Version: Nightly

v24.4 (2024-06-07)

✨ Highlights

Big themes for this release:

Improvements to the performance and ease-of-use for def functions.
Continued unification of standard library APIs around the UnsafePointer type.
Many quality-of-life improvements for the standard library collection types.
Significant performance improvements when inserting into a Dict. Performance on this metric is still not where we'd like it to be, but it is much improved.
A new @parameter for mechanism for expressing compile-time loops, which replaces the earlier (and less reliable) @unroll decorator.
New Mojo Manual pages on Control flow, Testing and using unsafe pointers.

Language changes

Mojo has changed how def function arguments are processed. Previously, by default, arguments to a def were treated according to the owned convention, which makes a copy of the value, enabling that value to be mutable in the callee.

This could lead to major performance issues because of the proliferation of unnecessary copies. It also required you to declare non-copyable types as borrowed explicitly. Now Mojo takes a different approach: def functions take arguments as borrowed by default (consistent with fn functions) but will make a local copy of the value only if the argument is mutated in the body of the function.

This improves consistency, performance, and ease of use.
Implicit variable definitions in a def function are more flexible: you can now implicitly declare variables as the result of a tuple return, using a,b,c = foo(). For example:
```
def return_two(i: Int) -> (Int, Int):
  return i, i+1

a, b = return_two(5)
```
Implicit variable declarations can also now shadow global immutable symbols (such as module names and built-ins) without getting a compiler error. For example:
```
slice = foo()
```
Mojo functions can return an auto-dereferenced reference to storage with a new ref keyword in the result type specifier. For example:
```
@value
struct Pair:
    var first: Int
    var second: Int

    fn get_first_ref(inout self) -> ref [self] Int:
        return self.first

fn show_mutation():
    var somePair = Pair(5, 6)
    somePair.get_first_ref() = 1
```
This approach provides a general way to return an "automatically dereferenced" reference of a given type. Notably, this eliminates the need for __refitem__() to exist. __refitem__() has thus been removed and replaced with __getitem__() that returns a reference.
Mojo added support for infer-only parameters. Infer-only parameters must appear at the beginning of the parameter list and cannot be explicitly specified by the user. They are declared to the left of a // marker, much like positional-only parameters. This allows programmers to define functions with dependent parameters to be called without the caller specifying all the necessary parameters. For example:
```
fn parameter_simd[dt: DType, //, value: Scalar[dt]]():
    print(value)

fn call_it():
    parameter_simd[Int32(42)]()
```
In the above example, Int32(42) is passed directly into value, the first parameter that isn't infer-only. dt is inferred from the parameter itself to be DType.int32.

This also works with structs. For example:
```
struct ScalarContainer[dt: DType, //, value: Scalar[dt]]:
    pass

fn foo(x: ScalarContainer[Int32(0)]): # 'dt' is inferred as `DType.int32`
    pass
```
This should make working with dependent parameters more ergonomic. See Infer-only parameters in the Mojo Manual.

Mojo now allows functions overloaded on parameters to be resolved when forming references to, but not calling, those functions. For example, the following now works:

fn overloaded_parameters[value: Int32]():
    pass

fn overloaded_parameters[value: Float32]():
    pass

fn form_reference():
    alias ref = overloaded_parameters[Int32()] # works!

Mojo now supports adding a @deprecated decorator on structs, functions, traits, aliases, and global variables. The decorator marks the attached declaration as deprecated and causes a warning to be emitted when the deprecated declaration is referenced in user code. The decorator requires a deprecation message, specified as a string literal.
```
@deprecated("Foo is deprecated, use Bar instead")
struct Foo:
    pass

fn outdated_api(x: Foo): # warning: Foo is deprecated, use Bar instead
    pass

@deprecated("use another function!")
fn bar():
    pass

fn techdebt():
    bar() # warning: use another function!
```
Mojo has introduced @parameter for, a new feature for compile-time programming. @parameter for defines a for loop where the sequence and the induction values in the sequence must be parameter values. For example:
```
fn parameter_for[max: Int]():
    @parameter
    for i in range(max)
        @parameter
        if i == 10:
            print("found 10!")
```
Currently, @parameter for requires the sequence's __iter__() method to return a _StridedRangeIterator, meaning the induction variables must be Int. The intention is to lift these restrictions in the future.
The is_mutable parameter of Reference and AnyLifetime is now a Bool, not a low-level __mlir_type.i1 value.

