[clisp-announce] current release

SourceForge Headquarters 225 Broadway Suite 1600 San Diego, CA 92101 +1 (858) 454-5900

The current release is still version 1999-07-22, and is available at

         ftp://clisp.cons.org/pub/lisp/clisp/source/

Also available are binary packages for the following platforms:

         alpha-linuxlibc6
         alpha-dec-osf4.0d
         hppa2.0-hp-hpux10.20
         i386-pc-solaris2.6
         i586-pc-linuxlibc5 (built with SuSE Linux 5.3)
         i586-pc-linuxlibc6 (built with SuSE Linux 6.0)
         i586-pc-linuxlibc6 (built with RedHat Linux 6.0)
         m68k-linuxlibc6
         powerpc-linuxlibc6
         rs6000-ibm-aix3.2.5
         sparc-sun-solaris2.4
         sparc-sun-sunos4.1.3_U1
         sparc-linuxlibc6
         win32

in the corresponding subdirectories of

         ftp://clisp.cons.org/pub/lisp/clisp/binaries/

Highlights of this release:

  * Unicode support.
  * Interface to PostgreSQL.
  * Implements the Gray proposal for user-defined streams.
  * Better ANSI CL compliance.

Here are the changes in detail, from the NEWS file:

User visible changes
--------------------

* Added a new module - "postgresql": interface to the PostgreSQL ODBMS.

* Implemented ANSI CL macro WITH-PACKAGE-ITERATOR.

* Conforming to ANSI CL issue <ALLOCATE-INSTANCE:ADD>: New function
  ALLOCATE-INSTANCE.

* Conforming to ANSI CL issue <GENERIC-FLET-POORLY-DESIGNED:DELETE>: The
  symbols GENERIC-FLET and GENERIC-LABELS are not exported from the
  COMMON-LISP package any more.

* Conforming to ANSI CL issues <KEYWORD-ARGUMENT-NAME-PACKAGE:ANY> and
  <MULTIPLE-VALUE-SETQ-ORDER:LIKE-SETF-OF-VALUES>.

* Conforming to ANSI CL Issue <MACRO-FUNCTION-ENVIRONMENT:YES>
  MACRO-FUNCTION now takes an optional second argument ENV.

* When CLISP is invoked with an "-a" option, *features* contain :ANSI-CL.

* Weak pointers are implemented. New functions MAKE-WEAK-POINTER,
  WEAK-POINTER-P, WEAK-POINTER-VALUE.

* The function OPEN, when creating unbuffered file streams, now supports any
  of the following :ELEMENT-TYPEs: CHARACTER and ([UN]SIGNED-BYTE n), where n
  is a multiple of 8.

* The functions
    MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM,
    SOCKET-ACCEPT, SOCKET-CONNECT
  accept a keyword argument :ELEMENT-TYPE. Possible values are types
  equivalent to CHARACTER or (UNSIGNED-BYTE n), (SIGNED-BYTE n), where n is
  a positive multiple of 8. Previously these functions returned streams whose
  element-type was (OR CHARACTER (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8)).

* STREAM-ELEMENT-TYPE is SETFable. The element type of streams created by the
  functions MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM,
  MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM, SOCKET-ACCEPT, SOCKET-CONNECT can be modified, if the
  old and the new element type are compatible.
  (UNSIGNED-BYTE n) and (SIGNED-BYTE n) are compatible, and CHARACTER is
  compatible with ([UN]SIGNED-BYTE 8).

