blob: ecd40be7cc3aa2505fd320a476287829a38162b0 [file] [log] [blame]
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
2=================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +00006- Two changes to from...import:
7
8 1) "from M import X" now works even if M is not a real module; it's
9 basically a getattr() operation with AttributeError exceptions
10 changed into ImportError.
11
12 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to
13 import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but
14 filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not
15 __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M.
16
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000017- File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest
18 way to iterate over all lines in a file:
19
20 for line in file.xreadlines():
21 ...do something to line...
22
23 See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
24 other file-like objects.
25
26- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
27 line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized
28 quite a bit in platform-specific ways, both on Windows (using an
29 incredibly complex, but nevertheless thread-safe), and on systems
30 (like Linux) that support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and
31 funlockfile(). In addition, the fileinput module, while still slow,
32 has been sped up too, by using file.readlines(sizehint).
33
34- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
35 command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
36 See the description of the warnings module below.
37
38- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly
39 affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
40 numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
41 occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
42 subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
Guido van Rossumae72d872001-01-11 15:00:14 +000043 is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000044 supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
45 reversed arguments.
46
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +000047- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
48 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
49
50 echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
51
52 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
53 to execve(2)).
54
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000055- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000056 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
57 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
58 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
59 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
60 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
61 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
62
63 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000064 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000065 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
66 >>> hex(-0x42L)
67 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
68
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000069 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
70 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
71 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
72
73 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
74 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
75 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
76 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
77 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
78
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +000079- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
80 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
81 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
82 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
83 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
84 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
85
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000086Standard library
87
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +000088- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
89 issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in
90 exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
91 option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
92 turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category])
93 issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
94 PyErr_Warn(category, message).
95
96- A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory
97 function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the
98 absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
99 file(-like) object:
100
101 import xreadlines
102 for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
103 ...do something to line...
104
105 This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
106 file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object
107 (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
108
109 for line in file.xreadlines():
110 ...do something to line...
111
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000112- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
113 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
114 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
115 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
116 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
117 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +0000118 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
119 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000120
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000121- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
122 default in the TCPServer class.
123
124- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
125 the caller. This is intended only as a building block for
126 higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
127
128Build issues
129
130- On Linux (and possibly other Unix platforms), the readline and
131 _curses modules are automatically configured through
132 Modules/Setup.config. These, and the bsddb module (which was
133 already dynamically configured) are now built as shared libraries by
134 default.
135
136- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
137 -- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
138 implementations.
139
140- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
141 C++ compiler if one is found.
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000142
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +0000143Windows changes
144
145- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
146 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
147 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
148 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
149 and recompile Python from source).
150
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000151- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3
152 subdirectory is no more!
153
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000154
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000155What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +0000156=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000157
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +0000158Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000159changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
160from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
161HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000162
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000163Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
164the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
165http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +0000166
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000167--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +0000168
169======================================================================
170
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000171What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
172==============================================
173
174Standard library
175
176- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
177 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
178 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
179
180- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
181 it from finding an existing .mo file.
182
183- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
184
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000185- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
186 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
187 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
188 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
189 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000190
191- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
192 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
193 extend past the end of the file.
194
195- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
196 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
197 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
198
199- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
200 redirect response.
201
202- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
203 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
204 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
205 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
206 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
207 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
208 use both normcase() and normpath().
209
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000210- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
211 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000212
213- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
214 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
215 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
216
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000217- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
218 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
219 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
220 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
221 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000222
223Internals
224
225- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
226 test_sre to fail.
227
228Build issues
229
230- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
231 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
232 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000233 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000234 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000235
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000236- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000237
238Tools and other miscellany
239
240- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
241 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
242 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
243 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
244 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000245 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000246
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000247What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
248=====================================================
249
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000250What is release candidate 1?
251
252We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
253intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
254more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
255widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
256release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
257any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
258release candidate.
259
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000260All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000261to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000262
263Core language, builtins, and interpreter
264
265- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
266 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
267
268- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
269 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
270 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
271 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
272
273- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
274 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
275 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
276
277- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
278 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
279
280- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
281 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
282
283Standard library
284
285- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
286 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
287
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000288- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000289 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000290
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000291- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
292 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000293
294- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
295
296- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
297 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
298 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
299 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000300 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000301
302- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
303 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000304 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000305
306 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
307 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000308 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000309
310 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
311 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
312 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
313 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
314
315- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
316 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
317 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
318 compile-time.
