[ANN] stdlib 41.1.0 released

["Gary V. Vaughan" <gary@...>]

stdlib is a library of modules for common programming tasks, including list,
table and functional operations, objects, pickling, pretty-printing and
command-line option parsing.

I am happy to announce release 41.1.0 of stdlib.

stdlib's home page is at http://lua-stdlib.github.io/lua-stdlib

This release overhauls the strbuf class, adds result type checking to the
experimental gradual type checking system used throughout stdlib, as well as
fixing some bugs.  There is also a big backwards incompatibility in the
debug.argscheck syntax, which may affect early adopters, but I decided not
to bump the major release number as the API is brand new, and still somewhat
in flux.  That said, this release is a recommended upgrade for all users.

## Noteworthy changes in release 41.1.0 (2015-01-30) [stable]

### New features

  - Anything that responds to `tostring` can be appended to a `std.strbuf`:

    ```lua
    local a, b = StrBuf { "foo", "bar" }, StrBuf { "baz", "quux" }
    a = a .. b --> "foobarbazquux"
    ```

  - `std.strbuf` stringifies lazily, so adding tables to a StrBuf
    object, and then changing the content of them before calling
    `tostring` also changes the contents of the buffer.  See LDocs for
    an example.

  - `debug.argscheck` accepts square brackets around final optional
    parameters, which is distinct to the old way of appending `?` or
    `|nil` in that no spurious "or nil" is reported for type mismatches
    against a final bracketed argument.

  - `debug.argscheck` can also check types of function return values, when
    specified as:

    ```lua
    fn = argscheck ("fname (?any...) => int, table or nil, string", fname)
    ```

    Optional results can be marked with brackets, and an ellipsis following
    the final type denotes any additional results must match that final
    type specification. Alternative result type groups are separated by "or".

  - New `table.unpack (t, [i, [j]])` function that defaults j to
    `table.maxn (t)`, even on luajit which stops before the first nil
    valued numeric index otherwise.

### Deprecations

  - `std.strbuf.tostring` has been deprecated in favour of `tostring`.
    Why write `std.strbuf.tostring (sb)` or `sb:tostring ()` when it is
    more idiomatic to write `tostring (sb)`?

### Bug fixes

  - `std.barrel` and the various `monkey_patch` functions now return
    their parent module table as documented.

  - stdlib modules are all `std.strict` compliant; require "std.strict"
    before requiring other modules no longer raises an error.

  - `debug.argscheck` can now diagnose when there are too many arguments,
    even in the case where the earlier arguments match parameters by
    skipping bracketed optionals, and the total number of arguments is
    still less than the absolute maximum allowed if optionals are counted
    too.

  - `package.normalize` now leaves valid ./../../ path prefixes unmolested.

### Incompatible changes

  - `debug.argscheck` requires nil parameter type `?` notation to be
    prepended to match Specl and TypedLua syntax.  `?` suffixes are a
    syntax error.

  - `debug.argscheck` uses `...` instead of `*` appended to the final element
    if all unmatched argument types should match.  The trailing `*` syntax
    was confusing, because it was easy to misread it as "followed by zero-or-
    more of this type".


Install it with LuaRocks, using:

    luarocks install stdlib 41.1.0