<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2004</year><year>2013</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You should have received a copy of the
Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
retrieved online at http://www.erlang.org/.
Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See
the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations
under the License.
</legalnotice>
<title>STDLIB Release Notes</title>
<prepared></prepared>
<docno></docno>
<date></date>
<rev></rev>
<file>notes.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This document describes the changes made to the STDLIB application.</p>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.19.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> The Erlang scanner no longer accepts floating point
numbers in the input string. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10990</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
When converting a faulty binary to a list with
unicode:characters_to_list, the error return value could
contain a faulty "rest", i.e. the io_list of characters
that could not be converted was wrong. This happened only
if input was a sub binary and conversion was from utf8.
This is now corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11080</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The type <c>hook_function()</c> has been corrected in
<c>erl_pp</c>, the Erlang Pretty Printer. </p>
<p>The printing of invalid forms, e.g. record field
types, has also been fixed. It has been broken since
R16B. </p>
<p> (Thanks to Tomáš Janoušek.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11100</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix receive support in erl_eval with a BEAM module.
Thanks to Anthony Ramine.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11137</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Delete obsolete note about simple-one-for-one supervisor.
Thanks to Magnus Henoch.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10938</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> When selecting encoding of a script written in Erlang
(<c>escript</c>) the optional directive on the second
line is now recognized. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10951</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The function <c>erl_parse:abstract/2</c> has been
documented. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10992</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Integrate elliptic curve contribution from Andreas
Schultz </p>
<p>
In order to be able to support elliptic curve cipher
suites in SSL/TLS, additions to handle elliptic curve
infrastructure has been added to public_key and crypto.</p>
<p>
This also has resulted in a rewrite of the crypto API to
gain consistency and remove unnecessary overhead. All OTP
applications using crypto has been updated to use the new
API.</p>
<p>
Impact: Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) offers
equivalent security with smaller key sizes than other
public key algorithms. Smaller key sizes result in
savings for power, memory, bandwidth, and computational
cost that make ECC especially attractive for constrained
environments.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11009</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Added sys:get_state/1,2 and sys:replace_state/2,3. Thanks
to Steve Vinoski.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11013</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Optimizations to gen mechanism. Thanks to Lo�c Hoguin.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11025</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Optimizations to gen.erl. Thanks to Lo�c Hoguin.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11035</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Use erlang:demonitor(Ref, [flush]) where applicable.
Thanks to Lo�c Hoguin.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11039</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Erlang source files with non-ASCII characters are now
encoded in UTF-8 (instead of latin1).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11041 Aux Id: OTP-10907 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix rest_for_one and one_for_all restarting a child not
terminated. Thanks to James Fish.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11042</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix excessive CPU consumption of timer_server. Thanks to
Aliaksey Kandratsenka.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11053</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Rename and document lists:zf/2 as lists:filtermap/2.
Thanks to Anthony Ramine.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11078</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed an inconsistent state in epp. Thanks to Anthony
Ramine</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11079</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
c:ls(File) will now print File, similar to ls(1) in Unix.
The error messages have also been improved. (Thanks to
Bengt Kleberg.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11108</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Support callback attributes in erl_pp. Thanks to Anthony
Ramine.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11140</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Improve erl_lint performance. Thanks to Jos� Valim.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-11143</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.19.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Bugs related to Unicode have been fixed in the
<c>erl_eval</c> module. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10622 Aux Id: kunagi-351 [262] </p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>filelib:wildcard("some/relative/path/*.beam",
Path)</c> would fail to match any file. That is,
filelib:wildcard/2 would not work if the first component
of the pattern did not contain any wildcard characters.
(A previous attempt to fix the problem in R15B02 seems to
have made matters worse.)</p>
<p>(Thanks to Samuel Rivas and Tuncer Ayaz.)</p>
<p>There is also an incompatible change to the
<c>Path</c> argument. It is no longer allowed to be a
binary.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10812</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> The new STDLIB application variable
<c>shell_strings</c> can be used for determining how the
Erlang shell outputs lists of integers. The new function
<c>shell:strings/1</c> toggles the value of the variable.
</p> <p> The control sequence modifier <c>l</c> can be
used for turning off the string recognition of <c>~p</c>
and <c>~P</c>. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10755</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Miscellaneous updates due to Unicode support. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10820</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Extend <c>~ts</c> to handle binaries with characters
coded in ISO-latin-1 </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10836</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The +pc flag to erl can be used to set the range of
characters considered printable. This affects how the
shell and io:format("~tp",...) functionality does
heuristic string detection. More can be read in STDLIB
users guide.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10884</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.19</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Wildcards such as "some/path/*" passed to
<c>filelib:wildcard/2</c> would fail to match any file.
(Thanks to Samuel Rivas for reporting this bug.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6874 Aux Id: kunagi-190 [101] </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed error handling in proc_lib:start which could hang
if the spawned process died in init.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9803 Aux Id: kunagi-209 [120] </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Allow ** in filelib:wildcard</p>
<p>
Two adjacent * used as a single pattern will match all
files and zero or more directories and subdirectories.
(Thanks to José Valim)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10431</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add the \gN and \g{N} syntax for back references in
re:replace/3,4 to allow use with numeric replacement
strings. (Thanks to Vance Shipley)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10455</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Export ets:match_pattern/0 type (Thanks to Joseph Wayne
Norton)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10472</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix printing the empty binary at depth 1 with ~W (Thanks
to Andrew Thompson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10504</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The type <c>ascii_string()</c> in the <c>base64</c>
module has been corrected. The type
<c>file:file_info()</c> has been cleaned up. The type
<c>file:fd()</c> has been made opaque in the
documentation. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10624 Aux Id: kunagi-352 [263] </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Dets tables are no longer fixed while traversing with
a bound key (when only the objects with the right key are
matched). This optimization affects the functions
<c>match/2</c>, <c>match_object/2</c>, <c>select/2</c>,
<c>match_delete/2</c>, and <c>select_delete/2</c>. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10097</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Support for Unicode has been implemented. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10302</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The linter now warns for opaque types that are not
exported, as well as for under-specified opaque types.
</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10436</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The type <c>file:name()</c> has been substituted for
the type <c>file:filename()</c> in the following
functions in the <c>filename</c> module:
<c>absname/2</c>, <c>absname_join/2</c>, <c>join/1,2</c>,
and <c>split/1</c>. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10474</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
If a child process fails in its start function, then the
error reason was earlier only reported as an error report
from the error_handler, and supervisor:start_link would
only return <c>{error,shutdown}</c>. This has been
changed so the supervisor will now return
<c>{error,{shutdown,Reason}}</c>, where <c>Reason</c>
identifies the failing child and its error reason.
(Thanks to Tomas Pihl)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10490</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Where necessary a comment stating encoding has been
added to Erlang files. The comment is meant to be removed
in Erlang/OTP R17B when UTF-8 becomes the default
encoding. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10630</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The contracts and types of the modules
<c>erl_scan</c> and <c>sys</c> have been corrected and
improved. (Thanks to Kostis Sagonas.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10658</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The Erlang shell now skips the rest of the line when
it encounters an Erlang scanner error. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10659</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Clean up some specs in the proplists module. (Thanks to
Kostis Sagonas.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10663</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Some examples overflowing the width of PDF pages have
been corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10665</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Enable escript to accept emulator arguments when script
file has no shebang. Thanks to Magnus Henoch</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10691</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug in queue:out/1, queue:out_r/1 that makes it
O(N^2) in worst case. Thanks to Aleksandr Erofeev.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10722</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> There are new functions in the <c>epp</c> module
which read the character encoding from files. See
<c>epp(3)</c> for more information. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10742 Aux Id: OTP-10302 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The functions in <c>io_lib</c> have been adjusted for
Unicode. The existing functions <c>write_string()</c> and
so on now take Unicode strings, while the old behavior
has been taken over by new functions
<c>write_latin1_string()</c> and so on. There are also
new functions to write Unicode strings as Latin-1
strings, mainly targetted towards the Erlang pretty
printer (<c>erl_pp</c>). </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10745 Aux Id: OTP-10302 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The new functions <c>proc_lib:format/2</c> and
<c>erl_parse:abstract/2</c> accept an encoding as second
argument. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10749 Aux Id: OTP-10302 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Increased potential concurrency in ETS for
<c>write_concurrency</c> option. The number of internal
table locks has increased from 16 to 64. This makes it
four times less likely that two concurrent processes
writing to the same table would collide and thereby
serialized. The cost is an increased constant memory
footprint for tables using write_concurrency. The memory
consumption per inserted record is not affected. The
increased footprint can be particularly large if
<c>write_concurrency</c> is combined with
<c>read_concurrency</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10787</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.18.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Minor test updates</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10591</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.18.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Fixed bug where if given an invalid drive letter on
windows ensure dir would go into an infinite loop.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10104</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Calls to gen_server:enter_loop/4 where ServerName has a
global scope and no timeout is given now works correctly.</p>
<p>
Thanks to Sam Bobroff for reporting the issue.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10130</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
fix escript/primary archive reloading</p>
<p>
If the mtime of an escript/primary archive file changes
after being added to the code path, correctly reload the
archive and update the cache. (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10151</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug that in some cases could cause corrupted binaries
in ETS tables with <c>compressed</c> option.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10182</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix filename:nativename/1 on Win32</p>
<p>
Don't choke on paths given as binary argument on Win32.
Thanks to Jan Klötzke</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10188</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug in <c>ets:test_ms/2</c> that could cause emulator
crash when using <c>'$_'</c> in match spec.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10190</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug where zip archives wrongly have a first disk
number set to 1</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10223</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> The message printed by the Erlang shell as an
explanation of the <c>badarith</c> error has been
corrected. (Thanks to Matthias Lang.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-10054</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.18.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
References to <c>is_constant/1</c> (which was removed in
the R12 release) has been removed from documentation and
code.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6454 Aux Id: seq10407 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Leave control back to gen_server during supervisor's
restart loop</p>
<p>
When an attempt to restart a child failed, supervisor
would earlier keep the execution flow and try to restart
the child over and over again until it either succeeded
or the restart frequency limit was reached. If none of
these happened, supervisor would hang forever in this
loop.</p>
<p>
This commit adds a timer of 0 ms where the control is
left back to the gen_server which implements the
supervisor. This way any incoming request to the
supervisor will be handled - which could help breaking
the infinite loop - e.g. shutdown request for the
supervisor or for the problematic child.</p>
<p>
This introduces some incompatibilities in stdlib due to
new return values from supervisor: <list>
<item>restart_child/2 can now return
{error,restarting}</item> <item>delete_child/2 can now
return {error,restarting}</item> <item>which_children/1
returns a list of {Id,Child,Type,Mods}, where Child, in
addition to the old pid() or 'undefined', now also can be
'restarting'.</item> </list></p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9549</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
If a temporary child's start function returned 'ignore',
then the supervisor would keep it's child specification.
This has been corrected. Child specifications for
non-existing temporary children shall never be kept.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9782 Aux Id: seq11964 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Use universal time as base in error logger
<p>
Previous conversion used the deprecated
calendar:local_time_to_universal_time/1 </p></p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9854</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Calling a guard test (such as is_list/1) from the
top-level in a guard, would cause a compiler crash if
there was a local definition with the same name.
Corrected to reject the program with an error
message.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9866</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix the type spec from the doc of binary:part/3 (Thanks
to Ricardo Catalinas Jiménez)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9920</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Correct spelling of registered (Thanks to Richard
Carlsson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9925</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Put gb_trees documentation into alphabetical order
(Thanks to Aidan Hobson Sayers)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9929</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix bug in ETS with <c>compressed</c> option and
insertion of term containing large integers (>2G) on
64-bit machines. Seen to cause emulator crash. (Thanks to
Diego Llarrull for excellent bug report)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9932</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add plugin support for alternative name lookup This patch
introduces a new way of locating a behaviour instance:
{via, Module, Name}. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9945</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The function <c>digraph_utils:condensation/1</c> used
to create a digraph containing loops contradicting the
documentation which states that the created digraph is
free of cycles. This bug has been fixed. (Thanks to
Kostis Sagonas for finding the bug.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9953</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> When an escript ends now all printout to standard
output and standard error gets out on the terminal. This
bug has been corrected by changing the behaviour of
erlang:halt/0,1, which should fix the same problem for
other escript-like applications, i.e that data stored in
the output port driver buffers got lost when printing on
a TTY and exiting through erlang:halt/0,1. </p>
<p> The BIF:s erlang:halt/0,1 has gotten improved
semantics and there is a new BIF erlang:halt/2 to
accomplish something like the old semantics. See the
documentation. </p>
<p> Now erlang:halt/0 and erlang:halt/1 with an integer
argument will close all ports and allow all pending async
threads operations to finish before exiting the emulator.
Previously erlang:halt/0 and erlang:halt(0) would just
wait for pending async threads operations but not close
ports. And erlang:halt/1 with a non-zero integer argument
would not even wait for pending async threads operations.
