blob: 37b127a37e2f00dc8d6cae9498fc607b7cd3ad70 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000015- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
16 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
17
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000018- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
19
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000020- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
21
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000022- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
23
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000024- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
25 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
26
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000027- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
28 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
29 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
30
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000031- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
32 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000033 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000034
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000035- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
36 now encodes backslash correctly.
37
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000038- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
39
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000040- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
41 and long longs.
42
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000043- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
44 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
45 message in this case.
46
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000047- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
48 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
49 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
50 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
51 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
52
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000053- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000055- Speed up some Unicode operations.
56
57- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
58
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000059- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000060 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
61
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000062- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
63
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000064- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
65 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
66
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000067- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
68
69- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
70
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000071- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
72 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
73 was empty.
74
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000075- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
76 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
77
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000078- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000079 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000080
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000081- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
82 codes.
83
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000084- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
85 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
86 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
87
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000088- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
89 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
90
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000091- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000092 (fixes bug #1119418).
93
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000094- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
95
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000096- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
97 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
98
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000099- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
100 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
101 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
102
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000103- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
104
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000105- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
106 reference counts in some error exit cases.
107
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000108- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
109 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
110 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
111 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
112 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
113 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
114 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
115 realloc.
116
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000117- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
118 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
119
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000120- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
121 like their int counterparts.
122
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000123- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
124 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
125 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
126 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
127 for a longer write-up of the problem).
128
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000129- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
130 serializing floats.
131
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000132- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
133 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
134 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
135
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000136- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
137 278.
138
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000139- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
140 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
141 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
142 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000143 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000144 PyNumber_*().
145 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
146
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000147- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
148 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
149 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
150 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
151
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000152- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
153 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
154 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
155 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
156 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
157
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000158- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
159 disabled caused a crash.
160
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000161- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
162 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
163
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000164- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000165 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
166
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000167- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
168
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000169- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000170 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
171 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
172 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000173
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000174- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
175
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000176- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
177 returning None.
178
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000179- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000180 ('\') with a specific error message.
181
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000182- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
183
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000184- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
185 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
186
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000187- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000188 an ferror() call.
189
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000190- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
191 list.sort().
192
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000193- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
194 (2+3) --> (5).
195
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000196- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
197
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000198- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
199 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000200
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000201- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
202 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
203 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
204
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000205- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
206 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
207 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
208
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209Extension Modules
210-----------------
211
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000212- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
213
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000214- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
215
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000216- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
217 problem on AIX.
218
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000219- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
220
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000221- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
222
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000223- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
224
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000225- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
226 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
227
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000228- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
229
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000230- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
231 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
232
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000233- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
234
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000235- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
236 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
237
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000238- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
239 returns in cStringIO.c.
240
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000241- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
242 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
243
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000244- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
245
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000246- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
247
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000248- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
249 the file system encoding.
250
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000251- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
252 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000253
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000254- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
255
256- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000257 line without newlines.
258
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000259- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
260 on Windows.
261
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000262- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000263 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
264
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000265- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
266 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
267 for large or negative values.
268
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000269- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000270 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000271
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000272- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
273
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000274- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
275 if available on the platform.
276
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000277- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
278 available on the platform.
279
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000280- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
281 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
282
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000283- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
284
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000285- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
286 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
287 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
288
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000289- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
290
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000291- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
292 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
293
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000294- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000295 file size.
296
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000297- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
298
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000299- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
300 {remove_history,replace_history}
301
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000302- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
303 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000304
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000305- stat_float_times is now True.
306
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000307- array.array objects are now picklable.
308
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000309- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
310 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
311
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000312- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
313 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
314 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
315
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000316- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
317 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000318
319Library
320-------
321
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000322- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
323
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000324- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
325 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
326 LoadError subclasses IOError.
327
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000328- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000329 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
330 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
331 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
332 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
333
334 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
335 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
336 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
337 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
338 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000339
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000340- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
341 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
342 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
343
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000344- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
345
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000346- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
347
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000348- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
349 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
350 illegal argument)
351
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000352- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
353 is an error in the format string.
354
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000355- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
356
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000357- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000358 "parent" argument.
359
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000360- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
361 for padding.
362
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000363- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
364 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
365
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000366- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
367 to get the correct encoding.
368
369- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
370 languages.
371
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000372- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
373
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000374- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
375
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000376- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
377
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000378- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
379 functionality.
380
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000381- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
382
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000383- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
384 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
385
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000386- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
387 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
388 match the Content-Length header.
389
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000390- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
391
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000392- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
393 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000394 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000395
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000396- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
397
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000398- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
399
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000400- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
401 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
402
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000403- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
404 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
405 Tkdnd.
406
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000407- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
408 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
409
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000410- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
411 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
412
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000413- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000414 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
415
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000416- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
417 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
418
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000419- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
420 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
421
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000422- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000423 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000424
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000425- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
426
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000427- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
428 error messages.
429
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000430- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
431
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000432- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
433 Bug #1224621.
434
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000435- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
436 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
437 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
438 terminates by raising StopIteration.
439
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000440- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
441
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000442- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
443 component of the path.
444
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000445- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
446 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
447 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
448 class at all.
449
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000450- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
451 files to PyPI.
452
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000453- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
454 them to PyPI.
455
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000456- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
457 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
458 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
459 work as expected.
460
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000461- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
462 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
463
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000464- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000465 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
466
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000467- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
468
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000469- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
470 to build.
471
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000472- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
473 symbolic links on Windows.
474
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000475- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000476 profile.py if available.
477
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000478- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
479
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000480- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
481 in LWPCookieJar.
482
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000483- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
484
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000485- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
486
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000487- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
488
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000489- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
490
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000491- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
492
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000493- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
494
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000495- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
496
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000497- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
498
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000499- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
500 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
501 be exploited in various ways.
502
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000503- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000504 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
505
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000506- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
507 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
508
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000509- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000510 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
511
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000512- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
513
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000514- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
515
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000516- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
517
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000518- Enhancements to the csv module:
519
520 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000521 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000522 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000523 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
524 reporting.
525 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
526 dictates.
527 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000528 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000529 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000530 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
531 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000532 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
533 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000534 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000535 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
536 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
537 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
538 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
539 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
540 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
541 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
542 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
543 without first creating a dialect class.
544 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
545 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
546 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000547 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000548 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
549 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000550 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
551 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
552 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
553 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000554 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
555 This has been fixed.
556
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000557- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
558 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
559 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
560 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
561
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000562- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
563
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000564- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
565 (Bug #951915).
566
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000567- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
568 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
569 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000570 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000571
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000572- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
573
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000574- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
575 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
576
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000577- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
578
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000579- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
580
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000581- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
582
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000583- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
584
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000585- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
586
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000587- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
588 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
589 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
590
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000591- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000592 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000593
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000594- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
595 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
596 tokenizer with very long source lines.
597
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000598- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
599 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
600 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000601
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000602- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
603 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000604
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000605- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
606 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
607
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000608- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
609 correctly.
610
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000611- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
612 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
613 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
614 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
615 between two lines.
616
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000617- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
618 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
619 handlers.
620
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000621- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000622 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
623 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000624
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000625- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
626 considering it exactly like a '*'.
627
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000628- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
629 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000630
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000631- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
632
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000633Build
634-----
635
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000636- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
637 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
638
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000639- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
640
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000641- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
642 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
643
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000644- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
645 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
646
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000647- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
648 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
649 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000650 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000651
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000652- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
653 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
654 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
655
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000656- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
657
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000658- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
659 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
660
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000661- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
662 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
663 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
664 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
665 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
666 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
667 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
668 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
669
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000670- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
671 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
672 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
673 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
674
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000675
676C API
677-----
678
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000679- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
680
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000681- Removed PyRange_New().
682
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000683- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
684 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
685 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
686 mappings.
687
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000688
689Tests
690-----
691
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000692- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000693
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000694- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
695 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
696
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000697
698Documentation
699-------------
700
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000701- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
702
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000703- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
704
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000705- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
706
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000707- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
708
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000709- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
710
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000711- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
712
713- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
714
715- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
716
717- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
718
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000719- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
720 Closes bug #1166582.
721
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000722- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
723 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
724 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
725
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000726Mac
727---
728
729
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000730New platforms
731-------------
732
733- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
734
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000735
736Tools/Demos
737-----------
738
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000739- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
740 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
741 source files that need an encoding declaration.
