LSL3

Purpose

The purpose of the LSL3 project is to design a new programing language that would replace LSL2 in Second Life.

Design Ideals

It should be designed to enable expression and not hinder expression with complex or over burdensome syntax requirements.
C style syntax and order of operations
Type safety
Strongly Typed

Goal

Address the shortcomings of LSL2 and add new functionality while limiting the increase of language complexity.
Design LSL3 with Hierarchical Linking in mind MISC-2237

Proposed Changes for LSL2

Here are some proposed changes to LSL2. Please add new changes, if they cannot be summed up in a single sentence please create a subpage to this article and put a link in the appropriate section.

Major changes

Object model
Get rid of get and set functions, use getters and setters instead where possible (syntax sugar).
Persistent storage/memory

Syntax

Fix quaternion ordering
Provide quaternion-scalar multiplication
Provide quaternion exponentiation q^a where a is a float. (Useful for interpolating rotations to achieve smoothness)
Object model for base types
Array indexer
continue and break keywords.
switch statement.

Types

User defined class & structures
- Duck Typing (LinFu?)
- Anonymous classes?
bool type
pointers
Remove restriction on lists containing lists
const

Functions

Organized into static classes?
Or keep the namespace flat to keep the syntax simple.

States & Events

State variables.
User defined events that can be triggered by external scripts.
Functions that are only available to specific states.

Libraries

Script libraries that can be sold and passed around.
Natural syntax which can be used instead of link_message

Flaws with LSL2

Here is a list of flaws with LSL2 that should be fixed.

Combining Quaternions

See SVC-1047 for a full description of this.

Evaluation order

Given the code f(a) + g(a), currently g(a) gets executed before f(a).
- Changing this so f(a) gets executed first should improve performance on Mono.

Comparisons of lists

Only length is compared.
The result of a list equality is the difference of the lengths.

'if else' syntax

if([1]) evaluates to false.
if !(STRING) gives syntax error, forcing if (STRING == "") Applies to all types in which ! cannot be put directly in front.

llInsertString

Does not support negative indexes.

llDetected* Functions

Do not support negative indexes.

Resources

SVC-1657