Changes from MudOS 0.9.14 to MudOS 0.9.15.

• added a new feature similar to the << EOF text reading feature provided by Perl. The @ character now means interpret from 'here' til the end of the line as the "terminator". Lex then considers each following line up to the terminator as forming part of a string literal. An example usage is as follows:

    /* assume this is at the left margin */
    x = @END
    This is taken literally.
    And so is this.
    END
    ;
  

• optimized the code produced by the LPC loop control constructs (for and while). These optimizations are modeled after those appearing in Amylaar's enhanced LPmud driver. MudOS 'for loops' now contain three fewer instructions per loop (the empty loop goes from 9 to 6 instructions The execution speed of the MudOS empty for loop (not that this is that meaningful :) is now within 1% of the speed of the empty for loop in Amylaar's driver.

• optimized a few of the LPC operators to produce smaller code.

• added the moncontrol() efun which lets profiling (of the driver - an in gmon.out and gprof) be turned on and off from inside the mudlib.

• added support for several new platforms (machines and operating systems) including SGI, Linux, 386bsd, A/UX (Apple UNIX(tm)), and HP Apollo.

• fixed the general compile time switch case problem

• added an error() efun which is like a throw() that doesn't require a catch.

• incorporated Amylaar's latest enhanced version of smalloc (uses fast fit).

• added option to options.h to allow save files to have an extension other than .o (for those having sysadmins who run scripts that remove .o files on a periodic basis).

• changed save_object() and restore_object() so that variables with a value of zero (0) needn't be saved to the .o file (however, the old behavior is still available for those who want it). This can produce a noticeable savings in disk space.