Other EEL Enhancements in Epsilon 12

The various primitives that use a printf-style format string (say( ), bprintf( ), error( ), and so forth) now understand additional escape sequences. These new codes may follow a % character:

k: The next argument must be a number. Epsilon interprets it as a key code, and substitutes the name of that key. If a number starting with zero appears after the %character, Epsilon uses the short form of the key name, if any. (See the new key_value( ) primitive to convert in the opposite direction.)
p: The next argument must be a number. Epsilon interprets it as a color class, and any following text appears in that color. This only works on those primitives that insert text into a buffer; the numeric argument is ignored in a sprintf( ) or say( ) or similar.
f: The next argument must be a string, normally the name of a file. This sequence is just like %s except when used in a primitive that displays text in the echo area, such as say( ), and the entire text to be displayed is too wide to fit in the available room. In that case, Epsilon calls the abbreviate_file_name( ) subroutine defined in disp.e to abbreviate the file name so the entire message fits in the available width. If the displayed message is also recorded in the #messages# buffer, where no width restriction applies, the unabbreviated form of the message will be used.

In EEL, local variables may now be declared at any point where a statement is legal, as in C++.

EEL has a new on_exit statement that causes code to run when the current function exits. See On_exit Statements for details.

Many internal compiler limits, such as the maximum size of string constants in a file or the maximum size of an EEL variable, have been removed or greatly increased.

The EEL compiler now recognizes the defined() syntax in preprocessor conditional lines.

The EEL compiler recognizes the preprocessor directives #elif and #tryinclude and the -i- flag (all new in v12.01).

Previously, Epsilon looked for a tagging function for a particular file based solely on its extension; modes supporting many extensions had to define a separate tagging function for each one. Now Epsilon also looks for a tagging function for a file based on the name of its mode. Various other tagging changes make tags work better in buffers that aren't in C mode.

EEL now defines a macro UNICODE to indicate the current version has Unicode support, in addition to the predefined _EEL_ macro.

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Converting Old EEL Code Changes from Older Versions New EEL Primitives and Subroutines in Epsilon 12