Primi 0.4

• New: If statements now support else clause.
  • Thanks to Add else clause to IfStatement #19 by @fredsted.
• New: String literals now support proper escaping (BC break).
  • You can now "escape an escape sequence" (e.g a \n newline) using a double backslash (e.g. \\n) to avoid escaping. (BC break)
    • Previously, string literal "\\n" would result in a string of new-line preceeded by a backslash \ symbol. Now "\\n" results in literal \n.
  • Also, escape sequences were previously expanded when instantiating String value objects - even, for example, when it was the result of concatenating two strings "\" and "n", which would then result in new string equal to "\n", which would be then expanded to a literal newline, which is just wrong approach.
  • With the new approach escape sequences are expanded only at the time of the evaluating string literals in Primi source code. It is merely a way of how string literals are interpreted.
    • Example:
      • As of now, concatenating "\" + "n" will result in string "\n" being a literal backslash \ followed by a literal letter n. (BC break)
      • A string literal "\n" is still expanded to a newline symbol (i.e. line feed or decimal ASCII 10).
  • Currently supported escape sequences are these:
    • \n: Will result in a newline.
    • \t: Will result in TAB character.
    • \\: Will result in a single backslash \.
    • \": Will result in " in both single and double quoted string literals,
    • \': Will result in ' in both single and double quoted string literals,
    • **All other characters with a single backslash in front of them, for example \m, will result in an Unrecognized string escape sequence '\m' error. (BC break)
  • Thanks to @fredsted for the original idea.
• New: Support for conditional expressions (akin to ternary operator) like "X if (bool) else Y". (Yes, obviously inspired by Python.)
  • Example:

     x = true
     y = 4 if (x) else 2
     // y == 4
     z = false
     y = y if (z) else 6
     // y == 6

• New: Number literals can now be written with underscores. For example 20_000_000.000_12 can be written instead of 20000000.00012.
• New: Array values can now be compared against another array values (by comparing all the items in both arrays).
• New: Regex values can be compared against other Regex values. Comparison returns true if both regexes are exactly the same.
• New: Brand-new StandardExtension providing general-purpose functions.
  • assert(bool[, string]): Throws error (with optional description as second argument) if the bool is false. This is useful for tests.
  • print(value): Prints the value if Primi is running in CLI.
• Improved: Optimized iterating over String value.
• Fixed grammar
  • Variable name 'return_whatever' was parsed as 'return' statement with the additional '_whatever' suffix - causing a syntax error. This is fixed now.
  • It was not possible to place //comments inside array definition that spanned multiple lines. That's possible now.
• Primi now supports (and also requires) PHP 7.1.

Internals

• REPL: Do not cache AST when in REPL mode.
• Separate ::getStringValue() and ::getStringRepr() methods for Value classes.
  • Idea behind this is similar to Python's __str__ and __repr__ dunders.
  • Example for StringValue containing string ahoj:
    • ::getStringValue() returns ahoj.
      • This is what is printed when used with print() function.
    • ::getStringRepr() return "ahoj" (including the double quotes).
      • This is what REPL displays to the user as the expression's result.
  • Function's "string repr" now includes info whether it is a userland function or it represents a native PHP function.
• Optimization: Text information in AST is now cached only for nodes that explicitly need it (using NODE_NEEDS_TEXT constant in handler class).
• Optimization: Bunch of stuff that node handlers need to prepare before handling their AST node was moved from runtime to parsing time.
• Optimization: NumberValue::isNumericInt() helper method now simplified by using ctype_digit() function.
• Using newer version of smuuf/php-peg that has some new optimizations.
• Refactoring and reworking tests:
  • The examples in examples directory ARE the language tests.
  • Rewritten many tests and examples to use the new assert() function.
• New benchmark system:
  • Two files that do roughly the same thing, one written in Primi and one written in PHP.
  • Primi performance is now evaluated "how many times is Primi slower than an equivalent code in PHP?"
  • This should make benchmarks more relevant - and any performance improvements or regressions should be more recognizable.
• Tests: Using GitHub Actions to run tests now (goodbye, Travis CI!).

Primi 0.3.2

• New function: array_has(key)

  • Returns true if the array contains such key. Returns false if not.
  • Examples:

  a = [0: "a", 1: "b"];
  a.has(0); // (bool) true
  a.has(1); // (bool) true
  a.has("nope"); // (bool) false

• New function: array_get(key[, default])

  • Returns a value having such key. If such key is missing, the expression returns some default value.
  • The default value is null by default, but it can be specified as the second argument.
  • Examples:

  a = [0: "a", 1: "b"];
  a.get(0); // (string) "a"
  a.get("hello"); // (null)
  a.get("hello_there", "yep"); // (string) "yep"

• Some tweaks to REPL visual design.

Primi 0.3.1.1

• Bugfix: Fixed string_shuffle function for unicode strings.

Primi 0.3.1

• REPL: Storing the latest result into "magic" underscore _ variable_.
• REPL: Avoid storing the same line into history multiple times if entered consecutively.
• REPL: Errors are now printed with color.
• REPL: Fixed bug in handling of multi-line input.
• Fixed bug of an internal InternalUndefinedTruthnessException error occasionally bubbling up to PHP itself.

