Release notes for Inform v5.2 (build 5J39)

This release was made on 1 December 2007, before Inform was open-sourced. At that time versions of Inform were identified by build codes in the form NLNN.

This is part of the historical archive of release notes.

Overview

This build introduces lists as first-class values. For any kind of value K, "list of K" is now also a kind of value, and rich support is provided for building and iterating over lists, which are dynamically resized as necessary. Otherwise little is new, but once again all known bugs have been fixed.

Language

For any kind of value K, "list of K" is now also a kind of value. Lists resize automatically, can be iterated through, sorted, searched, reversed or rotated, and they have a notation enabling constant lists to be written down concisely: for instance,
```
	let L be {2, 3, 5, 7, 11};
```
gives the temporary variable L the kind of value "list of numbers", and sets it initially to this sequence of five values, whereas
```
	let M be the list of open doors;
```
gives M the kind of value "list of objects", and sets its initial contents to be all the doors which are currently open. (Lists can also be used in global variables, in properties, or table entries, and can include each other: "list of lists of numbers", say, is a kind of value.) Values can be added or removed at any point in a list; lists can be merged, or compared for differences; and examples are presented to show the use of lists as queues, stacks, rings, sets, arrays, and so forth. (All memory management is automatic and all bounds are automatically checked.) See the new Chapter 20 ("Lists").
The previous restriction whereby TEST scripts could not exceed 255 characters in length has been withdrawn. The new maximum is 9999 (a cap intended only to catch accidental runaway cases where the closing quote has been forgotten).

Documentation, examples and extensions

Examples

"Eyes, Fingers, Toes" added to demonstrate a multi-number safe using lists to create a log of dialed numbers.
"Robo 1" added to demonstrate a programmable robot that will replay the player's behavior.
"Robo 2" added to demonstrate a robot that can learn multiple stored action scripts with command names determined by the player.
"Rock Garden" reformatted to give the general material at the top.
"The Fibonacci Sequence" added to demonstrate using lists as arrays.
"I Didn't Come All The Way From Great Portland Street" added to demonstrate using lists as sets.
"Lugubrious Pete's Delicatessen" added to demonstrate using lists as queues.
"Sieve of Eratosthenes" added to demonstrate using lists as sieves.
"Circle of Misery" added to demonstrate using lists as ring buffers.
"Lanista 1" corrected to fix a truncated sentence in the commentary.
"Leopard-skin" added to demonstrate a log of stored actions.
"What Makes You Tick" added to demonstrate building a fishing rod from component parts.
"Your Mother Doesn't Work Here" added to demonstrate using a list as a stack to plan character behavior.

Problem messages

Problem message added to prevent the UNDO command being used in a TEST script (which can't safely be done since it undoes progress in the test itself), and also to prevent individual commands in TEST scripts from exceeding 100 characters (since the I6 library would choke on those).
Problem message improved for namespace clashes between variable names and descriptions.
Problem message added (in place of previous I6 errors) when a description of an action, used as a condition, refers both to the past and to values in the present (by means of "called").
Problem message improved for an ambiguity in rule premisses as between a description of an actor followed by an action, and an action name with no actor attached. (This arose in the case of "standing using ...", where "standing" had also been defined so as to describe certain people: was the action here "standing using", done by nobody in particular, or "using", done by a person matching "standing"?)
Infelicity fixed whereby the problem message about minus signs being wrongly used in unit constants could be repeated (sometimes quite a few times) for the same mistake.
Problem message added (rather than I6 error or mysteriously incorrect behaviour) for the case of a phrase so ambiguous that at compile-time it is not possible to tell how many values it takes as arguments. The problem explains this, shows the phrases it cannot choose between, and invites the author to reword one of them.

Bug fixes

Bug fixed whereby pastes of Example text for examples including backslashes (such as those arising from the introduction of regular expression matching) and, in some cases, other unusual characters would cause the text to be pasted incomplete - so that it did not work as it was claimed to do.
Bug fixed whereby two or more consecutive double-quoted texts in a single table entry would lead to an internal error rather than a problem message; something which can happen easily if pasted text converts tabs to spaces, when two adjacent table columns are both supposed to contain text.
Bug fixed whereby a rule whose premiss involved clauses of several different sorts, one of them "when", could sometimes produce an internal error.
Bug fixed - or, really, feature added, but the lack of it was regarded as peculiar - whereby an action description used in a rule was not allowed to give the name of a kind of value to mean "any value of this kind": for instance, "Instead of dialing something to a code symbol", where "code symbol" is a kind of value and "dialing it to" is an action applying to one thing and one code symbol.
Bug fixed whereby "[']" for apostrophe wasn't being allowed in titles given as the opening text of a bibliographic heading.
Bug fixed whereby indexed text and stored action variables were not working properly if they belonged to rulebooks, activities or actions.
Bug fixed whereby "if there is a [table-reference]" was not working in the case of columns holding indexed text.
Bug fixed whereby spurious "no such entry" run-time problems would occur if a table with a column holding indexed text was created with blank rows.
Bug fixed whereby ambiguous phrases requiring run-time checking on some arguments would sometimes go wrong if other arguments were stored actions or indexed text.
Bug fixed whereby if several "let" variables in a single phrase needed to be indexed text or stored actions, they would sometimes have their kinds of value rearranged between them, with occasionally bizarre results.
Bug fixed whereby the dynamic memory allocator would print up debugging information such as "1+128+256+512+1024+2048+4096+8192+16384+65536" after successfully allocating memory via Glulx's @malloc mechanism. Apologies for this.
Bug fixed whereby a compound phrase which looks as if it might be in the form "total ...", counting the total of some property - but which isn't - would generate an internal error rather than being rejected in favour of some other interpretation.
Bug fixed whereby a rule predicated on a condition about something being listed (or not) in a table would cause I6 errors.
Bug fixed whereby an internal error rather than a problem message would sometimes be issued when a condition was used which had no active verb but could be taken as a description of things (typically arising if "is" had been mistyped as "in").
Bug fixed whereby the old I6 debugging commands CHANGES and ROUTINES, which are no longer implemented in I7, still had their grammar visible in I7-compiled games, so that it was possible (but usually quickly fatal) to try using these commands.

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