blob: 753686cc3aa1d9baed83875b153985931de44762 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000015- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
16 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
17 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
18 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
19 for a longer write-up of the problem).
20
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000021- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
22 serializing floats.
23
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000024- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
25 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
26 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
27
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000028- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
29 278.
30
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000031- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
32 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
33 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
34 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
35 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
36 PyNumber_*().
37 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
38
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000039- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
40 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
41 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
42 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
43
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000044- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
45 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
46 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
47 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
48 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
49
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000050- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
51 disabled caused a crash.
52
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000053- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
54 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
55
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000056- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
57 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
58
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000059- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
60
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000061- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000062 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
63 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
64 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000065
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000066- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
67
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +000068- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
69 returning None.
70
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +000071- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
72 ('\') with a specific error message.
73
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +000074- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
75
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +000076- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
77 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
78
Martin v. Löwis13a1fde2005-01-27 18:56:16 +000079- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +000080 an ferror() call.
81
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +000082- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
83 list.sort().
84
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +000085- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
86 (2+3) --> (5).
87
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +000088- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
89
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +000090- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
91 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000092
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +000093- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
94 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
95 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
96
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000097Extension Modules
98-----------------
99
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000100- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
101
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000102- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
103 if available on the platform.
104
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000105- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
106 available on the platform.
107
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000108- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
109 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
110
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000111- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
112
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000113- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
114 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
115 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
116
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000117- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
118
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000119- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
120 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
121
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000122- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
123 file size.
124
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000125- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
126
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000127- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
128 {remove_history,replace_history}
129
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000130- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
131 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000132
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000133- stat_float_times is now True.
134
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000135- array.array objects are now picklable.
136
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000137- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
138 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
139
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000140- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
141 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
142 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
143
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000144- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
145 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000146
147Library
148-------
149
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000150- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
151
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000152- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
153 error messages.
154
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000155- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
156
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000157- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
158 Bug #1224621.
159
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000160- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
161 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
162 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
163 terminates by raising StopIteration.
164
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000165- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
166
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000167- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
168 component of the path.
169
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000170- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
171 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
172 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
173 class at all.
174
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000175- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
176 files to PyPI.
177
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000178- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
179 them to PyPI.
180
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000181- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
182 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
183 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
184 work as expected.
185
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000186- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
187 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
188
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000189- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
190 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
191
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000192- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
193
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000194- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
195 to build.
196
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000197- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
198 symbolic links on Windows.
199
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000200- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
201 profile.py if available.
202
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000203- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
204
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000205- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
206 in LWPCookieJar.
207
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000208- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
209
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000210- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
211
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000212- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
213
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000214- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
215
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000216- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
217
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000218- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
219
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000220- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
221
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000222- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
223
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000224- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
225 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
226 be exploited in various ways.
227
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000228- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
229
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000230- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
231
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000232- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
233
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000234- Enhancements to the csv module:
235
236 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
237 reflecting it's capabilities, and improving it's compliance with
238 PEP 305.
239 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
240 reporting.
241 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
242 dictates.
243 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000244 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000245 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000246 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
247 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000248 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
249 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000250 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000251 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
252 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
253 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
254 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
255 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
256 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
257 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
258 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
259 without first creating a dialect class.
260 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
261 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
262 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000263 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000264 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
265 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000266 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
267 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
268 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
269 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000270 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
271 This has been fixed.
272
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000273- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
274 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
275 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
276 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
277
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000278- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
279
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000280- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
281 (Bug #951915).
282
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000283- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
284 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
285 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
286 encoding alias table
287
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000288- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
289
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000290- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
291 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
292
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000293- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
294
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000295- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
296
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000297- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
298
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000299- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
300
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000301- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
302
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000303- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
304 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
305 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
306
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000307- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000308 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000309
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000310- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
311 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
312 tokenizer with very long source lines.
313
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000314- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
315 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
316
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000317- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
318 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000319
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000320- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
321 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
322
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000323- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
324 correctly.
325
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000326- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
327 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
328 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
329 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
330 between two lines.
331
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000332
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000333Build
334-----
335
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000336- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
337 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
338 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000339 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000340
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000341- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
342 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
343 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
344
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000345- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
346
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000347- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
348 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
349
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000350- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
351 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
352 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
353 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
354 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
355 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
356 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
357 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
358
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000359- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
360 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
361 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
362 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
363
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000364
365C API
366-----
367
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000368- Removed PyRange_New().
369
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000370
371Tests
372-----
373
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000374- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000375
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000376
377Documentation
378-------------
379
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000380- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
381
382- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
383
384- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
385
386- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
387
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000388- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
389 Closes bug #1166582.
390
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000391- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
392 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
393 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
394
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000395Mac
396---
397
398
399
400Tools/Demos
401-----------
402
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000403- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
404
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000405- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000406
407
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000408What's New in Python 2.4 final?
409===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000410
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000411*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000412
413Core and builtins
414-----------------
415
416- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
417 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
418 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
419
420
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000421What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
422==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000423
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000424*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000425
426Core and builtins
427-----------------
428
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000429- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
430 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
431 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
432
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000433
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000434Library
435-------
436
437- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
438 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
439 raised is re-raised.
440
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000441- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
442 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
443
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000444- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
445 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
446 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
447 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
448 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
449 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
450 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
451 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
452 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
453 by the slice are recomputed now.
454
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000455- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000456
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000457Build
458-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000459
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000460- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
461 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
462 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000463
464C API
465-----
466
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000467- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
468
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000469
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000470What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
471================================
472
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000473*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000474
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000475License
476-------
477
478The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
479is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
480changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
481Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
482intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
483durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
484the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
485License::
486
487 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
488
489says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
490to Python 2.1.1.
491
492The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
493License Version 2.
494
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000495Core and builtins
496-----------------
497
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000498- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
499 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
500 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
501 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
502 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
503 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
504 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
505 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
506 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
507 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
508
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000509- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000510
511Extension Modules
512-----------------
513
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000514- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
515 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
516 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
517 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000518
519Library
520-------
521
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000522- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
523 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
524 returned.
525
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000526- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
527
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000528- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
529 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
530
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000531- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
532
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000533- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
534 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000535
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000536- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
537
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000538- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
539
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000540- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000541 the source code is updated and reloaded.
542
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000543Build
544-----
545
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000546- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000547
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000548What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
549================================
550
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000551*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000552
553Core and builtins
554-----------------
555
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000556- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000557 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
558
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000559- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
560 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
561 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
562 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
563
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000564- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
565 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
566
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000567- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
568 constant.
569
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000570- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
571 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
572 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
573 large), and to anomalies such as
574 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
575 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
576 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
577 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000578
579Extension modules
580-----------------
581
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000582- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
583 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000584 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
585 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
586 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000587
588Library
589-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000590
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000591- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000592 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000593 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
594 --swig-cpp.
595
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000596- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
597 it is set.
598
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000599- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000600
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000601- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
602 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
603 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
604 Closes bug #1039270.
605
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000606- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000607
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000608 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000609 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
610 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
611 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
612 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
613 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
614 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
615 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
616 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
617 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
618 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
619 + Updates to documentation.
620
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000621- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
622 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
623 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
624 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
625
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000626- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000627
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000628- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
629 applications should use the getmember function.
630
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000631- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
632
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000633- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
634 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
635 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
636 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
637 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
638 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
639 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
640 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
641 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
642
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000643- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
644 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000645 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000646
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000647- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
648 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
649 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
650 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
651 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
652 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
653 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
654 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000655
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000656- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
657 the new public features (of which there are many).
658
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000659- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000660 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
661 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
662 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
663 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000664 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000665
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000666- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
667
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000668- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
669 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
670 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
671 options.
672
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000673- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
674 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
675 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
676 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
677 conditions under which non-string values work.