742 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
743
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000744- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
745
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000746- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000747
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000748- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
749 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000750
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000751What's New in Python 2.4 final?
752===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000753
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000754*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000755
756Core and builtins
757-----------------
758
759- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
760 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
761 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
762
763
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000764What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
765==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000766
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000767*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000768
769Core and builtins
770-----------------
771
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000772- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
773 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
774 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
775
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000776
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000777Library
778-------
779
780- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
781 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
782 raised is re-raised.
783
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000784- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
785 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
786
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000787- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
788 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
789 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
790 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
791 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
792 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
793 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
794 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
795 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
796 by the slice are recomputed now.
797
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000798- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000799
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000800Build
801-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000802
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000803- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
804 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
805 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000806
807C API
808-----
809
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000810- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
811
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000812
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000813What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
814================================
815
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000816*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000817
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000818License
819-------
820
821The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
822is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
823changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
824Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
825intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
826durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
827the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
828License::
829
830 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
831
832says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
833to Python 2.1.1.
834
835The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
836License Version 2.
837
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000838Core and builtins
839-----------------
840
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000841- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
842 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
843 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
844 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
845 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
846 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
847 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000848 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000849 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
850 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
851
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000852- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000853
854Extension Modules
855-----------------
856
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000857- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
858 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
859 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
860 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000861
862Library
863-------
864
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000865- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
866 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
867 returned.
868
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000869- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
870
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000871- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
872 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
873
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000874- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
875
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000876- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
877 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000878
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000879- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
880
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000881- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
882
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000883- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000884 the source code is updated and reloaded.
885
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000886Build
887-----
888
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000889- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000890
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000891What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
892================================
893
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000894*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000895
896Core and builtins
897-----------------
898
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000899- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000900 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
901
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000902- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
903 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
904 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
905 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
906
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000907- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
908 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
909
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000910- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
911 constant.
912
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000913- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
914 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
915 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
916 large), and to anomalies such as
917 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
918 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
919 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
920 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000921
922Extension modules
923-----------------
924
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000925- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
926 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000927 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
928 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
929 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000930
931Library
932-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000933
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000934- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000935 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000936 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
937 --swig-cpp.
938
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000939- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
940 it is set.
941
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000942- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000943
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000944- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
945 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
946 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
947 Closes bug #1039270.
948
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000949- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000950
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000951 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000952 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
953 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
954 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
955 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
956 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
957 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
958 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
959 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
960 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
961 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
962 + Updates to documentation.
963
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000964- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
965 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
966 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
967 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
968
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000969- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000970
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000971- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
972 applications should use the getmember function.
973
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000974- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
975
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000976- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
977 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
978 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
979 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
980 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
981 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
982 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
983 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
984 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
985
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000986- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
987 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000988 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000989
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000990- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
991 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
992 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
993 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
994 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
995 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
996 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
997 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000998
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000999- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1000 the new public features (of which there are many).
1001
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001002- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001003 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1004 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1005 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1006 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001007 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001008
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001009- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1010
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001011- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1012 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1013 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1014 options.
1015
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001016- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1017 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1018 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1019 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1020 conditions under which non-string values work.
1021
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001022Build
1023-----
1024
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001025- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1026 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1027 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1028
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001029- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1030 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1031 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1032 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1033 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001034
1035C API
1036-----
1037
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001038- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1039 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1040
1041- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1042
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001043- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1044 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1045 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1046 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1047 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1048 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1049 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1050 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1051 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1052
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001053- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1054
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001055- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1056 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1057 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001058
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001059Tests
1060-----
1061
1062- test__locale ported to unittest
1063
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001064Mac
1065---
1066
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001067- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1068 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1069 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001070
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001071Tools/Demos
1072-----------
1073
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001074- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1075 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1076 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1077 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1078 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001079
1080
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001081What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1082=================================
1083
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001084*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001085
1086Core and builtins
1087-----------------
1088
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001089- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001090 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1091
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001092- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1093 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1094 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1095 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1096 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1097 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1098 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1099 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001100 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1101 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1102 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1103 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1104 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001105
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001106- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1107 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1108 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1109 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1110 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1111
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001112- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1113
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001114- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1115 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1116
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001117- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1118 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1119 modified the list.
1120
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001121- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1122 functions is now writable.
1123
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001124- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1125 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1126 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1127 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1128
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001129- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1130 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1131 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1132 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1133 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001134
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001135- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1136 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1137
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001138Extension modules
1139-----------------
1140
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001141- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1142
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001143- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1144 data.
1145
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001146- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1147 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1148 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1149 supposed to have been truncated away.
1150
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001151- Added socket.socketpair().
1152
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001153- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1154 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1155
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001156- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001157 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1158
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001159Library
1160-------
1161
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001162- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001163 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001164
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001165- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1166 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1167
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001168- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1169 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1170
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001171- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1172
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001173- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1174 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001175
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001176- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1177 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1178
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001179- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1180
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001181- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1182
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001183- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1184
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001185- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1186 Percivall.
1187
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001188- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1189 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1190
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001191- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1192 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1193 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001194 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001195
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001196- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1197 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1198 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1199 and exponent.
1200
1201- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1202
1203- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001204 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001205 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1206
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001207- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1208 to the readline module.
1209
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001210- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001211 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1212 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001213
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001214- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1215 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1216 contains symlinks.
1217
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001218- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1219 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1220
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001221- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1222 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1223 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1224
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001225- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1226 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1227 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1228 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1229 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1230 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1231 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1232 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1233 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1234 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1235 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1236 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1237 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1238
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001239- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1240
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001241Tools/Demos
1242-----------
1243
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001244- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1245 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1246
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001247- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1248
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001249Build
1250-----
1251
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001252- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1253 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1254 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1255 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1256 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1257 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1258 plans to do so.
1259
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001260- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1261 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1262
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001263- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1264 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1265
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001266- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1267 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1268
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001269- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1270 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1271
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001272- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1273 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1274
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001275C API
1276-----
1277
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001278..
1279
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001280Documentation
1281-------------
1282
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001283- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1284 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1285
1286- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1287 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1288 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001289
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001290New platforms
1291-------------
1292
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001293- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1294
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001295Tests
1296-----
1297
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001298..
1299
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001300Windows
1301-------
1302
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001303- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1304 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1305 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1306 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1307 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1308 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1309 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1310 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1311 the problem.
1312
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001313Mac
1314---
1315
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001316..
1317
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001318
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001319What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1320=================================
1321
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001322*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001323
1324Core and builtins
1325-----------------
1326
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001327- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1328 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1329 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1330 sensitive code.
1331
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001332- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001333 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001334
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001335 @staticmethod
1336 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001337
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001338 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001339
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001340- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1341 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1342 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1343 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1344 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1345 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1346 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1347 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1348 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1349 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1350 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1351
1352 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1353 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1354 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1355 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1356 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1357 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1358 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1359
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001360- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1361 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1362
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001363- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001364 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001365
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001366- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001367 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001368 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1369
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001370- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001371 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1372 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1373
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001374- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1375 types that support garbage collection.
1376
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001377- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1378
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001379- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1380 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1381 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1382 Jython.
1383
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001384- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1385
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001386- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1387 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1388
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001389- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1390 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1391 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001392
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001393- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1394 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1395 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1396
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001397Extension modules
1398-----------------
1399
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001400- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1401
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001402Library
1403-------
1404
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001405- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1406 TIS-620
1407
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001408- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1409 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1410 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1411 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1412 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1413 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1414 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1415 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1416 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1417 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1418
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001419- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1420
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001421- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1422 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1423 same as when the argument is omitted).
1424 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1425
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001426- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1427
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001428- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1429 schemes are offered.
1430
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001431- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1432
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001433- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1434 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1435 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1436
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001437- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1438
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001439- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1440 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1441
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001442- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1443 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1444 when dummy_threading is being used.
1445
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001446- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1447 from a tarfile.
1448
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001449- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001450 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001451
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001452- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1453 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1454 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1455 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1456
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001457- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1458 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1459
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001460- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1461 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1462 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1463 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1464 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1465 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1466 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1467 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1468 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1469 by some other method in progress).
1470
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001471- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1472 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1473 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001474
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001475- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1476
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001477- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1478 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1479 AM Kuchling.
1480
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001481- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1482 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1483 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1484
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001485- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1486 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1487 instead of unsigned.
1488
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001489- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001490 no longer part of the public API.
1491
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001492- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1493 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1494 string methods of the same name).
