blob: 59c630dd00fc3c735364aca6817ab96bd3476bd2 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000013- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
14
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000015- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
16 returning None.
17
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000018- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
19 ('\') with a specific error message.
20
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000021- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
22
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000023- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
24 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
25
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000026- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000027 an ferror() call.
28
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000029- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
30 list.sort().
31
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000032- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
33 (2+3) --> (5).
34
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000035- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
36
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000037- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
38 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000039
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000040- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
41 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
42 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
43
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000044Extension Modules
45-----------------
46
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +000047- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
48 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
49
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +000050- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
51 file size.
52
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +000053- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
54
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +000055- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
56 {remove_history,replace_history}
57
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +000058- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
59 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +000060
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +000061- stat_float_times is now True.
62
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +000063- array.array objects are now picklable.
64
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +000065- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
66 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
67
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +000068- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
69 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
70 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
71
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +000072- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
73 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000074
75Library
76-------
77
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +000078- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
79
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +000080- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
81 to build.
82
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +000083- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
84 symbolic links on Windows.
85
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +000086- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
87 profile.py if available.
88
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +000089- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
90
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +000091- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
92 in LWPCookieJar.
93
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +000094- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
95
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +000096- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
97
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +000098- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
99
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000100- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
101
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000102- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
103
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000104- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
105
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000106- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
107
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000108- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
109
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000110- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
111 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
112 be exploited in various ways.
113
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000114- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
115
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000116- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
117
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000118- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
119
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000120- Enhancements to the csv module:
121
122 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
123 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
124 PEP 305.
125 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
126 reporting.
127 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
128 dictates.
129 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000130 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000131 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000132 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
133 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000134 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
135 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000136 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000137 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
138 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
139 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
140 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
141 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
142 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
143 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
144 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
145 without first creating a dialect class.
146 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
147 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
148 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000149 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000150 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
151 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000152 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
153 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
154 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
155 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000156 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
157 This has been fixed.
158
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000159- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
160 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
161 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
162 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
163
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000164- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
165
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000166- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
167 (Bug #951915).
168
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000169- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
170 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
171 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
172 encoding alias table
173
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000174- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
175
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000176- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
177 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
178
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000179- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
180
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000181- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
182
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000183- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
184
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000185- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
186
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000187- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
188
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000189- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
190 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
191 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
192
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000193- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000194 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000195
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000196- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
197 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
198 tokenizer with very long source lines.
199
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000200- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
201 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
202
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000203- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
204 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000205
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000206- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
207 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
208
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209Build
210-----
211
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000212- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
213 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
214
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000215- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
216 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
217 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
218 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
219 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
220 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
221 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
222 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
223
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000224- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
225 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
226 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
227 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
228
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000229
230C API
231-----
232
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000233- Removed PyRange_New().
234
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000235
236Tests
237-----
238
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000239- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000240
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000241
242Documentation
243-------------
244
245- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
246 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
247 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
248
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000249Mac
250---
251
252
253
254Tools/Demos
255-----------
256
257
258
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000259What's New in Python 2.4 final?
260===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000261
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000262*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000263
264Core and builtins
265-----------------
266
267- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
268 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
269 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
270
271
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000272What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
273==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000274
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000275*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000276
277Core and builtins
278-----------------
279
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000280- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
281 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
282 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
283
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000284
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000285Library
286-------
287
288- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
289 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
290 raised is re-raised.
291
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000292- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
293 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
294
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000295- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
296 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
297 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
298 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
299 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
300 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
301 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
302 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
303 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
304 by the slice are recomputed now.
305
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000306- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000307
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000308Build
309-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000310
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000311- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
312 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
313 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000314
315C API
316-----
317
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000318- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
319
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000320
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000321What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
322================================
323
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000324*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000325
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000326License
327-------
328
329The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
330is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
331changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
332Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
333intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
334durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
335the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
336License::
337
338 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
339
340says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
341to Python 2.1.1.
342
343The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
344License Version 2.
345
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000346Core and builtins
347-----------------
348
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000349- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
350 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
351 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
352 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
353 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
354 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
355 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
356 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
357 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
358 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
359
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000360- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000361
362Extension Modules
363-----------------
364
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000365- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
366 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
367 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
368 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000369
370Library
371-------
372
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000373- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
374 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
375 returned.
376
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000377- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
378
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000379- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
380 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
381
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000382- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
383
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000384- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
385 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000386
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000387- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
388
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000389- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
390
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000391- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000392 the source code is updated and reloaded.
393
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000394Build
395-----
396
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000397- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000398
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000399What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
400================================
401
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000402*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000403
404Core and builtins
405-----------------
406
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000407- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000408 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
409
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000410- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
411 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
412 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
413 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
414
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000415- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
416 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
417
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000418- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
419 constant.
420
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000421- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
422 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
423 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
424 large), and to anomalies such as
425 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
426 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
427 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
428 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000429
430Extension modules
431-----------------
432
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000433- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
434 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000435 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
436 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
437 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000438
439Library
440-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000441
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000442- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000443 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000444 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
445 --swig-cpp.
446
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000447- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
448 it is set.
449
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000450- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000451
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000452- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
453 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
454 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
455 Closes bug #1039270.
456
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000457- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000458
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000459 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000460 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
461 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
462 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
463 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
464 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
465 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
466 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
467 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
468 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
469 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
470 + Updates to documentation.
471
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000472- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
473 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
474 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
475 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
476
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000477- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000478
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000479- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
480 applications should use the getmember function.
481
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000482- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
483
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000484- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
485 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
486 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
487 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
488 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
489 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
490 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
491 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
492 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
493
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000494- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
495 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000496 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000497
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000498- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
499 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
500 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
501 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
502 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
503 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
504 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
505 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000506
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000507- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
508 the new public features (of which there are many).
509
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000510- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000511 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
512 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
513 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
514 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000515 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000516
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000517- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
518
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000519- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
520 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
521 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
522 options.
523
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000524- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
525 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
526 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
527 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
528 conditions under which non-string values work.
529
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000530Build
531-----
532
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000533- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
534 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
535 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
536
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000537- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
538 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
539 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
540 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
541 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000542
543C API
544-----
545
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000546- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
547 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
548
549- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
550
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000551- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
552 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
553 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
554 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
555 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
556 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
557 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
558 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
559 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
560
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000561- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
562
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000563- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
564 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
565 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000566
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000567Tests
568-----
569
570- test__locale ported to unittest
571
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000572Mac
573---
574
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000575- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
576 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
577 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000578
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000579Tools/Demos
580-----------
581
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000582- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
583 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
584 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
585 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
586 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000587
588
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000589What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
590=================================
591
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000592*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000593
594Core and builtins
595-----------------
596
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000597- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000598 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
599
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000600- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
601 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
602 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
603 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
604 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
605 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
606 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
607 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000608 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
609 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
610 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
611 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
612 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000613
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000614- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
615 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
616 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
617 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
618 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
619
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000620- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
621
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000622- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
623 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
624
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000625- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
626 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
627 modified the list.
628
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000629- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
630 functions is now writable.
631
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000632- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
633 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
634 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
635 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
636
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000637- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
638 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
639 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
640 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
641 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000642
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000643- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
644 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
645
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000646Extension modules
647-----------------
648
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000649- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
650
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000651- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
652 data.
653
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000654- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
655 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
656 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
657 supposed to have been truncated away.
658
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000659- Added socket.socketpair().
660
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000661- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
662 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
663
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000664- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000665 versions of Python, have now been removed.
666
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000667Library
668-------
669
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000670- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000671 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000672
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000673- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
674 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
675
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000676- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
677 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
678
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000679- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
680
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000681- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
682 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000683
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000684- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
685 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
686
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000687- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
688
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000689- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
690
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000691- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
692
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000693- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
694 Percivall.
695
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000696- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
697 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
698
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000699- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
700 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
701 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000702 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000703
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000704- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
705 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
706 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
707 and exponent.
