blob: 96a2f5e91a4589c09f8265843ee66a8cafb014fd [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
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Tim Peterscf79aac2006-03-16 01:14:46 +000015- Patch #1123430: Python's small-object allocator now returns an arena to
16 the system ``free()`` when all memory within an arena becomes unused
17 again. Prior to Python 2.5, arenas (256KB chunks of memory) were never
18 freed. Some applications will see a drop in virtual memory size now,
19 especially long-running applications that, from time to time, temporarily
20 use a large number of small objects. Note that when Python returns an
21 arena to the platform C's ``free()``, there's no guarantee that the
22 platform C will in turn return that memory to the operating system. The
23 effect of the patch is to stop making that impossible, and in tests it
24 appears to be effective at least on Microsoft C and gcc-based systems.
25 Thanks to Evan Jones for hard work and patience.
26
Georg Brandl533ff6f2006-03-08 18:09:27 +000027- Patch #1434038: property() now uses the getter's docstring if there is
28 no "doc" argument given. This makes it possible to legitimately use
29 property() as a decorator to produce a read-only property.
30
Guido van Rossum9aa37ab2006-03-07 18:54:08 +000031- PEP 357, patch 1436368: add an __index__ method to int/long and a matching
32 nb_index slot to the PyNumberMethods struct. The slot is consulted instead
33 of requiring an int or long in slicing and a few other contexts, enabling
34 other objects (e.g. Numeric Python's integers) to be used as slice indices.
35
Neal Norwitz995acdf2006-03-07 05:01:00 +000036- Fixed various bugs reported by Coverity's Prevent tool.
37
Brett Cannonbf364092006-03-01 04:25:17 +000038- PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects. Introduced the
39 new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute.
40 KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now.
41 Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning.
42
Thomas Woutersfb609f42006-02-28 16:37:25 +000043- Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be
44 explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same
45 package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the
46 old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import
47 absolute_import' is used.
48
Brett Cannona7446e32006-02-27 23:39:10 +000049- Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set
50 to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string
51 exceptions.
52
Neal Norwitz0023a2f2006-02-27 23:24:48 +000053- CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined, this behavior is the default.
54 The name was removed from Include/code.h.
55
Neal Norwitzeb651252006-02-27 16:47:12 +000056- PEP 308: conditional expressions were added (x if cond else y).
57
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +000058- Patch 1433928:
59 - The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects).
60 - dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising
61 KeyError.
62
Tim Peters84ef21c2006-02-28 20:39:06 +000063- PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import
64 with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning.
65 Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's
Neal Norwitz055ec242006-02-28 20:06:49 +000066 part of an import statement).
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +000067 The following objects have __context__ methods:
68 - The built-in file type.
69 - The thread.LockType type.
70 - The following types defined by the threading module:
71 Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore.
72 - The decimal.Context class.
Guido van Rossumc2e20742006-02-27 22:32:47 +000073
Marc-André Lemburgfe4b34c2006-02-19 15:22:22 +000074- Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search
75 inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198.
76
77 Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own
78 codec search function. PEP 100 has the details.
79
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000080- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
81
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000082- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
83 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
84 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
85
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000086- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
87 configure would break checking curses.h.
88
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000089- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
90 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
91
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000092- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
93
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000094- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
95
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000096- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
97
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000098- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
99 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
100
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000101- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000102 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.subversion. Build number
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +0000103 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
104
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000105- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
106 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +0000107 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +0000108
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +0000109- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
110 now encodes backslash correctly.
111
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +0000112- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
113
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +0000114- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
115 and long longs.
116
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +0000117- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
118 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
119 message in this case.
120
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000121- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
122 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
123 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
124 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
125 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
126
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000127- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000128
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000129- Speed up some Unicode operations.
130
Martin v. Löwisbd260da2006-02-26 19:42:26 +0000131- A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract
132 syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access
Martin v. Löwis577b5b92006-02-27 15:23:19 +0000133 to Python code; an _ast module was added.
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000134
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +0000135- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +0000136 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
137
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +0000138- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
139
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +0000140- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
141 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
142
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +0000143- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
144
145- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
146
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +0000147- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
148 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
149 was empty.
150
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +0000151- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
152 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
153
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000154- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +0000155 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000156
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +0000157- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
158 codes.
159
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +0000160- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
161 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
162 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
163
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +0000164- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
165 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
166
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000167- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000168 (fixes bug #1119418).
169
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000170- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
171
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000172- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
173 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
174
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000175- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
176 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
177 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
178
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000179- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
180
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000181- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
182 reference counts in some error exit cases.
183
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000184- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
185 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
186 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
187 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
188 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
189 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
190 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
191 realloc.
192
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000193- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
194 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
195
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000196- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
197 like their int counterparts.
198
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000199- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
200 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
201 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
202 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
203 for a longer write-up of the problem).
204
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000205- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
206 serializing floats.
207
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000208- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
209 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
210 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
211
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000212- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
213 278.
214
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000215- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
216 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
217 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
218 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000219 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000220 PyNumber_*().
221 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
222
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000223- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
224 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
225 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
226 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
227
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000228- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
229 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
230 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
231 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
232 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
233
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000234- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
235 disabled caused a crash.
236
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000237- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
238 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
239
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000240- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000241 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
242
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000243- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
244
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000245- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000246 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
247 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
248 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000249
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000250- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
251
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000252- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
253 returning None.
254
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000255- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000256 ('\') with a specific error message.
257
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000258- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
259
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000260- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
261 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
262
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000263- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000264 an ferror() call.
265
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000266- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
267 list.sort().
268
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000269- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
270 (2+3) --> (5).
271
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000272- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
273
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000274- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
275 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000276
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000277- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
278 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
279 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
280
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000281- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
282 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
283 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
284
Tim Petersf4e69282006-02-27 17:15:31 +0000285- Patch #1413181: changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the
286 current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about
287 it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it
288 can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with
289 the same thread id).
290
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000291Extension Modules
292-----------------
293
Neal Norwitz10be10c2006-03-16 06:50:13 +0000294- Everything under lib-old was removed. This includes the following modules:
295 Para, addpack, cmp, cmpcache, codehack, dircmp, dump, find, fmt, grep,
296 lockfile, newdir, ni, packmail, poly, rand, statcache, tb, tzparse,
297 util, whatsound, whrandom, zmod
298
299- The following modules were removed: regsub, reconvert, regex, regex_syntax.
300
301- re and sre were swapped, so help(re) provides full help. importing sre
Neal Norwitzefbeaef2006-03-16 06:40:39 +0000302 is deprecated. The undocumented re.engine variable no longer exists.
303
Hye-Shik Changabb903f2006-03-13 10:20:08 +0000304- Bug #1448490: Fixed a bug that ISO-2022 codecs could not handle
305 SS2 (single-shift 2) escape sequences correctly.
306
Martin v. Löwis480f1bb2006-03-09 23:38:20 +0000307- The unicodedata module was updated to the 4.1 version of the Unicode
308 database. The 3.2 version is still available as unicodedata.db_3_2_0
309 for applications that require this specific version (such as IDNA).
310
Neal Norwitzb62c4332006-03-04 18:35:47 +0000311- The timing module is no longer built by default. It was deprecated
312 in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier.
313
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +0000314- Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module.
315 This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above).
316
Georg Brandldbd83392006-02-20 09:42:33 +0000317- Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when
318 INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined.
319
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000320- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
321 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
322
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000323- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
324 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
325
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000326- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
327 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
328 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
329
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000330- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
331 than the system default domain.
332
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000333- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
334 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
335 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
336
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000337- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
338
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000339- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
340 before the env.
341
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000342- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
343
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000344- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
345
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000346- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
347 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
348 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
349
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000350- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
351 without prior setting of the userptr.
352
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000353- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
354
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000355- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
356
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000357- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
358 problem on AIX.
359
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000360- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
361
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000362- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
363
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000364- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
365
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000366- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
367 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
368
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000369- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
370 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
371
372- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
373
374- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000375
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000376- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
377 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
378
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000379- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
380
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000381- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
382 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
383
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000384- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
385 returns in cStringIO.c.
386
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000387- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
388 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
389
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000390- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
391
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000392- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
393
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000394- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
395 the file system encoding.
396
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000397- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
398 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000399
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000400- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
401
402- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000403 line without newlines.
404
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000405- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
406 on Windows.
407
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000408- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000409 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
410
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000411- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
412 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
413 for large or negative values.
414
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000415- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000416 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000417
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000418- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
419
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000420- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
421 if available on the platform.
422
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000423- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
424 available on the platform.
425
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000426- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
427 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
428
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000429- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
430
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000431- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
432 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
433 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
434
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000435- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
436
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000437- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
438 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
439
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000440- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000441 file size.
442
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000443- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
444
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000445- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
446 {remove_history,replace_history}
447
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000448- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
449 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000450
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000451- stat_float_times is now True.
452
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000453- array.array objects are now picklable.
454
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000455- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
456 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
457
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000458- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
459 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
460 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
461
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000462- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
463 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000464
465Library
466-------
467
Walter Dörwaldabb02e52006-03-15 11:35:15 +0000468- Patch #1436130: codecs.lookup() now returns a CodecInfo object (a subclass
469 of tuple) that provides incremental decoders and encoders (a way to use
470 stateful codecs without the stream API). Functions
471 codecs.getincrementaldecoder() and codecs.getincrementalencoder() have
472 been added.
473
Walter Dörwald067db482006-03-15 22:17:27 +0000474- Patch #1359365: Calling next() on a closed StringIO.String object raises
475 a ValueError instead of a StopIteration now (like file and cString.String do).
