Orc release 2.0.0 (Thu, 21 Apr 2011)

Orc 2.0 is a new major revision of the Orc implementation. The core codebase has been rewritten in Scala, and the internal structure of the compiler and runtime have been altered and improved substantially.

The user-level surface language has also changed. Orc 2.0 is not backwards-compatible with previous versions of Orc. Here are the detailed release notes on the user-visible changes to the language. Guidance on how to modify programs written in the previous version of Orc to make them run under Orc 2.0 is on the UpgradingYourProgramToOrc2.0 wiki page.

See our Downloads page for detailed instructions on how to download and use Orc within Eclipse, locally within your web browser, or from the command line.

Added

• Support for records: record expressions, record types, record patterns, and record extension using +
• Function clauses may have arbitrary guard conditions.
• New web library section, with sites Browse, HTTP, ReadJSON, and WriteJSON
• New xml library section, with XML manipulation sites.
• Enhanced parse error messages.
• Enhanced compiler and runtime error messages, with links into the Orc Wiki.
• The .oil compiled representation of Orc programs now has a standard public format, given by orc.csres.utexas.edu/oil.xsd.
• Orc compiler and runtime support JSR 223.
• Orc 2.0 has a full Reference Manual.
• Added site IterableToStream to convert Java objects implementing Iterable to a more Orc-appropriate idiom.
• Any value with an apply member can be called; the call is forwarded to the apply member.
• Any value with an unapply member can be used in a call pattern; the match target is forwarded to the unapply member.

Modified

• def capsule is now def class.
• site is now import site.
• class is now import class.
• type is now import type for external types. Type aliases and datatypes remain unchanged.
• The three import declarations require the Java class name to be a quoted string.
• The comparison operators < and > are now <: and :>.
• if site is now Ift. Ift has a counterpart, Iff.
• IArray is now Table.
• Rtimer is now Rwait.
• Buffer is now Channel. BoundedBuffer is now BoundedChannel.
• "Nonblocking" sites, with the suffix 'nb', are now "definite" sites, with the suffix 'D'.
• Site names are now capitalized by convention. This has changed many sites in the standard library: Let, Print, Println, Error, Read, Write, Floor, Ceil, Random, URandom.
• Keywords are reserved. (Previously one could, for example, define a function named "stop".)
• Orc identifiers may now use Unicode letters.
• Fixed bugs in Floor and Ceil.
• Arrays no longer have any methods. They have one field, length. For slice, use the new function sliceArray.
• Arrays no longer pattern match as lists. Use arrayToList.
• Descendants of Iterable no longer pattern match as lists. Use iterableToList.
• All Orc programs and includes are interpreted using the UTF-8 character encoding.

Removed

• Tracing facilities have been removed.
• Experimental support for Orc exception handling syntax has been removed.
• Special treatment of interaction between if then else and >> in parser has been removed.
• if then without else is no longer supported. Always use if then else.
• Equality (=x) pattern is gone. Use a guard on the clause instead.
• Special treatment of newlines has been removed. Ambiguous syntax can be eliminated with the insertion of signal >>.
• Curried definition of functions, lambdas, and function types are no longer allowed. Expand these explicitly as chained lambdas instead.
• Record has been removed; use primitive records instead.
• Set and Map have been removed; use Scala or Java counterparts instead.
• cat has been removed, use + on strings instead.
• Clock has been removed, use Rclock instead.
• Ltimer and withLtimer have been removed.
• Apply has been removed.
• Thread has been removed.
• () as a synonym for signal has been removed.
• All uses of and dependencies on Kilim have been removed.