Subj : RC6 of SpiderMonkey JavaScript 1.5 published
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : Phil Schwartau <pschwartau@meer.net>
Date : Tue Feb 03 2004 07:30 pm

Hello,

The latest tarball for version 1.5 of the SpiderMonkey (JavaScript-C) 
engine is now available at:

   http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/js-1.5-rc6.tar.gz


This is Release Candidate 6 of JavaScript 1.5, containing a number of 
bugfixes as we progress toward a final release. Note: the Mozilla 
browser may display an incorrect file date of 2003-01-30 for the tarball 
if accessed via the ftp protocol instead of http. This is a known bug 
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=220948), and should be 
ignored. The actual date of the tarball is 2004-01-30.


A change log for this release is available at 
http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/release-notes.

Note in particular there has been a rewrite of SpiderMonkey regular 
expression engine. Certain behavior has changed as a result. See 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85721 and its many related 
bugs for further details. Some changes that have resulted:

   * Improved regexp performance

   * Anything that starts like a {min,max} quantifier but doesn't parse 
as one is taken as a flat string to match, instead of throwing a 
SyntaxError (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=228087).

   * The match array now always has N+1 elements, where N is the number 
of capturing left parentheses in the regular expression, regardless of 
whether all of them are actually used or not. 
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123437)

      o EXAMPLE:  arr = /(a)?a/("a")
         + |arr| is now:["a", undefined]
         + (no longer): ["a"]



As always, you can get the most recent version of the JS engine by 
pulling the source code via CVS and building it locally. Details on how 
to do this are available at:

      http://www.mozilla.org/js/spidermonkey/


To pull this specific RC6 release instead of the current CVS tip, one 
would use the tag -r JS_150_RC6.


Sincerely,
Phil

.