708
709- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
710
711- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
712 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
713 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
714
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000715- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
716 to the readline module.
717
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000718- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000719 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
720 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000721
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000722- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
723 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
724 contains symlinks.
725
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000726- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
727 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
728
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000729- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
730 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
731 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
732
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000733- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
734 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
735 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
736 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
737 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
738 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
739 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
740 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
741 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
742 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
743 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
744 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
745 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
746
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000747- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
748
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000749Tools/Demos
750-----------
751
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000752- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
753 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
754
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000755- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
756
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000757Build
758-----
759
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000760- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
761 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
762 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
763 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
764 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
765 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
766 plans to do so.
767
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000768- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
769 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
770
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000771- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
772 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
773
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000774- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
775 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
776
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000777- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
778 GNU/k*BSD systems.
779
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000780- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
781 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
782
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000783C API
784-----
785
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000786..
787
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000788Documentation
789-------------
790
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000791- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
792 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
793
794- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
795 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
796 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000797
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000798New platforms
799-------------
800
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000801- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
802
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000803Tests
804-----
805
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000806..
807
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000808Windows
809-------
810
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000811- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
812 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
813 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
814 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
815 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
816 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
817 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
818 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
819 the problem.
820
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000821Mac
822---
823
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000824..
825
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000826
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000827What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
828=================================
829
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000830*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000831
832Core and builtins
833-----------------
834
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000835- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
836 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
837 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
838 sensitive code.
839
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000840- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000841 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000842
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000843 @staticmethod
844 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000845
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000846 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000847
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000848- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
849 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
850 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
851 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
852 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
853 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
854 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
855 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
856 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
857 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
858 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
859
860 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
861 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
862 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
863 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
864 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
865 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
866 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
867
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +0000868- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
869 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
870
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000871- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000872 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +0000873
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000874- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000875 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000876 which was missing for no apparent reason.
877
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000878- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000879 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
880 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
881
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +0000882- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
883 types that support garbage collection.
884
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +0000885- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
886
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +0000887- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
888 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
889 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
890 Jython.
891
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +0000892- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
893
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +0000894- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
895 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
896
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +0000897- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
898 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
899 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +0000900
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +0000901- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
902 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
903 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
904
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000905Extension modules
906-----------------
907
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +0000908- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
909
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000910Library
911-------
912
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +0000913- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
914 TIS-620
915
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +0000916- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
917 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
918 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
919 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
920 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
921 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
922 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
923 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
924 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
925 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
926
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +0000927- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
928
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +0000929- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
930 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
931 same as when the argument is omitted).
932 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
933
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +0000934- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
935
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +0000936- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
937 schemes are offered.
938
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +0000939- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
940
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +0000941- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
942 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
943 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
944
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +0000945- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
946
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +0000947- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
948 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
949
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +0000950- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
951 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
952 when dummy_threading is being used.
953
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +0000954- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
955 from a tarfile.
956
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000957- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +0000958 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +0000959
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +0000960- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
961 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
962 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
963 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
964
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +0000965- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
966 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
967
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +0000968- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
969 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
970 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
971 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
972 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
973 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
974 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
975 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
976 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
977 by some other method in progress).
978
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000979- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
980 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
981 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +0000982
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +0000983- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
984
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +0000985- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
986 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
987 AM Kuchling.
988
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +0000989- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
990 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
991 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
992
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +0000993- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
994 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
995 instead of unsigned.
996
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +0000997- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +0000998 no longer part of the public API.
999
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001000- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1001 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1002 string methods of the same name).
1003
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001004- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001005 SF patch 945642.
1006
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001007- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1008
1009 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1010
1011 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1012 DocTestSuites.
1013
1014- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1015 that provide thread-local data.
1016
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001017- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1018 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1019
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001020- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1021
1022- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1023 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1024 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1025
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001026- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1027
1028 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1029 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1030 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001031
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001032 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1033 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1034 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1035 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1036
1037 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1038 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1039
1040 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1041 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1042 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1043 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1044
1045 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1046 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1047 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1048 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1049 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1050
1051 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1052 wrapping help output.
1053
1054 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1055 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1056 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001057
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001058C API
1059-----
1060
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001061- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1062 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1063 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1064 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1065 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1066 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1067 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1068 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1069 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1070 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1071 its visible semantics have not changed.
1072
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001073- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1074 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1075
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001076Documentation
1077-------------
1078
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001079- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001080
1081 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001082 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001083
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001084 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001085
1086 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1087
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001088- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001089
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001090Tests
1091-----
1092
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001093- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001094 platforms that use the Makefile.
1095
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001096- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1097 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1098 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1099
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001100
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001101What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1102=================================
1103
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001104*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001105
1106Core and builtins
1107-----------------
1108
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001109- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1110 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1111 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1112 objects now (one object instead of three).
1113
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001114- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1115 Windows DLLs.
1116
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001117- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1118 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001119
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001120- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1121 a new .pyc magic.
1122
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001123- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1124 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1125 be there.
1126
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001127- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1128 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1129 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1130
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001131- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1132 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1133 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1134
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001135- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1136
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001137- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1138 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1139 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001140
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001141- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1142 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1143
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001144- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1145
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001146- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001147 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001148
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001149- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1150
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001151- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1152
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001153- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1154 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1155
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001156- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1157 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1158 Fixes bug #858016 .
1159
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001160- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1161 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1162 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1163
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001164- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1165 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1166 improves their performance (about 35%).
1167
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001168- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1169 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1170 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1171
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001172- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1173 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1174 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1175 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1176
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001177- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1178 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
1179 list comprehensions, and the list contructor (when the input iterable
1180 length is not known).
1181
1182- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1183 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001184 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1185 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001186 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1187
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001188- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1189 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1190
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001191- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1192 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1193 keyword arguments.
1194
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001195- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1196 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1197 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1198
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001199- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1200 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1201 cases.
1202
1203- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1204 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1205 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1206 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1207 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1208 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1209 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1210 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1211 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1212 a release build.
1213
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001214- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1215 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1216
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001217- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001218 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001219
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001220- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1221 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1222 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1223 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1224 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1225 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1226 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1227 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1228 destroyed.
1229
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001230- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1231 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1232 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1233 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1234 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1235 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1236 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1237 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1238
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001239- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1240 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1241 character other than a space.
1242
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001243- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1244 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1245 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1246 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1247 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1248 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1249 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1250 attributes with the same name.
1251
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001252- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1253 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1254 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1255 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1256 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1257 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1258 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1259 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1260 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1261 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1262 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1263 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1264 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1265 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001266
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001267- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1268 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1269 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1270 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1271 This has been repaired.
1272
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001273- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1274
1275- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1276
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001277- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1278 over a sequence.
1279
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001280- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001281 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001282
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001283- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1284
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001285- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1286 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1287 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1288 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1289 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1290 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1291 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1292 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1293
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001294- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1295 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1296 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1297
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001298- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1299 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1300 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1301 freelist.
1302
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001303- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1304 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1305
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001306- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1307 number.
1308
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001309- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1310 a TypeError exception.
1311
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001312- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1313 820195.
1314
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001315- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1316 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1317 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1318
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001319- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001320 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1321 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001322
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001323- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1324 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1325 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1326
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001327- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1328 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001329 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001330
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001331- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001332 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1333 the first call.
1334
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001335
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001336Extension modules
1337-----------------
1338
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001339- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1340 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1341
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001342- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1343 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1344 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1345 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1346 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1347 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1348 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001349
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001350- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1351
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001352- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1353
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001354- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1355 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1356
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001357- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1358 fewer false positives.
1359
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001360- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1361 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1362
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001363- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001364 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1365
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001366- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001367 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001368 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001369 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1370 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001371
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001372- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1373 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1374 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1375 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1376
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001377- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1378 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1379 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1380 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1381 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1382 #897625.
