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authorErlang/OTP <[email protected]>2017-06-21 10:53:19 +0200
committerErlang/OTP <[email protected]>2017-06-21 10:53:19 +0200
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</header>
<p>This document describes the changes made to the STDLIB application.</p>
+<section><title>STDLIB 3.4</title>
+
+ <section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>
+ <list>
+ <item>
+ <p>For many releases, it has been legal to override a BIF
+ with a local function having the same name. However,
+ calling a local function with the same name as guard BIF
+ as filter in a list comprehension was not allowed.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-13690</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> A new (default) pseudo-random number generator
+ algorithm Xoroshiro116+ has been implemented in the
+ <c>rand</c> module. </p><p> The old algorithm
+ implementations had a number of flaws so they are all
+ deprecated, but corrected versions of two of them have
+ been added. See the documentation. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14295 Aux Id: PR-1372 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The Erlang shell, <c>qlc:string_to_handle()</c>, and
+ the Debugger (the Evaluator area and Edit variable window
+ of the Bindings area) can parse pids, ports, references,
+ and external funs, as long as they can be created in the
+ running system. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14296</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Internal code change: Calls to <c>catch</c> followed
+ by a call to <c>erlang:get_stacktrace/0</c> has been
+ rewritten to use <c>try</c> instead of <c>catch</c> to
+ make the code future-proof.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14400</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The <c>ms_transform</c> module, used by
+ <c>ets:fun2ms/1</c> and <c>dbg:fun2ms/1</c>, evaluates
+ constant arithmetic expressions. This is necessary since
+ the Erlang compiler, which normally evaluates constant
+ expressions, does not recognize the format generated by
+ <c>ms_transform</c>. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14454 Aux Id: ERIERL-29 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The state machine engine <c>gen_statem</c> can now
+ handle generic time-outs (multiple named) as well as
+ absolute time-out time. See the documentation. </p><p>
+ The <c>gen_statem</c> callback <c>Module:init/1</c> has
+ become mandatory to harmonize with other <c>gen_*</c>
+ modules. This may be an incompatibility for
+ <c>gen_statem</c> callback modules that use
+ <c>gen_statem:enter_loop/4-6</c>. </p>
+ <p>
+ *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14531</p>
+ </item>
+ </list>
+ </section>
+
+
+ <section><title>Improvements and New Features</title>
+ <list>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Improved unicode support for strings. Added normalization
+ functions in the <c>unicode</c> module. Extended the
+ <c>string</c> module API with new functions with improved
+ unicode handling and that works on grapheme clusters. The
+ new functions operates on the <c>unicode:chardata()</c>
+ type, thus they also accept <c>UTF-8 binaries</c> as
+ input. </p>
+ <p>
+ The old string API have been marked as obsolete. The
+ return values have been changed for some error cases.</p>
+ <p>
+ *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-10289 Aux Id: OTP-10309 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>There are two new guard BIFs '<c>floor/1</c>' and
+ '<c>ceil/1</c>'. They both return integers. In the
+ '<c>math</c>' module, there are two new BIFs with the
+ same names that return floating point values.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-13692</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Making code_change, terminate and handle_info callbacks
+ optional in the OTP behaviours.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-13801</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The support for Dets files created with Erlang/OTP R7
+ and earlier is removed. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-13830</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Replaced usage of deprecated symbolic <seealso
+ marker="erts:erlang#type-time_unit"><c>time
+ unit</c></seealso> representations.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-13831 Aux Id: OTP-13735 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>The function <c>fmod/2</c> has been added to the
+ <c>math</c> module.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14000</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>The EXIT signals received from processes using
+ <c>proc_lib</c> now looks like EXIT signals from
+ processes that were spawned using <c>spawn_link</c>. In
+ particular, that means that the stack trace is now
+ included in the EXIT signal so that it can see where the
+ process crashed.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14001</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>sets:add_element/2</c> is faster when adding an
+ element that is already present, and
+ <c>sets:del_element/2</c> is faster when the element to
+ be deleted is not present. This optimization can make
+ certain operations, such as sets:union/2 with many
+ overlapping elements, up to two orders of magnitude
+ faster.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14035</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Add information in doc about supervisor shutdown reason
+ when maximum restart frequency is reached.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14037 Aux Id: PR-1233 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Added <c>rand:jump/[0|1]</c> functions.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14038 Aux Id: PR-1235 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Functions for detecting changed code has been added.
