The Cobra Programming Language
Version 0.0.8 Release Notes
2006-04-23
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See also:
    Cobra\ReadMe.text
    Cobra\Docs\License.text
    http://CobraLang.com/

In this release:

== Additions ==

* Added ? as both a "nil coalesce" binary operator and a unary postfix operator 
  for nil detection. For example,

    def doSomething(stuff as Object?)
        if stuff?  # detect nil
            print 'Will use default stuff.'
        stuff = stuff ? .defaultStuff  # coalesce nil

* Added ! as the inverse of ? as both a binary operator and a unary postfix 
  operator.

    def doSomething(input as String)
        if input!  # detect not nil
            print 'Received some input.'
        i as int? = input ! string.parse(input)  # coalesce non-nil

* Added "fake classes" which are useful for defining APIs since Cobra does not yet 
  scan assemblies for their symbols:

    class TextWriter
        is fake
        get newLine as String
            pass

* Added two examples:
  * google-api.cobra - Use the Google Search API.
  * webpages.cobra - Generate HTML for a website modeled with OO inheritance.

* C# files can be passed on the Cobra command line to be included in the final 
  compilation. This is convenient for quickly incorporating the output of a C# 
  code generator like wsdl.exe.

* More than one Cobra source file can be passed on the command line.


== Changes ==

* Compiler options must now be passed with dashes (1 or 2, your choice).
    cobra.py --run foo.cobra
    cobra.py --compile --debug foo.cobra
  Running the program (after compilation) is still the default when no options are 
  passed:
    cobra.py foo.cobra

* The compiler no longer emits debug information by default. There is a new
  --debug option for that.

* Access to methods and properties of the current class has to be preceded by a 
  period or an underscore (as was originally intended). Previously, the compiler 
  crashed without the prefix. Now it gives a normal error message.

    def computeTotalRevenue
        total = 0
        for payment in .payments  # <-- short for this.payments
            total += payment.total
        _totalRevenue = total  # _totalRevenue is a protected field


== Fixes ==

* Fixed a bug regarding nilable cross references between classes.

* Explicit local variable declarations (ex: x as int) could not start with an 
  underscore, but implicit ones (ex: _x = 0) could. The implicit ones no longer 
  can, as originally intended. This prevents silent errors caused by mispelling
  class variables in constructors.

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