blob: af190bd4faaebcef8b3b58c16a3b8381f0ac70eb [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Skip Montanaro4a385832002-09-20 17:08:52 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00007What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate?
8===========================================
9
10Core and builtins
11-----------------
12
13Extension modules
14-----------------
15
16- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
17 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
18
19- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
20
21Library
22-------
23
24Tools/Demos
25-----------
26
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +000027- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
28
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +000029Build
30-----
31
32C API
33-----
34
35Windows
36-------
37
38Mac
39---
40
41
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +000042What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
43================================
44
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +000045*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +000046
47Core and builtins
48-----------------
49
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +000050- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
51 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
52 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
53 with the -i option.
54
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +000055- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
56 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
57
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +000058- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
59 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
60
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +000061- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
62 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
63 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
64 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
65 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
66 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
67 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
68 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
69 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
70 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
71 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
72 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
73 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +000074
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +000075- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
76 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
77 embedded in a lambda expression.
78
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +000079- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
80 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
81 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
82 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
83 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
84
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +000085- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
86 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
87 matches the restriction on classic classes.
88
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +000089- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
90 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
91
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +000092- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
93 It's writable again.
94
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +000095- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
96 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
97 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
98 preferred, then __iter__ can be overriden.
99
Neil Schemenauer4e3363e2003-06-09 18:42:19 +0000100- Creating an attribute on a module (i.e. a global variable created by
101 __setattr__) that causes a builtin name to be shadowed now raises a
102 DeprecationWarning. In future versions of Python the effect may be
103 undefined (in order to allow for optimization of global and builtin
104 name lookups).
105
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000106- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
107 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
108 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
109
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000110Extension modules
111-----------------
112
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +0000113- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
114 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
115
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000116- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
117 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
118 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
119 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
120
121- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
122 collection.
123
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +0000124- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
125 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
126 unique within a single program run.
127
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +0000128- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
129 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
130
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +0000131- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
132 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
133
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +0000134- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
135 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +0000136
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +0000137- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
138
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +0000139- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
140 Fixes SF bug #730685.
141
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +0000142- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
143 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
144 for many BSD-derived systems.
145
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000146
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000147Library
148-------
149
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +0000150- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
151 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
152 primary ones:
153
154 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
155 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
156 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
157
158 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
159 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
160 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
161 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
162 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
163 framework features (which doctest lacks).
164
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +0000165- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
166 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
167 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
168 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
169 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
170 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
171 argument.
172
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000173- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
174 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
175 in the archive.
176
177- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
178 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
179
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +0000180- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
181 569574).
182
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000183- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
184 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
185 no more.
186
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000187- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
188 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
189 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
190 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
191 code coverage.
192
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000193- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
194 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
195 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +0000196 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
197 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +0000198
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000199- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
200 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
201 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +0000202 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +0000203
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +0000204- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
205
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +0000206- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
207 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
208 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
209 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
210
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +0000211- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
212 handling.
213
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +0000214- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
215 __doc__ of data descriptors.
216
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +0000217- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
218 in socket.py.
219
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +0000220- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
221
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +0000222- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
223 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
224 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
225 opener with proxy support.
226
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000227- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
228
229- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
230
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000231Tools/Demos
232-----------
233
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +0000234- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
235
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +0000236- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
237
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +0000238- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
239 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +0000240
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +0000241- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
242 files.
243
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000244Build
245-----
246
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +0000247- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows to specify a
248 different root directory.
249
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000250C API
251-----
252
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +0000253- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
254 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
255 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
256 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
257 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
258 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
259 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
260 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
261 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
262 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
263
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000264- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
265 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
266 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
267 from Python.
268
269
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000270New platforms
271-------------
272
273None this time.
274
275Tests
276-----
277
278- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
279 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
280
281Windows
282-------
283
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +0000284- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
285
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +0000286- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
287 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
288 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
289 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
290 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
291 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
292 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
293 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
294 that's what it's for.
295
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000296Mac
297---
298
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +0000299- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
300 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
301 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
302 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +0000303- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
304 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
305- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +0000306
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +0000307SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
308------------------------------------
309
310430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
311598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
312622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
313661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
314683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
315697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
316713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
317724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
318727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
319729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
320730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
321731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
322732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
323733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
324735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
325740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
326744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
327745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
328747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
329749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
330751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
331753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
332755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
333757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
334760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
335
336
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000337What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
338================================
339
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +0000340*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000341
342Core and builtins
343-----------------
344
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +0000345- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
346 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
347
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +0000348- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
349 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
350 and cannot be strings).
351
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +0000352- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
353 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
354 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
355 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
356
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +0000357- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
358 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
359 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
360 Python itself.
361
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +0000362- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
363 the referenced object, if it has one.
364
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +0000365- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
366 the thread started at
367 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
368
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +0000369- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
370 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
371 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
372 placed on a list index.
373
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +0000374- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
375 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
376 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
377 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
378
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000379- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
380 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
381 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
382 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
383 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
384 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
385 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
386
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +0000387- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
388 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
389 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
390 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
391 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
392
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +0000393- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
394 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +0000395
396- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
397 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
398 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
399 #693195.)
400
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +0000401- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
402 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000403
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000404- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +0000405 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +0000406 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
407 interpreter executions, would fail.
408
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000409- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +0000410 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +0000411 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +0000412
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000413Extension modules
414-----------------
415
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +0000416- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
417 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
418 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
419 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
420
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +0000421- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
422 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
423
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +0000424- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
425 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
426 and Greg Chapman.)
427
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000428- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
429 recursively.
430
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +0000431- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +0000432 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
433 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
434 leaks.
435
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +0000436- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
437
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +0000438- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
439 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
440 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
441 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
442 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
443 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
444 #705836.
