[ANNOUNCE] LuaSocket 1.2 available for download

[Diego Nehab <diego@...>]

What is LuaSocket? 

LuaSocket is a  Lua extension library that provides support  for TCP and
UDP  socket layer  within the  Lua language.  The library  also provides
support for  SMTP (sending e-mails),  HTTP (www) and FTP  (uploading and
downloading files).

It  can be  used  by  any Lua  application  desiring  access to  network
communication on the Internet, once it has been properly linked with and
initialized by  the interpreter  running the  application. The  code has
been tested and runs well both on Windows and on Unix Platforms.

The library is available under the same  terms as the Lua language, that
is, it can be used at no cost for both academic and commercial purposes.

Current Version

LuaSocket version  1.2 is now  available for download! It  is compatible
with Lua  4.0 and has  been tested on  Windows 98, Windows  2000, Linux,
AIX, and Solaris.

What's New

There have been some improvements since version 1.1, mainly motivated by
feedback from the Lua community:

    * C Code has been completely rewritten, and is now simpler, faster,
      more robust and more complete. 
    * Added full support for the UDP protocol. 
    * Host name resolution is much more robust, and new functions toip and
      tohostname are provided that perform DNS conversions. Multi-homed hosts 
      are better supported. 
    * New functions getsockname and getpeername. 
    * New function poll allows busy polling of sockets. 
    * All input from TCP is now buffered. Line I/O is now much faster (10x+
      or more). All I/O is now non-blocking, avoiding busy waits by calls 
      to select to block the process. 
    * timeout method for the server socket is now supported, and affects
      the accept method. 
    * Global versions of socket methods are now optional at compile time.
      The only globals always exported are connect, bind and udpsocket, 
      toip and tohostname. 
    * HTTP protocol is now method independent. Http_get and http_post are
      provided, but simply call the generic http_request function. 
    * FTP protocol starts data connection passively using the PORT command.
      Even a minimal FTP server will be usable. CWD now changes directory 
      with a single command, which is faster. 
    * All memory allocation is performed by the Lua interpreter, and this
      leads to better garbage collection performance. 
    * The manual has been expanded and improved, hopefully. 
    * Source code comments have been checked. 

Incompatibilities with Previous Versions

There  server method  listen  has been  removed  from  the library.  The
backlog  server  socket value,  when  the  default  value  of 1  is  not
satisfactory, MUST be assigned at bind time.

Download

Take a look at the LuaSocket website at 
http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/~diego/luasocket

Kind regards,
Diego.