blob: 284b774c197677c121a0fce8dc80327591593805 [file] [log] [blame]
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +00001What's New in Python 2.1 alpha 1?
2=================================
3
4Core language, builtins, and interpreter
5
Martin v. Löwisbe4c0f52001-01-04 20:30:56 +00006- The interpreter accepts now bytecode files on the command line even
7 if they do not have a .pyc or .pyo extension. On Linux, after executing
8
9 echo ':pyc:M::\x87\xc6\x0d\x0a::/usr/local/bin/python:' > /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/register
10
11 any byte code file can be used as an executable (i.e. as an argument
12 to execve(2)).
13
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000014- %[xXo] formats of negative Python longs now produce a sign
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000015 character. In 1.6 and earlier, they never produced a sign,
16 and raised an error if the value of the long was too large
17 to fit in a Python int. In 2.0, they produced a sign if and
18 only if too large to fit in an int. This was inconsistent
19 across platforms (because the size of an int varies across
20 platforms), and inconsistent with hex() and oct(). Example:
21
22 >>> "%x" % -0x42L
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000023 '-42' # in 2.1
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000024 'ffffffbe' # in 2.0 and before, on 32-bit machines
25 >>> hex(-0x42L)
26 '-0x42L' # in all versions of Python
27
Tim Peters9940b802000-12-01 07:59:35 +000028 The behavior of %d formats for negative Python longs remains
29 the same as in 2.0 (although in 1.6 and before, they raised
30 an error if the long didn't fit in a Python int).
31
32 %u formats don't make sense for Python longs, but are allowed
33 and treated the same as %d in 2.1. In 2.0, a negative long
34 formatted via %u produced a sign if and only if too large to
35 fit in an int. In 1.6 and earlier, a negative long formatted
36 via %u raised an error if it was too big to fit in an int.
37
Guido van Rossum3661d392000-12-12 22:10:31 +000038- Dictionary objects have an odd new method, popitem(). This removes
39 an arbitrary item from the dictionary and returns it (in the form of
40 a (key, value) pair). This can be useful for algorithms that use a
41 dictionary as a bag of "to do" items and repeatedly need to pick one
42 item. Such algorithms normally end up running in quadratic time;
43 using popitem() they can usually be made to run in linear time.
44
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000045
46Standard library
47
48- The bisect module has new functions bisect_left, insort_left,
49 bisect_right and insort_right. The old names bisect and insort
50 are now aliases for bisect_right and insort_right. XXX_right
51 and XXX_left methods differ in what happens when the new element
52 compares equal to one or more elements already in the list: the
53 XXX_left methods insert to the left, the XXX_right methods to the
Tim Peters742bb6f2001-01-05 08:05:32 +000054 right. Code that doesn't care where equal elements end up should
55 continue to use the old, short names ("bisect" and "insort").
Tim Peters36cdad12000-12-29 02:06:45 +000056
57
Tim Petersd92dfe02000-12-12 01:18:41 +000058Windows changes
59
60- select module: By default under Windows, a select() call
61 can specify no more than 64 sockets. Python now boosts
62 this Microsoft default to 512. If you need even more than
63 that, see the MS docs (you'll need to #define FD_SETSIZE
64 and recompile Python from source).
65
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +000066
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +000067What's New in Python 2.0?
Fred Drake1a640502000-10-16 20:27:25 +000068=========================
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +000069
Guido van Rossum8ed602b2000-09-01 22:34:33 +000070Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.6. Older
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000071changes are in the file HISTORY. If you are making the jump directly
72from Python 1.5.2 to 2.0, make sure to read the section for 1.6 in the
73HISTORY file! Many important changes listed there.
Guido van Rossum61000331997-08-15 04:39:58 +000074
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000075Alternatively, a good overview of the changes between 1.5.2 and 2.0 is
76the document "What's New in Python 2.0" by Kuchling and Moshe Zadka:
77http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/new-python/.
Guido van Rossum1f83cce1997-10-06 21:04:35 +000078
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +000079--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)
Guido van Rossum437cfe81999-04-08 20:17:57 +000080
81======================================================================
82
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +000083What's new in 2.0 (since release candidate 1)?
84==============================================
85
86Standard library
87
88- The copy_reg module was modified to clarify its intended use: to
89 register pickle support for extension types, not for classes.
90 pickle() will raise a TypeError if it is passed a class.
91
92- Fixed a bug in gettext's "normalize and expand" code that prevented
93 it from finding an existing .mo file.
94
95- Restored support for HTTP/0.9 servers in httplib.
96
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +000097- The math module was changed to stop raising OverflowError in case of
98 underflow, and return 0 instead in underflow cases. Whether Python
99 used to raise OverflowError in case of underflow was platform-
100 dependent (it did when the platform math library set errno to ERANGE
101 on underflow).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000102
103- Fixed a bug in StringIO that occurred when the file position was not
104 at the end of the file and write() was called with enough data to
105 extend past the end of the file.
106
107- Fixed a bug that caused Tkinter error messages to get lost on
108 Windows. The bug was fixed by replacing direct use of
109 interp->result with Tcl_GetStringResult(interp).