1383
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001384- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1385 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1386
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001387- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1388 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1389 and pops on either side of the deque.
1390
1391- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1392 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1393
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001394- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1395 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1396 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1397 other functions that expect a function argument.
1398
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001399- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1400
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001401- os.getsid was added.
1402
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001403- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1404 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1405 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1406
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001407- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1408
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001409- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1410
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001411- readline.clear_history was added.
1412
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001413- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1414
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001415- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1416
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001417- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1418
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001419- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1420
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001421- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1422
1423- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1424
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001425- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1426
1427- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1428
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001429- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1430 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1431 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1432
1433- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1434 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1435 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1436 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1437 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1438 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1439 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1440
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001441- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1442 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1443 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1444 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001445
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001446- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001447 iterators from a single iterable.
1448
1449- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1450 of raising a TypeError exception.
1451
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001452- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1453 as parameter.
1454
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001455Library
1456-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001457
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001458- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1459 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1460 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001461
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001462- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1463 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1464 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001465
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001466- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001467
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001468- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1469 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001470
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001471- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1472 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1473
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001474- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1475
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001476- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001477 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001478
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001479- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001480 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001481
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001482- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1483
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001484- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1485 on cygwin and mingw32.
1486
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001487- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1488
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001489- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1490 module.
1491
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001492- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1493 installation scheme for all platforms.
1494
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001495- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001496 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001497
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001498- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1499 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1500 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1501
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001502- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1503 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1504 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1505
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001506- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1507
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001508- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1509
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001510- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1511 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1512
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001513- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1514 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1515 type pattern with the same value exists.
1516
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001517- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1518 when run from the command prompt).
1519
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001520- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1521 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1522
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001523- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1524 default sort).
1525
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001526- Added global runctx function to profile module
1527
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001528- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1529
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001530- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1531
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001532- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1533
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001534- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001535 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1536 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1537 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1538 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1539 accordingly.
1540
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001541- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1542 decoding standards.
1543
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001544- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1545 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1546 called for all requests.
1547
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001548- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1549 they are passed to the compiler.
1550
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001551- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1552 indent, width and depth.
1553
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001554- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1555 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1556
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001557- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1558 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1559
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001560- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1561
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001562- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1563
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001564- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1565
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001566- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1567 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1568
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001569- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001570 for better performance.
1571
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001572- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001573
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001574- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1575 a string).
1576
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001577- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1578
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001579- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1580
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001581- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1582
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001583- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1584
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001585- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1586 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1587 list of fieldnames.
1588
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001589- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1590 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1591
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001592- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1593
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001594- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1595 empty lists.
1596
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001597- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1598 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1599 and shelves.
1600
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001601- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1602 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1603
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001604- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001605 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1606 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001607
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001608- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1609 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001610 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001611
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001612- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001613 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1614 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1615
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001616- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1617 and removed in Py2.4.
1618
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001619- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1620
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001621- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1622
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001623Tools/Demos
1624-----------
1625
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001626- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1627 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1628
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001629- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1630
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001631- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1632 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1633 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1634 destination in situations where both files are given.
1635
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001636- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1637 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1638 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1639 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1640
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001641- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1642
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001643- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1644 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1645 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1646 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1647 now.
1648
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001649- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1650 in effect
1651
1652- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1653 C-c C-h
1654
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001655- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1656 -d option was given.
1657
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001658Build
1659-----
1660
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001661- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1662 build under OS X.
1663
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001664- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1665 --enable-profiling.
1666
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001667- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1668 is configured --with-tsc.
1669
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001670- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1671 on AMD64.
1672
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001673- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1674 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1675
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001676- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1677 removed.
1678
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001679- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1680 supported (see PEP 11).
1681
1682- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1683
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001684- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1685
1686- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1687 (see PEP 11).
1688
1689- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1690 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1691
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001692C API
1693-----
1694
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001695- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1696 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1697 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1698
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001699- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1700 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1701 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1702 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1703
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001704- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1705 generator objects.
1706
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001707- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1708 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001709 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1710 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001711
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001712- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1713 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1714
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001715- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1716 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1717 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1718 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1719 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1720
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001721- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1722 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1723 about 10% faster.
1724
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001725- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1726 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1727
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001728- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1729 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1730 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1731 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1732
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001733Windows
1734-------
1735
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001736- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1737 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1738 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1739 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1740
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001741- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1742 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1743 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1744
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001745
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001746What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1747===============================
1748
1749*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1750
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001751IDLE
1752----
1753
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001754- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1755 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1756 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1757 context-menu actions.
1758
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001759- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1760 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1761 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1762 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1763 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1764 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1765 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1766 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1767 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1768
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001769
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001770What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1771=============================================
1772
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001773*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001774
1775Core and builtins
1776-----------------
1777
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001778- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001779 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001780 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1781
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001782Extension modules
1783-----------------
1784
1785- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1786 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1787 than once. This has been fixed.
1788
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001789- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1790 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1791 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1792 call.
1793
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001794- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1795
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001796Library
1797-------
1798
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001799- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1800 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1801
1802- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1803 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1804 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1805 restored.
1806
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001807IDLE
1808----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001809
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001810- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001811
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001812Build
1813-----
1814
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001815- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1816 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1817
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001818C API
1819-----
1820
1821Windows
1822-------
1823
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001824- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1825 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1826
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001827- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1828
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001829Mac
1830---
1831
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001832- Various fixes to pimp.
1833
1834- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1835
1836- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1837 more problems than it solves.
1838
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001839
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001840What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1841=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001842
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001843*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1844
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001845Core and builtins
1846-----------------
1847
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001848- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1849 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1850
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001851- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
1852 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001853 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001854
1855- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
1856 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
1857 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001858 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001859
1860- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
1861 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001862
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001863- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
1864 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
1865 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
1866
1867- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001868 770247.
1869
1870- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001871
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001872Extension modules
1873-----------------
1874
1875- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
1876 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
1877
1878- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
1879
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00001880- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
1881
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00001882- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
1883 contained within the _strptime module.
1884
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001885- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
1886 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
1887
1888- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001889 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
1890
1891- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
1892 the find_class attribute, if present.
1893
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001894- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001895
1896 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
1897 (SF bug 763298).
1898
1899 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00001900 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
1901 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
1902 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001903
1904 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
1905
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001906Library
1907-------
1908
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001909- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
1910
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00001911- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
1912 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
1913 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
1914 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
1915 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
1916 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
1917 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
1918 or Tester().
1919
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001920- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
1921 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
1922 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
1923 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
1924 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
1925 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
1926 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
1927 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
1928 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00001929
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001930 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00001931
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00001932- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
1933 weren't before was an oversight.
1934
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001935- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
1936 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
1937
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00001938- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
1939 when there are no lines.
1940
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00001941- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
1942 which could occur with Tk 8.4
1943
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001944- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
1945 to child processes.
1946
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001947- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
1948
1949- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
1950
1951- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
1952 xmlrpclib.
1953
1954- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
1955 responses.
1956
1957- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
1958 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
1959
1960- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
1961 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
1962 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
1963
1964- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
1965 used as patterns.
1966
1967- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
1968 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
1969 than Tk 8.3.
1970
1971- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
1972
1973- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001974
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001975Tools/Demos
1976-----------
1977
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001978- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
1979
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00001980- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
1981
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001982- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001983
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001984Build
1985-----
1986
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001987- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
1988
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001989- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
1990
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001991- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
1992 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001993
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00001994- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
1995 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
1996 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001997
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001998C API
1999-----
2000
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002001- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2002 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2003
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002004Windows
2005-------
2006
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002007- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2008 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2009 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2010 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2011 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2012 Python exception ::
2013
2014 thread.error: can't start new thread
2015
2016 is raised now.
2017
2018- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2019 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2020 instead of from DLL teardown.
2021
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002022Mac
2023---
2024
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002025- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002026 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002027 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2028 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2029 the executable in the bundle.