476 cStringIO.StringIO.isatty() will raise a ValueError now if close() has been
477 called before (like file and StringIO.StringIO do).
Walter Dörwald197e8322006-03-15 22:13:13 +0000478
Martin v. Löwis04824ce2006-03-10 21:26:16 +0000479- A regrtest option -w was added to re-run failed tests in verbose mode.
480
Georg Brandle2b46772006-03-09 23:22:43 +0000481- Patch #1446372: quit and exit can now be called from the interactive
482 interpreter to exit.
483
Barry Warsawd3c38ff2006-03-07 09:46:03 +0000484- The function get_count() has been added to the gc module, and gc.collect()
485 grew an optional 'generation' argument.
486
Martin v. Löwisfbab90e2006-03-05 13:36:04 +0000487- A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils
488 command bdist_msi have been added.
489
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +0000490- PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager
491 and helpful context managers nested() and closing().
492
Martin v. Löwis415ed932006-02-27 19:56:30 +0000493- The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring.
494
Georg Brandl8f7c54e2006-02-20 08:40:38 +0000495- Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are
496 not allowed by the specs.
497
Georg Brandlc98eeed2006-02-19 14:57:47 +0000498- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
499 be used to control how files are opened.
500
Georg Brandlc029f872006-02-19 14:12:34 +0000501- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
502 specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
503
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000504- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
505 current file number.
506
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000507- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
508 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
509
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000510- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
511
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000512- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
513 two gigabytes.
514
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000515- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
516
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000517- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
518 return address using smtplib.
519
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000520- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
521 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000522
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000523- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
524 unless the system is Win32.
525
Tim Petersda1329b2006-02-27 16:50:01 +0000526- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000527 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
528 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
529
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000530- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
531
532- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000533
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000534- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
535
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000536- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000537 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000538
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000539- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
540 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000541
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000542- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
543
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000544- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
545
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000546- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
547 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
548 LoadError subclasses IOError.
549
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000550- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000551 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
552 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
553 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
554 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
555
556 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
557 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
558 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
559 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
560 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000561
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000562- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
563 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
564 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
565
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000566- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
567
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000568- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
569
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000570- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
571 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
572 illegal argument)
573
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000574- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
575 is an error in the format string.
576
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000577- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
578
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000579- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000580 "parent" argument.
581
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000582- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
583 for padding.
584
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000585- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
586 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
587
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000588- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
589 to get the correct encoding.
590
591- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
592 languages.
593
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000594- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
595
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000596- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
597
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000598- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
599
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000600- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
601 functionality.
602
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000603- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
604
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000605- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
606 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
607
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000608- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
609 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
610 match the Content-Length header.
611
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000612- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
613
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000614- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
615 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000616 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000617
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000618- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
619
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000620- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
621
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000622- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
623 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
624
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000625- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
626 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
627 Tkdnd.
628
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000629- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
630 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
631
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000632- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
633 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
634
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000635- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000636 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
637
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000638- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
639 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
640
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000641- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
642 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
643
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000644- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000645 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000646
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000647- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
648
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000649- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
650 error messages.
651
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000652- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
653
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000654- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
655 Bug #1224621.
656
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000657- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
658 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
659 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
660 terminates by raising StopIteration.
661
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000662- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
663
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000664- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
665 component of the path.
666
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000667- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
668 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
669 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
670 class at all.
671
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000672- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
673 files to PyPI.
674
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000675- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
676 them to PyPI.
677
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000678- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
679 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
680 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
681 work as expected.
682
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000683- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
684 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
685
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000686- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000687 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
688
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000689- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
690
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000691- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
692 to build.
693
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000694- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
695 symbolic links on Windows.
696
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000697- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000698 profile.py if available.
699
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000700- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
701
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000702- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
703 in LWPCookieJar.
704
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000705- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
706
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000707- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
708
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000709- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
710
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000711- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
712
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000713- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
714
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000715- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
716
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000717- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
718
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000719- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
720
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000721- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
722 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
723 be exploited in various ways.
724
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000725- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000726 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
727
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000728- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
729 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
730
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000731- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000732 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
733
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000734- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
735
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000736- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
737
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000738- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
739
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000740- Enhancements to the csv module:
741
742 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000743 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000744 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000745 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
746 reporting.
747 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
748 dictates.
749 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000750 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000751 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000752 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
753 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000754 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
755 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000756 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000757 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
758 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
759 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
760 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
761 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
762 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
763 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
764 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
765 without first creating a dialect class.
766 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
767 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
768 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000769 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000770 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
771 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000772 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
773 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
774 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
775 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000776 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
777 This has been fixed.
778
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000779- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
780 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
781 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
782 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
783
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000784- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
785
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000786- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
787 (Bug #951915).
788
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000789- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
790 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
791 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000792 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000793
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000794- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
795
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000796- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
797 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
798
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000799- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
800
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000801- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
802
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000803- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
804
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000805- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
806
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000807- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
808
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000809- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
810 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
811 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
812
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000813- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000814 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000815
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000816- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
817 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
818 tokenizer with very long source lines.
819
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000820- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
821 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
822 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000823
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000824- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
825 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000826
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000827- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
828 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
829
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000830- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
831 correctly.
832
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000833- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
834 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
835 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
836 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
837 between two lines.
838
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000839- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
840 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
841 handlers.
842
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000843- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000844 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
845 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000846
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000847- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
848 considering it exactly like a '*'.
849
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000850- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
851 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000852
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000853- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
854
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000855- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
856 touch the recursion limit.
857
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000858Build
859-----
860
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000861- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
862
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000863- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
864
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000865- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
866
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000867- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
868
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000869- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
870 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
871
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000872- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
873
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000874- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
875 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
876
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000877- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
878 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
879
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000880- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
881 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
882 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000883 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000884
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000885- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
886 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
887 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
888
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000889- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
890
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000891- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
892 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
893
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000894- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
895 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
896 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
897 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
898 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
899 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
900 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
901 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
902
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000903- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
904 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
905 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
906 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
907
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000908C API
909-----
910
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000911- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
912
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000913- Removed PyRange_New().
914
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000915- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
916 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
917 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
918 mappings.
919
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000920
921Tests
922-----
923
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000924- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000925
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000926- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
927 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
928
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000929
930Documentation
931-------------
932
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000933- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
934
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000935- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
936 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
937
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000938- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
939
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000940- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
941
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000942- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
943
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000944- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
945
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000946- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
947
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000948- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
949
950- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
951
952- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
953
954- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
955
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000956- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
957 Closes bug #1166582.
958
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000959- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
960 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
961 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
962
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000963Mac
964---
965
966
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000967New platforms
968-------------
969
970- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
971
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000972
973Tools/Demos
974-----------
975
Brett Cannonacde7342006-03-01 04:28:00 +0000976- Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that
977 directory for syntax highlighting in Vim. Vim directory was added and placed
978 vimrc to it (was previous up a level).
979
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000980- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
981 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
982 source files that need an encoding declaration.
983 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
984
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000985- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
986
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000987- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000988
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000989- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
990 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000991
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000992What's New in Python 2.4 final?
993===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000994
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000995*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000996
997Core and builtins
998-----------------
999
1000- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
1001 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
1002 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
1003
1004
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +00001005What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
1006==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001007
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +00001008*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001009
1010Core and builtins
1011-----------------
1012
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +00001013- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
1014 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
1015 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
1016
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001017
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001018Library
1019-------
1020
1021- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
1022 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
1023 raised is re-raised.
1024
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001025- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
1026 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
1027
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +00001028- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
1029 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
1030 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
1031 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
1032 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
1033 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
1034 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
1035 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
1036 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
1037 by the slice are recomputed now.
1038
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +00001039- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +00001040
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001041Build
1042-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +00001043
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +00001044- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
1045 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
1046 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001047
1048C API
1049-----
1050
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +00001051- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
1052
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00001053
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001054What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
1055================================
1056
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +00001057*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001058
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001059License
1060-------
1061
1062The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
1063is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
1064changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
1065Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
1066intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
1067durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
1068the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
1069License::
1070
1071 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
1072
1073says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
1074to Python 2.1.1.
1075
1076The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
1077License Version 2.
1078
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001079Core and builtins
1080-----------------
1081
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001082- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
1083 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
1084 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
1085 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
1086 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
1087 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
1088 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +00001089 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001090 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
1091 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
1092
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +00001093- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001094
1095Extension Modules
1096-----------------
1097
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +00001098- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
1099 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
1100 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
1101 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001102
1103Library
1104-------
1105
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +00001106- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
1107 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
1108 returned.
1109
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +00001110- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
1111
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +00001112- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
1113 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
1114
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +00001115- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
1116
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +00001117- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
1118 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001119
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +00001120- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
1121
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +00001122- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
1123
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001124- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +00001125 the source code is updated and reloaded.
1126
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001127Build
1128-----
1129
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001130- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001131
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001132What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
1133================================
1134
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +00001135*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001136
1137Core and builtins
1138-----------------
1139
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001140- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001141 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1142
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001143- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1144 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1145 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1146 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1147
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001148- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1149 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1150
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001151- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1152 constant.
1153
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001154- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1155 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1156 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1157 large), and to anomalies such as
1158 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1159 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1160 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1161 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001162
1163Extension modules
1164-----------------
1165
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001166- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1167 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001168 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1169 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1170 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001171
1172Library
1173-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001174
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001175- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001176 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001177 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1178 --swig-cpp.
1179
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001180- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1181 it is set.
1182
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001183- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001184
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001185- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1186 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1187 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1188 Closes bug #1039270.