110
111- Fixed bug in urllib2 that caused it to fail when it received an HTTP
112 redirect response.
113
114- Several changes were made to distutils: Some debugging code was
115 removed from util. Fixed the installer used when an external zip
116 program (like WinZip) is not found; the source code for this
117 installer is in Misc/distutils. check_lib() was modified to behave
118 more like AC_CHECK_LIB by add other_libraries() as a parameter. The
119 test for whether installed modules are on sys.path was changed to
120 use both normcase() and normpath().
121
Jeremy Hyltond867a2c2000-10-16 20:41:38 +0000122- Several minor bugs were fixed in the xml package (the minidom,
123 pulldom, expatreader, and saxutils modules).
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000124
125- The regression test driver (regrtest.py) behavior when invoked with
126 -l changed: It now reports a count of objects that are recognized as
127 garbage but not freed by the garbage collector.
128
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000129- The regression test for the math module was changed to test
130 exceptional behavior when the test is run in verbose mode. Python
131 cannot yet guarantee consistent exception behavior across platforms,
132 so the exception part of test_math is run only in verbose mode, and
133 may fail on your platform.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000134
135Internals
136
137- PyOS_CheckStack() has been disabled on Win64, where it caused
138 test_sre to fail.
139
140Build issues
141
142- Changed compiler flags, so that gcc is always invoked with -Wall and
143 -Wstrict-prototypes. Users compiling Python with GCC should see
144 exactly one warning, except if they have passed configure the
Tim Peters989b7b92000-10-16 20:24:53 +0000145 --with-pydebug flag. The expected warning is for getopt() in
Tim Petersadfb94f2000-10-16 20:51:33 +0000146 Modules/main.c. This warning will be fixed for Python 2.1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000147
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000148- Fixed configure to add -threads argument during linking on OSF1.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000149
150Tools and other miscellany
151
152- The compiler in Tools/compiler was updated to support the new
153 language features introduced in 2.0: extended print statement, list
154 comprehensions, and augmented assignments. The new compiler should
155 also be backwards compatible with Python 1.5.2; the compiler will
156 always generate code for the version of the interpreter it runs
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000157 under.
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000158
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000159What's new in 2.0 release candidate 1 (since beta 2)?
160=====================================================
161
Jeremy Hylton6040aaa2000-10-09 21:27:22 +0000162What is release candidate 1?
163
164We believe that release candidate 1 will fix all known bugs that we
165intend to fix for the 2.0 final release. This release should be a bit
166more stable than the previous betas. We would like to see even more
167widespread testing before the final release, so we are producing this
168release candidate. The final release will be exactly the same unless
169any show-stopping (or brown bag) bugs are found by testers of the
170release candidate.
171
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000172All the changes since the last beta release are bug fixes or changes
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000173to support building Python for specific platforms.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000174
175Core language, builtins, and interpreter
176
177- A bug that caused crashes when __coerce__ was used with augmented
178 assignment, e.g. +=, was fixed.
179
180- Raise ZeroDivisionError when raising zero to a negative number,
181 e.g. 0.0 ** -2.0. Note that math.pow is unrelated to the builtin
182 power operator and the result of math.pow(0.0, -2.0) will vary by
183 platform. On Linux, it raises a ValueError.
184
185- A bug in Unicode string interpolation was fixed that occasionally
186 caused errors with formats including "%%". For example, the
187 following expression "%% %s" % u"abc" no longer raises a TypeError.
188
189- Compilation of deeply nested expressions raises MemoryError instead
190 of SyntaxError, e.g. eval("[" * 50 + "]" * 50).
191
192- In 2.0b2 on Windows, the interpreter wrote .pyc files in text mode,
193 rendering them useless. They are now written in binary mode again.
194
195Standard library
196
197- Keyword arguments are now accepted for most pattern and match object
198 methods in SRE, the standard regular expression engine.
199
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000200- In SRE, fixed error with negative lookahead and lookbehind that
Jeremy Hylton32e20ff2000-10-09 19:48:11 +0000201 manifested itself as a runtime error in patterns like "(?<!abc)(def)".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000202
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000203- Several bugs in the Unicode handling and error handling in _tkinter
204 were fixed.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000205
206- Fix memory management errors in Merge() and Tkapp_Call() routines.
207
208- Several changes were made to cStringIO to make it compatible with
209 the file-like object interface and with StringIO. If operations are
210 performed on a closed object, an exception is raised. The truncate
211 method now accepts a position argument and readline accepts a size
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000212 argument.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000213
214- There were many changes made to the linuxaudiodev module and its
215 test suite; as a result, a short, unexpected audio sample should now
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000216 play when the regression test is run.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000217
218 Note that this module is named poorly, because it should work
219 correctly on any platform that supports the Open Sound System
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000220 (OSS).