2030
2031- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002032
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002033- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2034
2035- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2036 on Panther.
2037
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002038What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2039================================
2040
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002041*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002042
2043Core and builtins
2044-----------------
2045
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002046- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2047 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2048 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2049 with the -i option.
2050
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002051- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2052 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2053
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002054- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2055 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2056
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002057- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2058 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2059 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2060 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2061 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2062 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2063 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2064 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2065 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2066 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2067 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2068 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2069 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002070
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002071- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2072 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2073 embedded in a lambda expression.
2074
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002075- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2076 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2077 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2078 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2079 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2080
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002081- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2082 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2083 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2084
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002085- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2086 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2087
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002088- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2089 It's writable again.
2090
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002091- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2092 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2093 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002094 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002095
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002096- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2097 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2098 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2099
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002100Extension modules
2101-----------------
2102
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002103- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2104 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2105
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002106- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2107 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2108 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2109 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2110
2111- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2112 collection.
2113
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002114- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2115 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2116 unique within a single program run.
2117
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002118- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2119 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2120
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002121- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2122 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2123
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002124- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2125 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002126
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002127- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2128
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002129- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2130 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2131
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002132- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2133 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2134 for many BSD-derived systems.
2135
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002136
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002137Library
2138-------
2139
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002140- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2141 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2142 primary ones:
2143
2144 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2145 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2146 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2147
2148 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2149 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2150 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2151 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2152 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2153 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2154
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002155- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2156 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2157 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2158 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2159 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2160 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2161 argument.
2162
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002163- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2164 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2165 in the archive.
2166
2167- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2168 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2169
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002170- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2171 569574).
2172
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002173- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2174 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2175 no more.
2176
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002177- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2178 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2179 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2180 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2181 code coverage.
2182
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002183- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2184 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2185 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002186 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2187 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002188
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002189- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2190 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2191 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002192 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002193
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002194- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2195
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002196- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2197 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2198 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2199 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2200
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002201- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2202 handling.
2203
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002204- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2205 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2206
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002207- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2208 in socket.py.
2209
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002210- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2211
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002212- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2213 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2214 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2215 opener with proxy support.
2216
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002217- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2218
2219- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2220
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002221Tools/Demos
2222-----------
2223
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002224- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2225
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002226- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2227
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002228- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2229 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002230
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002231- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2232 files.
2233
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002234Build
2235-----
2236
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002237- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002238 different root directory.
2239
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002240C API
2241-----
2242
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002243- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2244 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2245 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2246 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2247 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2248 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2249 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2250 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2251 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2252 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2253
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002254- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2255 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2256 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2257 from Python.
2258
2259
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002260New platforms
2261-------------
2262
2263None this time.
2264
2265Tests
2266-----
2267
2268- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2269 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2270
2271Windows
2272-------
2273
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002274- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2275
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002276- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2277 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2278 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2279 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2280 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2281 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2282 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2283 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2284 that's what it's for.
2285
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002286Mac
2287---
2288
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002289- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2290 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2291 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2292 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002293- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2294 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2295- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002296
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002297SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2298------------------------------------
2299
2300430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2301598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2302622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2303661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2304683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2305697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2306713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2307724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2308727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2309729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2310730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2311731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2312732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2313733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2314735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2315740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2316744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2317745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2318747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2319749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2320751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2321753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2322755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2323757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2324760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2325
2326
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002327What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2328================================
2329
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002330*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002331
2332Core and builtins
2333-----------------
2334
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002335- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2336 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2337
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002338- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2339 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2340 and cannot be strings).
2341
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002342- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2343 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2344 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2345 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2346
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002347- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2348 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2349 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2350 Python itself.
2351
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002352- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2353 the referenced object, if it has one.
2354
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002355- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2356 the thread started at
2357 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2358
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002359- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2360 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2361 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2362 placed on a list index.
2363
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002364- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2365 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2366 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2367 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2368
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002369- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2370 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2371 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2372 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2373 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2374 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2375 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2376
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002377- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2378 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2379 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2380 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2381 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2382
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002383- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2384 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002385
2386- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2387 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2388 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2389 #693195.)
2390
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002391- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2392 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002393
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002394- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002395 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002396 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2397 interpreter executions, would fail.
2398
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002399- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002400 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002401 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002402
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002403Extension modules
2404-----------------
2405
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002406- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2407 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2408 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2409 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2410
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002411- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2412 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2413
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002414- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2415 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2416 and Greg Chapman.)
2417
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002418- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2419 recursively.
2420
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002421- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002422 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2423 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2424 leaks.
2425
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002426- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2427
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002428- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2429 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2430 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2431 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2432 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2433 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2434 #705836.
2435
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002436- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002437 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2438
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002439- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2440 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2441 See SF bug #692416.
2442
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002443- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2444 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2445
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002446- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2447 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2448 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002449
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002450- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002451 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2452 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2453
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002454- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2455 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2456 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2457 timeouts to work properly.
2458
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002459Library
2460-------
2461
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002462- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2463 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2464 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2465 future release.
2466
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002467- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2468 for querying platform dependent features.
2469
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002470- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002471
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002472- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2473 pickle protocol versions.
2474
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002475- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2476 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2477 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2478
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002479- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2480
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002481- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2482 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2483 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2484 modules.
2485
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002486- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2487 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2488 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2489
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002490- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2491 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2492
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002493- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2494 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2495 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2496
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002497- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002498 MS Office extensions.
2499
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002500- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2501 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2502
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002503- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2504 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2505
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002506- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2507 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2508 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2509 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2510 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2511 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2512
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002513- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2514 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2515 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002516
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002517- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2518 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2519 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2520
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002521- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2522
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002523- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2524 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2525 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2526
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002527Tools/Demos
2528-----------
2529
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002530- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2531 See the module docstring for details.
2532
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002533Build
2534-----
2535
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002536- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2537 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002538
2539C API
2540-----
2541
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002542- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2543
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002544- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2545 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2546 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2547
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002548- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2549 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002550
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002551 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2552 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2553 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002554
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002555- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002556 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2557
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002558- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2559 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2560 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002561
2562New platforms
2563-------------
2564
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002565None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002566
2567Tests
2568-----
2569
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002570- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2571 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002572
2573Windows
2574-------
2575
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002576- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2577 function.
2578
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002579- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2580 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002581
2582Mac
2583---
2584
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002585- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2586 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002587
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002588- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2589 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002590
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002591- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2592 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2593 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002594
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002595- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002596 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2597 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002598
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002599- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2600 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002601
2602
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002603What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2604=================================
2605
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002606*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002607
2608Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002609-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002610
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002611- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2612 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2613 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2614
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002615- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2616 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2617 (SF patch #664376.)
2618
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002619- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2620 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2621 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2622 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2623 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2624 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002625 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002626
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002627- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2628 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2629 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2630 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002631 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002632
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002633- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2634 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2635 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2636 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2637 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2638 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2639 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2640 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2641 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2642 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2643 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2644
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002645- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2646 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2647 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2648 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2649 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2650 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2651
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002652- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2653 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2654
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002655- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2656 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2657 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2658 case.)
2659
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002660- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2661 passed as unicode strings.
2662
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002663- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2664 See SF bug #683467.
2665
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002666- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2667 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2668
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002669- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2670
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002671- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2672
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002673- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2674 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2675 arguments.
2676
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002677- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2678 See SF bug #667147.
2679
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002680- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002681 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002682 See SF bug #676155.
2683
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002684- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002685 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002686 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2687 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2688 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2689 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2690 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2691 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002692
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002693Extension modules
2694-----------------
2695
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002696- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2697 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2698 tp_as_number pointer.
2699
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002700- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2701 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2702 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2703 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2704 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2705
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002706- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2707
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002708- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2709
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002710- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002711 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002712 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2713 patch #678531.)
