Corman Lisp 1.5 Release Notes

August 5, 2001

Registered users:  Please see Registration section at bottom.

Changes and new features include:

ANSI Common Lisp Compatibility

	Modified structures to be integrated better with CLOS.
	i.e. CLASS-OF returns a class unique to that structure type.
	
	Fixed bug in lexical macro handling.
	
	Added *LOAD-PATHNAME*, *LOAD-TRUENAME* variables.
	These are bound during LOAD.

	Added DIRECTORY-NAMESTRING, TRUENAME implementations.
	
	Modified APROPOS to more accurately report the package
	that symbols are found in.
	
	Added code to ensure all keywords are constant.
	
	Added bootstrap code to patch common lisp structures 
	which are created prior to CLOS loading to properly 
	support method dispatching (such as HASH-TABLE).
	
	Modified code generation of UNWIND-PROTECT
	to correctly handle return from the cleanup
	clauses via RETURN or GO.
	
	Fixed a bug in READ-SEQUENCE that caused the wrong index 
	to be returned when an EOF caused the entire sequence 
	range to not be read.
	
	Modified LOAD to accept a pathname as well as a filename 
	string.
	
	Fixed ENCODE-UNIVERSAL-TIME so it now defaults
	to the current time zone.
	
	Fixed TYPEP implementation to handle vector lengths correctly.
	
	Lots of modifications to COERCE, CONCATENATE to support
	vectors properly.
	
	Fixed problem with reading structs.
	Fixed problem writing arrays with fill pointers.
	
	MAKE-SEQUENCE now handles result type NULL.
	
	Added LOGBITP, LOGCOUNT, LDB, (SETF LDB), EXPT, LDB-TEST
	
	More efficient implementation of MOD for integers.
	
	Added *COMPILE-FILE-PATHNAME* and *COMPILE-FILE-TRUENAME*
	
	Fixed some string manipulation functions.
	
	Fixed a bug in GCD when one or more arguments are zero.
	
	ASSERT now evaluates interactively entered arguments (as implied
	by examples in the spec).
	
	Fixed problem with macroexpansion in FLET and LABELS function forms.
	
	Implemented SUBST, SUBST-IF, SUBST-IF-NOT, NSUBST, NSUBST-IF, 
	NSUBST-IF-NOT.
	
	Frank Adrian's changes to better handle package designators.
	
	Fixed problem with declarations in lambdas.
	
	Fixed a problem with READ-DELIMITED-LIST with
	lists ending with ". NIL". Thanks to Gilbert Perfetti
	for assistance with this.
	
	Incorporated Gilbert Perfetti's fix to handle dotted pairs 
	in backquotes.
	
	Added ENSURE-DIRECTORIES-EXIST.
	
	Fixed a problem where OPEN was not reporting an error
	when a file did not exist.
	
	Fixed support for coercing to type FUNCTION.
	
	Fixed bug in INTEGER-DECODE-FLOAT (thanks to Gilbert Perfetti).
	
	Improved DECODE-FLOAT handling of 0.0.
	
	Fixed a bug with times and dates and daylight time.
	
	Fixed a bug in CLOS macroexpansion.
	
	Integrated EQL specializers with CLOS. The overhead of defining
    methods that specialize on EQL types is only incurred for those
    generic functions that actually have those methods.
	
	Added support for shared slots to CLOS (:allocation :class).

	Added SETF registry functions, converted code to use them.
	SETF functions no longer stored in symbol property lists,
	rather in a hash-table.
	
	Added support for (SETF APPLY).
	
	Fixed a problem with escaped : characters in symbols.

	Reimplemented a couple kernel function (read macros) in lisp.
	This fixes a bug with the reader and #n= syntax.

	Fixed two problems with pathnames:
	(pathname ".ext") now correctly returns #P".ext"
	(MERGE-PATHNAMES #P"n.e" #P"d:\") now correctly returns #P"d:\n.e"

	Fixed a bug with UNION, INTERSECTION and SET-DIFFERENCE with key arguments.
	
	(SETF GETF) now returns the set value.

	Fixed handling of initial contents and reading vectors.
	
