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C++ Portable Types Library (PTypes) Version 1.7


Top: Introduction: Changes


Version 1.7.4

  • A new class unit has been added. Unit is a mini-process with its own main() and input/output 'plugs'; several unit objects within the framework of one application can be connected to form pipes, like processes in the Unix shell.
  • A new method for creating local pipes, infile::pipe(), has been added.
  • Null output stream object has been added as a static variable pnull.
  • __ptypes_version and the DLL version resource were not incremented in the previous release. Now they both show 1.7.4.
  • outmemory::get_strdata() added.

Version 1.7.3

  • Wrapper templates for objlist, strlist and strmap have been created. These templates help to avoid extra (dangerous) pointer typecasts and provide better compile-time type checking when using lists with objects derived from unknown. See introduction to Lists.
  • A new class template compref has been added that implements a 'smart' pointer to a reference-counted component object.
  • Function template tpexchange() has been added as a type-safe wrapper for pexchange().
  • New methods ipstream::get_myport() and ipmessage::get_myport() have been added.

Version 1.7.2

  • Fixed compilation and linking parameters for Linux and FreeBSD to build the shared library correctly (thanks to Alan Eldridge).
  • Bug fixed in wshare/urlutils.cxx: the URL parameters (protocol parameters, query string and fragment) were treated incorrectly in previous versions.

Version 1.7.1

  • A new section called "Deploying the shared (dynamic) library" is now included in the documentation. It describes in detail the procedure of using and deploying the shared (dynamic) library, discusses advantages and disadvantages of dynamic linking vs. static linking.
  • PTypes.DLL now contains a version resource. In addition, the library declares a global variable __ptypes_version, which can be checked at run-time or during installation on Unix.
  • strlist::compare() is declared as virtual to allow alternate sorting algorithms in descendant classes.

Version 1.7.0

  • Variant class implemented. A variant variable can hold values of many fundamental types (int, bool, datetime, float, string) plus associative arrays of variants and reference-counted pointers to objects. Variants can be used for designing interpreters for higher-level languages, designing or working with databases and spreadsheets, etc.
  • Message-oriented networking classes (ipmessage and ipmsgserver) implemented based on the UDP protocol.
  • The library now compiles both as a shared object (DLL on Windows) and a static library. The shared object (or DLL) is placed in so/ when building the library.
  • outstm::putf() is now atomic with respect to multithreading.
  • Ipsocket renamed to ipstream, ipserver renamed to ipstmserver. The old names are available as typedef's for compatibility.

Version 1.6.1

  • Read/write lock (rwlock) algorithm improved to be "fairer" with respect to both readers and writers.
  • Trigger algorithm fixed to be fully compatible with Windows event interface.
  • psleep() fixed on Solaris to be reentrant (multithreaded).

Version 1.6.0

  • Portable named pipes added - namedpipe and npserver.
  • Read/write lock class rwlock (a smarter mutex) added.
  • Trigger (a simplified semaphore) class added.
  • Memory stream classes inmemory and outmemory, previously undocumented, now described in section Streams.
  • Windows InterlockedXXX calls replaced with internal assembly code to work as expected even on Win95.
  • A string-to-int (64-bit) conversion routine added - stringtoi().
  • ipsocket::get_myip() added.
  • Dynamic string assignment and itostring() optimized.
  • Better diagnostics messages for ipserver.

Version 1.5.3

  • Token extraction methods can now optionally limit input and throw en exception if the token exceeds the limit. This new feature is targeted to real-world networking applications.
  • A new section "Portability and Performance Issues" and an alphabetical reference of all public symbols added in the documentation.
  • Examples for the sockets interface and some other modules rewritten to be cleaner and more educational.
  • GCC 3.x compilation problem solved in pinet.h (friend class declaration).

Version 1.5.2

  • Dynamic strings have been optimized and thoroughly tested. Compared to MFC CString class, PTypes dynamic strings now show much better performance.
  • Bug fixed in decodedate(). This function worked incorrectly for the last day (12/31) of each leap year.

