Hi guys. Readline goes to commendable efforts to disable all tty special characters whose default values clash with default readline bindings - all except STOP (^S) XON/XOFF flow control, which clashes with readline's default binding for forward-search-history. This issue was previously raised in this list in https://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2020-11/msg00046.html. Chet added the requested code in readline 8.2 under control of the USE_XON_XOFF macro, albeit disabled by default. He then modified it in readline 8.3 so it is now under control of the variable _rl_use_tty_xon_xoff instead of USE_XON_XOFF. Regardless, the new functionality still remains disabled in both master and devel versions.
Why can it not just be enabled by default? That would deliver the greatest good for the greatest number. As it currently stands, any novice user who attempts to use forward-search-history as per bash/readline documentation, or who hits ^S by accident in bash, will find the display mysteriously frozen, with no guidance from bash/readline docs as to why. This to me is a far bigger problem than the possibility of breaking changes. XON/XOFF tty special characters represent interactive functionality, so the only scripts that could conceivably be broken by such a change probably deserve to be broken. After all, what use is a frozen terminal for an interactive shell? XON/XOFF is undeniably useful for logorrheic terminal applications so one would not want to disable it altogether, but it is downright pathological for bash. ________________________________ [Facebook]<http://www.facebook.com/SydneyWater> [Twitter] <http://twitter.com/sydneywaternews> [YouTube] <http://www.youtube.com/user/sydneywatertv> [Instagram] <http://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/sydneywater/> ________________________________ NOTICE: This email is confidential. If you are not the nominated recipient, please immediately delete this email, destroy all copies and inform the sender. Sydney Water Corporation (Sydney Water) prohibits the unauthorised copying or distribution of this email. This email does not necessarily express the views of Sydney Water. Sydney Water does not warrant nor guarantee that this email communication is free from errors, virus, interception or interference. ________________________________
