_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

ZPE 1.5.2 is now available to download from my website. It is a huge update that brings so much (and removes so much). ZPE 1.5.2 is known by its code name Pelegosto.

Let's start with what's being removed:

• string_concatenate - added in version 1.3.0, deprecated in version 1.5.0 and now removed in version 1.5.2. 
• open_remote_client - added in version 1.5.0, deprecated in version 1.5.1 and now removed in version 1.5.2.
• open_remote_server - added in version 1.5.0, deprecated in version 1.5.1 and now removed in version 1.5.2.

Now for what's new:

• Serialisation and deserialisation of objects and structures: objects and structures can now be saved to disk and retrieved later. This feature is a particular favourite of mine.
• Custom keywords: finally you can customise the compiler with your own keywords and how they are interpreted. This feature is in its early days, but it works as expected.
• Constructors for structures: now you can instantiate a structure with a set of parameters. This feature was requested by one of the original testers of ZPE, wondering why it was you couldn't do this. Well, now I've done it.
• General improvements that fix a few bugs
• Performance improvements, particularly with mathematics
• The jget ZAC, based on cURL. This ZAC is designed to download a file from the central repository of ZPE tools and features. For instance running zpe -jget stdLib.zex will download the compiled standard library (now over 400 lines long). 

ZPE 1.5.3 is already underway and it's main focuses are on better structures and ZPEObjects as well as a much better compiler. So far in ZPE 1.5.3 the new -l argument for the compiler. This allows you to compile an application into a library, meaning the main function will not be included for efficiency.