678
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000679Build
680-----
681
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000682- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
683 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
684 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
685
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000686- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
687 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
688 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
689 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
690 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000691
692C API
693-----
694
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000695- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
696 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
697
698- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
699
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000700- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
701 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
702 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
703 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
704 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
705 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
706 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
707 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
708 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
709
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000710- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
711
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000712- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
713 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
714 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000715
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000716Tests
717-----
718
719- test__locale ported to unittest
720
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000721Mac
722---
723
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000724- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
725 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
726 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000727
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000728Tools/Demos
729-----------
730
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000731- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
732 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
733 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
734 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
735 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000736
737
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000738What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
739=================================
740
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000741*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000742
743Core and builtins
744-----------------
745
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000746- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000747 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
748
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000749- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
750 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
751 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
752 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
753 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
754 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
755 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
756 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000757 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
758 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
759 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
760 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
761 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000762
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000763- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
764 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
765 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
766 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
767 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
768
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000769- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
770
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000771- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
772 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
773
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000774- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
775 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
776 modified the list.
777
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000778- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
779 functions is now writable.
780
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000781- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
782 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
783 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
784 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
785
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000786- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
787 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
788 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
789 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
790 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000791
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000792- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
793 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
794
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000795Extension modules
796-----------------
797
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000798- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
799
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000800- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
801 data.
802
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000803- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
804 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
805 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
806 supposed to have been truncated away.
807
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000808- Added socket.socketpair().
809
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000810- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
811 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
812
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000813- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000814 versions of Python, have now been removed.
815
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000816Library
817-------
818
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000819- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000820 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000821
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000822- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
823 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
824
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000825- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
826 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
827
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000828- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
829
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000830- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
831 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000832
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000833- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
834 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
835
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000836- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
837
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000838- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
839
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000840- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
841
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000842- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
843 Percivall.
844
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000845- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
846 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
847
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000848- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
849 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
850 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000851 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000852
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000853- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
854 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
855 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
856 and exponent.
857
858- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
859
860- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
861 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatability and atexit
862 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
863
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000864- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
865 to the readline module.
866
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000867- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000868 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
869 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +0000870
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +0000871- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
872 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
873 contains symlinks.
874
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +0000875- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
876 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
877
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +0000878- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
879 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
880 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
881
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000882- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
883 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
884 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
885 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
886 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
887 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
888 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
889 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
890 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
891 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
892 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
893 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
894 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
895
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +0000896- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
897
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000898Tools/Demos
899-----------
900
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000901- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
902 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
903
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +0000904- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
905
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000906Build
907-----
908
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000909- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
910 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
911 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
912 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
913 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
914 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
915 plans to do so.
916
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +0000917- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
918 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
919
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +0000920- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
921 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
922
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +0000923- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
924 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
925
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +0000926- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
927 GNU/k*BSD systems.
928
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +0000929- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
930 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
931
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000932C API
933-----
934
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000935..
936
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000937Documentation
938-------------
939
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +0000940- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
941 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
942
943- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
944 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
945 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +0000946
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000947New platforms
948-------------
949
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +0000950- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
951
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000952Tests
953-----
954
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000955..
956
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000957Windows
958-------
959
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +0000960- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
961 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
962 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
963 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
964 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
965 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
966 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
967 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
968 the problem.
969
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000970Mac
971---
972
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000973..
974
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000975
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000976What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
977=================================
978
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000979*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +0000980
981Core and builtins
982-----------------
983
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +0000984- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
985 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
986 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
987 sensitive code.
988
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000989- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +0000990 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000991
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000992 @staticmethod
993 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000994
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +0000995 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +0000996
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +0000997- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
998 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
999 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1000 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1001 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1002 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1003 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1004 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1005 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1006 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1007 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1008
1009 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1010 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1011 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1012 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1013 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1014 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1015 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1016
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001017- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1018 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1019
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001020- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001021 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001022
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001023- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001024 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001025 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1026
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001027- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001028 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1029 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1030
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001031- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1032 types that support garbage collection.
1033
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001034- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1035
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001036- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1037 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1038 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1039 Jython.
1040
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001041- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1042
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001043- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1044 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1045
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001046- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1047 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1048 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001049
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001050- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1051 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1052 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1053
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001054Extension modules
1055-----------------
1056
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001057- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1058
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001059Library
1060-------
1061
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001062- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1063 TIS-620
1064
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001065- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1066 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1067 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1068 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1069 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1070 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1071 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1072 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1073 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1074 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1075
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001076- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1077
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001078- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1079 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1080 same as when the argument is omitted).
1081 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1082
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001083- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1084
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001085- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1086 schemes are offered.
1087
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001088- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1089
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001090- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1091 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1092 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1093
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001094- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1095
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001096- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1097 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1098
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001099- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1100 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1101 when dummy_threading is being used.
1102
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001103- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1104 from a tarfile.
1105
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001106- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001107 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001108
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001109- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1110 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1111 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1112 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1113
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001114- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1115 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1116
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001117- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1118 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1119 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1120 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1121 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1122 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1123 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1124 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1125 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1126 by some other method in progress).
1127
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001128- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1129 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1130 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001131
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001132- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1133
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001134- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1135 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1136 AM Kuchling.
1137
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001138- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1139 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1140 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1141
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001142- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1143 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1144 instead of unsigned.
1145
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001146- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001147 no longer part of the public API.
1148
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001149- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1150 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1151 string methods of the same name).
1152
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001153- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001154 SF patch 945642.
1155
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001156- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1157
1158 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1159
1160 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1161 DocTestSuites.
1162
1163- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1164 that provide thread-local data.
1165
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001166- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1167 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1168
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001169- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1170
1171- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1172 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1173 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1174
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001175- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1176
1177 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1178 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1179 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001180
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001181 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1182 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1183 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1184 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1185
1186 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1187 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1188
1189 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1190 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1191 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1192 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1193
1194 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1195 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1196 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1197 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1198 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1199
1200 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1201 wrapping help output.
1202
1203 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1204 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1205 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001206
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001207C API
1208-----
1209
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001210- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1211 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1212 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1213 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1214 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1215 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1216 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1217 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1218 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1219 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1220 its visible semantics have not changed.
1221
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001222- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1223 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1224
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001225Documentation
1226-------------
1227
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001228- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001229
1230 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001231 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001232
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001233 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001234
1235 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1236
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001237- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001238
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001239Tests
1240-----
1241
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001242- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001243 platforms that use the Makefile.
1244
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001245- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1246 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1247 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1248
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001249
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001250What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1251=================================
1252
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001253*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001254
1255Core and builtins
1256-----------------
1257
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001258- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1259 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1260 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1261 objects now (one object instead of three).
1262
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001263- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1264 Windows DLLs.
1265
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001266- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1267 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001268
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001269- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1270 a new .pyc magic.
1271
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001272- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1273 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1274 be there.
1275
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001276- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1277 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1278 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1279
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001280- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1281 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1282 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1283
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001284- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1285
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001286- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1287 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1288 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001289
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001290- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1291 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1292
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001293- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1294
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001295- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001296 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001297
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001298- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1299
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001300- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1301
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001302- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1303 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1304
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001305- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1306 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1307 Fixes bug #858016 .
1308
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001309- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1310 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1311 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1312
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001313- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1314 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1315 improves their performance (about 35%).
1316
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001317- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1318 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1319 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1320
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001321- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1322 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1323 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1324 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1325
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001326- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1327 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001328 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001329 length is not known).
1330
1331- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1332 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001333 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1334 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001335 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1336
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001337- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1338 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1339
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001340- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1341 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1342 keyword arguments.
1343
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001344- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1345 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1346 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1347
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001348- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1349 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1350 cases.
1351
1352- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1353 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1354 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1355 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1356 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1357 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1358 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1359 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1360 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1361 a release build.
1362
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001363- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1364 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1365
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001366- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001367 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001368
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001369- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1370 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1371 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1372 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1373 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1374 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1375 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1376 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1377 destroyed.
1378
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001379- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1380 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1381 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1382 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1383 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1384 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1385 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1386 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1387
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001388- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1389 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1390 character other than a space.
1391
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001392- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1393 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1394 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1395 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1396 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1397 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1398 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1399 attributes with the same name.
1400
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001401- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1402 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1403 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1404 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1405 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1406 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1407 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1408 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1409 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1410 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1411 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1412 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1413 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1414 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001415
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001416- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1417 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1418 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1419 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1420 This has been repaired.
