The Jim Interpreter

Sunday, 01 July 2018

Jim Tcl version 0.78

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.78

Jim Tcl 0.78 has been released and is available from:

http://repo.or.cz/w/jimtcl.git or https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.77

This release contains some bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.78

• local - Fix crash when local command is deleted
• history - When creating ~/.jim_history, set permissions to 0600 for security
• exec - Fix windows exec with empty or unset env
• exec - Fix check for | and |&
• jim.c - Fix Object leak in zlib support
• signal - Restore default signal handling on interp exit
• dict - Fix [dict values] with duplicate values
• Fix ‘/’ command, divide by zero
• expr - Replace expression engine to fix a number of problems
• zlib - Various fixes
• lsort -unique - Fix case with no duplicates
• aio tempname - Fix a crash when the template is invalid
• Tcl compatibility - Error on extra characters after close brace
• eventloop - Return from callback is not an error
• oo - Fix methods for superclasses
• Various refcount and edge case fixes found by fuzz testing

Features added in version 0.78

• Add support for utf-8 wide characters
• aio - Add tty for termios settings
• aio - Add sockopt for broadcast, tcp_nodelay, etc.
• utf-8 - Update UnicodeData.txt to 9.0.0
• jimsh - Add support for jimsh -
• jimsh - Scriptable command-line completion support via tcl::autocomplete
• history - Add autocompletion support history completion <cmd>
• Add support for -commands to many commands
• Add pkg-config support - jimtcl.pc
• clock - Add -gmt option to format and scan
• tree - Allow nodes to be deleted
• defer, $jim::defer - Allow scripts to run on proc exit
• eventloop - Support sub-millisecond timer resolution
• Support lambda even if references are disabled
• Performance - Improve a number of common cases through caching
• signal, exec, wait, pid, pipe - Many improvements
• build - Support --silent-rules, and enable by default
• regexp - Implement class shorthand escapes in brackets
• linenoise (jimsh) - Add ^Z (SUSP) support
• linenoise (jismh) - Update to support multiline mode

Other changes

• signal - Remove the signal command from child interpreters
• os.wait is now wait
• aio ssl now upgrades the current channel rather than creating a new channel
• Update autosetup to v0.6.8

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Sunday, 04 September 2016

Jim Tcl version 0.77

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.77

Jim Tcl 0.77 has been released and is available from:

http://repo.or.cz/w/jimtcl.git or https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.76

This release contains some bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.77

• exec - better handline of pipeline abnormal termination
• exec - fix append redirection on Windows
• regsub - fix substitution with trailing backslash
• expr - improved mathfunc handling and pow/**
• chained tailcalls were not always being run

Features added in version 0.77

• Add support for configure --docdir=...
• Add support for jimsh --help
• Add support for booleans in string is and expressions (true, false, on, off, yes, no)
• aio - add sync, openssl bindings, posix locking
• expr - add support for atan2, hypot and fmod
• regexp, regsub:
  • Add support for \D, \W and \S
  • Add partial support for \A, \Z
  • Add support for all character classes: [[::blank:]], [[::xdigit::]], etc.
• Update included sqlite3 to v3.14.1
• Add $tcl_platform(engine)
• Add basic (optional) zlib support
• Add interp child interprester support
• oo:
  • Add support for constructor, runs on new object creation
  • Add support for unknown method
• Add Travis and AppVeyor continuous integration support
• Use pkg-config in configure to find packages if possibe

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Saturday, 31 January 2015

Jim Tcl version 0.76

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.76

Jim Tcl 0.76 has been released and is available from:

http://repo.or.cz/w/jimtcl.git or https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.75

This release contains some bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.76

• file - fix stat file size for large files
• array - avoid crash on unset variable
• exec, file` - set umask before mkstemp
• file copy - use binary mode when reading and writing files (Windows)
• glob - work when intermediate dirs are not readable, and other fixes
• aio - fix conflict between onexception and writable
• namespace - restore namespace import support
• alias - don’t rely on internal list never shimmering
• Fix various minor problems reported by coverity
• Fix info nameofexecutable after cd

Features added in version 0.76

• exec, file - respect $TMPDIR
• aio - optional argument addrvar for accept.
• string - implement string cat (TIP #429)
• file - add support for file link
• info - add support for info source ?filename line?
• Better script validation (e.g. missing trailing brackets)
• Install tcltest compatibility package

Compatiblity

• Some invalid scripts will now throw an error rather than silently executing
• glob is more Tcl-compatible with respect to -directory and -tails, so may affect some scripts
• The output of errorInfo has changed from "Runtime Error: <file>:<line>: ..." to "<file>:<line>: Error: ..."