2714
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002715- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2716 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2717
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002718- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2719 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2720
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002721- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2722
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002723- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2724 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2725 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2726
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002727- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2728
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002729- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2730 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2731
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002732- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002733
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002734- datetime changes:
2735
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002736 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2737
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002738 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2739 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2740 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2741 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2742 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2743 now.
2744
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002745 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002746 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2747 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002748
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002749 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002750 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002751 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2752 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2753 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2754 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002755
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002756 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2757 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2758 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002759 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2760
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002761 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2762 by a later example coded by Guido.
2763
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002764 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002765 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2766 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2767 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002768 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2769 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2770
2771 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2772 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2773 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2774 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2775 tzinfo subclass instance.
2776
2777 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2778 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2779 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2780 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2781 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2782 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2783 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2784 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002785
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002786 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2787 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2788 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2789 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2790 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002791 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2792
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002793 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002794
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002795 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2796 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2797 as a naive datetime object.
2798
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002799 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2800 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2801 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2802
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002803 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2804 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2805 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2806 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2807 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2808 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2809 comparison.
2810
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002811 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2812 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2813 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2814 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002815 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002816
2817 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002818
2819 and ::
2820
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002821 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2822
2823 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2824 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2825 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2826 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2827
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002828 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2829 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2830 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2831 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2832 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2833
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002834 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2835 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002836 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2837 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002838
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002839Library
2840-------
2841
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002842- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2843 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2844
2845- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2846 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2847 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2848 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2849 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2850 See PEP 307 for details.
2851
2852- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
2853 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
2854
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002855- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
2856 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002857 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002858 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
2859 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00002860 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00002861
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00002862- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
2863 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
2864
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002865- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
2866 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
2867 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
2868
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00002869- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
2870
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00002871- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
2872 exception.
2873
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00002874- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
2875 class.
2876
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00002877- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
2878 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
2879 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
2880
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00002881- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
2882 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
2883
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002884- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00002885 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
2886 See SF bug #659228.
2887
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00002888- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
2889 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
2890 See SF patch #651082.
2891
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00002892- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002893
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00002894- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
2895 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
2896
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002897- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00002898 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00002899
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00002900- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
2901 DOS paths from other platforms.
2902
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002903Tools/Demos
2904-----------
2905
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002906- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
2907 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
2908 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
2909 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
2910 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
2911 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
2912 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
2913 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
2914 example:
2915
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00002916 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
2917 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00002918
2919 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
2920
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002921
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002922Build
2923-----
2924
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002925- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
2926 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
2927 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002928 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
2929
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00002930 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
2931
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00002932- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
2933 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
2934 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
2935 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
2936 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
2937 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
2938 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
2939 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
2940 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
2941
2942- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
2943 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
2944 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
2945 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
2946
2947- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
2948 from the Tools/scripts directory.
2949
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002950C API
2951-----
2952
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002953- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
2954 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00002955
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002956- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
2957 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2958 tp_as_number pointer.
2959
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00002960- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
2961 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
2962 (SF #681367)
2963
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00002964- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
2965 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
2966 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
2967 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00002968
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002969Tests
2970-----
2971
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00002972- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002973 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
2974 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
2975 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
2976 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
2977 pydoc.)
2978
2979- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
2980
2981- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00002982
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002983Windows
2984-------
2985
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002986- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
2987 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
2988 time).
2989
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00002990- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
2991 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
2992
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002993- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
2994 release without strong cryptography.
2995
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002996- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002997 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00002998
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002999- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3000 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3001
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003002Mac
3003---
3004
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003005- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3006 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003007
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003008- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3009 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3010 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003011
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003012- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3013 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003014
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003015- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3016 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3017 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3018 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003019
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003020- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003021 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3022 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3023 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003024
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003025
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003026What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003027=================================
3028
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003029*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003030
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003031Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003032--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003033
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003034- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3035
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003036- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3037 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003038 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003039 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003040 a different meaning than before.
3041
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003042- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003043 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003044 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003045
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003046- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003047 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003048 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003049
3050- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3051 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3052 and deallocation.
3053
3054- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3055 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3056
3057- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3058 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3059 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3060 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3061 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3062
3063- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3064 now detected by the garbage collector.
3065
3066- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3067 [SF bug 519621]
3068
3069- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3070 identifier.
3071
3072- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3073 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3074 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3075 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3076 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3077 [SF bug 563060]
3078
3079- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3080 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3081 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3082 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3083 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3084
3085- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3086 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3087 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3088
3089- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3090
3091- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3092 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3093 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3094 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3095 state of the slots would be lost.)
3096
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003097Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003098-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003099
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003100- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003101 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3102 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3103 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3104 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003105 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3106 Jython 2.1.
3107
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003108- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003109 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003110 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3111 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3112 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3113 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3114 these, see PEP 302.
3115
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003116- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3117 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3118 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3119
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003120- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3121 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3122 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3123
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003124- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3125 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3126 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3127
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003128- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3129 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3130 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3131 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3132 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3133 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3134 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3135 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3136 releases or implementations.
3137
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003138- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003139 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3140 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003141
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003142- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3143 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3144
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003145- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3146 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3147 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3148
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003149- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3150 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3151
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003152- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3153 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003154 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3155 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003156
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003157- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3158 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3159 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3160 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3161 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3162
3163 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3164 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3165 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3166 pattern.
3167
3168 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3169 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3170 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3171 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3172
3173 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3174 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3175 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3176 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3177 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3178 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3179
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003180- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3181 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3182 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3183 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3184 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3185 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3186 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3187 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003188
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003189- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3190 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3191 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3192 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3193 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003194 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3195 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3196 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3197 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3198 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3199 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3200 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003201
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003202- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3203 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3204
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003205- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3206 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3207 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3208 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3209 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3210 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3211 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3212 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3213 to Zack Weinberg!
3214
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003215- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3216 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3217 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3218 type. This has been fixed now.
3219
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003220- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3221 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3222 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3223
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003224- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3225 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3226 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3227 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3228 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3229 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3230 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3231 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003232 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003233
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003234- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3235 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3236 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003237
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003238- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3239 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3240 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3241 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3242 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3243 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3244 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3245 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003246 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003247 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3248 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3249
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003250- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3251 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3252 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3253 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3254 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3255 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3256 this.)
3257
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003258- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3259 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003260 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003261 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003262 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3263 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003264 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3265 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003266
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003267- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3268 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3269 currently running.
3270
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003271- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3272 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3273 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3274 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3275
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003276- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3277 as directory names.
3278
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003279- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3280 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3281
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003282- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3283 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3284
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003285- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003286 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3287 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003288
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003289- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3290 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3291 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3292 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3293 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3294
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003295- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3296 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3297 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3298 removed.
3299
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003300- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3301 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3302 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3303
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003304- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3305 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3306 to __debug__.
3307
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003308- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3309 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3310 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3311
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003312- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3313 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3314 deprecated now.
3315
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003316- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3317 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3318 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003319
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003320- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3321 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3322 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3323 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3324 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003325
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003326- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3327 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3328
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003329- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3330 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3331 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003332 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003333 is backward compatible.
3334
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003335- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3336 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3337 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3338 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3339 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3340
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003341- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3342 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3343 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3344 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3345 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3346 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003347
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003348- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3349 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3350
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003351- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3352 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3353
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003354- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3355 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3356 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3357 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3358 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3359
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003360- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3361 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3362 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3363
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003364- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003365 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3366
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003367- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3368 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3369 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003370
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003371- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3372 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3373
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003374- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3375 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3376 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3377
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003378- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3379
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003380Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003381-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003382
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003383- Added three operators to the operator module:
3384 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3385 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3386 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3387
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003388- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3389
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003390- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3391 archives.
3392
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003393- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3394 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3395 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3396
3397 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3398
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003399- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3400 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3401 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003402 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003403
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003404- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3405 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3406 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3407 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003408 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3409 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3410 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3411 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003412
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003413- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3414 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003415
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003416- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3417
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003418- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3419 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3420
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003421- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3422 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3423 supported.