1189
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001190- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001191
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001192 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001193 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1194 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1195 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1196 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1197 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1198 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1199 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1200 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1201 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1202 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1203 + Updates to documentation.
1204
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001205- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1206 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1207 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1208 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1209
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001210- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001211
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001212- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1213 applications should use the getmember function.
1214
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001215- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1216
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001217- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1218 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1219 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1220 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1221 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1222 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1223 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1224 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1225 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1226
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001227- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1228 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001229 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001230
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001231- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1232 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1233 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1234 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1235 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1236 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1237 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1238 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001239
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001240- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1241 the new public features (of which there are many).
1242
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001243- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001244 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1245 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1246 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1247 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001248 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001249
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001250- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1251
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001252- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1253 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1254 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1255 options.
1256
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001257- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1258 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1259 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1260 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1261 conditions under which non-string values work.
1262
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001263Build
1264-----
1265
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001266- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1267 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1268 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1269
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001270- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1271 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1272 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1273 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1274 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001275
1276C API
1277-----
1278
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001279- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1280 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1281
1282- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1283
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001284- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1285 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1286 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1287 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1288 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1289 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1290 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1291 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1292 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1293
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001294- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1295
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001296- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1297 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1298 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001299
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001300Tests
1301-----
1302
1303- test__locale ported to unittest
1304
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001305Mac
1306---
1307
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001308- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1309 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1310 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001311
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001312Tools/Demos
1313-----------
1314
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001315- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1316 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1317 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1318 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1319 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001320
1321
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001322What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1323=================================
1324
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001325*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001326
1327Core and builtins
1328-----------------
1329
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001330- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001331 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1332
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001333- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1334 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1335 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1336 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1337 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1338 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1339 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1340 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001341 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1342 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1343 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1344 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1345 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001346
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001347- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1348 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1349 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1350 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1351 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1352
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001353- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1354
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001355- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1356 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1357
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001358- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1359 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1360 modified the list.
1361
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001362- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1363 functions is now writable.
1364
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001365- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1366 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1367 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1368 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1369
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001370- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1371 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1372 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1373 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1374 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001375
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001376- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1377 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1378
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001379Extension modules
1380-----------------
1381
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001382- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1383
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001384- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1385 data.
1386
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001387- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1388 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1389 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1390 supposed to have been truncated away.
1391
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001392- Added socket.socketpair().
1393
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001394- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1395 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1396
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001397- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001398 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1399
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001400Library
1401-------
1402
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001403- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001404 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001405
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001406- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1407 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1408
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001409- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1410 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1411
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001412- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1413
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001414- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1415 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001416
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001417- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1418 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1419
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001420- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1421
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001422- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1423
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001424- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1425
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001426- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1427 Percivall.
1428
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001429- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1430 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1431
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001432- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1433 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1434 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001435 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001436
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001437- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1438 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1439 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1440 and exponent.
1441
1442- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1443
1444- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001445 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001446 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1447
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001448- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1449 to the readline module.
1450
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001451- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001452 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1453 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001454
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001455- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1456 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1457 contains symlinks.
1458
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001459- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1460 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1461
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001462- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1463 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1464 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1465
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001466- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1467 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1468 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1469 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1470 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1471 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1472 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1473 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1474 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1475 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1476 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1477 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1478 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1479
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001480- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1481
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001482Tools/Demos
1483-----------
1484
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001485- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1486 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1487
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001488- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1489
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001490Build
1491-----
1492
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001493- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1494 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1495 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1496 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1497 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1498 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1499 plans to do so.
1500
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001501- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1502 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1503
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001504- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1505 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1506
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001507- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1508 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1509
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001510- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1511 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1512
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001513- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1514 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1515
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001516C API
1517-----
1518
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001519..
1520
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001521Documentation
1522-------------
1523
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001524- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1525 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1526
1527- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1528 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1529 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001530
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001531New platforms
1532-------------
1533
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001534- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1535
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001536Tests
1537-----
1538
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001539..
1540
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001541Windows
1542-------
1543
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001544- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1545 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1546 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1547 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1548 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1549 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1550 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1551 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1552 the problem.
1553
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001554Mac
1555---
1556
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001557..
1558
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001559
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001560What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1561=================================
1562
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001563*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001564
1565Core and builtins
1566-----------------
1567
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001568- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1569 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1570 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1571 sensitive code.
1572
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001573- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001574 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001575
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001576 @staticmethod
1577 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001578
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001579 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001580
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001581- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1582 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1583 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1584 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1585 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1586 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1587 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1588 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1589 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1590 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1591 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1592
1593 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1594 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1595 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1596 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1597 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1598 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1599 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1600
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001601- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1602 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1603
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001604- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001605 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001606
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001607- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001608 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001609 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1610
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001611- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001612 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1613 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1614
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001615- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1616 types that support garbage collection.
1617
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001618- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1619
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001620- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1621 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1622 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1623 Jython.
1624
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001625- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1626
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001627- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1628 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1629
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001630- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1631 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1632 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001633
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001634- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1635 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1636 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1637
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001638Extension modules
1639-----------------
1640
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001641- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1642
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001643Library
1644-------
1645
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001646- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1647 TIS-620
1648
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001649- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1650 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1651 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1652 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1653 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1654 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1655 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1656 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1657 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1658 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1659
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001660- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1661
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001662- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1663 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1664 same as when the argument is omitted).
1665 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1666
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001667- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1668
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001669- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1670 schemes are offered.
1671
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001672- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1673
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001674- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1675 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1676 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1677
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001678- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1679
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001680- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1681 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1682
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001683- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1684 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1685 when dummy_threading is being used.
1686
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001687- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1688 from a tarfile.
1689
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001690- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001691 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001692
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001693- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1694 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1695 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1696 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1697
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001698- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1699 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1700
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001701- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1702 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1703 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1704 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1705 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1706 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1707 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1708 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1709 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1710 by some other method in progress).
1711
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001712- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1713 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1714 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001715
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001716- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1717
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001718- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1719 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1720 AM Kuchling.
1721
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001722- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1723 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1724 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1725
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001726- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1727 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1728 instead of unsigned.
1729
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001730- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001731 no longer part of the public API.
1732
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001733- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1734 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1735 string methods of the same name).
1736
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001737- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001738 SF patch 945642.
1739
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001740- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1741
1742 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1743
1744 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1745 DocTestSuites.
1746
1747- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1748 that provide thread-local data.
1749
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001750- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1751 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1752
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001753- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1754
1755- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1756 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1757 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1758
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001759- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1760
1761 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1762 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1763 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001764
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001765 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1766 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1767 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1768 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1769
1770 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1771 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1772
1773 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1774 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1775 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1776 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1777
1778 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1779 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1780 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1781 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1782 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1783
1784 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1785 wrapping help output.
1786
1787 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1788 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1789 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001790
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001791C API
1792-----
1793
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001794- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1795 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1796 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1797 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1798 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1799 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1800 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1801 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1802 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1803 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1804 its visible semantics have not changed.
1805
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001806- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1807 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1808
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001809Documentation
1810-------------
1811
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001812- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001813
1814 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001815 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001816
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001817 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001818
1819 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1820
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001821- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001822
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001823Tests
1824-----
1825
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001826- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001827 platforms that use the Makefile.
1828
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001829- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1830 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1831 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1832
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001833
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001834What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1835=================================
1836
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001837*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001838
1839Core and builtins
1840-----------------
1841
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001842- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1843 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1844 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1845 objects now (one object instead of three).
1846
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001847- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1848 Windows DLLs.
1849
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001850- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1851 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001852
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001853- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1854 a new .pyc magic.
1855
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001856- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1857 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1858 be there.
1859
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001860- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1861 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1862 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1863
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001864- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1865 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1866 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1867
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001868- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1869
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001870- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1871 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1872 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001873
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001874- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1875 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1876
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001877- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1878
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001879- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001880 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001881
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001882- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1883
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001884- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1885
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001886- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1887 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1888
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001889- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1890 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1891 Fixes bug #858016 .
1892
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001893- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1894 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1895 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1896
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001897- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1898 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1899 improves their performance (about 35%).
1900
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001901- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1902 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1903 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1904
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001905- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1906 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1907 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1908 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1909
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001910- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1911 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001912 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001913 length is not known).
1914
1915- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1916 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001917 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1918 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001919 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1920
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001921- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1922 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1923
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001924- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1925 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1926 keyword arguments.
1927
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001928- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1929 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1930 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1931
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001932- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1933 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1934 cases.
1935
1936- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1937 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1938 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1939 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1940 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1941 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1942 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1943 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1944 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1945 a release build.
1946
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001947- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1948 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1949
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001950- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001951 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001952
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001953- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1954 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1955 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1956 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1957 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1958 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1959 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1960 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1961 destroyed.
1962
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001963- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1964 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1965 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1966 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1967 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1968 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1969 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1970 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1971
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001972- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1973 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1974 character other than a space.
1975
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001976- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1977 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1978 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1979 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1980 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1981 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1982 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1983 attributes with the same name.
1984
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001985- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1986 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1987 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1988 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1989 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1990 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1991 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1992 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1993 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1994 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1995 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1996 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1997 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1998 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001999
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00002000- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
2001 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
2002 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
2003 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
2004 This has been repaired.
2005
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00002006- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
2007
2008- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
2009
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00002010- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
2011 over a sequence.
2012
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002013- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002014 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00002015
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00002016- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
2017
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00002018- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
2019 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
2020 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
2021 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
2022 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
2023 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
2024 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
2025 records with equal keys is unchanged).
2026
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00002027- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
2028 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
2029 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
2030
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00002031- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
2032 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
2033 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
2034 freelist.
