Nim/changelogs/changelog_0_18_1.md

v0.18.0 - 01/03/2018

Changes affecting backwards compatibility

Breaking changes in the standard library

• The [] proc for strings now raises an IndexError exception when the specified slice is out of bounds. See issue #6223 for more details. You can use substr(str, start, finish) to get the old behaviour back, see this commit for an example.

• strutils.split and strutils.rsplit with an empty string and a separator now returns that empty string. See issue #4377.

• Arrays of char cannot be converted to cstring anymore, pointers to arrays of char can! This means $ for arrays can finally exist in system.nim and do the right thing. This means $myArrayOfChar changed its behaviour! Compile with -d:nimNoArrayToString to see where to fix your code.

• reExtended is no longer default for the re constructor in the re module.

• The behavior of $ has been changed for all standard library collections. The collection-to-string implementations now perform proper quoting and escaping of strings and chars.

• newAsyncSocket taking an AsyncFD now runs setBlocking(false) on the fd.

• mod and bitwise and do not produce range subtypes anymore. This turned out to be more harmful than helpful and the language is simpler without this special typing rule.

• formatFloat/formatBiggestFloat now support formatting floats with zero precision digits. The previous precision = 0 behavior (default formatting) is now available via precision = -1.

• Moved from stdlib into Nimble packages:

  • basic2d deprecated: use glm, arraymancer, neo, or another package instead
  • basic3d deprecated: use glm, arraymancer, neo, or another package instead
  • gentabs
  • libuv
  • numeric
  • poly
  • pdcurses
  • romans
  • libsvm
  • joyent_http_parser

• Proc toCountTable now produces a CountTable with values correspoding to the number of occurrences of the key in the input. It used to produce a table with all values set to 1.

Counting occurrences in a sequence used to be:

  let mySeq = @[1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4]
  var myCounter = initCountTable[int]()

  for item in mySeq:
    myCounter.inc item

Now, you can simply do:

  let
    mySeq = @[1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4]
    myCounter = mySeq.toCountTable()

• If you use --dynlibOverride:ssl with OpenSSL 1.0.x, you now have to define openssl10 symbol (-d:openssl10). By default OpenSSL 1.1.x is assumed.

• newNativeSocket is now named createNativeSocket.

• newAsyncNativeSocket is now named createAsyncNativeSocket and it no longer raises an OS error but returns an osInvalidSocket when creation fails.

• The securehash module is now deprecated. Instead import std / sha1.

• The readPasswordFromStdin proc has been moved from the rdstdin to the terminal module, thus it does not depend on linenoise anymore.

Breaking changes in the compiler

• \n is now only the single line feed character like in most other programming languages. The new platform specific newline escape sequence is written as \p. This change only affects the Windows platform.

• The overloading rules changed slightly so that constrained generics are preferred over unconstrained generics. (Bug #6526)

• We changed how array accesses "from backwards" like a[^1] or a[0..^1] are implemented. These are now implemented purely in system.nim without compiler support. There is a new "heterogenous" slice type system.HSlice that takes 2 generic parameters which can be BackwardsIndex indices. BackwardsIndex is produced by system.^. This means if you overload [] or []= you need to ensure they also work with system.BackwardsIndex (if applicable for the accessors).

• The parsing rules of if expressions were changed so that multiple statements are allowed in the branches. We found few code examples that now fail because of this change, but here is one:

t[ti] = if exp_negative: '-' else: '+'; inc(ti)

This now needs to be written as:

t[ti] = (if exp_negative: '-' else: '+'); inc(ti)

• The experimental overloading of the dot . operators now take an untypedparameter as the field name, it used to be astatic[string]. You can usewhen defined(nimNewDot)` to make your code work with both old and new Nim versions. See special-operators for more information.

• yield (or await which is mapped to yield) never worked reliably in an array, seq or object constructor and is now prevented at compile-time.

Library additions

• Added sequtils.mapLiterals for easier construction of array and tuple literals.

• Added system.runnableExamples to make examples in Nim's documentation easier to write and test. The examples are tested as the last step of nim doc.

• Implemented getIoHandler proc in the asyncdispatch module that allows you to retrieve the underlying IO Completion Port or Selector[AsyncData] object in the specified dispatcher.

