Factor 0.98 now available

“Even though you're growing up, you should never stop having fun.” - Nina Dobrev

I'm very pleased to announce the release of Factor 0.98!

OS/CPU	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux
x86	0.98	0.98	0.98
x86-64	0.98	0.98	0.98

Source code: 0.98

This release is brought to you with almost 4,300 commits by the following individuals:

Alexander Ilin, Arkady Rost, Benjamin Pollack, Björn Lindqvist, Cat Stevens, Chris Double, Dimage Sapelkin, Doug Coleman, Friedrich von Never, John Benediktsson, Jon Harper, Mark Green, Mark Sweeney, Nicolas Pénet, Philip Dexter, Robert Vollmert, Samuel Tardieu, Sankaranarayanan Viswanathan, Shane Pelletier, @catb0t, @hyphz, @thron7, @xzenf

Besides several years of bug fixes and library improvements, I want to highlight the following changes:

• Improved user interface with light and dark themes and new icons
• Fix GTK library issue affecting some Linux installations
• Support Cocoa TouchBar on MacOS
• Factor REPL version banner includes build information.
• Bindings for ForestDB
• New graphical demos including Minesweeper, Game of Life, Bubble Chamber, etc.
• Better handling of "out of memory" errors
• Improved VM and compiler documentation, test fixtures, and bug fixes
• Much faster Heaps and Heapsort
• Support for Adobe Brackets, CotEditor, and Microsoft Visual Studio Code editors
• On Mac OS X, allow use of symlinks to factor binary
• Lots of improvements to FUEL (Factor's emacs mode)

Some possible backwards compatibility issues:

• Flattened unicode namespace (either USE: ascii or USE: unicode).
• Unified CONSTRUCTOR: syntax to include generated word name
• Returning a struct by value with two register-sized values on 64bit now works correctly
• Since shutdown hooks run first, calling exit will now unconditionally exit even if there is an error
• On Windows, don't call cd to change directory when launching processes; there is another mechanism for that
• In libc, renamed (io-error) to throw-errno
• In match, renamed ?1-tail to ?rest
• In sequences, renamed iota to <iota>
• In sequences, renamed start/start* to subseq-start/subseq-start-from
• In syntax, renamed GENERIC# to GENERIC#:
• Improve command-line argument parsing of "executable"
• Make buffered-port not have a length, because of problem with Linux virtual files and TCP sockets
• Fix broken optimization that made floats work for integer keys in case statements
• Growable sequences expand by factor of 2 (instead of 3) when growing
• Removed support for "triple-quote" strings

What is Factor

Factor is a concatenative, stack-based programming language with high-level features including dynamic types, extensible syntax, macros, and garbage collection. On a practical side, Factor has a full-featured library, supports many different platforms, and has been extensively documented.

The implementation is fully compiled for performance, while still supporting interactive development. Factor applications are portable between all common platforms. Factor can deploy stand-alone applications on all platforms. Full source code for the Factor project is available under a BSD license.

New Libraries:

• backticks: process backtick syntax for processes
• bencode: support for bencoding
• boolean-expr: simple boolean expression evaluator and simplifier
• bubble-chamber: variation of Jared Tarbell's Bubble Chamber
• calendar.elapsed: rendering elapsed time to text
• calendar.english: separated out English localization
• checksums.crc16: CRC16 checksum implementation
• checksums.metrohash: MetroHash checksum implementation
• checksums.multi: support multiple checksums in one pass
• checksums.process: support for using command-line checksums
• checksums.ripemd: RIPEMD checksum implementation
• checksums.sodium: Sodium crypto library checksum implementation
• cocoa.touchbar: support for the Apple Touchbar
• colors.flex-hex: implement "flex hex" color algorithm
• crontab: parsing the cron format
• cuckoo-filters: implementation of Cuckoo Filter data structure
• dbf: parsers for DBase file format
• editors.brackets: support for Adobe Brackets
• editors.cot: support for CotEditor
• editors.visual-studio-code: support for Microsoft Visual Studio Code
• emojify: add emoji's to text ("I :heart: Factor :+1:")
• english: tools for English language words
• enigma: implementation of Enigma cipher machine
• escape-strings: minimal string escaping algorithm
• etc-hosts: cross-platform /etc/hosts file parser
• file-monitor: cross-platform file change event monitor
• file-picker: cross-platform file picker user interface
• file-server: cross-platform file server web interface
• flip-text: fun with "uʍop ǝpᴉsdn" text flipping
• forestdb: bindings for ForestDB
• game-of-life: implementation of John Conway's Game of Life
• google.gmail: adding Google GMail API support
• gopher: library for querying Gopher servers
• gopher.server: cross-platform Gopher file server
• gopher.ui: interface for viewing Gopher servers
• ifaddrs: list network interfaces
• ip-parser: parsing IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
• ldcache: parsing /etc/ld.so.cache file
• libtls: wrapper for using libtls functions
• linked-sets: sets that yield items in insertion order
• lru-cache: least recently used cache algorithm
• machine-learning: experiments with some machine learning algorithms
• math.factorials: adding reverse-factorial
• math.functions.integer-logs: support for integer log2 and log10
• math.primes.erato.fast: faster Sieve of Eratosthenes
• metar: parsers for METAR and TAF weather reports
• midi: reading MIDI files and writing MIDI files
• minesweeper: playing the classic game of Minesweeper
• named-tuples: using tuples as a sequence and assoc
• oauth1: support OAuth 1.0
• oauth2: support OAuth 2.0
• odbc: support ODBC database query
• picomath: implement picomath.org small math words
• robohash: adding a robot-based hashing tool
• sequences.frozen: virtual "frozen" sequence
• sequences.interleaved: virtual "interleaved" sequence
• shapefiles: parser for ESRI Shapefiles
• shell.parser: parser for shell expressions
• snake-game: implementation of the snake video game
• sodium: wrapper for libsodium
• sorting.bubble: adding Bubblesort
• stream.extras: few helper words
• subrip-subtitles: parser for SubRip .SRT files
• successor: algorithm to find successor to a given string
• text-analysis: analyze the complexity of English text
• text-to-pdf: simple "Text to PDF" utility
• text-to-speech: cross-platform "Text to Speech" utility
• tools.cal: command-line "cal" tool
• tools.cat: command-line "cat" tool
• tools.copy: command-line "copy" tool
• tools.echo: command-line"echo" tool
• tools.grep: command-line"grep" tool
• tools.image-analyzer: examine Factor image files
• tools.move: command-line "move" tool
• tools.seq: command-line "seq" tool
• tools.tree: command-line "tree" tool
• tools.uniq: command-line "uniq" tool
• tools.wc: command-line "wc" tool
• ui.gadgets.charts: UI gadget for rendering line charts
• ui.gadgets.frame-buffer: UI gadget that supports a couple games
• ui.theme: support for light and dark themes
• windows.comdlg32: using comdlg32.dll functions
• windows.crypt32: using crypt32.dll functions
• windows.dragdrop-listener: allow dropping files into the Listener
• windows.dropfiles: implementing "file drop" gesture on Windows
• windows.surface-dial: support for Microsoft Surface Dial
• xdg: support for XDG Base Directory Specification
• zealot: continuous build and testing library