2035
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00002036- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
2037 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
2038
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00002039- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
2040 number.
2041
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00002042- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
2043 a TypeError exception.
2044
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00002045- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
2046 820195.
2047
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00002048- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
2049 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
2050 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
2051
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002052- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00002053 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
2054 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00002055
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00002056- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
2057 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
2058 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
2059
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002060- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
2061 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002062 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002063
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002064- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00002065 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
2066 the first call.
2067
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002068
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002069Extension modules
2070-----------------
2071
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00002072- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
2073 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
2074
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002075- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
2076 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
2077 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
2078 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
2079 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
2080 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
2081 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00002082
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00002083- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
2084
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00002085- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
2086
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00002087- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
2088 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
2089
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00002090- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
2091 fewer false positives.
2092
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00002093- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
2094 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
2095
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002096- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00002097 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
2098
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00002099- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002100 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00002101 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00002102 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
2103 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00002104
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00002105- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
2106 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
2107 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
2108 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
2109
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00002110- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
2111 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
2112 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
2113 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
2114 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
2115 #897625.
2116
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00002117- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
2118 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
2119
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00002120- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
2121 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
2122 and pops on either side of the deque.
2123
2124- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
2125 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
2126
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00002127- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
2128 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
2129 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
2130 other functions that expect a function argument.
2131
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00002132- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
2133
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002134- os.getsid was added.
2135
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00002136- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
2137 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
2138 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2139
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002140- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2141
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002142- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2143
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002144- readline.clear_history was added.
2145
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002146- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2147
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002148- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2149
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002150- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2151
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002152- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2153
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002154- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2155
2156- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2157
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002158- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2159
2160- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2161
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002162- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2163 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2164 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2165
2166- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2167 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2168 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2169 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2170 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2171 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2172 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2173
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002174- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2175 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2176 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2177 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002178
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002179- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002180 iterators from a single iterable.
2181
2182- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2183 of raising a TypeError exception.
2184
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002185- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2186 as parameter.
2187
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002188Library
2189-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002190
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002191- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2192 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2193 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2194 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2195
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002196- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2197
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002198- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2199 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2200 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002201
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002202- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2203 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2204 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002205
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002206- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002207
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002208- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2209 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002210
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002211- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2212 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2213
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002214- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2215
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002216- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002217 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002218
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002219- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002220 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002221
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002222- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2223
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002224- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2225 on cygwin and mingw32.
2226
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002227- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2228
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002229- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2230 module.
2231
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002232- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2233 installation scheme for all platforms.
2234
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002235- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002236 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002237
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002238- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2239 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2240 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2241
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002242- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2243 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2244 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2245
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002246- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2247
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002248- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2249
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002250- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2251 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2252
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002253- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2254 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2255 type pattern with the same value exists.
2256
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002257- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2258 when run from the command prompt).
2259
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002260- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2261 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2262
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002263- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2264 default sort).
2265
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002266- Added global runctx function to profile module
2267
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002268- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2269
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002270- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2271
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002272- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2273
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002274- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002275 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2276 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2277 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2278 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2279 accordingly.
2280
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002281- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2282 decoding standards.
2283
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002284- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2285 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2286 called for all requests.
2287
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002288- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2289 they are passed to the compiler.
2290
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002291- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2292 indent, width and depth.
2293
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002294- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2295 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2296
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002297- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2298 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2299
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002300- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2301
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002302- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2303
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002304- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2305
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002306- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2307 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2308
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002309- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002310 for better performance.
2311
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002312- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002313
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002314- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2315 a string).
2316
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002317- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2318
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002319- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2320
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002321- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2322
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002323- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2324
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002325- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2326 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2327 list of fieldnames.
2328
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002329- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2330 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2331
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002332- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2333
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002334- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2335 empty lists.
2336
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002337- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2338 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2339 and shelves.
2340
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002341- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2342 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2343
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002344- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002345 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2346 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002347
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002348- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2349 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002350 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002351
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002352- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002353 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2354 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2355
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002356- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2357 and removed in Py2.4.
2358
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002359- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2360
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002361- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2362
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002363Tools/Demos
2364-----------
2365
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002366- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2367 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2368
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002369- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2370
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002371- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2372 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2373 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2374 destination in situations where both files are given.
2375
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002376- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2377 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2378 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2379 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2380
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002381- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2382
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002383- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2384 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2385 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2386 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2387 now.
2388
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002389- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2390 in effect
2391
2392- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2393 C-c C-h
2394
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002395- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2396 -d option was given.
2397
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002398Build
2399-----
2400
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002401- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2402 build under OS X.
2403
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002404- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2405 --enable-profiling.
2406
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002407- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2408 is configured --with-tsc.
2409
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002410- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2411 on AMD64.
2412
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002413- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2414 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2415
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002416- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2417 removed.
2418
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002419- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2420 supported (see PEP 11).
2421
2422- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2423
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002424- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2425
2426- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2427 (see PEP 11).
2428
2429- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2430 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2431
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002432C API
2433-----
2434
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002435- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2436 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2437 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2438
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002439- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2440 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2441 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2442 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2443
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002444- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2445 generator objects.
2446
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002447- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2448 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002449 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2450 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002451
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002452- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2453 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2454
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002455- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2456 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2457 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2458 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2459 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2460
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002461- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2462 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2463 about 10% faster.
2464
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002465- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2466 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2467
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002468- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2469 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2470 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2471 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2472
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002473Windows
2474-------
2475
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002476- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2477 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2478 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2479 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2480
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002481- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2482 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2483 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2484
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002485
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002486What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2487===============================
2488
2489*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2490
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002491IDLE
2492----
2493
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002494- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2495 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2496 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2497 context-menu actions.
2498
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002499- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2500 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2501 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2502 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2503 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2504 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2505 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2506 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2507 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2508
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002509
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002510What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2511=============================================
2512
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002513*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002514
2515Core and builtins
2516-----------------
2517
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002518- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002519 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002520 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2521
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002522Extension modules
2523-----------------
2524
2525- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2526 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2527 than once. This has been fixed.
2528
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002529- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2530 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2531 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2532 call.
2533
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002534- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2535
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002536Library
2537-------
2538
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002539- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2540 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2541
2542- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2543 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2544 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2545 restored.
2546
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002547IDLE
2548----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002549
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002550- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002551
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002552Build
2553-----
2554
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002555- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2556 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2557
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002558C API
2559-----
2560
2561Windows
2562-------
2563
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002564- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2565 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2566
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002567- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2568
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002569Mac
2570---
2571
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002572- Various fixes to pimp.
2573
2574- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2575
2576- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2577 more problems than it solves.
2578
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002579
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002580What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2581=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002582
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002583*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2584
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002585Core and builtins
2586-----------------
2587
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002588- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2589 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2590
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002591- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2592 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002593 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002594
2595- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2596 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2597 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002598 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002599
2600- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2601 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002602
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002603- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2604 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2605 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2606
2607- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002608 770247.
2609
2610- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002611
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002612Extension modules
2613-----------------
2614
2615- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2616 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2617
2618- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2619
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002620- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2621
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002622- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2623 contained within the _strptime module.
2624
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002625- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2626 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2627
2628- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002629 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2630
2631- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2632 the find_class attribute, if present.
2633
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002634- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002635
2636 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2637 (SF bug 763298).
2638
2639 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002640 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2641 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2642 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002643
2644 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2645
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002646Library
2647-------
2648
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002649- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2650
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002651- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2652 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2653 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2654 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2655 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2656 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2657 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2658 or Tester().
2659
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002660- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2661 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2662 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2663 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2664 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2665 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2666 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2667 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2668 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002669
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002670 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002671
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002672- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2673 weren't before was an oversight.
2674
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002675- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2676 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2677
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002678- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2679 when there are no lines.
2680
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002681- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2682 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2683
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002684- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2685 to child processes.
2686
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002687- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2688
2689- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2690
2691- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2692 xmlrpclib.
2693
2694- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2695 responses.
2696
2697- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2698 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2699
2700- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2701 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2702 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2703
2704- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2705 used as patterns.
2706
2707- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2708 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2709 than Tk 8.3.
2710
2711- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2712
2713- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002714
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002715Tools/Demos
2716-----------
2717
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002718- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2719
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002720- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2721
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002722- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002723
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002724Build
2725-----
2726
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002727- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2728
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002729- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2730
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002731- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2732 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002733
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002734- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2735 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2736 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002737
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002738C API
2739-----
2740
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002741- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2742 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2743
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002744Windows
2745-------
2746
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002747- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2748 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2749 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2750 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2751 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2752 Python exception ::
2753
2754 thread.error: can't start new thread
2755
2756 is raised now.
2757
2758- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2759 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2760 instead of from DLL teardown.
2761
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002762Mac
2763---
2764
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002765- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002766 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002767 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2768 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2769 the executable in the bundle.
2770
2771- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002772
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002773- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2774
2775- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2776 on Panther.
2777
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002778What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2779================================
2780
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002781*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002782
2783Core and builtins
2784-----------------
2785
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002786- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2787 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2788 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2789 with the -i option.
2790
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002791- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2792 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2793
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002794- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2795 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2796
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002797- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2798 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2799 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2800 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2801 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2802 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2803 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2804 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2805 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2806 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2807 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2808 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2809 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002810
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002811- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2812 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2813 embedded in a lambda expression.
2814
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002815- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2816 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2817 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2818 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2819 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2820
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002821- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2822 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2823 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2824
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002825- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2826 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2827
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002828- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2829 It's writable again.
2830
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002831- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2832 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2833 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002834 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002835
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002836- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2837 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2838 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2839
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002840Extension modules
2841-----------------
2842
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002843- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2844 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2845
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002846- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2847 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2848 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2849 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2850
2851- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2852 collection.
