MoonScript v0.2.0

Exactly 3 months ago I releasedMoonScript. The CoffeeScript inspiredlanguage that compiles to Lua. Since then I've both written a lot of MoonScriptand enhanced the MoonScript compiler.

Today I'm proud to release v0.2.0. I've got a handful of new features and bugfixes:

Thanks for checking it out,follow me on twitter for updates orcomplaints.

Changes

• , is used instead of: for delimiting table slice parts.
• Class objects store the metatable of their instances in__base.__base isalso used in inheritance when chaining metatables.

New Things

The Language

• Addedkey-value table comprehensions.
• Added aswitch statement.
• The body of a class can contain arbitrary expressions in addition toassigning properties.self in this scope refers to the class itself.
• Class objects themselves support accessing the properties of the superclassthey extend (like instances).
• Class objects store their name as a string in the__name property.
• Enhanced thesuper keyword in instance methods.
• Bound methods can be created for an object by usingobject\function_name asa value. Calledfunction stubs.
• Addedexport * statement to export all assigned names following thestatement.
• Addedexport ^ statement to export all assigning names that begin with acapital letter following the statement.
• export can be used before any assignment or class declaration to exportjust that assignment (or class declaration).
• Argument lists can be broken up over several lines with trailing comma.
• :hello is short hand forhello: hello inside of table literal.
• Added..= for string concatenation.
• table.insert no longer used to build accumlated values in comprehensions.

The API

• Addedloadfile,loadstring, anddofile functions tomoonscript moduleto load/run MoonScript code.
• Addedto_lua function tomoonscript module to convert a MoonScript codestring to Lua string.

The Tools

• Createdprebuilt MoonScript Windows executables.
• Wrote aTextmate/Sublime Text bundle.
• Wrote aSciTE syntax highlighter with scintillua.
• Created aSciTE package for Windows that has everything configured.
• Created anonline compiler and snippet site usingemscripten.
• Watch mode works on all platforms now. Uses polling ifinotify is notavailable.

Standard Library

I'm now including a small set of useful functions in a single module calledmoon:

require"moon"

Documentation isavailable here.

Bug Fixes

• Windows line endings don’t break the parser.
• Fixed issues when using... within comprehensions when the compiled codeuses an intermediate function in the output.
• Names whose first characters happen to be a keyword don’t break parser.
• Return statement can have no arguments
• argument names prefixed with@ in function definitions work outside ofclasses work with default values.
• Fixed parse issues with the shorthand values within awith block.
• Numerous other small fixes. Seecommit log.

Other Stuff

Since the first release, I've written one other project in MoonScript (otherthan the compiler). It’s a static site generator calledsitegen. It’swhat I now use to generate all of my project pages and this blog.