Factor Language Blog

Version 0.86 of the Factor programming language is now out.

Windows and Mac Intel packages were provided courtesy of Doug Coleman (thanks Doug!)

Changes:

+ Core
- Improved memory management code leads to reduced memory consumption, less frequent garbage collections and fixes a few corner cases where Factor could run out of heap even if a GC would have freed enough memory to proceed
- Improved prettyprinter low lays out code in a more pleasing manner
- Windows native I/O has been sped up (Doug Coleman)

+ UI
- Double and triple clicks are now recognized, and can be used to select text in the editor gadget
- Windows now update while being resized on Windows

+ Stack effect inference
- The new infer. word should be called instead of infer, since it presents information in a more pleasing way
- Stack effect inference now infers variables read and written by a quotation to facilitate code comprehension and debugging

+ Module system
- The syntax for PROVIDE: has changed, consult the documentation
- Modules can now provide a main entry point, see run-module and MAIN:
- Modules can now provide documentation, see Documenting modules

+ Contributed libraries
- New contrib/cpuinfo (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/match (Chris Double)
- Updated contrib/parser-combinators (Chris Double)
- Updated contrib/postgresql (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/process (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/sqlite (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/textmate (Benjamin Pollack)
- Updated contrib/tuple-db (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/vim (Doug Coleman)
- Updated contrib/xml (Daniel Ehrenberg)