2853
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002854- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2855 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2856 unique within a single program run.
2857
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002858- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2859 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2860
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002861- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2862 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2863
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002864- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2865 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002866
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002867- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2868
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002869- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2870 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2871
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002872- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2873 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2874 for many BSD-derived systems.
2875
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002876
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002877Library
2878-------
2879
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002880- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2881 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2882 primary ones:
2883
2884 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2885 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2886 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2887
2888 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2889 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2890 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2891 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2892 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2893 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2894
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002895- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2896 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2897 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2898 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2899 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2900 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2901 argument.
2902
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002903- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2904 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2905 in the archive.
2906
2907- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2908 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2909
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002910- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2911 569574).
2912
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002913- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2914 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2915 no more.
2916
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002917- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2918 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2919 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2920 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2921 code coverage.
2922
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002923- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2924 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2925 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002926 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2927 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002928
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002929- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2930 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2931 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002932 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002933
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002934- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2935
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002936- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2937 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2938 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2939 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2940
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002941- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2942 handling.
2943
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002944- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2945 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2946
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002947- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2948 in socket.py.
2949
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002950- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2951
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002952- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2953 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2954 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2955 opener with proxy support.
2956
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002957- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2958
2959- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2960
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002961Tools/Demos
2962-----------
2963
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002964- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2965
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002966- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2967
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002968- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2969 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002970
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002971- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2972 files.
2973
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002974Build
2975-----
2976
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002977- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002978 different root directory.
2979
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002980C API
2981-----
2982
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002983- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2984 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2985 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2986 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2987 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2988 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2989 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2990 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2991 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2992 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2993
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002994- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2995 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2996 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2997 from Python.
2998
2999
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003000New platforms
3001-------------
3002
3003None this time.
3004
3005Tests
3006-----
3007
3008- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
3009 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
3010
3011Windows
3012-------
3013
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00003014- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
3015
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00003016- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
3017 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
3018 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
3019 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
3020 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
3021 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
3022 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
3023 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
3024 that's what it's for.
3025
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003026Mac
3027---
3028
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00003029- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
3030 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
3031 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
3032 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00003033- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
3034 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
3035- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00003036
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00003037SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
3038------------------------------------
3039
3040430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
3041598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
3042622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
3043661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
3044683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
3045697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
3046713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
3047724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
3048727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
3049729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
3050730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
3051731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
3052732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
3053733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
3054735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
3055740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
3056744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
3057745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
3058747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
3059749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
3060751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
3061753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
3062755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
3063757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
3064760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
3065
3066
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003067What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
3068================================
3069
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00003070*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003071
3072Core and builtins
3073-----------------
3074
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00003075- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
3076 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
3077
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00003078- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
3079 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
3080 and cannot be strings).
3081
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00003082- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
3083 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
3084 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
3085 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
3086
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00003087- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
3088 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
3089 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
3090 Python itself.
3091
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00003092- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
3093 the referenced object, if it has one.
3094
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00003095- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
3096 the thread started at
3097 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
3098
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00003099- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
3100 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
3101 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
3102 placed on a list index.
3103
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00003104- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
3105 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
3106 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
3107 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
3108
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003109- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
3110 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
3111 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
3112 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
3113 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
3114 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
3115 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
3116
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00003117- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
3118 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
3119 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
3120 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
3121 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
3122
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00003123- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
3124 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00003125
3126- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
3127 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
3128 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
3129 #693195.)
3130
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00003131- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
3132 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003133
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003134- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00003135 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003136 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
3137 interpreter executions, would fail.
3138
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003139- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003140 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003141 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003142
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003143Extension modules
3144-----------------
3145
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003146- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3147 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3148 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3149 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3150
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003151- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3152 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3153
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003154- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3155 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3156 and Greg Chapman.)
3157
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003158- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3159 recursively.
3160
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003161- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003162 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3163 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3164 leaks.
3165
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003166- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3167
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003168- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3169 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3170 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3171 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3172 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3173 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3174 #705836.
3175
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003176- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003177 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3178
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003179- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3180 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3181 See SF bug #692416.
3182
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003183- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3184 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3185
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003186- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3187 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3188 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003189
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003190- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003191 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3192 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3193
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003194- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3195 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3196 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3197 timeouts to work properly.
3198
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003199Library
3200-------
3201
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003202- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3203 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3204 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3205 future release.
3206
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003207- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3208 for querying platform dependent features.
3209
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003210- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003211
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003212- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3213 pickle protocol versions.
3214
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003215- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3216 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3217 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3218
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003219- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3220
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003221- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3222 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3223 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3224 modules.
3225
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003226- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3227 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3228 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3229
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003230- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3231 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3232
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003233- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3234 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3235 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3236
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003237- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003238 MS Office extensions.
3239
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003240- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3241 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3242
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003243- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3244 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3245
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003246- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3247 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3248 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3249 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3250 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3251 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3252
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003253- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3254 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3255 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003256
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003257- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3258 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3259 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3260
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003261- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3262
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003263- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3264 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3265 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3266
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003267Tools/Demos
3268-----------
3269
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003270- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3271 See the module docstring for details.
3272
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003273Build
3274-----
3275
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003276- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3277 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003278
3279C API
3280-----
3281
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003282- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3283
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003284- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3285 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3286 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3287
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003288- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3289 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003290
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003291 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3292 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3293 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003294
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003295- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003296 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3297
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003298- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3299 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3300 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003301
3302New platforms
3303-------------
3304
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003305None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003306
3307Tests
3308-----
3309
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003310- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3311 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003312
3313Windows
3314-------
3315
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003316- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3317 function.
3318
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003319- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3320 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003321
3322Mac
3323---
3324
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003325- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3326 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003327
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003328- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3329 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003330
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003331- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3332 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3333 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003334
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003335- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003336 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3337 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003338
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003339- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3340 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003341
3342
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003343What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3344=================================
3345
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003346*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003347
3348Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003349-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003350
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003351- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3352 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3353 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3354
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003355- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3356 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3357 (SF patch #664376.)
3358
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003359- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3360 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3361 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3362 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3363 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3364 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003365 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003366
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003367- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3368 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3369 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3370 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003371 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003372
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003373- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3374 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3375 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3376 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3377 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3378 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3379 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3380 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3381 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3382 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3383 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3384
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003385- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3386 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3387 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3388 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3389 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3390 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3391
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003392- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3393 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3394
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003395- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3396 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3397 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3398 case.)
3399
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003400- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3401 passed as unicode strings.
3402
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003403- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3404 See SF bug #683467.
3405
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003406- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3407 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3408
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003409- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3410
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003411- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3412
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003413- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3414 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3415 arguments.
3416
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003417- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3418 See SF bug #667147.
3419
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003420- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003421 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003422 See SF bug #676155.
3423
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003424- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003425 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003426 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3427 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3428 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3429 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3430 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3431 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003432
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003433Extension modules
3434-----------------
3435
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003436- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3437 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3438 tp_as_number pointer.
3439
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003440- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3441 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3442 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3443 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3444 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3445
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003446- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3447
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003448- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3449
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003450- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003451 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003452 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3453 patch #678531.)
3454
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003455- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3456 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3457
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003458- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3459 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3460
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003461- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3462
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003463- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3464 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3465 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3466
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003467- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3468
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003469- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3470 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3471
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003472- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003473
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003474- datetime changes:
3475
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003476 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3477
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003478 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3479 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3480 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3481 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3482 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3483 now.
3484
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003485 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003486 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3487 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003488
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003489 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003490 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003491 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3492 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3493 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3494 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003495
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003496 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3497 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3498 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003499 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3500
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003501 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3502 by a later example coded by Guido.
3503
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003504 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003505 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3506 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3507 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003508 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3509 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3510
3511 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3512 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3513 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3514 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3515 tzinfo subclass instance.
3516
3517 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3518 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3519 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3520 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3521 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3522 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3523 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3524 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003525
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003526 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3527 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3528 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3529 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3530 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003531 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3532
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003533 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003534
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003535 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3536 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3537 as a naive datetime object.
3538
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003539 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3540 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3541 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3542
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003543 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3544 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3545 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3546 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3547 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3548 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3549 comparison.
3550
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003551 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3552 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3553 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3554 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003555 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003556
3557 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003558
3559 and ::
3560
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003561 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3562
3563 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3564 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3565 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3566 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3567
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003568 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3569 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3570 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3571 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3572 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3573
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003574 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3575 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003576 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3577 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003578
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003579Library
3580-------
3581
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003582- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3583 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3584
3585- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3586 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3587 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3588 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3589 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3590 See PEP 307 for details.
3591
3592- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3593 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3594
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003595- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3596 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003597 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003598 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3599 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003600 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003601
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003602- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3603 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3604
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003605- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3606 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3607 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3608
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003609- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3610
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003611- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3612 exception.
3613
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003614- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3615 class.
3616
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003617- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3618 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3619 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3620
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003621- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3622 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3623
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003624- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003625 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3626 See SF bug #659228.
3627
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003628- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3629 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3630 See SF patch #651082.
3631
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003632- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003633
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003634- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3635 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3636
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003637- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003638 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003639
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003640- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3641 DOS paths from other platforms.
3642
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003643Tools/Demos
3644-----------
3645
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003646- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3647 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3648 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3649 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3650 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3651 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3652 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3653 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3654 example:
3655
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003656 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3657 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003658
3659 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3660
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003661
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003662Build
3663-----
3664
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003665- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3666 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3667 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003668 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3669
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003670 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3671
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003672- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3673 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3674 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3675 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3676 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3677 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3678 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3679 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3680 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3681
3682- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3683 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3684 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3685 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3686
3687- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3688 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3689
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003690C API
3691-----
3692
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003693- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3694 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003695
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003696- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3697 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3698 tp_as_number pointer.
