Tcl Source Code

	of a pipe before the child process, doesn't really fit the windows
	model. [BUG: 2460]

2000-09-07  Jeff Hobbs  <[email protected]>

	* doc/trace.n: minor doc cleanup

2000-09-06  André Pönitz <[email protected]>

	* doc/*.n: added or changed "SEE ALSO:" section

2000-09-06  Jeff Hobbs  <[email protected]>

	* win/tclWinLoad.c (TclpLoadFile): added special message for
	ERROR_PROC_NOT_FOUND exception in loading a dll.

	a Windows system.

2000-07-17  Mo DeJong  <[email protected]>

	* unix/tcl.m4 (SC_ENABLE_GCC): Don't set CC=gcc before running
	AC_PROG_CC if CC is already set.

2000-07-13  André Pönitz <[email protected]>

	* doc/lappend.n:
	* doc/lindex.n:
	* doc/linsert.n:
	* doc/list.n:
	* doc/llength.n:
	* doc/lrange.n:

	supported. Include instructions that indicate how to install Mingw and
	what URLs folks should use to download the supported version of Mingw.
	* win/configure: Regen.
	* win/configure.in: Error out if user tries to compile the Windows
	version of Tcl with Cygwin gcc. Users should compile with Mingw gcc
	instead.

2001-11-06  Andreas Kupries  <[email protected]> 

	* generic/tclIO.c (ReadChars): Fixed [Bug 478856] reported by Stuart
	Cassoff <[email protected]>. The bug caused loss of
	fileevents when [read]ing less data from the channel than buffered.
	Due to an empty input buffer the flag CHANNEL_NEED_MORE_DATA was set
	but never reset, causing the I/O system to wait for more data instead
	of using a timer to synthesize fileevents and to flush the pending

	and define HAVE_NO_LPFN_DECLS if not found.
	* win/tclWinSock.c: Define LPFN_* typedefs if HAVE_NO_LPFN_DECLS is
	defined. This fixes the build under Mingw and Cygwin, it was broken by
	the changes made on 2002-11-26.

2003-01-10  Vince Darley  <[email protected]>

	* generic/tclIOUtil.c: 
	* win/tclWinInt.h:
	* win/tclWinInit.c: fix to new WinTcl crash on exit with vfs,
	introduced on 2002-12-06. Encodings must be cleaned up after the
	filesystem.

	* win/makefile.vc: fix to minor VC++ 5.2 syntax problem

----------------- Released version 5.0 with Tk ------------------

39. 4/3/91 Removed change bars from manual entries, leaving only those
that came after version 3.3 was released.

40. 5/17/91 Changed tests to conform to Mary Ann May-Pumphrey's approach.
 
41. 5/23/91 Massive revision to Tcl parser to simplify the implementation
of string and floating-point support in expressions.  Newlines inside
[] are now treated as command separators rather than word separators
(this makes newline treatment consistent throughout Tcl).
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

42. 5/23/91 Massive rewrite of expression code to support floating-point

added "info script" option.

71. 8/20/91 Changed "file" command to take "option" argument as first
argument (before file name), for consistency with other Tcl commands.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

72. 8/20/91 Changed format of information in $errorInfo variable:
comments such as 
    ("while" body line 1)
are now on separate lines from commands being executed.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

73. 8/20/91 Changed Tcl_AppendResult so that it (eventually) frees
large buffers that it allocates.

TCL_DYNAMIC back to integer constants rather than procedure addresses.
This was needed because procedure addresses can have multiple values
under some dynamic loading systems (e.g. SunOS 4.1 and Windows).

6/8/95 (feature change) Modified interface to Tcl_Main to pass in the
address of the application-specific initialization procedure.
Tcl_AppInit is no longer hardwired into Tcl_Main.  This is needed
in order to make Tcl a shared library. 

6/8/95 (feature change) Modified Makefile so that the installed versions
of tclsh and libtcl.a have version number in them (e.g. tclsh7.4 and
libtcl7.4.a) and the library directory name also has an embedded version
number (e.g., /usr/local/lib/tcl7.4).  This should make it easier for
Tcl 7.4 to coexist with earlier versions.