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000221
222 The module now raises exceptions when errors occur instead of
223 crashing. It also defines the AFMT_A_LAW format (logarithmic A-law
224 audio) and defines a getptr() method that calls the
225 SNDCTL_DSP_GETxPTR ioctl defined in the OSS Programmer's Guide.
226
227- The library_version attribute, introduced in an earlier beta, was
228 removed because it can not be supported with early versions of the C
229 readline library, which provides no way to determine the version at
230 compile-time.
231
232- The binascii module is now enabled on Win64.
233
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000234- tokenize.py no longer suffers "recursion depth" errors when parsing
235 programs with very long string literals.
236
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000237Internals
238
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000239- Fixed several buffer overflow vulnerabilities in calculate_path(),
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000240 which is called when the interpreter starts up to determine where
241 the standard library is installed. These vulnerabilities affect all
242 previous versions of Python and can be exploited by setting very
243 long values for PYTHONHOME or argv[0]. The risk is greatest for a
244 setuid Python script, although use of the wrapper in
245 Misc/setuid-prog.c will eliminate the vulnerability.
246
247- Fixed garbage collection bugs in instance creation that were
248 triggered when errors occurred during initialization. The solution,
249 applied in cPickle and in PyInstance_New(), is to call
250 PyObject_GC_Init() after the initialization of the object's
251 container attributes is complete.
252
253- pyexpat adds definitions of PyModule_AddStringConstant and
254 PyModule_AddObject if the Python version is less than 2.0, which
255 provides compatibility with PyXML on Python 1.5.2.
256
257- If the platform has a bogus definition for LONG_BIT (the number of
258 bits in a long), an error will be reported at compile time.
259
260- Fix bugs in _PyTuple_Resize() which caused hard-to-interpret garbage
261 collection crashes and possibly other, unreported crashes.
262
263- Fixed a memory leak in _PyUnicode_Fini().
264
265Build issues
266
267- configure now accepts a --with-suffix option that specifies the
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000268 executable suffix. This is useful for builds on Cygwin and Mac OS
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000269 X, for example.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000270
271- The mmap.PAGESIZE constant is now initialized using sysconf when
272 possible, which eliminates a dependency on -lucb for Reliant UNIX.
273
274- The md5 file should now compile on all platforms.
275
276- The select module now compiles on platforms that do not define
277 POLLRDNORM and related constants.
278
279- Darwin (Mac OS X): Initial support for static builds on this
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000280 platform.
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000281
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000282- BeOS: A number of changes were made to the build and installation
283 process. ar-fake now operates on a directory of object files.
284 dl_export.h is gone, and its macros now appear on the mwcc command
285 line during build on PPC BeOS.
286
Jeremy Hyltond6e20232000-10-16 20:08:38 +0000287- Platform directory in lib/python2.0 is "plat-beos5" (or
Jeremy Hylton10921202000-10-09 18:34:12 +0000288 "plat-beos4", if building on BeOS 4.5), rather than "plat-beos".
Jeremy Hyltoned9e6442000-10-09 18:26:42 +0000289
290- Cygwin: Support for shared libraries, Tkinter, and sockets.
291
292- SunOS 4.1.4_JL: Fix test for directory existence in configure.
293
294Tools and other miscellany
295
296- Removed debugging prints from main used with freeze.
297
Tim Peters46446d62000-10-09 21:19:31 +0000298- IDLE auto-indent no longer crashes when it encounters Unicode
299 characters.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000300
301What's new in 2.0 beta 2 (since beta 1)?
302========================================
303
304Core language, builtins, and interpreter
305
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000306- Add support for unbounded ints in %d,i,u,x,X,o formats; for example
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000307 "%d" % 2L**64 == "18446744073709551616".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000308
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000309- Add -h and -V command line options to print the usage message and
310 Python version number and exit immediately.
311
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000312- eval() and exec accept Unicode objects as code parameters.
313
314- getattr() and setattr() now also accept Unicode objects for the
315 attribute name, which are converted to strings using the default
316 encoding before lookup.
317
318- Multiplication on string and Unicode now does proper bounds
319 checking; e.g. 'a' * 65536 * 65536 will raise ValueError, "repeated
320 string is too long."
321
322- Better error message when continue is found in try statement in a
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000323 loop.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000324
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000325
326Standard library and extensions
327
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000328- array: reverse() method of array now works. buffer_info() now does
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000329 argument checking; it still takes no arguments.
330
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000331- asyncore/asynchat: Included most recent version from Sam Rushing.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000332
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000333- cgi: Accept '&' or ';' as separator characters when parsing form data.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000334
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000335- CGIHTTPServer: Now works on Windows (and perhaps even Mac).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000336
337- ConfigParser: When reading the file, options spelled in upper case
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000338 letters are now correctly converted to lowercase.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000339
340- copy: Copy Unicode objects atomically.
341
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000342- cPickle: Fail gracefully when copy_reg can't be imported.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000343
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000344- cStringIO: Implemented readlines() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000345
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000346- dbm: Add get() and setdefault() methods to dbm object. Add constant
347 `library' to module that names the library used. Added doc strings
348 and method names to error messages. Uses configure to determine
349 which ndbm.h file to include; Berkeley DB's nbdm and GDBM's ndbm is
350 now available options.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000351
352- distutils: Update to version 0.9.3.