+ <c>code:modified_modules/0</c> returns all currently
+ loaded modules that have changed on disk.
+ <c>code:module_status/1</c> returns the status for a
+ module. In the shell and in <c>c</c> module, <c>mm/0</c>
+ is short for <c>code:modified_modules/0</c>, and
+ <c>lm/0</c> reloads all currently loaded modules that
+ have changed on disk.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14059</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Each assert macro in <c>assert.hrl</c> now has a
+ corresponding version with an extra argument, for adding
+ comments to assertions. These can for example be printed
+ as part of error reports, to clarify the meaning of the
+ check that failed.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14066</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>error_logger_tty_h</c> and
+ <c>error_logger_file_h</c> now inserts the node
+ information for nonlocal messages before the message
+ itself instead of after, both for readability and so as
+ not to change the line termination property at the end of
+ the message.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14068</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>The Erlang code linter checks for badly formed type
+ constraints. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14070 Aux Id: PR-1214 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>By default, there will now be a warning when
+ <c>export_all</c> is used. The warning can be disabled
+ using <c>nowarn_export_all</c>.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14071</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>When a <c>gen_server</c> process crashes, the
+ stacktrace for the client will be printed to facilitate
+ debugging.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14089</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>Optimized ETS operations by changing table identifier
+ type from integer to reference. The reference enables a
+ more direct mapping to the table with less potential lock
+ contention and makes especially creation and deletion of
+ tables scale much better.</p> <p>The change of the opaque
+ type for the ETS table identifiers may cause failure in
+ code that make faulty assumptions about this opaque
+ type.</p> <note> <p> The number of tables stored at one
+ Erlang node <em>used</em> to be limited. This is no
+ longer the case (except by memory usage). The previous
+ default limit was about 1400 tables and could be
+ increased by setting the environment variable
+ <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c> before starting the Erlang
+ runtime system. This hard limit has been removed, but it
+ is currently useful to set the <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c>
+ anyway. It should be set to an approximate of the maximum
+ amount of tables used. This since an internal table for
+ named tables is sized using this value. If large amounts
+ of named tables are used and <c>ERL_MAX_ETS_TABLES</c>
+ hasn't been increased, the performance of named table
+ lookup will degrade. </p> </note>
+ <p>
+ *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14094</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>take/2</c> has been added to <c>dict</c>,
+ <c>orddict</c>, and <c>gb_trees</c>. <c>take_any/2</c>
+ has been added to <c>gb_trees</c>.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14102</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Extend gen_event API to handle options as well.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14123</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Advice on how to tune the supervisor restart frequency
+ (intensity and period) is added to System Documentation -
+ Design Principles - Supervisor Behaviour.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14168 Aux Id: PR-1289 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ gen_fsm is deprecated and is replaced by gen_statem,
+ however for backwards compatibility reasons gen_fsm may
+ continue to exist as an undocumented feature for quite
+ some time.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14183</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>The shell functions <c>c/1</c> and <c>c/2</c> have
+ been extended so that if the argument is a module name
+ instead of a file name, it automatically locates the
+ .beam file and the corresponding source file, and then
+ recompiles the module using the same compiler options
+ (plus any options passed to c/2). If compilation fails,
+ the old beam file is preserved. Also adds <c>c(Mod, Opts,
+ Filter)</c>, where the Filter argument allows you to
+ remove old compiler options before the new options are
+ added.</p> <p>New utility functions <c>file_find/2/3</c>
+ and <c>find_source/1/2/3</c> have been added to
+ <c>filelib</c>.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14190</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>erl_tar</c> in previous versions of OTP only
+ supports the USTAR format. That limited path names to at
+ most 255 bytes, and did not support Unicode characters in
+ names in a portable way.</p>
+ <p><c>erl_tar</c> now has support for reading tar
+ archives in the formats currently in common use, such as
+ v7, STAR, USTAR, PAX, and GNU tar's extensions to the
+ STAR/USTAR format. When writing tar archives,
+ <c>erl_tar</c> can now write them in the <c>PAX</c>
+ format if necessary (for example, to support very long
+ filenames or filenames with Unicode characters). If
+ possible, <c>erl_tar</c> will still write tar archives in