445
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +0000446- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzet()
447 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
448
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +0000449- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
450 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
451 See SF bug #692416.
452
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +0000453- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
454 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
455
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +0000456- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
457 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
458 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000459
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000460- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +0000461 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
462 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
463
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +0000464- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
465 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
466 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
467 timeouts to work properly.
468
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000469Library
470-------
471
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +0000472- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
473 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
474 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
475 future release.
476
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +0000477- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
478 for querying platform dependent features.
479
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +0000480- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +0000481
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +0000482- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
483 pickle protocol versions.
484
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +0000485- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
486 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
487 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
488
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +0000489- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
490
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +0000491- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
492 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
493 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
494 modules.
495
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +0000496- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
497 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
498 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
499
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +0000500- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
501 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
502
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +0000503- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
504 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
505 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
506
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000507- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +0000508 MS Office extensions.
509
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +0000510- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
511 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
512
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +0000513- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
514 execution speed of expressions and statements.
515
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000516- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
517 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
518 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
519 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
520 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
521 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
522
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +0000523- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
524 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
525 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000526
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +0000527- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
528 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
529 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
530
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +0000531- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
532
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +0000533- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
534 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
535 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
536
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000537Tools/Demos
538-----------
539
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +0000540- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
541 See the module docstring for details.
542
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000543Build
544-----
545
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +0000546- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
547 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000548
549C API
550-----
551
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000552- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
553
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +0000554- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
555 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
556 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
557
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000558- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
559 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +0000560
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +0000561 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
562 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
563 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +0000564
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +0000565- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +0000566 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
567
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +0000568- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
569 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
570 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000571
572New platforms
573-------------
574
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +0000575None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000576
577Tests
578-----
579
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +0000580- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
581 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000582
583Windows
584-------
585
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +0000586- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
587 function.
588
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +0000589- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
590 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000591
592Mac
593---
594
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +0000595- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
596 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +0000597
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +0000598- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
599 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000600
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +0000601- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
602 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
603 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000604
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +0000605- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +0000606 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
607 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +0000608
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +0000609- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
610 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +0000611
612
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000613What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
614=================================
615
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +0000616*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000617
618Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +0000619-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000620
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +0000621- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
622 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
623 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
624
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +0000625- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
626 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
627 (SF patch #664376.)
628
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +0000629- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
630 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
631 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
632 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
633 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
634 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +0000635 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +0000636
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +0000637- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
638 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
639 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
640 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000641 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +0000642
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +0000643- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
644 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
645 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
646 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
647 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
648 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
649 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
650 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
651 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
652 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
653 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
654
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +0000655- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
656 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
657 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
658 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
659 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
660 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
661
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +0000662- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
663 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
664
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +0000665- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
666 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
667 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
668 case.)
669
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +0000670- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
671 passed as unicode strings.
672
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +0000673- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
674 See SF bug #683467.
675
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +0000676- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
677 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
678
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +0000679- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
680
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +0000681- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
682
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +0000683- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
684 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
685 arguments.
686
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +0000687- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
688 See SF bug #667147.
689
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +0000690- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +0000691 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +0000692 See SF bug #676155.
693
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +0000694- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +0000695 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +0000696 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
697 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
698 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
699 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
700 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
701 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +0000702
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000703Extension modules
704-----------------
705
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +0000706- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
707 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
708 tp_as_number pointer.
709
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +0000710- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
711 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
712 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
713 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
714 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
715
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +0000716- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
717
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +0000718- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
719
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +0000720- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +0000721 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +0000722 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
723 patch #678531.)
724
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +0000725- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
726 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
727
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +0000728- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
729 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
730
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +0000731- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
732
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +0000733- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
734 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
735 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
736
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000737- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
738
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +0000739- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
740 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
741
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +0000742- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +0000743
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +0000744- datetime changes:
745
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +0000746 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
747
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +0000748 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
749 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
750 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
751 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
752 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
753 now.
754
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +0000755 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000756 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
757 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +0000758
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +0000759 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000760 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000761 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
762 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
763 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
764 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000765
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +0000766 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
767 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
768 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +0000769 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
770
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +0000771 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
772 by a later example coded by Guido.
773
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +0000774 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000775 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
776 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
777 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +0000778 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
779 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
780
781 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
782 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
783 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
784 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
785 tzinfo subclass instance.
786
787 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
788 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
789 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
790 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
791 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
792 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
793 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
794 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +0000795
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +0000796 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
797 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
798 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
799 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
800 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000801 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
802
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +0000803 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000804
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +0000805 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
806 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
807 as a naive datetime object.
808
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +0000809 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
810 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
811 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
812
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +0000813 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
814 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
815 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
816 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
817 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
818 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
819 comparison.
820
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +0000821 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
822 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
823 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
824 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000825 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +0000826
827 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000828
829 and ::
830
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +0000831 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
832
833 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
834 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
835 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
836 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
837
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +0000838 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
839 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
840 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
841 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
842 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
843
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +0000844 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
845 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +0000846 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
847 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +0000848
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000849Library
850-------
851
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +0000852- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
853 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
854
855- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
856 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
857 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
858 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
859 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
860 See PEP 307 for details.
861
862- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
863 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
864
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +0000865- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
866 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +0000867 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +0000868 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
869 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +0000870 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +0000871
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +0000872- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
873 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
874
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +0000875- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
876 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
877 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
878
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +0000879- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
880
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +0000881- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
882 exception.
883
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +0000884- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
885 class.
