Here is a quick summary of recent changes SVN-side for DWScript:

• static classes are now in DWS, like the Prism/C# variant, they are classes which cannot be instantiated and can only have class methods or properties, but as DWScript supports the concept of meta-classes, unlike in Prism/C#, they can be virtual and sub-classed (unless you mark them as “sealed” too, of course).

  type
     TStatic = class static
        class procedure Whatever;
     end;

  Note that a static class can only be subclassed to a static class, and can only inherit from a static class (or TObject).

• quote-delimited strings can now be used as an alternative to apostrophe-delimited strings as in JavaScript and Prism, though they are still single-line strings, like in JS and unlike in Prism.

  var hello := "bonjour l'ami";

• the final qualifier is now supported, it can be used to indicate that a method can no longer be overridden by subclasses.
• the compiler will now warn about invoking constructors on instances (rather than classes) when outside of a constructor.
• method override checks have been made stricter and compiler should now report all cases of incorrect overrides.
• new directives {$HINTS ON|OFF} and {$WARNINGS ON|OFF} are now supported, and allow to turn on/off the hints and warnings respectively.

A source archive file for DWS 2.2 preview 3 (231 kB)  is now available. This is essentially just a zip file (7zip actually) for those not using the SVN.

Changes since the last post are rather limited:

• built-in “QuotedStr” function now accepts a second quoteChar parameter.
• improved compiler robustness (keeps parsing and reporting more errors in more cases), clarified some compile errors.
• improved unit tests coverage (84.6%).

Further changes since the last archive (preview 2) are listed in the following posts:

• Function pointers, direct method implementation now in DWScript
• DWScript: Class const, more hints, RTTI…