3424
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003425- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3426
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003427- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3428 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003429
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003430- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3431 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3432
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003433- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3434
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003435- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3436 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3437
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003438- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3439 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3440 functions but callable type objects.
3441
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003442- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003443 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003444 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003445
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003446- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3447 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003448
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003449- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3450 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003451
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003452- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3453 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3454 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3455 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3456
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003457- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3458 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003459
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003460- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3461 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3462 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3463 and __imul__.
3464
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003465- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003466 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3467 is called.
3468
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003469- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3470 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3471 interpreter was compiled.
3472
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003473- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3474 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3475 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003476 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003477 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3478 1, not 2.
3479
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003480- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3481 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3482 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3483 limit.
3484
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003485- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3486 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3487 bug #623464.
3488
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003489- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3490 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3491 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3492 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3493
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003494Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003495-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003496
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003497- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3498
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003499- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3500 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3501 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3502 with Python 2.3a2.
3503
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003504- os.path exposes getctime.
3505
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003506- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003507 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003508 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003509 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003510 unit tests of floating point results.
3511
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003512- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3513 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3514 has been increased.
3515
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003516- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3517 executed.
3518
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003519- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3520 postinstallation script.
3521
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003522- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3523 test the current module.
3524
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003525- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003526 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3527 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3528 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3529 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3530
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003531- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003532 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003533 Ward's Optik package.
3534
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003535- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3536 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3537 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3538 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3539
3540- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3541 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003542 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003543
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003544- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3545 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3546 shelf are binary pickles.
3547
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003548- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3549 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3550
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003551- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3552 modules are iterators now.
3553
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003554- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3555 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3556 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3557 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3558 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3559 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003560
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003561- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3562 with their entity value.
3563
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003564- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3565
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003566- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3567 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003568
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003569- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3570 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003571 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003572
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003573- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3574 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3575 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3576 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3577 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3578 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3579 main():
3580
3581 import locale
3582 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3583
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003584- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3585 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3586
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003587- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3588 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3589 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3590 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3591 to the new standard.
3592
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003593- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3594 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3595 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3596 an extension to the database.
3597
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003598- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3599 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3600 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3601 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003602 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003603
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003604- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003605 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003606
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003607- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3608 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3609 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3610 bounded integers.
3611
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003612- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3613 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3614 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3615 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3616 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3617 in existence.
3618
3619 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3620 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3621 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3622 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3623 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3624 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3625
3626 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3627 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3628 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3629 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3630
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003631- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3632 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3633 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3634
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003635- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3636
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003637- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3638 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3639 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3640 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3641
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003642- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3643 argument.
3644
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003645- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3646 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3647 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3648 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3649 [SF patch 560794].
3650
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003651- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3652 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3653 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003654 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3655 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3656 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003657
3658- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3659 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003660
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003661- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3662 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3663 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3664 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003665
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003666- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3667 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3668 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3669 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3670 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3671
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003672- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003673
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003674- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3675
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003676- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3677 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3678 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3679 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3680 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3681 identical to None.
3682
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003683- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3684 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3685 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3686 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3687 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3688 results now.
3689
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003690- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3691 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3692
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003693- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3694 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3695 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3696 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3697 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3698 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3699 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3700 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3701
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003702- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3703
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003704- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3705 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3706
3707- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3708 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3709 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3710 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3711 and other systems.
3712
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003713- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3714 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3715 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3716 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00003717 work well with these.
3718
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003719- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3720
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003721- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003722 connections.
3723
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003724- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3725 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3726 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3727
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003728- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3729 sets
3730
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003731- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3732 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3733 name.
3734
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003735- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3736 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3737 passed in.
3738
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003739- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003740 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003741 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3742 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003743
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003744- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3745
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003746- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3747
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003748- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3749 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3750 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3751
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003752- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3753 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3754 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3755 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003756 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003757
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003758- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003759 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003760 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003761
3762- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3763 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3764 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3765
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003766- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003767 the value of its expression argument.
3768
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003769- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3770 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3771 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3772
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003773- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3774 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3775 skipstone browser was included.
3776
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003777- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3778 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3779
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003780Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003781-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003782
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003783- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3784 names in addition to accepting file names.
3785
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003786- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3787 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3788 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3789 still used and useful.)
3790
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003791- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3792 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3793 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3794 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003795
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003796- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3797 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3798 the generated binary.
3799
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003800Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003801-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003802
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003803- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3804
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003805- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3806 except in the hands of experts.
3807
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003808- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003809 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3810 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3811 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003812
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003813- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3814 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3815 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3816 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3817 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3818 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3819 builds.
3820
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003821- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3822 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3823 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3824 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3825 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3826 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3827 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3828 new type.
3829
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003830- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003831
3832 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3833 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3834 positive infinities.
3835
3836 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3837 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3838 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3839 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3840 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3841 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3842 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3843
3844 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3845
3846 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3847
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003848- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3849 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3850 size of the executable.
3851
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003852- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
3853 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
3854 configure script. On other platforms, remove
3855 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00003856
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00003857- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
3858
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00003859- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
3860 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
3861 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00003862
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00003863- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
3864 well as Unix.
3865
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00003866- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
3867 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
3868 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
3869 modules in the README file for details.
3870
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003871C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003872-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003873
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003874- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
3875 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003876 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00003877 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00003878 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00003879
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003880- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
3881 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
3882 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
3883 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
3884 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
3885 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003886 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003887 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
3888 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
3889 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
3890 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
3891 aligned.)
3892
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00003893- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
3894 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
3895 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
3896
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003897- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
3898 level.
3899
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00003900- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
3901 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
3902 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
3903 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
3904 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
3905
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00003906- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
3907 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
3908 code.
3909
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00003910- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
3911 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
3912 adjusting for negative indices.
3913
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003914- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
3915 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
3916 object.
3917
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00003918- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
3919 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
3920 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
3921
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003922- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
3923 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00003924
3925- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
3926
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00003927- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
3928 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
3929 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
3930 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
3931
3932- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
3933
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00003934- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003935
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003936- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00003937 without going through the buffer API.
3938
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003939- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00003940
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00003941- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
3942 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
3943 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
3944 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
3945
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003946- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
3947 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
3948
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00003949- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003950 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
3951
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003952New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003953-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003954
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00003955- OpenVMS is now supported.
3956
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00003957- AtheOS is now supported.
3958
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00003959- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
3960
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00003961- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
3962
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003963Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003964-----
3965
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00003966- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
3967 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
3968 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003969
3970Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003971-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003972
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003973- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
3974 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
3975 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
3976 bugs.
3977 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003978 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00003979 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
3980 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003981 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003982
3983- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00003984 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00003985
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00003986- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
3987 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
3988
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003989- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
3990 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003991 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00003992 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
3993
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00003994- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
3995 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
3996 use files" uninstall option).
3997
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00003998- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
3999
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004000- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4001 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4002
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004003- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4004 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4005 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4006
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004007- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4008 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4009 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4010 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4011 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004012 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4013 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4014 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004015
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004016- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004017 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004018 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4019 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4020 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4021 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4022 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4023 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4024 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4025 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4026 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4027 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4028 work around.
4029
4030- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4031 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4032 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4033 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4034 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4035 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4036 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4037 specified with O_CREAT too).
4038
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004039Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004040----
4041
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004042- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004043
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004044- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4045 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4046 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4047
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004048- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4049 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4050 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4051
4052- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4053 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4054 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4055 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4056 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4057 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4058 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4059 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004060
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004061- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4062 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4063 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004064
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004065- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4066 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4067 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4068 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4069 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004070
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004071- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4072 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4073 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004074
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004075- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4076 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004077
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004078- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4079 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4080 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4081 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4082 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004083
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004084- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4085 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4086 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4087
4088- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4089 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4090 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004091
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004092- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4093 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4094 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4095 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004096 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004097
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004098- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4099 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004100
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004101- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4102 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004103
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004104- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004105 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004106 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4107 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004108
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004109
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004110What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004111===============================
4112
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004113*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4114
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004115Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004116--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004117
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004118- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4119 with a custom metaclass.
