blob: 484b50a3ad2972b0279791e8d7ef5a46ee553263 [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
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000015- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
16 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
17 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
18
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000019- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
20 configure would break checking curses.h.
21
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000022- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
23 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
24
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000025- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
26
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000027- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
28
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000029- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
30
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000031- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
32 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
33
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000034- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
35 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
36 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
37
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000038- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
39 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000040 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000041
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000042- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
43 now encodes backslash correctly.
44
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000045- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
46
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000047- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
48 and long longs.
49
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000050- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
51 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
52 message in this case.
53
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000054- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
55 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
56 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
57 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
58 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
59
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000060- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000061
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000062- Speed up some Unicode operations.
63
64- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
65
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000066- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000067 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
68
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000069- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
70
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000071- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
72 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
73
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000074- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
75
76- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
77
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000078- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
79 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
80 was empty.
81
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000082- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
83 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
84
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000085- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000086 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000088- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
89 codes.
90
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000091- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
92 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
93 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
94
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000095- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
96 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
97
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000098- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000099 (fixes bug #1119418).
100
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000101- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
102
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000103- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
104 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
105
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000106- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
107 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
108 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
109
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000110- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
111
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000112- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
113 reference counts in some error exit cases.
114
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000115- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
116 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
117 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
118 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
119 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
120 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
121 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
122 realloc.
123
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000124- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
125 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
126
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000127- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
128 like their int counterparts.
129
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000130- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
131 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
132 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
133 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
134 for a longer write-up of the problem).
135
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000136- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
137 serializing floats.
138
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000139- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
140 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
141 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
142
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000143- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
144 278.
145
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000146- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
147 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
148 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
149 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000150 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000151 PyNumber_*().
152 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
153
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000154- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
155 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
156 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
157 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
158
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000159- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
160 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
161 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
162 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
163 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
164
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000165- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
166 disabled caused a crash.
167
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000168- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
169 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
170
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000171- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000172 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
173
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000174- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
175
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000176- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000177 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
178 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
179 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000180
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000181- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
182
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000183- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
184 returning None.
185
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000186- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000187 ('\') with a specific error message.
188
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000189- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
190
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000191- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
192 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
193
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000194- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000195 an ferror() call.
196
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000197- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
198 list.sort().
199
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000200- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
201 (2+3) --> (5).
202
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000203- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
204
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000205- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
206 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000207
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000208- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
209 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
210 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
211
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000212- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
213 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
214 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
215
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000216Extension Modules
217-----------------
218
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000219- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
220
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000221- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
222 before the env.
223
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000224- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
225
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000226- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
227
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000228- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
229 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
230 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
231
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000232- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
233 without prior setting of the userptr.
234
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000235- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
236
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000237- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
238
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000239- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
240 problem on AIX.
241
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000242- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
243
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000244- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
245
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000246- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
247
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000248- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
249 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
250
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000251- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
252 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
253
254- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
255
256- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000257
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000258- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
259 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
260
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000261- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
262
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000263- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
264 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
265
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000266- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
267 returns in cStringIO.c.
268
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000269- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
270 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
271
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000272- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
273
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000274- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
275
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000276- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
277 the file system encoding.
278
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000279- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
280 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000281
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000282- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
283
284- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000285 line without newlines.
286
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000287- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
288 on Windows.
289
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000290- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000291 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
292
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000293- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
294 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
295 for large or negative values.
296
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000297- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000298 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000299
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000300- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
301
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000302- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
303 if available on the platform.
304
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000305- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
306 available on the platform.
307
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000308- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
309 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
310
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000311- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
312
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000313- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
314 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
315 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
316
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000317- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
318
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000319- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
320 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
321
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000322- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000323 file size.
324
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000325- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
326
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000327- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
328 {remove_history,replace_history}
329
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000330- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
331 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000332
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000333- stat_float_times is now True.
334
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000335- array.array objects are now picklable.
336
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000337- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
338 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
339
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000340- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
341 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
342 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
343
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000344- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
345 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000346
347Library
348-------
349
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000350- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000351 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
352 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
353
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000354- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
355
356- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000357
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000358- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
359
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000360- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000361 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000362
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000363- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
364 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000365
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000366- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
367
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000368- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
369
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000370- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
371 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
372 LoadError subclasses IOError.
373
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000374- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000375 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
376 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
377 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
378 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
379
380 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
381 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
382 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
383 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
384 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000385
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000386- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
387 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
388 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
389
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000390- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
391
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000392- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
393
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000394- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
395 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
396 illegal argument)
397
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000398- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
399 is an error in the format string.
400
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000401- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
402
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000403- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000404 "parent" argument.
405
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000406- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
407 for padding.
408
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000409- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
410 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
411
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000412- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
413 to get the correct encoding.
414
415- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
416 languages.
417
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000418- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
419
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000420- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
421
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000422- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
423
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000424- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
425 functionality.
426
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000427- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
428
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000429- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
430 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
431
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000432- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
433 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
434 match the Content-Length header.
435
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000436- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
437
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000438- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
439 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000440 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000441
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000442- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
443
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000444- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
445
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000446- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
447 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
448
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000449- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
450 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
451 Tkdnd.
452
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000453- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
454 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
455
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000456- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
457 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
458
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000459- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000460 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
461
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000462- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
463 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
464
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000465- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
466 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
467
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000468- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000469 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000470
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000471- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
472
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000473- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
474 error messages.
475
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000476- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
477
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000478- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
479 Bug #1224621.
480
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000481- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
482 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
483 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
484 terminates by raising StopIteration.
485
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000486- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
487
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000488- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
489 component of the path.
490
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000491- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
492 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
493 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
494 class at all.
495
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000496- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
497 files to PyPI.
498
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000499- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
500 them to PyPI.
501
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000502- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
503 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
504 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
505 work as expected.
506
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000507- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
508 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
509
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000510- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000511 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
512
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000513- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
514
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000515- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
516 to build.
517
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000518- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
519 symbolic links on Windows.
520
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000521- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000522 profile.py if available.
523
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000524- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
525
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000526- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
527 in LWPCookieJar.
528
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000529- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
530
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000531- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
532
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000533- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
534
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000535- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
536
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000537- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
538
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000539- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
540
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000541- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
542
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000543- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
544
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000545- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
546 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
547 be exploited in various ways.
548
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000549- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000550 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
551
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000552- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
553 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
554
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000555- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000556 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
557
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000558- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
559
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000560- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
561
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000562- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
563
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000564- Enhancements to the csv module:
565
566 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000567 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000568 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000569 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
570 reporting.
571 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
572 dictates.
573 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000574 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000575 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000576 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
577 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000578 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
579 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000580 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000581 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
582 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
583 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
584 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
585 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
586 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
587 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
588 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
589 without first creating a dialect class.
590 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
591 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
592 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000593 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000594 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
595 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000596 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
597 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
598 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
599 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000600 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
601 This has been fixed.
602
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000603- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
604 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
605 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
606 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
607
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000608- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
609
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000610- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
611 (Bug #951915).
612
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000613- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
614 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
615 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000616 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000617
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000618- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
619
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000620- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
621 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
622
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000623- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
624
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000625- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
626
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000627- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
628
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000629- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
630
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000631- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
632
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000633- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
634 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
635 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
636
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000637- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000638 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000639
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000640- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
641 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
642 tokenizer with very long source lines.
643
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000644- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
645 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
646 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000647
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000648- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
649 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000650
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000651- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
652 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
653
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000654- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
655 correctly.
656
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000657- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
658 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
659 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
660 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
661 between two lines.
662
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000663- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
664 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
665 handlers.
666
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000667- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000668 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
669 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000670
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000671- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
672 considering it exactly like a '*'.
673
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000674- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
675 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000676
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000677- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
678
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000679- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
680 touch the recursion limit.
681
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000682Build
683-----
684
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000685- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
686
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000687- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
688 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
689
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000690- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
691
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000692- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
693 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
694
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000695- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
696 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
697
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000698- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
699 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
700 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000701 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000702
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000703- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
704 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
705 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
706
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000707- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
708
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000709- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
710 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
711
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000712- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
713 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
714 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
715 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
716 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
717 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
718 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
719 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
720
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000721- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
722 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
723 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
724 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
725
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000726C API
727-----
728
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000729- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
730
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000731- Removed PyRange_New().
732
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000733- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
734 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
735 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
736 mappings.