1421
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001422- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1423
1424- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1425
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001426- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1427 over a sequence.
1428
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001429- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001430 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001431
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001432- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1433
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001434- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1435 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1436 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1437 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1438 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1439 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1440 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1441 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1442
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001443- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1444 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1445 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1446
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001447- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1448 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1449 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1450 freelist.
1451
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001452- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1453 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1454
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001455- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1456 number.
1457
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001458- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1459 a TypeError exception.
1460
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001461- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1462 820195.
1463
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001464- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1465 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1466 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1467
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001468- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001469 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1470 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001471
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001472- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1473 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1474 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1475
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001476- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1477 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001478 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001479
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001480- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001481 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1482 the first call.
1483
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001484
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001485Extension modules
1486-----------------
1487
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001488- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1489 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1490
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001491- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1492 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1493 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1494 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1495 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1496 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1497 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001498
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001499- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1500
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001501- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1502
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001503- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1504 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1505
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001506- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1507 fewer false positives.
1508
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001509- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1510 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1511
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001512- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001513 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1514
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001515- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001516 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001517 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001518 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1519 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001520
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001521- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1522 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1523 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1524 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1525
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001526- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1527 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1528 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1529 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1530 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1531 #897625.
1532
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001533- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1534 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1535
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001536- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1537 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1538 and pops on either side of the deque.
1539
1540- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1541 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1542
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001543- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1544 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1545 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1546 other functions that expect a function argument.
1547
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001548- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1549
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001550- os.getsid was added.
1551
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001552- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1553 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1554 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1555
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001556- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1557
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001558- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1559
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001560- readline.clear_history was added.
1561
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001562- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1563
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001564- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1565
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001566- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1567
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001568- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1569
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001570- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1571
1572- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1573
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001574- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1575
1576- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1577
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001578- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1579 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1580 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1581
1582- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1583 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1584 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1585 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1586 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1587 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1588 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1589
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001590- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1591 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1592 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1593 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001594
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001595- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001596 iterators from a single iterable.
1597
1598- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1599 of raising a TypeError exception.
1600
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001601- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1602 as parameter.
1603
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001604Library
1605-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001606
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001607- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1608 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1609 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001610
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001611- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1612 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1613 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001614
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001615- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001616
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001617- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1618 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001619
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001620- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1621 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1622
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001623- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1624
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001625- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001626 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001627
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001628- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001629 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001630
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001631- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1632
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001633- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1634 on cygwin and mingw32.
1635
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001636- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1637
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001638- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1639 module.
1640
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001641- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1642 installation scheme for all platforms.
1643
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001644- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001645 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001646
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001647- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1648 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1649 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1650
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001651- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1652 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1653 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1654
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001655- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1656
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001657- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1658
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001659- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1660 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1661
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001662- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1663 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1664 type pattern with the same value exists.
1665
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001666- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1667 when run from the command prompt).
1668
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001669- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1670 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1671
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001672- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1673 default sort).
1674
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001675- Added global runctx function to profile module
1676
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001677- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1678
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001679- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1680
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001681- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1682
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001683- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001684 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1685 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1686 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1687 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1688 accordingly.
1689
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001690- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1691 decoding standards.
1692
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001693- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1694 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1695 called for all requests.
1696
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001697- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1698 they are passed to the compiler.
1699
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001700- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1701 indent, width and depth.
1702
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001703- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1704 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1705
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001706- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1707 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1708
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001709- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1710
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001711- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1712
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001713- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1714
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001715- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1716 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1717
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001718- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001719 for better performance.
1720
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001721- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001722
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001723- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1724 a string).
1725
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001726- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1727
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001728- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1729
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001730- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1731
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001732- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1733
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001734- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1735 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1736 list of fieldnames.
1737
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001738- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1739 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1740
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001741- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1742
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001743- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1744 empty lists.
1745
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001746- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1747 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1748 and shelves.
1749
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001750- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1751 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1752
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001753- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001754 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1755 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001756
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001757- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1758 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001759 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001760
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001761- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001762 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1763 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1764
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001765- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1766 and removed in Py2.4.
1767
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001768- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1769
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001770- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1771
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001772Tools/Demos
1773-----------
1774
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001775- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1776 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1777
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001778- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1779
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001780- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1781 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1782 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1783 destination in situations where both files are given.
1784
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001785- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1786 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1787 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1788 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1789
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001790- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1791
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001792- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1793 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1794 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1795 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1796 now.
1797
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001798- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1799 in effect
1800
1801- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1802 C-c C-h
1803
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001804- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1805 -d option was given.
1806
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001807Build
1808-----
1809
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001810- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1811 build under OS X.
1812
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001813- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1814 --enable-profiling.
1815
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001816- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1817 is configured --with-tsc.
1818
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001819- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1820 on AMD64.
1821
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001822- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1823 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1824
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001825- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1826 removed.
1827
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001828- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1829 supported (see PEP 11).
1830
1831- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1832
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001833- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1834
1835- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1836 (see PEP 11).
1837
1838- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1839 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1840
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001841C API
1842-----
1843
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001844- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1845 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1846 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1847
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001848- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1849 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1850 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1851 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1852
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001853- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1854 generator objects.
1855
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001856- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1857 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001858 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1859 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001860
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001861- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
1862 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
1863
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00001864- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
1865 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
1866 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
1867 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
1868 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
1869
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00001870- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
1871 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
1872 about 10% faster.
1873
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00001874- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
1875 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
1876
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00001877- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
1878 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
1879 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
1880 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
1881
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001882Windows
1883-------
1884
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00001885- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
1886 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
1887 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
1888 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
1889
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00001890- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
1891 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
1892 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
1893
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001894
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001895What's New in Python 2.3 final?
1896===============================
1897
1898*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
1899
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001900IDLE
1901----
1902
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00001903- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
1904 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
1905 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
1906 context-menu actions.
1907
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001908- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
1909 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
1910 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
1911 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
1912 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
1913 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
1914 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
1915 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
1916 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
1917
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00001918
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001919What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
1920=============================================
1921
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00001922*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001923
1924Core and builtins
1925-----------------
1926
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001927- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001928 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00001929 comment at the end are still unsupported.
1930
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001931Extension modules
1932-----------------
1933
1934- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
1935 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
1936 than once. This has been fixed.
1937
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00001938- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
1939 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
1940 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
1941 call.
1942
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001943- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
1944
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001945Library
1946-------
1947
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001948- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
1949 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
1950
1951- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
1952 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
1953 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
1954 restored.
1955
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001956IDLE
1957----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001958
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00001959- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001960
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001961Build
1962-----
1963
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001964- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
1965 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
1966
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001967C API
1968-----
1969
1970Windows
1971-------
1972
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00001973- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
1974 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
1975
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001976- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
1977
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001978Mac
1979---
1980
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00001981- Various fixes to pimp.
1982
1983- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
1984
1985- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
1986 more problems than it solves.
1987
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00001988
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00001989What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
1990=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001991
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00001992*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
1993
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00001994Core and builtins
1995-----------------
1996
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00001997- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
1998 by sys.setcheckinterval().
1999
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002000- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2001 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002002 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002003
2004- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2005 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2006 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002007 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002008
2009- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2010 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002011
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002012- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2013 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2014 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2015
2016- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002017 770247.
2018
2019- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002020
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002021Extension modules
2022-----------------
2023
2024- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2025 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2026
2027- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2028
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002029- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2030
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002031- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2032 contained within the _strptime module.
2033
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002034- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2035 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2036
2037- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002038 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2039
2040- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2041 the find_class attribute, if present.
2042
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002043- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002044
2045 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2046 (SF bug 763298).
2047
2048 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002049 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2050 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2051 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002052
2053 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2054
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002055Library
2056-------
2057
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002058- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2059
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002060- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2061 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2062 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2063 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2064 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2065 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2066 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2067 or Tester().
2068
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002069- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2070 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2071 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2072 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2073 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2074 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2075 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2076 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2077 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002078
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002079 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002080
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002081- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2082 weren't before was an oversight.
