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Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 509?
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +00002===================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Neil Schemenauera35c6882001-02-27 04:45:05 +00006- An optional object allocator has been included. This allocator is
7 optimized for Python objects and should be faster and use less memory
8 than the standard system allocator. It is not enabled by default
9 because of possible thread safety problems. The allocator is only
10 protected by the Python interpreter lock and it is possible that some
11 extension modules require a thread safe allocator. The object
12 allocator can be enabled by providing the "--with-pymalloc" option to
13 configure.
14
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +000015Standard library
16
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +000017- pyexpat now detects the expat version if expat.h defines it. A
18 number of additional handlers are provided, which are only available
19 since expat 1.95. In addition, the methods SetParamEntityParsing and
20 GetInputContext of Parser objects are available with 1.95.x
21 only. Parser objects now provide the ordered_attributes and
22 specified_attributes attributes. A new module expat.model was added,
23 which offers a number of additional constants if 1.95.x is used.
24
25- xml.dom offers the new functions registerDOMImplementation and
26 getDOMImplementation.
27
28- xml.dom.minidom offers a toprettyxml method. A number of DOM
29 conformance issues have been resolved. In particular, Element now
30 has an hasAttributes method, and the handling of namespaces was
31 improved.
32
Andrew M. Kuchlingd6a1d792001-02-28 21:05:42 +000033- Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: inspect.py, a module for
34 getting information about live Python code, and pydoc.py, a module
35 for interactively converting docstrings to HTML or text.
36 Tools/scripts/pydoc, which is now automatically installed into
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +000037 <prefix>/bin, uses pydoc.py to display documentation; try running
Andrew M. Kuchlingd6a1d792001-02-28 21:05:42 +000038 'pydoc' for the instructions.
39
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +000040- New library module difflib.py, primarily packaging the SequenceMatcher
41 class at the heart of the popular ndiff.py file-comparison tool.
42
43- doctest.py (a framework for verifying Python code examples in docstrings)
44 is now part of the std library.
45
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +000046Windows changes
47
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +000048- Import is now case-sensitive. PEP 235 (Import on Case-Insensitive
49 Platforms) is implemented. See
50
51 http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0235.html
52
53 for full details, especially the "Current Lower-Left Semantics" section.
54 The new Windows import rules are simpler than before:
55
56 A. If the PYTHONCASEOK environment variable exists, same as
57 before: silently accept the first case-insensitive match of any
58 kind; raise ImportError if none found.
59
60 B. Else search sys.path for the first case-sensitive match; raise
61 ImportError if none found.
62
63 The same rules have been implented on other platforms with case-
64 insensitive but case-preserving filesystems too (including Cygwin, and
65 several flavors of Macintosh operating systems).
Tim Petersd66595f2001-02-04 03:09:53 +000066
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +000067- winsound module: Under Win9x, winsound.Beep() now attempts to simulate
68 what it's supposed to do (and does do under NT and 2000) via direct
69 port manipulation. It's unknown whether this will work on all systems,
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +000070 but it does work on my Win98SE systems now and was known to be useless on
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +000071 all Win9x systems before.
72
Tim Peters1eff7962001-03-01 02:31:33 +000073- Build: Subproject _test (effectively) renamed to _testcapi.
74
Tim Peters25a9ce32001-02-19 07:06:36 +000075
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +000076What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2?
77=================================
Tim Peters40ead762001-01-27 05:35:26 +000078
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +000079Core language, builtins, and interpreter
80
Jeremy Hylton4589bd82001-02-01 20:38:45 +000081- Scopes nest. If a name is used in a function or class, but is not
82 local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will
83 be used. One consequence of this change is that lambda statements
84 could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is
85 defined. In some unusual cases, this change will break code.
86
87 In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly
88 three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +000089 the builtin namespace. According to this old definition, if a
Jeremy Hylton4589bd82001-02-01 20:38:45 +000090 function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are
91 not visible in A. The new rules make names bound in B visible in A,
92 unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B.
93
94 Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules
95 in detail. The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates
96 some of the effects of the change.
97
98 The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested
99 functions where an outer function has local variables with the same
100 name as globals or builtins used by the inner function. Example:
101
102 def munge(str):
103 def helper(x):
104 return str(x)
105 if type(str) != type(''):
106 str = helper(str)
107 return str.strip()
108
109 Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the
110 builtin function str(). Under the new rules, it will be bound to
111 the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is
112 called.