737
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000738
739Tests
740-----
741
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000742- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000743
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000744- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
745 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
746
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000747
748Documentation
749-------------
750
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000751- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
752
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000753- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
754 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
755
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000756- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
757
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000758- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
759
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000760- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
761
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000762- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
763
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000764- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
765
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000766- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
767
768- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
769
770- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
771
772- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
773
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000774- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
775 Closes bug #1166582.
776
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000777- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
778 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
779 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
780
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000781Mac
782---
783
784
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000785New platforms
786-------------
787
788- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
789
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000790
791Tools/Demos
792-----------
793
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000794- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
795 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
796 source files that need an encoding declaration.
797 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
798
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000799- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
800
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000801- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000802
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000803- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
804 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000805
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000806What's New in Python 2.4 final?
807===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000808
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000809*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000810
811Core and builtins
812-----------------
813
814- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
815 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
816 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
817
818
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000819What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
820==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000821
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000822*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000823
824Core and builtins
825-----------------
826
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000827- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
828 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
829 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
830
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000831
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000832Library
833-------
834
835- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
836 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
837 raised is re-raised.
838
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000839- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
840 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
841
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000842- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
843 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
844 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
845 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
846 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
847 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
848 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
849 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
850 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
851 by the slice are recomputed now.
852
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000853- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000854
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000855Build
856-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000857
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000858- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
859 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
860 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000861
862C API
863-----
864
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000865- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
866
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000867
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000868What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
869================================
870
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000871*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000872
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000873License
874-------
875
876The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
877is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
878changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
879Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
880intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
881durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
882the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
883License::
884
885 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
886
887says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
888to Python 2.1.1.
889
890The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
891License Version 2.
892
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000893Core and builtins
894-----------------
895
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000896- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
897 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
898 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
899 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
900 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
901 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
902 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000903 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000904 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
905 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
906
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000907- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000908
909Extension Modules
910-----------------
911
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000912- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
913 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
914 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
915 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000916
917Library
918-------
919
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000920- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
921 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
922 returned.
923
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000924- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
925
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000926- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
927 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
928
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000929- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
930
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000931- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
932 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000933
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000934- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
935
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000936- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
937
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000938- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000939 the source code is updated and reloaded.
940
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000941Build
942-----
943
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000944- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000945
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000946What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
947================================
948
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000949*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000950
951Core and builtins
952-----------------
953
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000954- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000955 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
956
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000957- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
958 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
959 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
960 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
961
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000962- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
963 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
964
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000965- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
966 constant.
967
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000968- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
969 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
970 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
971 large), and to anomalies such as
972 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
973 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
974 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
975 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000976
977Extension modules
978-----------------
979
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000980- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
981 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000982 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
983 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
984 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000985
986Library
987-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000988
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000989- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000990 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000991 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
992 --swig-cpp.
993
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000994- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
995 it is set.
996
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000997- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000998
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000999- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1000 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1001 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1002 Closes bug #1039270.
1003
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001004- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001005
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001006 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001007 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1008 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1009 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1010 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1011 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1012 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1013 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1014 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1015 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1016 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1017 + Updates to documentation.
1018
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001019- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1020 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1021 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1022 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1023
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001024- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001025
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001026- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1027 applications should use the getmember function.
1028
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001029- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1030
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001031- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1032 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1033 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1034 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1035 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1036 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1037 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1038 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1039 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1040
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001041- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1042 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001043 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001044
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001045- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1046 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1047 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1048 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1049 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1050 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1051 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1052 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001053
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001054- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1055 the new public features (of which there are many).
1056
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001057- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001058 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1059 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1060 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1061 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001062 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001063
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001064- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1065
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001066- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1067 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1068 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1069 options.
1070
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001071- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1072 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1073 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1074 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1075 conditions under which non-string values work.
1076
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001077Build
1078-----
1079
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001080- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1081 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1082 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1083
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001084- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1085 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1086 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1087 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1088 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001089
1090C API
1091-----
1092
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001093- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1094 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1095
1096- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1097
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001098- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1099 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1100 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1101 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1102 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1103 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1104 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1105 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1106 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1107
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001108- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1109
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001110- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1111 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1112 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001113
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001114Tests
1115-----
1116
1117- test__locale ported to unittest
1118
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001119Mac
1120---
1121
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001122- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1123 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1124 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001125
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001126Tools/Demos
1127-----------
1128
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001129- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1130 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1131 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1132 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1133 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001134
1135
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001136What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1137=================================
1138
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001139*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001140
1141Core and builtins
1142-----------------
1143
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001144- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001145 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1146
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001147- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1148 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1149 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1150 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1151 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1152 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1153 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1154 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001155 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1156 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1157 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1158 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1159 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001160
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001161- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1162 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1163 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1164 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1165 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1166
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001167- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1168
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001169- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1170 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1171
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001172- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1173 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1174 modified the list.
1175
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001176- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1177 functions is now writable.
1178
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001179- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1180 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1181 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1182 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1183
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001184- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1185 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1186 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1187 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1188 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001189
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001190- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1191 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1192
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001193Extension modules
1194-----------------
1195
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001196- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1197
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001198- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1199 data.
1200
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001201- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1202 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1203 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1204 supposed to have been truncated away.
1205
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001206- Added socket.socketpair().
1207
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001208- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1209 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1210
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001211- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001212 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1213
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001214Library
1215-------
1216
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001217- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001218 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001219
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001220- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1221 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1222
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001223- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1224 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1225
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001226- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1227
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001228- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1229 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001230
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001231- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1232 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1233
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001234- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1235
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001236- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1237
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001238- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1239
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001240- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1241 Percivall.
1242
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001243- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1244 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1245
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001246- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1247 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1248 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001249 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001250
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001251- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1252 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1253 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1254 and exponent.
1255
1256- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1257
1258- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001259 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001260 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1261
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001262- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1263 to the readline module.
1264
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001265- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001266 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1267 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001268
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001269- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1270 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1271 contains symlinks.
1272
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001273- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1274 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1275
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001276- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1277 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1278 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1279
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001280- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1281 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1282 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1283 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1284 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1285 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1286 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1287 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1288 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1289 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1290 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1291 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1292 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1293
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001294- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1295
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001296Tools/Demos
1297-----------
1298
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001299- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1300 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1301
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001302- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1303
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001304Build
1305-----
1306
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001307- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1308 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1309 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1310 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1311 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1312 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1313 plans to do so.
1314
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001315- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1316 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1317
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001318- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1319 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1320
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001321- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1322 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1323
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001324- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1325 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1326
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001327- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1328 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1329
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001330C API
1331-----
1332
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001333..
1334
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001335Documentation
1336-------------
1337
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001338- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1339 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1340
1341- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1342 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1343 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001344
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001345New platforms
1346-------------
1347
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001348- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1349
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001350Tests
1351-----
1352
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001353..
1354
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001355Windows
1356-------
1357
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001358- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1359 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1360 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1361 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1362 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1363 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1364 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1365 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1366 the problem.
1367
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001368Mac
1369---
1370
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001371..
1372
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001373
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001374What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1375=================================
1376
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001377*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001378
1379Core and builtins
1380-----------------
1381
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001382- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1383 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1384 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1385 sensitive code.
1386
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001387- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001388 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001389
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001390 @staticmethod
1391 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001392
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001393 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001394
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001395- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1396 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1397 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1398 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1399 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1400 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1401 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1402 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1403 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1404 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1405 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1406
1407 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1408 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1409 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1410 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1411 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1412 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1413 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1414
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001415- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1416 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1417
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001418- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001419 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001420
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001421- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001422 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001423 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1424
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001425- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001426 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1427 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1428
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001429- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1430 types that support garbage collection.
1431
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001432- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1433
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001434- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1435 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1436 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1437 Jython.
1438
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001439- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1440
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001441- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1442 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1443
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001444- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1445 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1446 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001447
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001448- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1449 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1450 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1451
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001452Extension modules
1453-----------------
1454
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001455- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1456
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001457Library
1458-------
1459
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001460- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1461 TIS-620
1462
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001463- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1464 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1465 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1466 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1467 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1468 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1469 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1470 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1471 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1472 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1473
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001474- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1475
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001476- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1477 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1478 same as when the argument is omitted).
1479 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1480
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001481- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1482
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001483- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1484 schemes are offered.
1485
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001486- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1487
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001488- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1489 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1490 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1491
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001492- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1493
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001494- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1495 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1496
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001497- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1498 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1499 when dummy_threading is being used.
1500
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001501- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1502 from a tarfile.
