Older Compiler Releases

This is a list of the brief characteristics of previous compiler releases.

On 2006-10-07, the compiler was first publicly released. Before that date it had been available to a limited test audience for a short time. The first public release was version 0.9.29. The first private release was 0.3.26, and you can find the changes of those private releases in the Changelog file when you download the compiler package.

The license of the distribution was changed into GPLv3 when version 0.4.0 was released; older versions (0.3.38 and before) were released under the GPLv2.

0.4.3

Changes

• completed the semantic checks for pointer comparisons
• implemented the new version of the iterate statement
• fixed shell script incompatibility after testing on Ubuntu
• first steps towards getting the compiler compiled on MSVC

0.4.2

Changes

• the typechecking logic has been overhauled. Values passed to an inout parameter are now correctly typechecked.
• switched to CTest (comes with CMake) for running the tests. To run the regression tests, execute "make test" in the build directory.
• commandline parameter -f-immediate-errors was renamed to -f-no-diagnostic-buffer
• the build system was adapted to work with CMake 2.6
• fixed compatibility with GCC 4.3

0.4.1

Changes

• an error message is now generated for constant array indices that are known to be out of the valid range for the array type
• added extra procedures "print" and "line" to the class system.Out that take a char as argument
• the "size" procedure in an array type was changed. It no longer accepts an argument. Multi-dimensional arrays no longer have "size", but instead they have procedures "size0", "size1", ... , "sizeN" (with N +1 the number of dimensions)
• hex formatted char literals are no longer supported. They were only partially supported anyway, as the parser rejected them
• extra information in error/warning messages no longer repeats the same file name
• the symbol ".." is now supported (but not allowed anywhere yet)

0.4.0

Changes

• the compiler has gotten some big improvements, so the version number has been incremented to 0.4.0!
• semantic checking has been restructured; this fixes some tests and eases addition of new language features
• support for Unicode has been added. Currently only UTF-8 is supported. This means that your terminal will have to support UTF-8 in order to show the compiler messages correctly. Unicode quotes are now used instead of the ASCII characters that were used in previous releases. Hyper source files are assumed to be in UTF-8. Other encodings, like UTF-16, will be added later
• added a new warning -W-hide-parameter that warns for variables with the same name as one of the parameters of the procedure or constructor they reside in. This warning is enabled by default
• the license has been changed to the GPLv3
• procedure main can now return a result of type byte. Omitting the return type is still possible
• TODO and FIXME now also work in a double hash comment
• importing a user-defined sourcefile now generates a note saying that the import was ignored
• added a new option -f-syntax-only to stop the compiler after syntax checking. This also prevents semantic checking!
• added a new kind of test that verifies the correct handling of all sorts of commandline compiler options

0.3.38

Changes

• the compiler is less restrictive on the expressions used as an L-value
• when stopping on a fatal parse error, a note about this is printed
• added new compiler option -dumpspecs to print some information like compiler version, host platform, etc.
• added support for the AND-assign and OR-assign operator symbols, and added support to the bool type for those
• the highlighter no longer causes the input/output file to be corrupted when the lexer crashes or produces an error
• added support for a new type of comment: ## with no space in between creates a line comment that ignores further # characters and reaches until the end of the current line
• the compiler detects the wordsize of the platform it is compiled on. This currently only works for x86 and amd64 architectures (32 or 64 bit)
• though it is not a new compiler feature, be sure to check out a modified SciTE editor that was released recently. It provides syntax highlighting for Hyper source files and supports the new comment style that is introduced in this release

0.3.37

Changes

• added support for double pointers
• there are now two kinds of L-values: one for classes and one for pointers
• in diagnostic output the common directory prefix is extracted and shown separately, to have shorter output for each diagnostic (unless option -f-immediate-errors is used)
• the diagnostics are now sorted by source location (unless option -f-immediate-errors is used)
• the array operator of the array type now returns a pointer to its element type
• access checking for the conversion used in an assignment
• and lots of internal changes as well

0.3.36

Changes

• the compiler now checks that fields in a static class are static as well
• added static procedures "min" and "max" to all built-in integral types: byte, nat16, int16, ... These procedures return the minimum/maximum values for their type
• null is no longer accepted as an argument for inout parameters
• for array variable/field declarations the base type is now checked for a suitable constructor
• the compiler was also internally restructured, but this sort of changes is not listed in the changelog

0.3.35

Changes

• the highlighter now generates an external stylesheet, instead of one embedded in the XHTML document. The name of the stylesheet can be customized
• the regression tester can now handle compiler warnings
• the Boost libraries are now used in the compiler, so they are required now
• the floating-point types no longer support the increment and decrement operators, and their successor and predecessor operators are also removed. The reason for this is that they do not work for large floating-point numbers
• some commandline compiler options changed; run the compiler with option --help for help on usage

0.3.34

Changes

• the compiler now checks if its input file is a Hyper file or not by looking at its file extension (".hyp" or ".hyper")
• support for dynamic arrays
• complete static checking
• whitespace is no longer significant. For some small cases however, a warning is generated. New options are also available to control these warnings.
• the standalone HTML files generated by the highlighter from a source file now have the XHTML doctype, and validate!
• the highlighter can now highlight Hyper sourcecode embedded in existing HTML files. Run the program with option '--help' for documentation
• new string members: "clear()", "isEmpty()" and an add-assign operator for characters

0.3.33

Changes

• the `begin' directive is now checked, and the compiler now looks for procedure `main'
• a new compiler option `-c' prevents the compiler from looking for a procedure `main'
• the initializer of a field is now checked for type compatibility
• parameters without `inout' are now read-only and passed by reference
• array sizes are now checked and used in typechecking
• access checking is now done for constructors that are used as conversions for arguments when doing a procedure call or explicit constructor call

0.3.32

Changes

• the new namespace system is implemented. The old syntax is not supported anymore
• the example programs are now completely accepted by the compiler
• the default assignment operator is now generated if needed
• the compiler recognizes "TODO" and "FIXME" in comments and displays them as warning messages. Appropriate commandline switches to control this behaviour are also available
• more checking for 'static'
• support for chained comparisons (x < y < z etc...)

0.3.31

Changes

• the presence of return statements in a procedure is checked
• added public/private access checking (not complete)
• const checking is now complete
• added string constructors for converting other types
• new procedures in integer types: 'turnSign' and 'abs'
• new procedure in nat types: 'truncateToSigned'

0.3.30

Changes

• highlighter now uses the same style as the Hyper website
• copy constructors are now checked and auto-generated if needed
• 'inout' is now used for parameters that used 'var'
• the 'this' keyword is now supported in expressions
• access specifiers in a namespace are no longer supported

0.3.29

See also

• The latest release of the compiler