• For string formatting / interpolation a new module called strformat has been added to the stdlib.

• The ReadyKey type in the selectors module now contains an errorCode field to help distinguish between Event.Error events.

• Implemented an accept proc that works on a SocketHandle in nativesockets.

• Added algorithm.rotateLeft.

• Added typetraits.$ as an alias for typetraits.name.

• Added system.getStackTraceEntries that allows you to access the stack trace in a structured manner without string parsing.

• Added parseutils.parseSaturatedNatural.

• Added macros.unpackVarargs.

• Added support for asynchronous programming for the JavaScript backend using the asyncjs module.

• Added true color support for some terminals. Example: ```nim import colors, terminal

const Nim = "Efficient and expressive programming."

var fg = colYellow bg = colBlue int = 1.0

enableTrueColors()

for i in 1..15: styledEcho bgColor, bg, fgColor, fg, Nim, resetStyle int -= 0.01 fg = intensity(fg, int)

setForegroundColor colRed setBackgroundColor colGreen styledEcho "Red on Green.", resetStyle

### Library changes

- ``echo`` now works with strings that contain ``\0`` (the binary zero is not
  shown) and ``nil`` strings are equal to empty strings.

- JSON: Deprecated `getBVal`, `getFNum`, and `getNum` in favour of
  `getBool`, `getFloat`, `getBiggestInt`. A new `getInt` procedure was also
  added.

- ``rationals.toRational`` now uses an algorithm based on continued fractions.
  This means its results are more precise and it can't run into an infinite loop
  anymore.

- ``os.getEnv`` now takes an optional ``default`` parameter that tells ``getEnv``
  what to return if the environment variable does not exist.

- The ``random`` procs in ``random.nim`` have all been deprecated. Instead use
  the new ``rand`` procs. The module now exports the state of the random
  number generator as type ``Rand`` so multiple threads can easily use their
  own random number generators that do not require locking. For more information
  about this rename see issue [#6934](https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/6934)

- ``writeStackTrace`` is now proclaimed to have no IO effect (even though it does)
  so that it is more useful for debugging purposes.

- ``db_mysql`` module: ``DbConn`` is now a ``distinct`` type that doesn't expose the
  details of the underlying ``PMySQL`` type.

- ``parseopt2`` is now deprecated, use ``parseopt`` instead.

### Language additions

- It is now possible to forward declare object types so that mutually
  recursive types can be created across module boundaries. See
  [package level objects](https://nim-lang.org/docs/manual.html#package-level-objects)
  for more information.

- Added support for casting between integers of same bitsize in VM (compile time and nimscript).
  This allows to, among other things, reinterpret signed integers as unsigned.

- Custom pragmas are now supported using pragma ``pragma``, please see language
  manual for details.

