Re: Lua 5.1

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> I've read some news on this list, but does anyone have any information
> about what will change in 5.1 and when it will be released?

The major change will be incremental garbage collection. There will be
several minor changes also. Currently the list is more or less this:

* better handling of \r\n in the lexer

* you can create a Lua state with your own memory-allocation function,
so that this state does all its memory allocation through this function.
(Therefore, the Lua core will not need `malloc'.)

* more flexible long-string delimiters
(see http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2003-11/msg00301.html)

* parser fully reentrant
(see http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2003-11/msg00359.html)

* new semantics for local variables in a "for" loop
(see http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2003-04/msg00332.html)

* change in the handling of '#'
(see http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2003-11/msg00332.html)

* new way to handle varargs
(see http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2003-10/msg00362.html)

We are taking great care with compatibility issues.

About "when": The new garbage collector will set the pace. When it is
ready, Lua 5.1 will be ready. we plan to release a work version of the
new garbage collector around February-March. A first raw estimate for
the final version can be August (but this is a wild guess).

-- Roberto