1495
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001496- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001497 SF patch 945642.
1498
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001499- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1500
1501 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1502
1503 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1504 DocTestSuites.
1505
1506- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1507 that provide thread-local data.
1508
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001509- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1510 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1511
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001512- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1513
1514- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1515 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1516 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1517
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001518- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1519
1520 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1521 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1522 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001523
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001524 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1525 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1526 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1527 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1528
1529 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1530 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1531
1532 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1533 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1534 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1535 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1536
1537 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1538 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1539 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1540 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1541 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1542
1543 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1544 wrapping help output.
1545
1546 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1547 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1548 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001549
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001550C API
1551-----
1552
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001553- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1554 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1555 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1556 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1557 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1558 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1559 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1560 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1561 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1562 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1563 its visible semantics have not changed.
1564
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001565- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1566 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1567
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001568Documentation
1569-------------
1570
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001571- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001572
1573 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001574 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001575
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001576 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001577
1578 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1579
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001580- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001581
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001582Tests
1583-----
1584
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001585- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001586 platforms that use the Makefile.
1587
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001588- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1589 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1590 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1591
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001592
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001593What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1594=================================
1595
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001596*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001597
1598Core and builtins
1599-----------------
1600
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001601- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1602 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1603 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1604 objects now (one object instead of three).
1605
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001606- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1607 Windows DLLs.
1608
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001609- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1610 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001611
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001612- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1613 a new .pyc magic.
1614
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001615- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1616 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1617 be there.
1618
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001619- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1620 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1621 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1622
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001623- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1624 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1625 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1626
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001627- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1628
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001629- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1630 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1631 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001632
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001633- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1634 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1635
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001636- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1637
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001638- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001639 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001640
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001641- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1642
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001643- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1644
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001645- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1646 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1647
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001648- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1649 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1650 Fixes bug #858016 .
1651
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001652- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1653 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1654 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1655
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001656- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1657 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1658 improves their performance (about 35%).
1659
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001660- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1661 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1662 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1663
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001664- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1665 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1666 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1667 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1668
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001669- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1670 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001671 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001672 length is not known).
1673
1674- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1675 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001676 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1677 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001678 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1679
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001680- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1681 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1682
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001683- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1684 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1685 keyword arguments.
1686
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001687- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1688 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1689 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1690
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001691- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1692 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1693 cases.
1694
1695- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1696 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1697 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1698 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1699 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1700 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1701 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1702 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1703 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1704 a release build.
1705
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001706- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1707 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1708
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001709- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001710 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001711
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001712- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1713 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1714 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1715 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1716 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1717 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1718 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1719 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1720 destroyed.
1721
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001722- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1723 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1724 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1725 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1726 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1727 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1728 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1729 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1730
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001731- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1732 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1733 character other than a space.
1734
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001735- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1736 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1737 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1738 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1739 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1740 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1741 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1742 attributes with the same name.
1743
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001744- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1745 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1746 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1747 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1748 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1749 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1750 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1751 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1752 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1753 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1754 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1755 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1756 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1757 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001758
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001759- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1760 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1761 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1762 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1763 This has been repaired.
1764
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001765- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1766
1767- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1768
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001769- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1770 over a sequence.
1771
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001772- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001773 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001774
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001775- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1776
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001777- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1778 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1779 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1780 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1781 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1782 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1783 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1784 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1785
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001786- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1787 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1788 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1789
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001790- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1791 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1792 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1793 freelist.
1794
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001795- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1796 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1797
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001798- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1799 number.
1800
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001801- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1802 a TypeError exception.
1803
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001804- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1805 820195.
1806
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001807- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1808 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1809 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1810
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001811- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001812 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1813 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001814
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001815- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1816 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1817 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1818
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001819- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1820 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001821 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001822
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001823- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001824 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1825 the first call.
1826
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001827
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001828Extension modules
1829-----------------
1830
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001831- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1832 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1833
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001834- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1835 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1836 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1837 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1838 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1839 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1840 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001841
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001842- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1843
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001844- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1845
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001846- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1847 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1848
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001849- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1850 fewer false positives.
1851
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001852- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1853 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1854
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001855- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001856 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1857
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001858- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001859 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001860 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001861 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1862 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001863
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001864- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1865 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1866 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1867 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1868
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001869- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1870 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1871 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1872 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1873 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1874 #897625.
1875
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001876- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1877 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1878
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001879- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1880 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1881 and pops on either side of the deque.
1882
1883- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1884 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1885
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001886- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1887 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1888 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1889 other functions that expect a function argument.
1890
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001891- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1892
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001893- os.getsid was added.
1894
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001895- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1896 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1897 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1898
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001899- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1900
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001901- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1902
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001903- readline.clear_history was added.
1904
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001905- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1906
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001907- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1908
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001909- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1910
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001911- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1912
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001913- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1914
1915- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1916
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001917- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1918
1919- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1920
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001921- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1922 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1923 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1924
1925- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1926 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1927 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1928 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1929 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1930 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1931 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1932
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001933- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1934 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1935 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1936 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001937
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001938- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001939 iterators from a single iterable.
1940
1941- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1942 of raising a TypeError exception.
1943
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001944- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1945 as parameter.
1946
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001947Library
1948-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001949
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001950- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1951
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001952- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1953 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1954 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001955
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001956- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1957 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1958 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001959
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001960- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001961
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001962- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1963 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001964
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001965- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1966 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1967
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001968- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1969
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001970- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001971 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001972
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001973- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001974 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001975
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001976- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1977
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001978- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1979 on cygwin and mingw32.
1980
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001981- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1982
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001983- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1984 module.
1985
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001986- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1987 installation scheme for all platforms.
1988
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001989- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001990 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001991
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001992- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1993 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1994 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1995
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001996- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1997 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1998 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1999
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002000- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2001
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002002- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2003
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002004- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2005 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2006
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002007- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2008 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2009 type pattern with the same value exists.
2010
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002011- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2012 when run from the command prompt).
2013
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002014- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2015 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2016
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002017- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2018 default sort).
2019
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002020- Added global runctx function to profile module
2021
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002022- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2023
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002024- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2025
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002026- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2027
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002028- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002029 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2030 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2031 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2032 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2033 accordingly.
2034
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002035- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2036 decoding standards.
2037
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002038- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2039 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2040 called for all requests.
2041
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002042- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2043 they are passed to the compiler.
2044
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002045- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2046 indent, width and depth.
2047
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002048- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2049 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2050
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002051- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2052 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2053
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002054- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2055
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002056- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2057
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002058- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2059
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002060- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2061 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2062
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002063- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002064 for better performance.
2065
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002066- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002067
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002068- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2069 a string).
2070
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002071- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2072
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002073- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2074
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002075- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2076
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002077- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2078
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002079- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2080 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2081 list of fieldnames.
2082
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002083- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2084 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2085
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002086- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2087
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002088- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2089 empty lists.
2090
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002091- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2092 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2093 and shelves.
2094
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002095- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2096 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2097
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002098- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002099 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2100 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002101
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002102- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2103 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002104 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002105
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002106- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002107 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2108 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2109
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002110- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2111 and removed in Py2.4.
2112
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002113- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2114
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002115- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2116
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002117Tools/Demos
2118-----------
2119
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002120- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2121 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2122
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002123- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2124
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002125- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2126 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2127 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2128 destination in situations where both files are given.
2129
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002130- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2131 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2132 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2133 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2134
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002135- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2136
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002137- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2138 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2139 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2140 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2141 now.
2142
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002143- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2144 in effect
2145
2146- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2147 C-c C-h
2148
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002149- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2150 -d option was given.
2151
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002152Build
2153-----
2154
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002155- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2156 build under OS X.
2157
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002158- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2159 --enable-profiling.
2160
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002161- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2162 is configured --with-tsc.
2163
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002164- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2165 on AMD64.
2166
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002167- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2168 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2169
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002170- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2171 removed.
2172
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002173- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2174 supported (see PEP 11).
2175
2176- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2177
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002178- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2179
2180- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2181 (see PEP 11).
2182
2183- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2184 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2185
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002186C API
2187-----
2188
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002189- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2190 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2191 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2192
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002193- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2194 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2195 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2196 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2197
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002198- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2199 generator objects.
2200
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002201- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2202 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002203 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2204 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002205
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002206- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2207 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2208
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002209- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2210 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2211 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2212 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2213 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2214
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002215- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2216 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2217 about 10% faster.