4120
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004121Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004122-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004123
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004124- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4125 are proxies.
4126
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004127Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004128-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004129
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004130- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4131 very short strings.
4132
4133- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4134 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4135 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4136 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4137 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4138
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004139Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004140-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004141
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004142- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4143 close or delete time).
4144
4145- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4146 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4147
4148- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4149
4150- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004151 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004152
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004153Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004154-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004155
4156Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004157-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004158
4159C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004160-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004161
4162New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004163-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004164
4165Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004166-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004167
4168Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004169-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004170
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004171- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4172
4173- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4174 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4175
4176- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4177 deleted at process exit time.
4178
4179- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4180 in backslash.
4181
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004182Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004183----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004184
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004185- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4186 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4187 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4188
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004189
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004190What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004191===========================
4192
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004193*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4194
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004195Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004196--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004197
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004198- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4199 been extensively updated. See
4200
4201 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4202
4203 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4204
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004205- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4206 deleted!
4207
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004208- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4209 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4210 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4211 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4212 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4213
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004214- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4215
4216 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4217 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4218
4219 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4220 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4221 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4222 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4223 supported anyway.
4224
4225 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4226 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4227
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004228- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4229 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4230 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4231 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4232 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004233
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004234- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4235 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4236 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4237
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004238Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004239-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004240
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004241- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4242 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4243 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4244 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4245 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4246 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004247 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4248 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4249 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4250 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004251
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004252- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4253 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4254 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4255
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004256Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004257-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004258
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004259- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4260
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004261Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004263
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004264- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4265 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4266 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4267 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4268 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4269 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4270
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004271- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4272
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004273- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4274
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004275- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4276
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004277- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4278 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4279 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4280
4281- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4282
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004283Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004284-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004285
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004286- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4287 off a search on Google.
4288
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004289Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004290-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004291
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004292- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4293 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4294 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4295 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4296 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4297 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4298 other platforms should do likewise.
4299
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004300- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4301 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4302 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4303
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004304C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004305-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004306
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004307- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4308 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4309 producing key-value pairs.
4310
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004311- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004312 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004313 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4314 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4315 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4316 previously went unchallenged.
4317
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004318New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004319-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004320
4321Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004322-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004323
4324Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004325-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004326
4327Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004328----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004329
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004330- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4331 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004332
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004333- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4334 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4335 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4336 home.
4337
4338
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004339What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004340===========================
4341
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004342*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4343
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004344Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004345--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004346
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004347- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4348 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004349
4350 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004351 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004352
4353 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4354 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004355 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004356 This needs to be documented.
4357
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004358- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4359 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4360
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004361- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4362 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4363 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4364
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004365- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4366 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4367
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004368- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4369 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4370 class forbids it).
4371
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004372- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4373 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4374 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4375
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004376- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4377
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004378Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004379-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004380
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004381- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4382 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004383 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004384
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004385- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4386 (like 1 + '').
4387
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004388Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004389-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004390
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004391- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4392 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4393 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4394 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004395 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004396 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4397
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004398- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4399 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4400 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4401 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4402
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004403- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4404 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004405 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4406 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4407 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004408
4409- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4410 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004411
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004412- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4413 bytes on its input.
4414
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004415Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004416-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004417
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004418- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004419 convenience function.
4420
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004421- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4422 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4423 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004424 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4425 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4426 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4427 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4428 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4429 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004430
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004431- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4432 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4433 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4434 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4435
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004436- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4437 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4438 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4439
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004440- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4441 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4442 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4443 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4444
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004445- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4446 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004448 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4449 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4450 new -l and -e options.
4451
4452- statcache is now deprecated.
4453
4454- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4455 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004456 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004457 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4458 time properly taken into account.
4459
4460- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4461 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4462 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4463 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4464
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004465Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004466-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004467
4468Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004469-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004470
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004471- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4472 is built with libdb3 if available.
4473
4474- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4475
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004476C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004477-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004478
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004479- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4480 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4481 PySequence_Size().
4482
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004483- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4484
4485- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4486 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4487 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4488
4489- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4490 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4491
4492- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4493 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4494
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004495New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004496-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004497
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004498- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4499 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4500
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004501- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4502 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4503
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004504- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4505
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004506Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004507-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004508
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004509- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4510 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4511
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004512Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004513-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004514
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004515Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004517
4518- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4519 removed completely in the next release.
4520
4521- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4522 OSX.
4523
4524- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4525 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4526
4527- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4528
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004529
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004530What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004531===========================
4532
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004533*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4534
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004535Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004536--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004537
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004538- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004539 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004540 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004541 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4542 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004543 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4544 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004545 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4546 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004547
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004548- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4549 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4550
4551- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4552 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4553
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004554Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004555-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004556
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004557- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4558 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4559 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4560 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4561 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4562 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4563 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4564 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4565
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004566- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4567 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4568 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4569 example).
4570
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004571- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004572 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004573 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004574 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004575
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004576- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4577 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4578 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004579 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004580
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004581- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4582 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4583 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4584 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4585 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4586 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4587
4588 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4589
4590 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4591
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004592Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004593-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004594
4595- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4596
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004597- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4598
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004599- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4600 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004601
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004602- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4603 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4604 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4605 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4606 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4607 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004608 attributes.
4609
4610- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4611 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4612 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004613
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004614- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4615 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4616 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004617
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004618- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4619 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4620 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004621 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4622 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4623
4624- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4625 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004626
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004627Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004628-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004629
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004630- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4631 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4632
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004633- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4634 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4635 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4636 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4637
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004638- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4639 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4640 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4641 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4642
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004643 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4644 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4645 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4646 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4647 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4648 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4649 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4650 without losing information).
4651
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004652- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004653 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4654 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4655 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4656 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4657 module).
4658
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004659 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004660 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4661 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4662 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4663 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004664
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004665- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004666 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4667 encoding.
4668
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004669- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4670 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4671
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004672- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004673 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4674
4675- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4676 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4677 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4678 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4679
4680- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4681
4682- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4683 ON, and OFF.
4684
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004685- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4686 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4687
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004688Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004689-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004690
4691- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4692 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4693 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004694
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004695- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4696 been added: -X and -E.
4697
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004698Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004699-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004700
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004701- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4702 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4703
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004704C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004705-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004706
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004707- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4708 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4709 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4710 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4711 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4712
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004713- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4714 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4715 as long) arguments.
4716
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004717- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4718 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4719 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4720 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4721 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4722 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4723
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004724- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4725 input.
4726
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004727New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004728-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004729
4730Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004732
4733Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004734-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004735
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004736- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4737 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4738 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4739
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004740- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4741 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4742 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004743 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004744
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004745 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4746 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4747 import signal
4748 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004749
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004750 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004751 while 1:
4752 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004753 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004754 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4755 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4756 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4757 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004758
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004759
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004760What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4761===========================
4762
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004763*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4764
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004765Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004766--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004767
4768- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4769 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4770 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4771
4772- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4773 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4774 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4775 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4776 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4777 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4778 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004779
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004780- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004781 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004782 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4783 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4784 associate a docstring with a property.
4785
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004786- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4787 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4788 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4789 other built-in object types.
4790
4791- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4792 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4793 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4794 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4795 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4796
4797- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4798 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4799
4800- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4801 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004802 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004803 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4804 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4805 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4806 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4807 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4808
4809- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4810 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4811 class.
4812
4813- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4814 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4815 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4816 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4817
4818- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4819 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4820 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4821 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4822
4823- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4824 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4825
4826- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4827 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4828 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4829 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4830 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004831 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004832 with the same value as s.
4833
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004834- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4835
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004836Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004837----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004838
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004839- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4840
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004841- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4842 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4843 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4844 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4845 objects.