</p>
<p> To roughly the old behaviour, to not wait for ports
and async threads operations when you exit the emulator,
you use erlang:halt/2 with an integer first argument and
an option list containing {flush,false} as the second
argument. Note that now is flushing not dependant of the
exit code, and you can not only flush async threads
operations which we deemed as a strange behaviour anyway.
</p>
<p>Also, erlang:halt/1,2 has gotten a new feature: If the
first argument is the atom 'abort' the emulator is
aborted producing a core dump, if the operating system so
allows. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9985</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add escript win32 alternative invocation. escript can now
be started as both "escript.exe" and "escript" (Thanks to
Pierre Rouleau)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9997</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.18</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Improved algorithm in module <c>random</c>. Avoid seed
values that are even divisors of the primes and by that
prevent getting sub-seeds that are stuck on zero. Worst
case was random:seed(0,0,0) that produced a series of
only zeros. This is an incompatible change in the sense
that applications that relies on reproducing a specific
series for a given seed will fail. The pseudo random
output is still deterministic but different compared to
earlier versions.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8713</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Calls to <c>global:whereis_name/1</c> have been
substituted for calls to
<c>global:safe_whereis_name/1</c> since the latter is not
safe at all.</p>
<p>The reason for not doing this earlier is that setting
a global lock masked out a bug concerning the restart of
supervised children. The bug has now been fixed by a
modification of <c>global:whereis_name/1</c>. (Thanks to
Ulf Wiger for code contribution.)</p>
<p>A minor race conditions in <c>gen_fsm:start*</c> has
been fixed: if one of these functions returned <c>{error,
Reason}</c> or ignore, the name could still be registered
(either locally or in <c>global</c>. (This is the same
modification as was done for gen_server in OTP-7669.)</p>
<p>The undocumented function
<c>global:safe_whereis_name/1</c> has been removed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9212 Aux Id: seq7117, OTP-4174 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
If a child of a supervisor terminates with reason
{shutdown,Term} it is now handled by the supervisor as if
the reason was 'shutdown'. </p>
<p>
For children with restart type 'permanent', this implies
no change. For children with restart type 'transient',
the child will no longer be restarted and no supervisor
report will be written. For children with restart type
'temporary', no supervisor report will be written.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9222</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Minor improvement of documentation regarding supervisor
restart strategy for temporary and transient child
processes.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9381</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A Dets table with sufficiently large buckets could not
always be repaired. This bug has been fixed. </p> <p>The
format of Dets files has been modified. When downgrading
tables created with the new system will be repaired.
Otherwise the modification should not be noticeable. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9607</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> A few contracts in the <c>lists</c> module have been
corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9616</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add '-callback' attributes in stdlib's behaviours</p>
<p>
Replace the behaviour_info(callbacks) export in stdlib's
behaviours with -callback' attributes for all the
callbacks. Update the documentation with information on
the callback attribute Automatically generate
'behaviour_info' function from '-callback' attributes</p>
<p>
'behaviour_info(callbacks)' is a special function that is
defined in a module which describes a behaviour and
returns a list of its callbacks.</p>
<p>
This function is now automatically generated using the
'-callback' specs. An error is returned by lint if user
defines both '-callback' attributes and the
behaviour_info/1 function. If no type info is needed for
a callback use a generic spec for it. Add '-callback'
attribute to language syntax</p>
<p>
Behaviours may define specs for their callbacks using the
familiar spec syntax, replacing the '-spec' keyword with
'-callback'. Simple lint checks are performed to ensure
that no callbacks are defined twice and all types
referred are declared.</p>
<p>
These attributes can be then used by tools to provide
documentation to the behaviour or find discrepancies in
the callback definitions in the callback module.</p>
<p>
Add callback specs into 'application' module in kernel
Add callback specs to tftp module following internet
documentation Add callback specs to inets_service module
following possibly deprecated comments</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9621</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> If a Dets table had been properly closed but the
space management data could not been read, it was not
possible to repair the file. This bug has been fixed.
</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9622</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The Unicode noncharacter code points 16#FFFE and 16#FFFE
were not allowed to be encoded or decoded using the
<c>unicode</c> module or bit syntax. That was
inconsistent with the other noncharacters 16#FDD0 to
16#FDEF that could be encoded/decoded. To resolve the
inconsistency, 16#FFFE and 16#FFFE can now be encoded and
decoded. (Thanks to Alisdair Sullivan.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9624</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Make epp search directory of current file first when
including another file This completes a partial fix in
R11 that only worked for include_lib(). (Thanks to
Richard Carlsson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9645</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
ms_transform: Fix incorrect `variable shadowed' warnings</p>
<p>
This patch removes incorrect passing of variable bindings
from one function clause to another. (Thanks to Haitao
Li)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9646</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Explicitly kill dynamic children in supervisors</p>
<p>
According to the supervisor's documentation: "Important
note on simple-one-for-one supervisors: The dynamically
created child processes of a simple-one-for-one
supervisor are not explicitly killed, regardless of
shutdown strategy, but are expected to terminate when the
supervisor does (that is, when an exit signal from the
parent process is received)."</p>
<p>
All is fine as long as we stop simple_one_for_one
supervisor manually. Dynamic children catch the exit
signal from the supervisor and leave. But, if this
happens when we stop an application, after the top
supervisor has stopped, the application master kills all
remaining processes associated to this application. So,
dynamic children that trap exit signals can be killed
during their cleanup (here we mean inside terminate/2).
This is unpredictable and highly time-dependent.</p>
<p>
In this commit, supervisor module is patched to
explicitly terminate dynamic children accordingly to the
shutdown strategy.</p>
<p>
NOTE: Order in which dynamic children are stopped is not
defined. In fact, this is "almost" done at the same time.</p>
<p>
Stack errors when dynamic children are stopped</p>
<p>
Because a simple_one_for_one supervisor can have many
workers, we stack errors during its shutdown to report
only one message for each encountered error type. Instead
of reporting the child's pid, we use the number of
concerned children. (Thanks to Christopher Faulet)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9647</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Allow an infinite timeout to shutdown worker processes</p>
<p>
Now, in child specification, the shutdown value can also
be set to infinity for worker children. This restriction
was removed because this is not always possible to
predict the shutdown time for a worker. This is highly
application-dependent. Add a warning to docs about
workers' shutdown strategy (Thanks to Christopher Faulet)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9648</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
A badarg would sometimes occur in supervisor when
printing error reports and the child pid was undefined.
This has been corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9669</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix re:split spec not to accept option 'global'(Thanks to
Shunichi Shinohara)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9691</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Fix a few tests that used to fail on the HiPE
platform. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9637</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Variables are now now allowed in '<c>fun M:F/A</c>' as
suggested by Richard O'Keefe in EEP-23.</p>
<p>The representation of '<c>fun M:F/A</c>' in the
abstract format has been changed in an incompatible way.
Tools that directly read or manipulate the abstract
format (such as parse transforms) may need to be updated.
The compiler can handle both the new and the old format
(i.e. extracting the abstract format from a pre-R15 BEAM
file and compiling it using compile:forms/1,2 will work).
The <c>syntax_tools</c> application can also handle both
formats.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9643</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Tuple funs (a two-element tuple with a module name and a
function) are now officially deprecated and will be
removed in R16. Use '<c>fun M:F/A</c>' instead. To make
you aware that your system uses tuple funs, the very
first time a tuple fun is applied, a warning will be sent
to the error logger.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9649</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The deprecated '<c>regexp</c>' module has been removed.
Use the '<c>re</c>' module instead.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9737</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>filename:find_src/1,2</c> will now work on stripped
BEAM files (reported by Per Hedeland). The HiPE compiler
will also work on stripped BEAM files. The BEAM compiler
will no longer include compilation options given in the
source code itself in <c>M:module_info(compile)</c>
(because those options will be applied anyway if the
module is re-compiled).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9752</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.5</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
erl_tar:extract failed when executed inside a directory
with some parent directory to which the user has no read
access. This has been corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9368</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> A bug in <c>erl_scan:set_attribute/3</c> has been
fixed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9412</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The contract of <c>io_lib:fread()</c> has been
corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9413 Aux Id: seq11873 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
A crash in io_lib:fread/2 when end of input data was
encountered while trying to match literal characters,
which should return {more,_,_,_} but instead crashed, has
been corrected. Reported by Klas Johansson.</p>
<p>
A similar peculiarity for io:fread when encountering end
of file before any field data has also been corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9439</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The contract of <c>timer:now_diff()</c> has been
corrected. (Thanks to Alex Morarash). </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9450</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix minor typo in gen_fsm documentation (Thanks to Haitao
Li)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9456</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The contracts of <c>zip:zip_list_dir/1</c> and
<c>zip:zip_get/2</c> have been corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9471 Aux Id: seq11887, OTP-9472 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p> A bug in <c>zip:zip_open()</c> has been fixed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9472 Aux Id: seq11887, OTP-9471 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix trivial documentation errors(Thanks to Matthias Lang)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9498</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add a proplist() type</p>
<p>
Recently I was adding specs to an API and found that
there is no canonical proplist() type defined. (Thanks to
Ryan Zezeski)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9499</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
fix supervisors restarting temporary children</p>
<p>
In the current implementation of supervisors, temporary
children should never be restarted. However, when a
temporary child is restarted as part of a one_for_all or
rest_for_one strategy where the failing process is not
the temporary child, the supervisor still tries to
restart it.</p>
<p>
Because the supervisor doesn't keep some of the MFA
information of temporary children, this causes the
supervisor to hit its restart limit and crash.</p>
<p>
This patch fixes the behaviour by inserting a clause in
terminate_children/2-3 (private function) that will omit
temporary children when building a list of killed
processes, to avoid having the supervisor trying to
restart them again.</p>
<p>
Only supervisors in need of restarting children used the
list, so the change should be of no impact for the
functions that called terminate_children/2-3 only to kill
all children.</p>
<p>
The documentation has been modified to make this
behaviour more explicit. (Thanks to Fred Hebert)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9502</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
fix broken edoc annotations (Thanks to Richard Carlsson)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9516</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> XML files have been corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9550 Aux Id: OTP-9541 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Handle rare race in the crypto key server functionality</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9586</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> Types and specifications have been added. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9356</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The contracts of the <c>queue</c> module have been
modified. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9418</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Contracts in STDLIB and Kernel have been improved and
type errors have been corrected. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9485</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Types for several BIFs have been extended/corrected. Also
the types for types for <c>lists:keyfind/3</c>,
<c>lists:keysearch/3</c>, and <c>lists:keyemember/3</c>
have been corrected. The incorrect/incomplete types could
cause false dialyzer warnings.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9496</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.4</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> The default value <c>undefined</c> was added to
records field types in such a way that the result was not
always a well-formed type. This bug has been fixed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9147</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Update index file atomically</p>
<p>
Since the log_mf_h index file might be read by other
processes than the error handler (e.g. by the rb tool),
this file should be updated atomically. This will avoid
hitting the time gap between opening the file in write
mode (and thus emptying the file) and the actual update
with the new contents. To do this, a temporary file is
written, and the file:rename/1 used to replace the real
index file.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9148</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixed various typos across the documentation (Thanks to
Tuncer Ayaz)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9154</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Supervisors should not save child-specs for temporary
processes when they terminate as they should not be
restarted. Saving the temporary child spec will result in
that you can not start a new temporary process with the
same child spec as an already terminated temporary
process. Since R14B02 you can not restart a temporary
temporary process as arguments are no longer saved, it
has however always been semantically incorrect to restart
a temporary process. Thanks to Filipe David Manana for
reporting this and suggesting a solution.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9167 Aux Id: OTP-9064 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Various small documentation fixes (Thanks to Bernard
Duggan)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9172</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fix format_status bug for unregistered gen_event
processes</p>
<p>
Port the gen_fsm code for format_status to gen_event in
order to prevent a lists:concat([...,pid()]) crash when
calling sys:get_status/1 on an unregistered gen_event
process.</p>
<p>
Refactor format_status header code from gen_* behaviours
to module gen.</p>
<p>
Extend the format_status tests in gen_event_SUITE to
cover format_status bugs with anonymous gen_event
processes. (Thanks To Geoff Cant)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9218</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
List of pids changed to 'set' in supervisor for dynamic
temporary children. Accessing the list would not scale
well when adding/deleting many children. (Thanks to
Evgeniy Khramtsov)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9242</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Change pool module to attempt to attach to nodes that are
already running</p>
<p>
The pool module prints out an error message and takes no
further action for nodes that are already running. This
patch changes that behavior so that if the return from
slave:start/3 is {already_running, Node} then an attempt
to attach to the node is still made. This makes sense
because the node has been specified by the user in the
.hosts.erlang file indicating a wish for the node to be
part of the pool and a manual attach can be successfully
made after the pool is started.(Thanks to Kelly
McLaughlin)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9244</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
unicode: document 16#FFFE and 16#FFFF (non chars)(Thanks
to Tuncer Ayaz)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9256</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
re: remove gratuitous "it " in manpage (Thanks to Tuncer
Ayaz)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9307</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> A bug in erl_eval(3) has been fixed. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9322</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Add <c>timer:tc/1</c> and remove the catch in <c>tc/2</c>
and <c>tc/3</c>. The time measuring functions will thus
no longer trap exits, errors or throws caused by the
measured function.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9169</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Allow supervisor:terminate_child(SupRef,Pid) for
simple_one_for_one supervisors</p>
<p>
supervisor:terminate_child/2 was earlier not allowed if
the supervisor used restart strategy simple_one_for_one.
