Arc Language Blog

The long-awaited new update of Arc (arc3) has been made available. I've examined the release to determine what's new in arc3 beyond the mysterious new logo: .

arc3 is a major change from arc2, with about 3000 lines and most files changed. The following gratuitous pie chart illustrates that the largest number of changes are in the news server (news.arc), with many changes to the fundamental language (ac.scm and arc.arc) as well as the web and application servers (app.arc and srv.arc).

The news server has been heavily modified with new ranking, support for polls, and improved spam rejection, among other features. A new "how-to-run-news" file explains how to set up your own Hacker News-like server. I will discuss the news server, web server, app server, and html library in more detail in a future article. I will focus this article on the language and main libraries.

If you're looking to try arc3, it can be downloaded here. Arc3 has significant incompatibilities with previous versions that will cause problems if you're not prepared.

Incompatibilities

• Arc now requires mzscheme 372. Arc will not work with the version 352 required by arc2, or with the newer versions of mzscheme.
• flush-output is disabled by default on write, disp, and functions that use these. See declare below.
• The result of accum is no longer in reverse order.
• news.arc is no longer loaded as part of arc.
• a.b.c is now ((a b) c), not (a b c)
• a!b!c is now ((a 'b) 'c), not (a 'b 'c)
• The set function has been renamed assign, and the assert function has been renamed set.
• writefile1 removed.
• flat no longer supports stringstoo option.
• to-nearest renamed to nearest.
• random-elt renamed to rand-elt.
• firstn-that renamed to retrieve.
• plural renamed to pluralize.

New functions

• int function coerces to an integer.
• force-close discards buffered output and closes the descriptor.
• mvfile moves a file.
• memory returns the current memory use.
• sin, cos, tan, and log are finally available.
• declare is used to set system variables: explicit-flush to control automatic output flushing, and direct-calls for the function call optimization.
• timedate converts seconds to date.
• copylist copies a list.
• defs applies def to name, args, body triples to define multiple functions at once.
• get provides simpler table / array lookup. get!foo creates a function that takes a table and looks up 'foo. (Actually, it's a generic mechanism to create a function to apply an argument to something.)
• writefile writes to a temporary file first.
• letter tests if a character is a letter.
• sum sums up function results.
• med returns median of list.
• minutes-since returns minutes since a time.
• defcache wrapper around cache to reduce boilerplate.
• datestring creates "y - m - d" string.
• or= modifies a variable if the variable is false.
• out evaluates and prints an expression.
• fromdisk, diskvar, disktable, and todisk provide a simplified mechanism for loading and storing data.
• halve splits a string in two on the first separator.
• positions returns a list of positions where a test is true.
• lines splits a string into lines.
• urlencode urlencodes a string.
• nonblank returns a string if it's nonblank.
• plural returns a count and pluralized word.

Bug fixes

• atomic-invoke fixed.
• socket-accept uses custodians so web servers can forcibly close connections if the clients aren't reading data.
• coerce of string into int rounds the value as does number to char.
• list modified to copy the list.
• safeset now writes warnings to stderr.
• each fixed to avoid conflict with afn.
• cut fixed.
• trues fixed.
• whiler fixed.
• rand-string now more random to help fix huge security hole.
• split fixed for negative positions..
• memo now memoizes nil results too.
• readline will terminate on nil.
• copy fixed.
• hours-since fixed.
• date fixed to avoid system operation.
• intersperse now works with nil.
• load fixed.
• posmatch fixed.
• num fixed to handle negative numbers.

Optimizations

• complement in function position
• The <, >, and + operations when applied to two arguments.
• (foo bar) is optimized to call foo directly if foo is a global bound to a function. This is controlled by declare.

Other changes

• Debugging has been improved by giving the Arc names of things to Scheme, and turning on line counting.
• A default value can be provided when accessing a hash table.
• Currying was largely implemented but not enabled.

In conclusion, arc3 has some nice improvements, bug fixes, and optimizations, but nothing too dramatic in the language itself. If you're using the Arc news server, you'll definitely want arc3 for the security fixes. On the other hand, the unofficial Anarki release of Arc has a lot of interesting features too.

Disclaimers: I have provided my interpretations of the changes in arc3, and I'm sure there are some errors; please provide feedback if you find mistakes. Note that I am not connected with the arc team in any way, and this is not an "official" list of changes. In addition, arc3 may change without warning, so any of the above can be obsoleted. (There are some good reasons for real version numbers, bug tracking, and source code control, but I won't belabor that point.)

Labels: arc, documentation