4846
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004847- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4848 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004849 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4850 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
4851
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004852- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
4853 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
4854 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
4855
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004856Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004858
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00004859- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4860 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
4861 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
4862 by the instances.
4863
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00004864- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
4865 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
4866 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
4867
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004868- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
4869 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
4870 before the entire comparison is complete.
4871
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00004872- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
4873 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
4874 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
4875
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00004876- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
4877 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
4878 getwriter().
4879
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004880- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
4881 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
4882
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00004883- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004884 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
4885 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
4886
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00004887- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
4888 iterable object.
4889
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004890- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
4891 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004892
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004893- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
4894 authentication.
4895
4896- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
4897 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00004898
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004899- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00004900 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
4901 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
4902 a sample driver.)
4903
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004904Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004905-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004906
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004907- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
4908 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
4909 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
4910 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
4911 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
4912 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
4913 kernel has large file support.
4914
4915- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
4916 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
4917 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
4918 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
4919 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
4920
4921- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
4922 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
4923 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
4924
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004925C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004926-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004927
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004928- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
4929 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
4930
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004931New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004932-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004933
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004934- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
4935 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
4936
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004937Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004939
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004940- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
4941 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
4942 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
4943 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
4944 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
4945
4946- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
4947 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
4948 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
4949 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
4950
4951- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
4952 especially in regard to reporting errors.
4953
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004954Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004955-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004956
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004957- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00004958 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
4959 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00004960
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004961
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004962What's New in Python 2.2a3?
4963===========================
4964
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004965*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
4966
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004967Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004968----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00004969
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00004970- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
4971 big to represent as a C double.
4972
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00004973- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
4974 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
4975 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
4976 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
4977 restriction).
4978
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00004979- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
4980 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
4981 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
4982 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
4983 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
4984
4985 >>> dir([])
4986 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
4987 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
4988 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
4989 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
4990 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
4991 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
4992 'reverse', 'sort']
4993
4994 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
4995
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00004996- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00004997 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
4998 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
4999 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5000 OverflowError exception.
5001
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005002- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005003 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005004 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5005 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5006 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5007 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5008 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005009 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005010 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5011 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5012
5013 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5014 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5015 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5016 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005017
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005018- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005019 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5020 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5021 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5022 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5023 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5024 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5025 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5026 once it is created.
5027
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005028- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5029 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5030 (key, value) pairs.
5031
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005032- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005033 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5034 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5035
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005036- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5037 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5038 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5039 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5040 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005041
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005042- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005043 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5044 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5045
5046 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5047
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005048- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005049 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5050
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005051Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005052-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005053
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005054- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005055 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5056 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005057
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005058- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5059 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5060 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5061 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5062 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5063 in this area anymore).
5064
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005065- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5066 threading.Timer.
5067
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005068- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5069 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5070
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005071- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005072 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5073
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005074- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005075 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5076 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5077 converted to Python longs.
5078
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005079- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005080 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5081
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005082- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5083 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5084 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5085
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005086Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005087-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005088
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005089- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5090 division operators as per PEP 238.
5091
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005092Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005093-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005094
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005095- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5096 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5097 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5098 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5099
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005100C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005101-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005102
5103- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005104
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005105- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5106 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005107 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005108
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005109 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5110 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005111 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005112 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005113
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005114- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005115 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5116 module:
5117
5118 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005119
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005120 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5121 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005122
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005123 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5124 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005125
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005126 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5127
5128 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5129
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005130- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005131 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5132 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5133 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005134
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005135New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005136-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005137
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005138- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5139 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5140 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5141 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5142 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005143
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005144Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005145-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005146
5147Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005148-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005149
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005150- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5151 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5152 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5153 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005154 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5155 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5156 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5157 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5158 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005159
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005160- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005161 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5162
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005163
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005164What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5165===========================
5166
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005167*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5168
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005169Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005170-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005171
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005172- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5173 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5174
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005175- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5176 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5177 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005178
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005179- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5180 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5181 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5182 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005183
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005184- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5185
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005186- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005187
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005188Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005189-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005190
5191- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005192 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005193 the module docstring for details.
5194
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005195Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005196-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005197
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005198- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005199 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5200 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5201 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005202
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005203- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5204 Nick Mathewson.
5205
5206Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005207----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005208
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005209- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5210 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5211 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5212 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5213 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5214 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5215 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5216 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5217
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005218- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5219 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5220 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5221 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5222
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005223- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5224 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5225 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5226 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5227 come a long way).
5228
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005229- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5230 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5231 write filters for these warnings).
5232
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005233- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5234 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5235 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5236 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5237 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5238
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005239- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5240 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5241 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5242 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5243 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5244 older distribution.
5245
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005246Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005247-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005248
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005249- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5250 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005251 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005252
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005253- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5254 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5255 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5256
5257- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5258
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005259- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5260
5261- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5262
5263- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5264
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005265- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005266
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005267- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5268
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005269New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005270-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005271
5272C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005273-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005274
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005275- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5276 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5277 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5278 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5279 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5280 against buffer overruns.
5281
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005282- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005283 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5284 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005285 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5286 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5287 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5288
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005289- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5290 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5291 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5292 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5293 deprecated.
5294
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005295Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005296-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005297
5298- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5299 relevant is found.
5300
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005301
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005302What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005303===========================
5304
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005305*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5306
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005307Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005308----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005309
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005310- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5311 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5312 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5313 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5314 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5315 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5316 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5317 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005318 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005319 repaired.
5320
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005321- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005322 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005323 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5324 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5325 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5326 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5327 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5328 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5329 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5330 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5331
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005332- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5333 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5334 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5335 leading BMO character).
5336
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005337- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5338 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5339 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5340
5341 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5342 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5343 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005344
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005345 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5346 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5347 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5348 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5349 for various simple to use conversions.
5350
5351 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5352 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5353
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005354 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5355 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5356 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5357 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5358 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5359 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5360 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5361 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5362 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5363 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5364 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5365 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5366 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5367 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5368 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005369
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005370- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5371 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5372 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005373 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005374 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005375
5376 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005377 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5378 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5379 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5380 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5381 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005382 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5383 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005384
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005385 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5386 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5387 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005388 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005389
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005390- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5391 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5392 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5393 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5394 floating arithmetic,
5395
5396 x = 9007199254740992.0
5397 print long(x)
5398
5399 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5400 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5401 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5402 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5403 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5404 functions are of good quality).
5405
5406 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5407 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5408 algorithms to break.
5409
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005410- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5411 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5412 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5413 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5414 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5415 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5416 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5417 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5418 order.
5419
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005420- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5421 operation along the most common code paths.
5422
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005423- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5424 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5425
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005426- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5427 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5428 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5429 {}.update(UserDict())
5430
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005431- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5432 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5433 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5434 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5435 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5436 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5437 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5438 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5439
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005440- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005441 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005442
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005443 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005444 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5445 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005446 join() method of strings
5447 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005448 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5449 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005450 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005451 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005452
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005453- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5454 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5455
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005456- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5457 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5458
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005459- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5460 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5461 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5462 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5463
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005464- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5465 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005466 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005467 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5468 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005469
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005470- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5471
5472
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005473Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005475
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005476- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005477 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005478 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5479 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5480
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005481- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5482 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5483
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005484- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5485 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5486 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5487 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5488
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005489- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5490 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5491 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5492
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005493- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5494
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005495- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5496
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005497- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5498 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5499 that are still imported into string.py).
5500
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005501- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5502
5503- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5504 Now it does.
5505
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005506- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5507
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005508- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5509 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5510 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5511 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5512 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005513 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5514 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005515
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005516- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5517 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5518 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5519 'help(object)'.
5520
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005521Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005522-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005523
5524- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005525 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005526 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5527 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5528
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005529- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005530 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5531 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005532
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005533C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005534-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005535
5536- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5537 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005538
5539----
5540
5541**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**