Version 0.9.9 of the Nice Programming Language compiler is now available. You can download it from this page. Changes in this version include:

* Assertions about the type of variables are used by the typechecker, so that

    casts are not necessary. For instance:



      Object o = ...;

      // We happen to know by design than the object must be a string

      assert o instanceof String;

      // Here o can be used as a string without cast



    The same construct can be used with '!= null' tests.

  * java.lang.Class is now parameterized by the type it represents.

    In particular, newInstance is now declared in nice.lang with



       T newInstance(Class);



    This make it possible to write type-safe code that uses reflexion,

    in particular when using class literals.

  * Subclasses can have less type parameters than their parent by fixing

    the value of the others. For instance:



      class BitField implements List { ... }



  * Improved speed of coverage tests for some methods.

  * Much improved nicedoc tool.

  * Removed the '--strict' compiler option.

  * Underscores are allowed and ignored in literal numbers. example:

      long x = 1_000_123_000_456;

  * The indexing operator supports multiple arguments now. For instance

    'a[x,y]' is syntactic sugar for 'a.get(x,y)'.

  * Lists now support a wide array of slicing and indexing

    operations. There is a new bit of syntax, '@', which indicates

    the index of the last item in a list, which can be used for working

    with indexes relative to the end of the list, instead of the beginning.



    For instance, given a list of ints from 0 to 6 called

    'intList':

	intList[@] is 6,

	intList[@-1] is 5,

	intList[1..2] is the list [1,2].

	intList[1..@-1] is a list of all but the first and last

		elements of ints, i.e., [1,2,3,4,5]

	intList[1..] is a list of all but the first element of intList

	intList[..] is a complete copy of intList

	intList[..@-1] is a list of all but the last element of intList

	intList[int i => i % 2 == 0] is a list of all the even ints

		in intList: [0,2,4,6]

	Several more options are available, an update to the manual will

	reflect this.