Stdlib Release Notes

Stdlib 1.8.1

Improvements and new features

• lists:sort/2 is stable again.
  Own Id: OTP-3344
• The command-completion feature of the shell has been improved. Pressing the tab key now also lists possible completions (but only if no new character was added to the completion).
  Own Id: OTP-3354

Stdlib 1.8

Known problems

• If Erlang is started with longnames (e.g., erl -name foo), then slave:start/1 on a nonexistent host exits instead of returning an error tuple.
  Own Id: OTP-2635
• Excessively large variable numbers in the matching functions in the ets module can crash Erlang or block it for a long time, e.g., ets:match(Table, '$123456789').
  Own Id: OTP-3064
• The shell allows patterns which do not have pattern syntax (for example function calls); they become patterns which always fail to match.
  Own Id: OTP-3284

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• When c:c(File, Options) was used with options such that an intermediate file was produced instead of an object file (e.g., 'S'), it still tried to load an object file (which would be the old one, if one existed).
  This has been changed. A warning message will be printed (Warning: No object file created - nothing loaded) and no object file will be loaded even if an (older) object file exists.
  Own Id: OTP-3056
  Aux Id: OTP-3054
• Erlang shell line editing (e.g., M-B to back up over a word) didn't handle all Latin-1 characters correctly.
  Own Id: OTP-3158
• ets:tab2list/1 returned the list in the wrong order for a table of type ordered_set.
  Own Id: OTP-3319

Improvements and new features

• The new lint option {warn_format, Verbosity} causes warnings to be given for malformed calls to io:format and some similar functions. Verbosity is an integer which determines the amount of warnings to give (0 = no warnings).
  Own Id: OTP-1387
• Dets now has a write through caching mechanism as well as an auto save feature. Dets more seldom needs to repair files.
  Own Id: OTP-1831
  Aux Id: OTP-1526
• Many functions in stdlib do not enforce the types which the functions are documented to accept, thus resulting in undefined behaviour when given arguments of invalid type. Stricter error checking has been added to some functions in stdlib, namely io:get_chars, lists:keymember/3, lists:keysearch/3, lists:keydelete/3 and lists:keyreplace/4, resulting in an exit if an invalid argument is given.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-2689
  Aux Id: OTP-2441
• New functions lists:sort(Fun, List) and lists:merge(Fun, List1, List2) can be used for sorting/merging with respect to any criterion; Fun(A,B) should return whether A comes before B in the ordering.
  Own Id: OTP-2948
• A new function c:bt(Pid), available in the shell without module prefix, shows a stack backtrace for a process (i.e., calls erlang:process_display(Pid, backtrace)).
  Own Id: OTP-3122
• The new function c:q() (also defined in the module shell_default so that the module prefix need not be given in the shell) calls init:stop, and thus provides a short command to stop Erlang in a controlled way.
  Own Id: OTP-3123
• The functions behaviour_info/[0,1] have been removed from the module systools.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-3159
  Aux Id: OTP-1965
• The function c:i() now gives two lines of information for each process, including: heap size, stack size, registered name.
  Own Id: OTP-3160
• The output functions in the io module no longer return an error term in case of errors; they exit instead.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-3178
• The new lint option warn_unused_vars causes warnings to be given for variables which are not used (unless they begin with an underscore, in which case no warning is given).
  Own Id: OTP-3181
• Parenthesis-matching in the shell has been improved. A new command key ^] performs visible parenthesis blink, like the closing characters (i.e., ')', '}' or ']'), but it also inserts the proper matching character. The closing characters now beep if the matching opening character isn't of the right kind.
  Own Id: OTP-3250
• Enable the supervisor to handle other replies than {ok, Pid} when starting children.
  Own Id: OTP-3251
• The erl_internal:builtins/0 function has been removed.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-3300
• Due to an oversight, the following improvement was left out of the documentation in previous releases: The operator -- performs list subtraction. It is also available as the function lists:subtract/2.
  Own Id: OTP-3318
• The following functions in the lists module now have a faster implementation compared to previous releases: map/2, last/1, keysearch/3, keymember/3 and all sorting functions. The functions member/2, reverse/2, keysearch/3 and keymember/3 are now entirely implemented as BIFs.
  Own Id: OTP-3334
• Ets tables on remote nodes can no longer be accessed directly. Also, the format of the table identifiers returned by ets:open/2 have changed. Incorrectly written applications that assume that the table identifier is a tuple will no longer work.
  Most functions in the ets module are now BIFs. The internal and undocumented BIFs that the ets module used to call have been removed. Applications that incorrectly used the those BIFs directly will no longer work.
  (*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***)
  Own Id: OTP-3337