1                         Regina 0.08e
2                         26 June 1998
3
4
5Changes in this release (from 0.08d)
6------------------------------------
7
8o Fixed a bug in Termination System Exit. It would not get called
9  if the Rexx program uses the EXIT instruction to terminate.
10o Fixed the problem in execiser where variables that have no value are
11  specified in lower case in System Exits, do not return their name
12  in upper case as thier default value.
13o The UNAME BIF now reports more useful information when running under
14  Windows NT or Windows 95.
15o Fixed a couple of crash situations when LEAVEing from a DO/END loop.
16  Thanks to Florian Grosse-Coosmann for supplying the fixes.
17o The Regina, curses interface and demo program hanoi.rexx have been
18  removed from this distribution.  They are distributed as a seperate
19  package under the name Rexx/Curses.
20o The BIFs LINES, CHARS, LINEIN, LINEOUT, CHARIN and CHAROUT now read
21  or write to/from stdout if the first parameter is the empty string.
22o The BIF POPEN now writes lines onto the stack in FIFO order rather
23  than LIFO order.
24o Added support for piping output of an operating system command to
25  RXQUEUE.  While Regina does not have an external queue, it is possible
26  to do:
27  /**/
28  'ls | rxqueue'
29  Do While Queued() > 0
30    Parse Pull line
31    Say line
32  End
33  The above support is identical to the current >FIFO redirection
34  support and is provided for portability in code (but not functionality)
35o Fixed OPTIONS support. Due to the way it was implemented, OPTIONS
36  would not work correctly on Intel-based machines.
37o Added two extra OPTIONS keywords: EXT_COMMANDS_AS_FUNCS and
38  STDOUT_FOR_STDERR.
39  The first relates to Regina's default behaviour of trying to execute
40  an operating system command as a function, if no internal or external
41  Rexx program is found.
42  The second relates to Regina's default behaviour of sending error
43  messages and trace output to stderr.
44o Added new switches for configure script; --enable-tracemem and
45  --disable-flists. Both of these switches are really only useful for
46  people debugging Regina itself. Similarly when building on other
47  platforms that use 'make' directly, the equivalent switches are:
48     TRACEMEM=Y    - Do memory tracing (only valid with DEBUG=Y)
49     FLISTS=N      - Turn off use of Regina's memory management
50  The DEBUG=Y switch under EMX also sets -fbounds-checking
51o Fixed and enhanced the debugging functions; dumptree() and dumpvars().
52o Fixed a bug with passing a variable to a function (not modified with
53  PROCEDURE keyword) and changing its value within that function.
54  Thanks to Florian Grosse-Coosmann for supplying the fixes.
55o Added a new file to the distribution; BUGS. This gives examples of
56  code that can cause Regina to crash or produce the wrong results.
57o Fixed a bug with the EMX ports of Regina, that returned the full
58  filename from STREAM( filename, 'C', QUERY EXISTS) without the drive
59  specification and forward slashes instead of back slashes for directory
60  seperators.
61o Fixed a problem with specification of single-character arguments to
62  BIFs like STRIP().  The ANSI standard appears to allow any string in
63  these cases as long as it starts with the appropriate character.
64  <<< I'm not so sure about this now! >>>
65o Fixed an error with STREAM BIF: stream(filename,'C','APPEND') would
66  not append. stream(filename,'C','OPEN WRITE APPEND') works fine.
67o The OS/2 EMX port now builds regina.exe, regina.dll and the sample
68  test?.dll(s) for the dynfunc.rexx sample program.
69o Changed PARSE SOURCE output to suppress the fourth value. This was
70  inconsistent with the ANSI standard and caused problems for programs
71  that used the third value, expecting spaces in the file name,
72o Under DOS, OS/2 and Win95/NT, all files were opened in text mode. This
73  caused a problem with CHAROUT(filename,"line 1" || '0a'x), where the
74  line-feed character was being converted into a CR and LF. All files now
75  read in binary mode.
76o Regina now expects a new format for the name of external function
77  libraries under Unix. Prior to this release, Regina would take
78  the second parameter passed to the RXFUNCADD() function literally.
79  The sample external function packages built with Regina were named
80  test1.rxlib and test2.rxlib.  The sample program; dynfunc.rexx then
81  required a test of platform to determine what the name of the external
82  function package was.  Regina now follows the way that Object Rexx
83  determines the name of the external function library. Thus, the
84  "test1" external function package has a file name of the form:
85
86     lib<name>.<shl>
87
88     where:  lib    - "standard" Unix library prefix
89             <name> - the name of the external function package
90             <shl>  - the suffix used for shared libraries for a
91                      particular Unix variant
92
93  Thus the "test1" external function package is called:
94
95     libtest1.sl  - HPUX
96     libtest1.a   - AIX
97     libtest1.so  - All other Unix variants.
98
99  One other thing to be aware of.  The name specified in the RXFUNCADD()
100  function; paramter 2 IS CASE SENSITIVE.  Thus if you specify:
101
102     Call RxFuncAdd('Test1LoadFuncs', 'TEST1', 'Test1LoadFuncs')
103
104  Regina will look for libTEST1.<shl>
105o Fixed bug with STREAM BIF; stream(filename,'C','OPEN') would fail.
106
107Please report any bugs with this release of Regina to me.
108
109Cheers, Mark.
110------------------------------------------------------------------------
111 Mark Hessling                 Email:             M.Hessling@qut.edu.au
112 PO Box 203                    Phone:                    +617 3802 0800
113 Bellara                          http://www.lightlink.com/hessling/
114 QLD 4507                      **** Maintainer PDCurses & REXX/SQL ****
115 Australia                     ************* Author of THE ************
116+------------------------------------------------------------------------
117