+ the USTAR for maximum portability.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14226</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>base64:mime_decode/1</c> has been optimized so that
+ it is now almost as fast as<c>base64:decode/1</c>; it
+ used be noticeably slower.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14245</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p><c>erl_tar</c> will now strip any leading '<c>/</c>'
+ from pathnames when extracting files from a tar archive
+ and write a message to the error logger. There is also
+ new check for directory traversal attacks; if a relative
+ path points above the current working directory the
+ extraction will be aborted.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14278</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> Miscellaneous updates due to atoms containing
+ arbitrary Unicode characters. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14285</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ The Crypto application now supports generation of
+ cryptographically strong random numbers (floats &lt; 1.0
+ and integer arbitrary ranges) as a plugin to the 'rand'
+ module.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14317 Aux Id: PR-1372 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Add new function <c>ets:select_replace/2</c> which
+ performs atomic "compare-and-swap" operations for ETS
+ objects using match specifications.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14319 Aux Id: PR-1076 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The Erlang code linter checks for bad <c>dialyzer</c>
+ attributes. It also checks for bad type variables in type
+ declarations. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14323</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> Two new functions has been implemented in the
+ <c>rand</c> module; <c>normal/2</c> and
+ <c>normal_s/3</c>, that both produce normal distribution
+ (pseudo) random numbers with mean value and variance
+ according to arguments. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14328 Aux Id: PR-1382 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Upgraded the OTP internal PCRE library from version 8.33
+ to version 8.40. This library is used for implementation
+ of the <seealso marker="stdlib:re"><c>re</c></seealso>
+ regular expressions module.</p>
+ <p>
+ Besides various bug fixes, the new version allows for
+ better stack protection. In order to utilize this
+ feature, the stack size of normal scheduler threads is
+ now by default set to 128 kilo words on all platforms.
+ The stack size of normal scheduler threads can be set
+ upon system start by passing the <seealso
+ marker="erts:erl#sched_thread_stack_size"><c>+sss</c></seealso>
+ command line argument to the <seealso
+ marker="erts:erl"><c>erl</c></seealso> command.</p>
+ <p>
+ See <url
+ href="http://pcre.org/original/changelog.txt"><c>http://pcre.org/original/changelog.txt</c></url>
+ for information about changes made to PCRE between the
+ versions 8.33 and 8.40.</p>
+ <p>
+ *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14331 Aux Id: ERL-208 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Added function <c>re:version/0</c> which returns
+ information about the OTP internal PCRE version used for
+ implementation of the <c>re</c> module.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14347 Aux Id: PR-1412 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>The format of debug information that is stored in BEAM
+ files (when <c>debug_info</c> is used) has been changed.
+ The purpose of the change is to better support other
+ BEAM-based languages such as Elixir or LFE.</p>
+ <p>All tools included in OTP (dialyzer, debugger, cover,
+ and so on) will handle both the new format and the
+ previous format. Tools that retrieve the debug
+ information using <c>beam_lib:chunk(Beam,
+ [abstract_code])</c> will continue to work with both the
+ new and old format. Tools that call
+ <c>beam_lib:chunk(Beam, ["Abst"])</c> will not work with
+ the new format.</p>
+ <p>For more information, see the description of
+ <c>debug_info</c> in the documentation for
+ <c>beam_lib</c> and the description of the
+ <c>{debug_info,{Backend,Data}}</c> option in the
+ documentation for <c>compile</c>.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14369 Aux Id: PR-1367 </p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+ Add option hibernate_after to gen_server, gen_statem and
+ gen_event. Also added to the deprecated gen_fsm
+ behaviour.</p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14405</p>
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p> The size of crash reports created by
+ <c>gen_server</c>, <c>gen_statem</c> and <c>proc_lib</c>
+ is limited with aid of the Kernel application variable
+ <c>error_logger_format_depth</c>. The purpose is to limit
+ the size of the messages sent to the <c>error_logger</c>
+ process when processes with huge message queues or states
+ crash. </p> <p>The crash report generated by
+ <c>proc_lib</c> includes the new tag
+ <c>message_queue_len</c>. The neighbour report also
+ includes the new tag <c>current_stacktrace</c>. Finally,
+ the neighbour report no longer includes the tags
+ <c>messages</c> and <c>dictionary</c>. </p> <p> The new
+ function <c>error_logger:get_format_depth/0</c> can be
+ used to retrieve the value of the Kernel application
+ variable <c>error_logger_format_depth</c>. </p>
+ <p>
+ Own Id: OTP-14417</p>
+ </item>
+ </list>
+ </section>
+
+</section>
+
<section><title>STDLIB 3.3</title>
<section><title>Fixed Bugs and Malfunctions</title>