1/23/96 (bug fix) Eliminated extremely long startup times under Windows '95.
The problem was a result of the option database initialization code that
concatenated $HOME with /.Xdefaults, resulting in a // in the middle of the
file name.  Under Windows '95, this is incorrectly interpreted as a UNC
path.  They delays came from the network timeouts needed to determine that
the file name was invalid.  Tcl_TranslateFileName now suppresses duplicate
slashes that aren't at the beginning of the file name. (SS)
				     
1/25/96 (bug fix) Changed exec and open to create children so they are
attached to the application's console if it exists. (SS)

1/31/96 (bug fix) Fixed command line parsing to handle embedded
spaces under Windows. (SS)

----------------- Released 7.5b1, 2/1/96 -----------------------

8/22/96 (new feature) Added a new memory allocator for the Macintosh
version of Tcl.  It's quite a bit faster than MetroWerk's version. (RJ)

8/26/96 (documentation update) Removed old change bars (for all changes
in Tcl 7.5 and earlier releases) from manual entries. (JO)

8/27/96 (enhancement) The exec and open commands behave better and work in 
more situations under Windows NT and Windows 95.  Documentation describes 
what is still lacking. (CS)

8/27/96 (enhancement) The Windows makefiles will now compile even if the
compiler is not in the path and/or the compiler's environment variables
have not been set up. (CS) 

8/27/96 (configuration improvement) The Windows resource files are 
automatically updated when the version/patch level changes.  The header file
now has a comment that reminds the user which other files must be manually
updated when the version/patch level changes. (CS)

8/28/96 (new feature) Added file manipulation features (copy, rename, delete,
mkdir) that are supported on all platforms. They are implemented as 
subcommands to the "file" command. See the documentation for the "file"
command for more information. (JH)

----------------- Released 7.6b1, 8/30/96 -----------------------

9/3/96 (bug fix) Simplified code so that standard channels are created
lazily, they are added to an interpreter lazily, and they are never added

10/2/96 (new feature) Improved the package loader:
    - Added new variable tcl_pkgPath, which holds the default
      directories under which packages are normally installed (each
      package goes in a separate subdirectory of a directory in
      $tcl_pkgPath).  These directories are included in auto_path by
      default.
    - Changed the package auto-loader to look for pkgIndex.tcl files 
      not only in the auto_path directories but also in their immediate
      children.  This should make it easier to install and uninstall
      packages (don't have to change auto_path or merge pkgIndex.tcl
      files). (JO)

10/3/96 (bug fix) Changed tclsh to look for tclshrc.tcl instead of
tclsh.rc on startup under Windows.  This is more consistent with wish and

of stat for current dir on c: drive.

1/10/97 (new feature) Added Tcl_GetIndexFromObj procedure for quick
lookups of keyword arguments. (JO)

1/12/97 (new feature) Serial IO channel drivers for Windows and Unix,
available by using Tcl open command to open pseudo-files like "com1:" or
"/dev/ttya".  New option to Tcl fconfigure command for serial files:  
"-mode baud,parity,data,stop" to specify baud rate, parity, data bits, and
stop bits.  Serial IO is not yet available on Mac.

1/16/97 (feature change) Restored the Tcl7.x "two level substitution
semantics" for expressions. Expressions not enclosed in braces are
implemented, in general, by calling the expr command procedure
(Tcl_ExprObjCmd) at runtime after the Tcl interpreter has already done a

2/4/97 (bug fix) Fixed bug in clock code that dealt with relative
dates.  Using the relative month code you could get an invalid date
because it jumped into a non-existant day.  (For example, Jan 31
to Feb 31.)  The code now will return the last valid day of the
month in these situations.  Thanks to Hume Smith for sending in
this bug fix.  (RJ)

2/10/97 (feature change) Eliminated Tcl_StringObjAppend and 
Tcl_StringObjAppendObj procedures, replaced them with Tcl_AppendToObj
and Tcl_AppendStringsToObj procedures.  Added new procedure
Tcl_SetObjLength. (JO)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with Tcl 8.0a2, but not with Tcl 7.6 ***

2/10/97 (new feature) Added Tcl_WrongNumArgs procedure for generating
error messages about incorrect number of arguments. (JO)

    - Command trace procedures would crash if they did a Tcl_EvalObj that
      reallocated the evaluation stack.
    - Break and continue commands did not reset the interpreter result.
    - The Tcl_ExprXXX routines, both string- or object-based, always
      modified the interpreter result even if there was no error.
    - The argument parsing procedure used by several compile procedures
      always treated "]" as end of a command: e.g., "set a ]" would fail.
    - Changed errorInfo traceback message for compilation errors from 
      "invoked from within" to "while compiling".
    - Problem initializing Tcl object managers during interpreter creation.
    - Added check and error message if formal parameter to a procedure is
      an array element. (BL)