1503
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001504- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001505 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001506
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001507- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1508 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1509 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1510 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1511
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001512- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1513 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1514
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001515- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1516 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1517 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1518 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1519 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1520 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1521 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1522 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1523 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1524 by some other method in progress).
1525
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001526- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1527 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1528 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001529
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001530- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1531
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001532- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1533 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1534 AM Kuchling.
1535
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001536- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1537 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1538 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1539
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001540- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1541 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1542 instead of unsigned.
1543
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001544- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001545 no longer part of the public API.
1546
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001547- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1548 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1549 string methods of the same name).
1550
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001551- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001552 SF patch 945642.
1553
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001554- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1555
1556 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1557
1558 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1559 DocTestSuites.
1560
1561- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1562 that provide thread-local data.
1563
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001564- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1565 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1566
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001567- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1568
1569- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1570 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1571 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1572
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001573- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1574
1575 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1576 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1577 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001578
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001579 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1580 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1581 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1582 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1583
1584 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1585 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1586
1587 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1588 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1589 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1590 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1591
1592 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1593 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1594 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1595 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1596 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1597
1598 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1599 wrapping help output.
1600
1601 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1602 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1603 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001604
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001605C API
1606-----
1607
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001608- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1609 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1610 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1611 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1612 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1613 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1614 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1615 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1616 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1617 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1618 its visible semantics have not changed.
1619
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001620- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1621 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1622
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001623Documentation
1624-------------
1625
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001626- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001627
1628 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001629 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001630
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001631 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001632
1633 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1634
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001635- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001636
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001637Tests
1638-----
1639
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001640- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001641 platforms that use the Makefile.
1642
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001643- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1644 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1645 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1646
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001647
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001648What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1649=================================
1650
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001651*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001652
1653Core and builtins
1654-----------------
1655
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001656- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1657 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1658 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1659 objects now (one object instead of three).
1660
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001661- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1662 Windows DLLs.
1663
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001664- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1665 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001666
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001667- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1668 a new .pyc magic.
1669
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001670- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1671 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1672 be there.
1673
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001674- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1675 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1676 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1677
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001678- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1679 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1680 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1681
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001682- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1683
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001684- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1685 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1686 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001687
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001688- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1689 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1690
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001691- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1692
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001693- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001694 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001695
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001696- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1697
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001698- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1699
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001700- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1701 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1702
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001703- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1704 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1705 Fixes bug #858016 .
1706
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001707- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1708 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1709 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1710
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001711- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1712 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1713 improves their performance (about 35%).
1714
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001715- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1716 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1717 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1718
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001719- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1720 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1721 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1722 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1723
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001724- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1725 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001726 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001727 length is not known).
1728
1729- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1730 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001731 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1732 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001733 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1734
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001735- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1736 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1737
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001738- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1739 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1740 keyword arguments.
1741
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001742- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1743 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1744 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1745
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001746- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1747 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1748 cases.
1749
1750- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1751 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1752 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1753 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1754 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1755 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1756 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1757 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1758 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1759 a release build.
1760
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001761- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1762 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1763
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001764- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001765 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001766
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001767- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1768 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1769 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1770 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1771 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1772 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1773 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1774 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1775 destroyed.
1776
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001777- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1778 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1779 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1780 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1781 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1782 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1783 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1784 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1785
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001786- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1787 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1788 character other than a space.
1789
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001790- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1791 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1792 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1793 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1794 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1795 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1796 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1797 attributes with the same name.
1798
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001799- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1800 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1801 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1802 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1803 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1804 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1805 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1806 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1807 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1808 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1809 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1810 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1811 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1812 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001813
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001814- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1815 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1816 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1817 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1818 This has been repaired.
1819
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001820- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1821
1822- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1823
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001824- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1825 over a sequence.
1826
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001827- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001828 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001829
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001830- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1831
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001832- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1833 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1834 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1835 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1836 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1837 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1838 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1839 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1840
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001841- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1842 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1843 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1844
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001845- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1846 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1847 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1848 freelist.
1849
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001850- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1851 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1852
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001853- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1854 number.
1855
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001856- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1857 a TypeError exception.
1858
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001859- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1860 820195.
1861
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001862- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1863 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1864 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1865
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001866- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001867 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1868 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001869
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001870- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1871 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1872 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1873
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001874- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1875 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001876 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001877
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001878- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001879 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1880 the first call.
1881
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001882
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001883Extension modules
1884-----------------
1885
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001886- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1887 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1888
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001889- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1890 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1891 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1892 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1893 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1894 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1895 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001896
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001897- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1898
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001899- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1900
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001901- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1902 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1903
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001904- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1905 fewer false positives.
1906
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001907- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1908 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1909
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001910- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001911 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1912
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001913- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001914 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001915 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001916 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1917 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001918
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001919- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1920 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1921 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1922 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1923
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001924- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1925 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1926 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1927 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1928 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1929 #897625.
1930
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001931- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1932 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1933
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001934- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1935 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1936 and pops on either side of the deque.
1937
1938- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1939 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1940
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001941- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1942 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1943 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1944 other functions that expect a function argument.
1945
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001946- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1947
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001948- os.getsid was added.
1949
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001950- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1951 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1952 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1953
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001954- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1955
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001956- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1957
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001958- readline.clear_history was added.
1959
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001960- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1961
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001962- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1963
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001964- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1965
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001966- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1967
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001968- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1969
1970- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1971
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001972- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1973
1974- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1975
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001976- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1977 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1978 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1979
1980- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1981 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1982 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1983 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1984 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1985 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1986 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1987
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001988- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1989 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1990 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1991 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001992
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001993- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001994 iterators from a single iterable.
1995
1996- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1997 of raising a TypeError exception.
1998
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001999- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2000 as parameter.
2001
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002002Library
2003-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002004
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002005- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2006
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002007- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2008 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2009 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002010
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002011- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2012 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2013 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002014
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002015- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002016
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002017- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2018 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002019
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002020- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2021 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2022
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002023- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2024
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002025- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002026 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002027
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002028- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002029 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002030
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002031- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2032
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002033- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2034 on cygwin and mingw32.
2035
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002036- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2037
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002038- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2039 module.
2040
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002041- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2042 installation scheme for all platforms.
2043
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002044- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002045 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002046
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002047- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2048 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2049 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2050
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002051- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2052 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2053 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2054
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002055- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2056
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002057- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2058
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002059- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2060 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2061
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002062- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2063 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2064 type pattern with the same value exists.
2065
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002066- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2067 when run from the command prompt).
2068
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002069- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2070 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2071
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002072- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2073 default sort).
2074
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002075- Added global runctx function to profile module
2076
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002077- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2078
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002079- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2080
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002081- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2082
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002083- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002084 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2085 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2086 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2087 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2088 accordingly.
2089
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002090- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2091 decoding standards.
2092
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002093- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2094 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2095 called for all requests.
2096
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002097- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2098 they are passed to the compiler.
2099
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002100- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2101 indent, width and depth.
2102
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002103- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2104 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2105
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002106- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2107 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2108
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002109- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2110
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002111- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2112
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002113- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2114
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002115- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2116 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2117
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002118- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002119 for better performance.
2120
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002121- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002122
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002123- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2124 a string).
2125
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002126- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2127
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002128- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2129
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002130- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2131
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002132- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2133
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002134- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2135 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2136 list of fieldnames.
2137
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002138- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2139 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2140
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002141- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2142
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002143- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2144 empty lists.
2145
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002146- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2147 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2148 and shelves.
2149
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002150- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2151 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2152
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002153- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002154 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2155 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002156
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002157- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2158 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002159 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002160
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002161- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002162 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2163 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2164
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002165- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2166 and removed in Py2.4.
2167
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002168- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2169
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002170- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2171
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002172Tools/Demos
2173-----------
2174
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002175- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2176 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2177
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002178- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2179
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002180- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2181 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2182 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2183 destination in situations where both files are given.
2184
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002185- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2186 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2187 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2188 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2189
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002190- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2191
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002192- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2193 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2194 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2195 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2196 now.
2197
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002198- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2199 in effect
2200
2201- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2202 C-c C-h
2203
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002204- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2205 -d option was given.
2206
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002207Build
2208-----
2209
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002210- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2211 build under OS X.
2212
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002213- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2214 --enable-profiling.
2215
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002216- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2217 is configured --with-tsc.
2218
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002219- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2220 on AMD64.
2221
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002222- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2223 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2224
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002225- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2226 removed.
2227
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002228- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2229 supported (see PEP 11).
2230
2231- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2232
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002233- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2234
2235- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2236 (see PEP 11).
