Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1? |
| 2 | XXX Release date: DD-MMM-2002 XXX |
| 3 | ================================= |
| 4 | |
| 5 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Core and builtins |
| 8 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | e92e0a9 | 2002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 9 | - The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates |
| 10 | correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones. |
| 11 | |
Neal Norwitz | 649b759 | 2002-01-01 19:07:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 12 | - file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed: |
| 13 | Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise |
| 14 | a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called. |
| 15 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 16 | Extension modules |
| 17 | |
Neal Norwitz | e790eae | 2002-01-01 21:14:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 18 | - dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case |
Martin v. Löwis | 9322727 | 2002-01-01 20:18:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 19 | of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open |
| 20 | is called. |
| 21 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 22 | Library |
| 23 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 37aa580 | 2002-02-10 21:42:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame^] | 24 | - encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character |
| 25 | sets |
| 26 | |
Guido van Rossum | 606fe4e | 2001-12-28 20:57:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 27 | - ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use |
| 28 | "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host |
| 29 | name. |
| 30 | |
Fred Drake | 3673612 | 2002-01-10 13:50:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 31 | - webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that |
| 32 | arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was |
| 33 | passed in. |
| 34 | |
Tim Peters | 11bd994 | 2002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 35 | - gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and |
Martin v. Löwis | a55ffae | 2002-01-11 06:58:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 36 | gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback |
| 37 | on a per-message basis. |
Martin v. Löwis | 1be6419 | 2002-01-11 06:33:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 38 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 9668b93 | 2002-01-12 11:27:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 39 | - distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option. |
| 40 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 41 | Tools/Demos |
| 42 | |
| 43 | Build |
| 44 | |
| 45 | C API |
| 46 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 3e3eacb | 2002-01-09 16:21:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 47 | - The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode object as-is |
| 48 | without going through the buffer API. |
| 49 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 7198a52 | 2002-01-01 19:59:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 50 | - The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix PyCmp_. |
| 51 | |
Tim Peters | 10a3bb5 | 2001-12-25 19:07:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 52 | - An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This |
| 53 | hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has |
| 54 | been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created |
| 55 | conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless. |
| 56 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 57 | - Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided |
| 58 | to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish! |
| 59 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | e92e0a9 | 2002-02-09 11:28:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 60 | - Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number |
| 61 | scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details. |
| 62 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 63 | New platforms |
| 64 | |
Martin v. Löwis | a6e9758 | 2002-01-01 18:41:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 65 | - GNU/Hurd is now supported. |
| 66 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 67 | Tests |
| 68 | |
| 69 | Windows |
| 70 | |
Tim Peters | ab034fa | 2002-02-01 11:27:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 71 | - os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block |
| 72 | until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly |
| 73 | the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for |
| 74 | a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn() |
| 75 | functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms. |
| 76 | See the docs for details. |
| 77 | |
Tim Peters | 11bd994 | 2002-02-01 00:52:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 78 | - New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't |
| 79 | need a TemproraryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune |
| 80 | to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it |
| 81 | got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the |
| 82 | underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine. |
| 83 | However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C |
| 84 | level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were |
| 85 | open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then |
| 86 | doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's |
| 87 | C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f |
| 88 | blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow |
| 89 | deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to |
| 90 | work around. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | - The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the |
| 93 | low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are |
| 94 | O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL. |
| 95 | The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT, |
| 96 | O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary |
| 97 | to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY |
| 98 | (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless |
| 99 | specified with O_CREAT too). |
| 100 | |
Tim Peters | af8446f | 2001-12-21 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 101 | Mac |
| 102 | |
| 103 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 104 | What's New in Python 2.2 final? |
| 105 | Release date: 21-Dec-2001 |
| 106 | =============================== |
| 107 | |
| 108 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 109 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 110 | - pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes |
| 111 | with a custom metaclass. |
| 112 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 113 | Core and builtins |
| 114 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 115 | - weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both |
| 116 | are proxies. |
| 117 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 118 | Extension modules |
| 119 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 120 | - binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding |
| 121 | very short strings. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | - cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack |
| 124 | overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion |
| 125 | limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects |
| 126 | performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT |
| 127 | when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h). |
| 128 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 129 | Library |
| 130 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 131 | - dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at |
| 132 | close or delete time). |
| 133 | |
| 134 | - rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None |
| 135 | instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module). |
| 136 | |
| 137 | - xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | - test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code |
| 140 | when run from the standard regresssion test. |
| 141 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 142 | Tools/Demos |
| 143 | |
| 144 | Build |
| 145 | |
| 146 | C API |
| 147 | |
| 148 | New platforms |
| 149 | |
| 150 | Tests |
| 151 | |
| 152 | Windows |
| 153 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 154 | - distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst). |
| 155 | |
| 156 | - tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper |
| 157 | instances are deleted at process exit time. |
| 158 | |
| 159 | - socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are |
| 160 | deleted at process exit time. |
| 161 | |
| 162 | - posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending |
| 163 | in backslash. |
| 164 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 165 | Mac |
| 166 | |
Barry Warsaw | 52acb49 | 2001-12-21 20:04:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 167 | - The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers |
| 168 | 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have |
| 169 | been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX. |
| 170 | |
Tim Peters | 909c091 | 2001-12-14 23:16:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 171 | |
Tim Peters | 6272dfd | 2001-12-13 19:34:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 172 | What's New in Python 2.2c1? |
| 173 | Release date: 14-Dec-2001 |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 174 | =========================== |
| 175 | |
| 176 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 177 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 178 | - Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has |
| 179 | been extensively updated. See |
| 180 | |
| 181 | http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html |
| 182 | |
| 183 | That remains the primary documentation in this area. |
| 184 | |
Guido van Rossum | 33bab01 | 2001-12-05 22:45:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 185 | - Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never |
| 186 | deleted! |
| 187 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4b80085 | 2001-12-03 00:54:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 188 | - The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called |
| 189 | __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly |
| 190 | called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition |
| 191 | with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods |
| 192 | are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.) |
| 193 | |
Guido van Rossum | cdbbd0a | 2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 194 | - Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed: |
| 195 | |
| 196 | (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still |
| 197 | return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super). |
| 198 | |
| 199 | (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This |
| 200 | is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of |
| 201 | super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data |
| 202 | attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not |
| 203 | supported anyway. |
| 204 | |
| 205 | (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an |
| 206 | instance of the type used in creation of the super instance. |
| 207 | |
Guido van Rossum | cd7b7d6 | 2001-12-04 21:02:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 208 | - Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type |
| 209 | (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising |
| 210 | TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling |
| 211 | dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError |
| 212 | (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__). |
Guido van Rossum | cdbbd0a | 2001-12-03 15:46:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 213 | |
Guido van Rossum | d331cb5 | 2001-12-05 19:46:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 214 | - New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for |
| 215 | all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty |
| 216 | dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further. |
| 217 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 218 | Core and builtins |
| 219 | |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 220 | - -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on |
| 221 | the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead |
| 222 | of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all" |
| 223 | means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in |
| 224 | your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in |
| 225 | educational environments with control over the libraries in use. |
Tim Peters | bf72fe2 | 2001-12-11 21:43:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 226 | Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails |
| 227 | under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true |
| 228 | division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is |
| 229 | testing the current rules). |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 230 | |
Fred Drake | 6c01e25 | 2001-12-14 17:08:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 231 | - complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string |
| 232 | argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string |
| 233 | or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string. |
| 234 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 235 | Extension modules |
| 236 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 560da62 | 2001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 237 | - gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers. |
| 238 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 239 | Library |
| 240 | |
Tim Peters | 25059d3 | 2001-12-07 20:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 241 | - Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter |
| 242 | lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done |
| 243 | this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling |
| 244 | an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads |
| 245 | until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs |
| 246 | relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design. |
| 247 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 3a89b2b | 2001-11-25 14:35:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 248 | - webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now. |
| 249 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 652e191 | 2001-11-25 14:50:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 250 | - Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show. |
| 251 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 714d2e2 | 2001-12-02 12:26:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 252 | - The charset alias windows_1252 has been added. |
| 253 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 254 | - types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types; |
| 255 | usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled |
| 256 | without Unicode support it will be just (str,). |
| 257 | |
| 258 | - The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML. |
| 259 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 260 | Tools/Demos |
| 261 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 262 | - A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires |
| 263 | off a search on Google. |
| 264 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 265 | Build |
| 266 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 267 | - Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the |
| 268 | preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent). |
| 269 | In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in |
| 270 | Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension |
| 271 | authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in |
| 272 | release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to |
| 273 | other platforms should do likewise. |
| 274 | |
Jack Jansen | 1999ef4 | 2001-12-06 21:47:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 275 | - It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a |
| 276 | case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build |
| 277 | directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python. |
| 278 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 279 | C API |
| 280 | |
Tim Peters | f582b82 | 2001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 281 | - New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict |
| 282 | constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object |
| 283 | producing key-value pairs. |
| 284 | |
Tim Peters | cffed4b | 2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 285 | - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in |
Tim Peters | f582b82 | 2001-12-11 18:51:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 286 | the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This |
Tim Peters | cffed4b | 2001-11-29 03:26:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 287 | wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even |
| 288 | dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result, |
| 289 | PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that |
| 290 | previously went unchallenged. |
| 291 | |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 292 | New platforms |
| 293 | |
| 294 | Tests |
| 295 | |
| 296 | Windows |
| 297 | |
| 298 | Mac |
| 299 | |
Jack Jansen | ffa260f | 2001-12-06 21:14:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 300 | - In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin", |
| 301 | without any trailing digits. |
Tim Peters | b3c9af1 | 2001-11-17 00:21:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 302 | |
Barry Warsaw | 0655745 | 2001-12-14 20:47:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 303 | - Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons. |
| 304 | Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to |
| 305 | the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python |
| 306 | home. |
| 307 | |
| 308 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 309 | What's New in Python 2.2b2? |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 310 | Release date: 16-Nov-2001 |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 311 | =========================== |
| 312 | |
| 313 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 314 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3d27df0 | 2001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 315 | - Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the |
| 316 | list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now: |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 317 | |
| 318 | class Classic: pass |
Guido van Rossum | 3d27df0 | 2001-11-15 20:27:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 319 | class Mixed(Classic, object): pass |
Tim Peters | 76f7fe3 | 2001-11-15 20:02:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 320 | |
| 321 | The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected |
| 322 | according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed |
| 323 | using new-style MRO rules if any base clase is a new-style class. |
| 324 | This needs to be documented. |
| 325 | |
Tim Peters | a427a2b | 2001-10-29 22:25:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 326 | - The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have |
| 327 | been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage. |
| 328 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3fc08d2 | 2001-11-15 20:33:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 329 | - dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For |
| 330 | example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument, |
| 331 | and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects. |
| 332 | |
Guido van Rossum | 7ad2d1e | 2001-10-29 22:11:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 333 | - New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called |
| 334 | when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes). |
| 335 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 336 | - Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are |
| 337 | instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base |
| 338 | class forbids it). |
| 339 | |
Guido van Rossum | c8e5645 | 2001-10-22 00:43:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 340 | - Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments |
| 341 | (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods |
| 342 | that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__. |
| 343 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 344 | - The socket function has been converted to a type; see below. |
| 345 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 346 | Core and builtins |
| 347 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 249aaed | 2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 348 | - Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This |
| 349 | was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1" |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 350 | (see below) says. |
Jeremy Hylton | 249aaed | 2001-11-09 21:06:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 351 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 352 | - Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator |
| 353 | (like 1 + ''). |
| 354 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 355 | Extension modules |
| 356 | |
Tim Peters | 5ebfd36 | 2001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 357 | - mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for |
| 358 | both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and |
| 359 | copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on |
| 360 | Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a |
| 361 | uniform way because the mmap() signuatures had diverged across |
| 362 | platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this! |
| 363 | |
Tim Peters | 169ded0 | 2001-11-03 19:57:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 364 | - By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in |
| 365 | unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all |
| 366 | instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized |
| 367 | to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes. |
| 368 | |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 369 | - The socket module defines a new method for socket objects, |
| 370 | sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 371 | send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has |
| 372 | been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.) |
| 373 | before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing. |
Guido van Rossum | 12d955c | 2001-10-26 14:56:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 374 | |
| 375 | - Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite |
| 376 | for the curses module (you have to run it manually). |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 15e0353 | 2001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 377 | |
Guido van Rossum | 692adf1 | 2001-10-30 03:03:03 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 378 | - binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57 |
| 379 | bytes on its input. |
| 380 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 381 | Library |
| 382 | |
Tim Peters | 5ebfd36 | 2001-11-13 23:11:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 383 | - tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory |
Martin v. Löwis | 25ee87c | 2001-11-07 22:38:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 384 | convenience function. |
| 385 | |
Tim Peters | 7533587 | 2001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 386 | - Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For |
| 387 | example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a |
| 388 | single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously. |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 389 | Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time; |
| 390 | previously, the error went undetected, and results were |
| 391 | unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and |
| 392 | pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an |
| 393 | experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works |
| 394 | like findall() but returns an iterator. |
Tim Peters | 7533587 | 2001-11-03 19:35:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 395 | |
Martin v. Löwis | b7b3260 | 2001-11-02 23:48:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 396 | - Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox, |
| 397 | DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the |
| 398 | methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog, |
| 399 | tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions. |
| 400 | |
Tim Peters | 98791af | 2001-10-23 01:59:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 401 | - Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so |
| 402 | cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause |
| 403 | permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled). |