3699
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003700- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3701 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3702 (SF #681367)
3703
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003704- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3705 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3706 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3707 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003708
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003709Tests
3710-----
3711
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003712- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003713 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3714 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3715 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3716 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3717 pydoc.)
3718
3719- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3720
3721- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003722
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003723Windows
3724-------
3725
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003726- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3727 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3728 time).
3729
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003730- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3731 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3732
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003733- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3734 release without strong cryptography.
3735
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003736- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003737 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003738
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003739- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3740 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3741
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003742Mac
3743---
3744
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003745- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3746 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003747
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003748- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3749 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3750 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003751
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003752- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3753 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003754
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003755- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3756 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3757 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3758 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003759
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003760- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003761 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3762 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3763 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003764
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003765
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003766What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003767=================================
3768
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003769*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003770
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003771Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003772--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003773
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003774- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3775
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003776- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3777 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003778 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003779 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003780 a different meaning than before.
3781
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003782- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003783 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003784 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003785
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003786- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003787 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003788 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003789
3790- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3791 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3792 and deallocation.
3793
3794- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3795 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3796
3797- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3798 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3799 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3800 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3801 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3802
3803- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3804 now detected by the garbage collector.
3805
3806- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3807 [SF bug 519621]
3808
3809- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3810 identifier.
3811
3812- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3813 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3814 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3815 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3816 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3817 [SF bug 563060]
3818
3819- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3820 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3821 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3822 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3823 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3824
3825- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3826 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3827 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3828
3829- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3830
3831- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3832 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3833 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3834 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3835 state of the slots would be lost.)
3836
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003837Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003838-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003839
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003840- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003841 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3842 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3843 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3844 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003845 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3846 Jython 2.1.
3847
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003848- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003849 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003850 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3851 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3852 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3853 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3854 these, see PEP 302.
3855
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003856- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3857 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3858 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3859
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003860- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3861 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3862 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3863
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003864- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3865 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3866 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3867
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003868- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3869 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3870 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3871 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3872 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3873 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3874 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3875 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3876 releases or implementations.
3877
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003878- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003879 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3880 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003881
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003882- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3883 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3884
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003885- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3886 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3887 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3888
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003889- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3890 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3891
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003892- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3893 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003894 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3895 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003896
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003897- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3898 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3899 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3900 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3901 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3902
3903 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3904 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3905 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3906 pattern.
3907
3908 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3909 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3910 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3911 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3912
3913 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3914 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3915 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3916 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3917 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3918 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3919
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003920- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3921 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3922 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3923 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3924 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3925 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3926 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3927 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003928
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003929- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3930 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3931 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3932 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3933 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003934 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3935 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3936 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3937 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3938 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3939 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3940 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003941
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003942- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3943 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3944
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003945- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3946 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3947 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3948 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3949 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3950 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3951 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3952 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3953 to Zack Weinberg!
3954
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003955- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3956 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3957 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3958 type. This has been fixed now.
3959
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003960- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3961 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3962 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3963
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003964- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3965 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3966 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3967 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3968 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3969 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3970 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3971 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003972 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003973
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003974- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3975 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3976 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003977
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003978- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3979 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3980 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3981 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3982 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3983 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3984 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3985 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003986 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003987 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3988 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3989
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003990- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3991 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3992 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3993 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3994 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3995 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3996 this.)
3997
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003998- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3999 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00004000 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004001 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00004002 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
4003 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00004004 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
4005 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00004006
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00004007- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
4008 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
4009 currently running.
4010
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00004011- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
4012 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
4013 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
4014 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
4015
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00004016- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
4017 as directory names.
4018
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00004019- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
4020 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
4021
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00004022- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
4023 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
4024
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004025- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00004026 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
4027 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00004028
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00004029- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
4030 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
4031 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
4032 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
4033 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
4034
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004035- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
4036 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
4037 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
4038 removed.
4039
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00004040- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
4041 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
4042 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
4043
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00004044- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
4045 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
4046 to __debug__.
4047
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00004048- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
4049 string to the left with zeros. For example,
4050 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
4051
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00004052- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
4053 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
4054 deprecated now.
4055
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00004056- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
4057 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
4058 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00004059
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00004060- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
4061 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
4062 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
4063 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
4064 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00004065
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00004066- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
4067 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
4068
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004069- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
4070 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
4071 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004072 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004073 is backward compatible.
4074
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00004075- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
4076 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
4077 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
4078 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
4079 could access a pointer to freed memory.
4080
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00004081- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
4082 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
4083 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
4084 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
4085 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
4086 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004087
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00004088- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
4089 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
4090
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004091- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
4092 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
4093
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004094- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
4095 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
4096 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
4097 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
4098 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
4099
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00004100- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
4101 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
4102 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
4103
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004104- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00004105 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
4106
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00004107- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
4108 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
4109 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00004110
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00004111- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
4112 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
4113
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00004114- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
4115 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
4116 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
4117
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00004118- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
4119
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004120Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004121-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004122
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00004123- Added three operators to the operator module:
4124 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
4125 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
4126 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
4127
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00004128- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
4129
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00004130- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
4131 archives.
4132
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004133- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
4134 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
4135 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
4136
4137 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
4138
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004139- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4140 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4141 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004142 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004143
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004144- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4145 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4146 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4147 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004148 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4149 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4150 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4151 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004152
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004153- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4154 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004155
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004156- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4157
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004158- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4159 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4160
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004161- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4162 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4163 supported.
4164
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004165- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4166
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004167- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4168 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004169
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004170- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4171 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4172
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004173- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4174
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004175- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4176 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4177
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004178- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4179 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4180 functions but callable type objects.
4181
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004182- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004183 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004184 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004185
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004186- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4187 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004188
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004189- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4190 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004191
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004192- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4193 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4194 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4195 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4196
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004197- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4198 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004199
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004200- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4201 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4202 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4203 and __imul__.
4204
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004205- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004206 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4207 is called.
4208
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004209- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4210 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4211 interpreter was compiled.
4212
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004213- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4214 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4215 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004216 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004217 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4218 1, not 2.
4219
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004220- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4221 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4222 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4223 limit.
4224
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004225- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4226 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4227 bug #623464.
4228
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004229- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4230 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4231 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4232 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4233
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004234Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004235-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004236
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004237- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4238
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004239- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4240 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4241 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4242 with Python 2.3a2.
4243
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004244- os.path exposes getctime.
4245
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004246- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004247 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004248 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004249 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004250 unit tests of floating point results.
4251
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004252- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4253 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4254 has been increased.
4255
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004256- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4257 executed.
4258
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004259- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4260 postinstallation script.
4261
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004262- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4263 test the current module.
4264
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004265- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004266 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4267 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4268 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4269 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4270
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004271- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004272 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004273 Ward's Optik package.
4274
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004275- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4276 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4277 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4278 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4279
4280- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4281 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004282 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004283
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004284- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4285 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4286 shelf are binary pickles.
4287
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004288- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4289 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4290
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004291- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4292 modules are iterators now.
4293
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004294- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4295 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4296 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4297 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4298 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4299 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004300
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004301- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4302 with their entity value.
4303
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004304- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4305
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004306- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4307 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004308
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004309- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4310 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004311 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004312
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004313- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4314 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4315 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4316 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4317 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4318 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4319 main():
4320
4321 import locale
4322 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4323
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004324- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4325 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4326
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004327- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4328 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4329 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4330 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4331 to the new standard.
4332
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004333- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4334 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4335 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4336 an extension to the database.
4337
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004338- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4339 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4340 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4341 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004342 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004343
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004344- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004345 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004346
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004347- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4348 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4349 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4350 bounded integers.
4351
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004352- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4353 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4354 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4355 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4356 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4357 in existence.
4358
4359 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4360 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4361 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4362 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4363 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4364 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4365
4366 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4367 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4368 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4369 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4370
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004371- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4372 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4373 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4374
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004375- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4376
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004377- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4378 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4379 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4380 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4381
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004382- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4383 argument.
4384
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004385- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4386 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4387 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4388 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4389 [SF patch 560794].
4390
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004391- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4392 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4393 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004394 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4395 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4396 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004397
4398- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4399 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004400
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004401- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4402 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4403 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4404 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004405
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004406- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4407 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4408 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4409 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4410 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4411
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004412- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004413
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004414- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4415
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004416- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4417 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4418 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4419 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4420 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4421 identical to None.
4422
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004423- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4424 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4425 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4426 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4427 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4428 results now.
4429
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004430- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4431 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4432
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004433- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4434 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4435 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4436 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4437 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4438 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4439 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4440 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4441
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004442- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4443
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004444- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4445 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4446
4447- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4448 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4449 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4450 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4451 and other systems.
4452
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004453- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4454 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4455 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4456 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 +00004457 work well with these.
4458
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004459- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4460
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004461- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004462 connections.
4463
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004464- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4465 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4466 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4467
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004468- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4469 sets
4470
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004471- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4472 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4473 name.
4474
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004475- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4476 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4477 passed in.
4478
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004479- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004480 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004481 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4482 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004483
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004484- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4485
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004486- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4487
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004488- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4489 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4490 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4491
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004492- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4493 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4494 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4495 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004496 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004497
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004498- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004499 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004500 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004501
4502- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4503 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4504 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4505
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004506- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004507 the value of its expression argument.
4508
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004509- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4510 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4511 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4512
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004513- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4514 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4515 skipstone browser was included.