2237
2238- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2239 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2240
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002241C API
2242-----
2243
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002244- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2245 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2246 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2247
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002248- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2249 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2250 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2251 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2252
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002253- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2254 generator objects.
2255
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002256- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2257 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002258 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2259 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002260
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002261- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2262 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2263
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002264- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2265 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2266 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2267 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2268 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2269
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002270- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2271 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2272 about 10% faster.
2273
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002274- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2275 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2276
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002277- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2278 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2279 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2280 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2281
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002282Windows
2283-------
2284
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002285- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2286 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2287 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2288 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2289
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002290- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2291 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2292 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2293
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002294
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002295What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2296===============================
2297
2298*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2299
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002300IDLE
2301----
2302
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002303- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2304 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2305 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2306 context-menu actions.
2307
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002308- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2309 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2310 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2311 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2312 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2313 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2314 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2315 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2316 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2317
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002318
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002319What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2320=============================================
2321
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002322*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002323
2324Core and builtins
2325-----------------
2326
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002327- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002328 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002329 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2330
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002331Extension modules
2332-----------------
2333
2334- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2335 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2336 than once. This has been fixed.
2337
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002338- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2339 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2340 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2341 call.
2342
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002343- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2344
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002345Library
2346-------
2347
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002348- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2349 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2350
2351- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2352 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2353 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2354 restored.
2355
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002356IDLE
2357----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002358
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002359- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002360
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002361Build
2362-----
2363
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002364- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2365 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2366
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002367C API
2368-----
2369
2370Windows
2371-------
2372
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002373- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2374 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2375
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002376- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2377
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002378Mac
2379---
2380
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002381- Various fixes to pimp.
2382
2383- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2384
2385- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2386 more problems than it solves.
2387
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002388
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002389What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2390=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002391
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002392*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2393
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002394Core and builtins
2395-----------------
2396
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002397- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2398 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2399
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002400- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2401 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002402 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002403
2404- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2405 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2406 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002407 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002408
2409- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2410 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002411
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002412- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2413 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2414 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2415
2416- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002417 770247.
2418
2419- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002420
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002421Extension modules
2422-----------------
2423
2424- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2425 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2426
2427- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2428
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002429- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2430
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002431- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2432 contained within the _strptime module.
2433
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002434- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2435 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2436
2437- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002438 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2439
2440- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2441 the find_class attribute, if present.
2442
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002443- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002444
2445 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2446 (SF bug 763298).
2447
2448 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002449 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2450 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2451 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002452
2453 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2454
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002455Library
2456-------
2457
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002458- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2459
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002460- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2461 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2462 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2463 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2464 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2465 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2466 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2467 or Tester().
2468
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002469- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2470 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2471 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2472 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2473 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2474 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2475 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2476 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2477 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002478
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002479 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002480
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002481- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2482 weren't before was an oversight.
2483
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002484- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2485 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2486
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002487- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2488 when there are no lines.
2489
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002490- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2491 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2492
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002493- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2494 to child processes.
2495
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002496- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2497
2498- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2499
2500- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2501 xmlrpclib.
2502
2503- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2504 responses.
2505
2506- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2507 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2508
2509- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2510 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2511 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2512
2513- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2514 used as patterns.
2515
2516- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2517 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2518 than Tk 8.3.
2519
2520- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2521
2522- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002523
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002524Tools/Demos
2525-----------
2526
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002527- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2528
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002529- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2530
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002531- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002532
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002533Build
2534-----
2535
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002536- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2537
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002538- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2539
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002540- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2541 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002542
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002543- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2544 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2545 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002546
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002547C API
2548-----
2549
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002550- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2551 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2552
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002553Windows
2554-------
2555
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002556- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2557 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2558 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2559 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2560 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2561 Python exception ::
2562
2563 thread.error: can't start new thread
2564
2565 is raised now.
2566
2567- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2568 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2569 instead of from DLL teardown.
2570
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002571Mac
2572---
2573
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002574- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002575 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002576 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2577 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2578 the executable in the bundle.
2579
2580- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002581
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002582- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2583
2584- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2585 on Panther.
2586
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002587What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2588================================
2589
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002590*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002591
2592Core and builtins
2593-----------------
2594
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002595- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2596 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2597 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2598 with the -i option.
2599
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002600- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2601 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2602
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002603- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2604 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2605
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002606- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2607 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2608 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2609 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2610 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2611 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2612 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2613 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2614 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2615 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2616 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2617 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2618 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002619
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002620- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2621 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2622 embedded in a lambda expression.
2623
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002624- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2625 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2626 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2627 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2628 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2629
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002630- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2631 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2632 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2633
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002634- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2635 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2636
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002637- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2638 It's writable again.
2639
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002640- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2641 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2642 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002643 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002644
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002645- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2646 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2647 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2648
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002649Extension modules
2650-----------------
2651
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002652- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2653 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2654
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002655- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2656 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2657 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2658 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2659
2660- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2661 collection.
2662
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002663- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2664 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2665 unique within a single program run.
2666
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002667- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2668 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2669
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002670- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2671 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2672
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002673- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2674 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002675
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002676- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2677
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002678- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2679 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2680
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002681- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2682 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2683 for many BSD-derived systems.
2684
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002685
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002686Library
2687-------
2688
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002689- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2690 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2691 primary ones:
2692
2693 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2694 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2695 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2696
2697 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2698 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2699 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2700 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2701 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2702 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2703
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002704- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2705 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2706 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2707 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2708 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2709 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2710 argument.
2711
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002712- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2713 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2714 in the archive.
2715
2716- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2717 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2718
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002719- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2720 569574).
2721
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002722- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2723 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2724 no more.
2725
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002726- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2727 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2728 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2729 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2730 code coverage.
2731
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002732- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2733 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2734 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002735 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2736 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002737
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002738- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2739 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2740 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002741 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002742
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002743- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2744
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002745- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2746 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2747 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2748 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2749
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002750- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2751 handling.
2752
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002753- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2754 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2755
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002756- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2757 in socket.py.
2758
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002759- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2760
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002761- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2762 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2763 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2764 opener with proxy support.
2765
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002766- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2767
2768- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2769
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002770Tools/Demos
2771-----------
2772
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002773- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2774
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002775- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2776
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002777- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2778 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002779
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002780- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2781 files.
2782
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002783Build
2784-----
2785
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002786- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002787 different root directory.
2788
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002789C API
2790-----
2791
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002792- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2793 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2794 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2795 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2796 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2797 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2798 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2799 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2800 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2801 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2802
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002803- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2804 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2805 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2806 from Python.
2807
2808
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002809New platforms
2810-------------
2811
2812None this time.
2813
2814Tests
2815-----
2816
2817- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2818 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2819
2820Windows
2821-------
2822
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002823- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2824
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002825- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2826 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2827 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2828 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2829 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2830 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2831 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2832 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2833 that's what it's for.
2834
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002835Mac
2836---
2837
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002838- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2839 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2840 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2841 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002842- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2843 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2844- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002845
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002846SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2847------------------------------------
2848
2849430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2850598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2851622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2852661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2853683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2854697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2855713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2856724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2857727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2858729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2859730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2860731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2861732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2862733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2863735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2864740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2865744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2866745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2867747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2868749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2869751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2870753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2871755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2872757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2873760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2874
2875
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002876What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2877================================
2878
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002879*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002880
2881Core and builtins
2882-----------------
2883
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002884- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2885 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2886
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002887- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2888 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2889 and cannot be strings).
2890
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002891- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2892 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2893 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2894 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2895
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002896- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2897 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2898 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2899 Python itself.
2900
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002901- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2902 the referenced object, if it has one.
2903
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002904- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2905 the thread started at
2906 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2907
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002908- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2909 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2910 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2911 placed on a list index.
2912
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002913- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2914 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2915 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2916 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2917
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002918- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2919 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2920 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2921 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2922 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2923 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2924 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2925
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002926- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2927 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2928 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2929 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2930 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2931
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002932- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2933 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002934
2935- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2936 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2937 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2938 #693195.)
2939
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002940- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2941 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002942
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002943- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002944 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002945 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2946 interpreter executions, would fail.
2947
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002948- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002949 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002950 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002951
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002952Extension modules
2953-----------------
2954
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002955- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2956 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2957 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2958 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2959
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002960- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2961 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2962
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002963- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2964 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2965 and Greg Chapman.)
2966
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002967- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2968 recursively.
2969
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002970- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002971 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2972 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2973 leaks.