2083
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002084- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2085 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2086
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002087- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2088 when there are no lines.
2089
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002090- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2091 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2092
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002093- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2094 to child processes.
2095
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002096- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2097
2098- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2099
2100- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2101 xmlrpclib.
2102
2103- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2104 responses.
2105
2106- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2107 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2108
2109- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2110 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2111 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2112
2113- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2114 used as patterns.
2115
2116- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2117 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2118 than Tk 8.3.
2119
2120- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2121
2122- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002123
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002124Tools/Demos
2125-----------
2126
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002127- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2128
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002129- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2130
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002131- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002132
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002133Build
2134-----
2135
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002136- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2137
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002138- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2139
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002140- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2141 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002142
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002143- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2144 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2145 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002146
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002147C API
2148-----
2149
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002150- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2151 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2152
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002153Windows
2154-------
2155
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002156- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2157 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2158 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2159 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2160 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2161 Python exception ::
2162
2163 thread.error: can't start new thread
2164
2165 is raised now.
2166
2167- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2168 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2169 instead of from DLL teardown.
2170
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002171Mac
2172---
2173
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002174- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002175 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002176 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2177 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2178 the executable in the bundle.
2179
2180- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002181
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002182- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2183
2184- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2185 on Panther.
2186
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002187What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2188================================
2189
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002190*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002191
2192Core and builtins
2193-----------------
2194
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002195- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2196 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2197 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2198 with the -i option.
2199
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002200- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2201 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2202
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002203- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2204 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2205
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002206- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2207 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2208 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2209 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2210 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2211 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2212 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2213 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2214 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2215 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2216 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2217 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2218 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002219
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002220- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2221 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2222 embedded in a lambda expression.
2223
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002224- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2225 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2226 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2227 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2228 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2229
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002230- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2231 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2232 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2233
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002234- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2235 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2236
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002237- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2238 It's writable again.
2239
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002240- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2241 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2242 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002243 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002244
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002245- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2246 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2247 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2248
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002249Extension modules
2250-----------------
2251
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002252- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2253 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2254
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002255- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2256 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2257 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2258 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2259
2260- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2261 collection.
2262
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002263- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2264 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2265 unique within a single program run.
2266
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002267- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2268 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2269
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002270- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2271 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2272
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002273- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2274 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002275
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002276- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2277
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002278- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2279 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2280
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002281- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2282 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2283 for many BSD-derived systems.
2284
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002285
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002286Library
2287-------
2288
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002289- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2290 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2291 primary ones:
2292
2293 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2294 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2295 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2296
2297 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2298 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2299 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2300 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2301 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2302 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2303
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002304- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2305 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2306 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2307 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2308 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2309 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2310 argument.
2311
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002312- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2313 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2314 in the archive.
2315
2316- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2317 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2318
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002319- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2320 569574).
2321
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002322- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2323 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2324 no more.
2325
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002326- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2327 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2328 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2329 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2330 code coverage.
2331
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002332- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2333 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2334 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002335 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2336 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002337
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002338- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2339 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2340 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002341 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002342
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002343- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2344
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002345- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2346 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2347 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2348 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2349
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002350- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2351 handling.
2352
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002353- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2354 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2355
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002356- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2357 in socket.py.
2358
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002359- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2360
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002361- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2362 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2363 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2364 opener with proxy support.
2365
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002366- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2367
2368- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2369
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002370Tools/Demos
2371-----------
2372
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002373- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2374
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002375- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2376
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002377- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2378 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002379
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002380- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2381 files.
2382
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002383Build
2384-----
2385
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002386- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002387 different root directory.
2388
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002389C API
2390-----
2391
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002392- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2393 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2394 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2395 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2396 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2397 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2398 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2399 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2400 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2401 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2402
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002403- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2404 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2405 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2406 from Python.
2407
2408
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002409New platforms
2410-------------
2411
2412None this time.
2413
2414Tests
2415-----
2416
2417- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2418 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2419
2420Windows
2421-------
2422
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002423- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2424
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002425- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2426 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2427 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2428 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2429 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2430 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2431 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2432 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2433 that's what it's for.
2434
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002435Mac
2436---
2437
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002438- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2439 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2440 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2441 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002442- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2443 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2444- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002445
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002446SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2447------------------------------------
2448
2449430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2450598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2451622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2452661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2453683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2454697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2455713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2456724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2457727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2458729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2459730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2460731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2461732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2462733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2463735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2464740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2465744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2466745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2467747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2468749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2469751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2470753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2471755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2472757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2473760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2474
2475
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002476What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2477================================
2478
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002479*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002480
2481Core and builtins
2482-----------------
2483
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002484- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2485 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2486
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002487- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2488 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2489 and cannot be strings).
2490
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002491- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2492 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2493 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2494 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2495
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002496- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2497 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2498 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2499 Python itself.
2500
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002501- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2502 the referenced object, if it has one.
2503
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002504- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2505 the thread started at
2506 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2507
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002508- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2509 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2510 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2511 placed on a list index.
2512
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002513- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2514 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2515 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2516 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2517
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002518- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2519 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2520 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2521 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2522 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2523 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2524 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2525
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002526- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2527 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2528 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2529 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2530 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2531
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002532- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2533 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002534
2535- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2536 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2537 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2538 #693195.)
2539
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002540- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2541 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002542
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002543- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002544 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002545 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2546 interpreter executions, would fail.
2547
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002548- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002549 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002550 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002551
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002552Extension modules
2553-----------------
2554
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002555- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2556 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2557 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2558 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2559
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002560- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2561 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2562
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002563- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2564 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2565 and Greg Chapman.)
2566
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002567- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2568 recursively.
2569
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002570- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002571 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2572 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2573 leaks.
2574
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002575- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2576
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002577- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2578 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2579 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2580 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2581 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2582 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2583 #705836.
2584
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002585- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002586 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2587
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002588- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2589 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2590 See SF bug #692416.
2591
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002592- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2593 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2594
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002595- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2596 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2597 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002598
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002599- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002600 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2601 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2602
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002603- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2604 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2605 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2606 timeouts to work properly.
2607
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002608Library
2609-------
2610
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002611- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2612 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2613 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2614 future release.
2615
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002616- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2617 for querying platform dependent features.
2618
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002619- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002620
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002621- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2622 pickle protocol versions.
2623
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002624- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2625 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2626 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2627
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002628- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2629
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002630- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2631 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2632 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2633 modules.
2634
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002635- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2636 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2637 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2638
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002639- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2640 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2641
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002642- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2643 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2644 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2645
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002646- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002647 MS Office extensions.
2648
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002649- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2650 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2651
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002652- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2653 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2654
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002655- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2656 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2657 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2658 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2659 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2660 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2661
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002662- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2663 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2664 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002665
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002666- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2667 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2668 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2669
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002670- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2671
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002672- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2673 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2674 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2675
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002676Tools/Demos
2677-----------
2678
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002679- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2680 See the module docstring for details.
2681
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002682Build
2683-----
2684
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002685- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2686 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002687
2688C API
2689-----
2690
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002691- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2692
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002693- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2694 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2695 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2696
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002697- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2698 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002699
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002700 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2701 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2702 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002703
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002704- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002705 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2706
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002707- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2708 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2709 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002710
2711New platforms
2712-------------
2713
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002714None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002715
2716Tests
2717-----
2718
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002719- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2720 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002721
2722Windows
2723-------
2724
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002725- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2726 function.
2727
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002728- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2729 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002730
2731Mac
2732---
2733
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002734- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2735 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002736
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002737- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2738 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002739
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002740- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2741 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2742 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002743
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002744- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002745 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2746 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002747
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002748- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2749 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002750
2751
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002752What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2753=================================
2754
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002755*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002756
2757Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002758-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002759
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002760- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2761 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2762 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2763
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002764- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2765 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2766 (SF patch #664376.)
2767
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002768- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2769 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2770 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2771 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2772 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2773 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002774 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002775
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002776- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2777 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2778 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2779 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002780 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002781
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002782- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2783 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2784 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2785 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2786 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2787 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2788 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2789 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2790 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2791 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2792 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2793
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002794- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2795 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2796 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2797 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2798 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2799 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2800
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002801- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2802 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2803
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002804- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2805 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2806 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2807 case.)