886
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +0000887- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
888 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
889 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
890
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +0000891- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
892 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
893
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000894- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +0000895 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
896 See SF bug #659228.
897
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +0000898- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
899 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
900 See SF patch #651082.
901
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +0000902- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000903
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +0000904- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
905 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
906
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +0000907- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +0000908 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +0000909
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +0000910- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
911 DOS paths from other platforms.
912
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000913Tools/Demos
914-----------
915
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +0000916- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
917 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
918 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
919 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
920 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
921 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
922 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
923 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
924 example:
925
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +0000926 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
927 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +0000928
929 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
930
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000931
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000932Build
933-----
934
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +0000935- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
936 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
937 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000938 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
939
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +0000940 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
941
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +0000942- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
943 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
944 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
945 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
946 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
947 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
948 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
949 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
950 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
951
952- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
953 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
954 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
955 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
956
957- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
958 from the Tools/scripts directory.
959
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000960C API
961-----
962
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +0000963- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
964 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +0000965
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +0000966- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
967 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
968 tp_as_number pointer.
969
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +0000970- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
971 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
972 (SF #681367)
973
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +0000974- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
975 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
976 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
977 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +0000978
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000979Tests
980-----
981
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +0000982- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +0000983 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
984 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
985 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
986 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
987 pydoc.)
988
989- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
990
991- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +0000992
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +0000993Windows
994-------
995
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +0000996- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
997 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
998 time).
999
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00001000- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
1001 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
1002
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00001003- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
1004 release without strong cryptography.
1005
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001006- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00001007 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00001008
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001009- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
1010 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
1011
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001012Mac
1013---
1014
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001015- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
1016 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00001017
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00001018- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
1019 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
1020 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00001021
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00001022- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
1023 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001024
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001025- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
1026 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
1027 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
1028 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00001029
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00001030- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00001031 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
1032 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
1033 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001034
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00001035
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001036What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001037=================================
1038
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00001039*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001040
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001041Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001042--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001043
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00001044- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
1045
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001046- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
1047 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001048 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00001049 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00001050 a different meaning than before.
1051
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001052- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001053 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00001054 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001055
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001056- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001057 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001058 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00001059
1060- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
1061 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
1062 and deallocation.
1063
1064- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
1065 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
1066
1067- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
1068 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
1069 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
1070 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
1071 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
1072
1073- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
1074 now detected by the garbage collector.
1075
1076- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
1077 [SF bug 519621]
1078
1079- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
1080 identifier.
1081
1082- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
1083 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
1084 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
1085 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
1086 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
1087 [SF bug 563060]
1088
1089- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
1090 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
1091 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
1092 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
1093 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
1094
1095- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
1096 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
1097 not called. [SF bug #537450]
1098
1099- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
1100
1101- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
1102 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
1103 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
1104 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
1105 state of the slots would be lost.)
1106
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001107Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001108-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001109
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001110- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001111 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
1112 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
1113 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
1114 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001115 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
1116 Jython 2.1.
1117
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001118- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00001119 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00001120 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
1121 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
1122 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
1123 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
1124 these, see PEP 302.
1125
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001126- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
1127 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
1128 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
1129
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00001130- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
1131 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
1132 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
1133
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00001134- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
1135 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
1136 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
1137
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001138- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
1139 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
1140 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
1141 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
1142 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
1143 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
1144 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
1145 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
1146 releases or implementations.
1147
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001148- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001149 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
1150 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00001151
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00001152- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
1153 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
1154
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001155- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
1156 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
1157 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
1158
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00001159- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
1160 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
1161
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001162- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
1163 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001164 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
1165 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00001166
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00001167- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
1168 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
1169 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
1170 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
1171 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
1172
1173 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
1174 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
1175 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
1176 pattern.
1177
1178 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
1179 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
1180 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
1181 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
1182
1183 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
1184 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
1185 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
1186 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
1187 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
1188 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
1189
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00001190- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
1191 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
1192 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
1193 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
1194 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
1195 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
1196 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
1197 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00001198
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00001199- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
1200 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
1201 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
1202 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
1203 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001204 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
1205 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
1206 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
1207 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
1208 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
1209 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
1210 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001211
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00001212- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
1213 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
1214
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00001215- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
1216 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
1217 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
1218 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
1219 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
1220 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
1221 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
1222 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
1223 to Zack Weinberg!
1224
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00001225- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
1226 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
1227 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
1228 type. This has been fixed now.
1229
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00001230- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
1231 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
1232 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
1233
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001234- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
1235 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
1236 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
1237 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
1238 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
1239 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
1240 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
1241 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00001242 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001243
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00001244- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
1245 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
1246 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00001247
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001248- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
1249 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
1250 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
1251 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
1252 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
1253 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
1254 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
1255 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001256 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001257 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
1258 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
1259
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00001260- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
1261 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
1262 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
1263 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
1264 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
1265 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
1266 this.)
1267
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001268- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
1269 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00001270 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001271 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00001272 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
1273 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00001274 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
1275 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00001276
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00001277- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
1278 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
1279 currently running.
1280
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00001281- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
1282 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
1283 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
1284 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
1285
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00001286- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
1287 as directory names.
1288
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00001289- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
1290 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
1291
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00001292- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
1293 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
1294
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001295- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00001296 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
1297 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00001298
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00001299- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
1300 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
1301 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
1302 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
1303 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
1304
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00001305- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
1306 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
1307 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
1308 removed.
1309
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00001310- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
1311 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
1312 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
1313
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00001314- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
1315 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
1316 to __debug__.
1317
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00001318- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
1319 string to the left with zeros. For example,
1320 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
1321
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00001322- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
1323 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
1324 deprecated now.
1325
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00001326- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
1327 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
1328 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00001329
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00001330- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
1331 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
1332 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
1333 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
1334 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00001335
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00001336- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
1337 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
1338
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001339- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
1340 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
1341 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001342 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00001343 is backward compatible.