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Thursday, 27 February 2014

Jim Tcl version 0.75

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.75

Jim Tcl 0.75 has been released and is available from:

http://repo.or.cz/w/jimtcl.git or https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.74

This release contains some bug fixes plus a number of additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.75

• eventloop - Correct file handler should be deleted
• eventloop - Fix memory management of aio event handlers
• local - Requires at least one argument
• exec - Support nulls in exec immediate redirection
• binary - More compliant with Tcl
• aio - Fix aio recvfrom for non-inet socket
• Fix string tolower buffer overflow for non-utf8
• jimsh - consider scripts with trailing backslash as unfinished
• Properly respect backslashes in comments
• Avoid infinite recursion with namespace import
• Fix dict/list shimmering with embedded nulls
• Fix aio close from non-global namespace
• tailcall should resolve command in current namespace
• errors caught by catch shouldn`t affect later stacktrace
• tailcall: properly merge tailcall frames
• exec: fix reaping of detached processes
• clock: handle case of format string too long
• format: fix format %hd on some platforms
• jim.c: fix some dict/list shimmering issues

Features added in version 0.75

• binary, pack and unpack now support floating point
• file copy -force handles source and target as the same file
• format now supports %b for binary conversion
• lsort now supports -unique and -real
• Add support for half-close with aio close ?r|w?
• Add socket pair for a bidirectional pipe
• Add –random-hash to randomise hash tables for greater security
• dict now supports for, values, incr, append, lappend, update, info and replace
• file stat no longer requires the variable name

Compatiblity

• The deprecated case command has been removed

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Friday, 24 January 2014

Binary Cheatsheet

I have been using Tcl for years, but I still need to lookup the manual every time I use binary format and binary scan. If you are like me, you will find this cheatsheet a handy reference.

Examples

set bin [binary format I2sH2a* {0x123 0x456} 17 ab "testing"]

# This returns 4 (number of conversions)
binary scan $bin I2sH2a* intlist intval hexval str

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)

Thursday, 25 July 2013

Jim Tcl version 0.74

ANNOUNCE: Jim Tcl version 0.74

Jim Tcl 0.74 has been released and is available from:

http://repo.or.cz/w/jimtcl.git or https://github.com/msteveb/jimtcl

Find out all about Jim Tcl at http://jim.tcl.tk/

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 0.73

This release is mostly a bug fix release with some performance enhancements and a few small additional features. A summary is below. See git for the full changelog.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this release.

Bugs fixed in version 0.74

• Space allocated for exec envenvironment may be one byte short
• Fix glob with patterns containing spaces, [ and ]
• Sense of fconfigure -blocking is reversed
• subst -noc should substitute vars inside brackets
• Fix a reference counting bug
• Fix invalid memory reference during finalisers
• Fix an invalid memory reference in info references
• Fix a buffer overflow in info references
• Ensure that the full ref is passed to finalizer
• Fix conversion of numbers >= 2^31
• Fix binary scan for too-few bytes.
• Fix bug that was causing the system environ variable to be freed
• Fix a linenoise bug when moving off the left
• Fix linenoise serial console window size for vt102
• Fix a bug in the sqlite3 module (array index out of bounds)
• Fix string replace replacing a single char

Features added in version 0.74

• Add support for aio isatty
• Remove octal literals with a leading 0 (http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/114.html)
• Add support for glob -directory
• Allow abbreviations to glob options
• Ensure that signals can break vwait
• Allow aio copyto and aio read to copy >2GB
• aio seek and aio tell should allow for 64 bit offsets
• Add support for string equal -length and string compare -length

Performance Improvements

Thanks in large part to Lauri Kasanen, performance of Jim Tcl has improved by up to 20% in some areas compared to version 0.73.

    Executable Size     +1%
          PI digits     -4%
    [for] busy loop       .
       [local] loop       .
  [while] busy loop     -1%
                ary    -10%
         ary [dict]    -20%
       ary [static]     -1%
       dynamic code     -3%
dynamic code (list)       .
             expand     -1%
      fibonacci(25)     +1%
           heapsort     -4%
             mandel     -9%
         mini loops       .
       nested loops       .
             repeat       .
             rotate       .
              sieve    -20%
       sieve [dict]    -20%
              upvar    -16%
   wiki.tcl.tk/8566       .

Steve Bennett (steveb@workware.net.au)