2218
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002219- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2220 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2221
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002222- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2223 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2224 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2225 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2226
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002227Windows
2228-------
2229
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002230- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2231 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2232 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2233 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2234
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002235- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2236 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2237 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2238
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002239
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002240What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2241===============================
2242
2243*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2244
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002245IDLE
2246----
2247
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002248- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2249 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2250 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2251 context-menu actions.
2252
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002253- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2254 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2255 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2256 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2257 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2258 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2259 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2260 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2261 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2262
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002263
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002264What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2265=============================================
2266
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002267*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002268
2269Core and builtins
2270-----------------
2271
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002272- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002273 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002274 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2275
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002276Extension modules
2277-----------------
2278
2279- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2280 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2281 than once. This has been fixed.
2282
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002283- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2284 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2285 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2286 call.
2287
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002288- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2289
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002290Library
2291-------
2292
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002293- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2294 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2295
2296- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2297 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2298 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2299 restored.
2300
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002301IDLE
2302----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002303
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002304- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002305
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002306Build
2307-----
2308
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002309- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2310 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2311
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002312C API
2313-----
2314
2315Windows
2316-------
2317
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002318- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2319 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2320
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002321- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2322
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002323Mac
2324---
2325
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002326- Various fixes to pimp.
2327
2328- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2329
2330- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2331 more problems than it solves.
2332
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002333
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002334What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2335=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002336
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002337*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2338
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002339Core and builtins
2340-----------------
2341
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002342- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2343 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2344
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002345- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2346 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002347 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002348
2349- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2350 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2351 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002352 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002353
2354- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2355 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002356
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002357- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2358 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2359 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2360
2361- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002362 770247.
2363
2364- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002365
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002366Extension modules
2367-----------------
2368
2369- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2370 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2371
2372- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2373
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002374- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2375
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002376- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2377 contained within the _strptime module.
2378
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002379- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2380 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2381
2382- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002383 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2384
2385- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2386 the find_class attribute, if present.
2387
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002388- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002389
2390 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2391 (SF bug 763298).
2392
2393 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002394 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2395 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2396 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002397
2398 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2399
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002400Library
2401-------
2402
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002403- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2404
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002405- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2406 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2407 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2408 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2409 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2410 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2411 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2412 or Tester().
2413
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002414- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2415 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2416 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2417 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2418 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2419 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2420 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2421 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2422 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002423
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002424 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002425
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002426- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2427 weren't before was an oversight.
2428
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002429- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2430 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2431
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002432- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2433 when there are no lines.
2434
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002435- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2436 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2437
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002438- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2439 to child processes.
2440
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002441- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2442
2443- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2444
2445- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2446 xmlrpclib.
2447
2448- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2449 responses.
2450
2451- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2452 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2453
2454- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2455 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2456 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2457
2458- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2459 used as patterns.
2460
2461- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2462 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2463 than Tk 8.3.
2464
2465- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2466
2467- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002468
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002469Tools/Demos
2470-----------
2471
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002472- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2473
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002474- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2475
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002476- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002477
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002478Build
2479-----
2480
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002481- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2482
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002483- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2484
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002485- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2486 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002487
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002488- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2489 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2490 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002491
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002492C API
2493-----
2494
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002495- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2496 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2497
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002498Windows
2499-------
2500
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002501- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2502 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2503 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2504 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2505 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2506 Python exception ::
2507
2508 thread.error: can't start new thread
2509
2510 is raised now.
2511
2512- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2513 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2514 instead of from DLL teardown.
2515
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002516Mac
2517---
2518
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002519- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002520 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002521 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2522 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2523 the executable in the bundle.
2524
2525- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002526
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002527- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2528
2529- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2530 on Panther.
2531
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002532What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2533================================
2534
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002535*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002536
2537Core and builtins
2538-----------------
2539
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002540- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2541 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2542 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2543 with the -i option.
2544
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002545- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2546 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2547
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002548- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2549 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2550
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002551- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2552 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2553 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2554 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2555 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2556 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2557 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2558 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2559 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2560 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2561 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2562 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2563 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002564
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002565- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2566 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2567 embedded in a lambda expression.
2568
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002569- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2570 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2571 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2572 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2573 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2574
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002575- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2576 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2577 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2578
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002579- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2580 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2581
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002582- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2583 It's writable again.
2584
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002585- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2586 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2587 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002588 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002589
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002590- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2591 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2592 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2593
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002594Extension modules
2595-----------------
2596
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002597- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2598 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2599
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002600- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2601 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2602 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2603 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2604
2605- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2606 collection.
2607
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002608- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2609 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2610 unique within a single program run.
2611
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002612- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2613 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2614
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002615- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2616 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2617
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002618- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2619 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002620
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002621- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2622
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002623- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2624 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2625
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002626- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2627 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2628 for many BSD-derived systems.
2629
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002630
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002631Library
2632-------
2633
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002634- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2635 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2636 primary ones:
2637
2638 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2639 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2640 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2641
2642 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2643 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2644 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2645 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2646 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2647 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2648
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002649- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2650 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2651 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2652 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2653 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2654 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2655 argument.
2656
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002657- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2658 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2659 in the archive.
2660
2661- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2662 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2663
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002664- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2665 569574).
2666
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002667- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2668 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2669 no more.
2670
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002671- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2672 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2673 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2674 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2675 code coverage.
2676
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002677- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2678 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2679 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002680 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2681 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002682
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002683- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2684 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2685 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002686 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002687
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002688- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2689
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002690- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2691 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2692 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2693 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2694
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002695- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2696 handling.
2697
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002698- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2699 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2700
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002701- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2702 in socket.py.
2703
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002704- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2705
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002706- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2707 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2708 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2709 opener with proxy support.
2710
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002711- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2712
2713- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2714
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002715Tools/Demos
2716-----------
2717
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002718- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2719
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002720- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2721
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002722- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2723 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002724
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002725- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2726 files.
2727
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002728Build
2729-----
2730
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002731- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002732 different root directory.
2733
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002734C API
2735-----
2736
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002737- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2738 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2739 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2740 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2741 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2742 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2743 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2744 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2745 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2746 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2747
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002748- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2749 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2750 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2751 from Python.
2752
2753
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002754New platforms
2755-------------
2756
2757None this time.
2758
2759Tests
2760-----
2761
2762- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2763 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2764
2765Windows
2766-------
2767
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002768- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2769
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002770- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2771 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2772 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2773 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2774 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2775 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2776 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2777 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2778 that's what it's for.
2779
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002780Mac
2781---
2782
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002783- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2784 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2785 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2786 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002787- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2788 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2789- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002790
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002791SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2792------------------------------------
2793
2794430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2795598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2796622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2797661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2798683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2799697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2800713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2801724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2802727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2803729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2804730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2805731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2806732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2807733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2808735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2809740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2810744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2811745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2812747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2813749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2814751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2815753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2816755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2817757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2818760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2819
2820
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002821What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2822================================
2823
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002824*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002825
2826Core and builtins
2827-----------------
2828
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002829- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2830 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2831
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002832- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2833 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2834 and cannot be strings).
2835
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002836- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2837 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2838 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2839 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2840
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002841- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2842 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2843 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2844 Python itself.
2845
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002846- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2847 the referenced object, if it has one.
2848
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002849- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2850 the thread started at
2851 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2852
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002853- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2854 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2855 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2856 placed on a list index.
2857
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002858- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2859 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2860 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2861 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2862
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002863- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2864 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2865 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2866 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2867 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2868 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2869 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2870
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002871- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2872 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2873 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2874 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2875 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2876
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002877- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2878 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002879
2880- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2881 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2882 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2883 #693195.)
2884
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002885- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2886 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002887
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002888- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002889 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002890 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2891 interpreter executions, would fail.
2892
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002893- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002894 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002895 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002896
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002897Extension modules
2898-----------------
2899
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002900- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2901 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2902 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2903 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2904
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002905- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2906 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2907
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002908- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2909 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2910 and Greg Chapman.)
2911
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002912- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2913 recursively.
2914
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002915- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002916 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2917 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2918 leaks.
2919
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002920- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2921
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002922- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2923 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2924 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2925 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2926 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2927 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2928 #705836.
2929
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002930- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002931 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2932
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002933- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2934 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2935 See SF bug #692416.
2936
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002937- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2938 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2939
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002940- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2941 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2942 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002943
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002944- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002945 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2946 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2947
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002948- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2949 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2950 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2951 timeouts to work properly.