2808
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002809- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2810 passed as unicode strings.
2811
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002812- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2813 See SF bug #683467.
2814
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002815- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2816 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2817
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002818- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2819
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002820- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2821
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002822- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2823 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2824 arguments.
2825
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002826- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2827 See SF bug #667147.
2828
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002829- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002830 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002831 See SF bug #676155.
2832
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002833- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002834 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002835 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2836 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2837 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2838 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2839 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2840 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002841
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002842Extension modules
2843-----------------
2844
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002845- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2846 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2847 tp_as_number pointer.
2848
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002849- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2850 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2851 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2852 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2853 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2854
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002855- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2856
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002857- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2858
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002859- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002860 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002861 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
2862 patch #678531.)
2863
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00002864- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
2865 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
2866
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00002867- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
2868 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
2869
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00002870- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
2871
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00002872- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
2873 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
2874 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
2875
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002876- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
2877
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00002878- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
2879 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
2880
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002881- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002882
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002883- datetime changes:
2884
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00002885 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
2886
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002887 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
2888 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
2889 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
2890 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
2891 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
2892 now.
2893
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002894 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002895 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
2896 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00002897
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002898 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002899 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002900 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
2901 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
2902 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
2903 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002904
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002905 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
2906 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
2907 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00002908 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
2909
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00002910 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
2911 by a later example coded by Guido.
2912
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002913 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002914 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
2915 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
2916 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00002917 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
2918 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
2919
2920 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
2921 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
2922 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
2923 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
2924 tzinfo subclass instance.
2925
2926 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
2927 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
2928 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
2929 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
2930 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
2931 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
2932 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
2933 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00002934
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002935 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
2936 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
2937 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
2938 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
2939 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002940 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
2941
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002942 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002943
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00002944 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
2945 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
2946 as a naive datetime object.
2947
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00002948 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
2949 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
2950 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
2951
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00002952 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
2953 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
2954 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
2955 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
2956 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
2957 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
2958 comparison.
2959
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002960 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
2961 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
2962 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
2963 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002964 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002965
2966 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002967
2968 and ::
2969
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00002970 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
2971
2972 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
2973 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
2974 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
2975 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
2976
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00002977 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
2978 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
2979 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
2980 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
2981 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
2982
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002983 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
2984 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00002985 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
2986 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002987
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002988Library
2989-------
2990
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002991- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
2992 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
2993
2994- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
2995 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
2996 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
2997 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
2998 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
2999 See PEP 307 for details.
3000
3001- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3002 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3003
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003004- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3005 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003006 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003007 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3008 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003009 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003010
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003011- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3012 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3013
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003014- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3015 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3016 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3017
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003018- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3019
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003020- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3021 exception.
3022
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003023- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3024 class.
3025
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003026- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3027 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3028 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3029
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003030- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3031 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3032
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003033- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003034 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3035 See SF bug #659228.
3036
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003037- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3038 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3039 See SF patch #651082.
3040
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003041- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003042
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003043- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3044 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3045
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003046- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003047 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003048
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003049- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3050 DOS paths from other platforms.
3051
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003052Tools/Demos
3053-----------
3054
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003055- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3056 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3057 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3058 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3059 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3060 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3061 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3062 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3063 example:
3064
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003065 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3066 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003067
3068 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3069
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003070
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003071Build
3072-----
3073
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003074- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3075 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3076 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003077 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3078
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003079 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3080
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003081- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3082 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3083 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3084 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3085 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3086 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3087 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3088 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3089 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3090
3091- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3092 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3093 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3094 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3095
3096- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3097 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3098
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003099C API
3100-----
3101
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003102- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3103 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003104
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003105- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3106 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3107 tp_as_number pointer.
3108
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003109- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3110 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3111 (SF #681367)
3112
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003113- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3114 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3115 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3116 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003117
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003118Tests
3119-----
3120
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003121- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003122 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3123 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3124 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3125 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3126 pydoc.)
3127
3128- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3129
3130- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003131
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003132Windows
3133-------
3134
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003135- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3136 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3137 time).
3138
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003139- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3140 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3141
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003142- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3143 release without strong cryptography.
3144
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003145- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003146 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003147
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003148- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3149 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3150
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003151Mac
3152---
3153
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003154- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3155 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003156
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003157- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3158 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3159 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003160
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003161- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3162 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003163
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003164- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3165 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3166 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3167 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003168
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003169- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003170 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3171 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3172 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003173
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003174
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003175What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003176=================================
3177
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003178*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003179
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003180Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003181--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003182
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003183- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3184
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003185- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3186 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003187 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003188 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003189 a different meaning than before.
3190
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003191- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003192 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003193 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003194
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003195- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003196 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003197 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003198
3199- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3200 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3201 and deallocation.
3202
3203- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3204 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3205
3206- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3207 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3208 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3209 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3210 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3211
3212- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3213 now detected by the garbage collector.
3214
3215- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3216 [SF bug 519621]
3217
3218- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3219 identifier.
3220
3221- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3222 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3223 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3224 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3225 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3226 [SF bug 563060]
3227
3228- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3229 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3230 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3231 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3232 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3233
3234- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3235 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3236 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3237
3238- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3239
3240- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3241 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3242 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3243 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3244 state of the slots would be lost.)
3245
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003246Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003247-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003248
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003249- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003250 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3251 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3252 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3253 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003254 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3255 Jython 2.1.
3256
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003257- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003258 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003259 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3260 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3261 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3262 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3263 these, see PEP 302.
3264
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003265- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3266 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3267 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3268
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003269- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3270 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3271 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3272
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003273- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3274 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3275 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3276
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003277- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3278 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3279 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3280 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3281 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3282 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3283 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3284 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3285 releases or implementations.
3286
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003287- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003288 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3289 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003290
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003291- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3292 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3293
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003294- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3295 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3296 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3297
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003298- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3299 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3300
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003301- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3302 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003303 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3304 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003305
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003306- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3307 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3308 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3309 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3310 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3311
3312 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3313 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3314 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3315 pattern.
3316
3317 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3318 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3319 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3320 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3321
3322 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3323 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3324 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3325 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3326 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3327 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3328
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003329- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3330 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3331 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3332 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3333 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3334 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3335 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3336 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003337
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003338- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3339 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3340 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3341 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3342 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003343 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3344 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3345 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3346 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3347 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3348 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3349 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003350
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003351- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3352 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3353
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003354- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3355 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3356 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3357 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3358 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3359 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3360 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3361 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3362 to Zack Weinberg!
3363
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003364- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3365 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3366 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3367 type. This has been fixed now.
3368
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003369- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3370 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3371 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3372
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003373- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3374 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3375 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3376 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3377 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3378 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3379 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3380 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003381 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003382
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003383- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3384 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3385 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003386
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003387- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3388 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3389 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3390 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3391 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3392 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3393 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3394 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003395 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003396 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3397 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3398
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003399- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3400 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3401 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3402 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3403 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3404 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3405 this.)
3406
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003407- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3408 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003409 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003410 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003411 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3412 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003413 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3414 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003415
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003416- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3417 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3418 currently running.
3419
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003420- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3421 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3422 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3423 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3424
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003425- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3426 as directory names.
3427
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003428- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3429 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3430
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003431- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3432 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3433
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003434- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003435 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3436 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003437
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003438- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3439 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3440 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3441 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3442 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3443
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003444- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3445 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3446 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3447 removed.
3448
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003449- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3450 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3451 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3452
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003453- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3454 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3455 to __debug__.
3456
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003457- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3458 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3459 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3460
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003461- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3462 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3463 deprecated now.
3464
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003465- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3466 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3467 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003468
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003469- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3470 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3471 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3472 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3473 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003474
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003475- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3476 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3477
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003478- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3479 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3480 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003481 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003482 is backward compatible.