| 404 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4919214 | 2001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 405 | - os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the |
| 406 | separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except |
| 407 | RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable |
| 408 | unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS. |
| 409 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 410 | - mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly |
| 411 | found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an |
| 412 | optional `strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether |
| 413 | recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we |
| 414 | know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are |
| 415 | new -l and -e options. |
| 416 | |
| 417 | - statcache is now deprecated. |
| 418 | |
| 419 | - email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style |
| 420 | dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates |
| 421 | hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional `localtime' flag is |
| 422 | added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings |
| 423 | time properly taken into account. |
| 424 | |
| 425 | - In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by |
| 426 | transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception |
| 427 | propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__ |
| 428 | in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle. |
| 429 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 430 | Tools/Demos |
| 431 | |
| 432 | Build |
| 433 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 434 | - The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module |
| 435 | is built with libdb3 if available. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | - Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement. |
| 438 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 439 | C API |
| 440 | |
Tim Peters | 1fc240e | 2001-10-26 05:06:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 441 | - New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non- |
| 442 | NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling |
| 443 | PySequence_Size(). |
| 444 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 445 | - New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added. |
| 446 | |
| 447 | - New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and |
| 448 | PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more |
| 449 | convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C. |
| 450 | |
| 451 | - PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's |
| 452 | possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before. |
| 453 | |
| 454 | - New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its |
| 455 | argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface. |
| 456 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 457 | New platforms |
| 458 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8644321 | 2001-10-27 22:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 459 | - We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00, |
| 460 | *with* threads, and passes the test suite. |
| 461 | |
Tim Peters | 7a33d8b | 2001-11-05 02:51:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 462 | - Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build |
| 463 | again under OS/2 Visual Age C++. |
| 464 | |
Guido van Rossum | 4919214 | 2001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 465 | - Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger. |
| 466 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 467 | Tests |
| 468 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 15e0353 | 2001-10-22 16:37:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 469 | - Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically; |
| 470 | regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it. |
| 471 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 472 | Windows |
| 473 | |
Barry Warsaw | 012852b | 2001-11-16 16:17:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 474 | Mac |
| 475 | |
| 476 | - PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be |
| 477 | removed completely in the next release. |
| 478 | |
| 479 | - It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and |
| 480 | OSX. |
| 481 | |
| 482 | - The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side |
| 483 | result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII. |
| 484 | |
| 485 | - Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1 |
| 486 | |
Tim Peters | 84362bc | 2001-10-19 17:55:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 487 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 488 | What's New in Python 2.2b1? |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 489 | Release date: 19-Oct-2001 |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 490 | =========================== |
| 491 | |
| 492 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 493 | |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 494 | - New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 495 | extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 496 | no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 497 | remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you |
| 498 | must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the |
Guido van Rossum | 687ae00 | 2001-10-15 22:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 499 | __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack |
| 500 | of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the |
Guido van Rossum | 3eea25c | 2001-10-16 00:46:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 501 | future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I |
| 502 | can prove that it actually speeds things up). |
Guido van Rossum | 50fda3b | 2001-10-04 19:46:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 503 | |
Tim Peters | 1c9ca87 | 2001-10-04 06:43:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 504 | - C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it |
| 505 | always returned None, even when there was a class docstring). |
| 506 | |
| 507 | - doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes, |
| 508 | class methods, static methods, and properties. |
| 509 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 510 | Core and builtins |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 511 | |
Guido van Rossum | a8bcf80 | 2001-10-15 15:53:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 512 | - A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed. |
| 513 | For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in |
| 514 | this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a' |
| 515 | iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce', |
| 516 | 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be', |
| 517 | 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error. |
| 518 | Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say |
| 519 | [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost. |
| 520 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 521 | - getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as |
| 522 | documented, rather than returning the default value for all |
| 523 | exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for |
| 524 | example). |
| 525 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 526 | - Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API. |
Fred Drake | 934d2a4 | 2001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 527 | A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 528 | proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 529 | built-in exception. |
Fred Drake | 934d2a4 | 2001-10-18 18:18:06 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 530 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 531 | - unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary |
| 532 | objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists. |
| 533 | unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still |
Marc-André Lemburg | b5507ec | 2001-10-19 12:02:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 534 | require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument. |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 535 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 536 | - isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a |
| 537 | class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the |
| 538 | second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a |
| 539 | class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance() |
| 540 | will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the |
| 541 | things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g. |
| 542 | |
| 543 | isinstance(x, (A, B)) |
| 544 | |
| 545 | returns true if x is an instance of A or B. |
| 546 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 547 | Extension modules |
| 548 | |
| 549 | - thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None). |
| 550 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 16dc7f4 | 2001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 551 | - binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp. |
| 552 | |
Guido van Rossum | c524d95 | 2001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 553 | - readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the |
| 554 | pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function. |
Martin v. Löwis | 0daad59 | 2001-09-30 21:09:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 555 | |
Guido van Rossum | c524d95 | 2001-10-19 01:31:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 556 | - os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where |
| 557 | available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions |
| 558 | now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be |
| 559 | accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for |
| 560 | backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence. |
| 561 | Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as |
Guido van Rossum | 98bf58f | 2001-10-18 20:34:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 562 | attributes. |
| 563 | |
| 564 | - time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a |
| 565 | pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with |
| 566 | attributes like tm_year etc. |
Martin v. Löwis | 16628c9 | 2001-10-04 22:46:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 567 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 568 | - Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional |
| 569 | second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount |
| 570 | of memory to use for the uncompressed data. |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 571 | |
Jeremy Hylton | cb44143 | 2001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 572 | - optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL |
| 573 | functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls |
| 574 | are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 575 | automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile |
| 576 | arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional. |
| 577 | |
| 578 | - posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now |
| 579 | exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW. |
Jeremy Hylton | cb44143 | 2001-10-19 03:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 580 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9074ef6 | 2001-10-16 21:34:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 581 | Library |
Guido van Rossum | 3c28863 | 2001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 582 | |
Tim Peters | 7402f79 | 2001-10-02 03:53:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 583 | - doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module |
| 584 | being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg. |
| 585 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 586 | - HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has |
| 587 | been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling, |
| 588 | but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and |
| 589 | documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final). |
| 590 | |
Guido van Rossum | c4b09b4 | 2001-10-04 10:19:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 591 | - profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception |
| 592 | raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used |
| 593 | to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive |
| 594 | functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function. |
| 595 | |
Tim Peters | 0a1fc4e | 2001-10-07 03:12:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 596 | The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile |
| 597 | profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if |
| 598 | you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile |
| 599 | intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more |
| 600 | than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended |
| 601 | to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and |
| 602 | that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but |
| 603 | without losing information). |
| 604 | |
Tim Peters | cce092d | 2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 605 | - Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver |
Tim Peters | 659a603 | 2001-10-09 20:51:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 606 | a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can |
| 607 | now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or |
| 608 | instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code. |
| 609 | Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile |
| 610 | module). |
| 611 | |
| 612 | Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overriden by subclasses. |
| 613 | Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of |
| 614 | profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details |
| 615 | and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed |
| 616 | a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines. |
Tim Peters | cce092d | 2001-10-09 05:31:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 617 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 16dc7f4 | 2001-09-30 20:32:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 618 | - quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter, |
Jeremy Hylton | 6f543b6 | 2001-10-16 20:42:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 619 | which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q' |
| 620 | encoding. |
| 621 | |
Guido van Rossum | a5343cc | 2001-10-18 18:02:07 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 622 | - The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after |
| 623 | finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.) |
| 624 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 625 | - The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a `file' argument |
| 626 | to allow saving the message body to a file. |
| 627 | |
| 628 | - The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which |
| 629 | only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body. |
| 630 | Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing |
| 631 | audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter). |
| 632 | |
| 633 | - ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB. |
| 634 | |
| 635 | - ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO, |
| 636 | ON, and OFF. |
| 637 | |
Fred Drake | cb7a6b5 | 2001-10-22 18:41:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 638 | - xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute |
| 639 | and item() method as required by the DOM specifications. |
| 640 | |
Guido van Rossum | ed554f6 | 2001-10-02 23:15:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 641 | Tools/Demos |
| 642 | |
| 643 | - Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package |
| 644 | derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see |
| 645 | http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net. |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 646 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 647 | - The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have |
| 648 | been added: -X and -E. |
| 649 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 650 | Build |
| 651 | |
Barry Warsaw | f6fb171 | 2001-10-19 05:35:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 652 | - configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and |
| 653 | the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler. |
| 654 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 655 | C API |
| 656 | |
Guido van Rossum | 6c4bce3 | 2001-10-18 19:20:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 657 | - The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that |
| 658 | the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is |
| 659 | not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in |
| 660 | Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for |
| 661 | "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return. |
| 662 | |
Tim Peters | d38b1c7 | 2001-09-30 05:09:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 663 | - PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments. |
| 664 | Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well |
| 665 | as long) arguments. |
| 666 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3c28863 | 2001-10-16 21:13:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 667 | - PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread |
| 668 | ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no |
| 669 | thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only |
| 670 | the thread module used this API). This code has only really been |
| 671 | tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and |
| 672 | report any bugs or strange behavior). |
| 673 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1c48609 | 2001-10-19 02:05:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 674 | - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as |
| 675 | input. |
| 676 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 677 | New platforms |
| 678 | |
| 679 | Tests |
| 680 | |
| 681 | Windows |
| 682 | |
Tim Peters | 04cf1d3 | 2001-10-09 22:39:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 683 | - Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension |
| 684 | registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry |
| 685 | is created for .py and .pyw files. |
| 686 | |
Tim Peters | 1ce3cf7 | 2001-10-01 17:58:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 687 | - The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven |
| 688 | Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK |
| 689 | action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via |
| 690 | signal.signal(). For example: |
| 691 | |
| 692 | # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C |
| 693 | # (SIGINT) behavior. |
| 694 | import signal |
| 695 | signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, |
| 696 | signal.default_int_handler) |
| 697 | |
| 698 | try: |
| 699 | while 1: |
| 700 | pass |
| 701 | except KeyboardInterrupt: |
| 702 | # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed |
| 703 | # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the |
| 704 | # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup). |
| 705 | print "Clean exit" |
| 706 | |
Tim Peters | abf925f | 2001-09-28 21:53:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 707 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 708 | What's New in Python 2.2a4? |
Barry Warsaw | 86fbaf8 | 2001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 709 | Release date: 28-Sep-2001 |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 710 | =========================== |
| 711 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 712 | Type/class unification and new-style classes |
| 713 | |
| 714 | - pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes; |
| 715 | e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper |
| 716 | documentation for all operations on list objects. |
| 717 | |
| 718 | - Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely |
| 719 | be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with |
| 720 | Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass |
| 721 | examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work |
| 722 | with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write |
| 723 | webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug |
| 724 | report on SourceForge.) |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 725 | |
Tim Peters | 66c1a52 | 2001-09-24 21:17:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 726 | - property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc. |
| 727 | These map to readonly attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__' |
| 728 | in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't |
| 729 | discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to |
| 730 | associate a docstring with a property. |
| 731 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 732 | - Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For |
| 733 | example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str |
| 734 | instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most |
| 735 | other built-in object types. |
| 736 | |
| 737 | - The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type |
| 738 | 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>, |
| 739 | *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type |
| 740 | 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or |
| 741 | otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects). |
| 742 | |
| 743 | - The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>; |
| 744 | previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>. |
| 745 | |
| 746 | - For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now |
| 747 | called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 748 | *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 749 | one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular |
| 750 | attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute |
| 751 | access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If |
| 752 | both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises |
| 753 | AttributeError, __getattr__ is called. |
| 754 | |
| 755 | - The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to. |
| 756 | The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old |
| 757 | class. |
| 758 | |
| 759 | - The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern, |
| 760 | "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin |
| 761 | constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function. |
| 762 | file() is now the preferred way to open a file. |
| 763 | |
| 764 | - Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to |
| 765 | the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential |
| 766 | and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so |
| 767 | now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments. |
| 768 | |
| 769 | - Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or |
| 770 | unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired. |
| 771 | |
| 772 | - Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an |
| 773 | immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode), |
| 774 | where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the |
| 775 | operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that |
| 776 | instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of |
| 777 | a str sublass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str |
| 778 | with the same value as s. |
| 779 | |
Barry Warsaw | 86fbaf8 | 2001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 780 | - Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added. |
| 781 | |
Guido van Rossum | 808eea7 | 2001-09-25 04:15:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 782 | Core |
| 783 | |
Tim Peters | 2c9aa5e | 2001-09-23 04:06:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 784 | - file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings. |
| 785 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | aefd766 | 2001-09-20 12:59:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 786 | - PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like |
| 787 | PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str |
| 788 | on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This |
| 789 | makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer |
| 790 | objects. |
| 791 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 51c1816 | 2001-10-22 01:47:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 792 | - PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write |
| 793 | method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target |
Martin v. Löwis | 2777c02 | 2001-09-19 13:47:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 794 | of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must |
| 795 | at least convert them into ASCII strings. |
| 796 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 797 | - Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer |
| 798 | necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order |
| 799 | to let other runnable threads be scheduled. |
| 800 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 801 | Library |