4516
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004517- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4518 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4519
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004520Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004521-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004522
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004523- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4524 names in addition to accepting file names.
4525
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004526- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4527 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4528 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4529 still used and useful.)
4530
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004531- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4532 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4533 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4534 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004535
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004536- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4537 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4538 the generated binary.
4539
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004540Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004541-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004542
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004543- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4544
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004545- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4546 except in the hands of experts.
4547
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004548- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004549 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4550 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4551 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004552
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004553- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4554 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4555 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4556 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4557 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4558 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4559 builds.
4560
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004561- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4562 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4563 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4564 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4565 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4566 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4567 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4568 new type.
4569
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004570- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004571
4572 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4573 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4574 positive infinities.
4575
4576 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4577 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4578 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4579 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4580 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4581 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4582 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4583
4584 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4585
4586 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4587
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004588- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4589 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4590 size of the executable.
4591
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004592- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4593 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4594 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4595 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004596
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004597- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4598
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004599- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4600 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4601 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004602
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004603- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4604 well as Unix.
4605
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004606- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4607 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4608 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4609 modules in the README file for details.
4610
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004611C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004612-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004613
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004614- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4615 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004616 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004617 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004618 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004619
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004620- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4621 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4622 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4623 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4624 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4625 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004626 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004627 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4628 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4629 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4630 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4631 aligned.)
4632
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004633- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4634 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4635 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4636
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004637- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4638 level.
4639
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004640- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4641 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4642 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4643 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4644 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4645
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004646- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4647 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4648 code.
4649
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004650- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4651 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4652 adjusting for negative indices.
4653
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004654- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4655 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4656 object.
4657
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004658- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4659 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4660 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4661
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004662- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4663 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004664
4665- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4666
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004667- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4668 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4669 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4670 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4671
4672- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4673
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004674- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004675
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004676- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004677 without going through the buffer API.
4678
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004679- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004680
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004681- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4682 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4683 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4684 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4685
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004686- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4687 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4688
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004689- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004690 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4691
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004692New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004693-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004694
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004695- OpenVMS is now supported.
4696
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004697- AtheOS is now supported.
4698
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004699- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4700
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004701- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4702
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004703Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004704-----
4705
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004706- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4707 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4708 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004709
4710Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004711-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004712
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004713- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4714 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4715 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4716 bugs.
4717 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004718 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004719 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4720 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004721 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004722
4723- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004724 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004725
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004726- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4727 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4728
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004729- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4730 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004731 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004732 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4733
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004734- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4735 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4736 use files" uninstall option).
4737
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004738- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4739
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004740- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4741 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4742
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004743- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4744 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4745 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4746
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004747- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4748 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4749 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4750 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4751 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004752 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4753 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4754 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004755
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004756- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004757 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004758 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4759 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4760 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4761 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4762 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4763 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4764 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4765 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4766 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4767 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4768 work around.
4769
4770- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4771 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4772 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4773 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4774 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4775 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4776 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4777 specified with O_CREAT too).
4778
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004779Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004780----
4781
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004782- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004783
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004784- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4785 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4786 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4787
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004788- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4789 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4790 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4791
4792- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4793 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4794 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4795 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4796 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4797 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4798 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4799 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004800
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004801- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4802 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4803 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004804
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004805- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4806 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4807 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4808 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4809 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004810
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004811- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4812 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4813 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004814
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004815- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4816 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004817
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004818- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4819 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4820 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4821 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4822 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004823
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004824- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4825 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4826 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4827
4828- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4829 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4830 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004831
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004832- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4833 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4834 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4835 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004836 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004837
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004838- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4839 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004840
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004841- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4842 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004843
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004844- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004845 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004846 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4847 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004848
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004849
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004850What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004851===============================
4852
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004853*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4854
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004855Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004856--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004857
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004858- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4859 with a custom metaclass.
4860
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004861Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004862-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004863
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004864- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4865 are proxies.
4866
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004867Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004869
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004870- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4871 very short strings.
4872
4873- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4874 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4875 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4876 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4877 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4878
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004879Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004881
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004882- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4883 close or delete time).
4884
4885- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4886 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4887
4888- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4889
4890- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004891 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004892
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004893Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004894-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004895
4896Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004898
4899C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004900-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004901
4902New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004903-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004904
4905Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004906-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004907
4908Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004909-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004910
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004911- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4912
4913- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4914 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4915
4916- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4917 deleted at process exit time.
4918
4919- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4920 in backslash.
4921
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004922Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004923----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004924
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004925- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4926 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4927 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4928
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004929
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004930What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004931===========================
4932
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004933*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4934
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004935Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004936--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004937
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004938- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4939 been extensively updated. See
4940
4941 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4942
4943 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4944
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004945- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4946 deleted!
4947
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004948- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4949 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4950 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4951 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4952 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4953
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004954- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4955
4956 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4957 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4958
4959 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4960 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4961 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4962 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4963 supported anyway.
4964
4965 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4966 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4967
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004968- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4969 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4970 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4971 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4972 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004973
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004974- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4975 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4976 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4977
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004978Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004979-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004980
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004981- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4982 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4983 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4984 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4985 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4986 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004987 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4988 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4989 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4990 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004991
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004992- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4993 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4994 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4995
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004996Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004997-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004998
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004999- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
5000
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005001Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005002-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005003
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00005004- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
5005 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
5006 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
5007 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
5008 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
5009 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
5010
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00005011- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
5012
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00005013- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
5014
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00005015- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
5016
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005017- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
5018 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
5019 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
5020
5021- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
5022
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005023Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005024-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005025
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005026- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
5027 off a search on Google.
5028
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005029Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005030-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005031
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005032- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
5033 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
5034 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
5035 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
5036 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
5037 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
5038 other platforms should do likewise.
5039
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00005040- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
5041 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
5042 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
5043
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005044C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005045-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005046
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005047- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
5048 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
5049 producing key-value pairs.
5050
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005051- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00005052 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00005053 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
5054 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
5055 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
5056 previously went unchallenged.
5057
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005058New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005059-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005060
5061Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005062-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005063
5064Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005065-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005066
5067Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005068----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005069
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00005070- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
5071 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005072
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005073- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
5074 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
5075 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
5076 home.
5077
5078
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005079What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005080===========================
5081
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005082*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
5083
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005084Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005086
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005087- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
5088 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005089
5090 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005091 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005092
5093 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
5094 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005095 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005096 This needs to be documented.
5097
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00005098- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
5099 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
5100
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00005101- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
5102 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
5103 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
5104
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00005105- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
5106 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
5107
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005108- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
5109 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
5110 class forbids it).
5111
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00005112- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
5113 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
5114 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
5115
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005116- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
5117
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005118Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005119-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005120
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005121- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
5122 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005123 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005124
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005125- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
5126 (like 1 + '').
5127
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005128Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005129-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005130
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005131- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
5132 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
5133 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
5134 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005135 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005136 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
5137
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00005138- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5139 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5140 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5141 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5142
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005143- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5144 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005145 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5146 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5147 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005148
5149- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5150 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005151
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005152- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5153 bytes on its input.
5154
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005155Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005156-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005157
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005158- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005159 convenience function.
5160
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005161- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5162 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5163 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005164 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5165 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5166 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5167 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5168 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5169 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005170
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005171- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5172 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5173 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5174 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5175
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005176- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5177 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5178 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5179
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005180- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5181 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5182 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5183 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5184
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005185- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5186 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005187 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005188 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5189 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5190 new -l and -e options.
5191
5192- statcache is now deprecated.
5193
5194- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5195 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005196 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005197 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5198 time properly taken into account.
5199
5200- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5201 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5202 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5203 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5204
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005205Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005206-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005207
5208Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005209-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005210
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005211- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5212 is built with libdb3 if available.
5213
5214- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5215
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005216C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005218
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005219- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5220 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5221 PySequence_Size().
5222
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005223- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5224
5225- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5226 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5227 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5228
5229- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5230 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5231
5232- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5233 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5234
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005235New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005236-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005237
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005238- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5239 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5240
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005241- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5242 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5243
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005244- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5245
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005246Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005247-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005248
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005249- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5250 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5251
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005252Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005253-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005254
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005255Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005256----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005257
5258- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5259 removed completely in the next release.
5260
5261- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5262 OSX.
5263
5264- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5265 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5266
5267- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5268
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005269
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005270What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005271===========================
5272
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005273*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5274
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005275Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005276--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005277
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005278- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005279 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005280 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005281 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5282 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005283 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5284 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005285 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5286 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005287
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005288- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5289 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5290
5291- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5292 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5293
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005294Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005295-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005296
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005297- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5298 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5299 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5300 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5301 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5302 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5303 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5304 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5305
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005306- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5307 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5308 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5309 example).
5310
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005311- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005312 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005313 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005314 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005315
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005316- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5317 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5318 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005319 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005320
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005321- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5322 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5323 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5324 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5325 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5326 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5327
5328 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5329
5330 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5331
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005332Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005333-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005334
5335- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5336
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005337- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5338
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005339- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5340 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005341
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005342- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5343 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5344 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5345 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5346 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5347 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005348 attributes.
5349
5350- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5351 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5352 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005353
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005354- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5355 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5356 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005357
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005358- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5359 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5360 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005361 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5362 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5363
5364- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5365 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005366
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005367Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005368-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005369
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005370- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5371 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5372
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005373- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5374 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5375 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5376 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5377
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005378- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5379 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5380 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5381 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5382
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005383 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5384 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5385 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5386 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5387 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5388 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5389 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5390 without losing information).
5391
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005392- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005393 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5394 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5395 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5396 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5397 module).
5398
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005399 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005400 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5401 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5402 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5403 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005404
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005405- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005406 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5407 encoding.
