• Added Pareto number generation functions: uintX.rand_pareto(uintX: mult, float32: alpha), which returns integer values, float32.rand_pareto(alpha) which returns real values (#253)
• Added command verbose to turn off/on the display of variable assignments in the interpreter used in interactive mode, the default behavior is to show variable assignments (#263)
• Added command-line option -q (for quiet) to suppress all but IO.print() console ouputs during execution with the interpreter in the non-interactive mode
• Added my_enum.choice_uniform() method and my_channel.choice_uniform() to select items at random:

  
  enum Color
  {
    BLUE,
    GREEN,
    RED,
    YELLOW
  };
  
  var stack<int8>: a_stack_of_int[10]; 
      
  processdef MyProc()
  {
    state Main {
      IO.println("%u", uint32.cast(Color.choice_uniform()));
      IO.println("%d", a_stack_of_int.choice_uniform());
    }
  }
  
  process MyProc: aTask[50ms]();
  
  init()
  {
    a_stack_of_int.push(7);
    a_stack_of_int.push(0);
    a_stack_of_int.push(-4);
  }
  

• Added the following functions: uintX.min(a, b), intX.min(a, b), uintX.max(a, b), intX.max(a, b) with X in {8, 16, 32, 64}, as well as time64.min(a, b), time64.max(a, b) (#141)

What has been fixed or improved

• time() function is deprecated and replaced by time64.time() (#206)
• print() and println() functions are deprecated and replaced resp. by IO.print() and IO.println() (#203)

  
  init() {
    var time64: time_4s45ms3ns = 4s + 45ms + 3ns;
    var time64: time_max = time64.LAST;
    var uint8: uint8_max = uint8.LAST;
    var int64: int64_min = int64.FIRST;
    IO.println("%t\n%t\n%u\n%d", time_4s45ms3ns, time_max, uint8_max, int64_min);
  }
  

• Fixed: more accurate parser error messages on arithmetic operations with incompatible types (#223)
• syncIO() is deprecated and replaced by IO.sync()
• Parameter of exit() changed to uint8 (like exit codes on Unix)
• Restricted IO.print() and IO.println() arguments to primitive types, this means that enums must be explicitely casted (#221)
• pid() is deprecated and replaced by self.pid

  
  processdef MyProc()
  {
  ...
  var uint32: thisPID = self.pid;
  ...
  }
  
  process MyProc: task1[10ms]();
  process AnotherProc: task2[10ms](task1.pid);
  

• Renamed following built-in functions to snake case to respect CPAL naming conventions: max_size(), is_empty(), not_empty(), is_full(), not_full() and remove_current() (#273)
• [CPAL-editor] Fixed: CTRL+E shortcut to run interpreter in external terminal does not work on Windows (#256)
• [CPAL-editor] Fixed: default file extension for html export of CPAL source file is wrong (#266)

Code metrics and overhead data

• Test code coverage for the execution engine: 87.2% (lines of code), 92.2% (functions) and 77.2% (branches)
• Tests: parser=3603, interpreter=671, embedded targets=268
• Timing overhead (Cortex M4 at 120MHz with floating point unit): timer interrupt = 0.6us, scheduler overhead at process activation = 1.6us + n x 4.6 us where n is the number of active processes, process switching time = 2us