Revision history for Perl extension RiveScript.

1.20 Jul 30 2009

• Added automatic syntax checking when parsing RiveScript code. Also added 'strict mode' - if true (default), a syntax error is a fatal error. If false, a syntax error is a warning, and RiveScript aborts processing the file any further.
• Changed the behavior of "inherits" a bit: a new type has been added called "includes" which does what the old "inherits" does (mixes the trigger list of both topics together into the same pool). The new "inherits" option though causes the trigger list from the source topic to be higher in matching priority than the trigger list of the inherited topic.
• Moving to a new versioning scheme: development releases will have odd version numbers, stable (CPAN) versions will have even numbers.
• Fixed the Eliza brain; in many places a <star2> was used when there was only one star in the trigger. Fixes lots of issues with Eliza.
• Bugfix: recursion depth limits weren't taken into account when the {@} tag was responsible for a redirection. Fixed.
• Bugfix: there was a problem in the regular expression that counts real words while sorting triggers, so that triggers with *'s in them weren't sorted properly and would therefore cause matching issues.
• Bugfix: when the internal _getreply is called because of a recursive redirection (@, {@}), the %previous tags should be ignored. They weren't. since "lastreply" is always the same no matter how deeply recursive _getreply is going, it could result in some infinite recursion in rare cases. Fixed.
• Bugfix: using a reserved name as a global variable wasn't working properly and would crash RiveScript. Fixed.

1.19 Apr 12 2009

• Added support for defining custom object handlers for non-Perl programming languages.
• All the methods like setGlobal, setVariable, setUservar, etc. will now accept undef or "<undef>" as values - this will delete the variables.
• There are no reserved global variable names anymore. Now, if a variable name would conflict with a reserved name, it is put into a "protected" space elsewhere in the object. Still take note of which names are reserved though.

1.18 Dec 31 2008

• Added support for topics to inherit their triggers from other topics. e.g. > topic alpha inherits beta
• Fixed some bugs related to !array with ^continue's, and expanded its functionality therein.
• Updated the getUservars() function to optionally be able to get just a specific variable from the user's data. Added getUservar() as a grammatically correct alias to this new functionality.
• Added the functions freezeUservars() and thawUservars() to back up and restore a user's variables.
• Added the function lastMatch(), which returns the text of the trigger that matched the user's last message.
• The # command for RiveScript comments has been deprecated in revision 7 of the RiveScript Working Draft. The Perl module will now emit warnings each time the # comments are processed.
• Modified a couple of triggers in the default Eliza brain to improve matching issues therein.
• +Triggers can contain user <get> tags now.
• Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.

1.17 Sep 15 2008

• Updated the rsdemo tool to be more flexible as a general debugging and developing program. Also updated rsdemo and rsup to include POD documentation that can be read via `perldoc`.
• Added a global variable $RiveScript::basedir which is the the path to your Perl lib/RiveScript folder. This is used by `rsdemo` as its default location to search for replies.
• Tweak: Triggers of only # and _ can exist now alongside the old single-wildcard trigger of *.
• Bugfix: The lookahead code would throw Perl warnings if the following line had a single space in it, but was otherwise empty.
• Bugfix: Inline comment removing has been fixed.
• Bugfix: In conditionals, any blank side of the equality will get a default value of "undefined". This way you can use a matching array inside an optional and check if that <star> tag is defined. + i am wearing a [(@colors)] shirt
  • <star> ne undefined => Why are you wearing a <star> shirt?
    • What color is it?
• Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.

1.16 Jul 22 2008

• New options to the constructor: 'verbose' and 'debugfile'. See the new() constructor for details.
• Added new wildcard variants:
  • matches anything (previous behavior) # matches only numbers _ matches only letters So you can have a trigger like "+ i am # years old" and "+ i am * years old", with the latter trigger telling them to try that again and use a NUMBER this time. :)
• Bugfix: when there were multiple +trigger's that had a common %previous, there was no internal sort buffer for those +trigger's. As a result, matching wasn't very efficient. Added the method sortThatTriggers() to fix this.
• Bugfix: tags weren't being processed in @Redirects when they really should've!
• Bugfix: The ^Continue lookahead code wouldn't work if the next line began with a tab. Fixed!
• Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.

1.15 Jun 19 2008

• Person substitutions support multiple-word patterns now.
• Message substititons also support multiple-word patterns now.
• Added syntax tracking, so Deep Recursion errors can give you a filename and line number where the problem occurred.
• Added a handler for detecting when a user was put into an empty topic.
• Rearranged tag priority.
• Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.

1.14 Apr 2 2008

• Bugfix: If a BEGIN/request trigger didn't exist, RiveScript would not fetch any replies for the client's message. Fixed.
• Bugfix: Tags weren't being re-processed for the text of the BEGIN statement, so i.e. {uppercase}{ok}{/uppercase} wasn't working as expected. Fixed.
• Bugfix: RiveScript wasn't parsing out inline comments properly.
• Rearranged tag priorities.
• Optimization: When substituting <star>s in, an added bit of code will insert '' (nothing) if the variable is undefined. This prevents Perl warnings that occurred frequently with the Eliza brain.
• Updated the RiveScript Working Draft.

1.13 Mar 18 2008

• Included an "rsup" script for upgrading old RiveScript code.
• Attempted to fix the package for CPAN (1.12 was a broken upload).
• Bugfix: <bot> didn't have higher priority than <set>, so i.e. <set name=<bot name>> wouldn't work as expected. Fixed.

1.12 Mar 16 2008

• Initial beta release for a RiveScript 2.00 parser.