2974
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002975- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2976
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002977- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2978 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2979 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2980 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2981 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2982 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2983 #705836.
2984
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002985- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002986 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2987
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002988- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2989 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2990 See SF bug #692416.
2991
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002992- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2993 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2994
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002995- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2996 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2997 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002998
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002999- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003000 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3001 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3002
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003003- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3004 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3005 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3006 timeouts to work properly.
3007
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003008Library
3009-------
3010
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003011- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3012 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3013 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3014 future release.
3015
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003016- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3017 for querying platform dependent features.
3018
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003019- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003020
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003021- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3022 pickle protocol versions.
3023
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003024- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3025 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3026 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3027
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003028- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3029
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003030- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3031 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3032 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3033 modules.
3034
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003035- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3036 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3037 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3038
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003039- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3040 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3041
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003042- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3043 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3044 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3045
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003046- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003047 MS Office extensions.
3048
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003049- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3050 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3051
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003052- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3053 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3054
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003055- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3056 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3057 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3058 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3059 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3060 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3061
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003062- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3063 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3064 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003065
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003066- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3067 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3068 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3069
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003070- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3071
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003072- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3073 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3074 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3075
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003076Tools/Demos
3077-----------
3078
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003079- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3080 See the module docstring for details.
3081
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003082Build
3083-----
3084
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003085- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3086 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003087
3088C API
3089-----
3090
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003091- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3092
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003093- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3094 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3095 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3096
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003097- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3098 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003099
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003100 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3101 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3102 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003103
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003104- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003105 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3106
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003107- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3108 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3109 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003110
3111New platforms
3112-------------
3113
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003114None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003115
3116Tests
3117-----
3118
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003119- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3120 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003121
3122Windows
3123-------
3124
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003125- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3126 function.
3127
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003128- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3129 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003130
3131Mac
3132---
3133
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003134- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3135 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003136
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003137- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3138 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003139
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003140- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3141 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3142 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003143
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003144- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003145 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3146 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003147
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003148- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3149 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003150
3151
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003152What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3153=================================
3154
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003155*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003156
3157Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003158-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003159
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003160- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3161 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3162 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3163
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003164- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3165 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3166 (SF patch #664376.)
3167
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003168- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3169 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3170 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3171 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3172 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3173 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003174 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003175
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003176- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3177 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3178 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3179 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003180 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003181
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003182- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3183 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3184 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3185 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3186 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3187 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3188 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3189 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3190 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3191 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3192 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3193
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003194- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3195 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3196 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3197 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3198 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3199 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3200
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003201- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3202 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3203
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003204- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3205 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3206 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3207 case.)
3208
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003209- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3210 passed as unicode strings.
3211
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003212- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3213 See SF bug #683467.
3214
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003215- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3216 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3217
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003218- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3219
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003220- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3221
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003222- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3223 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3224 arguments.
3225
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003226- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3227 See SF bug #667147.
3228
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003229- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003230 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003231 See SF bug #676155.
3232
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003233- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003234 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003235 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3236 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3237 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3238 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3239 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3240 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003241
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003242Extension modules
3243-----------------
3244
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003245- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3246 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3247 tp_as_number pointer.
3248
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003249- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3250 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3251 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3252 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3253 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3254
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003255- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3256
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003257- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3258
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003259- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003260 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003261 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3262 patch #678531.)
3263
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003264- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3265 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3266
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003267- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3268 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3269
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003270- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3271
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003272- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3273 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3274 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3275
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003276- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3277
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003278- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3279 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3280
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003281- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003282
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003283- datetime changes:
3284
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003285 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3286
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003287 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3288 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3289 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3290 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3291 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3292 now.
3293
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003294 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003295 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3296 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003297
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003298 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003299 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003300 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3301 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3302 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3303 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003304
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003305 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3306 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3307 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003308 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3309
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003310 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3311 by a later example coded by Guido.
3312
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003313 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003314 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3315 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3316 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003317 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3318 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3319
3320 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3321 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3322 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3323 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3324 tzinfo subclass instance.
3325
3326 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3327 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3328 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3329 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3330 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3331 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3332 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3333 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003334
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003335 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3336 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3337 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3338 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3339 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003340 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3341
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003342 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003343
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003344 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3345 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3346 as a naive datetime object.
3347
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003348 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3349 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3350 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3351
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003352 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3353 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3354 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3355 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3356 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3357 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3358 comparison.
3359
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003360 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3361 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3362 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3363 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003364 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003365
3366 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003367
3368 and ::
3369
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003370 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3371
3372 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3373 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3374 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3375 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3376
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003377 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3378 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3379 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3380 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3381 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3382
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003383 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3384 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003385 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3386 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003387
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003388Library
3389-------
3390
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003391- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3392 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3393
3394- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3395 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3396 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3397 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3398 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3399 See PEP 307 for details.
3400
3401- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3402 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3403
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003404- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3405 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003406 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003407 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3408 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003409 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003410
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003411- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3412 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3413
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003414- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3415 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3416 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3417
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003418- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3419
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003420- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3421 exception.
3422
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003423- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3424 class.
3425
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003426- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3427 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3428 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3429
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003430- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3431 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3432
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003433- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003434 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3435 See SF bug #659228.
3436
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003437- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3438 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3439 See SF patch #651082.
3440
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003441- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003442
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003443- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3444 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3445
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003446- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003447 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003448
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003449- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3450 DOS paths from other platforms.
3451
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003452Tools/Demos
3453-----------
3454
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003455- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3456 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3457 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3458 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3459 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3460 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3461 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3462 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3463 example:
3464
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003465 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3466 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003467
3468 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3469
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003470
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003471Build
3472-----
3473
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003474- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3475 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3476 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003477 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3478
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003479 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3480
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003481- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3482 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3483 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3484 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3485 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3486 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3487 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3488 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3489 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3490
3491- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3492 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3493 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3494 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3495
3496- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3497 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3498
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003499C API
3500-----
3501
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003502- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3503 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003504
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003505- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3506 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3507 tp_as_number pointer.
3508
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003509- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3510 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3511 (SF #681367)
3512
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003513- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3514 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3515 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3516 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003517
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003518Tests
3519-----
3520
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003521- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003522 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3523 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3524 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3525 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3526 pydoc.)
3527
3528- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3529
3530- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003531
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003532Windows
3533-------
3534
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003535- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3536 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3537 time).
3538
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003539- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3540 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3541
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003542- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3543 release without strong cryptography.
3544
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003545- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003546 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003547
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003548- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3549 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3550
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003551Mac
3552---
3553
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003554- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3555 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003556
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003557- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3558 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3559 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003560
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003561- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3562 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003563
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003564- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3565 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3566 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3567 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003568
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003569- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003570 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3571 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3572 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003573
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003574
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003575What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003576=================================
3577
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003578*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003579
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003580Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003581--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003582
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003583- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3584
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003585- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3586 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003587 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003588 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003589 a different meaning than before.
3590
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003591- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003592 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003593 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003594
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003595- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003596 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003597 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003598
3599- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3600 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3601 and deallocation.
3602
3603- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3604 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3605
3606- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3607 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3608 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3609 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3610 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3611
3612- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3613 now detected by the garbage collector.
3614
3615- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3616 [SF bug 519621]
3617
3618- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3619 identifier.
3620
3621- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3622 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3623 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3624 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3625 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3626 [SF bug 563060]
3627
3628- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3629 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3630 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3631 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3632 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3633
3634- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3635 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3636 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3637
3638- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3639
3640- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3641 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3642 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3643 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3644 state of the slots would be lost.)
3645
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003646Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003647-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003648
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003649- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003650 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3651 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3652 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3653 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003654 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3655 Jython 2.1.
3656
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003657- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003658 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003659 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3660 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3661 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3662 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3663 these, see PEP 302.
3664
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003665- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3666 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3667 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3668
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003669- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3670 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3671 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3672
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003673- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3674 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3675 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3676
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003677- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3678 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3679 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3680 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3681 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3682 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3683 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3684 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3685 releases or implementations.
3686
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003687- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003688 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3689 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003690
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003691- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3692 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3693
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003694- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3695 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3696 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3697
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003698- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3699 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3700
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003701- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3702 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003703 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3704 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003705
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003706- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3707 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3708 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3709 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3710 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3711
3712 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3713 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3714 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3715 pattern.