| 802 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | bf99017 | 2001-09-27 14:17:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 803 | - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support |
| 804 | read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods. |
| 805 | These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such |
| 806 | by the instances. |
| 807 | |
Barry Warsaw | 2f60073 | 2001-09-24 04:28:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 808 | - The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the |
| 809 | mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes |
| 810 | and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators. |
| 811 | |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 812 | - difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This |
| 813 | restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output |
| 814 | before the entire comparison is complete. |
| 815 | |
Barry Warsaw | 58b072d | 2001-09-22 04:44:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 816 | - StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support |
| 817 | iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is |
| 818 | called for each iteration until it returns an empty string). |
| 819 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 494f2ae | 2001-09-19 11:33:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 820 | - The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access |
| 821 | builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(), |
| 822 | getwriter(). |
| 823 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 824 | - SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer) |
| 825 | simplifies writing XML RPC servers. |
| 826 | |
Barry Warsaw | 647d5e8 | 2001-09-28 17:01:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 827 | - os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 828 | after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this |
| 829 | is an alias for os.path.abspath(). |
| 830 | |
Tim Peters | 16a77ad | 2001-09-08 04:00:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 831 | - operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any |
| 832 | iterable object. |
| 833 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 834 | - smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of |
| 835 | the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods. |
Guido van Rossum | d8185ca | 2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 836 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 837 | - hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message |
| 838 | authentication. |
| 839 | |
| 840 | - mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the |
| 841 | same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed. |
Guido van Rossum | d8185ca | 2001-09-14 16:35:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 842 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 843 | - The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of |
Guido van Rossum | c9ed5dc | 2001-09-20 05:30:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 844 | Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a |
| 845 | Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as |
| 846 | a sample driver.) |
| 847 | |
Guido van Rossum | c9ed5dc | 2001-09-20 05:30:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 848 | Tools |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 849 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 850 | Build |
| 851 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 852 | - Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports |
| 853 | it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at |
| 854 | least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large |
| 855 | files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is |
| 856 | still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your |
| 857 | kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose |
| 858 | kernel has large file support. |
| 859 | |
| 860 | - The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a |
| 861 | cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied |
| 862 | values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works |
| 863 | flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of |
| 864 | autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN). |
| 865 | |
| 866 | - The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser |
| 867 | generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when |
| 868 | using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py. |
| 869 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 870 | C API |
| 871 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 872 | - The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read |
| 873 | and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode. |
| 874 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 875 | New platforms |
| 876 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 877 | - Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution |
| 878 | (http://familiar.handhelds.org). |
| 879 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 880 | Tests |
| 881 | |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 882 | - The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to |
| 883 | an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at |
| 884 | the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a |
| 885 | variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences. |
| 886 | This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting. |
| 887 | |
| 888 | - The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main() |
| 889 | convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being |
| 890 | imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and |
| 891 | flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework. |
| 892 | |
| 893 | - regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now, |
| 894 | especially in regard to reporting errors. |
| 895 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 896 | Windows |
| 897 | |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 898 | - Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems |
Tim Peters | 8a9c284 | 2001-09-22 21:30:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 899 | that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in |
| 900 | Python 2.2a3" for more detail. |
Guido van Rossum | 624c8af | 2001-09-18 15:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 901 | |
Tim Peters | b07352e | 2001-09-08 01:25:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 902 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 903 | What's New in Python 2.2a3? |
Barry Warsaw | 86fbaf8 | 2001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 904 | Release Date: 07-Sep-2001 |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 905 | =========================== |
| 906 | |
| 907 | Core |
| 908 | |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 909 | - Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too |
| 910 | big to represent as a C double. |
| 911 | |
Tim Peters | 32f453e | 2001-09-03 08:35:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 912 | - The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument |
| 913 | if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of |
| 914 | integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case |
| 915 | the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same |
| 916 | restriction). |
| 917 | |
Tim Peters | 5d2b77c | 2001-09-03 05:47:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 918 | - The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much |
| 919 | more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes |
| 920 | reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base |
| 921 | classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned |
| 922 | an empty list. In 2.2a3, |
| 923 | |
| 924 | >>> dir([]) |
| 925 | ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', |
| 926 | '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__', |
| 927 | '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__', |
| 928 | '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__', |
| 929 | '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__', |
| 930 | 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', |
| 931 | 'reverse', 'sort'] |
| 932 | |
| 933 | dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though. |
| 934 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 935 | - Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 936 | than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP |
| 937 | 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for |
| 938 | this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old |
| 939 | OverflowError exception. |
| 940 | |
Guido van Rossum | 61c345f | 2001-09-04 03:26:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 941 | - A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 942 | warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 943 | values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is |
| 944 | -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no |
| 945 | warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about |
| 946 | all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall |
| 947 | also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments |
Tim Peters | 3caca23 | 2001-12-06 06:23:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 948 | (for use with fixdiv.py). |
| 949 | [Note: the remainder of this paragraph (preserved below) became |
| 950 | obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] |
| 951 | <obsolete> |
| 952 | Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but |
| 953 | only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or |
| 954 | -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and |
| 955 | warns about classic division everywhere else. |
| 956 | </obsolete> |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 957 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 958 | - Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int, |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 959 | long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and |
| 960 | dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.) |
| 961 | Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in |
| 962 | types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading |
| 963 | __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances |
| 964 | will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value" |
| 965 | (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance |
| 966 | once it is created. |
| 967 | |
Guido van Rossum | aaf80c8 | 2001-09-02 13:44:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 968 | - The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a |
| 969 | mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its |
| 970 | (key, value) pairs. |
| 971 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 972 | - A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 973 | "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an |
| 974 | explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation |
| 975 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8d7234d | 2001-09-06 22:02:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 976 | - A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the |
| 977 | creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by |
| 978 | getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or |
| 979 | write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__. |
| 980 | See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 981 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 982 | - The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 983 | liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now |
| 984 | legal that were SyntaxErrors before: |
| 985 | |
| 986 | 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008. |
| 987 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 988 | - An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete |
Tim Peters | c6d9581 | 2001-08-28 20:56:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 989 | exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError. |
| 990 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 991 | Library |
| 992 | |
Martin v. Löwis | cb227c9 | 2001-09-06 08:54:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 993 | - telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for |
| 994 | setting an option negotiation callback. |
| 995 | |
Tim Peters | a40c793 | 2001-09-05 22:36:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 996 | - The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to |
| 997 | ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new |
| 998 | freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow- |
| 999 | checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all |
| 1000 | platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable |
| 1001 | in this area anymore). |
| 1002 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 44f8696 | 2001-09-05 13:44:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1003 | - Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class |
| 1004 | threading.Timer. |
| 1005 | |
Tim Peters | 7852616 | 2001-09-05 00:53:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1006 | - math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge |
| 1007 | long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0. |
| 1008 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1009 | - A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1010 | currently held. See the docs for the imp module. |
| 1011 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1012 | - pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read |
Tim Peters | 8211237 | 2001-08-29 02:28:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1013 | dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes. |
| 1014 | When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are |
| 1015 | converted to Python longs. |
| 1016 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1017 | - In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1018 | code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole. |
| 1019 | |
Steve Purcell | 6091cd6 | 2001-09-06 16:05:17 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1020 | - unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks |
| 1021 | generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references |
| 1022 | to objects that should be garbage collected between tests. |
| 1023 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1024 | Tools |
| 1025 | |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1026 | - Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix |
| 1027 | division operators as per PEP 238. |
| 1028 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1029 | Build |
| 1030 | |
Barry Warsaw | d6c8ca6 | 2001-09-07 18:13:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1031 | - If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at |
| 1032 | Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac |
| 1033 | application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa. |
| 1034 | Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please. |
| 1035 | |
Tim Peters | 7eea37e | 2001-09-04 22:08:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1036 | C API |
| 1037 | |
| 1038 | - New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj). |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1039 | |
Tim Peters | 9fffa3e | 2001-09-04 05:14:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1040 | - Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no |
| 1041 | callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow |
| 1042 | errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check: |
| 1043 | |
| 1044 | double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object); |
| 1045 | if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) { |
| 1046 | /* The conversion failed. */ |
| 1047 | } |
| 1048 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1049 | - The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1050 | compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension |
| 1051 | module: |
| 1052 | |
| 1053 | - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1054 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1055 | - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and |
| 1056 | PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1057 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1058 | - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini |
| 1059 | to PyObject_GC_UnTrack |
Tim Peters | d507dab | 2001-08-30 20:51:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1060 | |
Neil Schemenauer | 4042c69 | 2001-08-30 15:38:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1061 | - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations |
| 1062 | |
| 1063 | - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC |
| 1064 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1065 | - Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV(). |
Guido van Rossum | ae45714 | 2001-08-31 18:31:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1066 | These can be used safely to construct string objects from a |
| 1067 | sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported |
| 1068 | by PyErr_Format()). |
Tim Peters | 6923234 | 2001-08-30 05:16:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1069 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1070 | New platforms |
| 1071 | |
Tim Peters | b7da090 | 2001-09-02 23:01:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1072 | - Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile |
| 1073 | under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran |
| 1074 | out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError |
| 1075 | when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and |
| 1076 | causing later failures too. |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1077 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1078 | Tests |
| 1079 | |
| 1080 | Windows |
| 1081 | |
Tim Peters | 6e13a56 | 2001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1082 | - Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on |
| 1083 | Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek() |
| 1084 | to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough |
| 1085 | disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large |
Tim Peters | 9a9471c | 2001-09-11 23:18:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1086 | partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte) |
| 1087 | filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there. |
| 1088 | FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now. |
| 1089 | NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be |
| 1090 | used from Python now. |
Tim Peters | 6e13a56 | 2001-09-06 00:32:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1091 | |
Tim Peters | bdee63f | 2001-09-02 03:40:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1092 | - The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC |
Tim Peters | 402d598 | 2001-08-27 06:37:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1093 | points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan). |
| 1094 | |
Tim Peters | edc9931 | 2001-08-22 21:36:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1095 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1096 | What's New in Python 2.2a2? |
Barry Warsaw | 86fbaf8 | 2001-09-28 15:26:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1097 | Release Date: 22-Aug-2001 |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1098 | =========================== |
| 1099 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1100 | Build |
| 1101 | |
Barry Warsaw | 18b2ecf | 2001-08-22 20:26:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1102 | - Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1, |
| 1103 | generously donated to us by Wise Solutions. |
| 1104 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1105 | - configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values |
| 1106 | ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode |
| 1107 | type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter. |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1108 | |
Jack Jansen | 32ce0cd | 2001-08-21 19:28:20 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1109 | - A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework, |
| 1110 | which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting |
| 1111 | point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org |
| 1112 | if you are interested in helping. |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1113 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1114 | - The NeXT platform is no longer supported. |
| 1115 | |
| 1116 | - The `new' module is now statically linked. |
| 1117 | |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1118 | Tools |
| 1119 | |
| 1120 | - The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically |
Andrew M. Kuchling | b053209 | 2001-08-15 15:54:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1121 | edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1122 | the module docstring for details. |
| 1123 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1124 | Tests |
| 1125 | |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1126 | - regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1127 | platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest |
| 1128 | also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests |
| 1129 | which require network access or consume significant disk resources. |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1130 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1131 | - Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to |
| 1132 | Nick Mathewson. |
| 1133 | |
| 1134 | Core |
| 1135 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1136 | - The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP |
| 1137 | 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until |
| 1138 | Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in |
| 1139 | which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator |
| 1140 | module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented |
| 1141 | assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable |
| 1142 | methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion: |
| 1143 | <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html> |
| 1144 | |
Tim Peters | 6cd6a82 | 2001-08-17 22:11:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1145 | - Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells |
| 1146 | (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael |
| 1147 | Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full |
| 1148 | details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>. |
| 1149 | |
Guido van Rossum | f86ddd2 | 2001-08-17 21:21:04 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1150 | - The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the |
| 1151 | trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of |
| 1152 | some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing |
| 1153 | bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to |
| 1154 | come a long way). |
| 1155 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 888fac0 | 2001-07-31 14:24:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1156 | - Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import |
| 1157 | now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to |
| 1158 | write filters for these warnings). |
| 1159 | |
Barry Warsaw | 9b3be7f | 2001-08-14 18:35:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1160 | - A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a |
| 1161 | dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None, |
| 1162 | but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it |
| 1163 | to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes |
| 1164 | have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None. |
| 1165 | |
Guido van Rossum | 32aa5d2 | 2001-09-05 18:43:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1166 | - A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of |
| 1167 | all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically |
| 1168 | significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with |
| 1169 | "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if |
| 1170 | the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an |
| 1171 | older distribution. |
| 1172 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1173 | Library |
| 1174 | |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1175 | - New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py. |
| 1176 | These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py, |
Tim Peters | 0afb609 | 2001-08-15 06:06:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1177 | for programmatic reuse. |
Tim Peters | 5e824c3 | 2001-08-12 22:25:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1178 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1179 | - New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute |
| 1180 | value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more |
| 1181 | reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values. |
| 1182 | |
| 1183 | - Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added. |
| 1184 | |
Barry Warsaw | 6f3410d | 2001-08-22 04:08:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1185 | - Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings. |
| 1186 | |