353
354- dl: Add several dl.RTLD_ constants.
355
356- fpectl: Now supported on FreeBSD.
357
358- gc: Add DEBUG_SAVEALL option. When enabled all garbage objects
359 found by the collector will be saved in gc.garbage. This is useful
360 for debugging a program that creates reference cycles.
361
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000362- httplib: Three changes: Restore support for set_debuglevel feature
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000363 of HTTP class. Do not close socket on zero-length response. Do not
364 crash when server sends invalid content-length header.
365
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000366- mailbox: Mailbox class conforms better to qmail specifications.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000367
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000368- marshal: When reading a short, sign-extend on platforms where shorts
369 are bigger than 16 bits. When reading a long, repair the unportable
370 sign extension that was being done for 64-bit machines. (It assumed
371 that signed right shift sign-extends.)
372
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000373- operator: Add contains(), invert(), __invert__() as aliases for
374 __contains__(), inv(), and __inv__() respectively.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000375
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000376- os: Add support for popen2() and popen3() on all platforms where
377 fork() exists. (popen4() is still in the works.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000378
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000379- os: (Windows only:) Add startfile() function that acts like double-
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000380 clicking on a file in Explorer (or passing the file name to the
381 DOS "start" command).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000382
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000383- os.path: (Windows, DOS:) Treat trailing colon correctly in
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000384 os.path.join. os.path.join("a:", "b") yields "a:b".
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000385
386- pickle: Now raises ValueError when an invalid pickle that contains
387 a non-string repr where a string repr was expected. This behavior
388 matches cPickle.
389
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000390- posixfile: Remove broken __del__() method.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000391
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000392- py_compile: support CR+LF line terminators in source file.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000393
394- readline: Does not immediately exit when ^C is hit when readline and
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000395 threads are configured. Adds definition of rl_library_version. (The
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000396 latter addition requires GNU readline 2.2 or later.)
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000397
398- rfc822: Domain literals returned by AddrlistClass method
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000399 getdomainliteral() are now properly wrapped in brackets.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000400
401- site: sys.setdefaultencoding() should only be called in case the
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000402 standard default encoding ("ascii") is changed. This saves quite a
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000403 few cycles during startup since the first call to
404 setdefaultencoding() will initialize the codec registry and the
405 encodings package.
406
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000407- socket: Support for size hint in readlines() method of object returned
408 by makefile().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000409
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000410- sre: Added experimental expand() method to match objects. Does not
Jeremy Hylton625915e2000-10-02 13:43:33 +0000411 use buffer interface on Unicode strings. Does not hang if group id
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000412 is followed by whitespace.
413
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000414- StringIO: Size hint in readlines() is now supported as documented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000415
416- struct: Check ranges for bytes and shorts.
417
418- urllib: Improved handling of win32 proxy settings. Fixed quote and
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000419 quote_plus functions so that the always encode a comma.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000420
421- Tkinter: Image objects are now guaranteed to have unique ids. Set
422 event.delta to zero if Tk version doesn't support mousewheel.
423 Removed some debugging prints.
424
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000425- UserList: now implements __contains__().
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000426
Fred Drake67233bc2000-09-26 16:40:27 +0000427- webbrowser: On Windows, use os.startfile() instead of os.popen(),
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000428 which works around a bug in Norton AntiVirus 2000 that leads directly
429 to a Blue Screen freeze.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000430
431- xml: New version detection code allows PyXML to override standard
432 XML package if PyXML version is greater than 0.6.1.
433
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000434- xml.dom: DOM level 1 support for basic XML. Includes xml.dom.minidom
435 (conventional DOM), and xml.dom.pulldom, which allows building the DOM
436 tree only for nodes which are sufficiently interesting to a specific
437 application. Does not provide the HTML-specific extensions. Still
438 undocumented.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000439
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000440- xml.sax: SAX 2 support for Python, including all the handler
441 interfaces needed to process XML 1.0 compliant XML. Some
442 documentation is already available.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000443
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000444- pyexpat: Renamed to xml.parsers.expat since this is part of the new,
445 packagized XML support.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000446
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000447
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000448C API
449
450- Add three new convenience functions for module initialization --
451 PyModule_AddObject(), PyModule_AddIntConstant(), and
452 PyModule_AddStringConstant().
453
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000454- Cleaned up definition of NULL in C source code; all definitions were
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000455 removed and add #error to Python.h if NULL isn't defined after
456 #include of stdio.h.
457
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000458- Py_PROTO() macros that were removed in 2.0b1 have been restored for
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000459 backwards compatibility (at the source level) with old extensions.
460
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000461- A wrapper API was added for signal() and sigaction(). Instead of
462 either function, always use PyOS_getsig() to get a signal handler
463 and PyOS_setsig() to set one. A new convenience typedef
464 PyOS_sighandler_t is defined for the type of signal handlers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000465
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000466- Add PyString_AsStringAndSize() function that provides access to the
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000467 internal data buffer and size of a string object -- or the default
468 encoded version of a Unicode object.