2952
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002953Library
2954-------
2955
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002956- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2957 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2958 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2959 future release.
2960
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002961- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2962 for querying platform dependent features.
2963
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002964- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002965
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002966- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2967 pickle protocol versions.
2968
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002969- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2970 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2971 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2972
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002973- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2974
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002975- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2976 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2977 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2978 modules.
2979
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002980- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2981 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2982 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2983
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002984- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2985 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2986
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002987- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2988 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2989 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2990
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002991- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002992 MS Office extensions.
2993
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002994- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2995 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2996
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002997- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2998 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2999
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003000- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3001 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3002 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3003 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3004 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3005 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3006
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003007- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3008 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3009 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003010
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003011- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3012 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3013 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3014
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003015- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3016
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003017- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3018 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3019 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3020
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003021Tools/Demos
3022-----------
3023
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003024- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3025 See the module docstring for details.
3026
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003027Build
3028-----
3029
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003030- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3031 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003032
3033C API
3034-----
3035
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003036- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3037
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003038- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3039 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3040 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3041
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003042- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3043 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003044
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003045 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3046 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3047 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003048
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003049- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003050 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3051
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003052- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3053 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3054 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003055
3056New platforms
3057-------------
3058
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003059None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003060
3061Tests
3062-----
3063
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003064- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3065 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003066
3067Windows
3068-------
3069
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003070- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3071 function.
3072
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003073- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3074 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003075
3076Mac
3077---
3078
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003079- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3080 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003081
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003082- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3083 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003084
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003085- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3086 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3087 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003088
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003089- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003090 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3091 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003092
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003093- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3094 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003095
3096
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003097What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3098=================================
3099
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003100*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003101
3102Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003103-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003104
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003105- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3106 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3107 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3108
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003109- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3110 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3111 (SF patch #664376.)
3112
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003113- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3114 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3115 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3116 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3117 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3118 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003119 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003120
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003121- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3122 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3123 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3124 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003125 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003126
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003127- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3128 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3129 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3130 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3131 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3132 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3133 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3134 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3135 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3136 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3137 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3138
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003139- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3140 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3141 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3142 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3143 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3144 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3145
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003146- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3147 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3148
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003149- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3150 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3151 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3152 case.)
3153
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003154- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3155 passed as unicode strings.
3156
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003157- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3158 See SF bug #683467.
3159
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003160- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3161 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3162
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003163- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3164
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003165- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3166
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003167- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3168 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3169 arguments.
3170
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003171- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3172 See SF bug #667147.
3173
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003174- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003175 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003176 See SF bug #676155.
3177
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003178- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003179 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003180 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3181 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3182 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3183 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3184 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3185 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003186
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003187Extension modules
3188-----------------
3189
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003190- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3191 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3192 tp_as_number pointer.
3193
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003194- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3195 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3196 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3197 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3198 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3199
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003200- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3201
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003202- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3203
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003204- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003205 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003206 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3207 patch #678531.)
3208
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003209- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3210 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3211
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003212- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3213 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3214
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003215- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3216
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003217- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3218 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3219 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3220
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003221- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3222
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003223- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3224 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3225
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003226- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003227
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003228- datetime changes:
3229
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003230 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3231
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003232 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3233 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3234 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3235 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3236 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3237 now.
3238
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003239 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003240 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3241 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003242
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003243 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003244 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003245 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3246 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3247 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3248 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003249
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003250 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3251 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3252 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003253 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3254
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003255 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3256 by a later example coded by Guido.
3257
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003258 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003259 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3260 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3261 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003262 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3263 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3264
3265 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3266 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3267 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3268 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3269 tzinfo subclass instance.
3270
3271 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3272 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3273 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3274 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3275 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3276 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3277 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3278 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003279
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003280 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3281 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3282 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3283 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3284 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003285 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3286
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003287 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003288
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003289 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3290 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3291 as a naive datetime object.
3292
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003293 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3294 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3295 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3296
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003297 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3298 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3299 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3300 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3301 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3302 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3303 comparison.
3304
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003305 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3306 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3307 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3308 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003309 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003310
3311 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003312
3313 and ::
3314
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003315 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3316
3317 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3318 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3319 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3320 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3321
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003322 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3323 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3324 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3325 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3326 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3327
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003328 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3329 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003330 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3331 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003332
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003333Library
3334-------
3335
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003336- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3337 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3338
3339- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3340 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3341 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3342 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3343 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3344 See PEP 307 for details.
3345
3346- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3347 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3348
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003349- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3350 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003351 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003352 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3353 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003354 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003355
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003356- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3357 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3358
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003359- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3360 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3361 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3362
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003363- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3364
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003365- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3366 exception.
3367
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003368- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3369 class.
3370
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003371- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3372 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3373 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3374
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003375- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3376 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3377
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003378- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003379 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3380 See SF bug #659228.
3381
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003382- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3383 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3384 See SF patch #651082.
3385
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003386- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003387
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003388- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3389 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3390
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003391- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003392 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003393
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003394- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3395 DOS paths from other platforms.
3396
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003397Tools/Demos
3398-----------
3399
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003400- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3401 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3402 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3403 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3404 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3405 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3406 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3407 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3408 example:
3409
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003410 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3411 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003412
3413 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3414
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003415
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003416Build
3417-----
3418
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003419- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3420 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3421 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003422 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3423
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003424 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3425
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003426- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3427 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3428 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3429 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3430 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3431 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3432 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3433 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3434 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3435
3436- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3437 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3438 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3439 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3440
3441- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3442 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3443
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003444C API
3445-----
3446
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003447- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3448 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003449
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003450- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3451 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3452 tp_as_number pointer.
3453
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003454- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3455 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3456 (SF #681367)
3457
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003458- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3459 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3460 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3461 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003462
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003463Tests
3464-----
3465
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003466- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003467 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3468 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3469 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3470 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3471 pydoc.)
3472
3473- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3474
3475- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003476
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003477Windows
3478-------
3479
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003480- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3481 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3482 time).
3483
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003484- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3485 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3486
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003487- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3488 release without strong cryptography.
3489
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003490- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003491 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003492
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003493- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3494 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3495
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003496Mac
3497---
3498
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003499- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3500 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003501
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003502- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3503 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3504 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003505
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003506- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3507 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003508
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003509- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3510 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3511 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3512 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003513
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003514- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003515 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3516 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3517 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003518
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003519
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003520What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003521=================================
3522
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003523*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003524
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003525Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003526--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003527
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003528- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3529
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003530- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3531 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003532 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003533 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003534 a different meaning than before.
3535
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003536- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003537 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003538 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003539
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003540- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003541 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003542 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003543
3544- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3545 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3546 and deallocation.
3547
3548- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3549 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3550
3551- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3552 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3553 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3554 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3555 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3556
3557- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3558 now detected by the garbage collector.
3559
3560- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3561 [SF bug 519621]
3562
3563- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3564 identifier.
3565
3566- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3567 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3568 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3569 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3570 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3571 [SF bug 563060]
3572
3573- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3574 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3575 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3576 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3577 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3578
3579- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3580 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3581 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3582
3583- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3584
3585- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3586 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3587 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3588 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3589 state of the slots would be lost.)
3590
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003591Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003592-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003593
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003594- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003595 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3596 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3597 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3598 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003599 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3600 Jython 2.1.
3601
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003602- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003603 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003604 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3605 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3606 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3607 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3608 these, see PEP 302.
3609
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003610- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3611 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3612 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3613
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003614- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3615 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3616 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3617
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003618- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3619 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3620 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3621
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003622- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3623 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3624 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3625 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3626 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3627 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3628 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3629 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3630 releases or implementations.
3631
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003632- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003633 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3634 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003635
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003636- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3637 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3638
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003639- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3640 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3641 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3642
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003643- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3644 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3645
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003646- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3647 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003648 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3649 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003650
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003651- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3652 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3653 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3654 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3655 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3656
3657 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3658 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3659 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3660 pattern.
3661
3662 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3663 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3664 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3665 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3666
3667 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3668 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3669 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3670 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3671 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3672 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3673
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003674- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3675 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3676 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3677 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3678 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3679 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3680 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3681 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003682
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003683- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3684 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3685 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3686 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3687 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003688 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3689 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3690 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3691 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3692 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3693 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3694 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003695
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003696- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3697 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3698
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003699- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3700 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3701 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3702 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3703 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3704 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3705 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3706 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3707 to Zack Weinberg!