6/23/97 (new feature) Added "registry" package to allow manipulation
of the Windows system registry.  See manual entry for details. (SS)

of libraries in child process. (DL)

7/10/97 (bug fixes/new feature) Cleanup in Tcl_MakeSafe. Less information
is leaked to safe interps. Error message fixes for interp sub commands.
Likewise changes in safealias.tcl; tcl_safeCreateInterp can now be called
without argument to generate the slave name (like in interp create). (DL)

7/10/97 (bug fixes) Bytecode compiler now generates more detailed 
command location information: subcommands as well as commands now have
location information. This means command trace procedures now get the
correct source string for each command in their command parameter. (BL)

7/22/97 (bug fixes) Performance improvement in Safe interpreters
handling. Added new mask value to (tclInt.h) Interp.flags record. (DL)

both the Mac and Windows platforms to use the new allocator instead of
malloc and free. (SS)

7/24/97 - 8/12/97 (bug fixes/change of features) Completely revamped safe
sourcing/loading (see safe.n) to hide pathnames, use virtual
paths tokens instead, improved security in several respects and made it
more tunable. Multi level interp loading can work too now. Package auto
loading now works in safe interps as long as the package directory is in 
the auto_path (no deep crawling allowed in safe interps). (DL)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous alpha and beta releases ***

7/24/97 (bug fixes) Made Tcl_SetVar* and Tcl_NewString* treat a NULL value
as an empty string. (This fixes hairy crash case where you would crash
because load command for other interps assumed presence of
errorInfo...). (DL)

destroyed if an error occurred when accessing them. In addition, the "info
vars" command lists uninitialized namespace variables, while the "info
exists" command returns 0 for them. (BL)

7/29/97 (feature change)  Changed the http package to use the ::http
namespace. http_get renamed to http::geturl, http_config renamed to
http::config, http_formatQuery renamed to http::formatQuery.
It now provides the 2.0 version of the package.  
The 1.0 version is still available with the old names.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with Tcl 8.0b2 but not with Tcl 7.6 ***

7/29/97 (bug fix, new feature) Tcl_Main now uses Tcl objects internally to
preserve NULLs in commands and command output. Added new API procedure
Tcl_RecordAndEvalObj that resembles Tcl_RecordAndEval but takes an object
containing a command. (BL)

modify it).  This makes the Tcl 8.0 behavior almost identical to 7.6
except that the default precision is 12 instead of 6. (JO)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

----------------- Released 8.0, 8/18/97 -----------------------

8/19/97 (bug fix) Minimal fix for glob -nocomplain bugs:
"glob -nocomplain unreadableDir/*" was generating an anonymous 
error. More in depth fixes will come with 8.1. (DL).

8/20/97 (bug fix) Removed check for FLT_MIN in binary command so
underflow conditions are handled by the compiler automatic
conversions. (SS)

8/20/97 (bug fixes) Fixed several compilation-related bugs:

9/4/97 (bug fix) Slave interps now inherit the maximum recursion limit
of their parent instead of starting back at the default. {nb: this still
does not prevent stack overflow by multi-interps recursion or aliasing} (DL)

9/11/97 (bug fix) An uninitialized variable in Tcl_WaitPid caused
pipes to fail to report eof properly under Windows. (SS)

9/12/97 (bug fix) "exec" was misidentifying some DOS executables as not 
executable. (CCS)

9/14/97 (bug fix) Was using the wrong structure in sizeof operation in
tclUnixChan.c. (JL)

9/15/97 (bug fix) Fixed notifier to break out of do-one-event loop if
Tcl_WaitForEvent returns 1, so that callers of Tcl_DoOneEvent will get

tests in socket.test that are not platform specific. (Thanks to Mark
Roseman for the pointer on the fix.)  (RJ)

9/18/97 (bug fix) Fixed bug -dictionary option of lsort that could
cause the compare function to run off the end of an array if the
number only contained 0's. (Thanks to Greg Couch for the report.) (RJ)

9/18/97 (bug fix) TclFinalizeEnvironment was not cleaning up 
properly. (DL, JI)

9/18/97 (bug fix) Fixed long-standing bug where an "array get" command
did not trigger traces on the array or its elements. (BL)