319
320- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
321
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000322- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
323 programs with very long string literals.
324
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000325Internals
326
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000327- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000328 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
329 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
330 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
331 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
332 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
333 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
334
335- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
336 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
337 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
338 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
339 container attributes is complete.
340
341- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
342 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
343 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
344
345- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
346 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
347
348- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
349 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
350
351- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
352
353Build issues
354
355- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000356 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000357 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000358
359- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
360 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
361
362- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
363
364- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
365 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
366
367- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000368 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000369
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000370- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
371 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
372 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
373 line during build on PPC BeOS.
374
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000375- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000376 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000377
378- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
379
380- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
381
382Tools and other miscellany
383
384- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
385
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000386- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
387 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000388
389What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
390========================================
391
392Core language, builtins, and interpreter
393
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000394- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000395 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000396
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000397- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
398 Python version number and exit immediately.
399
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000400- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
401
402- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
403 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
404 encoding before lookup.
405
406- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
407 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
408 string is too long."
409
410- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000411 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000412
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000413
414Standard library and extensions
415
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000416- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000417 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
418
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000419- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000420
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000421- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000422
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000423- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000424
425- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000426 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000427
428- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
429
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000430- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000431
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000432- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000433
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000434- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
435 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
436 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
437 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
438 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000439
440- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
441
442- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
443
444- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
445
446- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
447 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
448 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
449
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000450- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000451 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
452 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
453
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000454- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000455
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000456- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
457 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
458 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
459 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
460
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000461- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
462 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000463
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000464- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
465 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000466
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000467- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000468 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
469 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000470
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000471- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000472 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000473
474- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
475 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
476 matches cPickle.
477
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000478- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000479
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000480- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000481
482- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000483 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000484 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000485
486- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000487 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000488
489- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000490 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000491 few cycles during startup since the first call to
492 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
493 encodings package.
494
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000495- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
496 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000497
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000498- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000499 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000500 is followed by whitespace.
501
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000502- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000503
504- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
505
506- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000507 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000508
509- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
510 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
511 Removed some debugging prints.
512
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000513- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000514
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000515- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000516 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
517 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000518
519- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
520 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
521
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000522- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
523 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
524 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
525 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
526 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000527
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000528- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
529 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
530 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000531
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000532- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
533 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000534
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000535
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000536C API
537
538- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
539 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
540 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
541
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000542- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000543 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
544 #include of stdio.h.
545
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000546- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000547 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
548
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000549- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
550 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
551 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
552 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000553
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000554- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000555 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
556 encoded version of a Unicode object.
557
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000558- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
559
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000560- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000561 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
562 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000563
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000564- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
565 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
566 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
567 set to NULL.
568
569- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
570 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
571
572- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
573 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
574 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
575 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000576 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000577
578- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
579
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000580
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000581Internals
582
583- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
584 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
585
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000586- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000587 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000588 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
589
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000590- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
591 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000592
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000593- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
594 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
595 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
596 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000597
598- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
599 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
600
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000601- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
602 registry key.
603
604- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000605 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000606
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000607
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000608Build and platform-specific issues
609
610- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
611
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000612- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
613 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000614
615- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
616 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
617 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
618
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000619- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000620 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000621
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000622- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
623 define for TELL64.
624
625
626Tools and other miscellany
627
628- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
629
630- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
631
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000632- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000633 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
634 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
635 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
636 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000637
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000638
639What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
640=========================
641
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000642Source Incompatibilities
643------------------------
644
645None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
646such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
647str(long) and repr(float).
648
649
650Binary Incompatibilities
651------------------------
652
653- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
654with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
6552.0.
656
657- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
658Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
659can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
660
661- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
662releases.
663
664
665Overview of Changes Since 1.6
666-----------------------------
667
668There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
669the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
670of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
671
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000672The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
673since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
674Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
675
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000676There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
677detail below:
678
679 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
680
681 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
682
683 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
684
685 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
686
687Other important changes:
688
689 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
690
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000691Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
692---------------------------------
693
694PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
695document providing information to the Python community, or describing
696a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
697specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
698
699We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
700features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
701documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
702author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
703documenting dissenting opinions.
704
705The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000706
707Augmented Assignment
708--------------------
709
710This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
711Eleven new assignment operators were added:
712
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000713 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000714
715For example,
716
717 A += B
718
719is similar to
720
721 A = A + B
722
723except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
724like dict[index].attr).