* Character I/O can now be customized via encodings. A stream's external
  format is an encoding, and the symbol macros
    *DEFAULT-FILE-ENCODING*, *PATHNAME-ENCODING*, *TERMINAL-ENCODING*,
    *MISC-ENCODING*, FFI:*FOREIGN-ENCODING*, AFFI:*FOREIGN-ENCODING*
  contain user-settable encodings.
  Encodings can be obtained through the function MAKE-ENCODING, and as values
  of the constants
    CHARSET:UCS-2, CHARSET:UNICODE-16, CHARSET:UNICODE-16-BIG-ENDIAN,
    CHARSET:UNICODE-16-LITTLE-ENDIAN, CHARSET:UCS-4, CHARSET:UNICODE-32,
    CHARSET:UNICODE-32-BIG-ENDIAN, CHARSET:UNICODE-32-LITTLE-ENDIAN,
    CHARSET:UTF-8, CHARSET:JAVA, CHARSET:ASCII, CHARSET:ISO-8859-1,
    CHARSET:ISO-8859-2, CHARSET:ISO-8859-3, CHARSET:ISO-8859-4,
    CHARSET:ISO-8859-5, CHARSET:ISO-8859-6, CHARSET:ISO-8859-7,
    CHARSET:ISO-8859-8, CHARSET:ISO-8859-9, CHARSET:ISO-8859-10,
    CHARSET:ISO-8859-13, CHARSET:ISO-8859-14, CHARSET:ISO-8859-15,
    CHARSET:KOI8-R, CHARSET:MAC-ARABIC, CHARSET:MAC-CENTRAL-EUROPE,
    CHARSET:MAC-CROATIAN, CHARSET:MAC-CYRILLIC, CHARSET:MAC-DINGBAT,
    CHARSET:MAC-GREEK, CHARSET:MAC-HEBREW, CHARSET:MAC-ICELAND,
    CHARSET:MAC-ROMAN, CHARSET:MAC-ROMANIA, CHARSET:MAC-SYMBOL,
    CHARSET:MAC-THAI, CHARSET:MAC-TURKISH, CHARSET:MAC-UKRAINE,
    CHARSET:CP437, CHARSET:CP737, CHARSET:CP775, CHARSET:CP850, CHARSET:CP852,
    CHARSET:CP855, CHARSET:CP857, CHARSET:CP860, CHARSET:CP861, CHARSET:CP862,
    CHARSET:CP863, CHARSET:CP864, CHARSET:CP865, CHARSET:CP866, CHARSET:CP869,
    CHARSET:CP874, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1250, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1251,
    CHARSET:WINDOWS-1252, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1253, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1254,
    CHARSET:WINDOWS-1255, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1256, CHARSET:WINDOWS-1257,
    CHARSET:WINDOWS-1258, CHARSET:HP-ROMAN8, CHARSET:NEXTSTEP.

* The functions
    OPEN, MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM,
    SOCKET-ACCEPT, SOCKET-CONNECT
  and the macro
    WITH-OUTPUT-TO-PRINTER
  accept a keyword argument :EXTERNAL-FORMAT. Possible values are encodings,
  such as returned by the function MAKE-ENCODING, the line terminator keywords
  :UNIX, :MAC, :DOS, and :DEFAULT.

* STREAM-EXTERNAL-FORMAT is SETFable. The external format of streams created
  by the functions OPEN, MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM,
  MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM, SOCKET-ACCEPT, SOCKET-CONNECT can be modified.

* OPEN has a new keyword argument :BUFFERED. It determines whether the file
  stream returned is buffered or not. Possible values for it are NIL, T, or
  :DEFAULT. If it is :DEFAULT, buffered file streams will be returned for
  regular files and (on Unix) block-devices, and unbuffered file streams for
  special files.

* The functions MAKE-PIPE-INPUT-STREAM, MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM,
  MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM, SOCKET-ACCEPT, SOCKET-CONNECT have a new keyword
  argument :BUFFERED. It determines whether the stream returned is buffered or
  not. Possible values for it are NIL, T, or :DEFAULT. :DEFAULT is equivalent
  to NIL.

* New functions READ-INTEGER, WRITE-INTEGER which can be used to do binary I/O
  on streams with element-type (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8).