1344
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00001345- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
1346 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
1347 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
1348 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
1349 could access a pointer to freed memory.
1350
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00001351- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
1352 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
1353 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
1354 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
1355 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
1356 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00001357
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00001358- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
1359 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
1360
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00001361- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
1362 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
1363
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00001364- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
1365 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
1366 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
1367 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
1368 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
1369
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00001370- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
1371 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
1372 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
1373
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001374- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00001375 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
1376
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00001377- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
1378 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
1379 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00001380
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00001381- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
1382 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
1383
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00001384- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
1385 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
1386 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
1387
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00001388- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
1389
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001390Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001391-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001392
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00001393- Added three operators to the operator module:
1394 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
1395 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
1396 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
1397
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00001398- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
1399
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00001400- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
1401 archives.
1402
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00001403- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
1404 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
1405 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
1406
1407 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
1408
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001409- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
1410 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
1411 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00001412 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00001413
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00001414- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
1415 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
1416 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
1417 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00001418 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
1419 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
1420 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
1421 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00001422
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00001423- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
1424 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00001425
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00001426- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
1427
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00001428- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
1429 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
1430
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00001431- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
1432 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
1433 supported.
1434
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00001435- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
1436
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00001437- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
1438 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00001439
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00001440- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
1441 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
1442
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00001443- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
1444
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00001445- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
1446 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
1447
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00001448- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
1449 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
1450 functions but callable type objects.
1451
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001452- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001453 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001454 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00001455
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00001456- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
1457 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00001458
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00001459- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
1460 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00001461
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00001462- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
1463 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
1464 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
1465 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
1466
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00001467- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
1468 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00001469
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00001470- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
1471 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
1472 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
1473 and __imul__.
1474
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00001475- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00001476 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
1477 is called.
1478
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00001479- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
1480 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
1481 interpreter was compiled.
1482
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001483- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
1484 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
1485 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00001486 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00001487 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
1488 1, not 2.
1489
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00001490- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
1491 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
1492 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
1493 limit.
1494
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00001495- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
1496 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
1497 bug #623464.
1498
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00001499- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
1500 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
1501 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
1502 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
1503
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001504Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001505-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001506
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00001507- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
1508
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00001509- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
1510 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
1511 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
1512 with Python 2.3a2.
1513
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00001514- os.path exposes getctime.
1515
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001516- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001517 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001518 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001519 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00001520 unit tests of floating point results.
1521
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00001522- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
1523 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
1524 has been increased.
1525
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00001526- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
1527 executed.
1528
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00001529- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
1530 postinstallation script.
1531
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00001532- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
1533 test the current module.
1534
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001535- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00001536 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
1537 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
1538 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
1539 this behavior needs to be controlled.
1540
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001541- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001542 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00001543 Ward's Optik package.
1544
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001545- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
1546 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
1547 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
1548 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
1549
1550- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
1551 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00001552 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00001553
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00001554- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
1555 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
1556 shelf are binary pickles.
1557
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00001558- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
1559 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
1560
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00001561- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
1562 modules are iterators now.
1563
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00001564- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
1565 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
1566 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
1567 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
1568 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
1569 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00001570
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00001571- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
1572 with their entity value.
1573
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00001574- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
1575
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00001576- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
1577 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00001578
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00001579- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
1580 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00001581 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00001582
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00001583- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
1584 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
1585 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
1586 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
1587 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
1588 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
1589 main():
1590
1591 import locale
1592 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
1593
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00001594- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
1595 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
1596
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00001597- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
1598 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
1599 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
1600 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
1601 to the new standard.
1602
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00001603- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
1604 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
1605 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
1606 an extension to the database.
1607
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00001608- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
1609 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
1610 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
1611 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00001612 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00001613
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00001614- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00001615 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00001616
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00001617- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
1618 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
1619 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
1620 bounded integers.
1621
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00001622- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
1623 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
1624 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
1625 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
1626 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
1627 in existence.
1628
1629 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
1630 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
1631 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
1632 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
1633 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
1634 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
1635
1636 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
1637 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
1638 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
1639 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
1640
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00001641- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
1642 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
1643 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
1644
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00001645- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
1646
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00001647- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
1648 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
1649 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
1650 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
1651
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00001652- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
1653 argument.
1654
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00001655- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
1656 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
1657 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
1658 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
1659 [SF patch 560794].
1660
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00001661- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
1662 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
1663 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00001664 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
1665 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
1666 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00001667
1668- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
1669 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00001670
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00001671- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
1672 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
1673 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
1674 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00001675
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00001676- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
1677 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
1678 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
1679 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
1680 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
1681
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00001682- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00001683
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00001684- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
1685
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00001686- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
1687 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
1688 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
1689 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
1690 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
1691 identical to None.
1692
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00001693- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
1694 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
1695 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
1696 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
1697 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
1698 results now.
1699
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00001700- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
1701 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
1702
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00001703- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
1704 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
1705 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
1706 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
1707 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
1708 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
1709 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
1710 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
1711
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00001712- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
1713
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00001714- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
1715 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
1716
1717- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
1718 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
1719 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
1720 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
1721 and other systems.
1722
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00001723- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
1724 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
1725 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
1726 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 +00001727 work well with these.
1728
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00001729- compileall now supports quiet operation.
1730
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001731- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00001732 connections.
1733
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00001734- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
1735 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
1736 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
1737
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00001738- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
1739 sets
1740
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00001741- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
1742 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
1743 name.
1744
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00001745- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
1746 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
1747 passed in.