Improved Libraries:

• boids: adding Cocoa TouchBar buttons
• cap: support for screenshot on retina displays
• checksums: cleanup and improved checksum API
• color-table: add columns for filled color and hex code
• cpu.architecture: adding Bit Test primitive
• cpu.x86.64: fix for return register on x86.64
• colors.hex: support varying length hex notations
• combinators.extras: adding swap-when
• compiler.cfg: fix scheduling issue
• concurrency.distributed: fix serializing of remote threads
• elf: cleanup and performance improvements
• formatting: support "space" prefix for numbers
• furnace.utilities: improve template path resolution
• heaps: performance improvements to the heap algorithm
• help: default word help (if not provided)
• html.parser.printer: improved plain text printer
• http.client: support HTTP proxies and bug fixes
• http.server: fix use of port remapping
• http.server.static: support sorting by columns
• images.png: support reading color profiles
• images.tiff: fix bugs exposed by AFL test suite
• interpolate: simplify and some minor improvements
• io.directories.search: simplify interface and allow BFS and DFS searches
• io.encodings.8-bit: more encodings and simplify hierarchy
• io.files.info.windows: fix file-readable? to check current user's permissions
• io.files.unique: create multiple unique files at same time
• io.launcher: cleanup interface and support hidden processes on Windows
• io.streams.c: faster M\ c-reader stream-read-until
• json.writer: better support for non-string keys, unicode and special floats
• lexer: support universal comments
• logging.server: simplify code
• macho: updated structures and tests
• mason.release: code signing on macOS and Windows
• math.binpack: faster binpack and map-binpack
• math.combinatorics: performance improvements
• math.extras: adding Möbius function and Kelly criterion
• math.functions: adding logn
• math.parser: faster format-float for known format strings
• math.primes.erato: performance improvements
• math.primes.factors: command-line support
• math.primes.solovay-strassen: adding Solovay-Strassen primality test
• math.statistics: fixes and new words
• math.text.french: more proper use of French
• math.transforms.bwt: performance improvements
• math.vectors: adding v>integer
• mime.types: update for new mime types
• multiline: support "Lua-style" strings
• peg.ebnf: handle escapes in strings better
• pong: bug fixes and a bit fancier graphics
• readline-listener: adding vocab word completions
• reddit: fix for Reddit API changes
• sequences.extras: some possibly useful new words
• simple-tokenizer: consider TAB, CR, LF as spaces
• smalltalk: cleanup grammar and fix underscore bug
• splitting.monotonic: faster monotonic-split.
• sorting: faster sort-keys and sort-values on hashtables
• sorting.extras: faster map-sort
• strings.parser: allow both \u{snowman} and \u{2603}
• terminfo: look in multiple directories for terminfo files
• tools.disassembler: allow disassemble of compose and curry
• tools.dns: enable use from command-line
• tools.hexdump: support stdin hexdump
• tools.scaffold: Better examples scaffold. Add more types.
• tools.test: adding with-test-file and with-test-directory helper words
• tools.which: enable use from command-line
• ui.tools.browser: adding Cocoa TouchBar buttons
• ui.tools.inspector: improved performance with large arrays and hashtables
• ui.tools.listener: adding Cocoa TouchBar buttons, Ctrl-Break support on Windows, and vocab word completions
• unicode: simplified hierarchy
• urls: improved parsing of scheme component
• wrap: performance improvements using better algorithm
• xkcd: fix mouseover text.
• xml.data: make tags support assoc protocol
• z-algorithm: faster z-values