469
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000470- PyString_Size() and PyString_AsString() accept Unicode objects.
471
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000472- The standard header <limits.h> is now included by Python.h (if it
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000473 exists). INT_MAX and LONG_MAX will always be defined, even if
474 <limits.h> is not available.
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000475
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000476- PyFloat_FromString takes a second argument, pend, that was
477 effectively useless. It is now officially useless but preserved for
478 backwards compatibility. If the pend argument is not NULL, *pend is
479 set to NULL.
480
481- PyObject_GetAttr() and PyObject_SetAttr() now accept Unicode objects
482 for the attribute name. See note on getattr() above.
483
484- A few bug fixes to argument processing for Unicode.
485 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() now accepts "es#" and "es".
486 PyArg_Parse() special cases "s#" for Unicode objects; it returns a
487 pointer to the default encoded string data instead of to the raw
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000488 UTF-16.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000489
490- Py_BuildValue accepts B format (for bgen-generated code).
491
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000492
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000493Internals
494
495- On Unix, fix code for finding Python installation directory so that
496 it works when argv[0] is a relative path.
497
Andrew M. Kuchlinga1099be2000-12-15 01:16:43 +0000498- Added a true unicode_internal_encode() function and fixed the
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000499 unicode_internal_decode function() to support Unicode objects directly
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000500 rather than by generating a copy of the object.
501
Tim Peters482c0212000-09-26 06:33:09 +0000502- Several of the internal Unicode tables are much smaller now, and
503 the source code should be much friendlier to weaker compilers.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000504
Jeremy Hylton97693b02000-09-26 17:42:51 +0000505- In the garbage collector: Fixed bug in collection of tuples. Fixed
506 bug that caused some instances to be removed from the container set
507 while they were still live. Fixed parsing in gc.set_debug() for
508 platforms where sizeof(long) > sizeof(int).
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000509
510- Fixed refcount problem in instance deallocation that only occurred
511 when Py_REF_DEBUG was defined and Py_TRACE_REFS was not.
512
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000513- On Windows, getpythonregpath is now protected against null data in
514 registry key.
515
516- On Unix, create .pyc/.pyo files with O_EXCL flag to avoid a race
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000517 condition.
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000518
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000519
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000520Build and platform-specific issues
521
522- Better support of GNU Pth via --with-pth configure option.
523
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000524- Python/C API now properly exposed to dynamically-loaded extension
525 modules on Reliant UNIX.
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000526
527- Changes for the benefit of SunOS 4.1.4 (really!). mmapmodule.c:
528 Don't define MS_SYNC to be zero when it is undefined. Added missing
529 prototypes in posixmodule.c.
530
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000531- Improved support for HP-UX build. Threads should now be correctly
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000532 configured (on HP-UX 10.20 and 11.00).
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000533
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000534- Fix largefile support on older NetBSD systems and OpenBSD by adding
535 define for TELL64.
536
537
538Tools and other miscellany
539
540- ftpmirror: Call to main() is wrapped in if __name__ == "__main__".
541
542- freeze: The modulefinder now works with 2.0 opcodes.
543
Tim Petersa3a3a032000-11-30 05:22:44 +0000544- IDLE:
Jeremy Hyltonfa2e2c12000-09-26 16:31:30 +0000545 Move hackery of sys.argv until after the Tk instance has been
546 created, which allows the application-specific Tkinter
547 initialization to be executed if present; also pass an explicit
548 className parameter to the Tk() constructor.
Fred Drake64bb3802000-09-26 16:21:35 +0000549
Jeremy Hylton1b618592000-09-26 05:32:36 +0000550
551What's new in 2.0 beta 1?
552=========================
553
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000554Source Incompatibilities
555------------------------
556
557None. Note that 1.6 introduced several incompatibilities with 1.5.2,
558such as single-argument append(), connect() and bind(), and changes to
559str(long) and repr(float).
560
561
562Binary Incompatibilities
563------------------------
564
565- Third party extensions built for Python 1.5.x or 1.6 cannot be used
566with Python 2.0; these extensions will have to be rebuilt for Python
5672.0.
568
569- On Windows, attempting to import a third party extension built for
570Python 1.5.x or 1.6 results in an immediate crash; there's not much we
571can do about this. Check your PYTHONPATH environment variable!
572
573- Python bytecode files (*.pyc and *.pyo) are not compatible between
574releases.
575
576
577Overview of Changes Since 1.6
578-----------------------------
579
580There are many new modules (including brand new XML support through
581the xml package, and i18n support through the gettext module); a list
582of all new modules is included below. Lots of bugs have been fixed.
583
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000584The process for making major new changes to the language has changed
585since Python 1.6. Enhancements must now be documented by a Python
586Enhancement Proposal (PEP) before they can be accepted.