9/18/97 (bug fixes) Fixed compilation-related bugs:
    - Fixed errorInfo traceback information for toplevel coomands that

NULs in the joinString and in list elements after the 2nd one.
Now you can "join $list \0" for instance. (DL)

10/9/97 (bug fix) Under windows, if env(TMP) or env(TEMP) referred to a
non-existent directory, exec would fail when trying to create its temporary
files. (CCS)

10/9/97 (bug fix) Under mac and windows, "info hostname" would crash if 
sockets were installed but the hostname could not be determined anyhow.
Tcl_GetHostName() was returning NULL when it should have been returning 
an empty string. (CCS)

10/10/97 (bug fix) "file attribute /" returned error on windows. (CCS)

10/10/97 (bug fix) Fixed the auto_load procedure to handle procedures
defined in namespaces better.  Also fixed pgk_mkIndex so it sees procedures
defined in nested namespaces.  Index entries are still only made for

cause an error, which would cause the C code to attempt to close the
now deleted channel. Bumping the refcount assures that the channel sticks
around to be really closed in this case. (JL)

12/8/97 (bug fix) Need to protect the channel in a fileevent so that it
is not deleted before the fileevent handler returns. (CS, JL)

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)

1/15/98 (improvement) Moved common part of initScript in common file.
Moved windows specific initialization to init.tcl so you can initialize
Tcl in windows without having to call Tcl_Init which is now only
searching for init.tcl {back ported from 8.1}. (DL)

6/18/98 (bug fix) The Windows registry package had a bad bounds check
that could lead to a crash. (SS)

6/18/98 (bug fix) The foreach compile proc did not correctly handle
non-local variable references. (SS)

6/25/98 (new features) Added name resolution hooks to support [incr Tcl].
There are new internal Tcl_*Resolver* APIs to add, query and remove the hooks. 
With this changes it should be possible to dynamically load [incr Tcl]
as an extension. (MM)

7/1/97 (bug fix) The commands "info args, body, default, procs" did
not correctly handle imported procedures. (RJ)

7/6/98 (improvement) pkg_mkIndex now implements the "package require"

6/4/98 (enhancement) Added new internal routines to support inserting
and deleting from the stat, access, and open-file-channel mechanisms.
TclAccessInsertProc, TclStatInsertProc, & TclOpenFileChannelInsertProc
insert pointers to such routines; TclAccessDeleteProc, TclStatDeleteProc,
& TclOpenFileChannelDeleteProc delete pointers to such routines.  See
the file generic/tclIOUtils.c for more details. (SKS)
 
7/1/98 (enhancement) Added a new internal C variable
tclPreInitScript.  This is a pointer to a string that may hold an
initialization script; If this pointer is non-NULL it is evaluated in
Tcl_Init() prior to the built-in initialization script defined in the
file generic/tclInitScript.h.  (SKS)

7/6/98 (bug fix) Removed dead code in PlatformInitExitHandler so that

Windows, MYDLLNAME.DLL was sourced, and mydllname.dll loaded. (EMS)

10/5/98 (new feature) Created a new Tcl_Obj type, "procbody". This object's
internal representation holds a pointer to a Proc structure. Extended
TclCreateProc to take both strings and "procbody". (EMS)

10/13/98 (bug fix) The "info complete" command can now handle strings
with NULLs embedded.  Thanks to [email protected] 
for providing this fix. (RJ)

10/13/98 (bug fix) The "lsort -dictionary" command did not properly
handle some numbers starting with 0.  Thanks to Richard Hipp
<[email protected]> for submitting the fix to Scriptics. (RJ)

10/13/98 (bug fix) The function Tcl_SetListObj was creating an invalid

script.  [Bug id: 840] (RJ)

12/3/98 (bug fix) Windows NT creates sockets so they are inheritable
by default.  Fixed socket code so it turns off this bit right after
creation so sockets aren't kept open by exec'ed processes. [Bug: 892]
Thanks to Kevin Kenny for this fix.  (SS)

1/11/98 (bug fix)  On HP, "info sharedlibextension" was returning 
empty string on static apps.  It now always returns ".sl".  (RJ)

1/28/99 (configure change) Now support -pipe option on gcc.  (RJ)

2/2/99 (bug fix) Fixed initialization problem on Windows where no
searching for init.tcl would be performed if the registry keys were
missing.  (stanton)

socket.n manual entry for details. (stanton)

2/2/99 (bug fix) Deleting a renamed interp alias could result in a
panic. (stanton)

2/2/99 (feature change/bug fix) Changed the behavior of "file
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 -------------------------

======== 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

"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 ***

----------------- 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) 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.