Version 1.5.1

  • Documentation cleanup.
  • A sample compile-time module for wshare, which responds to http://hostname/.about requests. Code cleanup in wshare.

Version 1.5.0

  • Wshare is becoming modular/scalable. Custom handlers for a new HTTP method, file extension or a nonexistent path can be easily incorporated into wshare at compile time. Currently this feature is documented only in the source files.
  • Wshare can show the server status report through http://localhost/.wstat
  • Standard input, output and error devices are declared in <pstreams.h> as pin, pout and perr stream objects respectively.
  • New printf-style formatted output method outstm::putf(). Accepts only a subset of format specifiers common to all platforms.
  • Bug fix in outstm::put().
  • Handle leak on Windows fixed.
  • realloc-related memory leak on Unix fixed.
  • Bug in string class fixed: s += s was working incorrectly in previous versions.

Version 1.4.1

  • The MD5 module is replaced with L. Peter Deutsch's implementation. Please, see comments in src/pmd5.cxx.
  • Wshare: code cleanup in various modules; Borland C++ port (wshare/wshare.mak); a new option -x to ignore default index files and always show directory indexes.
  • Include directives in src/pipserver.cxx and src/pipsocket.cxx have been reordered to avoid compiler errors on some Linux systems.

Version 1.4.0

  • A big sample program called wshare is now included in the project. Wshare is a simple and fast HTTP/1.1 web server; it demonstrates the full power of PTypes. Currently wshare lacks server-side scripting functionality, however, it can be used to quickly share local files over the web.
  • Waiting for data with timeout on a socket object is implemented (ipsocket::waitfor()).
  • SIGPIPE is now blocked on Unix when using PTypes' sockets.
  • A new utility function utodatetime() for converting Unix time_t values to PTypes datetime.
  • Atomic exchange for pointers is implemented separately, since on 64-bit platforms the size of a void pointer differs from the size of int.
  • A bug fix for autofree threads. Please note that semantics of thread::waitfor() has changed (see documentation for details).

Version 1.3.2

  • Ported to MacOS X (Darwin).
  • Important fixes in the thread module (src/pthread.cxx): PTypes now ensures proper operation and memory cleanup on all platforms, even with buggy implementation of the POSIX threads specs.
  • Compiled under Linux/Alpha, Linux/PowerPC and Linux/Sparc with minor fixes: ipaddress type is now castable to unsigned long instead of signed long; variables of type ipaddress must be compared with ipnone instead of -1.

Version 1.3.1

  • CVS repository setup at SourceForge.net (see the main page for details).
  • Various fixes in the documentation.
  • Fixes in the BCC makefile src/ptypes.mak.

Version 1.3

  • IP socket manipulation classes and utilities, finally!
  • The new datetime type along with time/calendar manipulation utilities.
  • Timed semaphore class tsemaphore.
  • The library now compiles within a namespace "pt" by default.
  • semaphore::post() and semaphore::wait() now do not return any values. If these functions fail, a fatal non-recoverable error is raised instead of returning an error code to the caller. It is senseless to run a multithreaded application if the system fails to operate semaphores.
  • Bug fixed in non-Intel version of pexchange().

Version 1.2

  • The entire library can now be conditionally enclosed within a namespace to avoid name conflicts in large projects. By default the library does NOT compile within a namespace.
  • Several fixes to improve performance of the dynamic string class, as well as to make it thread safe (see introduction to string class).
  • Ported to SunOS. (The library should now compile virtually on any Unix platform. Need some time and access to different computers.)
  • Compiled with Borland C++ 5.5 (aka C++ Builder) under Windows. The makefile is src/ptypes.mak.
  • MD5 (message digest) algorithm is implemented as an output stream class outmd5.
  • Bug fixes in src/pinstm.cxx and src/poutstm.cxx.

Version 1.1 was the first public release


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