3708
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003709- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3710 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3711 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3712 type. This has been fixed now.
3713
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003714- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3715 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3716 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3717
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003718- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3719 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3720 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3721 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3722 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3723 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3724 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3725 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003726 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003727
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003728- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3729 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3730 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003731
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003732- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3733 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3734 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3735 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3736 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3737 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3738 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3739 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003740 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003741 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3742 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3743
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003744- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3745 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3746 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3747 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3748 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3749 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3750 this.)
3751
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003752- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3753 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003754 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003755 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003756 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3757 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003758 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3759 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003760
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003761- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3762 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3763 currently running.
3764
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003765- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3766 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3767 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3768 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3769
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003770- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3771 as directory names.
3772
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003773- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3774 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3775
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003776- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3777 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3778
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003779- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003780 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3781 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003782
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003783- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3784 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3785 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3786 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3787 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3788
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003789- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3790 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3791 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3792 removed.
3793
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003794- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3795 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3796 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3797
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003798- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3799 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3800 to __debug__.
3801
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003802- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3803 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3804 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3805
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003806- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3807 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3808 deprecated now.
3809
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003810- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3811 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3812 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003813
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003814- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3815 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3816 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3817 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3818 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003819
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003820- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3821 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3822
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003823- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3824 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3825 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003826 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003827 is backward compatible.
3828
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003829- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3830 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3831 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3832 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3833 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3834
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003835- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3836 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3837 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3838 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3839 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3840 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003841
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003842- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3843 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3844
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003845- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3846 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3847
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003848- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3849 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3850 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3851 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3852 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3853
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003854- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3855 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3856 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3857
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003858- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003859 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3860
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003861- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3862 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3863 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003864
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003865- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3866 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3867
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003868- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3869 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3870 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3871
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003872- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3873
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003874Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003875-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003876
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003877- Added three operators to the operator module:
3878 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3879 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3880 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3881
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003882- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3883
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003884- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3885 archives.
3886
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003887- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3888 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3889 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3890
3891 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3892
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003893- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3894 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3895 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003896 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003897
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003898- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3899 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3900 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3901 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003902 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3903 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3904 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3905 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003906
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003907- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3908 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003909
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003910- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3911
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003912- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3913 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3914
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003915- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3916 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3917 supported.
3918
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003919- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3920
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003921- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3922 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003923
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003924- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3925 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3926
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003927- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3928
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003929- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3930 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3931
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003932- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3933 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3934 functions but callable type objects.
3935
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003936- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003937 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003938 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003939
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003940- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3941 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003942
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003943- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3944 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003945
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003946- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3947 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3948 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3949 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3950
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003951- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3952 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003953
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003954- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3955 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3956 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3957 and __imul__.
3958
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003959- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003960 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3961 is called.
3962
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003963- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3964 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3965 interpreter was compiled.
3966
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003967- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3968 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3969 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003970 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003971 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3972 1, not 2.
3973
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003974- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3975 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3976 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3977 limit.
3978
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003979- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3980 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3981 bug #623464.
3982
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003983- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3984 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3985 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3986 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3987
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003988Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003989-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003990
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003991- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3992
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003993- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3994 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3995 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3996 with Python 2.3a2.
3997
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003998- os.path exposes getctime.
3999
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004000- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004001 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004002 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004003 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004004 unit tests of floating point results.
4005
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004006- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4007 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4008 has been increased.
4009
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004010- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4011 executed.
4012
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004013- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4014 postinstallation script.
4015
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004016- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4017 test the current module.
4018
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004019- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004020 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4021 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4022 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4023 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4024
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004025- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004026 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004027 Ward's Optik package.
4028
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004029- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4030 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4031 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4032 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4033
4034- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4035 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004036 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004037
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004038- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4039 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4040 shelf are binary pickles.
4041
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004042- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4043 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4044
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004045- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4046 modules are iterators now.
4047
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004048- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4049 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4050 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4051 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4052 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4053 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004054
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004055- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4056 with their entity value.
4057
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004058- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4059
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004060- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4061 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004062
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004063- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4064 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004065 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004066
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004067- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4068 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4069 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4070 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4071 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4072 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4073 main():
4074
4075 import locale
4076 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4077
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004078- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4079 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4080
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004081- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4082 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4083 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4084 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4085 to the new standard.
4086
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004087- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4088 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4089 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4090 an extension to the database.
4091
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004092- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4093 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4094 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4095 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004096 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004097
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004098- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004099 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004100
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004101- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4102 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4103 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4104 bounded integers.
4105
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004106- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4107 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4108 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4109 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4110 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4111 in existence.
4112
4113 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4114 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4115 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4116 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4117 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4118 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4119
4120 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4121 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4122 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4123 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4124
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004125- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4126 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4127 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4128
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004129- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4130
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004131- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4132 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4133 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4134 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4135
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004136- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4137 argument.
4138
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004139- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4140 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4141 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4142 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4143 [SF patch 560794].
4144
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004145- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4146 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4147 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004148 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4149 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4150 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004151
4152- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4153 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004154
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004155- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4156 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4157 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4158 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004159
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004160- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4161 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4162 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4163 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4164 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4165
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004166- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004167
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004168- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4169
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004170- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4171 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4172 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4173 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4174 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4175 identical to None.
4176
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004177- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4178 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4179 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4180 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4181 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4182 results now.
4183
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004184- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4185 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4186
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004187- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4188 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4189 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4190 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4191 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4192 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4193 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4194 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4195
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004196- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4197
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004198- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4199 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4200
4201- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4202 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4203 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4204 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4205 and other systems.
4206
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004207- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4208 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4209 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4210 UTF-16 is a 2-byte encoding and the C lib's line reading APIs don't
Marc-André Lemburg4179a012002-04-05 12:15:05 +00004211 work well with these.
4212
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004213- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4214
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004215- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004216 connections.
4217
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004218- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4219 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4220 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4221
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004222- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4223 sets
4224
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004225- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4226 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4227 name.
4228
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004229- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4230 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4231 passed in.
4232
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004233- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004234 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004235 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4236 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004237
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004238- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4239
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004240- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4241
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004242- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4243 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4244 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4245
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004246- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4247 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4248 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4249 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004250 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004251
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004252- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004253 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004254 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004255
4256- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4257 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4258 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4259
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004260- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004261 the value of its expression argument.
4262
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004263- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4264 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4265 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4266
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004267- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4268 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4269 skipstone browser was included.
4270
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004271- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4272 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4273
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004274Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004275-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004276
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004277- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4278 names in addition to accepting file names.
4279
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004280- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4281 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4282 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4283 still used and useful.)
4284
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004285- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4286 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4287 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4288 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004289
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004290- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4291 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4292 the generated binary.
4293
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004294Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004295-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004296
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004297- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4298
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004299- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4300 except in the hands of experts.
4301
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004302- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004303 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4304 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4305 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004306
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004307- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4308 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4309 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4310 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4311 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4312 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4313 builds.
4314
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004315- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4316 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4317 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4318 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4319 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4320 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4321 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4322 new type.
4323
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004324- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004325
4326 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4327 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4328 positive infinities.
4329
4330 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4331 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4332 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4333 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4334 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4335 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4336 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4337
4338 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4339
4340 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4341
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004342- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4343 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4344 size of the executable.
4345
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004346- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4347 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4348 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4349 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004350
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004351- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4352
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004353- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4354 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4355 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004356
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004357- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4358 well as Unix.
4359
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004360- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4361 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4362 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4363 modules in the README file for details.
4364
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004365C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004366-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004367
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004368- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4369 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004370 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004371 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004372 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004373
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004374- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4375 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4376 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4377 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4378 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4379 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004380 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004381 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4382 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4383 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4384 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4385 aligned.)
4386
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004387- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4388 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4389 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4390
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004391- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4392 level.
4393
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004394- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4395 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4396 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4397 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4398 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4399
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004400- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4401 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4402 code.
4403
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004404- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4405 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4406 adjusting for negative indices.
4407
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004408- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4409 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4410 object.
4411
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004412- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4413 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4414 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4415
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004416- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4417 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004418
4419- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4420
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004421- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4422 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4423 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4424 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4425
4426- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4427
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004428- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004429
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004430- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004431 without going through the buffer API.
4432
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004433- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004434
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004435- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4436 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4437 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4438 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4439
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004440- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4441 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4442
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004443- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004444 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4445
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004446New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004448
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004449- OpenVMS is now supported.
4450
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004451- AtheOS is now supported.