2/1/98 (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}

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

in a duplicated Tcl_Obj. [Bug: 1975, 2047] (stanton)

5/3/99 (bug fix) Changed Tcl_ParseCommand to avoid modifying eval'ed
strings that are already null terminated.  [Bug: 1793] (stanton)

5/3/99 (new feature) Applied Jeff Hobbs's string patch which includes
the following changes:
    - added new subcommands: equal, repeat, map, is, replace 
    - added -length option to "string compare|equal"
    - added -nocase option to "string compare|equal|match"
    - string and list indices can be an integer or end?-integer?.
    - added optional first and last index args to string toupper, et al.
See the string.n manual entry for more details about the new string
features.  [Bug: 1845] (stanton)

interpreter. This set of changes should provide significant speed
improvements for many Tcl scripts.  [Bug: 1063] (stanton)

5/14/99 (bug fix) Durining initialization on Unix, Tcl now extracts the
encoding subfield from the LANG/LC_ALL environment variables in cases
where the locale is not found in the built-in locale table.  It also
attempts to initialize the locale subsystem so X11 is happy. [Bug: 1989]
(stanton) 

5/14/99 (bug fix) Applied the patch to fix 100-year and 400-year
boundaries in leap year code, from Isaac Hollander.  [Bug: 2066] (redman)

5/14/99 (bug fix) Fixed a crash caused by a failure to reset the result
before evaluating the test expression in an uncompiled for
statement. (stanton)

6/25/99 (new feature) Added initial implementation of new Tcl test
harness package.  Modified test files to use new tcltest package.
(jenn)

6/26/99 (new feature) Applied patch from Peter Hardie to add poke
command to dde and changed the dde package version number to
1.1. (redman) 

6/28/99 (bug fix) Applied patch from Peter Hardie to fix problem in
Tcl_GetIndexFromObj() when the key being passed is the empty string.
[Bug: 1738] (redman)

6/29/99 (new feature) Added options to tcltest package: -preservecore,
-limitconstraints, -help, -file, -notfile, and flags.  (jenn)

checked for fileevents.  Also added documentation for \\.\comX
notation for opening serial ports on Windows.  (redman)

7/21/99 (bug fix) Changed APIs in stub tables to use "unsigned long"
instead of the platform-specific "size_t", primarily after SunOS 4
users could no longer compile. (redman)

7/22/99 (bug fix) Fixed crashing during "array set a(b) {}". 
[Bug: 2427] (redman)

7/22/99 (bug fix) The install-sh script must be given execute
permissions prior to running.  [Bug: 2413] (redman)

7/22/99 (bug fix) Applied patch from Ulrich Ring to remove ANSI-style
prototypes in the code.  [Bug: 2391] (redman)

7/29/99 (bug fix) Applied patch to fix typo in .SH NAME line in
doc/Encoding.n [Bug: 2451].  Applied patch to avoid linking pack.n to
pack-old.n [Bug: 2469]. Patches from Don Porter. (redman)

7/29/99 (bug fix) Allow tcl to open CON and NUL, even for redirection
of std channels.  [Bug: 2393 2392 2209 2458] (redman)

7/30/99 (bug fix) Applied fixed Trf patch from Andreas Kupries. 
[Bug: 2386] (hobbs)

7/30/99 (bug fix) Fixed bug in info complete. [Bug: 2383 2466] (hobbs)

7/30/99 (bug fix) Applied patch to fix threading on Irix 6.5, patch
provided by James Dennett.  [Bug: 2450] (redman)

7/30/99 (bug fix) Fixed launching of 16bit applications on Win9x from
wish.  The command line was being primed with tclpip82.dll, but it was
ignored later. 