113
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +0000114- The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs
115 in a function or class scope. The language reference has documented
116 that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it.
117 The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this
118 form of name binding ambiguous. In a future release, the compiler
119 may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity.
120
Tim Peters40ead762001-01-27 05:35:26 +0000121- repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal,
122 and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively):
123
124 >>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255)
125 '\texample \r\n\x00\xff' # in 2.1
126 '\011example \015\012\000\377' # in 2.0
127
Moshe Zadka6af0ce02001-01-29 06:41:00 +0000128- Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since
129 the func_code attribute is writable.
130
Fred Drakefb9d7122001-02-01 20:00:40 +0000131- Weak references (PEP 205) have been added. This involves a few
132 changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python
133 module (weakref). The weakref module is the public interface. It
134 includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and
135 mappings with weakly held values.
136
Jeremy Hylton0072d5a2001-02-01 22:53:15 +0000137- A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body
138 of a loop. It is still not possible to use continue in a finally
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000139 clause.
Jeremy Hylton0072d5a2001-02-01 22:53:15 +0000140
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000141Standard library
142
Barry Warsaw30dbd142001-01-31 22:14:01 +0000143- mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is
144 identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for
145 determining From_ separators. Also, the constructors for all the
146 classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which
147 is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by
148 the next() method.
149
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000150- random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of
151 the now-deprecated whrandom.py. See the docs for details. random.py
152 also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000153 and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n),
154 for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to
155 random() had been made. The latter is particularly useful for multi-
156 threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for
157 each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a
158 non-overlapping segment of the full period.
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000159
Tim Peters0de88fc2001-02-01 04:59:18 +0000160- random.py's seed() function is new. For bit-for-bit compatibility with
161 prior releases, use the whseed function instead. The new seed function
162 addresses two problems: (1) The old function couldn't produce more than
163 about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best
164 that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator). (2) The old function
165 sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct
166 integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen;
167 the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all
168 arguments in [0, 27814431486576L).
169
Jeremy Hylton4c4fda02001-02-02 03:29:24 +0000170- The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux. The socket
171 family is AF_PACKET.
172
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000173- test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API. The tests
174 are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c.
175
Jeremy Hyltond6b1cf92001-02-02 20:06:28 +0000176- A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the
177 internal symbol table used by the Python compiler. A higher-level
178 interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release.
179
Andrew M. Kuchlingdebc3522001-02-22 15:53:21 +0000180- Removed the obsolete soundex module.
181
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +0000182- xml.dom.minidom now uses the standard DOM exceptions. Node supports
183 the isSameNode method; NamedNodeMap the get method.
184
185- xml.sax.expatreader supports the lexical handler property; it
186 generates comment, startCDATA, and endCDATA events.
187
Tim Petersee826f82001-01-31 19:39:44 +0000188Windows changes
189
190- Build procedure: the zlib project is built in a different way that
191 ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000192 the zlib binary used. See PCbuild\readme.txt for details. Your old
193 zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh
194 source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory.
Tim Petersee826f82001-01-31 19:39:44 +0000195
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000196- Build: New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above).
197
Tim Petersb16c56f2001-02-02 21:24:51 +0000198- Build: New subproject _symtable, for new DLL _symtable.pyd (a nascent
199 interface to some Python compiler internals).
200
201- Build: Subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the
Tim Peters9ea17ac2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000202 unicodedata subproject.
Tim Petersd7b5e882001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000203
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000204What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
205=================================
206
207Core language, builtins, and interpreter
208
Marc-André Lemburgebb195b2001-01-20 10:34:52 +0000209- There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API
210 called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the
211 former, but assures that the returned value is an Unicode object
212 (applying the usual coercion if necessary).
Marc-André Lemburgad7c98e2001-01-17 17:09:53 +0000213
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000214- The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP
215 207). C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in
216 the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object. The cmp() function
217 and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich
218 comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison. There
219 is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on
220 the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the
221 rich comparison to a Boolean result).
222
223 The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of
224 which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and
225 an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ,
226 Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python
227 object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare
228 slot function is used as a fallback, if defined).
229
230 Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one
231 or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__,
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000232 __ge__. There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of
233 these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection,
234 likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own
235 reflection (similar at the C level). No other implications are
236 made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean
237 inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=. This makes
238 it possible to define types with partial orderings.
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000239
240 Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not
241 the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement ==
242 and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators.
243
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000244 It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000245 Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits
246 for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons. Such types should ensure
247 that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises
248 an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot
249 at the C level) to always raise an exception.
