UNIX System V Release 2

[gwyn at Brl-Vld.ARPA]

From:      Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn at Brl-Vld.ARPA>

Last weekend I got to browse through the documentation at a site that
had just received UNIX System V Release 2 (including Documenter's
Workbench).  I particularly read the System Release Description, which
summarizes the changes.  Unfortunately the System Programmer's Manual
(sections 2 & 3 of the traditional manual) was missing!

The UNIX System V kernel is essentially unchanged.

Quite a few BSD "enhancements" have been incorporated into Release 2:

"man" "pcat"s manual pages instead of "nroff"ing
flexnames (long C variable names)
user "lint" libraries (preprocessed binary form)
faster, more flexible malloc()
"pg" (like "more")
"mailx" (like "Mail")
"cat -v" etc. (sigh)
"ls -[A-Z][a-z]" (double sigh)
curses/terminfo (like termcap but better)
ASCII archive format
varargs v*printf() functions are back
setvbuf() (more flexible setbuf())
shell functions (generalized alias)
"echo" & "pwd" built into shell
command directory hashing in shell
"at" (complete new implementation)

Significant other enhancements include:

Documenter's Workbench includes "pic" graphics preprocessor,
	"sroff" fast nroff-like formatter, and Typesetter-Independent
	"troff" with APS-5 device interpreter.
Machine Readable Documents separately licensed.
"shl" (simplistic) job control using "sxt" virtual terminal support.
Regular-user "cron" jobs and crontabs.
Standardized vendor-independent disk & tape device names.
Accounting package enhancements.
Improved documentation (fewer typos, better layout).
Improved profiling.
"cc" allows multiply-defined externs (boo) but "ld" can detect them (yay).
"ctrace" line-by-line C code execution trace.
tfind() & lfind() (like tsearch() & lsearch() but do not insert entry if
	not already in table).
Improved "f77".
Several Bourne shell enhancements, including better mailbox checking.
Better trouble reporting via "trenter" command.
More restrictive "passwd" to enhance security.
"cat" is significantly faster.
Completely new "sort", much faster and more options.
Miscellaneous new options to "who", "*grep", "dircmp".
Converters for new "ar" and COFF formats.