| 1187 | - Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore() |
| 1188 | |
| 1189 | - Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module. |
| 1190 | |
| 1191 | - The `new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags. |
| 1192 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 560da62 | 2001-11-24 09:24:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1193 | - The gc module offers the get_referents function. |
| 1194 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | d627791 | 2001-07-31 14:42:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1195 | New platforms |
| 1196 | |
| 1197 | C API |
| 1198 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 888fac0 | 2001-07-31 14:24:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1199 | - Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added |
| 1200 | which provide a cross-platform implementations for the |
| 1201 | relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to |
| 1202 | the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions |
| 1203 | apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection |
| 1204 | against buffer overruns. |
| 1205 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 48dbfe9 | 2001-07-31 14:37:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1206 | - Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters |
Tim Peters | c173137 | 2001-08-04 08:12:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1207 | and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to |
| 1208 | impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension |
Marc-André Lemburg | 48dbfe9 | 2001-07-31 14:37:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1209 | will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make |
| 1210 | sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by |
| 1211 | using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension. |
| 1212 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 339d0f7 | 2001-08-17 18:39:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1213 | - Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition |
| 1214 | tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a |
| 1215 | single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than |
| 1216 | calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now |
| 1217 | deprecated. |
| 1218 | |
Tim Peters | c173137 | 2001-08-04 08:12:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1219 | Windows |
| 1220 | |
| 1221 | - "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else |
| 1222 | relevant is found. |
| 1223 | |
Tim Peters | 20f51a7 | 2001-07-21 02:31:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1224 | |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1225 | What's New in Python 2.2a1? |
Barry Warsaw | d970fe4 | 2001-10-25 21:53:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1226 | Release date: 18-Jul-2001 |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1227 | =========================== |
| 1228 | |
| 1229 | Core |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1230 | |
Tim Peters | 6d6c1a3 | 2001-08-02 04:15:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1231 | - TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's |
| 1232 | described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP |
| 1233 | 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released |
| 1234 | with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately |
| 1235 | through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this |
| 1236 | with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is |
| 1237 | possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release |
| 1238 | this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards |
| 1239 | incompapatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be |
| 1240 | repaired. |
| 1241 | |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1242 | - Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see |
Tim Peters | 11a0d10 | 2001-07-17 18:48:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1243 | below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1244 | more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new |
| 1245 | keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a |
| 1246 | future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236). |
| 1247 | Generators will become a standard feature in a future release |
| 1248 | (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an |
| 1249 | ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used. |
| 1250 | (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of |
| 1251 | PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.) |
| 1252 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | 12e74b3 | 2001-05-22 08:58:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1253 | - The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now |
| 1254 | only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then |
| 1255 | only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a |
| 1256 | leading BMO character). |
| 1257 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1258 | - Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already |
| 1259 | existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access |
| 1260 | to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs. |
| 1261 | |
| 1262 | To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special |
| 1263 | casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects |
| 1264 | were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding). |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1265 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1266 | Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the |
| 1267 | requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will |
| 1268 | return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1") |
| 1269 | will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs |
| 1270 | for various simple to use conversions. |
| 1271 | |
| 1272 | New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode() |
| 1273 | and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects): |
| 1274 | |
| 1275 | Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
| 1276 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 1277 | uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
| 1278 | base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
Guido van Rossum | c341580 | 2001-06-06 13:30:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1279 | quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
Marc-André Lemburg | fab96cc | 2001-05-15 18:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1280 | zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
| 1281 | hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
| 1282 | rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec |
| 1283 | |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1284 | - Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode |
| 1285 | encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs' |
| 1286 | as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1287 | term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1288 | 'mbcs'. |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1289 | |
| 1290 | On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1291 | functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python |
| 1292 | string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for |
| 1293 | the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's |
| 1294 | default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing |
| 1295 | it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1296 | would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than |
| 1297 | the default encoding for the file system. |
Guido van Rossum | 1bd797a | 2001-05-14 13:53:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1298 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1299 | In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with |
| 1300 | Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect, |
| 1301 | increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context. |
Mark Hammond | 2a0af79 | 2001-05-14 03:09:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1302 | See [????] for more details, including examples. |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1303 | |
Tim Peters | 61dff2b | 2001-05-08 15:43:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1304 | - Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full |
| 1305 | precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a |
| 1306 | .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the |
| 1307 | 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754 |
| 1308 | floating arithmetic, |
| 1309 | |
| 1310 | x = 9007199254740992.0 |
| 1311 | print long(x) |
| 1312 | |
| 1313 | printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000 |
| 1314 | if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using |
| 1315 | str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal |
| 1316 | now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full |
| 1317 | machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion |
| 1318 | functions are of good quality). |
| 1319 | |
| 1320 | This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and |
| 1321 | usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable |
| 1322 | algorithms to break. |
| 1323 | |
Tim Peters | 2f228e7 | 2001-05-13 00:19:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1324 | - The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed |
| 1325 | benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(), |
| 1326 | dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a |
| 1327 | given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should |
| 1328 | rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the |
| 1329 | order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a |
| 1330 | dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new |
| 1331 | sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted |
| 1332 | order. |
| 1333 | |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1334 | - Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster |
| 1335 | operation along the most common code paths. |
| 1336 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1031582 | 2001-05-01 20:54:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1337 | - Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means |
| 1338 | the same as dict.has_key(x). |
| 1339 | |
Barry Warsaw | 51acc8d | 2001-06-26 20:12:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1340 | - The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping |
| 1341 | objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys() |
| 1342 | and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example, |
| 1343 | {}.update(UserDict()) |
| 1344 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1031582 | 2001-05-01 20:54:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1345 | - Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values |
| 1346 | to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter() |
| 1347 | to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value |
| 1348 | from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the |
| 1349 | tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators |
| 1350 | using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C). |
| 1351 | Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys. |
| 1352 | Iterating over a file generates its lines. |
| 1353 | |
Tim Peters | f553f89 | 2001-05-01 20:45:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1354 | - The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator |
| 1355 | arguments: |
Tim Peters | e63415e | 2001-05-08 04:38:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1356 | map(), filter(), reduce(), zip() |
Tim Peters | 8572b4f | 2001-05-06 01:05:02 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1357 | list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API) |
| 1358 | max(), min() |
Tim Peters | 1af03e9 | 2001-05-26 19:37:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1359 | join() method of strings |
| 1360 | extend() method of lists |
Tim Peters | 75f8e35 | 2001-05-05 11:33:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1361 | 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API) |
| 1362 | operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API) |
Tim Peters | d6d010b | 2001-06-21 02:49:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1363 | right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as |
| 1364 | x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values |
Tim Peters | 75f8e35 | 2001-05-05 11:33:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1365 | |
Tim Peters | d85e102 | 2001-05-11 21:51:48 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1366 | - Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example, |
| 1367 | random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute). |
| 1368 | |
Tim Peters | e63415e | 2001-05-08 04:38:29 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1369 | - Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even |
| 1370 | if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==. |
| 1371 | |
Tim Peters | 95bf939 | 2001-05-10 08:32:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1372 | - Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were |
| 1373 | insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python |
| 1374 | to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or |
| 1375 | values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down. |
| 1376 | |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1377 | - Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help |
| 1378 | dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1379 | d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x |
Tim Peters | eb28ef2 | 2001-06-02 05:27:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1380 | faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and |
| 1381 | the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never). |
Tim Peters | 15d4929 | 2001-05-27 07:39:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1382 | |
Tim Peters | 52e155e | 2001-06-16 05:42:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1383 | - repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple). |
| 1384 | |
| 1385 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1386 | Library |
| 1387 | |
Fred Drake | 960fdf9 | 2001-07-20 18:38:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1388 | - The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase |
| 1389 | were added to the string module. These a locale-indenpendent |
| 1390 | constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now |
| 1391 | use in appropriate locations in the standard library. |
| 1392 | |
Martin v. Löwis | f0473d5 | 2001-07-18 16:17:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1393 | - The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using |
| 1394 | sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags. |
| 1395 | |
Guido van Rossum | c7e4aca | 2001-07-12 11:54:37 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1396 | - Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This |
| 1397 | provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition, |
| 1398 | Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based, |
| 1399 | one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation. |
| 1400 | |
Guido van Rossum | 643d391 | 2001-07-05 14:46:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1401 | - The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing, |
| 1402 | repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist() |
| 1403 | method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260. |
| 1404 | |
Martin v. Löwis | ebf94db | 2001-06-06 06:25:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1405 | - A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added. |
| 1406 | |
Barry Warsaw | ffd674d | 2001-05-22 16:00:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1407 | - calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale. |
| 1408 | |
Guido van Rossum | 2e0a654 | 2001-05-15 02:14:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1409 | - strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6), |
| 1410 | and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items |
| 1411 | that are still imported into string.py). |
| 1412 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1413 | - Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings. |
| 1414 | |
| 1415 | - pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects. |
| 1416 | Now it does. |
| 1417 | |
Tim Peters | 95b3f78 | 2001-05-14 18:39:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1418 | - pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict). |
| 1419 | |
Tim Peters | 7b9542a | 2001-06-10 23:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1420 | - New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C |
| 1421 | types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In |
| 1422 | native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports |
| 1423 | these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config |
| 1424 | process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types. |
Tim Peters | 7a3bfc3 | 2001-06-12 01:22:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1425 | In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are |
| 1426 | 8-byte integral types. |
Tim Peters | 7b9542a | 2001-06-10 23:40:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1427 | |
Guido van Rossum | 83213cc | 2001-06-12 16:48:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1428 | - The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes |
| 1429 | pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help', |
| 1430 | it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or |
| 1431 | 'help(object)'. |
| 1432 | |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1433 | Tests |
| 1434 | |
| 1435 | - New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value |
| 1436 | comparison operators mutute the dicts randomly during comparison. This |
| 1437 | rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint |
| 1438 | of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!). |
| 1439 | |
| 1440 | - New test_pprint.py verfies that pprint.isrecursive() and |
Tim Peters | 95b3f78 | 2001-05-14 18:39:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1441 | pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple |
| 1442 | cases produce correct output. |
Tim Peters | a814db5 | 2001-05-14 07:05:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1443 | |
Tim Peters | 4324aa3 | 2001-05-28 22:30:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1444 | C API |
| 1445 | |
| 1446 | - Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal |
| 1447 | _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating. |
| 1448 | |
| 1449 | |
Guido van Rossum | 55a7899 | 2001-07-17 17:22:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1450 | ====================================================================== |
| 1451 | |
| 1452 | |
Guido van Rossum | ffe13be | 2001-04-16 18:46:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1453 | What's New in Python 2.1 (final)? |
| 1454 | ================================= |
| 1455 | |
| 1456 | We only changed a few things since the last release candidate, all in |
| 1457 | Python library code: |
| 1458 | |
| 1459 | - A bug in the locale module was fixed that affected locales which |
| 1460 | define no grouping for numeric formatting. |
| 1461 | |
| 1462 | - A few bugs in the weakref module's implementations of weak |
| 1463 | dictionaries (WeakValueDictionary and WeakKeyDictionary) were fixed, |
| 1464 | and the test suite was updated to check for these bugs. |
| 1465 | |
| 1466 | - An old bug in the os.path.walk() function (introduced in Python |
| 1467 | 2.0!) was fixed: a non-existent file would cause an exception |
| 1468 | instead of being ignored. |
| 1469 | |
| 1470 | - Fixed a few bugs in the new symtable module found by Neil Norwitz's |
| 1471 | PyChecker. |
| 1472 | |
| 1473 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1474 | What's New in Python 2.1c2? |
| 1475 | =========================== |
Barry Warsaw | 11e89c7 | 2001-04-11 20:37:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1476 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1477 | A flurry of small changes, and one showstopper fixed in the nick of |
| 1478 | time made it necessary to release another release candidate. The list |
| 1479 | here is the *complete* list of patches (except version updates): |
Guido van Rossum | 4fb6036 | 2001-04-13 00:46:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1480 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1481 | Core |
Guido van Rossum | 4fb6036 | 2001-04-13 00:46:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1482 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1483 | - Tim discovered a nasty bug in the dictionary code, caused by |
| 1484 | PyDict_Next() calling dict_resize(), and the GC code's use of |
| 1485 | PyDict_Next() violating an assumption in dict_items(). This was |
| 1486 | fixed with considerable amounts of band-aid, but the net effect is a |
| 1487 | saner and more robust implementation. |
| 1488 | |
| 1489 | - Made a bunch of symbols static that were accidentally global. |
| 1490 | |
| 1491 | Build and Ports |
| 1492 | |
| 1493 | - The setup.py script didn't check for a new enough version of zlib |
| 1494 | (1.1.3 is needed). Now it does. |
| 1495 | |
| 1496 | - Changed "make clean" target to also remove shared libraries. |
| 1497 | |
| 1498 | - Added a more general warning about the SGI Irix optimizer to README. |
| 1499 | |
| 1500 | Library |
| 1501 | |
| 1502 | - Fix a bug in urllib.basejoin("http://host", "../file.html") which |
| 1503 | omitted the slash between host and file.html. |
| 1504 | |
| 1505 | - The mailbox module's _Mailbox class contained a completely broken |
| 1506 | and undocumented seek() method. Ripped it out. |
| 1507 | |
| 1508 | - Fixed a bunch of typos in various library modules (urllib2, smtpd, |
| 1509 | sgmllib, netrc, chunk) found by Neil Norwitz's PyChecker. |
| 1510 | |
| 1511 | - Fixed a few last-minute bugs in unittest. |
| 1512 | |
| 1513 | Extensions |
| 1514 | |
| 1515 | - Reverted the patch to the OpenSSL code in socketmodule.c to support |
| 1516 | RAND_status() and the EGD, and the subsequent patch that tried to |
| 1517 | fix it for pre-0.9.5 versions; the problem with the patch is that on |
| 1518 | some systems it issues a warning whenever socket is imported, and |
| 1519 | that's unacceptable. |
| 1520 | |
| 1521 | Tests |
| 1522 | |
| 1523 | - Fixed the pickle tests to work with "import test.test_pickle". |
| 1524 | |
| 1525 | - Tweaked test_locale.py to actually run the test Windows. |
| 1526 | |
| 1527 | - In distutils/archive_util.py, call zipfile.ZipFile() with mode "w", |
| 1528 | not "wb" (which is not a valid mode at all). |
| 1529 | |
| 1530 | - Fix pstats browser crashes. Import readline if it exists to make |
| 1531 | the user interface nicer. |
| 1532 | |
| 1533 | - Add "import thread" to the top of test modules that import the |
| 1534 | threading module (test_asynchat and test_threadedtempfile). This |
| 1535 | prevents test failures caused by a broken threading module resulting |
| 1536 | from a previously caught failed import. |
| 1537 | |
| 1538 | - Changed test_asynchat.py to set the SO_REUSEADDR option; this was |
| 1539 | needed on some platforms (e.g. Solaris 8) when the tests are run |
| 1540 | twice in succession. |
| 1541 | |
| 1542 | - Skip rather than fail test_sunaudiodev if no audio device is found. |
| 1543 | |
| 1544 | |
| 1545 | What's New in Python 2.1c1? |
| 1546 | =========================== |
| 1547 | |
| 1548 | This list was significantly updated when 2.1c2 was released; the 2.1c1 |
| 1549 | release didn't mention most changes that were actually part of 2.1c1: |
| 1550 | |
| 1551 | Legal |
| 1552 | |
| 1553 | - Copyright was assigned to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and a |
| 1554 | PSF license (very similar to the CNRI license) was added. |
| 1555 | |
| 1556 | - The CNRI copyright notice was updated to include 2001. |
| 1557 | |
| 1558 | Core |
Barry Warsaw | 11e89c7 | 2001-04-11 20:37:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1559 | |
Guido van Rossum | c993272 | 2001-04-12 02:31:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1560 | - After a public outcry, assignment to __debug__ is no longer illegal; |
| 1561 | instead, a warning is issued. It will become illegal in 2.2. |
| 1562 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1563 | - Fixed a core dump with "%#x" % 0, and changed the semantics so that |
| 1564 | "%#x" now always prepends "0x", even if the value is zero. |
| 1565 | |
| 1566 | - Fixed some nits in the bytecode compiler. |
| 1567 | |
| 1568 | - Fixed core dumps when calling certain kinds of non-functions. |
| 1569 | |
| 1570 | - Fixed various core dumps caused by reference count bugs. |
| 1571 | |
| 1572 | Build and Ports |
| 1573 | |
| 1574 | - Use INSTALL_SCRIPT to install script files. |
| 1575 | |
Guido van Rossum | 34d37dc | 2001-04-11 21:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1576 | - New port: SCO Unixware 7, by Billy G. Allie. |
| 1577 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1578 | - Updated RISCOS port. |
| 1579 | |
| 1580 | - Updated BeOS port and notes. |
| 1581 | |
| 1582 | - Various other porting problems resolved. |
| 1583 | |
| 1584 | Library |
| 1585 | |
| 1586 | - The TERMIOS and SOCKET modules are now truly obsolete and |
| 1587 | unnecessary. Their symbols are incorporated in the termios and |