This is now changed so that children of this type of
supervisors can be terminated by specifying the child's
Pid.</p>
<p>
(Thanks to Vance Shipley.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9201</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Types and specifications have been added. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9267</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Erlang types and specifications are used for
documentation. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9271</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Allow Dets tablenames to be arbitrary terms.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9282</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> A specification that could cause problems for
Dialyzer has been fixed. An opaque type in erl_eval has
been turned in to a ordinary type. This is a temporary
fix. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9333</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Two bugs in io:format for ~F.~Ps has been corrected. When
length(S) >= abs(F) > P, the precision P was incorrectly
ignored. When F == P > lenght(S) the result was
incorrectly left adjusted. Bug found by Ali Yakout who
also provided a fix.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8989 Aux Id: seq11741 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Fix exception generation in the io module
<p>
Some functions did not generate correct badarg exception
on a badarg exception.</p></p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9045</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Fixes to the dict and orddict module documentation</p>
<p>
Fixed grammar and one inconsistency (Key - Value instead
of key/value, since everywhere else the former is used).
(thanks to Filipe David Manana)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9083</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Add ISO week number calculation functions to the calendar
module in stdlib</p>
<p>
This new feature adds the missing week number function to
the calendar module of the stdlib application. The
implementation conforms to the ISO 8601 standard. The new
feature has been implemented tested and documented
(thanks to Imre Horvath).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9087</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Implement the 'MAY' clauses from RFC4648 regarding the
pad character to make mime_decode() and
mime_decode_to_string() functions more tolerant of badly
padded base64. The RFC is quoted below for easy
reference.</p>
<p>
"RFC4648 Section 3.3 with reference to MIME decoding:
Furthermore, such specifications MAY ignore the pad
character, "=", treating it as non-alphabet data, if it
is present before the end of the encoded data. If more
than the allowed number of pad characters is found at the
end of the string (e.g., a base 64 string terminated with
"==="), the excess pad characters MAY also be ignored."</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9020</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Supervisors will no longer save start parameters for
temporary processes as they will not be restarted. In the
case of simple_one_for_one workers such as ssl-connection
processes this will substantial reduce the memory
footprint of the supervisor.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9064</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
When running escript it is now possible to add the -n
flag and the escript will be compiled using +native.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9076</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.2.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Several type specifications for standard libraries were
wrong in the R14B01 release. This is now corrected. The
corrections concern types in re,io,filename and the
module erlang itself.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-9008</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> When several clients accessed a Dets table
simultaneously, one of them calling
<c>dets:insert_new/2</c>, the Dets server could crash.
Alternatively, under the same conditions, <c>ok</c> was
sometimes returned instead of <c>true</c>. (Thanks to
John Hughes.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8856</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> When several clients accessed a Dets table
simultaneously, inserted or updated objects were
sometimes lost due to the Dets file being truncated.
(Thanks to John Hughes.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8898</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> When several clients accessed a Dets table
simultaneously, modifications of the Dets server's
internal state were sometimes thrown away. The symptoms
are diverse: error with reason <c>bad_object</c>;
inserted objects not returned by <c>lookup()</c>; et
cetera. (Thanks to John Hughes.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8899</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> If a Dets table was closed after calling
<c>bchunk/2</c>, <c>match/1,3</c>,
<c>match_object/1,3</c>, or <c>select/1,3</c> and then
opened again, a subsequent call using the returned
continuation would normally return a reply. This bug has
fixed; now the call fails with reason <c>badarg</c>. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8903</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> Cover did not collect coverage data for files such as
Yecc parses containing include directives. The bug has
been fixed by modifying <c>epp</c>, the Erlang Code
Preprocessor. </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8911</p>
</item>
<item>
<p> If a Dets table with fewer slots than keys was opened
and then closed after just a lookup, the contents were no
longer well-formed. This bug has been fixed. (Thanks to
Matthew Evans.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8923</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
In a supervisor, when it terminates a child, if that
child happens to have exited fractionally early, with
normal, the supervisor reports this as an error. This
should not be reported as an error.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8938 Aux Id: seq11615 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The documentation filelib:wildcard/1,2 now describes the
character set syntax for wildcards.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8879 Aux Id: seq11683 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Buffer overflows have been prevented in <c>erlc</c>,
<c>dialyzer</c>, <c>typer</c>, <c>run_test</c>,
<c>heart</c>, <c>escript</c>, and <c>erlexec</c>.</p>
(Thanks to Michael Santos.)
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8892</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Using a float for the number of copies for
<c>string:copies/2</c> resulted in an infinite loop. Now
it will fail with an exception instead. (Thanks to
Michael Santos.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8915</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
New ETS option <c>compressed</c>, to enable a more
compact storage format at the expence of heavier table
operations. For test and evaluation, <c>erl +ec</c> can
be used to force compression on all ETS tables.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8922 Aux Id: seq11658 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p> The default maximum number of slots of a Dets table
has been changed as to be equal to the maximum number of
slots. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8959</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>reference() has been substituted for ref() in the
documentation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8733</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The ms_transform now warns if the fun head shadows
surrounding variables (just like the warnings you would
get for an ordinary fun in the same context).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6759</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
ets:select_reverse/{1,2,3} are now documented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7863</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Large parts of the <c>ethread</c> library have been
rewritten. The <c>ethread</c> library is an Erlang
runtime system internal, portable thread library used by
the runtime system itself.</p>
<p>
Most notable improvement is a reader optimized rwlock
implementation which dramatically improve the performance
of read-lock/read-unlock operations on multi processor
systems by avoiding ping-ponging of the rwlock cache
lines. The reader optimized rwlock implementation is used
by miscellaneous rwlocks in the runtime system that are
known to be read-locked frequently, and can be enabled on
ETS tables by passing the <seealso
marker="stdlib:ets#new_2_read_concurrency">{read_concurrency,
true}</seealso> option upon table creation. See the
documentation of <seealso
marker="stdlib:ets#new/2">ets:new/2</seealso> for more
information. The reader optimized rwlock implementation
can be fine tuned when starting the runtime system. For
more information, see the documentation of the <seealso
marker="erts:erl#+rg">+rg</seealso> command line argument
of <c>erl</c>.</p>
<p>
There is also a new implementation of rwlocks that is not
optimized for readers. Both implementations interleaves
readers and writers during contention as opposed to,
e.g., the NPTL (Linux) pthread rwlock implementation
which use either a reader or writer preferred strategy.
The reader/writer preferred strategy is problematic since
it starves threads doing the non-preferred operation.</p>
<p>
The new rwlock implementations in general performs better
in ERTS than common pthread implementations. However, in
some extremely heavily contended cases this is not the
case. Such heavy contention can more or less only appear
on ETS tables. This when multiple processes do very large
amounts of write locked operations simultaneously on the
same table. Such use of ETS is bad regardless of rwlock
implementation, will never scale, and is something we
strongly advise against.</p>
<p>
The new rwlock implementations depend on atomic
operations. If no native atomic implementation is found,
a fallback solution will be used. Using the fallback
implies a performance degradation. That is, it is more
important now than before to build OTP with a native
atomic implementation.</p>
<p>
The <c>ethread</c> library contains native atomic
implementations for, x86 (32 and 64 bit), powerpc (32
bit), sparc V9 (32 and 64 bit), and tilera (32 bit). On
other hardware gcc's builtin support for atomic memory
access will be used if such exists. If no such support is
found, <c>configure</c> will warn about no atomic
implementation available.</p>
<p>
The <c>ethread</c> library can now also use the
<c>libatomic_ops</c> library for atomic memory accesses.
This makes it possible for the Erlang runtime system to
utilize optimized native atomic operations on more
platforms than before. If <c>configure</c> warns about no
atomic implementation available, try using the
<c>libatomic_ops</c> library. Use the <seealso
marker="doc/installation_guide:INSTALL#How-to-Build-and-Install-ErlangOTP_A-Closer-Look-at-the-individual-Steps_Configuring">--with-libatomic_ops=PATH</seealso>
<c>configure</c> command line argument when specifying
where the <c>libatomic_ops</c> installation is located.
The <c>libatomic_ops</c> library can be downloaded from:
<url
href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/atomic_ops/">http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/atomic_ops/</url></p>
<p>
The changed API of the <c>ethread</c> library has also
caused modifications in the Erlang runtime system.
Preparations for the to come "delayed deallocation"
feature has also been done since it depends on the
<c>ethread</c> library.</p>
<p>
<em>Note</em>: When building for x86, the <c>ethread</c>
library will now use instructions that first appeared on
the pentium 4 processor. If you want the runtime system
to be compatible with older processors (back to 486) you
need to pass the <seealso
marker="doc/installation_guide:INSTALL#How-to-Build-and-Install-ErlangOTP_A-Closer-Look-at-the-individual-Steps_Configuring">--enable-ethread-pre-pentium4-compatibility</seealso>
<c>configure</c> command line argument when configuring
the system.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8544</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Some Built In Functions (BIFs) from the module erlang was
never made autoimported for backward compatibility
reasons. As local functions now override autoimports, new
autoimports is no longer a problem, why the following
BIFs are finally made autoimported: monitor/2, monitor/3,
demonitor/2, demonitor/3, error/1, error/2,
integer_to_list/2, list_to_integer/2.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8763</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.17</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The Erlang code preprocessor (<c>epp</c>) sent extra
messages on the form <c>{eof,Location}</c> to the client
when parsing the <c>file</c> attribute. This bug,
introduced in R11B, has been fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8470</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The abstract type 'fun' could not be printed by the
Erlang pretty printer (<c>erl_pp</c>). This bug has been
fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8473</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>erl_scan:reserved_word/1</c> no longer
returns <c>true</c> when given the word <c>spec</c>. This
bug was introduced in STDLIB-1.15.3 (R12B-3).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8567</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation of <c>lists:keysort/2</c> states
that the sort is stable.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8628 Aux Id: seq11576 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The shell's line editing has been improved to more
resemble the behaviour of readline and other shells.
(Thanks to Dave Peticolas)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8635</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang code preprocessor (<c>epp</c>) did not
correctly handle premature end-of-input when defining
macros. This bug, introduced in STDLIB 1.16, has been
fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8665 Aux Id: OTP-7810 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The module binary from EEP31 (and EEP9) is implemented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8217</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The erlang pretty printer (<c>erl_pp</c>) no longer
quotes atoms in types.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8501</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang code preprocessor (<c>epp</c>) now
considers records with no fields as typed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8503</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Added function <c>zip:foldl/3</c> to iterate over zip
archives.</p>
<p>
Added functions to create and extract escripts. See
<c>escript:create/2</c> and <c>escript:extract/2</c>.</p>
<p>
The undocumented function <c>escript:foldl/3</c> has been
removed. The same functionality can be achieved with the
more flexible functions <c>escript:extract/2</c> and
<c>zip:foldl/3</c>.</p>
<p>
Record fields has been annotated with type info. Source
files as been adapted to fit within 80 chars and trailing
whitespace has been removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8521</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang parser no longer duplicates the singleton
type <c>undefined</c> in the type of record fields
without initial value.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8522</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A regular expression with many levels of parenthesis
could cause a buffer overflow. That has been corrected.
(Thanks to Michael Santos.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8539</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When defining macros the closing right parenthesis
before the dot is now mandatory.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8562</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Some properties of a compiled re pattern are defined to
allow for guard tests.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8577</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Local and imported functions now override the
auto-imported BIFs when the names clash. The pre R14
behaviour was that auto-imported BIFs would override
local functions. To avoid that old programs change
behaviour, the following will generate an error:</p>
<list><item><p>Doing a call without explicit module name
to a local function having a name clashing with the name
of an auto-imported BIF that was present (and
auto-imported) before OTP R14A</p></item>
<item><p>Explicitly importing a function having a name
clashing with the name of an autoimported BIF that was
present (and autoimported) before OTP R14A</p></item>
<item><p>Using any form of the old compiler directive
<c>nowarn_bif_clash</c></p></item> </list> <p>If the BIF
was added or auto-imported in OTP R14A or later,
overriding it with an import or a local function will
only result in a warning,</p> <p>To resolve clashes, you
can either use the explicit module name <c>erlang</c> to
call the BIF, or you can remove the auto-import of that
specific BIF by using the new compiler directive
<c>-compile({no_auto_import,[F/A]}).</c>, which makes all
calls to the local or imported function without explicit
module name pass without warnings or errors.</p> <p>The
change makes it possible to add auto-imported BIFs
without breaking or silently changing old code in the
future. However some current code ingeniously utilizing
the old behaviour or the <c>nowarn_bif_clash</c> compiler
directive, might need changing to be accepted by the
compiler.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8579</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The undocumented, unsupport, and deprecated function
<c>lists:flat_length/1</c> has been removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8584</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
A bug in re that could cause certain regular expression
matches never to terminate is corrected. (Thanks to
Michael Santos and Gordon Guthrie.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8589</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Nested records can now be accessed without
parenthesis. See the Reference Manual for examples.
