_{Jamie Balfour's}Personal blog

Arrow expressions are another new feature coming to ZPE 1.14.4. They make light work of simple expressions:

$x = [11, 34, 55, 66, 74, 87, 93, 102]
print($x.where(n => n % 2 == 0))

And for maps:

$x = ["a" => 11, "b" => 34, "c" => 55, "d" => 66, "e" => 74, "f" => 87, g" => 93, "h" => 102]
print($x.where(key, value => value > 40))

These new expressions are designed to simplify statements that would normally require a lambda function:

$x = [11, 34, 55, 66, 74, 87, 93, 102]
print($x.where(n => function ($n) { return $n % 2 == 0}))

Underneath, arrow expressions are actually running a lambda function themselves, but the syntax is simpler and easier on the eye than a lambda function.

In addition, I have also made some other significant changes:

• Firstly, internal aliases are no longer part of the runtime but are now part of the compiler, so that they are compiled to the appropriate internal function. This improves performance slightly, too. 
• New features in the parser mean that line numbering in compiler syntax errors and any other compile errors now show correct line numbers.
• And finally there's been a major fix in the CSV parser.

With a significant improvement to mod_zpe over the last few days, coupled with ZPE-PM and the new ZPE 1.14.4 performance improvements, YASS is now fully capable of running as a server-side language. And you can see what I mean if you visit the section of my website which is all powered by YASS at https://www.jamiebalfour.scot/yass. This part of my website is running the Apache module mod_zpe, and ZPE-PM is permanently running on my webserver as the backend. 

ZPE 1.14.4 will be out a week on Thursday, bringing massive improvements to ZPE. Also launching this Thursday is VWS 1.1.3, which brings major updates to VWS.

mod_zpe was first written in 2024 and has been pretty decent since. Its only letdown was one of ZPE's biggest weaknesses - it needed a fresh start every time it was required. Now with the latest update and ZPE 1.14.4's new ZPE-PM, it's finally possible to get exceptional performance from ZPE.

ZPE-PM is a daemon that runs YASS code via a socket. That means that there is no start-up cost associated with running code. This makes responses very quick - almost instant. 

ZPE is even more integrated into VWS than into Apache, offering an easy-to-manage installation. But at least now it works with Apache too.

ZPE-PM is the latest feature to make it into ZPE 1.14.4, and it's a major addition. 

ZPE-PM or ZPE Process Manager works like PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager). ZPE-PM is designed to run as a daemon process, much like ZPE Lite (more on that later). 

One of the biggest limitations of traditional scripting setups is that every request starts from scratch.

• Load runtime
• Parse code
• Execute
• Tear everything down

That’s fine for small scripts, but as things grow, it becomes inefficient — and harder to scale.

So I built ZPE-PM.

ZPE-PM is a long-running process that executes ZPE scripts over a socket connection.

Instead of launching ZPE for every request, you:

1. Start ZPE-PM once
2. Send it execution requests over a socket
3. Receive results (or live output)

It acts as a bridge between:

• clients (CLI tools, web servers like VWS)
• and the ZPE runtime

ZPE Lite is now, well, really lite. Using the zpe -l command to run the Lite mode is easy. You simply provide a file name to run through ZPE-PM (ZPE-PM must be running), and a host and port number are optional. By default, the host is localhost, and the port is 8940. 

You can also communicate with ZPE-PM with Python, C#, or any programming language that supports sockets. 

It's very fast. Processing with ZPE 1.14.4 has become considerably faster overall, so the Standard Algorithms went from 650ms to around 300ms in the latest update. But ZPE-PM makes the whole process really fast, and the newly improved ZPEC caching system comes in really handy for further performance improvements. Running a script once caches the byte codes for the next run. But not only that, ZPEC is designed for low-latency internalised communication, so requests are very lightweight, adding only around 7ms of overhead.

ZPE 1.14.4 is a big update. It mainly focuses on performance but also on integration with VWS.

First performance. This is big. Running the Standard Algorithms library in ZPE 1.14.3 took an average time of ~600ms. With ZPE 1.14.4, the mean time is now ~350ms. This is a massive improvement. ZPEX has gone from 30ms to 23ms to run the same library too. 

VWS has recently been revisited, so ZPE's support for VWS has been improved. New session variables, cookies and much more have been added to ZPE. ZPE's web performance has also been improved. As well as this, in addition to the YASS Web Pages (ywp) files you can create, you can now also compile these to YASS Executable Pages (yep) files for up to 5x faster processing. Nice.

ZPE now has a new --tools option for special tools in ZPE. ZPE --install now actually installs ZPE. ZPEC has been improved too, offering much better and faster performance than before. LAMEX3 comes to ZPE - 'improved' by ChatGPT (although performance has occasionally been lower than LAMEX2, I am working to ensure it is consistently faster than X2).

ZPE 1.14.4 will be out very soon, as I am just adding the finishing touches. 

ZPE 1.14.3 is another big update, and it's coming at the end of this week. 

x509_pem_fingerprint

There is a new predefined function in ZPE, x509_pem_fingerprint, previously available only through the new zpe.lib.security library. 