5408
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005409- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5410 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5411
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005412- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005413 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5414
5415- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5416 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5417 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5418 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5419
5420- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5421
5422- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5423 ON, and OFF.
5424
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005425- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5426 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5427
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005428Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005429-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005430
5431- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5432 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5433 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005434
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005435- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5436 been added: -X and -E.
5437
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005438Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005439-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005440
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005441- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5442 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5443
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005444C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005445-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005446
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005447- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5448 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5449 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5450 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5451 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5452
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005453- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5454 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5455 as long) arguments.
5456
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005457- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5458 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5459 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5460 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5461 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5462 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5463
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005464- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5465 input.
5466
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005467New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005468-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005469
5470Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005471-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005472
5473Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005474-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005475
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005476- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5477 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5478 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5479
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005480- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5481 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5482 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005483 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005484
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005485 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5486 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5487 import signal
5488 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005489
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005490 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005491 while 1:
5492 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005493 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005494 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5495 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5496 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5497 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005498
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005499
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005500What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5501===========================
5502
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5504
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005505Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005506--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005507
5508- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5509 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5510 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5511
5512- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5513 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5514 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5515 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5516 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5517 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5518 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005519
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005520- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005521 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005522 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5523 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5524 associate a docstring with a property.
5525
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005526- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5527 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5528 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5529 other built-in object types.
5530
5531- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5532 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5533 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5534 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5535 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5536
5537- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5538 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5539
5540- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5541 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005542 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005543 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5544 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5545 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5546 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5547 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5548
5549- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5550 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5551 class.
5552
5553- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5554 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5555 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5556 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5557
5558- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5559 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5560 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5561 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5562
5563- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5564 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5565
5566- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5567 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5568 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5569 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5570 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005571 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005572 with the same value as s.
5573
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005574- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5575
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005576Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005577----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005578
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005579- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5580
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005581- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5582 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5583 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5584 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5585 objects.
5586
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005587- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5588 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005589 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5590 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5591
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005592- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5593 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5594 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5595
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005596Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005597-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005598
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005599- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5600 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5601 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5602 by the instances.
5603
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005604- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5605 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5606 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5607
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005608- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5609 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5610 before the entire comparison is complete.
5611
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005612- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5613 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5614 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5615
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005616- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5617 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5618 getwriter().
5619
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005620- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5621 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5622
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005623- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005624 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5625 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5626
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005627- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5628 iterable object.
5629
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005630- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5631 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005632
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005633- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5634 authentication.
5635
5636- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5637 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005638
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005639- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005640 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5641 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5642 a sample driver.)
5643
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005644Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005645-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005646
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005647- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5648 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5649 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5650 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5651 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5652 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5653 kernel has large file support.
5654
5655- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5656 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5657 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5658 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5659 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5660
5661- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5662 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5663 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5664
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005665C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005666-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005667
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005668- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5669 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5670
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005671New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005672-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005673
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005674- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5675 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5676
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005677Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005678-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005679
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005680- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5681 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5682 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5683 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5684 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5685
5686- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5687 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5688 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5689 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5690
5691- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5692 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5693
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005694Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005695-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005696
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005697- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005698 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5699 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005700
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005701
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005702What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5703===========================
5704
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005705*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5706
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005707Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005708----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005709
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005710- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5711 big to represent as a C double.
5712
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005713- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5714 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5715 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5716 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5717 restriction).
5718
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005719- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5720 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5721 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5722 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5723 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5724
5725 >>> dir([])
5726 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5727 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5728 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5729 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5730 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5731 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5732 'reverse', 'sort']
5733
5734 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5735
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005736- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005737 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5738 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5739 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5740 OverflowError exception.
5741
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005742- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005743 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005744 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5745 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5746 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5747 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5748 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005749 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005750 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5751 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5752
5753 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5754 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5755 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5756 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005757
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005758- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005759 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5760 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5761 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5762 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5763 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5764 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5765 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5766 once it is created.
5767
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005768- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5769 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5770 (key, value) pairs.
5771
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005772- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005773 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5774 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5775
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005776- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5777 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5778 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5779 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5780 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005781
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005782- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005783 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5784 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5785
5786 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5787
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005788- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005789 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5790
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005791Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005792-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005793
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005794- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005795 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5796 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005797
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005798- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5799 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5800 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5801 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5802 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5803 in this area anymore).
5804
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005805- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5806 threading.Timer.
5807
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005808- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5809 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5810
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005811- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005812 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5813
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005814- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005815 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5816 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5817 converted to Python longs.
5818
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005819- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005820 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5821
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005822- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5823 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5824 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5825
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005826Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005827-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005828
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005829- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5830 division operators as per PEP 238.
5831
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005832Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005833-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005834
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005835- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5836 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5837 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5838 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5839
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005840C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005841-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005842
5843- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005844
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005845- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5846 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005847 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005848
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005849 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5850 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005851 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005852 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005853
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005854- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005855 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5856 module:
5857
5858 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005859
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005860 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5861 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005862
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005863 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5864 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005865
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005866 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5867
5868 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5869
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005870- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005871 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5872 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5873 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005874
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005875New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005876-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005877
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005878- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5879 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5880 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5881 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5882 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005883
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005884Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005885-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005886
5887Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005888-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005889
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005890- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5891 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5892 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5893 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005894 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5895 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5896 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5897 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5898 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005899
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005900- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005901 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5902
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005903
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005904What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5905===========================
5906
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005907*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5908
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005909Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005910-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005911
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005912- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5913 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5914
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005915- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5916 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5917 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005918
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005919- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5920 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5921 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5922 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005923
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005924- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5925
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005926- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005927
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005928Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005929-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005930
5931- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005932 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005933 the module docstring for details.
5934
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005935Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005936-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005937
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005938- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005939 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5940 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5941 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005942
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005943- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5944 Nick Mathewson.
5945
5946Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005947----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005948
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005949- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5950 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5951 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5952 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5953 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5954 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5955 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5956 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5957
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005958- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5959 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5960 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5961 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5962
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005963- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5964 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5965 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5966 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5967 come a long way).
5968
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005969- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5970 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5971 write filters for these warnings).
5972
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005973- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5974 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5975 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5976 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5977 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5978
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005979- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5980 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5981 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5982 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5983 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5984 older distribution.
5985
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005986Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005987-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005988
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005989- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5990 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005991 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005992
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005993- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5994 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5995 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5996
5997- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5998
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005999- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
6000
6001- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
6002
6003- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
6004
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006005- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00006006
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00006007- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
6008
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006009New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006010-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006011
6012C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006013-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00006014
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00006015- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
6016 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
6017 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
6018 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
6019 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
6020 against buffer overruns.
6021
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006022- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006023 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
6024 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00006025 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
6026 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
6027 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
6028
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00006029- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
6030 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
6031 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
6032 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
6033 deprecated.
6034
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006035Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006036-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00006037
6038- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
6039 relevant is found.
6040
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00006041
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006042What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006043===========================
6044
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006045*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
6046
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006047Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006048----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006049
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006050- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
6051 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
6052 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
6053 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
6054 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
6055 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
6056 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
6057 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006058 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006059 repaired.
6060
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006061- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00006062 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006063 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
6064 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
6065 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
6066 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
6067 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
6068 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
6069 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
6070 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
6071
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00006072- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
6073 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
6074 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
6075 leading BMO character).
6076
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006077- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
6078 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
6079 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
6080
6081 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
6082 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
6083 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006084
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006085 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
6086 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
6087 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
6088 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
6089 for various simple to use conversions.
6090
6091 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
6092 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
6093
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006094 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6095 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
6096 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
6097 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
6098 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6099 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
6100 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6101 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
6102 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6103 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
6104 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6105 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
6106 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6107 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
6108 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006109
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006110- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
6111 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
6112 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006113 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006114 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006115
6116 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006117 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
6118 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
6119 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
6120 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
6121 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006122 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
6123 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006124
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006125 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
6126 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
6127 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006128 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006129
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00006130- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
6131 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
6132 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
6133 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
6134 floating arithmetic,
6135
6136 x = 9007199254740992.0
6137 print long(x)
6138
6139 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6140 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6141 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6142 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6143 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6144 functions are of good quality).
6145
6146 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6147 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6148 algorithms to break.
6149
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006150- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6151 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6152 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6153 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6154 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6155 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6156 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6157 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6158 order.
6159
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006160- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6161 operation along the most common code paths.
6162
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006163- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6164 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6165
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006166- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6167 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6168 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6169 {}.update(UserDict())
6170
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006171- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6172 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6173 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6174 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6175 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6176 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6177 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6178 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6179
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006180- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006181 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006182
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006183 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006184 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6185 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006186 join() method of strings
6187 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006188 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6189 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006190 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006191 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006192
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006193- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6194 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6195
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006196- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6197 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6198
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006199- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6200 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6201 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6202 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6203
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006204- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6205 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006206 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006207 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6208 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006209
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006210- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6211
6212
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006213Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006214-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006215
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006216- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006217 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006218 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6219 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6220
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006221- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6222 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6223
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006224- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6225 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6226 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6227 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6228
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006229- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6230 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6231 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6232
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006233- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6234
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006235- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6236
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006237- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6238 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6239 that are still imported into string.py).
6240
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006241- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6242
6243- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6244 Now it does.
6245
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006246- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6247
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006248- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6249 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6250 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6251 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6252 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006253 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6254 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006255
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006256- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6257 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6258 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6259 'help(object)'.
6260
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006261Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006262-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006263
6264- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006265 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006266 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6267 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6268
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006269- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006270 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6271 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006272
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006273C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006274-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006275
6276- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6277 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006278
6279----
6280
6281**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**