587
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000588There are several important syntax enhancements, described in more
589detail below:
590
591 - Augmented assignment, e.g. x += 1
592
593 - List comprehensions, e.g. [x**2 for x in range(10)]
594
595 - Extended import statement, e.g. import Module as Name
596
597 - Extended print statement, e.g. print >> file, "Hello"
598
599Other important changes:
600
601 - Optional collection of cyclical garbage
602
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000603Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP)
604---------------------------------
605
606PEP stands for Python Enhancement Proposal. A PEP is a design
607document providing information to the Python community, or describing
608a new feature for Python. The PEP should provide a concise technical
609specification of the feature and a rationale for the feature.
610
611We intend PEPs to be the primary mechanisms for proposing new
612features, for collecting community input on an issue, and for
613documenting the design decisions that have gone into Python. The PEP
614author is responsible for building consensus within the community and
615documenting dissenting opinions.
616
617The PEPs are available at http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000618
619Augmented Assignment
620--------------------
621
622This must have been the most-requested feature of the past years!
623Eleven new assignment operators were added:
624
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000625 += -= *= /= %= **= <<= >>= &= ^= |=
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000626
627For example,
628
629 A += B
630
631is similar to
632
633 A = A + B
634
635except that A is evaluated only once (relevant when A is something
636like dict[index].attr).
637
638However, if A is a mutable object, A may be modified in place. Thus,
639if A is a number or a string, A += B has the same effect as A = A+B
640(except A is only evaluated once); but if a is a list, A += B has the
641same effect as A.extend(B)!
642
643Classes and built-in object types can override the new operators in
644order to implement the in-place behavior; the not-in-place behavior is
645used automatically as a fallback when an object doesn't implement the
646in-place behavior. For classes, the method name is derived from the
647method name for the corresponding not-in-place operator by inserting
648an 'i' in front of the name, e.g. __iadd__ implements in-place
649__add__.
650
651Augmented assignment was implemented by Thomas Wouters.
652
653
654List Comprehensions
655-------------------
656
657This is a flexible new notation for lists whose elements are computed
658from another list (or lists). The simplest form is:
659
660 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence>]
661
Guido van Rossum56db0952000-09-06 23:34:25 +0000662For example, [i**2 for i in range(4)] yields the list [0, 1, 4, 9].
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000663This is more efficient than a for loop with a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000664
665You can also add a condition:
666
667 [<expression> for <variable> in <sequence> if <condition>]
668
669For example, [w for w in words if w == w.lower()] would yield the list
670of words that contain no uppercase characters. This is more efficient
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000671than a for loop with an if statement and a list.append() call.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000672
673You can also have nested for loops and more than one 'if' clause. For
674example, here's a function that flattens a sequence of sequences::
675
676 def flatten(seq):
677 return [x for subseq in seq for x in subseq]
678
679 flatten([[0], [1,2,3], [4,5], [6,7,8,9], []])
680
681This prints
682
683 [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
684
685List comprehensions originated as a patch set from Greg Ewing; Skip
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000686Montanaro and Thomas Wouters also contributed. Described by PEP 202.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000687
688
689Extended Import Statement
690-------------------------
691
692Many people have asked for a way to import a module under a different
693name. This can be accomplished like this:
694
695 import foo
696 bar = foo
697 del foo
698
699but this common idiom gets old quickly. A simple extension of the
700import statement now allows this to be written as follows:
701
702 import foo as bar
703
704There's also a variant for 'from ... import':
705
706 from foo import bar as spam
707
708This also works with packages; e.g. you can write this:
709
710 import test.regrtest as regrtest
711
712Note that 'as' is not a new keyword -- it is recognized only in this
713context (this is only possible because the syntax for the import
714statement doesn't involve expressions).
715
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000716Implemented by Thomas Wouters. Described by PEP 221.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000717
718
719Extended Print Statement
720------------------------
721
722Easily the most controversial new feature, this extension to the print
723statement adds an option to make the output go to a different file
724than the default sys.stdout.
725
726For example, to write an error message to sys.stderr, you can now
727write:
728
729 print >> sys.stderr, "Error: bad dog!"
730
731As a special feature, if the expression used to indicate the file
Fred Drake45888ff2000-09-29 17:09:11 +0000732evaluates to None, the current value of sys.stdout is used. Thus:
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000733
734 print >> None, "Hello world"
735
736is equivalent to
737
738 print "Hello world"
739
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000740Design and implementation by Barry Warsaw. Described by PEP 214.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000741
742
743Optional Collection of Cyclical Garbage
744---------------------------------------
745
746Python is now equipped with a garbage collector that can hunt down
747cyclical references between Python objects. It's no replacement for
748reference counting; in fact, it depends on the reference counts being
749correct, and decides that a set of objects belong to a cycle if all
750their reference counts can be accounted for from their references to
751each other. This devious scheme was first proposed by Eric Tiedemann,
752and brought to implementation by Neil Schemenauer.
753
754There's a module "gc" that lets you control some parameters of the
755garbage collection. There's also an option to the configure script
756that lets you enable or disable the garbage collection. In 2.0b1,
757it's on by default, so that we (hopefully) can collect decent user
758experience with this new feature. There are some questions about its
Fred Drake9f11cf82000-09-29 17:54:40 +0000759performance. If it proves to be too much of a problem, we'll turn it
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000760off by default in the final 2.0 release.