725
726However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
727if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
728(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
729same effect as A.extend(B)!
730
731Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
732order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
733used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
734in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
735method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
736an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
737__add__.
738
739Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
740
741
742List Comprehensions
743-------------------
744
745This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
746from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
747
748 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
749
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000750For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000751This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000752
753You can also add a condition:
754
755 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
756
757For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
758of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000759than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000760
761You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
762example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
763
764 def flatten(seq):
765 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
766
767 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
768
769This prints
770
771 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
772
773List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000774Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000775
776
777Extended Import Statement
778-------------------------
779
780Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
781name. This can be accomplished like this:
782
783 import foo
784 bar = foo
785 del foo
786
787but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
788import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
789
790 import foo as bar
791
792There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
793
794 from foo import bar as spam
795
796This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
797
798 import test.regrtest as regrtest
799
800Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
801context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
802statement doesn't involve expressions).
803
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000804Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000805
806
807Extended Print Statement
808------------------------
809
810Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
811statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
812than the default sys.stdout.
813
814For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
815write:
816
817 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
818
819As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000820evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000821
822 print >> None, "Hello world"
823
824is equivalent to
825
826 print "Hello world"
827
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000828Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000829
830
831Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
832---------------------------------------
833
834Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
835cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
836reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
837correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
838their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
839each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
840and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
841
842There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
843garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
844that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
845it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
846experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000847performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000848off by default in the final 2.0 release.
849
850
851Smaller Changes
852---------------
853
854A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
855map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
856i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
857the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000858zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000859
860sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
861
862Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
863dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
864it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
865
866 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
867
868does the same work as this common idiom:
869
870 if not dict.has_key(key):
871 dict[key] = []
872 dict[key].append(item)
873
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000874There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
875indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
876
877Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
878escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000879
880The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
881have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
882were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
883was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
884e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
885limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
886fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
887limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
888
889The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
890programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
891limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
892Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
893overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
8941000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
895by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000896
897New Modules and Packages
898------------------------
899
900atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
901
902imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
903hooks.
904
905pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
906Prescod.
907
908xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
909subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
910would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
911user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
912xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
913backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
914
915webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
916
917
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000918Changed Modules
919---------------
920
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000921array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
922remove
923
924binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
925binary data and its hex representation
926
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000927calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
928over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
929of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
930e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
931
932cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
933dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
934
935ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
936remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
937to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
938
939ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000940optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
941
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000942gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000943
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000944httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
945the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000946
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000947locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
948
949marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
950recursive data structures
951
952os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
953
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000954os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
955support under Unix.
956
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000957os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000958
959os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
960
961smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
962
963socket -- new function getfqdn()
964
965readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
966The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
967example.
968
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000969select -- add interface to poll system call
970
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000971shutil -- new copyfileobj function
972
973SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
974HTTP server.
975
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000976Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000977
978urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000979e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000980
981whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000982
983
984Obsolete Modules
985----------------
986
987None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
988stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
989poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
990
991
992Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
993----------------------------
994
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000995None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000996
997
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000998C-level Changes
999---------------
1000
1001Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
1002
1003All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
1004Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
1005
1006Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
1007pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
1008header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
1009of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
1010they are all included by Python.h.)
1011
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001012Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001013and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
1014added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001015
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001016The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
1017use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
1018previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
1019concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
1020e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
1021at the API level, but are deprecated.
1022
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001023The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
1024Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
1025on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001026
1027The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
1028tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001029the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001030
1031The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001032C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001033
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001034PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
1035the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
1036prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001037
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001038New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001039
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001040PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
1041that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
1042extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
1043
1044XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001045
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001046
1047Windows Changes
1048---------------
1049
1050New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
1051
1052os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
1053Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
1054is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
1055Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
1056a standalone program.
1057
1058Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
1059on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
1060Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
1061Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001062under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001063uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
1064(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
1065from CGI).
1066
1067[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
1068installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
1069Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
1070wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
1071conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
1072to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
1073
1074[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
1075\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
1076
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001077
1078Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
1079--------------------------------------------
1080
1081The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
1082is some late-breaking news:
1083
1084New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
1085and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
1086
1087The new module is now enabled per default.
1088
1089It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1090strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1091!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1092cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1093
1094Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1095http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1096
1097
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001098======================================================================