tcsh history file fails to save commands with "!" properly

[Sunjae Park]

Binary package hint: tcsh

tcsh fails to save commands with "!" in the .history file properly. Since "!" is a special character for tcsh, it needs to be escaped by a backslash character. Auto-expansion automagically adds the backslash. However, this is not the case for the .history file.

Steps to reproduce:
1> Enter a command with "!" in it.
$ ls this_blows_up\!
2> Save the entered command by either exiting tcsh or entering "history -S"
3> Check the contents of .history. The command is now saved without the backslash. Example:
...
#[phone]
ls this_blows_up!
#[phone]
history -S

Since I use the history function of tcsh fairly extensively (biggest reason for tcsh over bash), this is somewhat annoying.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 RC or later?

[Sunjae Park (darehanl)]

Tcsh seems to handle the "!" mark in file names more gracefully now, but no, it's still not saved properly in the history file.

$ echo bye\!\! > file
$ history -S
$ tail ~/.history
...
#[phone]
echo bye!! > file
#[phone]
history -S
         The file .history is saved incorrectly.

$ tcsh
$ history
...
   499 13:39 echo bye!! > file
   500 13:39 history -S
   501 13:41 history
          We can now see that the history has been loaded incorrectly.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

confirmed in latest Karmic

[Lucas Nussbaum (lucas)]

will be fixed in the next Debian upload.

[Lucas Nussbaum (lucas)]

fixed in debian git tree

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package tcsh - 6.17.02-3

---------------
tcsh (6.17.02-3) unstable; urgency=low

  * Re-add 12_unknown_lscolors.patch. Closes segfault when removed.
    Closes: #592089.

tcsh (6.17.02-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * Set $COLUMNS and $LINES in csh.{cshrc,login}. Closes: #580498. LP: #546032
  * Standards-Version bumped to 3.8.4. No changes needed.
  * Upload to unstable.

tcsh (6.17.02-1) experimental; urgency=low

  * New upstream release.
  * Merged patches:
    + 01_build.1.patch
    + 06_man.patch
    + 10_hurd.patch
  * Removed patches:
    + 02_fix.patch - no longer needed
    + 12_unknown_lscolors.patch - upstream says:
        "rejected - will not apply now, I'd rather see the error and
         fix $LS_COLORS than eat it up silently."
  * Bug fixes:
    + "Crash with autoexpand and no histchars" (LP: #96490)
    + "tcsh history file fails to save commands with "!" properly" (LP: #139537)
    + "tcsh's sending of HUPs to children is broken" (Closes: #314641)
    + "tcsh doesn't support CR/LF end-of-lines in some cases, contrary to csh"
      (Closes: #462346)
    + "complete.tcsh bug in postmap" (Closes: #552632)
  * Fix catalogs generation to use the charset
  * Add disable-lexical.at-31.patch:
    disable broken comments test
  * Upload to experimental as it is a pre-release.
 -- Ubuntu Archive Auto-Sync <email address hidden> Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:02:07 +0000