This is NOT the latest version, which is available at: current

What's new in Dao 1.0 (released on Mar 06, 2009)

New features:

1. long type as multiple/arbitrary precision integer (BigInteger);
2. A new and lightweight regular expression matching engine, which can be accessed by new string methods such as: string.match(), string.submatch(), string.extract(), string.capture(), string.change(), string.pfind();
3. Internal parallelization of regex matching and some arithmetic operations for large numeric arrays, under Linux only;
4. Coroutine with typed interface, using newly added keyword yield ;
5. Parameter grouping as in python, to allow passing tuples as parameters, and get the fields of the tuples to be bound to the corresponding parameters automatically;
6. Simple just-in-time compiling support;
7. local keyword for local variable;
8. virtual keyword to indicate class virtual methods;
9. A new syntax for easy construction of list or array: { expr ... count } or [ expr ... count ], which will evaluate the expr expression count times, and return the result as list (if curry brackets are used) or array (if squared brackets are used);
10. List items pushback and popback by operators: << and >>;
11. Open a pipe: stdio.popen( command : string, mode : string );
12. Tuple as map keys, where tuples are ordered according to each item;
13. Configuration by file;

There are also many other minor but convenient new features, please read the ChangeLog file for the details.

Important changes:

1. Language syntax support for regular expression (regex) matching is removed, now regex has to be accessed by string methods; and the syntax of regex patterns is also changed.
2. Interface to support embedding codes of another language is removed, and the DaoTCC module to embed C codes is abandoned.

There are some other changes regarding standard methods, such as: stdlib.load(), stdlib.ctime(), stream.read() and string.splitby() etc. Some internal parts of the implementation are also changed, but have no effect or minor effects on the language semantics. Please read the ChangeLog file for the details.