v1.11.0

This is a large release containing numerous new features, bug fixes and speed improvements.

Speed Improvements

• Due to a code refactor, built-in operators for standard types now run even faster, in certain cases by 20-30%.

Bug fixes

• Engine::parse_json now returns an error on unquoted keys to be consistent with JSON specifications.
• import statements inside eval no longer cause errors in subsequent code.
• Functions marked global in imported modules with no alias names now work properly.
• Incorrect loop optimizations that are too aggressive (e.g. unrolling a do { ... } until true with a break statement inside) and cause crashes are removed.
• Dynamic::is now works properly for shared values.

Breaking changes

• NativeCallContext::new is completely deprecated and unimplemented (always panics) in favor of new API's.

New features

Dynamic detection API

• New methods are added to Dynamic in the form of is_XXX() where XXX is a type (e.g. is_int, is_unit, is_bool, is_array).
• This new API is to make it easier to detect the data type, instead of having to call is::<XXX>().

Loop expressions

• Loops (such as loop, do, while and for) can now act as expressions, with the break statement returning an optional value.
• Normal loops return () as the value.
• Loop expressions can be enabled/disabled via Engine::set_allow_loop_expressions

Static hashing

• It is now possible to specify a fixed seed for use with the ahash hasher, via a static function rhai::config::hashing::set_ahash_seed or an environment variable (RHAI_AHASH_SEED), in order to force static (i.e. deterministic) hashes for function signatures.
• This is necessary when using Rhai across shared-library boundaries.
• A build script is used to extract the environment variable (RHAI_AHASH_SEED, if any) and splice it into the source code before compilation.

no_time for no timestamps

• A new feature, no_time, is added to disable support for timestamps.
• This may be necessary when building for architectures without time support, such as raw WASM.

Serializable Scope

• Scope is now serializable and deserializable via serde.

Store and recreate NativeCallContext

• A convenient API is added to store a NativeCallContext into a new NativeCallContextStore type.
• This allows a NativeCallContext to be stored and recreated later on.

Call native Rust functions in NativeCallContext

• NativeCallContext::call_native_fn is added to call registered native Rust functions only.
• NativeCallContext::call_native_fn_raw is added as the advanced version.
• This is often desirable as Rust functions typically do not want a similar-named scripted function to hijack the process -- which will cause brittleness.

Custom syntax improvements

• The look-ahead symbol for custom syntax now renders a string literal in quotes (instead of the generic term string).
• This facilitates more accurate parsing by separating strings and identifiers.

Limits API

• Methods returning maximum limits (e.g. Engine::max_string_len) are now available even under unchecked.
• This helps avoid the proliferation of unnecessary feature flags in third-party library code.

Enhancements

• parse_json function is added to parse a JSON string into an object map.
• Error::ErrorNonPureMethodCallOnConstant is added which is raised when a non-pure method is called on a constant value.