| 1588 | socket modules. |
| 1589 | |
| 1590 | - Fixed some 64-bit bugs in pickle, cPickle, and struct, and added |
| 1591 | better tests for pickling. |
| 1592 | |
| 1593 | - threading: make Condition.wait() robust against KeyboardInterrupt. |
| 1594 | |
| 1595 | - zipfile: add support to zipfile to support opening an archive |
| 1596 | represented by an open file rather than a file name. Fix bug where |
| 1597 | the archive was not properly closed. Fixed a bug in this bugfix |
| 1598 | where flush() was called for a read-only file. |
| 1599 | |
| 1600 | - imputil: added an uninstall() method to the ImportManager. |
| 1601 | |
| 1602 | - Canvas: fixed bugs in lower() and tkraise() methods. |
| 1603 | |
| 1604 | - SocketServer: API change (added overridable close_request() method) |
| 1605 | so that the TCP server can explicitly close the request. |
| 1606 | |
| 1607 | - pstats: Eric Raymond added a simple interactive statistics browser, |
| 1608 | invoked when the module is run as a script. |
| 1609 | |
| 1610 | - locale: fixed a problem in format(). |
| 1611 | |
| 1612 | - webbrowser: made it work when the BROWSER environment variable has a |
| 1613 | value like "/usr/bin/netscape". Made it auto-detect Konqueror for |
| 1614 | KDE 2. Fixed some other nits. |
| 1615 | |
| 1616 | - unittest: changes to allow using a different exception than |
| 1617 | AssertionError, and added a few more function aliases. Some other |
| 1618 | small changes. |
| 1619 | |
| 1620 | - urllib, urllib2: fixed redirect problems and a coupleof other nits. |
| 1621 | |
| 1622 | - asynchat: fixed a critical bug in asynchat that slipped through the |
| 1623 | 2.1b2 release. Fixed another rare bug. |
| 1624 | |
| 1625 | - Fix some unqualified except: clauses (always a bad code example). |
| 1626 | |
| 1627 | XML |
| 1628 | |
| 1629 | - pyexpat: new API get_version_string(). |
| 1630 | |
| 1631 | - Fixed some minidom bugs. |
| 1632 | |
| 1633 | Extensions |
| 1634 | |
| 1635 | - Fixed a core dump in _weakref. Removed the weakref.mapping() |
| 1636 | function (it adds nothing to the API). |
| 1637 | |
| 1638 | - Rationalized the use of header files in the readline module, to make |
| 1639 | it compile (albeit with some warnings) with the very recent readline |
| 1640 | 4.2, without breaking for earlier versions. |
| 1641 | |
| 1642 | - Hopefully fixed a buffering problem in linuxaudiodev. |
| 1643 | |
| 1644 | - Attempted a fix to make the OpenSSL support in the socket module |
| 1645 | work again with pre-0.9.5 versions of OpenSSL. |
| 1646 | |
| 1647 | Tests |
| 1648 | |
| 1649 | - Added a test case for asynchat and asyncore. |
| 1650 | |
| 1651 | - Removed coupling between tests where one test failing could break |
| 1652 | another. |
| 1653 | |
| 1654 | Tools |
| 1655 | |
| 1656 | - Ping added an interactive help browser to pydoc, fixed some nits |
| 1657 | in the rest of the pydoc code, and added some features to his |
| 1658 | inspect module. |
| 1659 | |
| 1660 | - An updated python-mode.el version 4.1 which integrates Ken |
| 1661 | Manheimer's pdbtrack.el. This makes debugging Python code via pdb |
| 1662 | much nicer in XEmacs and Emacs. When stepping through your program |
| 1663 | with pdb, in either the shell window or the *Python* window, the |
| 1664 | source file and line will be tracked by an arrow. Very cool! |
| 1665 | |
| 1666 | - IDLE: syntax warnings in interactive mode are changed into errors. |
| 1667 | |
| 1668 | - Some improvements to Tools/webchecker (ignore some more URL types, |
Tim Peters | 0e57abf | 2001-05-02 07:39:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1669 | follow some more links). |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1670 | |
| 1671 | - Brought the Tools/compiler package up to date. |
Guido van Rossum | 34d37dc | 2001-04-11 21:03:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1672 | |
Barry Warsaw | 11e89c7 | 2001-04-11 20:37:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1673 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 0411f6f | 2001-03-21 08:01:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1674 | What's New in Python 2.1 beta 2? |
| 1675 | ================================ |
| 1676 | |
Guido van Rossum | 053ae35 | 2001-03-22 14:17:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1677 | (Unlisted are many fixed bugs, more documentation, etc.) |
| 1678 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 0411f6f | 2001-03-21 08:01:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1679 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 1680 | |
Guido van Rossum | 053ae35 | 2001-03-22 14:17:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1681 | - The nested scopes work (enabled by "from __future__ import |
| 1682 | nested_scopes") is completed; in particular, the future now extends |
| 1683 | into code executed through exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the |
| 1684 | interactive interpreter. |
| 1685 | |
| 1686 | - When calling a base class method (e.g. BaseClass.__init__(self)), |
| 1687 | this is now allowed even if self is not strictly spoken a class |
| 1688 | instance (e.g. when using metaclasses or the Don Beaudry hook). |
| 1689 | |
| 1690 | - Slice objects are now comparable but not hashable; this prevents |
| 1691 | dict[:] from being accepted but meaningless. |
| 1692 | |
| 1693 | - Complex division is now calculated using less braindead algorithms. |
| 1694 | This doesn't change semantics except it's more likely to give useful |
| 1695 | results in extreme cases. Complex repr() now uses full precision |
| 1696 | like float repr(). |
| 1697 | |
| 1698 | - sgmllib.py now calls handle_decl() for simple <!...> declarations. |
| 1699 | |
Jeremy Hylton | f626db7 | 2001-03-23 14:18:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1700 | - It is illegal to assign to the name __debug__, which is set when the |
| 1701 | interpreter starts. It is effectively a compile-time constant. |
| 1702 | |
| 1703 | - A warning will be issued if a global statement for a variable |
| 1704 | follows a use or assignment of that variable. |
| 1705 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 0411f6f | 2001-03-21 08:01:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1706 | Standard library |
| 1707 | |
Guido van Rossum | 053ae35 | 2001-03-22 14:17:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1708 | - unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT, |
| 1709 | inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. You now |
| 1710 | have a choice of two testing frameworks: unittest requires you to |
| 1711 | write testcases as separate code, doctest gathers them from |
| 1712 | docstrings. Both approaches have their advantages and |
| 1713 | disadvantages. |
| 1714 | |
| 1715 | - A new module Tix was added, which wraps the Tix extension library |
| 1716 | for Tk. With that module, it is not necessary to statically link |
| 1717 | Tix with _tkinter, since Tix will be loaded with Tcl's "package |
| 1718 | require" command. See Demo/tix/. |
| 1719 | |
| 1720 | - tzparse.py is now obsolete. |
| 1721 | |
| 1722 | - In gzip.py, the seek() and tell() methods are removed -- they were |
| 1723 | non-functional anyway, and it's better if callers can test for their |
| 1724 | existence with hasattr(). |
| 1725 | |
| 1726 | Python/C API |
| 1727 | |
| 1728 | - PyDict_Next(): it is now safe to call PyDict_SetItem() with a key |
| 1729 | that's already in the dictionary during a PyDict_Next() iteration. |
| 1730 | This used to fail occasionally when a dictionary resize operation |
| 1731 | could be triggered that would rehash all the keys. All other |
| 1732 | modifications to the dictionary are still off-limits during a |
| 1733 | PyDict_Next() iteration! |
| 1734 | |
| 1735 | - New extended APIs related to passing compiler variables around. |
| 1736 | |
| 1737 | - New abstract APIs PyObject_IsInstance(), PyObject_IsSubclass() |
| 1738 | implement isinstance() and issubclass(). |
| 1739 | |
| 1740 | - Py_BuildValue() now has a "D" conversion to create a Python complex |
| 1741 | number from a Py_complex C value. |
Martin v. Löwis | 0411f6f | 2001-03-21 08:01:39 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1742 | |
Fred Drake | 4e262a9 | 2001-03-22 18:26:47 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1743 | - Extensions types which support weak references must now set the |
| 1744 | field allocated for the weak reference machinery to NULL themselves; |
| 1745 | this is done to avoid the cost of checking each object for having a |
| 1746 | weakly referencable type in PyObject_INIT(), since most types are |
| 1747 | not weakly referencable. |
| 1748 | |
Jeremy Hylton | f626db7 | 2001-03-23 14:18:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1749 | - PyFrame_FastToLocals() and PyFrame_LocalsToFast() copy bindings for |
| 1750 | free variables and cell variables to and from the frame's f_locals. |
| 1751 | |
| 1752 | - Variants of several functions defined in pythonrun.h have been added |
| 1753 | to support the nested_scopes future statement. The variants all end |
| 1754 | in Flags and take an extra argument, a PyCompilerFlags *; examples: |
| 1755 | PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(), PyRun_InteractiveLoopFlags(). These |
| 1756 | variants may be removed in Python 2.2, when nested scopes are |
Tim Peters | 0e57abf | 2001-05-02 07:39:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1757 | mandatory. |
Jeremy Hylton | f626db7 | 2001-03-23 14:18:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1758 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 8e9972c | 2001-03-22 15:42:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1759 | Distutils |
| 1760 | |
| 1761 | - the sdist command now writes a PKG-INFO file, as described in PEP 241, |
| 1762 | into the release tree. |
| 1763 | |
Tim Peters | 0e57abf | 2001-05-02 07:39:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1764 | - several enhancements to the bdist_wininst command from Thomas Heller |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 8e9972c | 2001-03-22 15:42:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1765 | (an uninstaller, more customization of the installer's display) |
| 1766 | |
| 1767 | - from Jack Jansen: added Mac-specific code to generate a dialog for |
| 1768 | users to specify the command-line (because providing a command-line with |
Tim Peters | 0e57abf | 2001-05-02 07:39:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1769 | MacPython is awkward). Jack also made various fixes for the Mac |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 8e9972c | 2001-03-22 15:42:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1770 | and the Metrowerks compiler. |
Tim Peters | 0e57abf | 2001-05-02 07:39:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1771 | |
| 1772 | - added 'platforms' and 'keywords' to the set of metadata that can be |
| 1773 | specified for a distribution. |
Andrew M. Kuchling | 8e9972c | 2001-03-22 15:42:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1774 | |
| 1775 | - applied patches from Jason Tishler to make the compiler class work with |
| 1776 | Cygwin. |
| 1777 | |
| 1778 | |
Tim Peters | 2fe289a | 2001-03-01 22:19:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1779 | What's New in Python 2.1 beta 1? |
| 1780 | ================================ |
Tim Peters | d66595f | 2001-02-04 03:09:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1781 | |
| 1782 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 1783 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9d0fbde | 2001-03-02 14:00:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1784 | - Following an outcry from the community about the amount of code |
| 1785 | broken by the nested scopes feature introduced in 2.1a2, we decided |
| 1786 | to make this feature optional, and to wait until Python 2.2 (or at |
| 1787 | least 6 months) to make it standard. The option can be enabled on a |
| 1788 | per-module basis by adding "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at |
| 1789 | the beginning of a module (before any other statements, but after |
| 1790 | comments and an optional docstring). See PEP 236 (Back to the |
| 1791 | __future__) for a description of the __future__ statement. PEP 227 |
| 1792 | (Statically Nested Scopes) has been updated to reflect this change, |
| 1793 | and to clarify the semantics in a number of endcases. |
| 1794 | |
| 1795 | - The nested scopes code, when enabled, has been hardened, and most |
| 1796 | bugs and memory leaks in it have been fixed. |
| 1797 | |
| 1798 | - Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions |
| 1799 | that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled: |
| 1800 | |
| 1801 | - Using "from...import *" or "exec" without in-clause in a function |
| 1802 | scope that also defines a lambda or nested function with one or |
| 1803 | more free (non-local) variables. The presence of the import* or |
| 1804 | bare exec makes it impossible for the compiler to determine the |
| 1805 | exact set of local variables in the outer scope, which makes it |
| 1806 | impossible to determine the bindings for free variables in the |
| 1807 | inner scope. To avoid the warning about import *, change it into |
| 1808 | an import of explicitly name object, or move the import* statement |
| 1809 | to the global scope; to avoid the warning about bare exec, use |
| 1810 | exec...in... (a good idea anyway -- there's a possibility that |
| 1811 | bare exec will be deprecated in the future). |
| 1812 | |
| 1813 | - Use of a global variable in a nested scope with the same name as a |
| 1814 | local variable in a surrounding scope. This will change in |
| 1815 | meaning with nested scopes: the name in the inner scope will |
| 1816 | reference the variable in the outer scope rather than the global |
| 1817 | of the same name. To avoid the warning, either rename the outer |
| 1818 | variable, or use a global statement in the inner function. |
| 1819 | |
Neil Schemenauer | a35c688 | 2001-02-27 04:45:05 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1820 | - An optional object allocator has been included. This allocator is |
| 1821 | optimized for Python objects and should be faster and use less memory |
| 1822 | than the standard system allocator. It is not enabled by default |
| 1823 | because of possible thread safety problems. The allocator is only |
| 1824 | protected by the Python interpreter lock and it is possible that some |
| 1825 | extension modules require a thread safe allocator. The object |
| 1826 | allocator can be enabled by providing the "--with-pymalloc" option to |
| 1827 | configure. |
| 1828 | |
Tim Peters | d66595f | 2001-02-04 03:09:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1829 | Standard library |
| 1830 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 2a5130e | 2001-02-27 04:21:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1831 | - pyexpat now detects the expat version if expat.h defines it. A |
| 1832 | number of additional handlers are provided, which are only available |
| 1833 | since expat 1.95. In addition, the methods SetParamEntityParsing and |
| 1834 | GetInputContext of Parser objects are available with 1.95.x |
| 1835 | only. Parser objects now provide the ordered_attributes and |
| 1836 | specified_attributes attributes. A new module expat.model was added, |
| 1837 | which offers a number of additional constants if 1.95.x is used. |
| 1838 | |
| 1839 | - xml.dom offers the new functions registerDOMImplementation and |
| 1840 | getDOMImplementation. |
| 1841 | |
| 1842 | - xml.dom.minidom offers a toprettyxml method. A number of DOM |
| 1843 | conformance issues have been resolved. In particular, Element now |
| 1844 | has an hasAttributes method, and the handling of namespaces was |
| 1845 | improved. |
| 1846 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | d6a1d79 | 2001-02-28 21:05:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1847 | - Ka-Ping Yee contributed two new modules: inspect.py, a module for |
| 1848 | getting information about live Python code, and pydoc.py, a module |
| 1849 | for interactively converting docstrings to HTML or text. |
| 1850 | Tools/scripts/pydoc, which is now automatically installed into |
Tim Peters | 1eff796 | 2001-03-01 02:31:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1851 | <prefix>/bin, uses pydoc.py to display documentation; try running |
Guido van Rossum | e3955a8 | 2001-03-02 14:05:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1852 | "pydoc -h" for instructions. "pydoc -g" pops up a small GUI that |
| 1853 | lets you browse the module docstrings using a web browser. |
Andrew M. Kuchling | d6a1d79 | 2001-02-28 21:05:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1854 | |
Tim Peters | 1eff796 | 2001-03-01 02:31:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1855 | - New library module difflib.py, primarily packaging the SequenceMatcher |
| 1856 | class at the heart of the popular ndiff.py file-comparison tool. |
| 1857 | |
| 1858 | - doctest.py (a framework for verifying Python code examples in docstrings) |
| 1859 | is now part of the std library. |
| 1860 | |
Tim Peters | d66595f | 2001-02-04 03:09:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1861 | Windows changes |
| 1862 | |
Guido van Rossum | e3955a8 | 2001-03-02 14:05:59 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1863 | - A new entry in the Start menu, "Module Docs", runs "pydoc -g" -- a |
| 1864 | small GUI that lets you browse the module docstrings using your |
| 1865 | default web browser. |
| 1866 | |
Tim Peters | 1eff796 | 2001-03-01 02:31:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1867 | - Import is now case-sensitive. PEP 235 (Import on Case-Insensitive |
| 1868 | Platforms) is implemented. See |
| 1869 | |
| 1870 | http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/pep-0235.html |
| 1871 | |
| 1872 | for full details, especially the "Current Lower-Left Semantics" section. |
| 1873 | The new Windows import rules are simpler than before: |
| 1874 | |
| 1875 | A. If the PYTHONCASEOK environment variable exists, same as |
| 1876 | before: silently accept the first case-insensitive match of any |
| 1877 | kind; raise ImportError if none found. |
| 1878 | |
| 1879 | B. Else search sys.path for the first case-sensitive match; raise |
| 1880 | ImportError if none found. |
| 1881 | |
| 1882 | The same rules have been implented on other platforms with case- |
| 1883 | insensitive but case-preserving filesystems too (including Cygwin, and |
| 1884 | several flavors of Macintosh operating systems). |
Tim Peters | d66595f | 2001-02-04 03:09:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1885 | |
Tim Peters | 25a9ce3 | 2001-02-19 07:06:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1886 | - winsound module: Under Win9x, winsound.Beep() now attempts to simulate |
| 1887 | what it's supposed to do (and does do under NT and 2000) via direct |
| 1888 | port manipulation. It's unknown whether this will work on all systems, |
Tim Peters | 1eff796 | 2001-03-01 02:31:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1889 | but it does work on my Win98SE systems now and was known to be useless on |
Tim Peters | 25a9ce3 | 2001-02-19 07:06:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1890 | all Win9x systems before. |
| 1891 | |
Tim Peters | 1eff796 | 2001-03-01 02:31:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1892 | - Build: Subproject _test (effectively) renamed to _testcapi. |
| 1893 | |
Tim Peters | 2fe289a | 2001-03-01 22:19:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1894 | New platforms |
| 1895 | |
| 1896 | - 2.1 should compile and run out of the box under MacOS X, even using HFS+. |
| 1897 | Thanks to Steven Majewski! |
| 1898 | |
| 1899 | - 2.1 should compile and run out of the box on Cygwin. Thanks to Jason |
| 1900 | Tishler! |
| 1901 | |
Guido van Rossum | 9089b27 | 2001-03-02 06:49:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1902 | - 2.1 contains new files and patches for RISCOS, thanks to Dietmar |
| 1903 | Schwertberger! See RISCOS/README for more information -- it seems |
| 1904 | that because of the bizarre filename conventions on RISCOS, no port |
Guido van Rossum | 4919214 | 2001-10-24 20:51:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1905 | to that platform is easy. |
Guido van Rossum | 9089b27 | 2001-03-02 06:49:50 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1906 | |
Tim Peters | 25a9ce3 | 2001-02-19 07:06:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1907 | |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1908 | What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 2? |
| 1909 | ================================= |
Tim Peters | 40ead76 | 2001-01-27 05:35:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1910 | |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1911 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 1912 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 4589bd8 | 2001-02-01 20:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1913 | - Scopes nest. If a name is used in a function or class, but is not |
| 1914 | local, the definition in the nearest enclosing function scope will |
| 1915 | be used. One consequence of this change is that lambda statements |
| 1916 | could reference variables in the namespaces where the lambda is |
| 1917 | defined. In some unusual cases, this change will break code. |
| 1918 | |
| 1919 | In all previous version of Python, names were resolved in exactly |
| 1920 | three namespaces -- the local namespace, the global namespace, and |
Jeremy Hylton | d6b1cf9 | 2001-02-02 20:06:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1921 | the builtin namespace. According to this old definition, if a |
Jeremy Hylton | 4589bd8 | 2001-02-01 20:38:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1922 | function A is defined within a function B, the names bound in B are |
| 1923 | not visible in A. The new rules make names bound in B visible in A, |
| 1924 | unless A contains a name binding that hides the binding in B. |
| 1925 | |
| 1926 | Section 4.1 of the reference manual describes the new scoping rules |
| 1927 | in detail. The test script in Lib/test/test_scope.py demonstrates |
| 1928 | some of the effects of the change. |
| 1929 | |
| 1930 | The new rules will cause existing code to break if it defines nested |
| 1931 | functions where an outer function has local variables with the same |
| 1932 | name as globals or builtins used by the inner function. Example: |
| 1933 | |
| 1934 | def munge(str): |
| 1935 | def helper(x): |
| 1936 | return str(x) |
| 1937 | if type(str) != type(''): |
| 1938 | str = helper(str) |
| 1939 | return str.strip() |
| 1940 | |
| 1941 | Under the old rules, the name str in helper() is bound to the |
| 1942 | builtin function str(). Under the new rules, it will be bound to |
| 1943 | the argument named str and an error will occur when helper() is |
| 1944 | called. |
| 1945 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6b1cf9 | 2001-02-02 20:06:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1946 | - The compiler will report a SyntaxError if "from ... import *" occurs |
| 1947 | in a function or class scope. The language reference has documented |
| 1948 | that this case is illegal, but the compiler never checked for it. |
| 1949 | The recent introduction of nested scope makes the meaning of this |
| 1950 | form of name binding ambiguous. In a future release, the compiler |
| 1951 | may allow this form when there is no possibility of ambiguity. |
| 1952 | |
Tim Peters | 40ead76 | 2001-01-27 05:35:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1953 | - repr(string) is easier to read, now using hex escapes instead of octal, |
| 1954 | and using \t, \n and \r instead of \011, \012 and \015 (respectively): |
| 1955 | |
| 1956 | >>> "\texample \r\n" + chr(0) + chr(255) |
| 1957 | '\texample \r\n\x00\xff' # in 2.1 |
| 1958 | '\011example \015\012\000\377' # in 2.0 |
| 1959 | |
Moshe Zadka | 6af0ce0 | 2001-01-29 06:41:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1960 | - Functions are now compared and hashed by identity, not by value, since |
| 1961 | the func_code attribute is writable. |
| 1962 | |
Fred Drake | fb9d712 | 2001-02-01 20:00:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1963 | - Weak references (PEP 205) have been added. This involves a few |
| 1964 | changes in the core, an extension module (_weakref), and a Python |
| 1965 | module (weakref). The weakref module is the public interface. It |
| 1966 | includes support for "explicit" weak references, proxy objects, and |
| 1967 | mappings with weakly held values. |
| 1968 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 0072d5a | 2001-02-01 22:53:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1969 | - A 'continue' statement can now appear in a try block within the body |
| 1970 | of a loop. It is still not possible to use continue in a finally |
Tim Peters | 9ea17ac | 2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1971 | clause. |
Jeremy Hylton | 0072d5a | 2001-02-01 22:53:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1972 | |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1973 | Standard library |
| 1974 | |
Barry Warsaw | 30dbd14 | 2001-01-31 22:14:01 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1975 | - mailbox.py now has a new class, PortableUnixMailbox which is |
| 1976 | identical to UnixMailbox but uses a more portable scheme for |
| 1977 | determining From_ separators. Also, the constructors for all the |
| 1978 | classes in this module have a new optional `factory' argument, which |
| 1979 | is a callable used when new message classes must be instantiated by |
| 1980 | the next() method. |
| 1981 | |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1982 | - random.py is now self-contained, and offers all the functionality of |