- Standard library modules can now also be imported via the ``std`` pseudo-directory.
  This is useful in order to distinguish between standard library and nimble package
  imports:

  ```nim
  import std / [strutils, os, osproc]
  import someNimblePackage / [strutils, os]

Language changes

• The unary < is now deprecated, for .. < use ..< for other usages use the pred proc.

• Bodies of for loops now get their own scope:

# now compiles:
for i in 0..4:
  let i = i + 1
  echo i

• To make Nim even more robust the system iterators .. and countup now only accept a single generic type T. This means the following code doesn't die with an "out of range" error anymore:

var b = 5.Natural
var a = -5
for i in a..b:
  echo i

• atomic and generic are no longer keywords in Nim. generic used to be an alias for concept, atomic was not used for anything.

• The memory manager now uses a variant of the TLSF algorithm that has much better memory fragmentation behaviour. According to http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/ the maximum fragmentation measured is lower than 25%. As a nice bonus alloc and dealloc became O(1) operations.

• The compiler is now more consistent in its treatment of ambiguous symbols: Types that shadow procs and vice versa are marked as ambiguous (bug #6693).

• codegenDecl pragma now works for the JavaScript backend. It returns an empty string for function return type placeholders.

• Extra semantic checks for procs with noreturn pragma: return type is not allowed, statements after call to noreturn procs are no longer allowed.

• Noreturn proc calls and raising exceptions branches are now skipped during common type deduction in if and case expressions. The following code snippets now compile:

  import strutils
  let str = "Y"
  let a = case str:
  of "Y": true
  of "N": false
  else: raise newException(ValueError, "Invalid boolean")
  let b = case str:
  of nil, "": raise newException(ValueError, "Invalid boolean")
  elif str.startsWith("Y"): true
  elif str.startsWith("N"): false
  else: false
  let c = if str == "Y": true
  elif str == "N": false
  else:
    echo "invalid bool"
    quit("this is the end")
  

• Pragmas now support call syntax, for example: {.exportc"myname".} and {.exportc("myname").}

• The deprecated pragma now supports a user-definable warning message for procs.

  proc bar {.deprecated: "use foo instead".} =
    return

  bar()

Tool changes

• The nim doc command is now an alias for nim doc2, the second version of the documentation generator. The old version 1 can still be accessed via the new nim doc0 command.

• Nim's rst2html command now supports the testing of code snippets via an RST extension that we called :test:::

  .. code-block:: nim
      :test:
    # shows how the 'if' statement works
    if true: echo "yes"

Compiler changes

Bugfixes

• Fixed "ReraiseError when using try/except within finally block" (#5871)
• Fixed "Range type inference leads to counter-intuitive behvaiour" (#5854)
• Fixed "JSON % operator can fail in extern procs with dynamic types" (#6385)
• Fixed ""intVal is not accessible" in VM" (#6083)
• Fixed "Add excl for OrderedSet" (#2467)
• Fixed "newSeqOfCap actually doesn't reserve memory" (#6403)
• Fixed "[Regression] Nim segfaults" (#6435)
• Fixed "Seq assignment is slower than expected" (#6433)
• Fixed "json module issues with empty dicts and lists" (#6438)
• Fixed "mingw installed via finish.exe fails to link if Nim located in path with whitespace" (#6452)
• Fixed "unittest.check does not perform short-circuit evaluation" (#5784)
• Fixed "Error while concatenating an array of chars." (#5861)
• Fixed "range initialization: [ProveInit] hint: Cannot prove that" (#6474)
• Fixed "scanf can call procs with side-effects multiple times" (#6487)
• Fixed "gcsafe detection problem" (#5620)
• Fixed "C++ codegen: mitems generates invalid code." (#4910)
• Fixed "strange runtime behavior on macOS" (#6496)
• Fixed "stdtmpl: invalid indentation after a line ending in question mark" (#5070)
• Fixed "Windows: NAN troubles on c backend" (#6511)
• Fixed "lib/nim/system/cellsets.nim(33, 31) Error: type mismatch while attempting to compile for 16bit CPUs" (#3558)
• Fixed "Can't compile dynlib with -d:useNimRtl and --threads:on" (#5143)
• Fixed "var s = @[0,1,2,...] can generate thousand of single assignments in C code" (#5007)
• Fixed "echo discards everything after a null character" (#1137)
• Fixed "Turn off reExtended by default" (#5627)
• Fixed "Bad Links in docs/backends.html" (#5914)