This improves the ergonomics of spelling out a Reference type explicitly.
Mojo will now link to a Python dynamic library based on the Python on top of your search path: PATH. This enables you to activate a virtual environment like conda and have access to Python modules installed in that environment without setting MOJO_PYTHON_LIBRARY. Previously Mojo would find a libpython dynamic library on installation and put the path in .modular/modular.cfg, which could result in version conflicts if you activated a virtual environment of a different Python version.
AnyRegType has been renamed to __TypeOfAllTypes and Mojo now forbids binding non-trivial register-passable types to __TypeOfAllTypes. This closes a major safety hole in the language. Please use AnyType for generic code going forward.
The let keyword has been completely removed from the language. We previously removed let declarations but still provided an error message to users. Now, it is completely gone from the grammar.

Standard library changes

New traits and related features:

Added built-in repr() function and Representable trait. (PR #2361)

Added the Indexer trait to denote types that implement the __index__() method which allows these types to be accepted in common __getitem__() and __setitem__() implementations, as well as allow a new built-in index() function to be called on them. Most standard library containers can now be indexed by any type that implements Indexer. For example:

@value
struct AlwaysZero(Indexer):
    fn __index__(self) -> Int:
        return 0

struct MyList:
    var data: List[Int]

    fn __init__(inout self):
        self.data = List[Int](1, 2, 3, 4)

    fn __getitem__[T: Indexer](self, idx: T) -> Int:
        return self.data[index(idx)]

print(MyList()[AlwaysZero()])  # prints `1`

Types conforming to the Indexer trait are implicitly convertible to Int. This means you can write generic APIs that take Int instead of making them take a generic type that conforms to Indexer. For example:

@value
struct AlwaysZero(Indexer):
    fn __index__(self) -> Int:
        return 0

@value
struct Incrementer:
    fn __getitem__(self, idx: Int) -> Int:
        return idx + 1

var a = Incrementer()
print(a[AlwaysZero()])  # works and prints 1

(PR #2685)

Added traits allowing user-defined types to be supported by various built-in and math functions.

Function	Trait	Required method
`abs()`	`Absable`	`__abs__()`
`pow()`	`Powable`	`__pow__()`
`round()`	`Roundable`	`__round__()`
`math.ceil`	`math.Ceilable`	`__ceil__()`
`math.ceildiv`	`math.CeilDivable` `math.CeilDivableRaising`	`__ceildiv__()`
`math.floor`	`math.Floorable`	`__floor__()`
`math.trunc`	`Truncable`	`__trunc__()`

Notes:

Conforming to the Powable trait also means that the type can be used with the power operator (**).
For ceildiv(), structs can conform to either the CeilDivable trait or CeilDivableRaising trait.
Due to ongoing refactoring, the traits Ceilable, CeilDivable, Floorable, and Truncable do not appear in the API reference. They should be imported from the math module, except for Truncable which is (temporarily) available as a built-in trait and does not need to be imported.

Example:

from math import sqrt

@value
struct Complex2(Absable, Roundable):
    var re: Float64
    var im: Float64

    fn __abs__(self) -> Self:
        return Self(sqrt(self.re * self.re + self.im * self.im), 0.0)

    fn __round__(self) -> Self:
        return Self(round(self.re, 0), round(self.im, 0))

    fn __round__(self, ndigits: Int) -> Self:
        return Self(round(self.re, ndigits), round(self.im, ndigits))

Benchmarking:
- The bencher module as part of the benchmark package is now public and documented. This module provides types such as Bencher which provides the ability to execute a Benchmark and allows for benchmarking configuration via the BenchmarkConfig struct.
String and friends:
- Breaking. Implicit conversion to String is now removed for builtin classes/types. Use str() explicitly to convert to String.
- Added String.isspace() method conformant with Python's universal separators. This replaces the isspace() free function from the string module. (If you need the old function, it is temporarily available as _isspace(). It now takes a UInt8 but is otherwise unchanged.)
- String.split() now defaults to whitespace and has Pythonic behavior in that it removes all adjacent whitespace by default.
- String.strip(), lstrip() and rstrip() can now remove custom characters other than whitespace. In addition, there are now several useful aliases for whitespace, ASCII lower/uppercase, and so on. (PR #2555)
- String now has a splitlines() method, which allows splitting strings at line boundaries. This method supports universal newlines and provides an option to retain or remove the line break characters. (PR #2810)
- InlinedString has been renamed to InlineString to be consistent with other types.
- StringRef now implements strip(), which can be used to remove leading and trailing whitespace. (PR #2683)
- StringRef now implements startswith() and endswith(). (PR #2710)
- Added a new StringSlice type, to replace uses of the unsafe StringRef type in standard library code.
  