4452
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004453- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4454
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004455- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4456
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004457Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004458-----
4459
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004460- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4461 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4462 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004463
4464Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004465-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004466
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004467- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4468 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4469 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4470 bugs.
4471 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004472 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004473 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4474 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004475 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004476
4477- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004478 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004479
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004480- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4481 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4482
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004483- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4484 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004485 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004486 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4487
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004488- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4489 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4490 use files" uninstall option).
4491
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004492- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4493
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004494- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4495 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4496
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004497- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4498 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4499 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4500
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004501- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4502 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4503 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4504 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4505 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004506 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4507 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4508 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004509
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004510- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004511 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004512 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4513 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4514 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4515 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4516 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4517 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4518 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4519 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4520 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4521 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4522 work around.
4523
4524- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4525 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4526 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4527 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4528 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4529 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4530 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4531 specified with O_CREAT too).
4532
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004533Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004534----
4535
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004536- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004537
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004538- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4539 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4540 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4541
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004542- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4543 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4544 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4545
4546- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4547 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4548 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4549 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4550 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4551 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4552 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4553 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004554
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004555- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4556 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4557 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004558
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004559- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4560 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4561 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4562 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4563 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004564
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004565- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4566 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4567 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004568
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004569- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4570 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004571
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004572- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4573 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4574 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4575 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4576 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004577
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004578- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4579 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4580 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4581
4582- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4583 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4584 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004585
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004586- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4587 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4588 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4589 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004590 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004591
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004592- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4593 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004594
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004595- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4596 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004597
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004598- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004599 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004600 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4601 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004602
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004603
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004604What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004605===============================
4606
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004607*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4608
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004609Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004610--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004611
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004612- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4613 with a custom metaclass.
4614
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004615Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004616-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004617
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004618- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4619 are proxies.
4620
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004621Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004622-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004623
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004624- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4625 very short strings.
4626
4627- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4628 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4629 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4630 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4631 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4632
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004633Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004635
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004636- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4637 close or delete time).
4638
4639- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4640 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4641
4642- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4643
4644- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004645 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004646
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004647Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004648-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004649
4650Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004651-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004652
4653C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004654-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004655
4656New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004657-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004658
4659Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004660-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004661
4662Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004663-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004664
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004665- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4666
4667- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4668 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4669
4670- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4671 deleted at process exit time.
4672
4673- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4674 in backslash.
4675
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004676Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004677----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004678
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004679- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4680 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4681 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4682
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004683
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004684What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004685===========================
4686
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004687*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4688
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004689Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004690--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004691
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004692- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4693 been extensively updated. See
4694
4695 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4696
4697 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4698
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004699- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4700 deleted!
4701
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004702- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4703 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4704 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4705 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4706 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4707
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004708- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4709
4710 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4711 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4712
4713 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4714 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4715 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4716 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4717 supported anyway.
4718
4719 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4720 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4721
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004722- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4723 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4724 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4725 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4726 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004727
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004728- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4729 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4730 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4731
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004732Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004733-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004734
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004735- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4736 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4737 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4738 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4739 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4740 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004741 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4742 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4743 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4744 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004745
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004746- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4747 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4748 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4749
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004750Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004751-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004752
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004753- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4754
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004755Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004756-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004757
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004758- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4759 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4760 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4761 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4762 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4763 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4764
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004765- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4766
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004767- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4768
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004769- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4770
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004771- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4772 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4773 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4774
4775- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4776
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004777Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004778-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004779
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004780- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4781 off a search on Google.
4782
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004783Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004784-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004785
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004786- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4787 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4788 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4789 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4790 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4791 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4792 other platforms should do likewise.
4793
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004794- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4795 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4796 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4797
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004798C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004799-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004800
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004801- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4802 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4803 producing key-value pairs.
4804
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004805- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004806 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004807 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4808 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4809 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4810 previously went unchallenged.
4811
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004812New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004813-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004814
4815Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004816-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004817
4818Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004819-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004820
4821Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004822----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004823
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004824- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4825 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004826
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004827- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4828 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4829 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4830 home.
4831
4832
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004833What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004834===========================
4835
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004836*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4837
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004838Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004840
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004841- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4842 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004843
4844 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004845 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004846
4847 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4848 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004849 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004850 This needs to be documented.
4851
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004852- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4853 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4854
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004855- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4856 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4857 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4858
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004859- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4860 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4861
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004862- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4863 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4864 class forbids it).
4865
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004866- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4867 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4868 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4869
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004870- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4871
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004872Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004873-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004874
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004875- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4876 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004877 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004878
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004879- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4880 (like 1 + '').
4881
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004882Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004883-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004884
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004885- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4886 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4887 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4888 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004889 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004890 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4891
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004892- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4893 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4894 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4895 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4896
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004897- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4898 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004899 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4900 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4901 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004902
4903- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4904 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004905
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004906- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4907 bytes on its input.
4908
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004909Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004910-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004911
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004912- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004913 convenience function.
4914
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004915- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4916 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4917 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004918 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4919 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4920 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4921 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4922 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4923 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004924
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004925- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4926 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4927 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4928 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4929
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004930- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4931 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4932 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4933
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004934- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4935 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4936 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4937 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4938
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004939- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4940 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004941 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004942 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4943 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4944 new -l and -e options.
4945
4946- statcache is now deprecated.
4947
4948- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4949 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004950 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004951 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4952 time properly taken into account.
4953
4954- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4955 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4956 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4957 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4958
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004959Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004960-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004961
4962Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004963-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004964
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004965- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4966 is built with libdb3 if available.
4967
4968- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4969
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004970C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004971-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004972
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004973- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4974 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4975 PySequence_Size().
4976
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004977- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4978
4979- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4980 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4981 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4982
4983- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4984 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4985
4986- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4987 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4988
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004989New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004990-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004991
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004992- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4993 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4994
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004995- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4996 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4997
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004998- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4999
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005000Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005001-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005002
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005003- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5004 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5005
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005006Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005007-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005008
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005009Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005010----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005011
5012- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5013 removed completely in the next release.
5014
5015- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5016 OSX.
5017
5018- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5019 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5020
5021- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5022
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005023
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005024What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005025===========================
5026
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005027*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5028
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005029Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005030--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005031
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005032- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005033 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005034 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005035 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5036 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005037 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5038 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005039 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5040 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005041
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005042- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5043 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5044
5045- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5046 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5047
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005048Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005049-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005050
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005051- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5052 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5053 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5054 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5055 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5056 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5057 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5058 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5059
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005060- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5061 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5062 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5063 example).
5064
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005065- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005066 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005067 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005068 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005069
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005070- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5071 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5072 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005073 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005074
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005075- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5076 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5077 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5078 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5079 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5080 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5081
5082 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5083
5084 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5085
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005086Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005087-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005088
5089- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5090
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005091- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5092
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005093- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5094 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005095
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005096- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5097 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5098 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5099 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5100 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5101 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005102 attributes.
5103
5104- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5105 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5106 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005107
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005108- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5109 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5110 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005111
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005112- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5113 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5114 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005115 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5116 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5117
5118- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5119 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005120
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005121Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005122-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005123
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005124- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5125 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5126
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005127- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5128 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5129 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5130 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5131
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005132- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5133 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5134 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5135 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5136
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005137 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5138 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5139 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5140 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5141 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5142 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5143 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5144 without losing information).
5145
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005146- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005147 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5148 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5149 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5150 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5151 module).
5152
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005153 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005154 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5155 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5156 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5157 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005158
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005159- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005160 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5161 encoding.
5162
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005163- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5164 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5165
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005166- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005167 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5168
5169- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5170 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5171 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5172 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5173
5174- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5175
5176- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5177 ON, and OFF.
5178
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005179- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5180 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5181
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005182Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005183-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005184
5185- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5186 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5187 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005188
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005189- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5190 been added: -X and -E.
5191
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005192Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005193-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005194
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005195- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5196 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5197
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005198C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005199-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005200
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005201- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5202 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5203 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5204 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5205 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5206
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005207- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5208 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5209 as long) arguments.
5210
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005211- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5212 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5213 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5214 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5215 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5216 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5217
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005218- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5219 input.
5220
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005221New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005222-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005223
5224Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005225-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005226
5227Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005228-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005229
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005230- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5231 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5232 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5233
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005234- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5235 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5236 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005237 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005238
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005239 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5240 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5241 import signal
5242 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005243
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005244 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005245 while 1:
5246 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005247 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005248 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5249 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5250 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5251 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005252
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005253
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005254What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5255===========================
5256
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005257*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5258
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005259Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005260--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005261
5262- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5263 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5264 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5265
5266- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5267 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5268 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5269 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5270 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5271 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5272 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005273
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005274- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005275 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005276 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5277 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5278 associate a docstring with a property.