1748
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00001749- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00001750 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00001751 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
1752 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00001753
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00001754- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
1755
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00001756- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
1757
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00001758- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
1759 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
1760 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
1761
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00001762- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
1763 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
1764 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
1765 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00001766 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00001767
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001768- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00001769 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001770 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00001771
1772- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
1773 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
1774 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
1775
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00001776- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00001777 the value of its expression argument.
1778
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00001779- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
1780 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
1781 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
1782
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00001783- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
1784 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
1785 skipstone browser was included.
1786
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00001787- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
1788 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
1789
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001790Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001791-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001792
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00001793- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
1794 names in addition to accepting file names.
1795
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00001796- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
1797 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
1798 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
1799 still used and useful.)
1800
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00001801- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
1802 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
1803 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
1804 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00001805
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00001806- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
1807 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
1808 the generated binary.
1809
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001810Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001811-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001812
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00001813- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
1814
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00001815- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
1816 except in the hands of experts.
1817
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00001818- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00001819 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
1820 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
1821 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00001822
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00001823- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
1824 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
1825 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
1826 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
1827 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
1828 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
1829 builds.
1830
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00001831- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
1832 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
1833 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
1834 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
1835 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
1836 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
1837 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
1838 new type.
1839
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00001840- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00001841
1842 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
1843 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
1844 positive infinities.
1845
1846 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
1847 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
1848 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
1849 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
1850 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
1851 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
1852 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
1853
1854 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
1855
1856 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
1857
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00001858- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
1859 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
1860 size of the executable.
1861
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00001862- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
1863 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
1864 configure script. On other platforms, remove
1865 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00001866
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00001867- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
1868
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00001869- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
1870 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
1871 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00001872
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00001873- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
1874 well as Unix.
1875
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00001876- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
1877 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
1878 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
1879 modules in the README file for details.
1880
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001881C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001882-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001883
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00001884- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
1885 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00001886 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00001887 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00001888 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00001889
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001890- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
1891 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
1892 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
1893 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
1894 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
1895 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001896 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00001897 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
1898 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
1899 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
1900 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
1901 aligned.)
1902
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00001903- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
1904 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
1905 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
1906
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00001907- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
1908 level.
1909
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00001910- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
1911 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
1912 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
1913 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
1914 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
1915
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00001916- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
1917 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
1918 code.
1919
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00001920- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
1921 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
1922 adjusting for negative indices.
1923
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00001924- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
1925 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
1926 object.
1927
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00001928- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
1929 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
1930 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
1931
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00001932- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
1933 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00001934
1935- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
1936
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00001937- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
1938 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
1939 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
1940 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
1941
1942- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
1943
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00001944- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00001945
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00001946- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00001947 without going through the buffer API.
1948
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001949- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00001950
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00001951- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
1952 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
1953 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
1954 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
1955
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001956- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
1957 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
1958
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00001959- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00001960 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
1961
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001962New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001963-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001964
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00001965- OpenVMS is now supported.
1966
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00001967- AtheOS is now supported.
1968
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00001969- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
1970
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00001971- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
1972
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001973Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001974-----
1975
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00001976- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
1977 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
1978 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001979
1980Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001981-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00001982
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00001983- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
1984 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
1985 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
1986 bugs.
1987 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00001988 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00001989 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
1990 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00001991 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00001992
1993- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00001994 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00001995
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00001996- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
1997 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
1998
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00001999- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
2000 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002001 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00002002 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
2003
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00002004- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
2005 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
2006 use files" uninstall option).
2007
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00002008- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
2009
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002010- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
2011 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
2012
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00002013- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
2014 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
2015 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
2016
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002017- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
2018 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
2019 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
2020 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
2021 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00002022 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
2023 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
2024 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00002025
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002026- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002027 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00002028 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
2029 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
2030 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
2031 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
2032 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
2033 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
2034 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
2035 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
2036 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
2037 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
2038 work around.
2039
2040- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
2041 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
2042 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
2043 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
2044 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
2045 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
2046 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
2047 specified with O_CREAT too).
2048
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002049Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002050----
2051
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002052- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002053
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00002054- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
2055 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
2056 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
2057
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002058- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
2059 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
2060 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
2061
2062- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
2063 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
2064 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
2065 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
2066 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
2067 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
2068 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
2069 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00002070
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00002071- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
2072 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
2073 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002074
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002075- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
2076 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
2077 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
2078 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
2079 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002080
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002081- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
2082 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
2083 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002084
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002085- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
2086 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002087
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002088- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
2089 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
2090 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
2091 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
2092 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002093
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002094- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
2095 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
2096 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
2097
2098- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
2099 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
2100 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002101
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002102- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
2103 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
2104 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
2105 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002106 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002107
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002108- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
2109 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002110
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00002111- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
2112 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00002113
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002114- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00002115 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00002116 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
2117 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00002118
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002119
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002120What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002121===============================
2122
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002123*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
2124
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002125Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002126--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002127
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002128- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
2129 with a custom metaclass.
2130
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002131Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002132-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002133
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002134- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
2135 are proxies.
2136
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002137Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002138-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002139
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002140- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
2141 very short strings.
2142
2143- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
2144 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
2145 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
2146 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
2147 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
2148
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002149Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002150-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002151
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002152- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
2153 close or delete time).
2154
2155- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
2156 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
2157
2158- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
2159
2160- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002161 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002162
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002163Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002164-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002165
2166Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002167-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002168
2169C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002170-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002171
2172New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002173-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002174
2175Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002176-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002177
2178Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002179-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002180
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002181- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
2182
2183- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
2184 instances are deleted at process exit time.
2185
2186- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
2187 deleted at process exit time.
2188
2189- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
2190 in backslash.
