not block on partial
+input lines.  (redman)
+
+3/23/99 (bug fix) Added a new Tcl_ServiceModeHook interface.
+This is used on Windows to avoid the various problems that people
+have been seeing where the system hangs when tclsh is running
+outside of the event loop. As part of this, renamed
+TclpAlertNotifier back to Tcl_AlertNotifier since it is public.
+(stanton)
+
+3/23/99 (feature change) Test suite now uses "tcltest" namespace to
+define the test procedure and other auxiliary procedures as well as
+global variables.  The previously chosen "test" namespace was thought
+to be too generic and likely to create conflits.
+(hirschl)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+3/24/99 (bug fix) Make sockets thread safe on Windows.
+(redman)
+
+3/24/99 (bug fix) Fix cases where expr would incorrect return
+a floating point value instead of an integer. (stanton)
+
+3/25/99 (bug fix) Added ASCII to big5 and gb2312 encodings.
+(stanton)
+
+3/25/99 (feature change) Changed so aliases are invoked at current
+scope in the target interpreter instead of at the global scope.  This
+was an incompatibility introduced in 8.1 that is being removed.
+(stanton)
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous beta releases ***
+
+3/26/99 (feature change) --nameble-shared is now the default and build
+Tcl as a shared library; specify --disable-shared to build a static Tcl
+library and shell.
+*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
+
+3/29/99 (bug fix)  Removed the stub functions and changed the stub
+macros to just use the name without params. Pass &tclStubs into the
+interp (don't use tclStubsPtr because of collisions with the stubs on
+Solaris). (redman)
+
+3/30/99 (bug fix) Loadable modules are now unloaded at the last
+possible moment during Tcl_Finalize to fix various exit-time crashes.
+(welch)
+
+3/30/99 (bug fix) Tcl no longer calls setlocale().  It looks at
+env(LANG) and env(LC_TYPE) instead.  (stanton)
+
+4/1/99 (bug fix) Fixed the Ultrix multiple symbol definition problem.
+Now, even Tcl includes a copy of the Tcl stub library. (redman)
+
+4/1/99 (bug fix) Internationalized the registry package.
+
+4/1/99 (bug fix) Changed the implemenation of Tcl_ConditionWait and
+Tcl_ConditionNotify on Windows.  The new algorithm eliminates a race
+condition and was suggested by Jim Davidson. (welch)
+
+4/2/99 (new apis)  Made various Unicode utility functions public.
+Tcl_UtfToUniCharDString, Tcl_UniCharToUtfDString, Tcl_UniCharLen,
+Tcl_UniCharNcmp, Tcl_UniCharIsAlnum, Tcl_UniCharIsAlpha,
+Tcl_UniCharIsDigit, Tcl_UniCharIsLower, Tcl_UniCharIsSpace,
+Tcl_UniCharIsUpper, Tcl_UniCharIsWordChar, Tcl_WinUtfToTChar,
+Tcl_WinTCharToUtf (stanton)
+
+4/2/99 (feature change) Add new DDE package and removed the Tk
+send command from the Windows version.  Changed DDE-based send
+code into "dde eval" command.  The DDE package can be loaded
+into tclsh, not just wish.  Windows only. (redman)
+
+4/5/99 (bug fix) Changed safe-tcl so that the encoding command
+is an alias that masks out the "encoding system" subcommand.
+(redman)
+
+4/5/99 (bug fix) Configure patches to improve support for
+OS/390 and BSD/OS 4.*. (stanton)
+
+4/5/99 (bug fix) Fixed crash in the clock command that occurred
+with negative time values in timezones east of GMT. (stanton)
+
+4/6/99 (bug fix) Moved the "array set" C level code into a common
+routine (TclArraySet).  The TclSetupEnv routine now uses this API to
+create an env array w/ no elements.  This fixes the bug caused when
+every environ varaible is removed, and the Tcl env variable is
+synched.  If no environ vars existed, the Tcl env var would never be
+created. (surles)
+
+4/6/99 (bug fix) Made the Env module I18N compliant. (surles)
+
+4/6/99 (bug fix) Changed the FindVariable routine to TclpFindVariable,
+that now does a case insensitive string comparison on Windows, and not
+on UNIX. (surles)
+
+
+--------------- Released 8.1b3, April 6, 1999 ----------------------
+