[Remind-Fans] New release of Remind coming soon; testers wanted

[Tim Chase]

On 2024-05-31 22:15, Remind list wrote:
> Do you love living on the bleeding edge?  Juggling chainsaws,
> fiery torches and rubber chickens?  Running with scissors?

No.

> If so, I invite you to check out a branch containing upcoming changes
> to Remind:
> 
> https://git.skoll.ca/Skollsoft-Public/Remind/src/branch/wip/revamped-expression-evaluation

But checking out a dev branch and testing it is a lot less dangerous,
so I'd be glad to do that

> I started writing Remind in 1989 and added support for expressions probably
> around 1992 or so.  It was very early in my software career and "expr.c"
> was not my proudest moment.

Glad you've been able to make steps toward leaving this shame behind.

> So please give it a go and let me know if you notice any bugs.

I just ran my full calendar through it (with its several thousand
events and a multitude of expression-evaluations in it): with and
without color; in normal agenda mode, week-calendar (-c+), and -n
modes and compared before/after results with diff(1) and they all
passed without issue.

> gives us goodies like short-circuit && and || operators.

Huzzah, indeed!

> Additionally, iif() and choose() only evaluate those specific
> arguments they care about.

Interesting.  But nice to know.

Also, though I'd have to scaffold out an actual timing benchmark
between them,  my gut feel for `rem -n` producing all my events was
that it ran a LOT faster.  Any thoughts on whether that feels right
to you?

-tim