250
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000251- Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise
252 an exception for <, <=, > and >=. Unfortunately, this also means
253 that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two
254 numbers differ. Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare
255 complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break
256 too much code.
257
Tim Peters3389f192001-02-18 08:48:49 +0000258- The outcome of comparing non-numeric objects of different types is
Tim Peters14495852001-02-18 08:28:33 +0000259 not defined by the language, other than that it's arbitrary but
260 consistent (see the Reference Manual). An implementation detail changed
261 in 2.1a1 such that None now compares less than any other object. Code
262 relying on this new behavior (like code that relied on the previous
263 behavior) does so at its own risk.
264
Barry Warsaw573b5412001-01-15 20:43:18 +0000265- Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily
266 named attributes (PEP 232). Functions have a new __dict__
267 (a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes. Methods get
268 and set attributes on their underlying im_func. It is a TypeError
269 to set an attribute on a bound method.
270
Guido van Rossum051e3352001-01-15 19:11:10 +0000271- The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that
272 xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms. There's still a
273 limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be
274 calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will
275 work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31.
276 (Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing
277 that is much more work.)
278
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +0000279- Two changes to from...import:
280
Guido van Rossumba381232001-02-03 15:06:40 +0000281 1) "from M import X" now works even if (after loading module M)
282 sys.modules['M'] is not a real module; it's basically a getattr()
283 operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError.
Guido van Rossum1cc8f832001-01-12 16:25:08 +0000284
285 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to
286 import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but
287 filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not
288 __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M.
289
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000290- File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest
291 way to iterate over all lines in a file:
292
293 for line in file.xreadlines():
294 ...do something to line...
295
296 See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for
297 other file-like objects.
298
299- Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on
300 line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000301 quite a bit in platform-specific ways: on systems (like Linux) that
302 support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are
303 used by default. On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(),
304 a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by
305 default.
306
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000307 You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing
308 USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000309 getc_unlocked()).
310
Tim Petersd52269b2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000311 You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing
312 DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test
Tim Petersf29b64d2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000313 test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!).
314
315- In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other
316 methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using
317 file.readlines(sizehint).
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000318
319- Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new
320 command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings.
321 See the description of the warnings module below.
322
323- Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly
324 affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type
325 numerical operators without having to use coercion), but
326 occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed
327 subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this
Guido van Rossumae72d872001-01-11 15:00:14 +0000328 is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000329 supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with
Guido van Rossuma88479f2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000330 reflected arguments.
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000331
Guido van Rossumf98eda02001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000332- In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton
333 object, NotImplemented is defined. This can be returned for
334 operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a
335 particular combination of arguments. From C, this is
336 Py_NotImplemented.
337
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +0000338- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
339 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
340
Martin v. Löwise214baa2001-02-04 22:37:56 +0000341import imp,sys,string
342magic = string.join(["\\x%.2x" % ord(c) for c in imp.get_magic()],"")
343reg = ':pyc:M::%s::%s:' % (magic, sys.executable)
344open("/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register","wb").write(reg)
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +0000345
346 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
347 to execve(2)).
348
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000349- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000350 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
351 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
352 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
353 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
354 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
355 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
356
357 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000358 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000359 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
360 >>> hex(-0x42L)
361 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
362
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000363 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
364 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
365 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
366
367 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
368 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
369 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
370 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
371 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
372
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +0000373- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
374 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
375 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
376 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
377 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
378 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
379
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000380Standard library
381
Thomas Woutersfe385252001-01-19 23:16:56 +0000382- In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime,
383 localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to
384 the current time (in the local timezone).
385
Guido van Rossumda91f222001-01-15 16:36:08 +0000386- The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a
387 more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls
388 these days. Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect
389 to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is
390 expected to be a very rare situation. To fix that, you can call
391 ftp.set_pasv(0).
392
Martin v. Löwis10a27872001-01-13 09:54:41 +0000393- The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration,
394 but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting
395 with import are executed.
396
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000397- There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for
398 issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in
399 exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line
400 option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We
401 turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category])
402 issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as
403 PyErr_Warn(category, message).
404
405- A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory
406 function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the
407 absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open
408 file(-like) object:
409
410 import xreadlines
411 for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file):
412 ...do something to line...
413
414 This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using
415 file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object
416 (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent:
417
418 for line in file.xreadlines():
419 ...do something to line...