3716
3717 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3718 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3719 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3720 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3721
3722 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3723 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3724 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3725 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3726 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3727 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3728
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003729- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3730 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3731 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3732 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3733 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3734 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3735 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3736 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003737
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003738- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3739 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3740 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3741 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3742 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003743 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3744 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3745 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3746 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3747 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3748 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3749 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003750
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003751- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3752 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3753
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003754- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3755 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3756 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3757 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3758 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3759 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3760 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3761 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3762 to Zack Weinberg!
3763
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003764- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3765 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3766 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3767 type. This has been fixed now.
3768
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003769- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3770 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3771 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3772
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003773- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3774 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3775 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3776 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3777 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3778 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3779 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3780 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003781 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003782
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003783- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3784 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3785 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003786
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003787- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3788 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3789 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3790 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3791 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3792 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3793 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3794 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003795 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003796 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3797 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3798
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003799- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3800 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3801 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3802 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3803 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3804 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3805 this.)
3806
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003807- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3808 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003809 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003810 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003811 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3812 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003813 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3814 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003815
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003816- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3817 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3818 currently running.
3819
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003820- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3821 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3822 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3823 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3824
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003825- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3826 as directory names.
3827
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003828- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3829 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3830
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003831- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3832 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3833
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003834- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003835 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3836 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003837
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003838- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3839 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3840 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3841 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3842 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3843
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003844- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3845 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3846 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3847 removed.
3848
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003849- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3850 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3851 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3852
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003853- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3854 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3855 to __debug__.
3856
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003857- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3858 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3859 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3860
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003861- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3862 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3863 deprecated now.
3864
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003865- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3866 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3867 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003868
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003869- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3870 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3871 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3872 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3873 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003874
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003875- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3876 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3877
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003878- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3879 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3880 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003881 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003882 is backward compatible.
3883
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003884- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3885 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3886 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3887 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3888 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3889
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003890- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3891 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3892 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3893 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3894 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3895 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003896
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003897- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3898 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3899
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003900- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3901 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3902
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003903- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3904 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3905 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3906 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3907 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3908
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003909- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3910 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3911 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3912
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003913- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003914 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3915
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003916- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3917 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3918 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003919
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003920- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3921 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3922
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003923- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3924 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3925 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3926
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003927- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3928
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003929Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003930-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003931
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003932- Added three operators to the operator module:
3933 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3934 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3935 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3936
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003937- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3938
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003939- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3940 archives.
3941
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003942- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3943 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3944 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3945
3946 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3947
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003948- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3949 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3950 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003951 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003952
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003953- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3954 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3955 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3956 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003957 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3958 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3959 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3960 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003961
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003962- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3963 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003964
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003965- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3966
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003967- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3968 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3969
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003970- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3971 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3972 supported.
3973
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003974- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3975
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003976- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3977 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003978
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003979- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3980 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3981
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003982- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3983
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003984- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3985 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3986
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003987- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3988 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3989 functions but callable type objects.
3990
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003991- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003992 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003993 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003994
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003995- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3996 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003997
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003998- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3999 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004000
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004001- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4002 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4003 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4004 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4005
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004006- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4007 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004008
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004009- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4010 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4011 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4012 and __imul__.
4013
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004014- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004015 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4016 is called.
4017
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004018- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4019 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4020 interpreter was compiled.
4021
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004022- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4023 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4024 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004025 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004026 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4027 1, not 2.
4028
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004029- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4030 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4031 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4032 limit.
4033
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004034- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4035 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4036 bug #623464.
4037
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004038- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4039 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4040 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4041 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4042
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004043Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004044-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004045
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004046- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4047
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004048- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4049 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4050 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4051 with Python 2.3a2.
4052
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004053- os.path exposes getctime.
4054
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004055- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004056 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004057 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004058 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004059 unit tests of floating point results.
4060
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004061- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4062 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4063 has been increased.
4064
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004065- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4066 executed.
4067
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004068- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4069 postinstallation script.
4070
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004071- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4072 test the current module.
4073
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004074- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004075 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4076 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4077 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4078 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4079
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004080- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004081 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004082 Ward's Optik package.
4083
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004084- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4085 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4086 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4087 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4088
4089- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4090 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004091 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004092
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004093- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4094 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4095 shelf are binary pickles.
4096
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004097- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4098 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4099
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004100- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4101 modules are iterators now.
4102
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004103- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4104 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4105 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4106 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4107 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4108 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004109
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004110- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4111 with their entity value.
4112
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004113- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4114
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004115- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4116 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004117
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004118- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4119 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004120 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004121
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004122- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4123 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4124 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4125 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4126 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4127 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4128 main():
4129
4130 import locale
4131 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4132
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004133- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4134 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4135
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004136- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4137 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4138 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4139 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4140 to the new standard.
4141
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004142- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4143 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4144 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4145 an extension to the database.
4146
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004147- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4148 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4149 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4150 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004151 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004152
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004153- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004154 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004155
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004156- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4157 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4158 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4159 bounded integers.
4160
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004161- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4162 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4163 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4164 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4165 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4166 in existence.
4167
4168 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4169 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4170 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4171 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4172 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4173 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4174
4175 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4176 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4177 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4178 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4179
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004180- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4181 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4182 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4183
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004184- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4185
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004186- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4187 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4188 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4189 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4190
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004191- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4192 argument.
4193
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004194- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4195 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4196 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4197 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4198 [SF patch 560794].
4199
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004200- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4201 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4202 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004203 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4204 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4205 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004206
4207- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4208 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004209
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004210- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4211 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4212 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4213 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004214
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004215- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4216 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4217 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4218 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4219 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4220
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004221- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004222
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004223- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4224
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004225- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4226 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4227 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4228 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4229 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4230 identical to None.
4231
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004232- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4233 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4234 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4235 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4236 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4237 results now.
4238
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004239- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4240 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4241
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004242- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4243 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4244 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4245 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4246 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4247 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4248 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4249 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4250
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004251- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4252
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004253- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4254 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4255
4256- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4257 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4258 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4259 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4260 and other systems.
4261
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004262- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4263 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4264 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4265 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 +00004266 work well with these.
4267
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004268- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4269
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004270- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004271 connections.
4272
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004273- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4274 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4275 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4276
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004277- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4278 sets
4279
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004280- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4281 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4282 name.
4283
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004284- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4285 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4286 passed in.
4287
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004288- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004289 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004290 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4291 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004292
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004293- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4294
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004295- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4296
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004297- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4298 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4299 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4300
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004301- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4302 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4303 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4304 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004305 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004306
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004307- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004308 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004309 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004310
4311- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4312 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4313 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4314
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004315- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004316 the value of its expression argument.
4317
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004318- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4319 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4320 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4321
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004322- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4323 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4324 skipstone browser was included.
4325
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004326- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4327 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4328
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004329Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004330-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004331
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004332- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4333 names in addition to accepting file names.
4334
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004335- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4336 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4337 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4338 still used and useful.)
4339
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004340- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4341 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4342 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4343 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004344
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004345- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4346 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4347 the generated binary.
4348
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004349Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004350-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004351
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004352- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4353
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004354- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4355 except in the hands of experts.
4356
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004357- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004358 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4359 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4360 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004361
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004362- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4363 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4364 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4365 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4366 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4367 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4368 builds.
4369
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004370- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4371 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4372 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4373 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4374 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4375 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4376 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4377 new type.
4378
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004379- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004380
4381 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4382 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4383 positive infinities.
4384
4385 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4386 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4387 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4388 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4389 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4390 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4391 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4392
4393 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4394
4395 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4396
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004397- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4398 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4399 size of the executable.
4400
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004401- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4402 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4403 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4404 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004405
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004406- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4407
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004408- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4409 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4410 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004411
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004412- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4413 well as Unix.
4414
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004415- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4416 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4417 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4418 modules in the README file for details.
4419
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004420C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004421-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004422
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004423- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4424 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004425 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004426 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004427 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004428
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004429- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4430 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4431 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4432 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4433 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4434 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004435 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004436 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4437 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4438 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4439 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4440 aligned.)
4441
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004442- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4443 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4444 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4445
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004446- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4447 level.
4448
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004449- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4450 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4451 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4452 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4453 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4454
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004455- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4456 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4457 code.
4458
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004459- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4460 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4461 adjusting for negative indices.
4462
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004463- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4464 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4465 object.
4466
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004467- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4468 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4469 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4470
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004471- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4472 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004473
4474- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4475
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004476- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4477 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4478 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4479 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4480
4481- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4482
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004483- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004484
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004485- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004486 without going through the buffer API.
