Compiler Release Notes

Compiler 3.0.1

Improvements and new features

• Several minor compiler bugs corncerning the bit syntax were corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-3707

Compiler 3.0

Known problems

• Use of recursively defined records causes the compiler to crash instead of reporting an error.
  Own Id: OTP-2677

Fixed errors and malfunctions

• The Erlang compiler builds lists and tuples in a smarter way than previous compilers, meaning that literal lists and tuples practically any size can now be built.
  Own Id: OTP-2388
  Aux Id: seq 821
• Using a literal atom in a call to atom_to_list/1 resulted in a compiled module that could not be loaded. This has been corrected.
  Own Id: OTP-3438

Improvements and new features

• We have made several changes to the garbage collector and internal memory allocation routines to reduce memory consumption and memory fragmentation. Also, the compiler now makes sure that references to any data that will not be used again will be killed, so that the garbage collector can discard it as soon as possible. (Thanks to Claes Wickstrom at Bluetail who suggested most of the changes to the garbage collector.)
  Own Id: OTP-2375
  Aux Id: seq 816, HA81951
• It is now allowed to use an expression within a pattern, if the expression uses only numeric or bitwise operators, and can be evaluated to a constant at compile-time. E.g., case X of {1+2, T} -> T end.
  Own Id: OTP-3144
  Aux Id: OTP-3143
• There now exists syntax for constructing and matching binaries. For more infomation, see Extensions to Erlang. Also, the handling of small binaries (up to 64 bytes) has been optimised, as well as splitting of binaries.
  Own Id: OTP-3376
• The construction ??Arg for an argument to a macro expands to a string containing the tokens of the argument, similar to the #arg stringifying construction in C.
  Own Id: OTP-3425
• The compiler now supports inlining within a module (see the compiler documentation). Numerous known problems and limitations have been corrected, and the optimisation is better (for instance, tuples used in cases for grouping are no longer built). The earlier compiler versions v1 (R5) and v2 (R6) have been discontinued because there are no longer any reason to use them.
  Own Id: OTP-3672