420
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000421- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
422 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
423 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
424 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
425 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
426 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +0000427 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
428 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000429
Andrew M. Kuchlingf6f3a892001-01-13 14:53:34 +0000430- The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part
431 of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum.
432
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000433- The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by
434 default in the TCPServer class.
435
436- A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of
437 the caller. This is intended only as a building block for
438 higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation.
439
Martin v. Löwis2a5130e2001-02-27 04:21:58 +0000440- The pyexpat module supports a number of new handlers, which are
441 available only in expat 1.2. If invocation of a callback fails, it
442 will report an additional frame in the traceback. Parser objects
443 participate now in garbage collection. If expat reports an unknown
444 encoding, pyexpat will try to use a Python codec; that works only
445 for single-byte charsets. The parser type objects is exposed as
446 XMLParserObject.
447
448- xml.dom now offers standard definitions for symbolic node type and
449 exception code constants, and a hierarchy of DOM exceptions. minidom
450 was adjusted to use them.
451
452- The conformance of xml.dom.minidom to the DOM specification was
453 improved. It detects a number of additional error cases; the
454 previous/next relationship works even when the tree is modified;
455 Node supports the normalize() method; NamedNodeMap, DocumentType and
456 DOMImplementation classes were added; Element supports the
457 hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS methods; and Text supports the splitText
458 method.
459
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000460Build issues
461
Guido van Rossum1e33bdc2001-01-23 03:17:00 +0000462- For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of
463 extension modules is now greatly automated. Rather than having to
464 edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be
465 built and where their include files and libraries are, a
466 distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most
467 extension modules. All extension modules built this way are built
468 as shared libraries. Only a few modules that must be linked
469 statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to
470 edit their configuration.
471
472- Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin. If it doesn't,
473 mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net).
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000474
475- Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt()
476 -- there's too much variation among C library getopt()
477 implementations.
478
479- C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a
480 C++ compiler if one is found.
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000481
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +0000482Windows changes
483
484- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
485 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
486 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
487 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
488 and recompile Python from source).
489
Guido van Rossumf61f1662001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000490- Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3
491 subdirectory is no more!
492
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000493
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000494What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +0000495=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000496
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +0000497Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000498changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
499from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
500HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000501
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000502Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
503the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
504http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +0000505
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000506--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +0000507
508======================================================================
509
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000510What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
511==============================================
512
513Standard library
514
515- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
516 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
517 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
518
519- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
520 it from finding an existing .mo file.
521
522- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
523
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000524- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
525 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
526 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
527 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
528 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000529
530- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
531 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
532 extend past the end of the file.
533
534- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
535 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
536 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
537
538- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
539 redirect response.
540
541- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
542 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
543 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
544 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
545 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
546 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
547 use both normcase() and normpath().
548
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000549- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
550 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000551
552- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
553 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
554 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
555
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000556- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
557 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
558 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
559 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
560 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000561
562Internals
563
564- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
565 test_sre to fail.
566
567Build issues
568
569- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
570 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
571 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000572 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000573 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000574
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000575- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000576
577Tools and other miscellany
578
579- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
580 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
581 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
582 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
583 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000584 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000585
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000586What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
587=====================================================
588
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000589What is release candidate 1?
590
591We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
592intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
593more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
594widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
595release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
596any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
597release candidate.
598
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000599All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000600to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000601
602Core language, builtins, and interpreter
603
604- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
605 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
606
607- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
608 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
609 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
610 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
611
612- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
613 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
614 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
615
616- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
617 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
618
619- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
620 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
621
622Standard library
623
624- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
625 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
626
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000627- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000628 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000629
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000630- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
631 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000632
633- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
634
635- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
636 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
637 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
638 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000639 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000640
641- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
642 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000643 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000644
645 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
646 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000647 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000648
649 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
650 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
651 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
652 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
653
654- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
655 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
656 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
657 compile-time.
658
659- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
660
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000661- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
662 programs with very long string literals.
663
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000664Internals
665
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000666- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000667 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
668 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
669 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
670 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
671 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
672 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
673
674- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
675 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
676 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
677 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
678 container attributes is complete.
679
680- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
681 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
682 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
683
684- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
685 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
686
687- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
688 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
689
690- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
691
692Build issues
693
694- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000695 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000696 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000697
698- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
699 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
700
701- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
702
703- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
704 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
705
706- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000707 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000708
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000709- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
710 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
711 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
712 line during build on PPC BeOS.