2191
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002192Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002193----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002194
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00002195- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
2196 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
2197 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
2198
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00002199
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00002200What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002201===========================
2202
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002203*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
2204
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002205Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002206--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002207
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002208- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
2209 been extensively updated. See
2210
2211 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
2212
2213 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
2214
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00002215- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
2216 deleted!
2217
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00002218- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
2219 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
2220 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
2221 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
2222 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
2223
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002224- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
2225
2226 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
2227 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
2228
2229 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
2230 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
2231 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
2232 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
2233 supported anyway.
2234
2235 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
2236 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
2237
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00002238- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
2239 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
2240 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
2241 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
2242 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00002243
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00002244- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
2245 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
2246 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
2247
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002248Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002249-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002250
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002251- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
2252 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
2253 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
2254 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
2255 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
2256 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00002257 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
2258 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
2259 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
2260 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00002261
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00002262- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
2263 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
2264 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
2265
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002266Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002267-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002268
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00002269- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
2270
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002271Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002272-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002273
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00002274- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
2275 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
2276 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
2277 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
2278 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
2279 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
2280
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00002281- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
2282
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00002283- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
2284
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00002285- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
2286
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002287- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
2288 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
2289 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
2290
2291- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
2292
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002293Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002294-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002295
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002296- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
2297 off a search on Google.
2298
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002299Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002300-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002301
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002302- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
2303 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
2304 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
2305 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
2306 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
2307 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
2308 other platforms should do likewise.
2309
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00002310- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
2311 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
2312 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
2313
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002314C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002315-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002316
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002317- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
2318 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
2319 producing key-value pairs.
2320
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002321- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00002322 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00002323 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
2324 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
2325 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
2326 previously went unchallenged.
2327
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002328New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002329-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002330
2331Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002332-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002333
2334Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002335-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002336
2337Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002338----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002339
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00002340- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
2341 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00002342
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00002343- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
2344 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
2345 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
2346 home.
2347
2348
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002349What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002350===========================
2351
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002352*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
2353
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002354Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002355--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002356
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002357- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
2358 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002359
2360 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00002361 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002362
2363 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
2364 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002365 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00002366 This needs to be documented.
2367
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00002368- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
2369 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
2370
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00002371- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
2372 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
2373 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
2374
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00002375- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
2376 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
2377
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002378- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
2379 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
2380 class forbids it).
2381
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00002382- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
2383 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
2384 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
2385
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002386- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
2387
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002388Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002389-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002390
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002391- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
2392 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002393 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00002394
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002395- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
2396 (like 1 + '').
2397
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002398Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002399-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002400
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002401- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
2402 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
2403 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
2404 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002405 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002406 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
2407
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00002408- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
2409 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
2410 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
2411 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
2412
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002413- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
2414 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002415 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
2416 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
2417 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00002418
2419- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
2420 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002421
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00002422- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
2423 bytes on its input.
2424
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002425Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002426-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002427
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00002428- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00002429 convenience function.
2430
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002431- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
2432 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
2433 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002434 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
2435 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
2436 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
2437 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
2438 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
2439 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00002440
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00002441- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
2442 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
2443 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
2444 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
2445
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00002446- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
2447 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
2448 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
2449
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002450- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
2451 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
2452 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
2453 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
2454
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002455- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
2456 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002457 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002458 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
2459 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
2460 new -l and -e options.
2461
2462- statcache is now deprecated.
2463
2464- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
2465 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002466 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002467 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
2468 time properly taken into account.
2469
2470- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
2471 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
2472 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
2473 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
2474
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002475Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002476-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002477
2478Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002479-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002480
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002481- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
2482 is built with libdb3 if available.
2483
2484- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
2485
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002486C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002487-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002488
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00002489- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
2490 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
2491 PySequence_Size().
2492
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002493- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
2494
2495- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
2496 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
2497 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
2498
2499- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
2500 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
2501
2502- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
2503 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
2504
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002505New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002506-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002507
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00002508- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
2509 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
2510
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00002511- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
2512 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
2513
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00002514- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
2515
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002516Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002517-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002518
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00002519- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
2520 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
2521
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002522Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002523-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002524
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002525Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002526----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00002527
2528- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
2529 removed completely in the next release.
2530
2531- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
2532 OSX.
2533
2534- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
2535 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
2536
2537- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
2538
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00002539
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002540What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002541===========================
2542
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002543*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
2544
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002545Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002546--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002547
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002548- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002549 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002550 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002551 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
2552 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00002553 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
2554 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00002555 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
2556 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00002557
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00002558- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
2559 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
2560
2561- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
2562 class methods, static methods, and properties.
2563
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002564Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002565-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002566
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00002567- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
2568 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
2569 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
2570 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
2571 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
2572 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
2573 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
2574 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
2575
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002576- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
2577 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
2578 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
2579 example).
2580
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00002581- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00002582 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00002583 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002584 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00002585
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00002586- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
2587 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
2588 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00002589 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00002590
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002591- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
2592 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
2593 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
2594 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
2595 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
2596 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
2597
2598 isinstance(x, (A, B))
2599
2600 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
2601
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002602Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002603-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002604
2605- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
2606
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00002607- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
2608
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00002609- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
2610 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00002611
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00002612- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
2613 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
2614 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
2615 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
2616 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
2617 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00002618 attributes.
2619
2620- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
2621 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
2622 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00002623
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002624- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
2625 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
2626 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002627
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00002628- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
2629 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
2630 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002631 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
2632 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
2633
2634- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
2635 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00002636
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00002637Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002638-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00002639
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00002640- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
2641 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
2642
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00002643- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
2644 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
2645 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
2646 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
2647
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00002648- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
2649 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
2650 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
2651 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
2652
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00002653 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
2654 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
2655 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
2656 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
2657 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
2658 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
2659 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
2660 without losing information).