5279
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005280- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5281 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5282 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5283 other built-in object types.
5284
5285- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5286 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5287 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5288 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5289 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5290
5291- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5292 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5293
5294- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5295 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005296 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005297 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5298 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5299 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5300 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5301 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5302
5303- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5304 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5305 class.
5306
5307- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5308 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5309 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5310 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5311
5312- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5313 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5314 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5315 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5316
5317- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5318 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5319
5320- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5321 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5322 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5323 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5324 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005325 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005326 with the same value as s.
5327
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005328- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5329
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005330Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005331----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005332
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005333- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5334
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005335- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5336 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5337 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5338 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5339 objects.
5340
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005341- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5342 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005343 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5344 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5345
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005346- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5347 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5348 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5349
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005350Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005351-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005352
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005353- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5354 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5355 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5356 by the instances.
5357
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005358- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5359 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5360 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5361
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005362- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5363 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5364 before the entire comparison is complete.
5365
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005366- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5367 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5368 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5369
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005370- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5371 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5372 getwriter().
5373
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005374- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5375 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5376
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005377- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005378 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5379 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5380
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005381- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5382 iterable object.
5383
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005384- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5385 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005386
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005387- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5388 authentication.
5389
5390- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5391 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005392
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005393- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005394 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5395 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5396 a sample driver.)
5397
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005398Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005399-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005400
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005401- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5402 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5403 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5404 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5405 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5406 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5407 kernel has large file support.
5408
5409- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5410 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5411 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5412 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5413 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5414
5415- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5416 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5417 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5418
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005419C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005420-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005421
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005422- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5423 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5424
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005425New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005426-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005427
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005428- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5429 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5430
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005431Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005432-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005433
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005434- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5435 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5436 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5437 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5438 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5439
5440- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5441 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5442 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5443 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5444
5445- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5446 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5447
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005448Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005449-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005450
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005451- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005452 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5453 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005454
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005455
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005456What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5457===========================
5458
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005459*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5460
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005461Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005462----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005463
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005464- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5465 big to represent as a C double.
5466
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005467- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5468 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5469 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5470 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5471 restriction).
5472
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005473- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5474 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5475 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5476 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5477 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5478
5479 >>> dir([])
5480 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5481 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5482 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5483 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5484 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5485 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5486 'reverse', 'sort']
5487
5488 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5489
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005490- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005491 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5492 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5493 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5494 OverflowError exception.
5495
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005496- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005497 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005498 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5499 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5500 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5501 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5502 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005503 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005504 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5505 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5506
5507 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5508 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5509 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5510 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005511
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005512- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005513 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5514 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5515 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5516 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5517 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5518 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5519 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5520 once it is created.
5521
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005522- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5523 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5524 (key, value) pairs.
5525
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005526- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005527 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5528 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5529
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005530- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5531 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5532 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5533 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5534 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005535
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005536- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005537 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5538 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5539
5540 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5541
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005542- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005543 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5544
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005545Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005546-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005547
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005548- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005549 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5550 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005551
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005552- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5553 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5554 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5555 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5556 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5557 in this area anymore).
5558
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005559- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5560 threading.Timer.
5561
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005562- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5563 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5564
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005565- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005566 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5567
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005568- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005569 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5570 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5571 converted to Python longs.
5572
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005573- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005574 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5575
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005576- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5577 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5578 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5579
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005580Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005581-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005582
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005583- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5584 division operators as per PEP 238.
5585
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005586Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005587-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005588
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005589- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5590 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5591 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5592 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5593
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005594C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005595-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005596
5597- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005598
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005599- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5600 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005601 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005602
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005603 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5604 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005605 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005606 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005607
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005608- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005609 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5610 module:
5611
5612 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005613
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005614 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5615 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005616
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005617 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5618 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005619
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005620 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5621
5622 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5623
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005624- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005625 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5626 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5627 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005628
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005629New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005630-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005631
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005632- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5633 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5634 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5635 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5636 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005637
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005638Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005639-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005640
5641Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005642-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005643
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005644- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5645 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5646 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5647 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005648 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5649 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5650 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5651 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5652 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005653
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005654- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005655 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5656
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005657
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005658What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5659===========================
5660
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005661*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5662
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005663Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005664-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005665
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005666- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5667 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5668
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005669- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5670 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5671 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005672
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005673- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5674 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5675 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5676 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005677
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005678- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5679
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005680- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005681
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005682Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005683-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005684
5685- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005686 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005687 the module docstring for details.
5688
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005689Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005690-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005691
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005692- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005693 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5694 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5695 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005696
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005697- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5698 Nick Mathewson.
5699
5700Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005701----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005702
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005703- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5704 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5705 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5706 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5707 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5708 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5709 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5710 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5711
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005712- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5713 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5714 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5715 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5716
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005717- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5718 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5719 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5720 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5721 come a long way).
5722
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005723- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5724 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5725 write filters for these warnings).
5726
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005727- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5728 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5729 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5730 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5731 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5732
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005733- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5734 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5735 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5736 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5737 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5738 older distribution.
5739
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005740Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005741-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005742
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005743- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5744 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005745 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005746
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005747- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5748 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5749 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5750
5751- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5752
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005753- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5754
5755- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5756
5757- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5758
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005759- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005760
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005761- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5762
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005763New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005764-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005765
5766C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005767-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005768
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005769- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5770 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5771 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5772 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5773 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5774 against buffer overruns.
5775
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005776- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005777 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5778 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005779 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5780 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5781 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5782
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005783- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5784 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5785 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5786 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5787 deprecated.
5788
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005789Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005790-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005791
5792- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5793 relevant is found.
5794
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005795
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005796What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005797===========================
5798
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005799*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5800
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005801Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005802----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005803
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005804- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5805 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5806 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5807 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5808 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5809 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5810 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5811 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005812 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005813 repaired.
5814
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005815- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005816 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005817 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5818 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5819 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5820 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5821 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5822 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5823 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5824 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5825
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005826- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5827 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5828 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5829 leading BMO character).
5830
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005831- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5832 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5833 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5834
5835 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5836 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5837 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005838
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005839 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5840 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5841 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5842 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5843 for various simple to use conversions.
5844
5845 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5846 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5847
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005848 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5849 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5850 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5851 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5852 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5853 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5854 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5855 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5856 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5857 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5858 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5859 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5860 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5861 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5862 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005863
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005864- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5865 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5866 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005867 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005868 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005869
5870 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005871 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5872 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5873 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5874 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5875 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005876 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5877 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005878
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005879 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5880 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5881 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005882 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005883
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005884- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5885 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5886 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5887 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5888 floating arithmetic,
5889
5890 x = 9007199254740992.0
5891 print long(x)
5892
5893 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5894 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5895 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5896 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5897 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5898 functions are of good quality).
5899
5900 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5901 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5902 algorithms to break.
5903
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005904- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5905 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5906 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5907 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5908 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5909 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5910 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5911 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5912 order.
5913
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005914- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5915 operation along the most common code paths.
5916
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005917- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5918 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5919
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005920- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5921 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5922 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5923 {}.update(UserDict())
5924
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005925- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5926 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5927 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5928 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5929 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5930 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5931 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5932 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5933
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005934- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005935 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005936
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005937 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005938 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5939 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005940 join() method of strings
5941 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005942 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5943 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005944 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005945 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005946
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005947- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5948 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5949
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005950- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5951 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5952
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005953- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5954 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5955 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5956 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5957
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005958- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5959 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005960 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005961 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5962 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005963
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005964- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5965
5966
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005967Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005968-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005969
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005970- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005971 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005972 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5973 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5974
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005975- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5976 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5977
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005978- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5979 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5980 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5981 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5982
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005983- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5984 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5985 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5986
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005987- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5988
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005989- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5990
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005991- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5992 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5993 that are still imported into string.py).
5994
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005995- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5996
5997- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5998 Now it does.
5999
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006000- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6001
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006002- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6003 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6004 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6005 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6006 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006007 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6008 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006009
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006010- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6011 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6012 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6013 'help(object)'.
6014
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006015Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006016-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006017
6018- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006019 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006020 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6021 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6022
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006023- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006024 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6025 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006026
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006027C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006028-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006029
6030- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6031 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006032
6033----
6034
6035**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**