(Thanks to YAMASHINA Hio and Tuncer Ayaz.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8597</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>receive</c> statements that can only read out a
newly created reference are now specially optimized so
that it will execute in constant time regardless of the
number of messages in the receive queue for the process.
That optimization will benefit calls to
<c>gen_server:call()</c>. (See <c>gen:do_call/4</c> for
an example of a receive statement that will be
optimized.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8623</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The beam_lib:cmp/2 function now compares BEAM files in
stricter way. The BEAM files will be considered different
if there are any changes except in the compilation
information ("CInf") chunk. beam_lib:cmp/2 used to ignore
differences in the debug information (significant for
Dialyzer) and other chunks that did not directly change
the run-time behavior.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8625</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
When a gen_server, gen_fsm process, or gen_event
terminates abnormally, sometimes the text representation
of the process state can occupy many lines of the error
log, depending on the definition of the state term. A
mechanism to trim out parts of the state from the log has
been added (using a format_status/2 callback). See the
documentation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8630</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Calling <c>sys:get_status()</c> for processes that have
globally registered names that were not atoms would cause
a crash. Corrected. (Thanks to Steve Vinoski.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8656</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang scanner has been augmented with two new
tokens: <c>..</c> and <c>...</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8657</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Expressions evaluating to integers can now be used in
types and function specifications where hitherto only
integers were allowed ("Erlang_Integer").</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8664</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The compiler optimizes record operations better.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8668</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The recently added BIFs erlang:min/2, erlang:max/2 and
erlang:port_command/3 are now auto-imported (as they were
originally intended to be). Due to the recent compiler
change (OTP-8579), the only impact on old code defining
it's own min/2, max/2 or port_command/3 functions will be
a warning, the local functions will still be used. The
warning can be removed by using
-compile({no_auto_import,[min/2,max/2,port_command/3]}).
in the source file.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8669 Aux Id: OTP-8579 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Now, binary_to_term/2 is auto-imported. This will cause a
compile warning if and only if a module has got a local
function with that name.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8671</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The predefined builtin type tid() has been removed.
Instead, ets:tid() should be used.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8687</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.5</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Because of a race condition, using filelib:ensure_dir/1
from multiple processes to create the same path or parts
of the same directory structure, filelib:ensure_dir/1
could return a meaningless {error,eexist}. That race
condition has been eliminated, and {error,eexist} will
now be returned only if there exists a regular file,
device file, or some other non-directory file with the
same name. (Thanks to Tuncer Ayaz.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8389</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A number of bugs concerning re and unicode are
corrected:</p>
<p>re:compile no longer loses unicode option, which also
fixes bug in re:split.</p>
<p>re:replace now handles unicode charlist replacement
argument</p>
<p>re:replace now handles unicode RE charlist argument
correctly</p>
<p>re:replace now handles binary unicode output correctly
when nothing is replaced.</p>
<p>Most code, testcases and error isolation done by Rory
Byrne.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8394</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The loading of native code was not properly atomic in the
SMP emulator, which could cause crashes. Also a per-MFA
information table for the native code has now been
protected with a lock since it turns that it could be
accessed concurrently in the SMP emulator. (Thanks to
Mikael Pettersson.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8397</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
user.erl (used in oldshell) is updated to handle unicode
in prompt strings (io:get_line/{1,2}). io_lib is also
updated to format prompts with the 't' modifier (i.e. ~ts
instead of ~s).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8418 Aux Id: OTP-8393 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The re module: A regular expression with an option change
at the start of a pattern that had top-level alternatives
could cause overwriting and/or a crash. (Thanks to
Michael Santos.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8438</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The ability for the gen_server and gen_fsm callback
modules to format their own state for display under the
sys:get_status/1,2 calls has been restored and
documented. (Thanks to Steve Vinoski.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8324</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
c:nc/{1,2} used to assume that the beam file was created
in the same directory as the source code and failed to
load the code if it was not. Corrected to look for the
beam file in the current directory or in the directory
specified by the <c>{outdir,Dir}</c> option. (Thanks to
Alex Suraci.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8337</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation is now possible to build in an open
source environment after a number of bugs are fixed and
some features are added in the documentation build
process. </p>
<p>- The arity calculation is updated.</p>
<p>- The module prefix used in the function names for
bif's are removed in the generated links so the links
will look like
"http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#append_element-2"
instead of
"http://www.erlang.org/doc/man/erlang.html#erlang:append_element-2".</p>
<p>- Enhanced the menu positioning in the html
documentation when a new page is loaded.</p>
<p>- A number of corrections in the generation of man
pages (thanks to Sergei Golovan)</p>
<p>- The legal notice is taken from the xml book file so
OTP's build process can be used for non OTP
applications.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8343</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Shell tab completion now works for quoted module and
function names. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8383</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Explicit top directories in archive files are now
optional.</p>
<p>
For example, if an archive (app-vsn.ez) just contains an
app-vsn/ebin/mod.beam file, the file info for the app-vsn
and app-vsn/ebin directories are faked using the file
info from the archive file as origin. The virtual
direcories can also be listed. For short, the top
directories are virtual if they does not exist.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8387</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Macros overloading has been implemented. (Thanks to
Christopher Faulet.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8388</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new function <c>shell:prompt_func/1</c> and the
new application configuration parameter
<c>shell_prompt_func</c> can be used for customizing the
Erlang shell prompt.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8393</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Improved handling of typed records in escripts</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8434</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Added supervisor:count_children/1 to count the number of
children being managed without the memory impact of
which_children/1. (Thanks to Jay Nelson.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8436</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.4</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The documentation is now built with open source tools
(xsltproc and fop) that exists on most platforms. One
visible change is that the frames are removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8201</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
[escript] The restriction that the first line in escripts
must begin with <c>#!</c> has been removed.</p>
<p>
[escript] Some command line options to the escript
executable has now been documented. For example you can
run an escript in the debugger by just adding a command
line option.</p>
<p>
[escript] The documentation of the escript header syntax
has been clarified. For example the header is optional.
This means that it is possible to directly "execute"
<c>.erl</c>, <c>.beam</c> and<c>.zip</c> files.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8215</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Optimized array:from_orddict/1, it is now faster and
uses less memory if the orddict was sparse.</p>
<p>Changed array:reset/2, it will now never expand the
array which it could before for non fixed arrays. See the
documentation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8216</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang Pretty Printer (<c>erl_pp</c>) now puts the
leading <c>[</c> of list comprehensions as well as the
leading <c><<</c> of bit string comprehensions on a
separate line in order to expose the Cover counter of the
template.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8227</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The extension ".xrl" used for Leex input files is now
recognized by the compiler.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8232</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Some clarifications have been made in the documentation
regarding <c>gen_server</c>, <c>gen_fsm</c>, and
<c>gen_event</c> behavior when handling <c>'EXIT'</c>
messages from the parent process. For more information
see the <seealso
marker="gen_server">gen_server(3)</seealso>, <seealso
marker="gen_fsm">gen_fsm(3)</seealso>, and <seealso
marker="gen_event">gen_event(3)</seealso> documentation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8255 Aux Id: seq11419 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The -on_load() directive can be used to run a function
when a module is loaded. It is documented in the section
about code loading in the Reference Manual.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8295</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.3.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
An erroneous type spec for <c>gen:start/6</c> caused
dialyzer to erroneously issue warnings when
<c>{spawn_opt, SpawnOptionList}</c> was passed in the
option list to the <c>gen_server</c> and <c>gen_fsm</c>
start functions.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8068 Aux Id: seq11323, seq11314 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The linter used to crash on invalid <c>-opaque</c>
declarations.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8051</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Bugs in <c>digraph:add_edge/5</c> and
<c>digraph:del_path/3</c> have been fixed. (Thanks to
Crystal Din.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8066</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When trying to insert objects with
<c>dets:insert_new()</c> into a Dets table of type
<c>duplicate_bag</c>, already existing objects would
sometimes be duplicated. This bug has been fixed. (Thanks
to Crystal Din.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8070</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Running erlc in a very deep directory (with a path length
of more 256 or more characters) would cause the emulator
to crash in a call to <c>list_to_atom/1</c>. (Thanks to
Chris Newcombe.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8124</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A few minor bugs have been fixed in the Erlang Code
Preprocessor (<c>epp</c>).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8130</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug in The Erlang Meta Interpreter (<c>erl_eval</c>)
has been fixed: exceptions generated in the template of
bit string comprehensions were not handled properly.
(Thanks to Ulf Wiger.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8133</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Option <c>{capture,none}</c> was missing in documentation
for <c>re:run/3</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8113</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When <c>erl_scan:tokens()</c> returns an error tuple
<c>{error, ErrorInfo, EndLocation</c>}, the list
<c>LeftOverChars</c> is the remaining characters of the
input data, starting from <c>EndLocation</c>. It used to
be the empty list.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8129</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang Meta Interpreter (<c>erl_eval</c>) has been
somewhat optimized when it comes to interpreting
<c>receive</c>-expressions. (Thanks to Richard
Carlsson.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8139</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang Pretty Printer (<c>erl_pp</c>) has been
modified as to handle types.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8150</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The text of tokens returned by the Erlang scanner
(<c>erl_scan</c>) was sometimes empty when the
<c>text</c> option was given and <c>StartLocation</c> was
a line. This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7965</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation for <c>base64:decode/1</c> has been
updated to point out that it strips whitespace.</p>
<p><c>base64:decode/1</c> and <c>base64:mime_decode/1</c>
would sometimes fail instead of stripping away non-base64
characters.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7984</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Two types in the <c>gen</c> module were corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8029 Aux Id: seq11296 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>array:from_orddict([])</c> and
<c>array:from_list([])</c> would construct fixed arrays
instead of extendible arrays.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8033</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Interpreted escripts are now tail recursive.</p>
<p>
The function erl_eval:expr/5 has been introduced.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7933</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>gen_server:call/2,3</c> will be somewhat faster if the
calling process has a many messages in its message queue.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7979</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Random now supports seed with arity one,
<c>random:seed/1</c>, which takes a three-tuple.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8019</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>regexp</c> module now recognizes the escape
sequences <c>\xXY</c> and <c>\x{X...}</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-8024</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The documentation of <c>dets:open_file/1</c> now
states that the file is repaired if it has not been
properly closed. (Thanks to Ulf Wiger.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7895</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The Erlang scanner no longer returns the text of
tokens when the start location is a pair of a line and
column unless the new option <c>text</c> is supplied
(incompatibility with R13A).</p> <p>There are new
functions to access the attributes of tokens:
<c>attributes_info/1,2</c> and
<c>set_attribute/3</c>.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7892 Aux Id: OTP-7810 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Several glitches and performance issues in the Unicode
and I/O-system implementation of R13A have been
corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7896 Aux Id: OTP-7648 OTP-7887 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The type spec of filelib:wildcard/2 has been corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7915</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>New functions: <c>gb_sets:is_disjoint/2</c>,
<c>ordsets:is_disjoint/2</c>, and
<c>gb_sets:is_disjoint/2</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7947</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>gb_trees:map/2</c> which was added in
R13A is now documented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7948</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.16</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>Fixed a minor race conditions in
<c>gen_server:start*</c>: if one of these functions
returned <c>{error,Reason}</c> or <c>ignore</c>, the name
could still be registered (either locally or in
<c>global</c>).</p>
<p>A process started by <c>proc_lib</c> in some cases
depended on its process dictionary not to be erased, and
would crash when terminating abnormally and not generate
a proper crash report. This has been corrected (but the
initial call will not be shown in the error report if the
process dictionary has been erased). NOTE: There is no
longer any need to erase the process dictionary for
memory conservation reasons, since the actual call
arguments are no longer saved in the process
dictionary.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7669</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang preprocessor used wrong line number when
stringifying macro arguments. (Thanks to John
Hughes.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7702</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug in the <c>qlc</c> module has been fixed: merge
join sometimes failed to return all answers. (Thanks to
Bernard Duggan.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7714</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>A new option, <c>key_equality</c>, has been added to
<c>qlc:table/2</c>. This option makes it possible for
<c>qlc</c> to better handle tables that use <c>==/2</c>
when comparing keys for equality (examples of such tables
are ordered ETS tables and gb_table in qlc(3)).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6674</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The functions <c>lists:seq/1,2</c> return the empty
list in a few cases when they used to generate an
exception, for example <c>lists:seq(1, 0)</c>. See
lists(3) for details. (Thanks to Richard O'Keefe.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7230</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The order of objects visited in select for ordered_set is