* The Gray proposal <STREAM-DEFINITION-BY-USER> is implemented:
  New classes
    FUNDAMENTAL-STREAM,
    FUNDAMENTAL-INPUT-STREAM, FUNDAMENTAL-OUTPUT-STREAM,
    FUNDAMENTAL-CHARACTER-STREAM, FUNDAMENTAL-BINARY-STREAM,
    FUNDAMENTAL-CHARACTER-INPUT-STREAM, FUNDAMENTAL-CHARACTER-OUTPUT-STREAM,
    FUNDAMENTAL-BINARY-INPUT-STREAM, FUNDAMENTAL-BINARY-OUTPUT-STREAM.
  New generic functions
    STREAM-READ-CHAR, STREAM-UNREAD-CHAR, STREAM-READ-CHAR-NO-HANG,
    STREAM-PEEK-CHAR, STREAM-LISTEN, STREAM-READ-CHAR-WILL-HANG-P,
    STREAM-READ-CHAR-SEQUENCE, STREAM-READ-LINE, STREAM-CLEAR-INPUT,
    STREAM-WRITE-CHAR, STREAM-LINE-COLUMN, STREAM-START-LINE-P,
    STREAM-WRITE-CHAR-SEQUENCE, STREAM-WRITE-STRING, STREAM-TERPRI,
    STREAM-FRESH-LINE, STREAM-FINISH-OUTPUT, STREAM-FORCE-OUTPUT,
    STREAM-CLEAR-OUTPUT, STREAM-ADVANCE-TO-COLUMN,
    STREAM-READ-BYTE, STREAM-READ-BYTE-SEQUENCE,
    STREAM-WRITE-BYTE, STREAM-WRITE-BYTE-SEQUENCE.
  The functions CLOSE, OPEN-STREAM-P, STREAM-ELEMENT-TYPE are now generic
  functions.

* The macros FFI:DEF-C-CALL-OUT and FFI:DEF-C-CALL-IN now add an argument
  :LANGUAGE :STDC (means ANSI C) instead of :LANGUAGE :C (means old K&R C).

* Conforming with ANSI CL, SIMPLE-CONDITION now has the initarg
  :FORMAT-CONTROL instead of :FORMAT-STRING. New function
  SIMPLE-CONDITION-FORMAT-CONTROL.

* Conforming with ANSI CL, FILE-LENGTH and FILE-POSITION, when called on
  an unbuffered file stream, now return NIL instead of signalling an error.

* Conforming with ANSI CL, MACROEXPAND and MACROEXPAND-1 now accept NIL as
  second argument, denoting the global environment.

* Conforming with ANSI CL, the reader now signals an error of type
  READER-ERROR when trying to parse tokens like 35/000 or 1.5e1000,
  instead of DIVISION-BY-ZERO and FLOATING-POINT-OVERFLOW, respectively.

* On Unix, calling OPEN on a block device now returns a buffered stream
  instead of an unbuffered stream.

* On Unix, writing to a pipe created by MAKE-PIPE-OUTPUT-STREAM or
  MAKE-PIPE-IO-STREAM after the corresponding child process has exited
  now leads to an error message instead of terminating the CLISP process.

* The generic function GENERIC-STREAM-LISTEN is replaced with
  GENERIC-STREAM-READ-CHAR-WILL-HANG-P.

* The function XGCD now really always returns coefficients of smallest
  possible absolute value.

* Fixed an interpreter bug: (let (x) (declare (special x)) ...) did not change
  the global value of x in interpreted mode.

* Fixed a bug: On Win32, Ctrl-Z sometimes caused two levels of the read-eval-
  print loop to be aborted instead of just one.

* Fixed a bug: READ-CHAR-SEQUENCE, when called on a string input stream,
  forgot to advance the pointer into the string.

* Fixed a bug: WRITE-CHAR-SEQUENCE on Win32 failed to convert NL to CR/LF.

* Fixed a bug: Calling (GET-DISPATCH-MACRO-CHARACTER disp-char sub-char) would
  crash, instead of returning NIL, if there is no macro-character function
  associated with sub-char after disp-char.

* Fixed a bug: (CHECK-TYPE place typespec string) did not evaluate `string'.

* Fixed a bug: Calling the function FINALIZE caused a crash during the next GC
  on many platforms.

* Fixed a bug: Calling a generic function without any installed method
  resulted in an inappropriate error message, not a call to
  NO-APPLICABLE-METHOD.

* Fixed a bug: Closing a SOCKET-SERVER twice, or using a closed SOCKET-SERVER
  could result in inappropriate error messages.

* Fixed a bug: (format nil "~@D" 0) ==> "+0" now.

Portability
-----------

* Added support for SPARC running Linux.

* Added support for Apple PowerPC running MacOS X Server (a.k.a. Rhapsody).

Other modifications
-------------------

* On Linux 2.2.x with glibc-2.1, Solaris, OSF/1 and Irix, stack overflow is
  now caught reliably. Previously, endless recursion in interpreted code could
  cause a crash in some cases.

Enjoy!
                   Bruno