What’s New In Tohil 4.2

Welcome to Tohil 4.2.

4.2 is primarily a maintenance release, but includes at least one really nice new feature:

Python code passed to tohil::exec is now unindented before being passed to Python

Tohil’s #1 new feature request! Up until now, the argument to tohil::exec had to obey Python indentation rules including there being no indentation at all for the top level, leading to ugly stuff like:

    tohil::exec {
def new_validate(self, data):
     return json.loads(base64.b64decode(data))
    }

^ The “def” here has to occur at the beginning of the line, i.e. not be preceded by any spaces or tabs, or Python will raise an exception. This nesting does not “read” well.

To make it easier to make your code read well and comply with Python indentation rules, if the first nonblank line starts with whitespace, tohil::exec will un-indent the code block such that the first line is not indented at all and following lines are undented to match, all done lickety split, natively in C.

So you can now nest your embedded Python code in a more standard way:

tohil::exec {
   def new_validate(self, data):
        return json.loads(base64.b64decode(data))
}

Additional Improvements

• Added -nonevalue option to tohil::call, allowing the “none” sentinel to be specified arbitrarily (Retains the default value of tohil::NONE.)

• Cleaned up tohil namespace so dir(tohil) doesn’t show modules tohil imported as if it had created them.

• Made package forget tohil work.

• Added support for the Tcl unload command to be able to unload the Tohil shared library. (Consider it risky, though.)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crash when register_callback-registered functions raised a Python exception

Improved Build Support

• Added support for building tohil as a Debian package

• Homebrew formula for building with homebrew