713
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000714- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000715 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000716
717- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
718
719- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
720
721Tools and other miscellany
722
723- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
724
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000725- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
726 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000727
728What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
729========================================
730
731Core language, builtins, and interpreter
732
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000733- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000734 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000735
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000736- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
737 Python version number and exit immediately.
738
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000739- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
740
741- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
742 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
743 encoding before lookup.
744
745- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
746 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
747 string is too long."
748
749- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000750 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000751
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000752
753Standard library and extensions
754
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000755- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000756 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
757
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000758- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000759
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000760- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000761
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000762- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000763
764- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000765 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000766
767- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
768
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000769- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000770
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000771- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000772
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000773- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
774 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
775 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
776 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
777 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000778
779- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
780
781- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
782
783- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
784
785- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
786 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
787 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
788
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000789- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000790 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
791 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
792
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000793- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000794
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000795- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
796 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
797 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
798 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
799
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000800- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
801 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000802
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000803- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
804 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000805
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000806- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000807 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
808 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000809
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000810- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000811 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000812
813- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
814 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
815 matches cPickle.
816
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000817- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000818
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000819- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000820
821- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000822 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000823 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000824
825- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000826 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000827
828- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000829 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000830 few cycles during startup since the first call to
831 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
832 encodings package.
833
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000834- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
835 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000836
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000837- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000838 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000839 is followed by whitespace.
840
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000841- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000842
843- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
844
845- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000846 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000847
848- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
849 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
850 Removed some debugging prints.
851
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000852- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000853
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000854- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000855 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
856 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000857
858- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
859 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
860
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000861- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
862 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
863 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
864 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
865 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000866
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000867- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
868 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
869 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000870
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000871- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
872 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000873
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000874
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000875C API
876
877- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
878 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
879 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
880
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000881- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000882 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
883 #include of stdio.h.
884
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000885- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000886 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
887
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000888- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
889 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
890 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
891 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000892
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000893- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000894 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
895 encoded version of a Unicode object.
896
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000897- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
898
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000899- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000900 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
901 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000902
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000903- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
904 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
905 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
906 set to NULL.
907
908- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
909 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
910
911- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
912 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
913 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
914 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000915 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000916
917- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
918
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000919
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000920Internals
921
922- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
923 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
924
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000925- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000926 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000927 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
928
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000929- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
930 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000931
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000932- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
933 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
934 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
935 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000936
937- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
938 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
939
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000940- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
941 registry key.
942
943- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000944 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000945
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000946
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000947Build and platform-specific issues
948
949- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
950
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000951- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
952 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000953
954- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
955 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
956 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
957
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000958- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000959 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000960
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000961- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
962 define for TELL64.
963
964
965Tools and other miscellany
966
967- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
968
969- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
970
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000971- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000972 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
973 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
974 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
975 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000976
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000977
978What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
979=========================
980
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000981Source Incompatibilities
982------------------------
983
984None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
985such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
986str(long) and repr(float).
987
988
989Binary Incompatibilities
990------------------------
991
992- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
993with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
9942.0.
995
996- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
997Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
998can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
999
1000- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
1001releases.
1002
1003
1004Overview of Changes Since 1.6
1005-----------------------------
1006
1007There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
1008the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
1009of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
1010
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001011The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
1012since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
1013Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
1014
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001015There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
1016detail below:
1017
1018 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
1019
1020 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
1021
1022 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
1023
1024 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
1025
1026Other important changes:
1027
1028 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
1029
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001030Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
1031---------------------------------
1032
1033PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
1034document providing information to the Python community, or describing
1035a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
1036specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
1037
1038We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
1039features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
1040documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
1041author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
1042documenting dissenting opinions.
1043
1044The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001045
1046Augmented Assignment
1047--------------------
1048
1049This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
1050Eleven new assignment operators were added:
1051
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001052 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001053
1054For example,
1055
1056 A += B
1057
1058is similar to
1059
1060 A = A + B
1061
1062except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
1063like dict[index].attr).
1064
1065However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
1066if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
1067(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
1068same effect as A.extend(B)!
1069
1070Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
1071order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
1072used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
1073in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
1074method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
1075an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
1076__add__.