2661
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00002662- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00002663 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
2664 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
2665 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
2666 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
2667 module).
2668
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00002669 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00002670 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
2671 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
2672 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
2673 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00002674
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00002675- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00002676 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
2677 encoding.
2678
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00002679- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
2680 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
2681
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002682- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002683 to allow saving the message body to a file.
2684
2685- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
2686 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
2687 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
2688 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
2689
2690- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
2691
2692- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
2693 ON, and OFF.
2694
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00002695- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
2696 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
2697
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00002698Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002699-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00002700
2701- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
2702 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
2703 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002704
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002705- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
2706 been added: -X and -E.
2707
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002708Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002709-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002710
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00002711- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
2712 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
2713
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002714C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002715-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002716
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00002717- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
2718 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
2719 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
2720 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
2721 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
2722
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00002723- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
2724 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
2725 as long) arguments.
2726
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00002727- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
2728 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
2729 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
2730 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
2731 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
2732 report any bugs or strange behavior).
2733
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00002734- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
2735 input.
2736
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002737New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002738-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002739
2740Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002741-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002742
2743Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002744-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002745
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00002746- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
2747 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
2748 is created for .py and .pyw files.
2749
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00002750- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
2751 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
2752 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00002753 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00002754
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002755 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
2756 # (SIGINT) behavior.
2757 import signal
2758 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00002759
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002760 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002761 while 1:
2762 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002763 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00002764 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
2765 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
2766 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
2767 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00002768
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00002769
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002770What's New in Python 2.2a4?
2771===========================
2772
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002773*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
2774
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002775Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002776--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002777
2778- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
2779 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
2780 documentation for all operations on list objects.
2781
2782- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
2783 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
2784 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
2785 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
2786 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
2787 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
2788 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002789
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00002790- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002791 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00002792 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
2793 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
2794 associate a docstring with a property.
2795
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002796- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
2797 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
2798 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
2799 other built-in object types.
2800
2801- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
2802 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
2803 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
2804 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
2805 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
2806
2807- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
2808 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
2809
2810- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
2811 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00002812 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002813 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
2814 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
2815 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
2816 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
2817 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
2818
2819- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
2820 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
2821 class.
2822
2823- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
2824 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
2825 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
2826 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
2827
2828- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
2829 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
2830 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
2831 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
2832
2833- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
2834 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
2835
2836- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
2837 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
2838 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
2839 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
2840 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00002841 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002842 with the same value as s.
2843
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00002844- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
2845
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002846Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002847----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00002848
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00002849- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
2850
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00002851- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
2852 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
2853 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
2854 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
2855 objects.
2856
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00002857- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
2858 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00002859 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
2860 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
2861
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002862- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
2863 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
2864 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
2865
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002866Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002867-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002868
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00002869- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
2870 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
2871 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
2872 by the instances.
2873
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00002874- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
2875 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
2876 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
2877
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00002878- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
2879 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
2880 before the entire comparison is complete.
2881
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00002882- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
2883 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
2884 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
2885
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00002886- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
2887 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
2888 getwriter().
2889
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002890- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
2891 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
2892
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00002893- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002894 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
2895 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
2896
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00002897- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
2898 iterable object.
2899
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002900- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
2901 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00002902
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002903- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
2904 authentication.
2905
2906- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
2907 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00002908
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002909- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00002910 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
2911 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
2912 a sample driver.)
2913
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002914Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002915-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002916
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002917- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
2918 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
2919 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
2920 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
2921 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
2922 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
2923 kernel has large file support.
2924
2925- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
2926 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
2927 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
2928 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
2929 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
2930
2931- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
2932 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
2933 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
2934
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002935C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002936-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002937
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002938- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
2939 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
2940
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002941New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002942-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002943
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002944- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
2945 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
2946
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002947Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002948-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002949
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00002950- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
2951 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
2952 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
2953 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
2954 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
2955
2956- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
2957 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
2958 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
2959 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
2960
2961- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
2962 especially in regard to reporting errors.
2963
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002964Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002965-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002966
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002967- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00002968 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
2969 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00002970
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00002971
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00002972What's New in Python 2.2a3?
2973===========================
2974
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002975*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
2976
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00002977Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00002978----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00002979
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00002980- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
2981 big to represent as a C double.
2982
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00002983- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
2984 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
2985 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
2986 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
2987 restriction).
2988
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00002989- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
2990 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
2991 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
2992 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
2993 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
2994
2995 >>> dir([])
2996 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
2997 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
2998 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
2999 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
3000 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
3001 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
3002 'reverse', 'sort']
3003
3004 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
3005
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003006- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003007 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
3008 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
3009 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
3010 OverflowError exception.
3011
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00003012- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003013 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003014 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
3015 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
3016 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
3017 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
3018 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00003019 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003020 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
3021 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
3022
3023 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
3024 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
3025 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
3026 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003027
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003028- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003029 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
3030 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
3031 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
3032 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
3033 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
3034 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
3035 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
3036 once it is created.
3037
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00003038- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
3039 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
3040 (key, value) pairs.
3041
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003042- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003043 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
3044 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
3045
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00003046- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
3047 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
3048 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
3049 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
3050 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003051
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003052- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003053 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
3054 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
3055
3056 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
3057
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003058- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00003059 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
3060
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003061Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003062-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003063
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003064- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00003065 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
3066 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00003067
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00003068- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
3069 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
3070 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
3071 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
3072 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
3073 in this area anymore).
3074
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00003075- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
3076 threading.Timer.
3077
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00003078- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
3079 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
3080
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003081- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003082 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
3083
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003084- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00003085 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
3086 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
3087 converted to Python longs.
3088
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003089- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003090 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
3091
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00003092- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
3093 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
3094 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
3095
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003096Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003097-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003098
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003099- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
3100 division operators as per PEP 238.