| 1983 | the now-deprecated whrandom.py. See the docs for details. random.py |
| 1984 | also supports new functions getstate() and setstate(), for saving |
Tim Peters | d52269b | 2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1985 | and restoring the internal state of the generator; and jumpahead(n), |
| 1986 | for quickly forcing the internal state to be the same as if n calls to |
| 1987 | random() had been made. The latter is particularly useful for multi- |
| 1988 | threaded programs, creating one instance of the random.Random() class for |
| 1989 | each thread, then using .jumpahead() to force each instance to use a |
| 1990 | non-overlapping segment of the full period. |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1991 | |
Tim Peters | 0de88fc | 2001-02-01 04:59:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1992 | - random.py's seed() function is new. For bit-for-bit compatibility with |
| 1993 | prior releases, use the whseed function instead. The new seed function |
| 1994 | addresses two problems: (1) The old function couldn't produce more than |
| 1995 | about 2**24 distinct internal states; the new one about 2**45 (the best |
| 1996 | that can be done in the Wichmann-Hill generator). (2) The old function |
| 1997 | sometimes produced identical internal states when passed distinct |
| 1998 | integers, and there was no simple way to predict when that would happen; |
| 1999 | the new one guarantees to produce distinct internal states for all |
| 2000 | arguments in [0, 27814431486576L). |
| 2001 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 4c4fda0 | 2001-02-02 03:29:24 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2002 | - The socket module now supports raw packets on Linux. The socket |
| 2003 | family is AF_PACKET. |
| 2004 | |
Tim Peters | 9ea17ac | 2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2005 | - test_capi.py is a start at running tests of the Python C API. The tests |
| 2006 | are implemented by the new Modules/_testmodule.c. |
| 2007 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6b1cf9 | 2001-02-02 20:06:28 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2008 | - A new extension module, _symtable, provides provisional access to the |
| 2009 | internal symbol table used by the Python compiler. A higher-level |
| 2010 | interface will be added on top of _symtable in a future release. |
| 2011 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | debc352 | 2001-02-22 15:53:21 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2012 | - Removed the obsolete soundex module. |
| 2013 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 2a5130e | 2001-02-27 04:21:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2014 | - xml.dom.minidom now uses the standard DOM exceptions. Node supports |
| 2015 | the isSameNode method; NamedNodeMap the get method. |
| 2016 | |
| 2017 | - xml.sax.expatreader supports the lexical handler property; it |
| 2018 | generates comment, startCDATA, and endCDATA events. |
| 2019 | |
Tim Peters | ee826f8 | 2001-01-31 19:39:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2020 | Windows changes |
| 2021 | |
| 2022 | - Build procedure: the zlib project is built in a different way that |
| 2023 | ensures the zlib header files used can no longer get out of synch with |
Tim Peters | 9ea17ac | 2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2024 | the zlib binary used. See PCbuild\readme.txt for details. Your old |
| 2025 | zlib-related directories can be deleted; you'll need to download fresh |
| 2026 | source for zlib and unpack it into a new directory. |
Tim Peters | ee826f8 | 2001-01-31 19:39:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2027 | |
Tim Peters | 9ea17ac | 2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2028 | - Build: New subproject _test for the benefit of test_capi.py (see above). |
| 2029 | |
Tim Peters | b16c56f | 2001-02-02 21:24:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2030 | - Build: New subproject _symtable, for new DLL _symtable.pyd (a nascent |
| 2031 | interface to some Python compiler internals). |
| 2032 | |
| 2033 | - Build: Subproject ucnhash is gone, since the code was folded into the |
Tim Peters | 9ea17ac | 2001-02-02 05:57:15 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2034 | unicodedata subproject. |
Tim Peters | d7b5e88 | 2001-01-25 03:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2035 | |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2036 | What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1? |
| 2037 | ================================= |
| 2038 | |
| 2039 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 2040 | |
Marc-André Lemburg | ebb195b | 2001-01-20 10:34:52 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2041 | - There is a new Unicode companion to the PyObject_Str() API |
| 2042 | called PyObject_Unicode(). It behaves in the same way as the |
| 2043 | former, but assures that the returned value is an Unicode object |
| 2044 | (applying the usual coercion if necessary). |
Marc-André Lemburg | ad7c98e | 2001-01-17 17:09:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2045 | |
Guido van Rossum | f98eda0 | 2001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2046 | - The comparison operators support "rich comparison overloading" (PEP |
| 2047 | 207). C extension types can provide a rich comparison function in |
| 2048 | the new tp_richcompare slot in the type object. The cmp() function |
| 2049 | and the C function PyObject_Compare() first try the new rich |
| 2050 | comparison operators before trying the old 3-way comparison. There |
| 2051 | is also a new C API PyObject_RichCompare() (which also falls back on |
| 2052 | the old 3-way comparison, but does not constrain the outcome of the |
| 2053 | rich comparison to a Boolean result). |
| 2054 | |
| 2055 | The rich comparison function takes two objects (at least one of |
| 2056 | which is guaranteed to have the type that provided the function) and |
| 2057 | an integer indicating the opcode, which can be Py_LT, Py_LE, Py_EQ, |
| 2058 | Py_NE, Py_GT, Py_GE (for <, <=, ==, !=, >, >=), and returns a Python |
| 2059 | object, which may be NotImplemented (in which case the tp_compare |
| 2060 | slot function is used as a fallback, if defined). |
| 2061 | |
| 2062 | Classes can overload individual comparison operators by defining one |
| 2063 | or more of the methods__lt__, __le__, __eq__, __ne__, __gt__, |
Guido van Rossum | a88479f | 2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2064 | __ge__. There are no explicit "reflected argument" versions of |
| 2065 | these; instead, __lt__ and __gt__ are each other's reflection, |
| 2066 | likewise for__le__ and __ge__; __eq__ and __ne__ are their own |
| 2067 | reflection (similar at the C level). No other implications are |
| 2068 | made; in particular, Python does not assume that == is the Boolean |
| 2069 | inverse of !=, or that < is the Boolean inverse of >=. This makes |
| 2070 | it possible to define types with partial orderings. |
Guido van Rossum | f98eda0 | 2001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2071 | |
| 2072 | Classes or types that want to implement (in)equality tests but not |
| 2073 | the ordering operators (i.e. unordered types) should implement == |
| 2074 | and !=, and raise an error for the ordering operators. |
| 2075 | |
Guido van Rossum | a88479f | 2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2076 | It is possible to define types whose rich comparison results are not |
Guido van Rossum | f98eda0 | 2001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2077 | Boolean; e.g. a matrix type might want to return a matrix of bits |
| 2078 | for A < B, giving elementwise comparisons. Such types should ensure |
| 2079 | that any interpretation of their value in a Boolean context raises |
| 2080 | an exception, e.g. by defining __nonzero__ (or the tp_nonzero slot |
| 2081 | at the C level) to always raise an exception. |
| 2082 | |
Guido van Rossum | a88479f | 2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2083 | - Complex numbers use rich comparisons to define == and != but raise |
| 2084 | an exception for <, <=, > and >=. Unfortunately, this also means |
| 2085 | that cmp() of two complex numbers raises an exception when the two |
| 2086 | numbers differ. Since it is not mathematically meaningful to compare |
| 2087 | complex numbers except for equality, I hope that this doesn't break |
| 2088 | too much code. |
| 2089 | |
Tim Peters | 3389f19 | 2001-02-18 08:48:49 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2090 | - The outcome of comparing non-numeric objects of different types is |
Tim Peters | 1449585 | 2001-02-18 08:28:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2091 | not defined by the language, other than that it's arbitrary but |
| 2092 | consistent (see the Reference Manual). An implementation detail changed |
| 2093 | in 2.1a1 such that None now compares less than any other object. Code |
| 2094 | relying on this new behavior (like code that relied on the previous |
| 2095 | behavior) does so at its own risk. |
| 2096 | |
Barry Warsaw | 573b541 | 2001-01-15 20:43:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2097 | - Functions and methods now support getting and setting arbitrarily |
| 2098 | named attributes (PEP 232). Functions have a new __dict__ |
| 2099 | (a.k.a. func_dict) which hold the function attributes. Methods get |
| 2100 | and set attributes on their underlying im_func. It is a TypeError |
| 2101 | to set an attribute on a bound method. |
| 2102 | |
Guido van Rossum | 051e335 | 2001-01-15 19:11:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2103 | - The xrange() object implementation has been improved so that |
| 2104 | xrange(sys.maxint) can be used on 64-bit platforms. There's still a |
| 2105 | limitation that in this case len(xrange(sys.maxint)) can't be |
| 2106 | calculated, but the common idiom "for i in xrange(sys.maxint)" will |
| 2107 | work fine as long as the index i doesn't actually reach 2**31. |
| 2108 | (Python uses regular ints for sequence and string indices; fixing |
| 2109 | that is much more work.) |
| 2110 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1cc8f83 | 2001-01-12 16:25:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2111 | - Two changes to from...import: |
| 2112 | |
Guido van Rossum | ba38123 | 2001-02-03 15:06:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2113 | 1) "from M import X" now works even if (after loading module M) |
| 2114 | sys.modules['M'] is not a real module; it's basically a getattr() |
| 2115 | operation with AttributeError exceptions changed into ImportError. |
Guido van Rossum | 1cc8f83 | 2001-01-12 16:25:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2116 | |
| 2117 | 2) "from M import *" now looks for M.__all__ to decide which names to |
| 2118 | import; if M.__all__ doesn't exist, it uses M.__dict__.keys() but |
| 2119 | filters out names starting with '_' as before. Whether or not |
| 2120 | __all__ exists, there's no restriction on the type of M. |
| 2121 | |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2122 | - File objects have a new method, xreadlines(). This is the fastest |
| 2123 | way to iterate over all lines in a file: |
| 2124 | |
| 2125 | for line in file.xreadlines(): |
| 2126 | ...do something to line... |
| 2127 | |
| 2128 | See the xreadlines module (mentioned below) for how to do this for |
| 2129 | other file-like objects. |
| 2130 | |
| 2131 | - Even if you don't use file.xreadlines(), you may expect a speedup on |
| 2132 | line-by-line input. The file.readline() method has been optimized |
Tim Peters | f29b64d | 2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2133 | quite a bit in platform-specific ways: on systems (like Linux) that |
| 2134 | support flockfile(), getc_unlocked(), and funlockfile(), those are |
| 2135 | used by default. On systems (like Windows) without getc_unlocked(), |
| 2136 | a complicated (but still thread-safe) method using fgets() is used by |
| 2137 | default. |
| 2138 | |
Tim Peters | d52269b | 2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2139 | You can force use of the fgets() method by #define'ing |
| 2140 | USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE at build time (it may be faster than |
Tim Peters | f29b64d | 2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2141 | getc_unlocked()). |
| 2142 | |
Tim Peters | d52269b | 2001-01-25 06:23:18 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2143 | You can force fgets() not to be used by #define'ing |
| 2144 | DONT_USE_FGETS_IN_GETLINE (this is the first thing to try if std test |
Tim Peters | f29b64d | 2001-01-15 06:33:19 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2145 | test_bufio.py fails -- and let us know if it does!). |
| 2146 | |
| 2147 | - In addition, the fileinput module, while still slower than the other |
| 2148 | methods on most platforms, has been sped up too, by using |
| 2149 | file.readlines(sizehint). |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2150 | |
| 2151 | - Support for run-time warnings has been added, including a new |
| 2152 | command line option (-W) to specify the disposition of warnings. |
| 2153 | See the description of the warnings module below. |
| 2154 | |
| 2155 | - Extensive changes have been made to the coercion code. This mostly |
| 2156 | affects extension modules (which can now implement mixed-type |
| 2157 | numerical operators without having to use coercion), but |
| 2158 | occasionally, in boundary cases the coercion semantics have changed |
| 2159 | subtly. Since this was a terrible gray area of the language, this |
Guido van Rossum | ae72d87 | 2001-01-11 15:00:14 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2160 | is considered an improvement. Also note that __rcmp__ is no longer |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2161 | supported -- instead of calling __rcmp__, __cmp__ is called with |
Guido van Rossum | a88479f | 2001-01-18 14:28:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2162 | reflected arguments. |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2163 | |
Guido van Rossum | f98eda0 | 2001-01-17 15:54:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2164 | - In connection with the coercion changes, a new built-in singleton |
| 2165 | object, NotImplemented is defined. This can be returned for |
| 2166 | operations that wish to indicate they are not implemented for a |
| 2167 | particular combination of arguments. From C, this is |
| 2168 | Py_NotImplemented. |
| 2169 | |
Martin v. Löwis | be4c0f5 | 2001-01-04 20:30:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2170 | - The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even |
| 2171 | if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing |
| 2172 | |
Martin v. Löwis | e214baa | 2001-02-04 22:37:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2173 | import imp,sys,string |
| 2174 | magic = string.join(["\\x%.2x" % ord(c) for c in imp.get_magic()],"") |
| 2175 | reg = ':pyc:M::%s::%s:' % (magic, sys.executable) |
| 2176 | open("/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register","wb").write(reg) |
Martin v. Löwis | be4c0f5 | 2001-01-04 20:30:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2177 | |
| 2178 | any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument |
| 2179 | to execve(2)). |
| 2180 | |
Tim Peters | 9940b80 | 2000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2181 | - %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2182 | character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign, |
| 2183 | and raised an error if the value of the long was too large |
| 2184 | to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and |
| 2185 | only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent |
| 2186 | across platforms (because the size of an int varies across |
| 2187 | platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example: |
| 2188 | |
| 2189 | >>> "%x" % -0x42L |
Tim Peters | 9940b80 | 2000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2190 | '-42' # in 2.1 |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2191 | 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines |
| 2192 | >>> hex(-0x42L) |
| 2193 | '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python |
| 2194 | |
Tim Peters | 9940b80 | 2000-12-01 07:59:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2195 | The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains |
| 2196 | the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised |
| 2197 | an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int). |
| 2198 | |
| 2199 | %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed |
| 2200 | and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long |
| 2201 | formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to |
| 2202 | fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted |
| 2203 | via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int. |
| 2204 | |
Guido van Rossum | 3661d39 | 2000-12-12 22:10:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2205 | - Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes |
| 2206 | an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of |
| 2207 | a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a |
| 2208 | dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one |
| 2209 | item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time; |
| 2210 | using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time. |
| 2211 | |
Tim Peters | 36cdad1 | 2000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2212 | Standard library |
| 2213 | |
Thomas Wouters | fe38525 | 2001-01-19 23:16:56 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2214 | - In the time module, the time argument to the functions strftime, |
| 2215 | localtime, gmtime, asctime and ctime is now optional, defaulting to |
| 2216 | the current time (in the local timezone). |
| 2217 | |
Guido van Rossum | da91f22 | 2001-01-15 16:36:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2218 | - The ftplib module now defaults to passive mode, which is deemed a |
| 2219 | more useful default given that clients are often inside firewalls |
| 2220 | these days. Note that this could break if ftplib is used to connect |
| 2221 | to a *server* that is inside a firewall, from outside; this is |
| 2222 | expected to be a very rare situation. To fix that, you can call |
| 2223 | ftp.set_pasv(0). |
| 2224 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 10a2787 | 2001-01-13 09:54:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2225 | - The module site now treats .pth files not only for path configuration, |
| 2226 | but also supports extensions to the initialization code: Lines starting |
| 2227 | with import are executed. |
| 2228 | |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2229 | - There's a new module, warnings, which implements a mechanism for |
| 2230 | issuing and filtering warnings. There are some new built-in |
| 2231 | exceptions that serve as warning categories, and a new command line |
| 2232 | option, -W, to control warnings (e.g. -Wi ignores all warnings, -We |
| 2233 | turns warnings into errors). warnings.warn(message[, category]) |
| 2234 | issues a warning message; this can also be called from C as |
| 2235 | PyErr_Warn(category, message). |
| 2236 | |
| 2237 | - A new module xreadlines was added. This exports a single factory |
| 2238 | function, xreadlines(). The intention is that this code is the |
| 2239 | absolutely fastest way to iterate over all lines in an open |
| 2240 | file(-like) object: |
| 2241 | |
| 2242 | import xreadlines |
| 2243 | for line in xreadlines.xreadlines(file): |
| 2244 | ...do something to line... |
| 2245 | |
| 2246 | This is equivalent to the previous the speed record holder using |
| 2247 | file.readlines(sizehint). Note that if file is a real file object |
| 2248 | (as opposed to a file-like object), this is equivalent: |
| 2249 | |
| 2250 | for line in file.xreadlines(): |
| 2251 | ...do something to line... |
| 2252 | |
Tim Peters | 36cdad1 | 2000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2253 | - The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left, |
| 2254 | bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort |
| 2255 | are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right |
| 2256 | and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element |
| 2257 | compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the |
| 2258 | XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the |
Tim Peters | 742bb6f | 2001-01-05 08:05:32 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2259 | right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should |
| 2260 | continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort"). |
Tim Peters | 36cdad1 | 2000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2261 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | f6f3a89 | 2001-01-13 14:53:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2262 | - The new curses.panel module wraps the panel library that forms part |
| 2263 | of SYSV curses and ncurses. Contributed by Thomas Gellekum. |
| 2264 | |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2265 | - The SocketServer module now sets the allow_reuse_address flag by |
| 2266 | default in the TCPServer class. |
| 2267 | |
| 2268 | - A new function, sys._getframe(), returns the stack frame pointer of |
| 2269 | the caller. This is intended only as a building block for |
| 2270 | higher-level mechanisms such as string interpolation. |
| 2271 | |
Martin v. Löwis | 2a5130e | 2001-02-27 04:21:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2272 | - The pyexpat module supports a number of new handlers, which are |
| 2273 | available only in expat 1.2. If invocation of a callback fails, it |
| 2274 | will report an additional frame in the traceback. Parser objects |
| 2275 | participate now in garbage collection. If expat reports an unknown |
| 2276 | encoding, pyexpat will try to use a Python codec; that works only |
| 2277 | for single-byte charsets. The parser type objects is exposed as |
| 2278 | XMLParserObject. |
| 2279 | |
| 2280 | - xml.dom now offers standard definitions for symbolic node type and |
| 2281 | exception code constants, and a hierarchy of DOM exceptions. minidom |
| 2282 | was adjusted to use them. |
| 2283 | |
| 2284 | - The conformance of xml.dom.minidom to the DOM specification was |
| 2285 | improved. It detects a number of additional error cases; the |
| 2286 | previous/next relationship works even when the tree is modified; |
| 2287 | Node supports the normalize() method; NamedNodeMap, DocumentType and |
| 2288 | DOMImplementation classes were added; Element supports the |
| 2289 | hasAttribute and hasAttributeNS methods; and Text supports the splitText |
| 2290 | method. |
| 2291 | |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2292 | Build issues |
| 2293 | |
Guido van Rossum | 1e33bdc | 2001-01-23 03:17:00 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2294 | - For Unix (and Unix-compatible) builds, configuration and building of |
| 2295 | extension modules is now greatly automated. Rather than having to |
| 2296 | edit the Modules/Setup file to indicate which modules should be |
| 2297 | built and where their include files and libraries are, a |
| 2298 | distutils-based setup.py script now takes care of building most |
| 2299 | extension modules. All extension modules built this way are built |
| 2300 | as shared libraries. Only a few modules that must be linked |
| 2301 | statically are still listed in the Setup file; you won't need to |
| 2302 | edit their configuration. |
| 2303 | |
| 2304 | - Python should now build out of the box on Cygwin. If it doesn't, |
| 2305 | mail to Jason Tishler (jlt63 at users.sourceforge.net). |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2306 | |
| 2307 | - Python now always uses its own (renamed) implementation of getopt() |
| 2308 | -- there's too much variation among C library getopt() |
| 2309 | implementations. |
| 2310 | |
| 2311 | - C++ compilers are better supported; the CXX macro is always set to a |
| 2312 | C++ compiler if one is found. |
Tim Peters | 36cdad1 | 2000-12-29 02:06:45 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2313 | |
Tim Peters | d92dfe0 | 2000-12-12 01:18:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2314 | Windows changes |
| 2315 | |
| 2316 | - select module: By default under Windows, a select() call |
| 2317 | can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts |
| 2318 | this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than |
| 2319 | that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE |
| 2320 | and recompile Python from source). |
| 2321 | |
Guido van Rossum | f61f166 | 2001-01-10 20:13:55 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2322 | - Support for Windows 3.1, DOS and OS/2 is gone. The Lib/dos-8x3 |
| 2323 | subdirectory is no more! |
| 2324 | |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2325 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2326 | What's New in Python 2.0? |
Fred Drake | 1a64050 | 2000-10-16 20:27:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2327 | ========================= |
Guido van Rossum | 6100033 | 1997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2328 | |
Guido van Rossum | 8ed602b | 2000-09-01 22:34:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2329 | Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2330 | changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly |
| 2331 | from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the |
| 2332 | HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there. |
Guido van Rossum | 6100033 | 1997-08-15 04:39:58 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2333 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2334 | Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is |