7/30/99 (bug fix) Added functions to stub table, patch provided by Jan
Nijtmans. [Bug: 2445] (hobbs)

8/1/99  (bug fix) Changed Windows socket driver to terminate threads
by sending a message to the window rather than calling
TerminateThread(), which seems to leak about 4k from the helper
thread's stack space. (redman)

--------------- Released 8.2b2, August 5, 1999 ----------------------

8/4/99 (bug fix) Applied patches supplied by Henry Spencer to greatly
enhance performance of certain classes of regular expressions. 
[Bug: 2440 2447] (stanton)

8/5/99 (doc change) Made it clear that tcl_pkgPath was not set for
Windows. [Bug: 2455] (hobbs)

8/5/99 (bug fix) Fixed reference to bytes that might not be null
terminated in tclLiteral.c. [Bug: 2496] (hobbs)

8/5/99 (bug fix) Fixed typo in http.tcl. [Bug: 2502] (hobbs)

8/9/99 (bug fix) Fixed test suite to handle larger integers
(64bit). Patch from Don Porter. (hobbs)

8/9/99 (documentation fix) Clarified Tcl_DecrRefCount docs 
[Bug: 1952]. Clarified array pattern docs [Bug: 1330]. Fixed clock docs
[Bug: 693]. Fixed formatting errors [Bug: 2188 2189]. Fixed doc error
in tclvars.n [Bug: 2042]. (hobbs)

8/9/99 (bug fix) Fixed path handling in auto_execok [Bug: 1276] (hobbs)

8/9/99 (internal api change) Removed the TclpMutexLock and TclpMutexUnlock

10/30/99 (bug fix) fixed Purify reported memory leaks in findexecutable
test command, TclpCreateProcess on Unix, in handling of C environ array,
and in testthread code.  No more known (reported) mem leaks for Tcl
built using gcc on Solaris 2.5.1.  Also none reported for Tcl on NT
(using Purify 6.0). (hobbs)

10/30/99 (bug fix) fixed improper bytecode handling of 
'eval {set array($unknownvar) 5}' (also for incr) (hobbs)

10/30/99 (bug fix) fixed event/io threading problems by making
triggerPipe non-blocking (nick kisserbeth)

10/30/99 (bug fix) fixed Tcl_AppendStringsToObjVA and Tcl_AppendResultVA
to only	iterates once over the va_list (avoiding non-portable memcpy).

2001-05-27 (new feature) updated to Unicode 3.1.0 data set (still using 16
bits for Tcl_UniChar though) (hobbs)

2001-05-30 (new feature)[TIP 15] Tcl_GetMathFuncInfo, Tcl_ListMathFuncs,
Tcl_InfoObjCmd, InfoFunctionsCmd APIs (fellows)

2001-06-08 (bug fix,feature enhancement)[219170,414936] all Tcl_Panic 
definitions brought into agreement (porter)

2001-06-12 (bug fix)[219232] regexp returned non-matching sub-pairs to have
index pair {-1 -1} (fellows)

2001-06-27 (bug fix)[217987] corrected backslash substitution of non-ASCII
characters.  (hobbs, riefenstahl)

2001-09-10 (performance enhancement)[TIP 53,451441] [proc foo args {}] now
compiles to 0 bytecodes (sofer)

2001-09-13 (new feature)[TIP 56] Tcl_EvalTokensStandard API (sofer)

2001-09-13 (new feature) Old ChangeLog entries => ChangeLog.1999 (hobbs)

2001-09-17 (new feature) compiling with TCL_COMPILE_DEBUG now required to 
enable all compile and execution tracing (sofer)
        *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

2001-09-19 (bug fix)[411825] made TclNeedSpace UTF-8 aware (fellows)

2001-09-19 (bug fix)[219166] overagressive compilation of "quoted" bodies of
[for], [foreach], [if], and [while] (sofer)

2002-07-28 (bug fix)[582522] alias fires exec traces (sofer)

2002-07-29 (bug fix)[578363] regexp (fellows,pvgoran)

2002-07-30 (bug fix)[584603] WriteChars infinite loop non-UTF-8 string (kupries)

2002-08-04 (new feature)[584051,580433,585105,582429][TIP 27] Tcl interfaces 
	are now fully CONST-ified.  Use the symbols USE_NON_CONST or
	USE_COMPAT_CONST to select interfaces with fewer changes.
        *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

2002-08-05 (bug fix)[589859] tcltest setup and cleanup scripts skipped when
	test body is skipped (porter)
	=> tcltest 2.2

2002-08-07 (bug fix)[587488] mem leak with USE_THREAD_ALLOC (sofer,sass)
	
2002-08-07 (feature enhancement)[584794,584650,472576] boolean values
	are no longer always re-parsed from string. (sofer)

Many internal bugs fixed.
Considerable cleanup of the test suite.

