Racket v5.3.2

posted by Eli Barzilay

Racket version 5.3.2 is now available from http://racket-lang.org/ Core Libraries::

• The new math library provides functions and data structures for working with numbers and collections of numbers. Functions include non-elementary (such as gamma, zeta, Lambert’s W), number-theoretic (factorization, modular arithmetic), linear algebra (arithmetic, decompositions), and statistical (expected values, order statistics, binning). Data structures include arbitrary-precision bigfloats, probability distributions, and multidimensional arrays.

• The new file/untar, file/untgz, and file/unzip libraries support unpacking widely used archive formats.

• The new lazy-require form allows programs to delay the loading and instantiation of helper modules until they are needed.

• The new data/bit-vector library provides an implementation of bit vectors (a mutable sequence of booleans) supporting popcount.

• The racket/generic library allows the specification of default method implementations for core datatypes.

• The openssl library can verify hostnames and use the operating system’s certificate store to verify certificates.

Package System::

• A new package system is in beta release. This system will become Planet’s successor. It differs significantly from the latter. For details, please read the documentation at http://docs.racket-lang.org/planet2/ and list your packages on the new index at https://pkg.racket-lang.org/.

• The raco test command supports testing by collection and package, in addition to by directory and file, with the -c and -p options.

Teaching Libraries::

• batch-io: the read and write functions work on Unix-style standard input and output.

DrRacket::

• DrRacket’s GUI is more responsive.

• The automatic parenthesis insertion mode is improved.

Scribble::

• Scribble renders Markdown format files via the --markdown command-line flag. Example use case: Generate documentation hosted on GitHub or BitBucket.

• Documentation cross-reference information is stored in an SQLite3 database, which means that SQLite3 is required for building Racket documentation on Unix/Linux machines (but SQLite3 is included in Racket distributions for Windows and Mac OS X).

Using a database for cross-reference information significantly reduces the initial footprint of DrRacket, since DrRacket no longer needs to load all cross-reference information.

Typed Racket::

• Typed Racket programs can require plot/typed to draw plots. List- and vector-accepting functions accept general sequences.

• Typed Racket supports Racket’s delimited continuation and continuation mark operators.

Redex::

• Added more support for define-judgment-form, including random generation for well-formed judgments and visualization of judgments.

Deprecation:: The following have been removed in this release:

• the planet command-line tool; use raco planet instead.

The following has been deprecated and will be removed in the August 2013 release:

• the mzlib/class100 library; use racket/class instead.