4487
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004488- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004489
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004490- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4491 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4492 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4493 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4494
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004495- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4496 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4497
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004498- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004499 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4500
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004501New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004502-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004503
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004504- OpenVMS is now supported.
4505
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004506- AtheOS is now supported.
4507
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004508- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4509
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004510- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4511
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004512Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004513-----
4514
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004515- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4516 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4517 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004518
4519Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004520-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004521
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004522- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4523 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4524 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4525 bugs.
4526 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004527 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004528 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4529 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004530 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004531
4532- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004533 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004534
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004535- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4536 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4537
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004538- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4539 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004540 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004541 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4542
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004543- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4544 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4545 use files" uninstall option).
4546
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004547- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4548
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004549- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4550 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4551
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004552- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4553 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4554 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4555
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004556- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4557 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4558 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4559 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4560 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004561 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4562 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4563 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004564
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004565- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004566 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004567 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4568 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4569 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4570 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4571 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4572 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4573 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4574 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4575 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4576 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4577 work around.
4578
4579- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4580 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4581 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4582 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4583 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4584 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4585 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4586 specified with O_CREAT too).
4587
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004588Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004589----
4590
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004591- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004592
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004593- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4594 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4595 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4596
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004597- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4598 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4599 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4600
4601- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4602 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4603 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4604 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4605 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4606 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4607 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4608 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004609
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004610- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4611 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4612 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004613
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004614- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4615 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4616 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4617 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4618 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004619
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004620- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4621 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4622 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004623
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004624- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4625 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004626
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004627- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4628 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4629 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4630 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4631 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004632
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004633- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4634 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4635 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4636
4637- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4638 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4639 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004640
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004641- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4642 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4643 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4644 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004645 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004646
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004647- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4648 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004649
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004650- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4651 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004652
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004653- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004654 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004655 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4656 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004657
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004658
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004659What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004660===============================
4661
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004662*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4663
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004664Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004665--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004666
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004667- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4668 with a custom metaclass.
4669
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004670Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004671-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004672
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004673- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4674 are proxies.
4675
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004676Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004677-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004678
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004679- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4680 very short strings.
4681
4682- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4683 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4684 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4685 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4686 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4687
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004688Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004689-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004690
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004691- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4692 close or delete time).
4693
4694- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4695 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4696
4697- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4698
4699- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004700 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004701
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004702Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004704
4705Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004706-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004707
4708C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004709-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004710
4711New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004712-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004713
4714Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004715-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004716
4717Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004718-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004719
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004720- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4721
4722- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4723 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4724
4725- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4726 deleted at process exit time.
4727
4728- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4729 in backslash.
4730
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004731Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004732----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004733
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004734- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4735 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4736 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4737
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004738
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004739What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004740===========================
4741
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004742*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4743
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004744Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004745--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004746
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004747- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4748 been extensively updated. See
4749
4750 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4751
4752 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4753
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004754- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4755 deleted!
4756
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004757- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4758 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4759 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4760 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4761 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4762
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004763- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4764
4765 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4766 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4767
4768 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4769 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4770 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4771 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4772 supported anyway.
4773
4774 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4775 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4776
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004777- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4778 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4779 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4780 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4781 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004782
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004783- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4784 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4785 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4786
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004787Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004788-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004789
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004790- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4791 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4792 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4793 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4794 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4795 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004796 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4797 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4798 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4799 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004800
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004801- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4802 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4803 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4804
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004805Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004806-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004807
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004808- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4809
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004810Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004811-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004812
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004813- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4814 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4815 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4816 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4817 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4818 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4819
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004820- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4821
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004822- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4823
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004824- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4825
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004826- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4827 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4828 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4829
4830- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4831
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004832Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004833-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004834
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004835- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4836 off a search on Google.
4837
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004838Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004840
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004841- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4842 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4843 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4844 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4845 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4846 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4847 other platforms should do likewise.
4848
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004849- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4850 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4851 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4852
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004853C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004854-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004855
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004856- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4857 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4858 producing key-value pairs.
4859
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004860- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004861 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004862 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4863 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4864 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4865 previously went unchallenged.
4866
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004867New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004868-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004869
4870Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004871-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004872
4873Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004874-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004875
4876Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004877----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004878
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004879- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4880 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004881
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004882- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4883 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4884 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4885 home.
4886
4887
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004888What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004889===========================
4890
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004891*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4892
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004893Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004894--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004895
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004896- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4897 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004898
4899 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004900 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004901
4902 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4903 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004904 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004905 This needs to be documented.
4906
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004907- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4908 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4909
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004910- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4911 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4912 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4913
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004914- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4915 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4916
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004917- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4918 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4919 class forbids it).
4920
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004921- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4922 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4923 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4924
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004925- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4926
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004927Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004928-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004929
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004930- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4931 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004932 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004933
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004934- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4935 (like 1 + '').
4936
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004937Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004939
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004940- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4941 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4942 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4943 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004944 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004945 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4946
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004947- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4948 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4949 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4950 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4951
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004952- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4953 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004954 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4955 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4956 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004957
4958- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4959 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004960
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004961- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4962 bytes on its input.
4963
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004964Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004965-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004966
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004967- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004968 convenience function.
4969
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004970- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4971 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4972 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004973 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4974 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4975 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4976 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4977 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4978 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004979
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004980- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4981 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4982 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4983 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4984
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004985- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4986 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4987 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4988
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004989- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4990 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4991 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4992 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4993
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004994- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4995 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004996 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004997 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4998 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4999 new -l and -e options.
5000
5001- statcache is now deprecated.
5002
5003- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5004 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005005 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005006 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5007 time properly taken into account.
5008
5009- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5010 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5011 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5012 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5013
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005014Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005016
5017Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005019
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005020- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5021 is built with libdb3 if available.
5022
5023- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5024
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005025C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005026-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005027
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005028- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5029 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5030 PySequence_Size().
5031
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005032- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5033
5034- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5035 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5036 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5037
5038- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5039 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5040
5041- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5042 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5043
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005044New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005045-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005046
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005047- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5048 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5049
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005050- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5051 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5052
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005053- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5054
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005055Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005056-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005057
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005058- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5059 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5060
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005061Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005062-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005063
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005064Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005065----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005066
5067- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5068 removed completely in the next release.
5069
5070- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5071 OSX.
5072
5073- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5074 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5075
5076- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5077
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005078
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005079What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005080===========================
5081
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005082*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5083
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005084Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005085--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005086
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005087- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005088 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005089 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005090 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5091 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005092 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5093 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005094 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5095 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005096
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005097- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5098 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5099
5100- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5101 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5102
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005103Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005104-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005105
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005106- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5107 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5108 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5109 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5110 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5111 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5112 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5113 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5114
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005115- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5116 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5117 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5118 example).
5119
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005120- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005121 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005122 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005123 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005124
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005125- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5126 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5127 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005128 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005129
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005130- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5131 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5132 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5133 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5134 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5135 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5136
5137 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5138
5139 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5140
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005141Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005142-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005143
5144- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5145
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005146- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5147
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005148- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5149 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005150
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005151- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5152 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5153 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5154 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5155 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5156 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005157 attributes.
5158
5159- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5160 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5161 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005162
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005163- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5164 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5165 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005166
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005167- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5168 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5169 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005170 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5171 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5172
5173- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5174 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005175
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005176Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005177-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005178
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005179- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5180 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5181
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005182- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5183 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5184 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5185 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5186
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005187- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5188 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5189 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5190 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5191
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005192 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5193 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5194 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5195 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5196 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5197 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5198 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5199 without losing information).
5200
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005201- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005202 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5203 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5204 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5205 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5206 module).
5207
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005208 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005209 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5210 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5211 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5212 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005213
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005214- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005215 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5216 encoding.
5217
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005218- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5219 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5220
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005221- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005222 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5223
5224- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5225 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5226 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5227 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5228
5229- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5230
5231- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5232 ON, and OFF.
5233
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005234- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5235 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5236
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005237Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005238-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005239
5240- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5241 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5242 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005243
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005244- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5245 been added: -X and -E.
5246
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005247Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005248-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005249
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005250- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5251 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5252
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005253C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005254-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005255
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005256- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5257 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5258 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5259 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5260 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5261
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005262- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5263 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5264 as long) arguments.
5265
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005266- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5267 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5268 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5269 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5270 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5271 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5272
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005273- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5274 input.
5275
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005276New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005277-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005278
5279Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005280-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005281
5282Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005283-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005284
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005285- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5286 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5287 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5288
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005289- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5290 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5291 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005292 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005293
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005294 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5295 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5296 import signal
5297 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005298
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005299 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005300 while 1:
5301 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005302 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005303 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5304 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5305 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5306 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005307
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005308
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005309What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5310===========================
5311
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005312*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5313
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005314Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005315--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005316
5317- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5318 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5319 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5320
5321- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5322 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5323 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5324 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5325 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5326 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5327 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005328
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005329- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005330 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005331 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5332 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5333 associate a docstring with a property.