| 2335 | the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka: |
| 2336 | http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/. |
Guido van Rossum | 1f83cce | 1997-10-06 21:04:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2337 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2338 | --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/) |
Guido van Rossum | 437cfe8 | 1999-04-08 20:17:57 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2339 | |
| 2340 | ====================================================================== |
| 2341 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2342 | What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)? |
| 2343 | ============================================== |
| 2344 | |
| 2345 | Standard library |
| 2346 | |
| 2347 | - The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to |
| 2348 | register pickle support for extension types, not for classes. |
| 2349 | pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class. |
| 2350 | |
| 2351 | - Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented |
| 2352 | it from finding an existing .mo file. |
| 2353 | |
| 2354 | - Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib. |
| 2355 | |
Tim Peters | 989b7b9 | 2000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2356 | - The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of |
| 2357 | underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python |
| 2358 | used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform- |
| 2359 | dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE |
| 2360 | on underflow). |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2361 | |
| 2362 | - Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not |
| 2363 | at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to |
| 2364 | extend past the end of the file. |
| 2365 | |
| 2366 | - Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on |
| 2367 | Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of |
| 2368 | interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp). |
| 2369 | |
| 2370 | - Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP |
| 2371 | redirect response. |
| 2372 | |
| 2373 | - Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was |
| 2374 | removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip |
| 2375 | program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this |
| 2376 | installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave |
| 2377 | more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The |
| 2378 | test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to |
| 2379 | use both normcase() and normpath(). |
| 2380 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d867a2c | 2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2381 | - Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom, |
| 2382 | pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules). |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2383 | |
| 2384 | - The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with |
| 2385 | -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as |
| 2386 | garbage but not freed by the garbage collector. |
| 2387 | |
Tim Peters | 989b7b9 | 2000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2388 | - The regression test for the math module was changed to test |
| 2389 | exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python |
| 2390 | cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms, |
| 2391 | so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and |
| 2392 | may fail on your platform. |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2393 | |
| 2394 | Internals |
| 2395 | |
| 2396 | - PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused |
| 2397 | test_sre to fail. |
| 2398 | |
| 2399 | Build issues |
| 2400 | |
| 2401 | - Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and |
| 2402 | -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see |
| 2403 | exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the |
Tim Peters | 989b7b9 | 2000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2404 | --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in |
Tim Peters | adfb94f | 2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2405 | Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1. |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2406 | |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2407 | - Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1. |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2408 | |
| 2409 | Tools and other miscellany |
| 2410 | |
| 2411 | - The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new |
| 2412 | language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list |
| 2413 | comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should |
| 2414 | also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will |
| 2415 | always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2416 | under. |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2417 | |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2418 | What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)? |
| 2419 | ===================================================== |
| 2420 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 6040aaa | 2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2421 | What is release candidate 1? |
| 2422 | |
| 2423 | We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we |
| 2424 | intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit |
| 2425 | more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more |
| 2426 | widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this |
| 2427 | release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless |
| 2428 | any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the |
| 2429 | release candidate. |
| 2430 | |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2431 | All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2432 | to support building Python for specific platforms. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2433 | |
| 2434 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 2435 | |
| 2436 | - A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented |
| 2437 | assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed. |
| 2438 | |
| 2439 | - Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number, |
| 2440 | e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin |
| 2441 | power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by |
| 2442 | platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError. |
| 2443 | |
| 2444 | - A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally |
| 2445 | caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the |
| 2446 | following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError. |
| 2447 | |
| 2448 | - Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead |
| 2449 | of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50). |
| 2450 | |
| 2451 | - In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode, |
| 2452 | rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again. |
| 2453 | |
| 2454 | Standard library |
| 2455 | |
| 2456 | - Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object |
| 2457 | methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine. |
| 2458 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2459 | - In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that |
Jeremy Hylton | 32e20ff | 2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2460 | manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)". |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2461 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2462 | - Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter |
| 2463 | were fixed. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2464 | |
| 2465 | - Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines. |
| 2466 | |
| 2467 | - Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with |
| 2468 | the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are |
| 2469 | performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate |
| 2470 | method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2471 | argument. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2472 | |
| 2473 | - There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its |
| 2474 | test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2475 | play when the regression test is run. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2476 | |
| 2477 | Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work |
| 2478 | correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2479 | (OSS). |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2480 | |
| 2481 | The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of |
| 2482 | crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law |
| 2483 | audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the |
| 2484 | SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide. |
| 2485 | |
| 2486 | - The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was |
| 2487 | removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C |
| 2488 | readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at |
| 2489 | compile-time. |
| 2490 | |
| 2491 | - The binascii module is now enabled on Win64. |
| 2492 | |
Tim Peters | 46446d6 | 2000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2493 | - tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing |
| 2494 | programs with very long string literals. |
| 2495 | |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2496 | Internals |
| 2497 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2498 | - Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(), |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2499 | which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where |
| 2500 | the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all |
| 2501 | previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very |
| 2502 | long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a |
| 2503 | setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in |
| 2504 | Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability. |
| 2505 | |
| 2506 | - Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were |
| 2507 | triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution, |
| 2508 | applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call |
| 2509 | PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's |
| 2510 | container attributes is complete. |
| 2511 | |
| 2512 | - pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and |
| 2513 | PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which |
| 2514 | provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2. |
| 2515 | |
| 2516 | - If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of |
| 2517 | bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time. |
| 2518 | |
| 2519 | - Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage |
| 2520 | collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes. |
| 2521 | |
| 2522 | - Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini(). |
| 2523 | |
| 2524 | Build issues |
| 2525 | |
| 2526 | - configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2527 | executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2528 | X, for example. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2529 | |
| 2530 | - The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when |
| 2531 | possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX. |
| 2532 | |
| 2533 | - The md5 file should now compile on all platforms. |
| 2534 | |
| 2535 | - The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define |
| 2536 | POLLRDNORM and related constants. |
| 2537 | |
| 2538 | - Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2539 | platform. |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2540 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1092120 | 2000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2541 | - BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation |
| 2542 | process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files. |
| 2543 | dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command |
| 2544 | line during build on PPC BeOS. |
| 2545 | |
Jeremy Hylton | d6e2023 | 2000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2546 | - Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or |
Jeremy Hylton | 1092120 | 2000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2547 | "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos". |
Jeremy Hylton | ed9e644 | 2000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2548 | |
| 2549 | - Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets. |
| 2550 | |
| 2551 | - SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure. |
| 2552 | |
| 2553 | Tools and other miscellany |
| 2554 | |
| 2555 | - Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze. |
| 2556 | |
Tim Peters | 46446d6 | 2000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2557 | - IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode |
| 2558 | characters. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2559 | |
| 2560 | What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)? |
| 2561 | ======================================== |
| 2562 | |
| 2563 | Core language, builtins, and interpreter |
| 2564 | |
Tim Peters | 482c021 | 2000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2565 | - Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2566 | "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616". |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2567 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2568 | - Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and |
| 2569 | Python version number and exit immediately. |
| 2570 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2571 | - eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters. |
| 2572 | |
| 2573 | - getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the |
| 2574 | attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default |
| 2575 | encoding before lookup. |
| 2576 | |
| 2577 | - Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds |
| 2578 | checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated |
| 2579 | string is too long." |
| 2580 | |
| 2581 | - Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2582 | loop. |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2583 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2584 | |
| 2585 | Standard library and extensions |
| 2586 | |
Guido van Rossum | 5b08f13 | 2001-04-16 02:05:23 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2587 | - socket module: the OpenSSL code now adds support for RAND_status() |
| 2588 | and EGD (Entropy Gathering Device). |
| 2589 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2590 | - array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2591 | argument checking; it still takes no arguments. |
| 2592 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2593 | - asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2594 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2595 | - cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2596 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2597 | - CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac). |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2598 | |
| 2599 | - ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2600 | letters are now correctly converted to lowercase. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2601 | |
| 2602 | - copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically. |
| 2603 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2604 | - cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2605 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2606 | - cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2607 | |
Fred Drake | 67233bc | 2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2608 | - dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant |
| 2609 | `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings |
| 2610 | and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine |
| 2611 | which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is |
| 2612 | now available options. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2613 | |
| 2614 | - distutils: Update to version 0.9.3. |
| 2615 | |
| 2616 | - dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants. |
| 2617 | |
| 2618 | - fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD. |
| 2619 | |
| 2620 | - gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects |
| 2621 | found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful |
| 2622 | for debugging a program that creates reference cycles. |
| 2623 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2624 | - httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2625 | of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not |
| 2626 | crash when server sends invalid content-length header. |
| 2627 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2628 | - mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2629 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2630 | - marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts |
| 2631 | are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable |
| 2632 | sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed |
| 2633 | that signed right shift sign-extends.) |
| 2634 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2635 | - operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for |
| 2636 | __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2637 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2638 | - os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where |
| 2639 | fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.) |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2640 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2641 | - os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double- |
Tim Peters | 482c021 | 2000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2642 | clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the |
| 2643 | DOS "start" command). |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2644 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2645 | - os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in |
Tim Peters | 482c021 | 2000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2646 | os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b". |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2647 | |
| 2648 | - pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains |
| 2649 | a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior |
| 2650 | matches cPickle. |
| 2651 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2652 | - posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2653 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2654 | - py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2655 | |
| 2656 | - readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2657 | threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2658 | latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.) |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2659 | |
| 2660 | - rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2661 | getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2662 | |
| 2663 | - site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the |
Tim Peters | 482c021 | 2000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2664 | standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2665 | few cycles during startup since the first call to |
| 2666 | setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the |
| 2667 | encodings package. |
| 2668 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2669 | - socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned |
| 2670 | by makefile(). |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2671 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2672 | - sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not |
Jeremy Hylton | 625915e | 2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2673 | use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2674 | is followed by whitespace. |
| 2675 | |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2676 | - StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2677 | |
| 2678 | - struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts. |
| 2679 | |
| 2680 | - urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2681 | quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2682 | |
| 2683 | - Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set |
| 2684 | event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel. |
| 2685 | Removed some debugging prints. |
| 2686 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2687 | - UserList: now implements __contains__(). |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2688 | |
Fred Drake | 67233bc | 2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2689 | - webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(), |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2690 | which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly |
| 2691 | to a Blue Screen freeze. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2692 | |
| 2693 | - xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard |
| 2694 | XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1. |
| 2695 | |
Fred Drake | 64bb380 | 2000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2696 | - xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom |
| 2697 | (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM |
| 2698 | tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific |
| 2699 | application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still |
| 2700 | undocumented. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2701 | |
Fred Drake | 64bb380 | 2000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2702 | - xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler |
| 2703 | interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some |
| 2704 | documentation is already available. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2705 | |
Fred Drake | 64bb380 | 2000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2706 | - pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new, |
| 2707 | packagized XML support. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2708 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2709 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2710 | C API |
| 2711 | |
| 2712 | - Add three new convenience functions for module initialization -- |
| 2713 | PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and |
| 2714 | PyModule_AddStringConstant(). |
| 2715 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2716 | - Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2717 | removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after |
| 2718 | #include of stdio.h. |
| 2719 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2720 | - Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2721 | backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions. |
| 2722 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2723 | - A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of |
| 2724 | either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler |
| 2725 | and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef |
| 2726 | PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2727 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2728 | - Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2729 | internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default |
| 2730 | encoded version of a Unicode object. |
| 2731 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2732 | - PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects. |
| 2733 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2734 | - The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it |
Fred Drake | 64bb380 | 2000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2735 | exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if |
| 2736 | <limits.h> is not available. |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2737 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2738 | - PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was |
| 2739 | effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for |
| 2740 | backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is |
| 2741 | set to NULL. |
| 2742 | |
| 2743 | - PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects |
| 2744 | for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above. |
| 2745 | |
| 2746 | - A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode. |
| 2747 | PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es". |
| 2748 | PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a |
| 2749 | pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2750 | UTF-16. |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2751 | |
| 2752 | - Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code). |
| 2753 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2754 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2755 | Internals |
| 2756 | |
| 2757 | - On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that |
| 2758 | it works when argv[0] is a relative path. |
| 2759 | |
Andrew M. Kuchling | a1099be | 2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2760 | - Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2761 | unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2762 | rather than by generating a copy of the object. |
