use anonymous files for here-documents if available and the document size exceeds pipe capacity; fixes to build if multibyte characters are unavailable; fix potential overflow with extrememly long $'...' strings; fix for readline redisplay highlighting with a zero-length region

examples/INDEX.html

@@ -417,6 +417,10 @@
     <td>./startup-files/Bashrc.bfox</td>
     <td>Sample Bourne Again SHell init file (Fox).</td>
   </tr>
+ <tr>
+    <td>./startup-files/fix-output</td>
+    <td>A pair of functions that will add a newline if the previous command doesn't end with one.</td>
+  </tr>
   <tr>
     <td>./startup-files/README</td>
     <td>README</td>

examples/INDEX.txt

@@ -99,5 +99,5 @@ Path	Description	X-Ref
 ./startup-files/bash-profile	Sample startup file for bash login shells (Ramey).	
 ./startup-files/bashrc	Sample Bourne Again SHell init file (Ramey).	
 ./startup-files/Bashrc.bfox	Sample Bourne Again SHell init file (Fox).	
+./startup-files/fix-output	A pair of functions that will add a newline if the previous command doesn't end with one.
 ./startup-files/README	README	
-

examples/startup-files/README

@@ -10,3 +10,9 @@ bash-profile	Sample startup file for bash login shells (Ramey).
 bashrc		Sample Bourne Again SHell init file (Ramey).
 Bashrc.bfox	Sample Bourne Again SHell init file (Fox).
 README		README
+
+These files are quite old.
+
+fix-output contains a pair of functions and an example assignment to
+PROMPT_COMMAND that will force a newline if a command does not leave the
+cursor at column 0.

examples/startup-files/fix-output

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+# This is an example set of functions to call from PROMPT_COMMAND. If you
+# run commands that don't terminate their output with a newline, this can
+# detect it and add a newline before printing the readline prompt.
+
+# Readline assumes that it begins with the cursor in column 0 and makes
+# redisplay decisions based on that. If it does not start at column 0, for
+# example if the previous command does not end with a newline, it will lead
+# to display problems when the cursor is not where readline assumes.
+
+_fetch_cursor_position()
+{
+    local -a pos
+    IFS='[;' read -t 0.5 -p $'\e[6n' -d R -a pos -rs || {
+        echo "${FUNCNAME}: failed: $? ; ${pos[*]}" >&2
+        return 1
+    }
+    _cursor_row="${pos[1]}"
+    _cursor_col="${pos[2]}"
+}
+
+_prompt_command()
+{
+    _fetch_cursor_position && (( $_cursor_col > 1 )) && printf '\n'
+}
+
+PROMPT_COMMAND=_prompt_command