now documented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7339</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
It is now possible to debug code in escripts and
archives.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7626</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Support for Unicode is implemented as described in
EEP10. Formatting and reading of unicode data both from
terminals and files is supported by the io and io_lib
modules. Files can be opened in modes with automatic
translation to and from different unicode formats. The
module 'unicode' contains functions for conversion
between external and internal unicode formats and the re
module has support for unicode data. There is also
language syntax for specifying string and character data
beyond the ISO-latin-1 range.</p>
<p>The interactive shell will support input and output of
unicode characters when the terminal and operating system
supports it.</p>
<p>Please see the EEP and the io/io_lib manual pages as
well as the stdlib users guide for details.</p>
<p><em>I/O-protocol incompatibilities:</em></p>
<p>The io_protocol between io_Server and client is
updated to handle protocol data in unicode formats. The
updated protocol is now documented. The specification
resides in the stdlib <em>users manual</em>, which is a
new part of the manual.</p>
<p><em>io module incompatibilities:</em></p>
<p>The io:put_chars, io:get_chars and io:get_line all
handle and return unicode data. In the case where
binaries can be provided (as to io:put_chars), they shall
be encoded in UTF-8. When binaries are returned (as by
io:get_line/get_chars when the io_server is set in
<em>binary mode</em>) the returned data is also
<em>always</em> encoded as UTF-8. The file module however
still returns byte-oriented data, why file:read can be
used instead of io:get_chars to read binary data in
ISO-latin-1.</p>
<p><em>io_lib module incompatibilities:</em></p>
<p>io_lib:format can, given new format directives (i.e
"~ts" and "~tc"), return lists containing integers larger
than 255. </p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7648 Aux Id: OTP-7580 OTP-7514 OTP-7494
OTP-7443 OTP-7181 EEP10 EEP11 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The function <c>pool:attach/1</c> now returns
<c>already_attached</c> if the node is already attached,
rather than <c>allready_attached</c> (sic!). (Thanks to
Edwin Fine.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7653 Aux Id: OTP-7603 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Preprocessor directives are now allowed in escripts. This
means that for example macros may be used in escripts.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7662</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When a process started with <c>proc_lib</c>,
<c>gen_server</c>, or <c>gen_fsm</c> exits with reason
<c>{shutdown,Term}</c>, a crash report will no longer be
generated (to allow a clean shutdown, but still provide
additional information to process that are linked to the
terminating process).</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7740 Aux Id: seq10847 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
A new BIF, <c>lists:keyfind/3</c>, has been added. It
works like <c>lists:keysearch/3</c> except that it does
not wrap the returned tuple in a <c>value</c> tuple in
case of success. (Thanks to James Hague for suggesting
this function.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7752</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>lists:suffix(Suffix, List)</c> used to have a a
complexity of <c>length(Suffix)*length(List)</c> (which
could become quite slow for some inputs). It has now been
re-implemented so that its complexity is
<c>length(Suffix)+length(List)</c>. (Thanks to Richard
O'Keefe for the new implementation.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7797</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang scanner has been augmented as to return
white spaces, comments, and exact location of tokens. The
functions <c>string/3</c>, <c>tokens/4</c>, and
<c>token_info/1,2</c> are new. See erl_scan(3) for
details.</p>
<p><c>tokens/3,4</c> have been modified as to return a
list of tokens instead of an error when <c>eof</c> is
encountered before the dot.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7810</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>filelib:fold_files/5</c> now uses the <c>re</c> module
instead of the <c>regexp</c> module for regular
expression matching. In practice, this change will not be
a problem for most regular expressions used for
<c>filelib:fold_files/5</c>. (The major difference in
regular expression is that parenthesis and curly brackets
is treated as literal characters by <c>regexp</c> but as
special characters by <c>re</c>; fortunately, those
characters are rarely used in filenames.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7819</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
<c>digraph:new(Type)</c> will now cause a <c>badarg</c>
exception if <c>Type</c> is not a valid type. Similarly,
<c>digraph_utils:subgraph/2,3</c> will now cause a
<c>badarg</c> if the arguments are invalid. (Those
functions used to return error tuples if something was
wrong.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7824</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The argument passed to <c>random:uniform/1</c> must
now be an integer (as stated in the documentation). In
previous releases, a floating point number was also
allowed.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7827</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The copyright notices have been updated.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7851</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A few missing match spec functions was added to
dbg:fun2ms; exception_trace/0 and trace/2,3.</p>
<p>There is a new function queue:member/2.</p>
<p>A bug in io_lib:fread that made it accidentally
concatenate fields separated by newline has been
corrected. Reported and analyzed by Matthew Palmer to
erlang-patches.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7865</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15.5</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>A bug in the <c>qlc</c> module has been fixed: when
merge joining two query handles the temporary file used
for equivalence classes was not truncated properly which
could result in poor performance.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7552</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The characters 16#C0 and 16#E0 ("A" and "a" with grave
accent), were not properly converted by the
<c>string:to_lower/1</c> and <c>string:to_upper/1</c>
functions. (Thanks to Richard O'Keefe.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7589</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The function <c>pool:attach/1</c> now returns
<c>already_attached</c> if the node is already attached,
rather than <c>allready_attached</c> (sic!). (Thanks to
Edwin Fine.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7603</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation for <c>io:get_line/1,2</c> now
mentions that the return value can also be
<c>{error,Reason}</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7604 Aux Id: seq11063 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The split function is now added to the re library.
Exceptions and errors from both run, replace and split
are made more consistent.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7514 Aux Id: OTP-7494 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Processes spawned using <c>proc_lib</c> (including
<c>gen_server</c> and other library modules that use
<c>proc_lib</c>) no longer keep the entire argument list
for the initial call, but only the arity.</p>
<p>Also, if <c>proc_lib:spawn/1</c> is used to spawn a
fun, the actual fun is not kept, but only module,
function name, and arity of the function that implements
the fun.</p>
<p>The reason for the change is that keeping the initial
fun (or a fun in an argument list), would prevent
upgrading the code for the module. A secondary reason is
that keeping the fun and function arguments could waste a
significant amount of memory.</p>
<p>The drawback with the change is that the crash reports
will provide less precise information about the initial
call (only <c>Module:Function/Arity</c> instead of
<c>Module:Function(Arguments)</c>). The function
<c>proc_lib:initial_call/1</c> still returns a list, but
each argument has been replaced with a dummy atom.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7531 Aux Id: seq11036 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
There is now experimental support for loading of code
from archive files. See the documentation of <c>code</c>,
<c>init</c>, <c>erl_prim_loader </c> and <c>escript</c>
for more info.</p>
<p>
The error handling of <c>escripts</c> has been improved.</p>
<p>
An <c>escript</c> may now set explicit arguments to the
emulator, such as <c>-smp enabled</c>.</p>
<p>
An <c>escript</c> may now contain a precompiled beam
file.</p>
<p>
An <c>escript</c> may now contain an archive file
containing one or more applications (experimental).</p>
<p>
The internal module <c>code_aux</c> has been removed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7548 Aux Id: otp-6622 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Enabled explicit control of which types of files that
should be compressed in a ZIP archive.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7549 Aux Id: otp-6622 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
In the job control mode, the "s" and "r" commands now
take an optional argument to specify which shell to
start. (Thanks to Robert Virding.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7617</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15.4</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
A bug in the calendar module could cause
calendar:local_time_to_universal_time_dst/1 to return
duplicate identical values for local times in timezones
without DST. Multiple values should only be returned when
a local time is within the hour occurring twice due to
shift from DST to non-DST, and certainly only in
timezones with DST. The correct behaviour is now
implemented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7344 Aux Id: seq10960 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation of <c>(d)ets:init_table()</c> has
been corrected. (Thanks to Paul Mineiro.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7413</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The soft upper limit of 60 on the number of non-white
characters on a line, which was introduced in R12B-0 for
the control sequences <c>p</c> and <c>P</c> of the
functions <c>io:fwrite/2,3</c> and
<c>io_lib:fwrite/2</c>, has been removed. This means that
terms whose printed representation fits on a line will
have no NEWLINEs. The Erlang shell still uses the 60
character limit, though.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7421 Aux Id: OTP-6708 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Some debug code has been removed from Dets.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7424</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation of <c>dets:match_delete/2</c> has
been corrected. (Thanks to Paul Mineiro.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7445</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Corrections of digraph(3). (Thanks to Vlad
Dumitrescu.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7492</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
For the process that an escript runs in, the
<c>trap_exit</c> process flag is now <c>false</c> instead
of <c>true</c> (as in previous releases). Scripts that
depend on the previous (counter-intuitive) behaviour
might not work. (Thanks to Bengt Kleberg.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7517</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The documentation of <c>lists:(u)sort/2</c> now states
what is expected of an ordering function.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7489</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The re module is extended with repetitive matches (global
option) and replacement function.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7494 Aux Id: OTP-7181 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang shell now displays a nicer error message
when evaluating an undefined command. (Thanks to Richard
Carlsson.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7495</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
zip:unzip to/from binary with empty directories did not
work. (Thanks to Martin Dvorak.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7248</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The documentation of the control sequence <c>w</c> of
the <c>io_lib</c> module now states that floating point
numbers are printed accurately.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7324 Aux Id: OTP-7084 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
zip:unzip was not supporting a flavour of the zip format
found in jar-files.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7382 Aux Id: seq10970 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
An experimental module "re" is added to the emulator
which interfaces a publicly available regular expression
library for Perl-like regular expressions (PCRE). The
interface is purely experimental and *will* be subject to
change.</p>
<p>
The implementation is for reference and testing in
connection to the relevant EEP.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7181</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15.2</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p> When inserting many small objects, Dets sometimes
crashed when reaching the maximum number of slots.
(Thanks to Daniel Goertzen.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7146</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Processes linked to the Erlang shell did not get an
exit signal when the evaluator process was killed. This
bug, introduced in R12B-0, has been fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7184 Aux Id: OTP-6554 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Invalid arguments to <c>ets:update_counter/3</c> were not
handled correctly. A tuple position (<c>Pos</c>) less
than 1 caused the element directly following the key to
be updated (as if no position at all had been specified).
All invalid values for <c>Pos</c> will now fail with
<c>badarg</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7226</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
For certain terminals, io:columns/0 could return 0
instead of enotsup. That is now corrected.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7229 Aux Id: seq10886 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>qlc:info()</c> can now handle port identifiers,
pids, references, and funs. (Thanks to Wojciech Kaczmare
for reporting this bug.)</p> <p>When evaluating the
<c>parent_fun</c> messages sent to the process calling
<c>qlc:cursor()</c> were sometimes erroneously consumed.
This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7232</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>erl_parse:abstract()</c> can now handle bit
strings.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7234</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The <c>queue</c> module has been rewritten to make it
easier to use. Suggestions and discussion from and with
among others Lev Walkin, Anders Ramsell and Rober Virding
in december 2007 on [email protected]. It was
also discussed to change the internal representation to
contain length information which would speed up
<c>len/1</c> but that change has been postponed. Anyone
interested may write an EEP and try to reach an
acceptable compromise for queue overhead and thereby the
speed of all other operations than <c>len/1</c>. The
<c>queue</c> module is now optimized for fast and minimal
garbage <c>in/2</c> and <c>out/1</c> and such. See the
documentation.</p>
<p>New functions: <c>is_queue/1</c>, <c>get/1</c>,
<c>get_r/1</c>, <c>peek/1</c>, <c>peek_r/1</c>,
<c>drop/1</c>, <c>drop_r/1</c> and <c>liat/1</c>.
<c>is_queue/1</c> is a new predicate, <c>liat/1</c> is a
correction of an old misspelling, and the others
(<c>get</c>*, <c>peek</c>* and <c>drop</c>*) are new
interface functions.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7064</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The functions <c>io_lib:write/1,2</c> and
<c>io_lib:print/1,4</c> have been changed when it comes
to writing floating point numbers. This change affects
the control sequences <c>p</c>, <c>P</c>, <c>w</c>, and
<c>W</c> of the <c>io_lib</c> module. (Thanks to Bob
Ippolito for code contribution.) </p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7084</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Updated the documentation for
<c>erlang:function_exported/3</c> and <c>io:format/2</c>
functions to no longer state that those functions are
kept mainly for backwards compatibility.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7186</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
A new BIF ets:update_element/3. To update individual
elements within an ets-tuple, without having to read,
update and write back the entire tuple.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7200</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>string:join/2</c> now accepts an empty list as
first argument.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7231 Aux Id: OTP-6671 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>qlc:info/1,2</c> accepts a new option,
<c>depth</c>. The type <c>SelectedObjects</c> used in the
description of <c>qlc:table/2</c> has been augmented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7238</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>tuple_size/1</c> and <c>byte_size/1</c> have been
substituted for <c>size/1</c> in the documentation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7244</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
Ets:select/3 in combination with
ets:repair_continuation/2 and ordered_set data tables
could result in function_clause although used as
intended. This is now corrected. Thanks to Paul Mineiro
for finding and isolating the bug!</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7025</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The compiler warning for the deprecated function
<c>ftp:close/1</c> now mentions the correct replacement
function.</p>
<p>The warning for the removed functions in the
<c>httpd_util</c> module have been changed to say they
have been removed, not merely deprecated. (Thanks to
Fredrik Thulin.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7034 Aux Id: seq10825 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>In <c>(Expr)#r{}</c> (no fields are updated),
<c>Expr</c> is no longer evaluated more than once. There
is also a test that <c>Expr</c> is of the correct record
type. (Thanks to Dominic Williams.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7078 Aux Id: OTP-4962 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Documentation bugfixes and clarifications.</p> (Thanks
to Joern ([email protected]), Matthias Lang, and Richard
Carlsson.)
