Visual Prolog 9 New Features

Visual Prolog 9 has a number of new language features.

Build 900

Language

• Bounded polymorphism.
• Extension Predicates.
• The nondeterm fact databases have been made threadsafe (lock free)
• Constant fact variables that does not change value after initialization.
• New ways to pass arguments. Named, default and optional parameters and functor originals.
• New attribute [mandatoryOut].
• New predicate notErroneous/1->.
• Bitwise and boolean operators **, ++, ...
• New attribute [attribute].
• Attribute [byVal] can now also be used for output arguments [byVal, out].
• New attribute [pack(N)]
• New directive #stringinclude.
• Lazy/late fact initialization is made atomic/threadsafe.
• More compact layout of functor terms on the 64 bit platform
• bit::isSet/2 is handled intrinsically by the compiler ([intrinsic])

PFC

• More encryption support through the classes crypt, cryptHash and bCrypt_api.
• Support for JSON Web Tokens (jwt).
• Support for Password Hashing.
• OLE drag and drop and clipboard support.
• Support for Slim Reader/Writer locks (srwLock)
• New package winHttp_api for client side HTTP/HTTPS operations.

Examples

• jsonWebToken demonstrates how to create and unpack JSON Web Tokens (jwt) and a way to hash passwords.
• tail a program that display changes to files as they happens (e.g. for live following of log files).
• dragDropTargetOle that illustrates how OLE drag and drop and clipboard handling can be used.

Build 901

Build 901 fixes bugs as listed below.

Language

• Constant used in inline attribute is used
• Code generation for ~~ breaks stack
• retired entities should not cause inheritance ambiguities

IDE

• The PIE example could not be compiled on Windows 7 computers (and earlier).

PFC

• Raising an exception in a class initializer

Build 902

Build 902 fixes a runtime bug with finalizers (see Memory corruption in finalizer).

See also Visual Prolog 9 Upgrade Notes.