| 2763 | |
Tim Peters | 482c021 | 2000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2764 | - Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and |
| 2765 | the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2766 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 97693b0 | 2000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2767 | - In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed |
| 2768 | bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set |
| 2769 | while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for |
| 2770 | platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int). |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2771 | |
| 2772 | - Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred |
| 2773 | when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not. |
| 2774 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2775 | - On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in |
| 2776 | registry key. |
| 2777 | |
| 2778 | - On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2779 | condition. |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2780 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2781 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2782 | Build and platform-specific issues |
| 2783 | |
| 2784 | - Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option. |
| 2785 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2786 | - Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension |
| 2787 | modules on Reliant UNIX. |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2788 | |
| 2789 | - Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c: |
| 2790 | Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing |
| 2791 | prototypes in posixmodule.c. |
| 2792 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2793 | - Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2794 | configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00). |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2795 | |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2796 | - Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding |
| 2797 | define for TELL64. |
| 2798 | |
| 2799 | |
| 2800 | Tools and other miscellany |
| 2801 | |
| 2802 | - ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__". |
| 2803 | |
| 2804 | - freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes. |
| 2805 | |
Tim Peters | a3a3a03 | 2000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2806 | - IDLE: |
Jeremy Hylton | fa2e2c1 | 2000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2807 | Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been |
| 2808 | created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter |
| 2809 | initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit |
| 2810 | className parameter to the Tk() constructor. |
Fred Drake | 64bb380 | 2000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2811 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 1b61859 | 2000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2812 | |
| 2813 | What's new in 2.0 beta 1? |
| 2814 | ========================= |
| 2815 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2816 | Source Incompatibilities |
| 2817 | ------------------------ |
| 2818 | |
| 2819 | None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2, |
| 2820 | such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to |
| 2821 | str(long) and repr(float). |
| 2822 | |
| 2823 | |
| 2824 | Binary Incompatibilities |
| 2825 | ------------------------ |
| 2826 | |
| 2827 | - Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used |
| 2828 | with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python |
| 2829 | 2.0. |
| 2830 | |
| 2831 | - On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for |
| 2832 | Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we |
| 2833 | can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable! |
| 2834 | |
| 2835 | - Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between |
| 2836 | releases. |
| 2837 | |
| 2838 | |
| 2839 | Overview of Changes Since 1.6 |
| 2840 | ----------------------------- |
| 2841 | |
| 2842 | There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through |
| 2843 | the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list |
| 2844 | of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed. |
| 2845 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2846 | The process for making major new changes to the language has changed |
| 2847 | since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python |
| 2848 | Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted. |
| 2849 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2850 | There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more |
| 2851 | detail below: |
| 2852 | |
| 2853 | - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1 |
| 2854 | |
| 2855 | - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)] |
| 2856 | |
| 2857 | - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name |
| 2858 | |
| 2859 | - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello" |
| 2860 | |
| 2861 | Other important changes: |
| 2862 | |
| 2863 | - Optional collection of cyclical garbage |
| 2864 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2865 | Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) |
| 2866 | --------------------------------- |
| 2867 | |
| 2868 | PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design |
| 2869 | document providing information to the Python community, or describing |
| 2870 | a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical |
| 2871 | specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature. |
| 2872 | |
| 2873 | We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new |
| 2874 | features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for |
| 2875 | documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP |
| 2876 | author is responsible for building consensus within the community and |
| 2877 | documenting dissenting opinions. |
| 2878 | |
| 2879 | The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2880 | |
| 2881 | Augmented Assignment |
| 2882 | -------------------- |
| 2883 | |
| 2884 | This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years! |
| 2885 | Eleven new assignment operators were added: |
| 2886 | |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2887 | += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |= |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2888 | |
| 2889 | For example, |
| 2890 | |
| 2891 | A += B |
| 2892 | |
| 2893 | is similar to |
| 2894 | |
| 2895 | A = A + B |
| 2896 | |
| 2897 | except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something |
| 2898 | like dict[index].attr). |
| 2899 | |
| 2900 | However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus, |
| 2901 | if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B |
| 2902 | (except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the |
| 2903 | same effect as A.extend(B)! |
| 2904 | |
| 2905 | Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in |
| 2906 | order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is |
| 2907 | used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the |
| 2908 | in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the |
| 2909 | method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting |
| 2910 | an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place |
| 2911 | __add__. |
| 2912 | |
| 2913 | Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters. |
| 2914 | |
| 2915 | |
| 2916 | List Comprehensions |
| 2917 | ------------------- |
| 2918 | |
| 2919 | This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed |
| 2920 | from another list (or lists). The simplest form is: |
| 2921 | |
| 2922 | [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>] |
| 2923 | |
Guido van Rossum | 56db095 | 2000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2924 | For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9]. |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2925 | This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2926 | |
| 2927 | You can also add a condition: |
| 2928 | |
| 2929 | [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>] |
| 2930 | |
| 2931 | For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list |
| 2932 | of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2933 | than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2934 | |
| 2935 | You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For |
| 2936 | example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences:: |
| 2937 | |
| 2938 | def flatten(seq): |
| 2939 | return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq] |
| 2940 | |
| 2941 | flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []]) |
| 2942 | |
| 2943 | This prints |
| 2944 | |
| 2945 | [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9] |
| 2946 | |
| 2947 | List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2948 | Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2949 | |
| 2950 | |
| 2951 | Extended Import Statement |
| 2952 | ------------------------- |
| 2953 | |
| 2954 | Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different |
| 2955 | name. This can be accomplished like this: |
| 2956 | |
| 2957 | import foo |
| 2958 | bar = foo |
| 2959 | del foo |
| 2960 | |
| 2961 | but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the |
| 2962 | import statement now allows this to be written as follows: |
| 2963 | |
| 2964 | import foo as bar |
| 2965 | |
| 2966 | There's also a variant for 'from ... import': |
| 2967 | |
| 2968 | from foo import bar as spam |
| 2969 | |
| 2970 | This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this: |
| 2971 | |
| 2972 | import test.regrtest as regrtest |
| 2973 | |
| 2974 | Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this |
| 2975 | context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import |
| 2976 | statement doesn't involve expressions). |
| 2977 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2978 | Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2979 | |
| 2980 | |
| 2981 | Extended Print Statement |
| 2982 | ------------------------ |
| 2983 | |
| 2984 | Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print |
| 2985 | statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file |
| 2986 | than the default sys.stdout. |
| 2987 | |
| 2988 | For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now |
| 2989 | write: |
| 2990 | |
| 2991 | print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!" |
| 2992 | |
| 2993 | As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file |
Fred Drake | 45888ff | 2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2994 | evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus: |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 2995 | |
| 2996 | print >> None, "Hello world" |
| 2997 | |
| 2998 | is equivalent to |
| 2999 | |
| 3000 | print "Hello world" |
| 3001 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3002 | Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3003 | |
| 3004 | |
| 3005 | Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage |
| 3006 | --------------------------------------- |
| 3007 | |
| 3008 | Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down |
| 3009 | cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for |
| 3010 | reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being |
| 3011 | correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all |
| 3012 | their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to |
| 3013 | each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann, |
| 3014 | and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer. |
| 3015 | |
| 3016 | There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the |
| 3017 | garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script |
| 3018 | that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1, |
| 3019 | it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user |
| 3020 | experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its |
Fred Drake | 9f11cf8 | 2000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3021 | performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3022 | off by default in the final 2.0 release. |
| 3023 | |
| 3024 | |
| 3025 | Smaller Changes |
| 3026 | --------------- |
| 3027 | |
| 3028 | A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to |
| 3029 | map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length; |
| 3030 | i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When |
| 3031 | the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins: |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3032 | zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3033 | |
| 3034 | sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial). |
| 3035 | |
| 3036 | Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default). |
| 3037 | dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not, |
| 3038 | it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus: |
| 3039 | |
| 3040 | dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item) |
| 3041 | |
| 3042 | does the same work as this common idiom: |
| 3043 | |
| 3044 | if not dict.has_key(key): |
| 3045 | dict[key] = [] |
| 3046 | dict[key].append(item) |
| 3047 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3048 | There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for |
| 3049 | indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError. |
| 3050 | |
| 3051 | Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U |
| 3052 | escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3053 | |
| 3054 | The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code |
| 3055 | have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python |
| 3056 | were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted |
| 3057 | was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions, |
| 3058 | e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This |
| 3059 | limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively |
| 3060 | fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be |
| 3061 | limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python. |
| 3062 | |
| 3063 | The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python |
| 3064 | programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This |
| 3065 | limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by |
| 3066 | Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from |
| 3067 | overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is |
| 3068 | 1000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found |
| 3069 | by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3070 | |
| 3071 | New Modules and Packages |
| 3072 | ------------------------ |
| 3073 | |
| 3074 | atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits. |
| 3075 | |
| 3076 | imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import |
| 3077 | hooks. |
| 3078 | |
| 3079 | pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul |
| 3080 | Prescod. |
| 3081 | |
| 3082 | xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three |
| 3083 | subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these |
| 3084 | would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a |
| 3085 | user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard |
| 3086 | xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute |
| 3087 | backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package. |
| 3088 | |
| 3089 | webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser. |
| 3090 | |
| 3091 | |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3092 | Changed Modules |
| 3093 | --------------- |
| 3094 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3095 | array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and |
| 3096 | remove |
| 3097 | |
| 3098 | binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between |
| 3099 | binary data and its hex representation |
| 3100 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3101 | calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control |
| 3102 | over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead |
| 3103 | of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week, |
| 3104 | e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY. |
| 3105 | |
| 3106 | cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a |
| 3107 | dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object. |
| 3108 | |
| 3109 | ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option, |
| 3110 | remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module |
| 3111 | to be used for writing config files as well as reading them. |
| 3112 | |
| 3113 | ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3114 | optionally support the RFC 959 REST command. |
| 3115 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3116 | gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3117 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3118 | httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See |
| 3119 | the module doc strings for details. |
Guido van Rossum | 830ca2a | 2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3120 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3121 | locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh |
| 3122 | |
| 3123 | marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or |
| 3124 | recursive data structures |
| 3125 | |
| 3126 | os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid |
| 3127 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3128 | os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3 |
| 3129 | support under Unix. |
| 3130 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3131 | os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3132 | |
| 3133 | os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix |
| 3134 | |
| 3135 | smtplib -- support for sending very long messages |
| 3136 | |
| 3137 | socket -- new function getfqdn() |
| 3138 | |
| 3139 | readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files. |
| 3140 | The readline section of the library reference manual contains an |
| 3141 | example. |
| 3142 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3143 | select -- add interface to poll system call |
| 3144 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3145 | shutil -- new copyfileobj function |
| 3146 | |
| 3147 | SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the |
| 3148 | HTTP server. |
| 3149 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3150 | Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3151 | |
| 3152 | urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration, |
Tim Peters | 8b09233 | 2000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3153 | e.g. http_proxy. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3154 | |
| 3155 | whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3156 | |
| 3157 | |
| 3158 | Obsolete Modules |
| 3159 | ---------------- |
| 3160 | |
| 3161 | None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete: |
| 3162 | stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail, |
| 3163 | poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound. |
| 3164 | |
| 3165 | |
| 3166 | Changed, New, Obsolete Tools |
| 3167 | ---------------------------- |
| 3168 | |
Tim Peters | 8b09233 | 2000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3169 | None. |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3170 | |
| 3171 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3172 | C-level Changes |
| 3173 | --------------- |
| 3174 | |
| 3175 | Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code. |
| 3176 | |
| 3177 | All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the |
| 3178 | Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable. |
| 3179 | |
| 3180 | Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file, |
| 3181 | pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old |
| 3182 | header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set |
| 3183 | of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly; |
| 3184 | they are all included by Python.h.) |
| 3185 | |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3186 | Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3187 | and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also |
| 3188 | added large file support for Linux64 and Win64. |
Guido van Rossum | f2ffce0 | 2000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3189 | |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3190 | The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently |
| 3191 | use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In |
| 3192 | previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the |
| 3193 | concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names, |
| 3194 | e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility |
| 3195 | at the API level, but are deprecated. |
| 3196 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3197 | The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by |
| 3198 | Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow |
| 3199 | on Windows. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3200 | |
| 3201 | The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object, |
| 3202 | tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in |
Guido van Rossum | 4338a28 | 2000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3203 | the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3204 | |
| 3205 | The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in |
Guido van Rossum | 4338a28 | 2000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3206 | C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3207 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3208 | PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of |
| 3209 | the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change |
| 3210 | prevents crashes caused by programmer error. |
Jeremy Hylton | bdebd54 | 2000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3211 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3212 | New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable. |
Guido van Rossum | e905e95 | 2000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3213 | |
Jeremy Hylton | 24c3d60 | 2000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3214 | PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions |
| 3215 | that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an |
| 3216 | extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done. |
| 3217 | |
| 3218 | XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here. |
Guido van Rossum | ab9d6f0 | 1998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3219 | |
Tim Peters | 8b09233 | 2000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3220 | |
| 3221 | Windows Changes |
| 3222 | --------------- |
| 3223 | |
| 3224 | New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above). |
| 3225 | |
| 3226 | os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft |
| 3227 | Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there |
| 3228 | is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your |
| 3229 | Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not |
| 3230 | a standalone program. |
| 3231 | |
| 3232 | Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python |
| 3233 | on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges, |
| 3234 | Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. |
| 3235 | Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info |
Guido van Rossum | 4338a28 | 2000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3236 | under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal" |
Tim Peters | 8b09233 | 2000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3237 | uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working |
| 3238 | (for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly |
| 3239 | from CGI). |
| 3240 | |
| 3241 | [This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk |
| 3242 | installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the |
| 3243 | Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this |
| 3244 | wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with |
| 3245 | conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python |
| 3246 | to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files. |
| 3247 | |
| 3248 | [This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in |
| 3249 | \Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\. |
| 3250 | |
Guido van Rossum | f62ed9c | 2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3251 | |
| 3252 | Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6 |
| 3253 | -------------------------------------------- |
| 3254 | |
| 3255 | The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here |
| 3256 | is some late-breaking news: |
| 3257 | |
| 3258 | New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(), |
| 3259 | and changes to getlocale() and setlocale(). |
| 3260 | |
| 3261 | The new module is now enabled per default. |
| 3262 | |
| 3263 | It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal |
| 3264 | strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings |
| 3265 | !) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from |
| 3266 | cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa. |
| 3267 | |
| 3268 | Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA: |
| 3269 | http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/ |
| 3270 | |
| 3271 | |
Guido van Rossum | ab9d6f0 | 1998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 3272 | ====================================================================== |