Primi 0.3

• REPL mode is now a default behaviour of Primi's "primary binary" ./primi if executed with zero arguments.
• REPL now has a new command ?? which acts similarly to old ? command (prints all locally defined variables), but ?? prints global variables, too (e.g. global functions coming from extensions).
• The type __function__ has been renamed to just function.
• New function: string_join()
  • Can be used to concatenate items from an array (and even nested arrays!).
  • Example:

    a = ",".join([1, 2, 3]); // (string) "1,2,3"
    b = ",".join([1, 2, ['nested', 'stuff'], 4]); // (string) "1,2,nested,stuff,4"

• New function: string_shuffle()
  • Returns a new string value containing shuffled string passed as input.
  • Example:

    a = "hello".shuffle(); // (string) "leloh"
    b = "hello".shuffle(); // (string) "ollhe"
    c = string_shuffle("hello"); // (string) "lheol"
    d = "123456789".to_string().shuffle(); // (string) "841376592"

• New function: type()
  • Returns the type of a value/variable as a string.
  • Example:

    a = type("hello"); // (string) "string"
    b = type(type); // (string) "function"

• Fixed bug in hash_sha256 function for numbers.

Primi 0.2.5

• Truthness of null values can now be determined. That ultimately means that now it supports comparison to other truthy/untruthy values (such as bool values, etc.)
• REPL mode now has slightly better support for multiline input.

Primi 0.2.4

• NEW: Range definition literals
  • Syntax:
    • left .. right
      • Creates an array having integer values from left to right using steps of (minus) 1.
    • left ..[step..] right
      • Creates an array having values from left to right using steps of step.
  • Only integer numbers and integer number variables can be used as boundaries for range/step definition. (Current implementation will coerce floats into integers.)
  • Example:

    r = 1 .. 5; // (array) [0: 1, 1: 2, 2: 3, 3: 4, 4: 5]
    r = 1 .. -2 // (array) [0: 1, 1: 0, 2: -1, 3: -2]
    a = 1; b = 5; r = a .. b // (array) [0: 1, 1: 2, 2: 3, 3: 4, 4: 5] 
    r = 1 ..2.. 5; // (array) [0: 1, 1: 3, 2: 5]
    r = 1 ..4.. 7; // (array) [0: 1, 1: 5]
    r = 1 ..4.. 3; // ERR: Invalid step '4' for range
    

    The syntax is still experimental and may be subject to change.
• NEW: Added two hashing functions to Primi Standard Library.
  • hash_md5(string|number)
    • Returns a string containing MD5 hash of string or number.
    • Example:

      "hello".hash_md5(); // (string) "5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592"

  • hash_sha256(string|number)
    • Returns a string containing SHA256 hash of string or number.
    • Example:

      "hello".hash_sha256(); // (string) "2cf24dba5fb0a30e26e83b2ac5b9e29e1b161e5c1fa7425e73043362938b9824"
      

• Minor optimizations and fixes.

Primi 0.2.3

• BC break: The foreach..as construct/syntax was dropped in favor of more readable for..in construct/syntax..
• foreach (A as B) { ... } becomes for (B in A) { ... }
• New statements: break and continue control statements that can be used to fine-tune execution flow when inside for or while loops.
  • Their usage in global scope causes an error.
• BC break: Removed the echo statement, as it is undesirable by default (and by language's philosophy) for end-users to be able to perform any kind of direct output via Primi script.
  • One can still create an extension that provides such functionality via a new function.

Primi 0.2.2

• NEW: Logical operators.
  • Implemented and, or and proper ! negation operators.
    • Added helper Common::isTruthy() for having a single point of
      truth for value's truthyness.
  • Precedence of operators is defined as follows (high to low):
    • (...)
    • !
    • *, /
    • +, -
    • ==, !=, >=, <=, >, <
    • and
    • or
• FIX: Fixed error in array_shuffle() function. …
  • It did not operate on copy of the array. It does now.
• FIX: Fixed error when getting argument count for error message.
• Pretty major refactoring.
  • Introduced left-to-right evaluation helpers.
    • Supports short-circuiting.
  • Introduced left-to-right comparion evaluation helper.
    • Uses short-circuiting.
  • Many places where we relied on PHP's internal boolean-evaluation logic
    were now refactored to use our Common::isTruthy() helper.
  • There was an attempt to normalize number-bool comparison.
• Tests now support pragma comments, eg. // pragma:one_liners
  • This pragma (compilator/interpreter directive) forces the test runner to evaluate each line of the test as if it were standalone script.
    • That enables us to test exceptions better (thrown Primi's error exception no longer terminates the whole test suite.)
  • This leads to improved test coverage.

Primi 0.2.1

• Handling of strings and numbers is now strict.
  • No more magic conversion of "123" (string) to 123 (number).
  • Comparison of string and integer is allowed, but always returns false.
• Regex literals are now r"..." instead of slashes.
• REPL mode has new command ? one can use to print out variables from global context.