In addition, the direct inclusion of X.509 fingerprinting means that ZPE now supports different types of plugins and libraries. Some libraries are what are called trusted libraries - they are signed by me. Then there are untrusted libraries. ZPE will soon block these on their first load, but they can still be used after approval. These untrusted libraries will also not have the same access in sandbox mode, with restrictions on system files and being limited to the sandbox folder. In addition, certain activities, such as reflection, executing commands, and networking, will be banned. If the sandbox is disabled, they are free to do what they want. Sandbox is now enabled by default in ZPE 1.14 and later.

Stricter lockdown procedures

Lockdown is a feature added in July 2025 that allows ZPE to run in a safe mode, ensuring that certain features cannot be run or loaded. Lockdown is stricter than before in ZPE 1.14.3, as plugins will not load at all during lockdown.

Further module improvements

Modules also received a major update. When modules were first introduced, they worked fine with a main function, unless the code was compiled using the YASS Compiler in ZPE and saved to an executable file. Now that's all changed. During compilation, the main function is identified and referenced, thus ensuring that main functions within a module load correctly.

Plugin and library updates

With all the work I've been doing on plugin and library security over the last few versions, this update further improves how libraries are integrated into ZPE.

Libraries have deep access to ZPE, and they are core to expanding its possibilities even further. However, in recent versions, due to the number of plugins and libraries available to ZPE on the rise, and the inclusion of trust checks within them, plugin loading has become a burden on startup times. As a result, I realised that plugins and libraries should be loaded asynchronously on startup. This, however, causes another issue: if a library is loaded after a program is run in ZPE, it will throw an error. To combat this, I've added an additional form of loading - using the already included import command:

import "zpe.lib.sqlite"

This means you can force the loading of a plugin right there and then, and if it's already been loaded asynchronously, the import statement does nothing. Nice!

Check out the new plugins

Several new plugins are under development. These new plugins, which are currently mostly libraries, are designed to extend ZPE's functionality and were one of the key goals when ZPE was first conceptualised. A couple of the new libraries are:

libMSAccess, libSQLite, libUI, libSerial, libSystemInfo, libMQTT, libMySQL

Plugins can now be added via ZULE (ZPE Uploads, Libraries and Extensions) package manager (which is getting an update in the next version) using the --plugins option:

--zule install --plugins

You can find out more about the libraries and plugins available on my GitHub page, where I share all the source code and the latest trusted builds.

New compiler feature

Previous versions of ZPE did not support using the arrow operator (->) to access an object after a function call, such as print(get_wikipedia_reference("USB")->title). This has been a problem for a while, but after a five-minute look at the compiler, it was an easy fix. So you can now probe the result of a function with an arrow operator.

ZPE 1.14.2 has been released this weekend. The new version brings a ton of new enhancements including the ability to view variables at certain points in the program through proper debugging tools that offer step over and execution pausing - not just termination.

ZIDE v.0.1.0-alpha has also been released, and this is the first version to be properly released. You can download the JAR from my GitHub and the individual binaries from my website (Linux coming soon).

ZIDE is not like ZPE in the sense that ZIDE is still in very early days. Each time a new binary is built, it will automatically be uploaded to my website for downloading. GitHub also will continue to feature release tags for each version. You can see the full source code for ZIDE on my GitHub as well.

ZPE 1.14.2 brings three major features.

Universal template parsing

Template parsing was introduced some time ago, but was released only in January 2026 with ZPE version 1.14.1. In the latest release, version 1.14.2, template parsing is available anywhere, including in parameters and return values.

Scope blocks

Many languages have scope blocks, and now YASS does too. They are nice and easy to use as well. Simply using the double brace syntax ({{ }} or the block syntax (block . . . end block), you can create an isolated scope block:

// Everything here runs inside the implicit GLOBAL function

$total = 100
print("Start total: " & $total)

block

  // This variable exists ONLY inside the block
  $total = 25
  print("Inside block: " & $total)

  // Blocks can still see outer variables
  $discount = 10
  $total = $total - $discount
  print("After discount: " & $total)

end block

// Block variables are discarded
print("End total: " & $total)

Variable scoping

Additionally, variables declared as private in a function are scoped to the containing function and no longer modify parent or global variables, allowing safer encapsulation while preserving YASS’s simple scoping model.

As the title suggests, ZPE 1.14.1 is just about ready. This version is more of a bug-fix version, but it does bring some nice new changes. 

For a start, ZPE no longer relies on native access for the command-line interface jLine. It also introduces tabbing in the command line via jLine. This is a really welcome addition. Changes to ZPEX mean that the -g and -q modes are no longer included in those builds. Minor performance improvements have also been brought to ZPE and, best of all, the JAR is more than 4MB smaller than before.

It's been a while since I uploaded a new version of ZPE, and it's not because I'm done with it or anything. 

ZPE is mature, powerful and robust, and I'm not desperately in need of updating it right now. I am, however, working on adding code blocks to the YASS language but that's not due until the end of December. 

As a result, I've released the version planned for the end of October, which has now been rebranded as ZPE 1.13.11 Walmgate.