1077
1078Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
1079
1080
1081List Comprehensions
1082-------------------
1083
1084This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
1085from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
1086
1087 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
1088
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +00001089For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001090This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001091
1092You can also add a condition:
1093
1094 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
1095
1096For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
1097of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001098than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001099
1100You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
1101example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
1102
1103 def flatten(seq):
1104 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
1105
1106 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
1107
1108This prints
1109
1110 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
1111
1112List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001113Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001114
1115
1116Extended Import Statement
1117-------------------------
1118
1119Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
1120name. This can be accomplished like this:
1121
1122 import foo
1123 bar = foo
1124 del foo
1125
1126but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
1127import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
1128
1129 import foo as bar
1130
1131There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
1132
1133 from foo import bar as spam
1134
1135This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
1136
1137 import test.regrtest as regrtest
1138
1139Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
1140context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
1141statement doesn't involve expressions).
1142
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001143Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001144
1145
1146Extended Print Statement
1147------------------------
1148
1149Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
1150statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
1151than the default sys.stdout.
1152
1153For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
1154write:
1155
1156 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
1157
1158As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +00001159evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001160
1161 print >> None, "Hello world"
1162
1163is equivalent to
1164
1165 print "Hello world"
1166
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001167Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001168
1169
1170Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
1171---------------------------------------
1172
1173Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
1174cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
1175reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
1176correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
1177their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
1178each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
1179and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
1180
1181There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
1182garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
1183that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
1184it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
1185experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +00001186performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001187off by default in the final 2.0 release.
1188
1189
1190Smaller Changes
1191---------------
1192
1193A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
1194map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
1195i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
1196the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001197zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001198
1199sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
1200
1201Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
1202dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
1203it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
1204
1205 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
1206
1207does the same work as this common idiom:
1208
1209 if not dict.has_key(key):
1210 dict[key] = []
1211 dict[key].append(item)
1212
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001213There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
1214indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
1215
1216Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
1217escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001218
1219The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
1220have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
1221were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
1222was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
1223e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
1224limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
1225fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
1226limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
1227
1228The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
1229programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
1230limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
1231Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
1232overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
12331000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
1234by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001235
1236New Modules and Packages
1237------------------------
1238
1239atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
1240
1241imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
1242hooks.
1243
1244pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
1245Prescod.
1246
1247xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
1248subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
1249would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
1250user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
1251xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
1252backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
1253
1254webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
1255
1256
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001257Changed Modules
1258---------------
1259
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001260array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
1261remove
1262
1263binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
1264binary data and its hex representation
1265
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001266calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
1267over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
1268of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
1269e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
1270
1271cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
1272dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
1273
1274ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
1275remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
1276to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
1277
1278ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001279optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
1280
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001281gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001282
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001283httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
1284the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +00001285
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001286locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
1287
1288marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
1289recursive data structures
1290
1291os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
1292
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001293os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
1294support under Unix.
1295
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001296os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001297
1298os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
1299
1300smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
1301
1302socket -- new function getfqdn()
1303
1304readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
1305The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
1306example.
1307
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001308select -- add interface to poll system call
1309
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001310shutil -- new copyfileobj function
1311
1312SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
1313HTTP server.
1314
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001315Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001316
1317urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001318e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001319
1320whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001321
1322
1323Obsolete Modules
1324----------------
1325
1326None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
1327stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
1328poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
1329
1330
1331Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
1332----------------------------
1333
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001334None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001335
1336
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001337C-level Changes
1338---------------
1339
1340Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
1341
1342All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
1343Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
1344
1345Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
1346pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
1347header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
1348of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
1349they are all included by Python.h.)
1350
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001351Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001352and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
1353added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +00001354
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001355The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
1356use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
1357previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
1358concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
1359e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
1360at the API level, but are deprecated.
1361
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001362The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
1363Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
1364on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001365
1366The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
1367tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001368the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001369
1370The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001371C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001372
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001373PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
1374the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
1375prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +00001376
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001377New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +00001378
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +00001379PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
1380that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
1381extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
1382
1383XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001384
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001385
1386Windows Changes
1387---------------
1388
1389New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
1390
1391os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
1392Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
1393is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
1394Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
1395a standalone program.
1396
1397Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
1398on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
1399Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
1400Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +00001401under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +00001402uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
1403(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
1404from CGI).
1405
1406[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
1407installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
1408Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
1409wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
1410conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
1411to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
1412
1413[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
1414\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
1415
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +00001416
1417Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
1418--------------------------------------------
1419
1420The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
1421is some late-breaking news:
1422
1423New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
1424and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
1425
1426The new module is now enabled per default.
1427
1428It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1429strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1430!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1431cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1432
1433Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1434http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1435
1436
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001437======================================================================