761
762
763Smaller Changes
764---------------
765
766A new function zip() was added. zip(seq1, seq2, ...) is equivalent to
767map(None, seq1, seq2, ...) when the sequences have the same length;
768i.e. zip([1,2,3], [10,20,30]) returns [(1,10), (2,20), (3,30)]. When
769the lists are not all the same length, the shortest list wins:
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000770zip([1,2,3], [10,20]) returns [(1,10), (2,20)]. See PEP 201.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000771
772sys.version_info is a tuple (major, minor, micro, level, serial).
773
774Dictionaries have an odd new method, setdefault(key, default).
775dict.setdefault(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists; if not,
776it sets dict[key] to default and returns that value. Thus:
777
778 dict.setdefault(key, []).append(item)
779
780does the same work as this common idiom:
781
782 if not dict.has_key(key):
783 dict[key] = []
784 dict[key].append(item)
785
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000786There are two new variants of SyntaxError that are raised for
787indentation-related errors: IndentationError and TabError.
788
789Changed \x to consume exactly two hex digits; see PEP 223. Added \U
790escape that consumes exactly eight hex digits.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000791
792The limits on the size of expressions and file in Python source code
793have been raised from 2**16 to 2**32. Previous versions of Python
794were limited because the maximum argument size the Python VM accepted
795was 2**16. This limited the size of object constructor expressions,
796e.g. [1,2,3] or {'a':1, 'b':2}, and the size of source files. This
797limit was raised thanks to a patch by Charles Waldman that effectively
798fixes the problem. It is now much more likely that you will be
799limited by available memory than by an arbitrary limit in Python.
800
801The interpreter's maximum recursion depth can be modified by Python
802programs using sys.getrecursionlimit and sys.setrecursionlimit. This
803limit is the maximum number of recursive calls that can be made by
804Python code. The limit exists to prevent infinite recursion from
805overflowing the C stack and causing a core dump. The default value is
8061000. The maximum safe value for a particular platform can be found
807by running Misc/find_recursionlimit.py.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000808
809New Modules and Packages
810------------------------
811
812atexit - for registering functions to be called when Python exits.
813
814imputil - Greg Stein's alternative API for writing custom import
815hooks.
816
817pyexpat - an interface to the Expat XML parser, contributed by Paul
818Prescod.
819
820xml - a new package with XML support code organized (so far) in three
821subpackages: xml.dom, xml.sax, and xml.parsers. Describing these
822would fill a volume. There's a special feature whereby a
823user-installed package named _xmlplus overrides the standard
824xmlpackage; this is intended to give the XML SIG a hook to distribute
825backwards-compatible updates to the standard xml package.
826
827webbrowser - a platform-independent API to launch a web browser.
828
829
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000830Changed Modules
831---------------
832
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000833array -- new methods for array objects: count, extend, index, pop, and
834remove
835
836binascii -- new functions b2a_hex and a2b_hex that convert between
837binary data and its hex representation
838
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000839calendar -- Many new functions that support features including control
840over which day of the week is the first day, returning strings instead
841of printing them. Also new symbolic constants for days of week,
842e.g. MONDAY, ..., SUNDAY.
843
844cgi -- FieldStorage objects have a getvalue method that works like a
845dictionary's get method and returns the value attribute of the object.
846
847ConfigParser -- The parser object has new methods has_option,
848remove_section, remove_option, set, and write. They allow the module
849to be used for writing config files as well as reading them.
850
851ftplib -- ntransfercmd(), transfercmd(), and retrbinary() all now
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000852optionally support the RFC 959 REST command.
853
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000854gzip -- readline and readlines now accept optional size arguments
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000855
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000856httplib -- New interfaces and support for HTTP/1.1 by Greg Stein. See
857the module doc strings for details.
Guido van Rossum830ca2a2000-09-05 15:34:16 +0000858
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000859locale -- implement getdefaultlocale for Win32 and Macintosh
860
861marshal -- no longer dumps core when marshaling deeply nested or
862recursive data structures
863
864os -- new functions isatty, seteuid, setegid, setreuid, setregid
865
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000866os/popen2 -- popen2/popen3/popen4 support under Windows. popen2/popen3
867support under Unix.
868
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000869os/pty -- support for openpty and forkpty
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000870
871os.path -- fix semantics of os.path.commonprefix
872
873smtplib -- support for sending very long messages
874
875socket -- new function getfqdn()
876
877readline -- new functions to read, write and truncate history files.
878The readline section of the library reference manual contains an
879example.
880
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000881select -- add interface to poll system call
882
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000883shutil -- new copyfileobj function
884
885SimpleHTTPServer, CGIHTTPServer -- Fix problems with buffering in the
886HTTP server.
887
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000888Tkinter -- optimization of function flatten
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000889
890urllib -- scans environment variables for proxy configuration,
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000891e.g. http_proxy.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000892
893whichdb -- recognizes dumbdbm format
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000894
895
896Obsolete Modules
897----------------
898
899None. However note that 1.6 made a whole slew of modules obsolete:
900stdwin, soundex, cml, cmpcache, dircache, dump, find, grep, packmail,
901poly, zmod, strop, util, whatsound.