3101
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003102Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003103-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003104
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00003105- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
3106 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
3107 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
3108 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
3109
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003110C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003111-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00003112
3113- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003114
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003115- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
3116 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003117 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003118
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003119 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
3120 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003121 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003122 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00003123
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003124- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003125 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
3126 module:
3127
3128 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003129
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003130 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
3131 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003132
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003133 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
3134 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00003135
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00003136 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
3137
3138 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
3139
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003140- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00003141 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
3142 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
3143 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00003144
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003145New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003146-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003147
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00003148- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
3149 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
3150 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
3151 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
3152 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003153
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003154Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003155-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003156
3157Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003158-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003159
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003160- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
3161 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
3162 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
3163 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00003164 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
3165 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
3166 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
3167 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
3168 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00003169
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00003170- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00003171 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
3172
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00003173
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003174What's New in Python 2.2a2?
3175===========================
3176
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003177*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
3178
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003179Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003180-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003181
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00003182- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
3183 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
3184
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003185- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
3186 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
3187 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003188
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00003189- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
3190 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
3191 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
3192 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003193
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003194- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
3195
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003196- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003197
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003198Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003199-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003200
3201- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00003202 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003203 the module docstring for details.
3204
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003205Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003206-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003207
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003208- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003209 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
3210 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
3211 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003212
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003213- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
3214 Nick Mathewson.
3215
3216Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003217----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003218
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003219- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
3220 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
3221 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
3222 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
3223 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
3224 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
3225 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
3226 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
3227
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00003228- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
3229 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
3230 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
3231 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
3232
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00003233- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
3234 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
3235 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
3236 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
3237 come a long way).
3238
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003239- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
3240 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
3241 write filters for these warnings).
3242
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00003243- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
3244 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
3245 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
3246 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
3247 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
3248
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00003249- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
3250 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
3251 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
3252 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
3253 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
3254 older distribution.
3255
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003256Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003257-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003258
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003259- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
3260 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00003261 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00003262
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003263- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
3264 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
3265 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
3266
3267- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
3268
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003269- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
3270
3271- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
3272
3273- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
3274
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003275- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00003276
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00003277- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
3278
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003279New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003280-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003281
3282C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003283-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00003284
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00003285- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
3286 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
3287 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
3288 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
3289 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
3290 against buffer overruns.
3291
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003292- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003293 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
3294 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00003295 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
3296 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
3297 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
3298
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00003299- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
3300 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
3301 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
3302 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
3303 deprecated.
3304
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003305Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003306-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00003307
3308- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
3309 relevant is found.
3310
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00003311
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003312What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003313===========================
3314
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003315*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
3316
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003317Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003318----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003319
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003320- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
3321 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
3322 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
3323 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
3324 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
3325 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
3326 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
3327 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003328 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00003329 repaired.
3330
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003331- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00003332 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00003333 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
3334 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
3335 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
3336 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
3337 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
3338 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
3339 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
3340 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
3341
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00003342- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
3343 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
3344 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
3345 leading BMO character).
3346
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003347- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
3348 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
3349 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
3350
3351 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
3352 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
3353 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003354
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003355 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
3356 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
3357 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
3358 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
3359 for various simple to use conversions.
3360
3361 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
3362 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
3363
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003364 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3365 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
3366 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
3367 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
3368 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3369 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
3370 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3371 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
3372 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3373 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
3374 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3375 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
3376 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
3377 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
3378 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00003379
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003380- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
3381 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
3382 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003383 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003384 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003385
3386 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003387 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
3388 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
3389 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
3390 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
3391 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003392 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
3393 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00003394
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003395 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
3396 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
3397 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00003398 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003399
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00003400- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
3401 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
3402 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
3403 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
3404 floating arithmetic,
3405
3406 x = 9007199254740992.0
3407 print long(x)
3408
3409 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
3410 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
3411 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
3412 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
3413 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
3414 functions are of good quality).
3415
3416 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
3417 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
3418 algorithms to break.
3419
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00003420- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
3421 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
3422 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
3423 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
3424 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
3425 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
3426 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
3427 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
3428 order.
3429
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003430- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
3431 operation along the most common code paths.
3432
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003433- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
3434 the same as dict.has_key(x).
3435
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00003436- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
3437 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
3438 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
3439 {}.update(UserDict())
3440
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00003441- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
3442 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
3443 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
3444 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
3445 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
3446 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
3447 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
3448 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
3449
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00003450- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003451 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003452
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003453 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00003454 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
3455 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00003456 join() method of strings
3457 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003458 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
3459 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003460 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00003461 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00003462
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00003463- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
3464 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
3465
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00003466- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
3467 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
3468
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00003469- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
3470 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
3471 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
3472 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
3473
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003474- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
3475 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003476 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00003477 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
3478 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00003479
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00003480- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
3481
3482
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003483Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003484-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003485
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003486- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003487 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00003488 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
3489 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
3490
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00003491- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
3492 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
3493
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00003494- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
3495 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
3496 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
3497 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
3498
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00003499- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
3500 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
3501 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
3502
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00003503- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
3504
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00003505- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
3506
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00003507- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
3508 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
3509 that are still imported into string.py).
3510
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003511- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
3512
3513- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
3514 Now it does.
3515
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003516- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
3517
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003518- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
3519 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
3520 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
3521 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
3522 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00003523 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
3524 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00003525
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00003526- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
3527 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
3528 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
3529 'help(object)'.
3530
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003531Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003532-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003533
3534- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003535 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003536 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
3537 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
3538
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003539- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00003540 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
3541 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00003542
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003543C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003544-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00003545
3546- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
3547 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003548
3549----
3550
3551**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**