	MAKE-ARRAY now signals error if initializer list is too short.
	
	Fixed array displacements when displacing to an already displaced array.

	Fixed a bug in READ-FROM-STRING.

	Cleaned up pathname, directory handling.

	Added SHIFTF, improved ROTATEF.
	Added some missing SETF functions.

	Added GET-INTERNAL-REAL-TIME.

	Changed the type of the doc strings in DEFMACRO forms to FUNCTION 
	(rather than MACRO) for ansi-compliance.

	Added GET-SETF-EXPANSION.
	Added DEFINE-MODIFY-MACRO macro.

	Fixed MOD function (for negative integers).

	Added functions:
	assoc-if, assoc-if-not, rassoc, rassoc-if, rassoc-if-not,
	tree-equal, revappend, copy-alist, nintersection, nset-difference, nunion

Compiler
	Optimized generic function dispatch (overhead reduced 50%).
	
	Added tail recursion elimination.
	
	Class and structure optimizations.
	
	Fixed a problem with LET* and special variable bindings 
	that would show up if the initializer of a variable caused 
	a non-local exit.
	
	Fixed a problem with THROW and the number of returned values.

	Added support for alternate keyword naming i.e.
		(defun func (x &key ((:y z) 'default)) ...
	
	Added code to signal an error if an attempt is made to convert a
	bignum to a short float or a single float, and the float cannot 
	contain a number of that magnitude (i.e. it is larger than
	most-positive-single-float or smaller than most-negative-single-float). 

Corman Lisp
	Added WIN32 to features.
	
	Added WIN:SHELL command to call out to the system.
	
	Added WIN:GET-COMMAND-LINE to get the current application's
	command line parameters.
	
	Updated DIRECTORY. Added :recurse option.
	
	Added GetFileAttributes function.
	Added CCL::GET-FILE-ATTRIBUTES and CCL::DIRECTORY-P.
	
	Init.lisp will now be loaded from the same directory as the 
	kernel.
	
	Added FIND-IN-FILES function. A fast way to search for all occurrences
    of a string e.g. (find-in-files "foo" "sys/*.lisp").
	
	Added declaration of SetWindowText.
	
	Fixed a bug in the debugger (works better now with saved 
	applications).
	
	Added more support for file attributes setting/getting.
	
	Fixed a bug in SAVE-APPLICATION, now allow 3-letter or shorter names.

GUI
	Modified Miniwin to keep the width and height of all windows.
	
	Added new GUI module. This is meant to be an expanded version
	of Miniwin, largely rewritten, with much additional 
	functionality. Currently supports both single document
	and multi-document windows applications.

IDE
	Fixed a crash bug when you press tab and the highlighted area
	extended to the end of the buffer. It now is disabled in this 
	case.
	
	Fixed bug in IDE when double-clicking on .lisp file.
	
	Modified IDE to support changing font size, style.
	Tab and font size are now changed in the Preferences dialog
	(and saved in the registry).
	
	Added options to modify colors in Preferences.
	Rearranged Preferences dialog.
	
	Now force mouse cue off when scrolling.
	
	Added icons for different document types.

	Added Lisp menu command to return the user to the top level
	(useful if you are in the debugger and you want to exit).
	
	If the IDE is expired, a nag screen comes up every 30 minutes.
	(everybody's favorite :-)

Examples
	Added JavaClass console program. Parses java .class files
	and prints report to console. This includes demonstration code
	for getting and using command-line parameters, recursive directory
	listings.
	
	Added touch.lisp console application.

	Added four new sample programs which use the new GUI package:
		hello
		life-gui
		mdi-example
		menu1

Registration
	The registration codes for 1.5 are different than for previous versions.
	You will get an additional 30 days with the IDE, beginning with installation
	of 1.5.
	
	Registered users of versions 1.4, 1.41 and 1.42 are entitled to a free
	registration of 1.5. Please e-mail lisp@corman.net to obtain your new
	code.
	
	Registered users of earlier versions may upgrade their registration
	to 1.5 for US $50. See the registration section of the web site
	for details. If you have any questions, e-mail lisp@corman.net.