  StringSlice is a non-owning reference to encoded string data. Unlike StringRef, a StringSlice is safely tied to the lifetime of the data it points to.
  - Added new as_string_slice() methods to String and StringLiteral.
  - Added StringSlice initializer from an UnsafePointer and a length in bytes.
- Added a new as_bytes_slice() method to String and StringLiteral, which returns a Span of the bytes owned by the string.
- Continued transition to UnsafePointer and unsigned byte type for strings:
  - Renamed String._as_ptr() to String.unsafe_ptr(), and changed return type to UnsafePointer (was DTypePointer).
  - Renamed StringLiteral.data() to StringLiteral.unsafe_ptr(), and changed return type to UnsafePointer (was DTypePointer).
  - InlineString.as_ptr() has been renamed to unsafe_ptr() and now returns an UnsafePointer[UInt8] (was DTypePointer[DType.int8]).
  - StringRef.data is now an UnsafePointer (was DTypePointer) and StringRef.unsafe_ptr() now returns an UnsafePointer[UInt8] (was DTypePointer[DType.int8]).
Other built-ins:
- The Slice.__len__() function has been removed and Slice no longer conforms to the Sized trait. This clarifies the ambiguity of the semantics: the length of a slice always depends on the length of the object being sliced. Users that need the existing functionality can use the Slice.unsafe_indices() method. This makes it explicit that this implementation does not check if the slice bounds are concrete or within any given object's length.
- Added a built-in sort() function for lists of elements that conform to the ComparableCollectionElement trait.(PR #2609)
- int() can now take a string and a specified base to parse an integer from a string: int("ff", 16) returns 255. Additionally, if a base of zero is specified, the string will be parsed as if it was an integer literal, with the base determined by whether the string contains the prefix "0x", "0o", or "0b". (PR #2273, fixes #2274)
- Added the bin() built-in function to convert integral types into their binary string representation. (PR #2603)
- Added the atof() built-in function, which can convert a String to a float64. (PR #2649)
- You can now use the built-in any() and all() functions to check for truthy elements in a collection. Because SIMD.__bool__() is now constrained to size=1, You must explicitly use these to get the truthy value of a SIMD vector with more than one element. This avoids common bugs around implicit conversion of SIMD to Bool. (PR #2600)
  
