Cobra April 2009 Update

[Charles]

This is a new update for April, covering improvements since the last update for March.

There were 2 releases last month with various improvements described below. The most recent is Cobra 2009-04-30. You can download the latest now.

Or for the absolute latest, there is a HowToInstallFromSource wiki page covering the ease and benefits of using Cobra from the source repository, and how to do it.

The following improvements are due to patches and feedback from the community as well as my own efforts. Thanks to all contributors including sample program writers, wiki writers, and testers!

Language

-- Warn when "base.init" or another ".init" is not invoked explicitly at the beginning of an initializer.

-- Allow /# and #/ (block comment start/end) to be indented.

-- Compiler directives have changed to @foo as in @args and @number. Discussed here.

-- Added new @ref directive for referencing libraries from source (as opposed to command line). See the WPF How To for example usage.

-- Note that the language does not change much each month because it is getting mature. We already have classes, interfaces, structs, mixins, generics, properties, methods, lambdas, closures and more.

Library

-- obj.typeOf # Portable method which returns the type of the object.

-- CobraCore.exit(code) # Portable method to exit the process.

-- CobraCore.random # Returns a globally shared instance of Random created the first time it's requested.

-- More IList<of T> conveniences:

---- IList<of T>.concated as IList<of T>
---- IList<of T>.numberedDown as KeyValuePair<int, T>*
---- IList<of T>.random as T
---- IList<of T>.random(r as Random) as T

Misc

-- Various improvements to the installer contributed by users based on their experiences and environments. Thanks everyone!

-- Command line parsing robustness improvements.

-- Added or improved 4 error messages and warnings.

-- Fixed 4 bugs.

Docs, Samples and How-To's

-- Caligari posted a new version of his FindWords program.

-- Updated StandardLibraryExtensionMethods.

-- Our Trac instance, which runs our wiki, tickets and online source browsing, has been optimized and made responsive again.


The next update will be posted in about 30 days to cover the month of May, but you can always keep up to date by following the discussion forums.

We hope you'll try out the latest Cobra!


Best regards,

Chuck Esterbrook

[Charles]

Forgot to mention 99 Bottles of Beer.