902
903
904Changed, New, Obsolete Tools
905----------------------------
906
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000907None.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000908
909
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000910C-level Changes
911---------------
912
913Several cleanup jobs were carried out throughout the source code.
914
915All C code was converted to ANSI C; we got rid of all uses of the
916Py_PROTO() macro, which makes the header files a lot more readable.
917
918Most of the portability hacks were moved to a new header file,
919pyport.h; several other new header files were added and some old
920header files were removed, in an attempt to create a more rational set
921of header files. (Few of these ever need to be included explicitly;
922they are all included by Python.h.)
923
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000924Trent Mick ensured portability to 64-bit platforms, under both Linux
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000925and Win64, especially for the new Intel Itanium processor. Mick also
926added large file support for Linux64 and Win64.
Guido van Rossumf2ffce02000-09-05 04:38:34 +0000927
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000928The C APIs to return an object's size have been update to consistently
929use the form PyXXX_Size, e.g. PySequence_Size and PyDict_Size. In
930previous versions, the abstract interfaces used PyXXX_Length and the
931concrete interfaces used PyXXX_Size. The old names,
932e.g. PyObject_Length, are still available for backwards compatibility
933at the API level, but are deprecated.
934
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000935The PyOS_CheckStack function has been implemented on Windows by
936Fredrik Lundh. It prevents Python from failing with a stack overflow
937on Windows.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000938
939The GC changes resulted in creation of two new slots on object,
940tp_traverse and tp_clear. The augmented assignment changes result in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000941the creation of a new slot for each in-place operator.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000942
943The GC API creates new requirements for container types implemented in
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000944C extension modules. See Include/objimpl.h for details.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000945
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000946PyErr_Format has been updated to automatically calculate the size of
947the buffer needed to hold the formatted result string. This change
948prevents crashes caused by programmer error.
Jeremy Hyltonbdebd542000-09-05 18:28:54 +0000949
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000950New C API calls: PyObject_AsFileDescriptor, PyErr_WriteUnraisable.
Guido van Rossume905e952000-09-05 12:42:46 +0000951
Jeremy Hylton24c3d602000-09-05 19:36:26 +0000952PyRun_AnyFileEx, PyRun_SimpleFileEx, PyRun_FileEx -- New functions
953that are the same as their non-Ex counterparts except they take an
954extra flag argument that tells them to close the file when done.
955
956XXX There were other API changes that should be fleshed out here.
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +0000957
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000958
959Windows Changes
960---------------
961
962New popen2/popen3/peopen4 in os module (see Changed Modules above).
963
964os.popen is much more usable on Windows 95 and 98. See Microsoft
965Knowledge Base article Q150956. The Win9x workaround described there
966is implemented by the new w9xpopen.exe helper in the root of your
967Python installation. Note that Python uses this internally; it is not
968a standalone program.
969
970Administrator privileges are no longer required to install Python
971on Windows NT or Windows 2000. If you have administrator privileges,
972Python's registry info will be written under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
973Otherwise the installer backs off to writing Python's registry info
Guido van Rossum4338a282000-09-06 13:02:08 +0000974under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. The latter is sufficient for all "normal"
Tim Peters8b092332000-09-05 20:15:25 +0000975uses of Python, but will prevent some advanced uses from working
976(for example, running a Python script as an NT service, or possibly
977from CGI).
978
979[This was new in 1.6] The installer no longer runs a separate Tcl/Tk
980installer; instead, it installs the needed Tcl/Tk files directly in the
981Python directory. If you already have a Tcl/Tk installation, this
982wastes some disk space (about 4 Megs) but avoids problems with
983conflicting Tcl/Tk installations, and makes it much easier for Python
984to ensure that Tcl/Tk can find all its files.
985
986[This was new in 1.6] The Windows installer now installs by default in
987\Python20\ on the default volume, instead of \Program Files\Python-2.0\.
988
Guido van Rossumf62ed9c2000-09-26 11:16:10 +0000989
990Updates to the changes between 1.5.2 and 1.6
991--------------------------------------------
992
993The 1.6 NEWS file can't be changed after the release is done, so here
994is some late-breaking news:
995
996New APIs in locale.py: normalize(), getdefaultlocale(), resetlocale(),
997and changes to getlocale() and setlocale().
998
999The new module is now enabled per default.
1000
1001It is not true that the encodings codecs cannot be used for normal
1002strings: the string.encode() (which is also present on 8-bit strings
1003!) allows using them for 8-bit strings too, e.g. to convert files from
1004cp1252 (Windows) to latin-1 or vice-versa.
1005
1006Japanese codecs are available from Tamito KAJIYAMA:
1007http://pseudo.grad.sccs.chukyo-u.ac.jp/~kajiyama/python/
1008
1009
Guido van Rossumab9d6f01998-08-10 22:01:13 +00001010======================================================================