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7079</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Duplicated objects were sometimes not deleted from the
list of answers when a QLC table was traversed using a
match specification. (Thanks to Dmitri Girenko.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7114</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The documentation has been updated so as to reflect
the last updates of the Erlang shell as well as the minor
modifications of the control sequence <c>p</c> of the
<c>io_lib</c> module.</p> <p>Superfluous empty lines have
been removed from code examples and from Erlang shell
examples.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6944 Aux Id: OTP-6554, OTP-6911 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>tuple_size/1</c> and <c>byte_size/1</c> have been
substituted for <c>size/1</c>.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7009</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
It is now possible to hibernate a
gen_server/gen_event/gen_fsm. In gen_server and gen_fsm,
hibernation is triggered by returning the atom
'hibernate' instead of a timeout value. In the gen_event
case hibernation is triggered by a event handler
returning a tuple with an extra element containing the
atom 'hibernate'.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7026 Aux Id: seq10817 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Some undocumented debug functionality has been added
to Dets.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7066</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The functions <c>digraph_utils:is_tree/1</c>,
<c>digraph_utils:is_arborescence/1</c>, and
<c>digraph_utils:arborescence_root/1</c> are new.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7081</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The compiler could generate suboptimal code for record
updates if the record update code consisted of multiple
source code lines.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-7101</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.15</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>Bugs have been fixed in <c>qlc</c>:</p> <list
type="bulleted"> <item>Setting the <c>lookup_fun</c>
option of <c>qlc:table/2</c> to <c>undefined</c> could
cause a crash.</item> <item>If a QLC restricted some
column of a table in such a way that a traversal using a
match specification was possible and the QLC also
compared the key column or some indexed column of the the
table with a column of some other table, <c>qlc</c>
always chose to traverse the table first, never
considering lookup join. This has been changed so that
lookup join is always preferred; if an initial traversal
using the match specification is desired, the query needs
to be rewritten introducing an extra QLC with the
filter(s) restricting the column.</item> <item>When
trying to find candidates for match specifications and
lookup, filters using variables from one generator only
are ignored unless they are placed immediately after the
generator and possibly other filters using variables from
the same generator. In particular, filters joining two
tables should not be placed between the generator and the
filters using the generator only.</item> <item>The
call-back function <c>TraverseFun</c> used for
implementing QLC tables is allowed to return a term other
than a list since STDLIB 1.14 (OTP-5195). However, when
the returned term was a fun <c>qlc</c> often tried to
call the fun instead of returning it.</item> </list> <p>A
few minor optimizations have been implemented as
well.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6673</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug concerning the use of parameterized modules from
the shell has been fixed.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6785</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug regarding the size expression of the bit syntax
has been fixed in the <c>erl_eval</c> module.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6787</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The log_mf_h event handler didn't close the index file
when it was done reading it causing a file descriptor
leak.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6800</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Definitions for the <c>filename()</c> and
<c>dirname()</c> types have been added to the
documentation for the <c>filelib</c> module.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6870</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>file:write_file/3, file:write/2 and file:read/2 could
crash (contrary to documentation) for odd enough file
system problems, e.g write to full file system. This bug
has now been corrected.</p> <p>In this process the file
module has been rewritten to produce better error codes.
Posix error codes now originate from the OS file system
calls or are generated only for very similar causes (for
example 'enomem' is generated if a memory allocation
fails, and 'einval' is generated if the file handle in
Erlang is a file handle but currently invalid).</p>
<p>More Erlang-ish error codes are now generated. For
example <c>{error,badarg}</c> is now returned from
<c>file:close/1</c> if the argument is not of a file
handle type. See file(3).</p> <p>The possibility to write
a single byte using <c>file:write/2</c> instead of a list
or binary of one byte, contradictory to the
documentation, has been removed.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6967 Aux Id: OTP-6597 OTP-6291 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug concerning the evaluation of the <c>++/2</c>
operator has been fixed in <c>erl_eval</c>. (Thanks to
Matthew Dempsky.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6977</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>The behaviour of the internal functions gen:call/3,4
has been changed slightly in the rare case that when the
caller was linked to the called server, and the server
crashed during the call; its exit signal was consumed by
the gen:call/3,4 code and converted to an exit exception.
This exit signal is no longer consumed.</p>
<p>To even notice this change, 1) the calling process has
to be linked to the called server.</p>
<p>
2) the call must not be remote by name that is it must be
local or remote by pid, local by name or global by name.</p>
<p>
3) the calling process has to have set
<c>process_flag(trap_exit, true)</c>.</p>
<p>
4) the server has to crash during the call.</p>
<p>
5) the calling process has to be sensitive to getting
previously consumed <c>{'EXIT',Pid,Reason}</c> messages
in its message queue.</p>
<p>The old behaviour was once the only way for a client
to notice if the server died, but has since
<c>erlang:monitor(process, {Name,Node})</c> was
introduced and used in gen:call been regarded as an
undesired behaviour if not a bug.</p>
<p>The affected user APIs are:
<c>gen_server:call/2,3</c>,
<c>gen_fsm:sync_send_event/2,3</c>,
<c>gen_fsm:sync_send_all_state_event/2,3</c>,
<c>gen_event:_</c>, <c>sys:_</c> and maybe a few others
that hardly will be noticed.</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-3954 Aux Id: Seq 4538 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When an exception occurs the Erlang shell now displays
the class, the reason, and the stacktrace in a clearer
way (rather than dumping the raw EXIT tuples as before).
<c>proc_lib:format/1</c> displays the exception of crash
reports in the same clearer way.</p> <p>The new shell
command <c>catch_exception</c> and the new application
configuration parameter <c>shell_catch_exception</c> can
be used for catching exceptions that would normally exit
the Erlang shell.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6554 Aux Id: OTP-6289 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>string:join/2</c> joins strings in a
list with a separator. Example: '<c>string:join(["a",
"b", "c"], ", ") gives "a, b, c"</c>'</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6671</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The control sequence <c>P</c> of the <c>Format</c>
argument of the functions <c>io:fwrite/2,3</c> and
<c>io_lib:fwrite/2</c> now inserts fewer line breaks when
printing tuples and lists. A soft upper limit of 60 on
the number of non-white characters on a line has been
introduced.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6708</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The new module <c>array</c> provides a fast functional
array implementation.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6733</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Functions that have long been deprecated have now been
removed from the following modules: <c>dict</c>,
<c>erl_eval</c>, <c>erl_pp</c>, <c>io</c>, <c>io_lib</c>,
<c>lists</c>, <c>orddict</c>, <c>ordsets</c>,
<c>sets</c>, and <c>string</c>.</p>
<p>The undocumented function <c>lists:zf/3</c> has also
been removed (use a list comprehension or
<c>lists:zf/2</c> instead).</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6845</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Minor documentation corrections for file:pread/2 and
file:pread/3.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6853</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
Contract directives for modules in Kernel and STDLIB.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6895</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>ets:fixtable/2</c> function, which has been
deprecated for several releases, has been removed.</p>
<p>The <c>ets:info/1</c> function has been reimplemented
as a BIF, which guarantees that information returned is
consistent.</p>
<p>The <c>ets:info/2</c> function now fails with reason
<c>badarg</c> if the second argument is invalid.
(Dialyzer can be used to find buggy code where the second
argument is misspelled.)</p>
<p>
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6906</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang pretty printer <c>erl_pp</c> now inserts
more newlines in order to facilitate line coverage
analysis by <c>Cover</c>. (Thanks to Thomas Arts.)</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6911</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
The documentation for ets:safe_fixtable/2, ets:foldl/3,
and ets:foldr/3 is now clearer about what will happen if
objects are inserted during table traversals.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6928 Aux Id: seq10779 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
It is now possible to extract files in tar files directly
into binaries. It is also possible to add files to tar
files directly from binaries.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6943</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The functions <c>keystore/4</c> and <c>keytake/3</c>
are new in the <c>lists</c> module.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6953</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new <c>qlc</c> option <c>tmpdir_usage</c> can be
used for outputting messages onto the error logger when a
temporary file is about to be created, or to prohibit the
usage of temporary files altogether.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6964</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.14.5.3</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The allowed syntax for -type() and -spec() was updated.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6861 Aux Id: OTP-6834 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.14.5.2</title>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The compiler will for forward compatibility ignore the
-type() and -spec() attributes that will be introduced in
the R12B release.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6834</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>STDLIB 1.14.5.1</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The log_mf_h event handler didn't close the index file
when it was done reading it causing a file descriptor
leak.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6800</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list>
<item>
<p>
The dict:size/1 and orddict:size/1 functions have been
documented.</p>
<p>
Own Id: OTP-6818</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.5</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Bugs have been fixed in Dets concerning comparison
(==) and matching (=:=).</p>
<p>The STDLIB manual pages
have been updated as to more carefully state when terms
are matched and when they are compared.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-4738 Aux Id: OTP-4685 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The shell has been updated to fix the following flaws:
Shell process exit left you with an unresponsive initial
shell if not using oldshell. Starting a restricted shell
with a nonexisting callback module resulted in a shell
where no commands could be used, not even init:stop/0.
Fun's could not be used as parameters to local shell
functions (in shell_default or user_default) when
restricted_shell was active.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6537</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug in QLC's parse transform has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6590</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug concerning <c>lists:sort/1</c> and
<c>lists:keysort/2</c> and a mix of floating point
numbers and integers has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6606</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When calling <c>erlang:garbage_collect/0</c> in the
Erlang shell not only the evaluator process (the one
returned by calling <c>self()</c> in the Erlang shell) is
garbage collected, but also the process holding the
history list.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6659</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Functions of the <c>beam_lib</c> module that used to
catch exceptions and return a tuple
<c>{'EXIT',Reason}</c> now exit with the reason
<c>Reason</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6711</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>erl_eval</c> module now calls the non-local
function handler whenever an operator is evaluated
(exceptions are <c>andalso</c>, <c>orelse</c>, and
<c>catch</c>). The non-local function handler is now also
called when the function or operator occurs in a guard
test (such calls used to be ignored).</p>
<p>These changes affect the Erlang shell when running in
restricted mode: the callback function
<c>non_local_allowed/3</c> is now called for operators
such as <c>'!'/2</c>. This means that
<c>non_local_allowed/3</c> may need to be changed as to
let operators through. Note that <c>erlang:'!'/2</c> as
well as <c>erlang:send/2,3</c> have to be restricted in
order to stop message passing in the shell.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6714 Aux Id: seq10374 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The new compiler option <c>warn_obsolete_guard</c> can
be used for turning on warnings for calls to old type
testing BIFs.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6585</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>For scripts written using <c>escript</c>, there is a new
function <c>escript:script_name/0</c>, which can be used
to retrieve the pathame of the script. The documentation
has been clarified regarding pre-defined macros such as
?MODULE and the module name.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6593</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Minor Makefile changes.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6689 Aux Id: OTP-6742 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.4</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The MD5 calculation of a BEAM file done by
<c>code:module_md5/1</c>, <c>beam_lib:md5/1</c>, and by
the compiler for the default value of the <c>vsn</c>
attribute have all been changed so that its result will
be the same on all platforms; modules containing funs
could get different MD5s on different platforms.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6459</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When sorting terms using the <c>file_sorter</c> module
(the option <c>Format</c> set to <c>term</c>), file
errors were not always properly handled. This bug has
been fixed.</p>
<p>The directory supplied with the
<c>tmpdir</c> option is no longer checked unless it is
actually used. The error reason <c>not_a_directory</c>
can no longer be returned; instead a <c>file_error</c>
tuple is returned</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6526</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Bugs regarding <c>try</c>/<c>catch</c> have been fixed
in the <c>erl_eval</c> module.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6539</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When sorting the operands of a join operation, QLC
called <c>file:open/3</c> with bad arguments. This bug
has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6562 Aux Id: seq10606 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The functions <c>beam_lib:cmp/1</c> and
<c>beam_lib:strip/1</c> (and similar functions) have been
updated to handle optional chunks (such as "FunT") in
more general way in order to be future compatible.</p>
<p>The function <c>beam_lib:chunks/3</c> has been
added.</p>
<p>The function <c>beam_lib:md5/1</c> has been added.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6443</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Added base64 as a module to stdlib, encoding and decoding</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6470</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Added the functions to_upper/1 and to_lower/1 to the
string module. These provide case conversion for ISO/IEC
8859-1 characters (Latin1) and strings.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6472</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The callback function <c>non_local_allowed/3</c> used
by the restricted shell can now return the value
<c>{{restricted,NewFuncSpec,NewArgList},NewState}</c>
which can be used for letting the shell call some other
function than the one specified.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6497 Aux Id: seq10555 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>There is a new <c>escript</c> program that can be used
for writing scripts in Erlang. Erlang scripts don't need
to be compiled and any arguments can be passed to them
without risk that they are interpreted by the Erlang
system.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6505</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>Format</c> argument of the functions
<c>io:fwrite/2,3</c> and <c>io_lib:fwrite/2</c> is now
allowed to be a binary.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6517</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.3.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The control sequences <c>p</c> and <c>P</c> of the
<c>Format</c> argument of the functions
<c>io:fwrite/2,3</c> and <c>io_lib:fwrite/2</c> could
cause a <c>badarg</c> failure when applied to binaries.