3483
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003484- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3485 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3486 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3487 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3488 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3489
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003490- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3491 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3492 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3493 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3494 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3495 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003496
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003497- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3498 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3499
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003500- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3501 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3502
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003503- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3504 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3505 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3506 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3507 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3508
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003509- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3510 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3511 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3512
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003513- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003514 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3515
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003516- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3517 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3518 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003519
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003520- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3521 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3522
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003523- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3524 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3525 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3526
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003527- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3528
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003529Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003530-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003531
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003532- Added three operators to the operator module:
3533 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3534 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3535 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3536
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003537- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3538
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003539- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3540 archives.
3541
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003542- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3543 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3544 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3545
3546 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3547
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003548- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3549 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3550 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003551 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003552
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003553- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3554 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3555 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3556 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003557 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3558 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3559 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3560 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003561
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003562- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3563 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003564
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003565- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3566
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003567- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3568 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3569
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003570- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3571 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3572 supported.
3573
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003574- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3575
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003576- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3577 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003578
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003579- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3580 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3581
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003582- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3583
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003584- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3585 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3586
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003587- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3588 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3589 functions but callable type objects.
3590
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003591- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003592 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003593 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003594
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003595- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3596 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003597
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003598- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3599 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003600
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003601- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3602 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3603 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3604 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3605
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003606- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3607 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003608
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003609- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3610 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3611 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3612 and __imul__.
3613
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003614- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003615 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3616 is called.
3617
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003618- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3619 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3620 interpreter was compiled.
3621
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003622- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3623 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3624 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003625 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003626 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3627 1, not 2.
3628
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003629- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3630 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3631 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3632 limit.
3633
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003634- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3635 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3636 bug #623464.
3637
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003638- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3639 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3640 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3641 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3642
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003643Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003644-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003645
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003646- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3647
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003648- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3649 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3650 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3651 with Python 2.3a2.
3652
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003653- os.path exposes getctime.
3654
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003655- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003656 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003657 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003658 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003659 unit tests of floating point results.
3660
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003661- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3662 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3663 has been increased.
3664
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003665- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3666 executed.
3667
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003668- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3669 postinstallation script.
3670
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003671- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3672 test the current module.
3673
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003674- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003675 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3676 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3677 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3678 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3679
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003680- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003681 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003682 Ward's Optik package.
3683
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003684- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3685 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3686 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3687 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3688
3689- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3690 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003691 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003692
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003693- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3694 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3695 shelf are binary pickles.
3696
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003697- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3698 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3699
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003700- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3701 modules are iterators now.
3702
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003703- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3704 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3705 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3706 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3707 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3708 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003709
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003710- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3711 with their entity value.
3712
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003713- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3714
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003715- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3716 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003717
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003718- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3719 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003720 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003721
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003722- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3723 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3724 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3725 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3726 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3727 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3728 main():
3729
3730 import locale
3731 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3732
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003733- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3734 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3735
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003736- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3737 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3738 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3739 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3740 to the new standard.
3741
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003742- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3743 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3744 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3745 an extension to the database.
3746
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003747- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3748 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3749 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3750 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003751 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003752
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003753- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003754 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003755
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003756- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3757 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3758 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3759 bounded integers.
3760
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003761- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3762 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3763 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3764 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3765 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3766 in existence.
3767
3768 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3769 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3770 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3771 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3772 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3773 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3774
3775 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3776 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3777 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3778 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3779
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003780- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3781 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3782 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3783
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003784- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3785
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003786- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3787 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3788 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3789 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3790
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003791- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3792 argument.
3793
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003794- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3795 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3796 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3797 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3798 [SF patch 560794].
3799
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003800- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3801 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3802 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003803 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3804 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3805 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003806
3807- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3808 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003809
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003810- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3811 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3812 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3813 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003814
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003815- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3816 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3817 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3818 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3819 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3820
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003821- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003822
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003823- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3824
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003825- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3826 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3827 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3828 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3829 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3830 identical to None.
3831
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003832- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3833 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3834 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3835 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3836 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3837 results now.
3838
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003839- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3840 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3841
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003842- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3843 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3844 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3845 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3846 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3847 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3848 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3849 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3850
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003851- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3852
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003853- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3854 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3855
3856- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3857 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3858 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3859 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3860 and other systems.
3861
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003862- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
3863 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
3864 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
3865 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00003866 work well with these.
3867
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00003868- compileall now supports quiet operation.
3869
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003870- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00003871 connections.
3872
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00003873- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
3874 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
3875 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
3876
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00003877- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
3878 sets
3879
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00003880- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
3881 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
3882 name.
3883
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00003884- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
3885 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
3886 passed in.
3887
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00003888- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00003889 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00003890 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
3891 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00003892
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00003893- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
3894
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00003895- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
3896
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00003897- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
3898 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
3899 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
3900
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003901- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
3902 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
3903 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
3904 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00003905 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00003906
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003907- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003908 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003909 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00003910
3911- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
3912 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
3913 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
3914
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003915- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00003916 the value of its expression argument.
3917
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003918- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
3919 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
3920 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
3921
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00003922- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
3923 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
3924 skipstone browser was included.
3925
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00003926- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
3927 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
3928
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003929Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003930-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003931
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00003932- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
3933 names in addition to accepting file names.
3934
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00003935- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
3936 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
3937 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
3938 still used and useful.)
3939
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00003940- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
3941 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
3942 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
3943 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00003944
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00003945- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
3946 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
3947 the generated binary.
3948
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003949Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003950-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003951
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00003952- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
3953
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003954- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
3955 except in the hands of experts.
3956
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003957- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00003958 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
3959 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
3960 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00003961
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00003962- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
3963 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
3964 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
3965 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
3966 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
3967 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
3968 builds.
3969
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003970- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
3971 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
3972 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
3973 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
3974 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
3975 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
3976 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
3977 new type.
3978
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00003979- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00003980
3981 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
3982 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
3983 positive infinities.
3984
3985 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
3986 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
3987 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
3988 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
3989 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
3990 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
3991 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
3992
3993 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
3994
3995 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
3996
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00003997- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
3998 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
3999 size of the executable.
4000
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004001- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4002 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4003 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4004 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004005
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004006- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4007
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004008- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4009 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4010 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004011
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004012- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4013 well as Unix.
4014
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004015- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4016 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4017 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4018 modules in the README file for details.
4019
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004020C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004021-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004022
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004023- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4024 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004025 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004026 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004027 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004028
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004029- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4030 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4031 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4032 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4033 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4034 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004035 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004036 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4037 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4038 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4039 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4040 aligned.)
4041
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004042- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4043 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4044 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4045
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004046- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4047 level.
4048
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004049- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4050 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4051 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4052 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4053 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4054
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004055- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4056 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4057 code.
4058
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004059- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4060 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4061 adjusting for negative indices.
4062
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004063- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4064 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4065 object.
4066
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004067- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4068 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4069 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4070
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004071- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4072 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004073
4074- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4075
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004076- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4077 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4078 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4079 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4080
4081- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4082
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004083- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004084
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004085- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004086 without going through the buffer API.
4087
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004088- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004089
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004090- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4091 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4092 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4093 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4094
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004095- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4096 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4097
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004098- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004099 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4100
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004101New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004102-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004103
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004104- OpenVMS is now supported.
4105
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004106- AtheOS is now supported.
4107
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004108- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4109
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004110- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4111
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004112Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004113-----
4114
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004115- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4116 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4117 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004118
4119Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004120-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004121
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004122- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4123 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4124 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4125 bugs.
4126 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004127 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004128 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4129 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004130 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004131
4132- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004133 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004134
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004135- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4136 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4137
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004138- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4139 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004140 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004141 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4142
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004143- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4144 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4145 use files" uninstall option).
4146
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004147- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4148
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004149- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4150 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4151
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004152- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4153 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4154 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4155
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004156- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4157 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4158 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4159 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4160 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004161 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4162 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4163 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004164
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004165- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004166 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004167 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4168 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4169 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4170 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4171 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4172 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4173 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4174 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4175 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4176 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4177 work around.
4178
4179- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4180 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4181 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4182 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4183 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4184 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4185 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4186 specified with O_CREAT too).