  For example:
```
  fn truthy_simd():
      var vec = SIMD[DType.int32, 4](0, 1, 2, 3)
      if any(vec):
          print("any elements are truthy")
      if all(vec):
          print("all elements are truthy")
```
- object now implements all the bitwise operators. (PR #2324)
- Tuple now supports __contains__(). (PR #2709) For example:
```
var x = Tuple(1, 2, True)
if 1 in x:
    print("x contains 1")
```
- ListLiteral and Tuple now only require that element types be Movable. Consequently, ListLiteral and Tuple are themselves no longer Copyable.
- Added new ImmutableStaticLifetime and MutableStaticLifetime helpers.
UnsafePointer and others:
- Added new memcpy() overload for UnsafePointer[Scalar[_]] pointers.
- Removed the get_null() method from UnsafePointer and other pointer types. Please use the default constructor instead: UnsafePointer[T]().
- Many functions returning a pointer type have been unified to have a public API function of unsafe_ptr().
- The Tensor.data() method has been renamed to unsafe_ptr(). The return type is still a DTypePointer[T].
Collections:
- List now has an index() method that allows you to find the (first) location of an element in a List of EqualityComparable types. For example:
```
var my_list = List[Int](2, 3, 5, 7, 3)
print(my_list.index(3))  # prints 1
```
- List can now be converted to a String with a simplified syntax:
```
var my_list = List[Int](2, 3)
print(my_list.__str__())  # prints [2, 3]
```
  Note that List doesn't conform to the Stringable trait yet so you cannot use str(my_list) yet. (PR #2673)
- List has a simplified syntax to call the count() method: my_list.count(x). (PR #2675)
- List() now supports __contains__(), so you can now use lists with the in operator:
```
if x in my_list:
```
  (PR #2667)
- List now has an unsafe_get() to get the reference to an element without bounds check or wraparound for negative indices. Note that this method is unsafe. Use with caution. PR #2800
- Added a fromkeys() method to Dict to return a Dict with the specified keys and values. (PR 2622)
- Added a clear() method to Dict. (PR 2627)
- Dict now supports reversed() for its items() and values() iterators. (PR #2340)
- Dict now has a simplified conversion to String with my_dict.__str__(). Note that Dict does not conform to the Stringable trait so str(my_dict) is not possible yet. (PR #2674)
- Dict now implements get(key) and get(key, default) functions. (PR #2519)
- Added a temporary __get_ref(key) method to Dict, allowing you to get a Reference to a dictionary value.
- Added a new InlineList type, a stack-allocated list with a static maximum size. (PR 2587#) (PR #2703)
- Added a new Span type for taking slices of contiguous collections. (PR #2595)
os module:
- The os module now provides functionality for adding and removing directories using mkdir() and rmdir(). (PR #2430)
- Added the os.path.getsize() function, which gives the size in bytes of the file identified by the path. (PR 2626)
- Added os.path.join() function. (PR 2792)
- Added a new tempfile module, with gettempdir() and mkdtemp() functions. (PR 2742)
SIMD type:
- Added SIMD.shuffle() with IndexList mask. (PR #2315)
- SIMD.__bool__() is constrained such that it only works when size is 1. For SIMD vectors with more than one element, use any() or all(). (PR #2502)
- The SIMD.reduce_or() and SIMD.reduce_and() methods are now bitwise operations, and support integer types. (PR #2671)
- Added SIMD.__repr__() to get the verbose string representation of SIMD types. (PR #2728)
math package:
- The math.bit module has been moved to a new top-level bit module. The following functions in this module have been renamed:
  - ctlz -> countl_zero
  - cttz -> countr_zero
  - bit_length -> bit_width
  - ctpop -> pop_count
  - bswap -> byte_swap
  - bitreverse -> bit_reverse
- The math.rotate_bits_left() and math.rotate_bits_right() functions have been moved to the bit module.
- The is_power_of_2() function in the math module is now called is_power_of_two() and located in the bit module.
- The abs(), round(), min(), max(), pow(), and divmod() functions have moved from math to builtin, so you no longer need to import these functions.
- The math.tgamma() function has been renamed to math.gamma() to conform with Python's naming.
- The implementation of the following functions have been moved from the math module to the new utils.numerics module: isfinite(), isinf(), isnan(), nan(), nextafter(), and ulp(). The functions continue to be exposed in the math module.
- math.gcd() now works on negative inputs, and like Python's implementation, accepts a variadic list of integers. New overloads for a List or Spanof integers are also added. (PR #2777)
Async and coroutines:
- Coroutine now requires a lifetime parameter. This parameter is set automatically by the parser when calling an async function. It contains the lifetimes of all the arguments and any lifetime accesses by the arguments. This ensures that argument captures by async functions keep the arguments alive as long as the coroutine is alive.
- Async function calls are no longer allowed to borrow non-trivial register-passable types. Because async functions capture their arguments but register-passable types don't have lifetimes (yet), Mojo is not able to correctly track the reference, making this unsafe. To cover this safety gap, Mojo has temporarily disallowed binding non-trivial register-passable types to borrowed arguments in async functions.
Miscellaneous:
- Added an InlineArray type that works on memory-only types. Compare with the existing StaticTuple type, which is conceptually an array type, but only works on __TypeOfAllTypes. (PR #2294)
- The base64 package now includes encoding and decoding support for both the Base64 and Base16 encoding schemes. (PR #2364) (PR #2584)
- The take() function in Variant and Optional has been renamed to unsafe_take().
- The get() function in Variant has been replaced by __getitem__(). That is, v.get[T]() should be replaced with v[T].
- Various functions in the algorithm module are now built-in functions. This includes sort(), swap(), and partition(). swap() and partition() will likely shuffle around as we're reworking our built-in sort() function and optimizing it.
infinity and NaN are now correctly handled in testing.assert_almost_equal() and an inf function has been added to utils/numerics.mojo. (PR #2375)

Tooling changes

Invoking mojo package my-package -o my-dir on the command line, where my-package is a Mojo package source directory, and my-dir is an existing directory, now outputs a Mojo package to my-dir/my-package.mojopkg. Previously, this had to be spelled out, as in -o my-dir/my-package.mojopkg.
The Mojo Language Server now reports a warning when a local variable is unused.
Several mojo subcommands now support a --diagnostic-format option that changes the format with which errors, warnings, and other diagnostics are printed. By specifying --diagnostic-format json on the command line, errors and other diagnostics will be output in a structured JSON Lines format that is easier for machines to parse.

The full list of subcommands that support --diagnostic-format is as follows: mojo build, mojo doc, mojo run, mojo package, and mojo test. Further, the mojo test --json option has been subsumed into this new option; for the same behavior, run mojo test --diagnostic-format json.