--- Released 8.4b2, August 9, 2002 --- See ChangeLog for details ---

=> tcltest 2.2.2

2003-02-01 (bug fix)[670042] corrected [info loaded {}] for static
packages in multiple interps.

2003-02-01 (bug fix)[675356] [clock clicks {}]; [clock clicks -] - syntax errs

2003-02-01 (bug fix)[656660] MT-safety for [clock format] 

2003-02-03 (bug fix)[651271] command rename traces get fully-qualified names
        *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

2003-02-07 (performance improvement) [glob] on Windows is 2.5 times faster

2003-02-07 (feature change) lack of Cygwin support indicated by config error

--- Released 8.4.5, November 20, 2003 --- See ChangeLog for details ---

2003-12-02 (bug fix)[851747] object sharing fix in [binary scan]

2003-12-09 (platform support)[852369] update errno usage for recent glibc

2003-12-12 (bug fix)[858937] fix for [file normalize ~nobody] 

2003-12-17 (bug fix)[839519] fixed two memory leaks (vasiljevic)

2004-01-09 (bug fix)[873311] fixed infinite loop in TclFinalizeFilesystem

2004-02-02 (bug fix)[405995] Tcl_Ungets buffer filling fix

2004-02-04 (bug fix)[833910] tcltest command line option parsing error
=> tcltest 2.4.5

2004-02-04 (bug fix)[833637] code error in tcltest -preservecore operation

2004-02-12 (feature enhancement) update HP-11 build libs setup

2004-02-17 (bug fix)[849514,859251] corrected [file normailze] of $link/.. 

2004-02-17 (bug fix)[772288] Unix std channels forced to exist at startup.

2004-02-17 (new default) tcltest::configure -verbose {body error}

2004-02-19 (bug fix) init.tcl search path with unusual --libdir (samson)

   operations, this will now be consumed by Tcl.

 * [TIP #138] New TCL_HASH_KEY_SYSTEM_HASH option for Tcl hash tables

 * [TIP #139] documented portions of Tcl's namespace C APIs

 * [TIP #148] correct [list]-quoting of the '#' character
     *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY *** 
   For scripts that assume a particular (buggy) string rep for lists.

 * [TIP #156] add "root locale" to msgcat
=> msgcat 1.4

 * [TIP #157] leading {expand} syntax on words to cause argument expansion.
   This is a safer/cleaner alternative to the use of 'eval'.

2005-07-15 (bug fix)[1237907] localtime() => NULL => crash (kenny)

2005-07-21 (dropped support) IRIX 4, RISCos, Ultrix, and ancient BSD (kenny)
***POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY***

2005-07-22 (enhancement)[1237755] 8.4 features in script library (fradin,porter)

2005-07-24 (new feature) configure macros SC_PROG_TCLSH, SC_BUILD_TCLSH (dejong) 
2005-07-26 (bug fix)[1047286] cmd delete traces during namespace delete (porter)

2005-07-26 (new unix feature)[1231015] ${prefix}/share on ::tcl_pkgPath (dejong)
***POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY***

2005-07-27 (bug fix)[1214462] [unknown] can return exceptions (porter)

2005-11-08 (bug fix)[1162286] [package require] checks that the script
registered by [package ifneeded] provides the version it claims (lavana,porter)
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***

2005-11-09 (bug fix)[1350293,1350291] [after $negative $script] fixed (kenny)

2005-11-12 (bug fix)[1352734,1354540,1355942,1355342] [namespace delete] 
issues with [namespace path] and command delete traces (sofer,fellows)

2005-11-18 (bug fix)[1358369] URL parsing standards compliance (wu,fellows)
=> http 2.5.2

2005-11-18 (revert) Restored registration of "list" Tcl_ObjType (porter)
Reduces the ***POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY*** from 2005-05-17.

2006-05-27 (bug fix)[923072] Darwin: made unthreaded CoreFoundation notifier
naked-fork safe on Tiger (steffen)

2006-06-20 (internal change) Dropped the internal routines used to hook into
filesystem operations back in the pre-Tcl_Filesystem days. (porter)
***POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY***
For extensions and programs that have never migrated to the supported Tcl 8.4 
interface for virtual filesystems

2006-07-05 (enhancement) Expression parser rewrite avoids stack overflow,
reduces from O(N^2) to O(N) complexity, and greatly improves syntas error
messages (porter)
***POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY***
For any code relying on exact error messages.