5334
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005335- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5336 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5337 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5338 other built-in object types.
5339
5340- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5341 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5342 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5343 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5344 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5345
5346- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5347 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5348
5349- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5350 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005351 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005352 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5353 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5354 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5355 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5356 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5357
5358- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5359 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5360 class.
5361
5362- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5363 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5364 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5365 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5366
5367- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5368 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5369 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5370 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5371
5372- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5373 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5374
5375- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5376 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5377 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5378 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5379 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005380 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005381 with the same value as s.
5382
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005383- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5384
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005385Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005386----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005387
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005388- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5389
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005390- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5391 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5392 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5393 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5394 objects.
5395
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005396- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5397 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005398 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5399 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5400
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005401- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5402 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5403 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5404
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005405Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005406-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005407
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005408- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5409 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5410 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5411 by the instances.
5412
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005413- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5414 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5415 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5416
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005417- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5418 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5419 before the entire comparison is complete.
5420
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005421- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5422 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5423 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5424
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005425- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5426 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5427 getwriter().
5428
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005429- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5430 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5431
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005432- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005433 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5434 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5435
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005436- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5437 iterable object.
5438
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005439- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5440 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005441
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005442- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5443 authentication.
5444
5445- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5446 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005447
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005448- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005449 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5450 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5451 a sample driver.)
5452
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005453Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005454-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005455
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005456- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5457 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5458 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5459 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5460 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5461 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5462 kernel has large file support.
5463
5464- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5465 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5466 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5467 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5468 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5469
5470- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5471 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5472 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5473
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005474C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005475-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005476
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005477- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5478 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5479
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005480New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005481-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005482
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005483- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5484 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5485
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005486Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005487-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005488
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005489- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5490 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5491 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5492 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5493 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5494
5495- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5496 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5497 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5498 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5499
5500- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5501 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5502
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005503Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005504-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005505
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005506- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005507 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5508 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005509
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005510
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005511What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5512===========================
5513
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005514*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5515
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005516Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005517----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005518
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005519- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5520 big to represent as a C double.
5521
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005522- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5523 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5524 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5525 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5526 restriction).
5527
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005528- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5529 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5530 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5531 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5532 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5533
5534 >>> dir([])
5535 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5536 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5537 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5538 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5539 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5540 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5541 'reverse', 'sort']
5542
5543 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5544
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005545- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005546 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5547 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5548 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5549 OverflowError exception.
5550
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005551- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005552 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005553 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5554 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5555 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5556 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5557 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005558 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005559 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5560 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5561
5562 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5563 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5564 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5565 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005566
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005567- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005568 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5569 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5570 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5571 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5572 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5573 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5574 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5575 once it is created.
5576
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005577- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5578 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5579 (key, value) pairs.
5580
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005581- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005582 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5583 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5584
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005585- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5586 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5587 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5588 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5589 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005590
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005591- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005592 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5593 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5594
5595 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5596
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005597- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005598 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5599
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005600Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005601-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005602
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005603- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005604 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5605 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005606
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005607- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5608 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5609 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5610 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5611 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5612 in this area anymore).
5613
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005614- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5615 threading.Timer.
5616
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005617- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5618 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5619
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005620- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005621 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5622
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005623- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005624 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5625 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5626 converted to Python longs.
5627
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005628- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005629 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5630
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005631- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5632 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5633 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5634
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005635Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005636-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005637
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005638- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5639 division operators as per PEP 238.
5640
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005641Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005642-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005643
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005644- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5645 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5646 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5647 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5648
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005649C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005650-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005651
5652- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005653
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005654- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5655 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005656 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005657
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005658 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5659 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005660 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005661 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005662
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005663- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005664 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5665 module:
5666
5667 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005668
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005669 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5670 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005671
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005672 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5673 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005674
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005675 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5676
5677 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5678
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005679- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005680 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5681 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5682 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005683
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005684New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005685-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005686
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005687- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5688 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5689 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5690 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5691 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005692
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005693Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005694-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005695
5696Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005697-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005698
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005699- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5700 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5701 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5702 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005703 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5704 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5705 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5706 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5707 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005708
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005709- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005710 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5711
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005712
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005713What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5714===========================
5715
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005716*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5717
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005718Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005719-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005720
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005721- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5722 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5723
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005724- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5725 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5726 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005727
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005728- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5729 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5730 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5731 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005732
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005733- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5734
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005735- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005736
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005737Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005738-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005739
5740- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005741 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005742 the module docstring for details.
5743
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005744Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005745-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005746
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005747- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005748 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5749 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5750 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005751
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005752- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5753 Nick Mathewson.
5754
5755Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005756----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005757
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005758- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5759 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5760 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5761 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5762 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5763 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5764 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5765 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5766
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005767- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5768 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5769 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5770 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5771
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005772- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5773 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5774 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5775 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5776 come a long way).
5777
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005778- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5779 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5780 write filters for these warnings).
5781
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005782- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5783 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5784 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5785 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5786 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5787
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005788- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5789 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5790 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5791 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5792 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5793 older distribution.
5794
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005795Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005796-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005797
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005798- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5799 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005800 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005801
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005802- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5803 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5804 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5805
5806- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5807
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005808- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5809
5810- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5811
5812- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5813
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005814- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005815
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005816- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5817
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005818New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005819-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005820
5821C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005822-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005823
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005824- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5825 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5826 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5827 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5828 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5829 against buffer overruns.
5830
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005831- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005832 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5833 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005834 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5835 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5836 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5837
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005838- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5839 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5840 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5841 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5842 deprecated.
5843
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005844Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005845-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005846
5847- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5848 relevant is found.
5849
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005850
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005851What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005852===========================
5853
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005854*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5855
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005856Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005857----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005858
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005859- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5860 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5861 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5862 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5863 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5864 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5865 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5866 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005867 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005868 repaired.
5869
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005870- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005871 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005872 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5873 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5874 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5875 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5876 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5877 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5878 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5879 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5880
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005881- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5882 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5883 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5884 leading BMO character).
5885
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005886- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5887 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5888 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5889
5890 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5891 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5892 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005893
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005894 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5895 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5896 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5897 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5898 for various simple to use conversions.
5899
5900 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5901 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5902
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005903 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5904 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5905 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5906 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5907 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5908 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5909 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5910 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5911 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5912 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5913 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5914 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5915 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5916 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5917 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005918
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005919- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5920 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5921 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005922 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005923 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005924
5925 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005926 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5927 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5928 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5929 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5930 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005931 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5932 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005933
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005934 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5935 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5936 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005937 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005938
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005939- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5940 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5941 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5942 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5943 floating arithmetic,
5944
5945 x = 9007199254740992.0
5946 print long(x)
5947
5948 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5949 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5950 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5951 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5952 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5953 functions are of good quality).
5954
5955 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5956 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5957 algorithms to break.
5958
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005959- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5960 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5961 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5962 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5963 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5964 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5965 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5966 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5967 order.
5968
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005969- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5970 operation along the most common code paths.
5971
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005972- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5973 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5974
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005975- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5976 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5977 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5978 {}.update(UserDict())
5979
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005980- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5981 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5982 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5983 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5984 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5985 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5986 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5987 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5988
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005989- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005990 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005991
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005992 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005993 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5994 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005995 join() method of strings
5996 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005997 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5998 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005999 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006000 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006001
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006002- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6003 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6004
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006005- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6006 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6007
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006008- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6009 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6010 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6011 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6012
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006013- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6014 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006015 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006016 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6017 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006018
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006019- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6020
6021
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006022Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006023-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006024
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006025- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006026 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006027 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6028 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6029
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006030- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6031 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6032
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006033- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6034 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6035 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6036 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6037
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006038- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6039 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6040 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6041
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006042- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6043
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006044- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6045
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006046- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6047 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6048 that are still imported into string.py).
6049
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006050- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6051
6052- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6053 Now it does.
6054
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006055- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6056
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006057- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6058 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6059 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6060 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6061 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006062 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6063 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006064
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006065- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6066 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6067 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6068 'help(object)'.
6069
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006070Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006071-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006072
6073- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006074 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006075 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6076 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6077
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006078- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006079 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6080 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006081
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006082C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006083-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006084
6085- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6086 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006087
6088----
6089
6090**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**