• Fixed "Index out of bounds error in db_postgres when executing non parameter-substituted queries containing "?"" (#6571)
• Fixed "Please add pipe2 support to posix stdlib" (#6553)
• Fixed "Return semantics vary depending on return style" (#6422)
• Fixed "parsecsv.open reports SIGSEGV when calling 'open' on missing file" (#6148)
• Fixed "VCC: Nim generates non-compilable code for system.nim" (#6606)
• Fixed "Generic subtype matches worse than a generic" (#6526)
• Fixed "formatFloat inconsistent scientific notation" (#6589)
• Fixed "Generated c code calls function twice" (#6292)
• Fixed "Range type inference leads to counter-intuitive behvaiour" (#5854)
• Fixed "New backward indexing is too limited" (#6631)
• Fixed "Table usage in a macro (SIGSEGV: Illegal storage access.)" (#1860)
• Fixed "Incorrect deprecation error" (#6634)
• Fixed "Wrong indices in arrays not starting with 0" (#6675)
• Fixed "if expressions" (#6609)
• Fixed "BackwardsIndex: converter + [] + unrelated type[^1]: lib/system.nim(3536, 3) Error" (#6692)
• Fixed "BackwardsIndex: converter + [] + unrelated type[^1]: lib/system.nim(3536, 3) Error" (#6692)
• Fixed "js backend 0.17.3: array bounds check for non zero based arrays is buggy" (#6532)
• Fixed "HttpClient's new API doesn't work through a proxy for https URLs" (#6685)
• Fixed "isServing isn't declared and isn't compiling" (#6707)

• Fixed "[Regression] value out of range" (#6710)

• Fixed "Error when using multisync macro" (#6708)

• Fixed "formatFloat inconsistent scientific notation" (#6589)

• Fixed "Using : (constructor arguments) for passing values to functions with default arguments causes a compiler crash." (#6765)

• Fixed "In-place object initialization leads to vcc incompatible code" (#6757)

• Fixed "Improve parseCookies doc" (#5721)

• Fixed "Parser regression with nested do notation inside conditional" (#6166)

• Fixed "Request for better error message" (#6776)

• Fixed "Testament tester does not execute test with exitcode only" (#6775)

• Fixed "JS integer division off by one" (#6753)

• Fixed "Regression: cannot prove not nil" (#5781)

• Fixed "SIGSEGV: Illegal storage access. (Attempt to read from nil?) in generic proc" (#6073)

• Fixed "Request for better error message" (#6776)

• Fixed "Nim #head: sorting via reference hangs compiler" (#6724)

• Fixed "Cannot cast pointer to char in cpp" (#5979)

• Fixed "asynchttpserver replies with several errors on single request" (#6386)

• Fixed "object variants superclass trigger bad codegen" (#5521)

• Fixed "JS integer division off by one" (#6753)

• Fixed "js backend compiler crash with tables indexed by certain types" (#6568)

• Fixed "Jsgen bug with is" (#6445)

• Fixed "Subrange definition with ..<" (#6788)

• Fixed "fields not initialized: array with enum index type as object field." (#6682)

• Fixed "Can not delete data in table when table's data type is kind of "not nil"" (#6555)

• Fixed "tables.nim: Cannot prove that 'n' is initialized" (#6121)

• Fixed "issues with 'not nil' applied to a closure proc" (#6489)

• Fixed "not nil not working in some cases" (#4686)

• Fixed "Cannot prove '@[v]' is not nil" (#3993)

• Fixed "Feature: support TCP_NODELAY in net.sockets" (#6795)

• Fixed "Code that makes the compiler throw an error message and then hangs" (#6820)

• Fixed "Code that makes the compiler throw an error message and then hangs" (#6820)

• Fixed "Inconsistent behavior with sequence and string slicing" (#6223)

• Fixed "Wrong behavior of "split" (proc and iterator)" (#4377)

• Fixed "[Documentation] Invalid module name: [foo, bar]" (#6831)

• Fixed "The destructor is not called for temporary objects" (#4214)

• Fixed "Destructors does not work with implicit items iterator in for loop" (#985)

• Fixed "Error in template when using the type of the parameter inside it" (#6756)

• Fixed "should json.to() respect parent attributes?" (#5856)

• Fixed "json 'to' macro can not marshalize into tuples" (#6095)

• Fixed "json.to fails with seq[T]" (#6604)

• Fixed "json.to() is not worth using compared to marshal.to[T]" (#5848)

• Fixed "Memory not being released in time, running out of memory" (#6031)

• Fixed "[Regression] Bad C codegen for generic code" (#6889)

• Fixed "rollingFileLogger deletes file on every start." (#6264)

• Fixed "Remove/deprecate securehash module." (#6033)

• Fixed "[bug or not] object construction for seq[T] failed without space after colon" (#5999)

• Fixed "issues with the random module" (#4726)