4187
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004188Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004189----
4190
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004191- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004192
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004193- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4194 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4195 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4196
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004197- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4198 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4199 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4200
4201- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4202 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4203 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4204 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4205 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4206 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4207 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4208 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004209
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004210- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4211 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4212 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004213
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004214- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4215 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4216 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4217 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4218 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004219
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004220- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4221 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4222 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004223
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004224- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4225 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004226
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004227- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4228 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4229 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4230 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4231 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004232
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004233- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4234 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4235 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4236
4237- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4238 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4239 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004240
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004241- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4242 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4243 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4244 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004245 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004246
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004247- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4248 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004249
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004250- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4251 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004252
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004253- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004254 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004255 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4256 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004257
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004258
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004259What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004260===============================
4261
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004262*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4263
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004264Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004265--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004266
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004267- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4268 with a custom metaclass.
4269
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004270Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004271-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004272
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004273- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4274 are proxies.
4275
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004276Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004277-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004278
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004279- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4280 very short strings.
4281
4282- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4283 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4284 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4285 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4286 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4287
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004288Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004289-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004290
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004291- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4292 close or delete time).
4293
4294- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4295 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4296
4297- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4298
4299- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004300 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004301
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004302Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004303-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004304
4305Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004306-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004307
4308C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004309-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004310
4311New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004312-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004313
4314Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004315-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004316
4317Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004318-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004319
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004320- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4321
4322- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4323 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4324
4325- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4326 deleted at process exit time.
4327
4328- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4329 in backslash.
4330
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004331Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004332----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004333
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004334- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4335 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4336 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4337
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004338
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004339What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004340===========================
4341
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004342*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4343
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004344Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004345--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004346
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004347- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4348 been extensively updated. See
4349
4350 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4351
4352 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4353
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004354- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4355 deleted!
4356
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004357- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4358 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4359 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4360 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4361 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4362
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004363- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4364
4365 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4366 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4367
4368 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4369 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4370 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4371 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4372 supported anyway.
4373
4374 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4375 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4376
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004377- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4378 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4379 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4380 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4381 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004382
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004383- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4384 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4385 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4386
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004387Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004388-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004389
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004390- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4391 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4392 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4393 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4394 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4395 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004396 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4397 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4398 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4399 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004400
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004401- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4402 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4403 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4404
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004405Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004406-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004407
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004408- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4409
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004410Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004411-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004412
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004413- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4414 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4415 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4416 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4417 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4418 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4419
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004420- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4421
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004422- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4423
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004424- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4425
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004426- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4427 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4428 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4429
4430- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4431
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004432Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004433-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004434
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004435- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4436 off a search on Google.
4437
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004438Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004439-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004440
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004441- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4442 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4443 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4444 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4445 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4446 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4447 other platforms should do likewise.
4448
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004449- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4450 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4451 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4452
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004453C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004454-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004455
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004456- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4457 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4458 producing key-value pairs.
4459
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004460- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004461 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004462 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4463 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4464 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4465 previously went unchallenged.
4466
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004467New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004468-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004469
4470Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004471-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004472
4473Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004474-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004475
4476Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004477----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004478
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004479- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4480 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004481
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004482- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4483 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4484 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4485 home.
4486
4487
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004488What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004489===========================
4490
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004491*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4492
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004493Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004494--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004495
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004496- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4497 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004498
4499 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004500 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004501
4502 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4503 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004504 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004505 This needs to be documented.
4506
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004507- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4508 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4509
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004510- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4511 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4512 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4513
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004514- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4515 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4516
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004517- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4518 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4519 class forbids it).
4520
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004521- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4522 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4523 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4524
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004525- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4526
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004527Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004528-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004529
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004530- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4531 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004532 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004533
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004534- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4535 (like 1 + '').
4536
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004537Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004538-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004539
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004540- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4541 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4542 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4543 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004544 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004545 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4546
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004547- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4548 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4549 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4550 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4551
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004552- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4553 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004554 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4555 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4556 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004557
4558- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4559 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004560
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004561- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4562 bytes on its input.
4563
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004564Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004565-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004566
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004567- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004568 convenience function.
4569
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004570- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4571 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4572 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004573 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4574 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4575 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4576 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4577 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4578 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004579
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004580- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4581 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4582 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4583 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4584
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004585- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4586 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4587 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4588
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004589- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4590 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4591 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4592 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4593
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004594- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4595 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004596 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004597 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4598 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4599 new -l and -e options.
4600
4601- statcache is now deprecated.
4602
4603- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4604 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004605 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004606 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4607 time properly taken into account.
4608
4609- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4610 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4611 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4612 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4613
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004614Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004616
4617Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004618-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004619
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004620- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4621 is built with libdb3 if available.
4622
4623- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4624
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004625C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004626-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004627
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004628- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4629 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4630 PySequence_Size().
4631
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004632- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4633
4634- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4635 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4636 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4637
4638- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4639 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4640
4641- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4642 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4643
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004644New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004646
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004647- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4648 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4649
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004650- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4651 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4652
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004653- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4654
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004655Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004656-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004657
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004658- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4659 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4660
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004661Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004662-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004663
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004664Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004665----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004666
4667- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4668 removed completely in the next release.
4669
4670- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4671 OSX.
4672
4673- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4674 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4675
4676- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4677
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004678
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004679What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004680===========================
4681
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004682*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4683
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004684Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004685--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004686
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004687- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004688 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004689 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004690 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4691 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004692 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4693 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004694 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4695 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004696
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004697- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4698 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4699
4700- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4701 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4702
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004703Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004704-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004705
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004706- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4707 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4708 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4709 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4710 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4711 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4712 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4713 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4714
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004715- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4716 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4717 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4718 example).
4719
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004720- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004721 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004722 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004723 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004724
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004725- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4726 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4727 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004728 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004729
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004730- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4731 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4732 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4733 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4734 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4735 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4736
4737 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4738
4739 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4740
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004741Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004742-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004743
4744- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4745
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004746- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4747
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004748- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4749 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004750
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004751- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4752 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4753 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4754 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4755 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4756 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004757 attributes.
4758
4759- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4760 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4761 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004762
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004763- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4764 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4765 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004766
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004767- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4768 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4769 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004770 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4771 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4772
4773- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4774 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004775
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004776Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004777-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004778
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004779- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4780 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4781
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004782- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4783 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4784 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4785 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4786
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004787- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4788 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4789 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4790 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4791
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004792 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4793 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4794 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4795 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4796 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4797 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4798 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4799 without losing information).
4800
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004801- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004802 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4803 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4804 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4805 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4806 module).
4807
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004808 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004809 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4810 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4811 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4812 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004813
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004814- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004815 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4816 encoding.
4817
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004818- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4819 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4820
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004821- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004822 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4823
4824- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4825 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4826 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4827 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4828
4829- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4830
4831- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4832 ON, and OFF.
4833
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004834- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4835 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4836
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004837Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004839
4840- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4841 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4842 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004843
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004844- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4845 been added: -X and -E.
4846
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004847Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004848-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004849
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004850- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4851 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4852
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004853C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004854-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004855
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004856- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4857 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4858 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4859 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4860 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4861
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00004862- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
4863 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
4864 as long) arguments.
4865
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004866- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
4867 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
4868 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
4869 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
4870 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
4871 report any bugs or strange behavior).
4872
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004873- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
4874 input.
4875
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004876New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004877-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004878
4879Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004881
4882Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004883-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004884
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00004885- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
4886 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
4887 is created for .py and .pyw files.
4888
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004889- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
4890 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
4891 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004892 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004893
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004894 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
4895 # (SIGINT) behavior.
4896 import signal
4897 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004898
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004899 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004900 while 1:
4901 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004902 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004903 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
4904 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
4905 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
4906 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00004907
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004908
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004909What's New in Python 2.2a4?
4910===========================
4911
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004912*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
4913
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004914Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004915--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004916
4917- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
4918 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
4919 documentation for all operations on list objects.
4920
4921- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
4922 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
4923 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
4924 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
4925 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
4926 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
4927 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00004928
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004929- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004930 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00004931 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
4932 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
4933 associate a docstring with a property.
4934
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004935- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
4936 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
4937 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
4938 other built-in object types.
