BETA-TEST release of LambdaMOO version 1.8.0beta3

• Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 22:42:13 PST
• From:
  Pavel Curtis <pavel@parc.xerox.com>

I have made another *beta-test* release of version 1.8.0 of the LambdaMOO
server in the usual place:

	ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/MOO/LambdaMOO-1.8.0beta3.tar.Z

This is a still a BETA TEST release of the server, which implies that not many
people have yet tried it in a production setting and that it may not be as
stable as a normal, production release of LambdaMOO.

Because very few bugs (and *no* major bugs) were reported in the beta2 release,
I am making beta3 be a candidate for the final, production release.  I would
appreciate it if as many production MOOs as possible would consider trying out
this release, preferably by switching over normal operations from whatever
version you were previously using.

PLEASE NOTE, however, that it is *not* possible to use a DB file written by
1.8.0beta3 and use it with any pre-1.8.0beta release; it's a one-way switch.

ALSO NOTE that, before you upgrade to this release, you should read carefully
through all of the entries in ChangeLog.txt since the release you were
previously using; any entry marked with the string `NOTE' carries a procedure
you must follow *before* trying to run on the new release.

Please continue to send your bug reports to the main MOO-Cows mailing list.  As
before, critical bug fixes will either be posted to MOO-Cows-Announce or else
released in later beta releases.  If there are no significant bugs reported in
the next couple of weeks, I will make the final, production release of 1.8.0.

Thanks in advance for your help in testing out this release!

	Pavel

Here's the ChangeLog.txt entry for this release:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Version 1.8.0beta3, 18 February 1996
-- Once more liberalized parsing of floating-point numbers, this time not to
   require any digits *after* the decimal point if there are digits *before*
   it.  Thus, `32.' is now parsed identically to `32.0' and `32.e1' is parsed
   identically to `32.0e1'.  (Thanks to Brian Buchanan for pointing out this
   remaining inconsistency with the behavior of tofloat().)
-- Added built-in function `value_hash(X)', which returns a 32-character
   hexadecimal string equal to `MD5(toliteral(X))', where MD5 is a well-known
   cryptographically secure hash function.  In essence, if
   `equals(value_hash(X), value_hash(Y))' then you can be pretty damned sure
   that `equals(X, Y)', even if the two hashes were computed on different
   machines.  Also added `string_hash(X)', which just computes the MD5 hash of
   the contents of the string X, and `binary_hash(X)', which does the same for
   the binary string X.
-- Fixed `toint(X)', where X is a string denoting a floating-point number, to
   return the same as `toint(tofloat(X))'.  (Thanks to Kai Storbeck for
   suggesting this.)
-- Fixed bug in `floatstr(X, PREC)' where PREC was allowed to be negative.
   (Thanks to `slayer' for reporting this bug.)
-- Changed parser to replace calls of the form `call_function("foo", ...)'
   with simply `foo(...)' if `foo' is a known function.  (Thanks to Don Schwarz
   for suggesting this.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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