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5.1 FunnelWeb Versions

FunnelWeb V1 (1986)

FunnelWeb V1 was written in Ada on a VAX in 1986 by Ross Williams. FunnelWeb V1 was released as a VAX/VMS executable for use within the University of Adelaide, but was never publicly released.

FunnelWeb V2 (1991)

In late 1991, David Hulse translated FunnelWeb V1 from Ada to C. This C version was designated V2. It was never publicly released.

FunnelWeb V3.0 (June 1992)

In early 1992, Ross Williams rewrote and expanded V2, creating FunnelWeb V3.0. This version was publicly released on the Internet on 6 June 1992.

Version 3.0 proved very solid. However, the following bugs were eventually encountered:

- Bombs with an assertion error if the input file is 10000 or more lines long.
- Bombs with an assertion error (`lister.dup: count>=DUPMAX`) if a listing file is being generated, and an error occurs on a line longer than 200 characters.
- The FunnelWeb shell `diff` command bombs with an assertion error if it can't open the first file:
- VMS FunnelWeb overwrites previous output files with the newly generated output files, rather than generating a new version.

FunnelWeb 3.05AC

Tony Coates created a FunnelWeb variant called FunnelWeb V3.05AC (a variant of FunnelWeb V3.0) that provides some additional useful features. As this is an unofficial version, it's features are not guaranteed to appear in future official versions of FunnelWeb.

FunnelWeb V3.1 (October 1993)

In October 1993, the following changes were made, yielding V3.1:

- Lister: Increased MAXLINES to one million to avoid 10000 bug.
- Memory: Modified package to count blocks of various sizes.
- Command: Modified it to call memory to write out mem report.
- Parser: Change ty_name to ty_pname to save memory.
- Data: Some unrecorded changes.
- Weave: Some unrecorded changes.

These changes essentially just fixed the "10,000 lines" bug and performed some memory tuning. The other bugs in V3.0 remained. The source code for V3.1 was never released. However, some executables were.

FunnelWeb 3.2 (May 1999)

In May 1999, Ross Williams revised and enhanced FunnelWeb to produce a new official version: FunnelWeb Version 3.2. The changes made were as follows:

- Fixed the >=10,000 lines bug.
- Fixed the `DUPMAX` bug.
- Fixed the bug in the `diff` command.
- Added HTML output using new `+u` option.
- Added the `@L` library macro feature.
- Now executes `fwinit.fws` if no command line arguments.
- Now gives a line number in `"Expecting @)"` error.
- Eliminated the 64K input file restriction in the MS-DOS version.
- Macintosh version now sets creator of output files to BBEdit.
- Ported to more platforms.
- Redesigned the main FunnelWeb web.
- Converted the user manuals to webs and placed online.

Webmaster Copyright © Ross N. Williams 1992,1999. All rights reserved.