4939
4940- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
4941 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
4942 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
4943 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
4944 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
4945
4946- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
4947 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
4948
4949- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
4950 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004951 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004952 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
4953 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
4954 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
4955 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
4956 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
4957
4958- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
4959 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
4960 class.
4961
4962- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
4963 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
4964 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
4965 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
4966
4967- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
4968 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
4969 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
4970 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
4971
4972- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
4973 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
4974
4975- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
4976 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
4977 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
4978 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
4979 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004980 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004981 with the same value as s.
4982
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00004983- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
4984
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004985Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00004987
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00004988- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
4989
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00004990- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
4991 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
4992 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
4993 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
4994 objects.
4995
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004996- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
4997 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00004998 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
4999 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5000
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005001- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5002 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5003 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5004
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005005Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005006-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005007
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005008- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5009 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5010 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5011 by the instances.
5012
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005013- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5014 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5015 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5016
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005017- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5018 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5019 before the entire comparison is complete.
5020
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005021- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5022 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5023 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5024
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005025- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5026 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5027 getwriter().
5028
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005029- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5030 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5031
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005032- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005033 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5034 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5035
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005036- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5037 iterable object.
5038
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005039- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5040 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005041
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005042- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5043 authentication.
5044
5045- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5046 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005047
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005048- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005049 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5050 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5051 a sample driver.)
5052
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005053Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005055
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005056- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5057 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5058 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5059 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5060 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5061 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5062 kernel has large file support.
5063
5064- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5065 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5066 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5067 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5068 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5069
5070- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5071 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5072 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5073
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005074C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005075-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005076
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005077- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5078 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5079
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005080New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005081-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005082
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005083- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5084 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5085
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005086Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005087-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005088
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005089- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5090 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5091 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5092 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5093 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5094
5095- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5096 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5097 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5098 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5099
5100- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5101 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5102
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005103Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005104-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005105
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005106- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005107 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5108 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005109
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005110
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005111What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5112===========================
5113
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005114*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5115
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005116Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005117----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005118
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005119- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5120 big to represent as a C double.
5121
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005122- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5123 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5124 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5125 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5126 restriction).
5127
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005128- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5129 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5130 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5131 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5132 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5133
5134 >>> dir([])
5135 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5136 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5137 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5138 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5139 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5140 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5141 'reverse', 'sort']
5142
5143 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5144
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005145- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005146 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5147 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5148 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5149 OverflowError exception.
5150
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005151- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005152 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005153 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5154 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5155 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5156 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5157 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005158 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005159 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5160 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5161
5162 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5163 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5164 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5165 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005166
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005167- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005168 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5169 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5170 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5171 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5172 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5173 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5174 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5175 once it is created.
5176
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005177- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5178 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5179 (key, value) pairs.
5180
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005181- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005182 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5183 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5184
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005185- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5186 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5187 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5188 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5189 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005190
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005191- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005192 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5193 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5194
5195 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5196
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005197- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005198 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5199
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005200Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005201-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005202
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005203- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005204 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5205 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005206
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005207- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5208 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5209 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5210 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5211 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5212 in this area anymore).
5213
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005214- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5215 threading.Timer.
5216
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005217- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5218 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5219
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005220- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005221 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5222
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005223- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005224 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5225 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5226 converted to Python longs.
5227
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005228- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005229 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5230
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005231- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5232 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5233 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5234
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005235Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005236-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005237
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005238- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5239 division operators as per PEP 238.
5240
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005241Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005242-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005243
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005244- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5245 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5246 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5247 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5248
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005249C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005250-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005251
5252- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005253
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005254- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5255 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005256 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005257
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005258 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5259 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005260 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005261 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005262
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005263- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005264 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5265 module:
5266
5267 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005268
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005269 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5270 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005271
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005272 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5273 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005274
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005275 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5276
5277 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5278
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005279- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005280 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5281 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5282 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005283
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005284New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005285-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005286
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005287- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5288 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5289 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5290 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5291 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005292
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005293Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005294-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005295
5296Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005297-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005298
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005299- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5300 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5301 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5302 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005303 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5304 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5305 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5306 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5307 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005308
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005309- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005310 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5311
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005312
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005313What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5314===========================
5315
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005316*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5317
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005318Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005319-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005320
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005321- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5322 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5323
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005324- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5325 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5326 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005327
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005328- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5329 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5330 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5331 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005332
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005333- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5334
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005335- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005336
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005337Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005338-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005339
5340- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005341 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005342 the module docstring for details.
5343
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005344Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005345-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005346
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005347- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005348 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5349 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5350 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005351
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005352- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5353 Nick Mathewson.
5354
5355Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005356----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005357
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005358- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5359 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5360 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5361 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5362 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5363 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5364 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5365 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5366
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005367- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5368 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5369 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5370 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5371
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005372- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5373 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5374 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5375 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5376 come a long way).
5377
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005378- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5379 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5380 write filters for these warnings).
5381
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005382- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5383 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5384 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5385 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5386 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5387
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005388- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5389 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5390 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5391 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5392 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5393 older distribution.
5394
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005395Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005396-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005397
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005398- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5399 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005400 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005401
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005402- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5403 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5404 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5405
5406- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5407
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005408- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5409
5410- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5411
5412- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5413
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005414- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005415
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005416- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5417
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005418New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005419-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005420
5421C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005422-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005423
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005424- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5425 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5426 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5427 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5428 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5429 against buffer overruns.
5430
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005431- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005432 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5433 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005434 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5435 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5436 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5437
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005438- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5439 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5440 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5441 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5442 deprecated.
5443
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005444Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005445-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005446
5447- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5448 relevant is found.
5449
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005450
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005451What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005452===========================
5453
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005454*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5455
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005456Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005457----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005458
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005459- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5460 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5461 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5462 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5463 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5464 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5465 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5466 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005467 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005468 repaired.
5469
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005470- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005471 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005472 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5473 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5474 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5475 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5476 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5477 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5478 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5479 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5480
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005481- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5482 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5483 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5484 leading BMO character).
5485
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005486- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5487 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5488 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5489
5490 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5491 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5492 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005493
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005494 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5495 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5496 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5497 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5498 for various simple to use conversions.
5499
5500 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5501 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5502
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5504 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5505 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5506 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5507 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5508 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5509 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5510 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5511 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5512 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5513 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5514 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5515 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5516 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5517 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005518
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005519- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5520 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5521 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005522 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005523 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005524
5525 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005526 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5527 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5528 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5529 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5530 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005531 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5532 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005533
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005534 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5535 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5536 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005537 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005538
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005539- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5540 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5541 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5542 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5543 floating arithmetic,
5544
5545 x = 9007199254740992.0
5546 print long(x)
5547
5548 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5549 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5550 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5551 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5552 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5553 functions are of good quality).
5554
5555 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5556 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5557 algorithms to break.
5558
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005559- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5560 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5561 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5562 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5563 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5564 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5565 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5566 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5567 order.
5568
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005569- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5570 operation along the most common code paths.
5571
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005572- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5573 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5574
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005575- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5576 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5577 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5578 {}.update(UserDict())
5579
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005580- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5581 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5582 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5583 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5584 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5585 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5586 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5587 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5588
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005589- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005590 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005591
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005592 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005593 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5594 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005595 join() method of strings
5596 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005597 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5598 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005599 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005600 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005601
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005602- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5603 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5604
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005605- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5606 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5607
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005608- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5609 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5610 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5611 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5612
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005613- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5614 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005615 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005616 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5617 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005618
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005619- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5620
5621
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005622Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005623-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005624
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005625- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005626 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005627 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5628 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5629
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005630- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5631 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5632
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005633- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5634 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5635 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5636 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5637
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005638- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5639 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5640 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5641
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005642- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5643
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005644- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5645
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005646- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5647 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5648 that are still imported into string.py).
5649
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005650- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5651
5652- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5653 Now it does.
5654
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005655- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5656
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005657- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5658 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5659 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5660 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5661 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005662 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5663 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005664
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005665- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5666 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5667 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5668 'help(object)'.
5669
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005670Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005671-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005672
5673- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005674 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005675 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5676 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5677
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005678- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005679 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5680 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005681
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005682C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005683-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005684
5685- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5686 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005687
5688----
5689
5690**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**