This bug was introduced in STDLIB 1.14.3. (Thanks to
Denis Bilenko.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6495</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Added the option {cwd, Dir} to make zip-archives with
relative pathnames without having to do (a global)
file:set_cwd.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6491 Aux Id: seq10551 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.3</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The <c>spawn_opt/2,3,4,5</c> option <c>monitor</c> --
introduced in Kernel 2.11.2 -- is currently not possible
to use when starting a process using <c>proc_lib</c>,
that is, also when starting a gen_server, gen_fsm etc. </p>
<p>This limitation has now been properly documented and the
behavior of the <c>gen_fsm</c>, <c>gen_server</c>, and
<c>proc_lib</c> <c>start</c> and <c>start_link</c>
functions when providing this option has been changed
from hanging indefinitely to failing with reason
<c>badarg</c>.</p>
<p>(Thanks to Fredrik Linder)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6345</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The control sequence <c>P</c> of the <c>Format</c>
argument of the functions <c>io:fwrite/2,3</c> and
<c>io_lib:fwrite/2</c> now replaces the tail of binary
strings with <c>...</c> when the maximum depth has been
reached. For instance, <c><![CDATA[io:fwrite("~P", [<<"a binary string">>, 3]).]]></c> prints <c><![CDATA[<<"a binary"...>>]]></c>.</p>
<p>The indentation takes more care not to exceed the
right margin, if possible.</p>
<p>If the maximum depth is
reached while printing a tuple, <c>,...</c> is printed
instead of <c>|...</c> (this change applies to the
control sequence <c>W</c> as well).</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6354</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang shell command <c>h/0</c> that prints the
history list now avoids printing (huge) terms referred to
by <c>v/1</c> but instead just prints the call to
<c>v/1</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6390</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.2.2</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The functions <c>dets:select/1,3</c>,
<c>dets:match/1,3</c>, and <c>dets:match_object/1,3</c>
have been changed as to never return
<c>{[],Continuation}</c>. This change affects the
corresponding functions in Mnesia.</p>
<p>Bugs have been
fixed in QLC: <c>qlc:info()</c> could crash if the
<c>tmpdir</c> option did not designate a valid directory;
the results of looking up keys are kept in RAM, which
should improve performance.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6359</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.2.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>A bug in <c>erl_pp:exprs()</c> has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6321 Aux Id: seq10497 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.2</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The control sequences <c>p</c> and <c>P</c> of the
<c>Format</c> argument of the functions
<c>io:format/2,3</c> and <c>io_lib:format/2</c> did not
handle binaries very well. This bug, introduced in
stdlib-1.14, has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6230</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>filelib:wildcard(Wc, PathWithRedundantSlashes)</c>,
where <c>PathWithRedundantSlashes</c> is a directory path
containing redundant slashes, such as <c>/tmp/</c> or
<c>//tmp</c>, could return incorrect results. (Thanks to
Martin Bjorklund.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6271</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang code preprocessor crashed if the predefined
macros ?MODULE or ?MODULE_STRING were used before the
module declaration. This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6277</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Support for faster join of two tables has been added
to the <c>qlc</c> module. There are two kinds of fast
joins: lookup join that uses existing indices, and merge
join that takes two sorted inputs. There is a new
<c>join</c> option that can be used to force QLC to use a
particular kind of join in some QLC expression.</p>
<p>Several other changes have also been included:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The new <c>tmpdir</c> option of <c>cursor/2</c>,
<c>eval/2</c>, <c>fold/4</c>, and <c>info/2</c> can be
used to set the directory that join uses for temporary
files. The option also overrides the <c>tmpdir</c> option
of <c>keysort/3</c> and <c>sort/2</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new <c>lookup</c> option can be used to
assert that constants are looked up when evaluating some
QLC expression.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>cache</c> and <c>cache_all</c> options
accept new tags: <c>ets</c>, <c>list</c>, and <c>no</c>.
The tag <c>list</c> caches answers in a list using a
temporary file if the answers cannot be held in RAM.
Combining <c>{cache,list}</c> and <c>{unique, true}</c>
is equivalent to calling <c>sort/2</c> with the option
<c>unique</c> set to <c>true</c>. The old tags
<c>true</c> (equivalent to <c>ets</c>) and <c>false</c>
(equivalent to <c>no</c>) are recognized for backward
compatibility.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new option <c>max_list_size</c> can be used
to set the limit where merge join starts to use temporary
files for large equivalence classes and when answers
cached in lists are put on temporary files.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>There is a new callback <c>is_sorted_key</c> to
be supplied as an option to <c>table/2</c>.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>QLC analyzes each and every QLC expression when
trying to find constants for the lookup function.
Hitherto only QLC expressions with exactly one generator
were analyzed.</p>
<p>Note that only filters with guard
syntax placed immediately after the generator are
analyzed. The restriction to guard filters is an
incompatible change. See <c>qlc(3)</c> for further
details.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>In a similar way several match specifications
for traversal of QLC tables can be utilized for different
generators of one single QLC expression.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug has been fixed: when caching answers to a
sufficiently complex query it could happen that some
answers were not returned.</p>
</item>
</list>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6038</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang pretty printer (<c>erl_pp</c>) is now much
faster when the code is deeply nested. A few minor bugs
have been fixed as well.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6227 Aux Id: OTP-5924 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang shell now tries to garbage collect large
binaries. Under certain circumstances such binaries could
otherwise linger on for an indefinite amount of time.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6239</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>To help Dialyzer find more bugs, many functions in the
Kernel and STDLIB applications now only accept arguments
of the type that is documented.</p>
<p>For instance, the functions <c>lists:prefix/2</c> and
<c>lists:suffix/2</c> are documented to only accept lists
as their arguments, but they actually accepted anything
and returned <c>false</c>. That has been changed so that
the functions cause an exception if one or both arguments
are not lists.</p>
<p>Also, the <c>string:strip/3</c> function is documented
to take a character argument that is a character to strip
from one or both ends of the string. Given a list instead
of a character, it used to do nothing, but will now cause
an exception.</p>
<p>Dialyzer will find most cases where those functions
are passed arguments of the wrong type.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6295</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The functions <c>c:y/1,2</c> which call
<c>yecc:file/1,2</c> are now listed by
<c>c:help/0</c>.</p>
<p>Documentation of <c>c:y/1,2</c> has been added to
<c>c(3)</c>.</p>
<p>The fact that the control sequence character <c>s</c>
recognizes binaries and deep character lists has been
documented in <c>io(3)</c>. This feature was added in
R11B-0 (OTP-5403).</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6140</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The shell command rr() sometimes failed to read record
definitions from file(s). This problem has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6166 Aux Id: OTP-5878 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The nonlocal function handler in <c>erl_eval</c>, which
is used for implementing the restricted mode of the
Erlang shell, did not handle calls to
<c>erlang:apply/3</c> correctly. This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6169 Aux Id: seq10374 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>ets:rename/1 could deadlock, or crash the SMP emulator
when the table wasn't a named table.</p>
<p>ets:next/2, and ets:prev/2 could return erroneous results
on the SMP emulator.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6198 Aux Id: seq10392, seq10415 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When closing a Dets table the space management data was
sometimes saved in such a way that opening the table
could not be done without repairing the file. This bug
has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6206</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.14</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>A bugfix in QLC: two of the call-back functions used
for implementing QLC tables, <c>TraverseFun</c> and
<c>LookupFun</c>, are now allowed to return a term other
than a list. Such a term is immediately returned as the
results of the current query, and is useful mostly for
returning error tuples.</p>
<p>Several other minor bugs have been also been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5195</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The STDLIB modules <c>error_logger_file_h</c> and
<c>error_logger_tty_h</c> now read the environment
variable <c>utc_log</c> from the SASL application.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5535</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>ets:info/1</c> has been corrected to behave according
to the documentation and return a list of tuples, not a
tuple with tuples.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5639</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Referencing a so far undeclared record from the default
value of some record declaration is from now on considered
an error by the linter. It is also an error if the default
value of a record declaration uses or binds a variable.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5878</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When a file <c>.hrl</c> file is included using
<c>-include_lib</c>, the include path is temporarily
updated to include the directory the <c>.hrl</c> file was
found in, which will allow that <c>.hrl</c> file to itself
include files from the same directory as itself using
<c>-include</c>. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5944</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Corrected <c>filelib:ensure_dir/1</c> which sometimes
returned <c>true</c> and sometimes <c>ok</c> to always
return <c>ok</c> when successful. This goes against the
documentation which said <c>true</c>, but <c>ok</c> was
judged to be a more logical return value.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5960 Aux Id: seq10240 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The shell now handles records better when used in calls
on the form <c>{Module, Function}(ArgList)</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5990 Aux Id: OTP-5876 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The functions <c>lists:ukeysort/2</c> and
<c>lists:ukeymerge/3</c> have been changed in such a way
that two tuples are considered equal if their keys
match.</p>
<p>For the sake of consistency, <c>lists:usort/2</c> and
<c>lists:umerge/3</c> have been modified too: two elements
are considered equal if they compare equal.</p>
<p>The <c>file_sorter</c> module has been modified in a
similar way: the <c>unique</c> option now applies to the
key (<c>keysort()</c> and <c>keymerge()</c>) and the
ordering function (the option <c>{order, Order} </c>).</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6019</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Correction in documentation for
<c>ets:update_counter/3</c>; failure with <c>badarg</c>
also if the counter to be updated is the key.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6072</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When sorting terms using the <c>file_sorter</c> module
and an ordering fun, the sort was not always stable. This
bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6088</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Improvements of the linter:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The <c>compile</c> attribute is recognized after
function definitions.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new compiler option
<c>nowarn_deprecated_function</c> can be used for
turning off warnings for calls to deprecated functions.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new compiler option
<c>{nowarn_unused_function,[{Name,Arity}]}</c> turns off
warnings for unused local functions for the mentioned
functions. The new options
<c>{nowarn_deprecated_function,[{Module,Name,Arity}]}</c>
and <c>{nowarn_bif_clash,[{Name,Arity}]}</c> work
similarly.</p>
</item>
</list>
<p>The Erlang code preprocessor <c>epp</c> now recognizes
the <c>file</c> attribute. This attribute is meant to be
used by tools such as Yecc that generate source code
files.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5362</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The formatting option <c>~s</c> of <c>io:fwrite</c> and
<c>io_lib:fwrite</c> has been extended to handle arguments
that are binaries or I/O lists.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5403</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The control sequences <c>p</c> and <c>P</c> of the
<c>Format</c> argument of the functions
<c>io:format/2,3</c> and <c>io_lib:format/2</c> have been
changed as to display the contents of binaries containing
printable characters as strings.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5485</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The linter emits warnings for functions exported more
than once in <c>export</c> attributes.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5494</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A manual for STDLIB has been added, <c>stdlib(6)</c>. It
mentions the configuration parameters for the Erlang
shell.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5530</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Added the <c>zip</c> module with functions for reading
and creating zip archives. See <c>zip(3)</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5786</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Simple-one-for-one supervisors now store the pids of
child processes using <c>dict</c> instead of a list. This
significantly improves performance when there are many
dynamic supervised child processes. (Thanks to Mickaël
Rémond et al.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5898</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When given the new option '<c>strict_record_tests</c>',
the compiler will generate code that verifies the record
type for '<c>R#record.field</c>' operations in guards. Code
that verifies record types in bodies has already been
generated since R10B, but in this release there will be a
'<c>{badrecord,RecordTag}</c>' instead of a
'<c>badmatch</c>' if the record verification test fails.
See the documentation for the <c>compile</c> module for
more information.</p>
<p>The Erlang shell always applies strict record tests.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5915 Aux Id: OTP-5714 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang pretty printer (<c>erl_pp</c>) now tries to
insert line breaks at appropriate places.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5924</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>public</c> option has been removed from
<c>digraph:new/1</c>. The reason is that several
functions in the <c>digraph</c> module are implemented
using multiple ETS accesses, which is not thread safe.