Note that the format of the JSON output may change; we don't currently guarantee its stability across releases of Mojo.
A new --validate-doc-strings option has been added to mojo to emit errors on invalid doc strings instead of warnings.
The --warn-missing-doc-strings flag for mojo has been renamed to --diagnose-missing-doc-strings.
A new decorator, @doc_private, was added that can be used to hide a declaration from being generated in the output of mojo doc. It also removes the requirement that the declaration has documentation (for example, when used with --diagnose-missing-doc-strings).
Debugger users can now set breakpoints on function calls in O0 builds even if the call has been inlined by the compiler.
The Mojo Language Server now supports renaming local variables.

Other changes

❌ Removed

The @unroll decorator has been deprecated and removed. The decorator was supposed to guarantee that a decorated loop would be unrolled, or else the compiler would error. In practice, this guarantee was eroded over time, as a compiler-based approach cannot be as robust as the Mojo parameter system. In addition, the @unroll decorator did not make the loop induction variables parameter values, limiting its usefulness. Please see @parameter for for a replacement!
The method object.print() has been removed. Since object now conforms to the Stringable trait, you can use print(my_object) instead.
The following functions have been removed from the math module:
- clamp(); use the new SIMD.clamp() method instead.
- round_half_down() and round_half_up(); these can be trivially implemented using the ceil() and floor() functions.
- add(), sub(), mul(), div(), mod(), greater(), greater_equal(), less(), less_equal(), equal(), not_equal(), logical_and(), logical_xor(), and logical_not(); Instead, users should rely directly on the corresponding operators (+, -, *, /, %, >, >=, <, <=, ==, !=, &, ^, and ~).
- identity() and reciprocal(); users can implement these trivially.
- select(); removed in favor of using SIMD.select() directly.
- is_even() and is_odd(); these can be trivially implemented using bitwise & with 1.
- roundeven(); the new SIMD.roundeven() method now provides the identical functionality.
- div_ceil(); use the new ceildiv() function.
- rotate_left() and rotate_right(); the same functionality is available in the builtin SIMD.rotate_{left,right}() methods for SIMD types, and the bit.rotate_bits_{left,right})() methods for Int.
- An overload of math.pow() taking an integer parameter exponent.
- align_down_residual(); it can be trivially implemented using align_down().
- all_true(), any_true(), and none_true(); use SIMD.reduce_and() and SIMD.reduce_or() directly.
- reduce_bit_count(); use the new SIMD.reduce_bit_count() directly.
- rint() and nearbyint(); use round() or SIMD.roundeven() as appropriate.
The EvaluationMethod has been removed from math.polynomial and Estrin's method is no longer available. This method was limited to degree 10 or less, underutilized, and its performance unclear. In the future, this might be reintroduced with an improved implementation if needed, when better performance benchmarking infrastructure is available. The default behavior of math.polynomial.polynomial_evaluate() is unchanged (Horner's method).
The math.bit.select() and math.bit.bit_and() functions have been removed. The same functionality is available in the builtin SIMD.select and SIMD.__and__() methods, respectively.
The math.limit module has been removed. The same functionality is available as follows:
- math.limit.inf(): use utils.numerics.max_or_inf()
- math.limit.neginf(): use utils.numerics.min_or_neg_inf()
- math.limit.max_finite(): use utils.numerics.max_finite()
- math.limit.min_finite(): use utils.numerics.min_finite()
The tensor.random module has been removed. The same functionality is now accessible via the Tensor.rand() and Tensor.randn() static methods.
The builtin SIMD struct no longer conforms to Indexer; users must explicitly cast Scalar values using int.

🛠️ Fixed

#1837 Fix self-referential variant crashing the compiler.
#2363 Fix LSP crashing on simple trait definitions.
#1787 Fix error when using // on FloatLiteral in alias expression.
Made several improvements to dictionary performance. Dicts with integer keys are most heavily affected, but large dicts and dicts with large values will also see large improvements.
#2692 Fix assert_raises to include calling location.

Special thanks

Special thanks to our community contributors:

@rd4com, @toiletsandpaper, @helehex, @artemiogr97, @mikowals, @kernhanda, @lsh, @LJ-9801, @YichengDWu, @gabrieldemarmiesse, @fknfilewalker, @jayzhan211, @martinvuyk, @ChristopherLR, @mzaks, @bgreni, @Brian-M-J, @leandrolcampos

✨ Highlights​

Language changes​

Standard library changes​

Tooling changes​

Other changes​

❌ Removed​

🛠️ Fixed​

Special thanks​