• Fixed "Reassigning local var to seq of objects results in nil element in Object's seq field" (#668)

• Fixed "Compilation error with "newseq[string]"" (#6726)

• Fixed "await inside array/dict literal produces invalid code - Part 2" (#6626)

• Fixed "terminal.eraseline() gives OverflowError on Windows" (#6931)

• Fixed "[Regression] sequtils.any conflicts with system.any" (#6932)

• Fixed "C++ codegen: mitems generates invalid code." (#4910)

• Fixed "seq.mitems produces invalid cpp codegen" (#6892)

• Fixed "Concepts regression" (#6108)

• Fixed "Generic iterable concept with array crashes compiler" (#6277)

• Fixed "C code generation "‘a’ is a pointer; did you mean to use ‘->’?"" (#6462)

• Fixed "--NimblePath fails if a - in path which is not followed by a number" (#6949)

• Fixed ""not registered in the selector" in asyncfile.close() for something that clearly was registered" (#6906)

• Fixed "strange frexp behavior" (#6353)

• Fixed "noreturn branches of case statements shouldn't contribute to type" (#6885)

• Fixed "Type inference for 'if' statements changed" (#6980)

• Fixed "newest asyncdispatch recursion" (#6100)

• Fixed "Ambiguous identifier between set type and proc" (#6965)

• Fixed "Inconsistent behavior with sequence and string slicing" (#6223)

• Fixed "Unsupported OpenSSL library imported dynamically" (#5000)

• Fixed "nim check segfaults" (#6972)

• Fixed "GC deadlock" (#6988)

• Fixed "Create a seq without memory initialization" (#6401)

• Fixed "Fix bug for getch on Windows while using the arrow keys" (#6966)

• Fixed "runnableExamples doesn't work in templates" (#7018)

• Fixed "runnableExamples doesn't work with untyped statement blocks" (#7019)

• Fixed "Critical bug in parseBiggestFloat" (#7060)

• Fixed "[RFC] strformat.% should be gone" (#7078)

• Fixed "compiler crash on simple macro" (#7093)

• Fixed "Make newlines sane again" (#7089)

• Fixed "JS - Unicode enum string representation issue" (#6741)

• Fixed "Strange behaviour of 0.17.3 (working ok in 0.17.2)" (#6989)

• Fixed "Strange behaviour of 0.17.3 (working ok in 0.17.2)" (#6989)

• Fixed "Compiler crash: try expression with infix as" (#7116)

• Fixed "nimsuggest crash" (#7140)

• Fixed "[RFC] Reintroduce readChar" (#7072)

• Fixed "Copyright line needs updating" (#7129)

• Fixed "-0.0 doesn't result in negative zero in VM" (#7079)

• Fixed "Windows large filesize" (#7121)

• Fixed "Securehash is not parsimonious with MD5 and other hash modules" (#6961)

• Fixed "os.findExe() shouldn't look in current directory on posix, unless exe has a /" (#6939)

• Fixed "compiles(...) with fatal pragma causes compiler to exit early" (#7080)

• Fixed "NPE when compile macro that returns concrete value" (#5450)

• Fixed "Using a variable of type int | float causes internal compiler error" (#6946)

• Fixed "Unsigned integers could not be used as array indexes." (#7153)

• Fixed "countdown with uint causes underflow" (#4220)

• Fixed "Inconsistent method call syntax" (#7200)

• Fixed "Impossible to create an empty const array" (#6853)

• Fixed "Strange UINT handling" (#3985)

• Fixed "Bad codegen when passing arg that is part of return value destination" (#6960)

• Fixed "No info about gcsafety in error message when global var is accessed in async proc" (#6186)

• Fixed "Resolving package vs. local import ambiguities" (#2819)

• Fixed "Internal error with type() operator" (#3711)

• Fixed "newAsyncSocket should raise an OS error plus other inconsistencies" (#4995)

• Fixed "mapLiterals fails with negative values" (#7215)

• Fixed "fmWrite doesn't truncate file with openAsync, unlike open()" (#5531)

• Fixed "Move libsvm to an external nimble module" (#5786)

• Fixed "Prevent acceptAddr gotcha with newSocket" (#7227)

• Fixed "strtabs.getOrDefault is inconsistent with tables.getOrDefault" (#4265)

• Fixed "Code falling through into exception handler when no exception thrown." (#7232)

• Fixed "the new generic inference rules are broken" (#7247)

• Fixed "Odd ..< regression" (#6992)

• Fixed "Different proc type inferred from default parameter" (#4659)

• Fixed "Different proc type inferred from default parameter" (#4659)

• Fixed "Testament sometimes ignores test failures" (#7236)

• Fixed "New Allocator Fails On >=4GB Requests" (#7120)

• Fixed "User pragmas hide effect specifications from sempass2" (#7216)

• Fixed "C++: SIGABRT instead of IndexError for out-of-bounds" (#6512)

• Fixed "An uncaught exception in cpp mode doesn't show the exception name/msg" (#6431)