(Thanks to Ulf Wiger.)</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5985</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>lists:keyreplace/4</c> checks that the
fourth argument (<c>NewTuple</c>) is a tuple.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6023</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Added an example of how to reconstruct source code from
debug info (abstract code) to <c>beam_lib(3)</c>. (Thanks
to Mats Cronqvist who wrote the example.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6073</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new compiler option <c>warn_unused_record</c> is used
for finding unused locally defined record types.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-6105</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.12</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p><c>shell_default:xm/1</c> has been added. It calls
<c>xref:m/1</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5405 Aux Id: OTP-4101 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Warnings are output whenever so far undeclared records are
referenced from some default value of a record
declaration. In STDLIB 1.14 (R11B) such forward references
will cause a compilation error.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5878</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The linter's check of the <c>deprecated</c> attribute did
not take the compile option <c>export_all</c> into
account. This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5917</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang pretty printer did not handle <c>try/catch</c>
correctly. This bug has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5926</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Corrected documentation for <c>lists:nthtail/3</c>.</p>
<p>Added documentation for <c>lists:keymap/3</c>.</p>
<p>Tried to clarify some other type declarations and
function descriptions in <c>lists(3)</c>.</p>
<p>Corrected documentation for <c>timer:now_diff/2</c>.</p>
<p>Fixed broken links in <c>gen_fsm(3)</c>,
<c>gen_server(3)</c>, <c>io_lib(3)</c> and <c>lib(3)</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5931</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Type checks have been added to functions in
<c>lists.erl</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5939</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The new STDLIB module <c>erl_expand_records</c> expands
records in abstract code. It is used by the Erlang shell,
which means that Compiler is no longer used by the shell.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5876 Aux Id: OTP-5435 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The compiler will now warn that the
<c>megaco:format_versions/1</c> function is deprecated.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5976</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.11</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>When calling <c>gen_server:enter_loop</c> with a
registered server name, it was only checked that the
registered name existed, not that it actually was the
name of the calling process.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5854</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>More detail on <c>beam_lib:version/1</c> in
documentation.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5789</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new function <c>io:read/3</c> works like
<c>io:read/1,2</c> but takes a third argument,
<c>StartLine</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5813</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new function <c>gen_fsm:enter_loop/4,5,6</c>, similar
to <c>gen_server:enter_loop/3,4,5</c>, has been added.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5846 Aux Id: seq10163 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>c:i/1</c> is now exported.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5848 Aux Id: seq10164 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.10</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>A couple of type errors have been fixed in <c>sofs</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5739</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The pre-processor used to complain that the macro
definition '<c>-define(S(S), ??S).</c>' was circular,
which it isn't. (Thanks to Richard Carlsson.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5777</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.9</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The linter, QLC and the module <c>erl_pp</c> did not
handle the new '<c>fun M:F/A</c>' construct in all
situations. This problem has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5644</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The manual pages for most of the Kernel and some of
the STDLIB modules have been updated, in particular
regarding type definitions.</p>
<p>The documentation of the return value for
<c>erts:info/1</c> has been corrected.</p>
<p>The documentation for <c>erlang:statistics/1</c> now
lists all possible arguments.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5360</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Replaced some tuple funs with the new <c>fun M:F/A</c>
construct.</p>
<p>The high-order functions in the lists module no longer
accept bad funs under any circumstances.
'<c>lists:map(bad_fun, [])</c>' used to return
'<c>[]</c>' but now causes an exception.</p>
<p>Unused, broken compatibility code in the <c>ets</c>
module was removed. (Thanks to Dialyzer.)</p>
<p>Eliminated 5 discrepancies found by Dialyzer in the
Appmon application.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5633</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>c:i/0</c> function will now run in a paged mode if
there are more than 100 processes in the system. (Thanks
to Ulf Wiger.)</p>
<p><c>erlang:system_info(process_count)</c> has been
optimized and does now return exactly the same value as
<c>length(processes())</c>. Previously
<c>erlang:system_info(process_count)</c> did not include
exiting processes which are included in
<c>length(processes())</c>.</p>
<p>The <c>+P</c> flag for <c>erl</c>, which sets the maximum
number of processes allowed to exist at the same, no longer
accepts values higher than 134217727. (You will still
probably run out of memory before you'll be able to reach
that limit.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5645 Aux Id: seq9984 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.8</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Very minor corrections in <c>beam_lib</c> and its
documentation.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5589</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The <c>erlang:port_info/1</c> BIF is now documented.
Minor corrections of the documentation for
<c>erlang:port_info/2</c>.</p>
<p>Added a note to the documentation of the <c>math</c>
module that all functions are not available on all
platforms.</p>
<p>Added more information about the '<c>+c</c>' option in
the <c>erl</c> man page in the ERTS documentation.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5555</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The new <c>fun M:F/A</c> construct creates a fun that
refers to the latest version of <c>M:F/A</c>. This syntax is
meant to replace tuple funs <c>{M,F}</c> which have many
problems.</p>
<p>The new type test <c>is_function(Fun,A)</c> (which may be
used in guards) test whether <c>Fun</c> is a fun that can be
applied with <c>A</c> arguments. (Currently, <c>Fun</c> can
also be a tuple fun.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5584</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.7</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p><c>filelib:wildcard/2</c> was broken (it ignored its
second argument).</p>
<p>Also, <c>filelib:wildcard("Filename")</c> (where the
argument does not contain any meta-characters) would
always return <c>["Filename"]</c>. Corrected so that an
empty list will be returned if <c>"Filename"</c> does not
actually exist. (Same correction in
<c>filelib:wildcard/2</c>.) (This change is a slight
incompatibility.)</p>
<p><c>filelib:wildcard/1,2</c> will generate a different
exception when given bad patterns such as <c>"{a,"</c>. The
exception used to be caused by
'<c>exit(missing_delimiter)</c>' but is now
'<c>erlang:error({badpattern,missing_delimiter})</c>'.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5523 Aux Id: seq9824 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Further improvements of encrypted debug info: New option
<c>encrypt_debug_info</c> for compiler.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5541 Aux Id: seq9837 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.6</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>When opening a Dets table read only an attempt was
sometimes made to re-hash the table resulting in an error
message. This problem has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5487 Aux Id: OTP-4989 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>It is now possible to encrypt the debug information in
Beam files, to help keep the source code secret. See the
documentation for <c>compile</c> on how to provide the key
for encrypting, and the documentation for <c>beam_lib</c>
on how to provide the key for decryption so that tools such
as the Debugger, <c>xref</c>, or <c>cover</c> can be used.</p>
<p>The <c>beam_lib:chunks/2</c> functions now accepts an
additional chunk type <c>compile_info</c> to retrieve
the compilation information directly as a term. (Thanks
to Tobias Lindahl.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5460 Aux Id: seq9787 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.5</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Closing a Dets table kept in RAM would cause a crash if
the file could not be written. This problem has been
fixed by returning an error tuple.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5402</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>erl_pp</c> now correctly pretty-prints <c>fun F/A</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5412</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The Erlang shell failed if the compiler was not in the
code path. This problem has been fixed, but in order to
evaluate records the compiler is still needed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5435</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Corrected the example in the documentation for
<c>ets:match/2</c>. Also clarified that
<c>ets:update_counter/3</c> updates the counter atomically.
(Thanks to Anders Svensson.)</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5452 Aux Id: seq9770, seq9789 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The possibility to start the Erlang shell in parallel
with the rest of the system was reintroduced for
backwards compatibility in STDLIB 1.13.1. The flag to be
used for this is now called <c>async_shell_start</c> and has
been documented. New shells started from the JCL menu are
not synchronized with <c>init</c> anymore. This makes it
possible to start a new shell (e.g. for debugging purposes)
even if the initial shell has not come up.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5406 Aux Id: OTP-5218 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The compiler will now produce warnings when using the
deprecated functions in the <c>snmp</c> module.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5425</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The function <c>c:zi/0</c> has been removed. Use
<c>c:i/0</c> instead.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5432</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Corrected two minor bugs found by the Dialyzer:
Calling a parameterized module from a restricted shell
(i.e. if <c>shell:start_restricted/1</c> has been used)
would crash the shell evaluator. A debug printout in
<c>gen_fsm</c> had a clause that would never match; causing
less information to be printed.</p>
<p>And a somewhat more serious one also found by
Dialyzer: <c>rpc:yield/1</c> would crash unless the call
started by <c>rpc:async_call/4</c> had already finished;
<c>rpc:nb_yield(Key,infinity)</c> would also crash.</p>
<p>Cleaned up and removed redundant code found by
Dialyzer in <c>erlang:dmonitor_p/2</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5462</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.4</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Bugs in the Erlang shell have been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5327</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Some dead code reported by Dialyzer was eliminated.</p>
<p>A bug in <c>dbg</c> when tracing to wrap trace files has
been corrected. It failed to delete any already existing
wrap trace files with the same names when starting a new
wrap trace.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5329</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The linter could output invalid warnings about bit
patterns in record initializations. This problem has been
fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5338</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>ordsets:is_set(NoList)</c>, where <c>NoList</c> is any
term except a list, would crash. For consistency with
<c>sets:is_set/1</c> and <c>gb_sets:is_set/1</c>, it now
returns <c>false</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5341</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A BIF <c>erlang:raise/3</c> has been added. See the manual
for details. It is intended for internal system programming
only, advanced error handling.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5376 Aux Id: OTP-5257 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The <c>deprecated</c> attribute is now checked by the
linter. See <c>xref(3)</c> for a description of the
<c>deprecated</c> attribute.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5276</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The restricted shell will now indicate if the return
value from a user predicate is on an incorrect form.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5335</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.3</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>Bugs concerning unused and shadowed variables have been
fixed in the linter.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5091</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>A bug in the evaluator that caused the shell to choke on
bit syntax expressions has been fixed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5237</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>io:format/2</c> et.al no longer crashes for some
combinations of precision and value for format character
"g". Previously it crashed if the precision P was 4 or lower
and the absolute value of the float to print was lower
than 10^4 but 10^(P-1) or higher. Now it will not crash
depending on the value of the float.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5263</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Bugs in the handling of the bit syntax have been fixed in
the Erlang shell.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5269</p>
</item>
<item>
<p><c>gb_sets:del_element/2</c> was changed to do the
same as <c>gb_sets:delete_any/2</c> which was the
original intention, not as <c>gb_sets:delete/2</c>. Code
that relies on <c>gb_sets:del_element/2</c> causing an
error if the element does not exist must be changed to
call <c>gb_sets:delete/2</c> instead.</p>
<p>The documentation was also updated to explicitly
document functions that were only referred to as
'aliases' of a documented function. Also, a list of all
functions common to the <c>gb_sets</c>, <c>sets</c>, and
<c>ordsets</c> was added.</p>
<p>*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5277</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>Debug messages have been removed from the QLC module.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5283</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The size of continuations returned from
<c>dets:match/1,3</c>, <c>dets:match_object/1,3</c>, and
<c>dets:select/1,3</c> has been reduced. This affects the
amount of data Mnesia sends between nodes while
evaluating QLC queries.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5232</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.2</title>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The <c>-rsh</c> switch for starting a remote shell
(introduced with OTP-5210) clashed with an already existing
switch used by <c>slave</c>. Therefore the switch for
the remote shell is now instead named <c>-remsh</c>.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5248 Aux Id: OTP-5210 </p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>STDLIB 1.13.1</title>
<section>
<title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>The Pman 'trace shell' functionality was broken as has
now been fixed. Furthermore, Pman could not correctly
find the pid of the active shell if more than one shell
process was running on the node. This has also been
corrected.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5191</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>When the undocumented feature "parameterized modules" was
used, the ?MODULE macro did not work correctly.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5224</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
<section>
<title>Improvements and New Features</title>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>
<p>You can now start Erlang with the <c>-rsh</c> flag which
gives you a remote initial shell instead of a local one.
Example:</p>
<pre>
erl -sname this_node -rsh other_node@other_host
</pre>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5210</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The man page for the <c>lists</c> module has been updated
with description of the new <c>zip</c>, <c>unzip</c>,
and <c>partition/2</c> functions.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5213</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The top level group leader used to be listed as job #1 in
the job list in JCL mode. Since there is no shell
associated with this process that can be connected to, it
will no longer be listed.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5214</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The possibility to start the Erlang shell in parallel
with the rest of the system has been reintroduced for
backwards compatibility. Note that this old behaviour is
error prone and should not be used unless for some reason
necessary.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5218 Aux Id: seq9534 </p>
</item>
<item>
<p>The <c>shell</c> commands <c>rr/1,2,3</c> now accepts
wildcards when reading record definitions from BEAM
files.</p>
<p>Own Id: OTP-5226</p>
</item>
</list>
</section>
</section>
</chapter>
