blob: d675706b54ca5b34a6901323868cb7221c8cb08c [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000015- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
16
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000017- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
18 and long longs.
19
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000020- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
21 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
22 message in this case.
23
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000024- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
25 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
26 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
27 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
28 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
29
30- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
31
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000032- Speed up some Unicode operations.
33
34- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
35
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000036- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000037 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
38
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000039- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
40
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000041- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
42 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
43
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000044- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
45
46- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
47
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000048- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
49 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
50 was empty.
51
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000052- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
53 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
54
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000055- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000056 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000057
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000058- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
59 codes.
60
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000061- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
62 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
63 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
64
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000065- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
66 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
67
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000068- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000069 (fixes bug #1119418).
70
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000071- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
72
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000073- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
74 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
75
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000076- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
77 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
78 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
79
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000080- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
81
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000082- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
83 reference counts in some error exit cases.
84
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000085- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
86 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
87 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
88 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
89 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
90 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
91 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
92 realloc.
93
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000094- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
95 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
96
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000097- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
98 like their int counterparts.
99
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000100- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
101 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
102 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
103 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
104 for a longer write-up of the problem).
105
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000106- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
107 serializing floats.
108
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000109- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
110 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
111 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
112
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000113- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
114 278.
115
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000116- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
117 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
118 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
119 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000120 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000121 PyNumber_*().
122 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
123
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000124- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
125 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
126 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
127 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
128
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000129- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
130 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
131 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
132 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
133 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
134
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000135- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
136 disabled caused a crash.
137
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000138- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
139 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
140
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000141- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000142 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
143
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000144- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
145
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000146- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000147 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
148 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
149 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000150
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000151- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
152
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000153- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
154 returning None.
155
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000156- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000157 ('\') with a specific error message.
158
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000159- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
160
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000161- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
162 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
163
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000164- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000165 an ferror() call.
166
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000167- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
168 list.sort().
169
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000170- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
171 (2+3) --> (5).
172
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000173- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
174
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000175- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
176 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000177
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000178- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
179 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
180 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
181
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000182- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
183 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
184 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
185
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000186Extension Modules
187-----------------
188
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000189- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
190 problem on AIX.
191
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000192- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
193
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000194- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
195
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000196- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
197
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000198- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
199 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
200
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000201- Get bsddb module to build with BSD DB version 3.2
202
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000203- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
204 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
205
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000206- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
207
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000208- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
209 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
210
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000211- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
212 returns in cStringIO.c.
213
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000214- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
215 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
216
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000217- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
218
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000219- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
220
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000221- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
222 the file system encoding.
223
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000224- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
225 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000226
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000227- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
228
229- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000230 line without newlines.
231
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000232- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
233 on Windows.
234
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000235- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000236 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
237
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000238- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
239 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
240 for large or negative values.
241
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000242- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000243 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000244
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000245- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
246
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000247- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
248 if available on the platform.
249
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000250- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
251 available on the platform.
252
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000253- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
254 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
255
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000256- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
257
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000258- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
259 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
260 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
261
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000262- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
263
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000264- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
265 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
266
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000267- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000268 file size.
269
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000270- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
271
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000272- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
273 {remove_history,replace_history}
274
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000275- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
276 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000277
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000278- stat_float_times is now True.
279
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000280- array.array objects are now picklable.
281
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000282- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
283 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
284
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000285- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
286 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
287 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
288
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000289- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
290 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000291
292Library
293-------
294
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000295- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
296 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
297 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
298
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000299- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
300
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000301- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
302
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000303- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
304 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
305 illegal argument)
306
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000307- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
308 is an error in the format string.
309
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000310- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
311
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000312- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000313 "parent" argument.
314
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000315- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
316 for padding.
317
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000318- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
319 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
320
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000321- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
322 to get the correct encoding.
323
324- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
325 languages.
326
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000327- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
328
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000329- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
330
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000331- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
332
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000333- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
334 functionality.
335
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000336- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
337
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000338- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
339 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
340
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000341- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
342 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
343 match the Content-Length header.
344
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000345- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
346
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000347- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
348 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000349 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000350
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000351- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
352
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000353- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
354
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000355- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
356 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
357
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000358- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
359 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
360 Tkdnd.
361
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000362- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
363 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
364
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000365- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
366 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
367
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000368- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000369 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
370
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000371- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
372 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
373
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000374- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
375 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
376
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000377- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000378 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000379
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000380- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
381
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000382- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
383 error messages.
384
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000385- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
386
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000387- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
388 Bug #1224621.
389
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000390- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
391 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
392 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
393 terminates by raising StopIteration.
394
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000395- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
396
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000397- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
398 component of the path.
399
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000400- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
401 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
402 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
403 class at all.
404
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000405- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
406 files to PyPI.
407
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000408- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
409 them to PyPI.
410
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000411- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
412 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
413 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
414 work as expected.
415
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000416- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
417 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
418
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000419- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000420 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
421
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000422- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
423
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000424- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
425 to build.
426
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000427- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
428 symbolic links on Windows.
429
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000430- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000431 profile.py if available.
432
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000433- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
434
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000435- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
436 in LWPCookieJar.
437
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000438- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
439
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000440- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
441
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000442- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
443
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000444- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
445
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000446- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
447
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000448- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
449
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000450- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
451
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000452- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
453
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000454- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
455 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
456 be exploited in various ways.
457
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000458- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
459 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
460
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000461- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
462 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
463
Andrew M. Kuchling427aedb2005-12-04 17:13:12 +0000464- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000465 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
466
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000467- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
468
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000469- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
470
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000471- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
472
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000473- Enhancements to the csv module:
474
475 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000476 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000477 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000478 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
479 reporting.
480 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
481 dictates.
482 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000483 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000484 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000485 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
486 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000487 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
488 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000489 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000490 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
491 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
492 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
493 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
494 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
495 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
496 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
497 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
498 without first creating a dialect class.
499 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
500 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
501 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000502 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000503 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
504 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000505 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
506 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
507 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
508 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000509 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
510 This has been fixed.
511
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000512- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
513 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
514 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
515 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
516
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000517- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
518
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000519- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
520 (Bug #951915).
521
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000522- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
523 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
524 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000525 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000526
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000527- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
528
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000529- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
530 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
531
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000532- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
533
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000534- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
535
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000536- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
537
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000538- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
539
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000540- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
541
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000542- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
543 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
544 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
545
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000546- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000547 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000548
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000549- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
550 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
551 tokenizer with very long source lines.
552
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000553- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
554 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
555
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000556- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
557 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000558
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000559- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
560 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
561
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000562- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
563 correctly.
564
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000565- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
566 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
567 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
568 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
569 between two lines.
570
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000571- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
572 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
573 handlers.
574
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000575- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000576 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
577 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000578
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000579- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
580 considering it exactly like a '*'.
581
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000582- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
583 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000584
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000585- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
586
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000587Build
588-----
589
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000590- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
591 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
592
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000593- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
594 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
595
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000596- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
597 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
598 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000599 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000600
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000601- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
602 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
603 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
604
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000605- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
606
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000607- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
608 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
609
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000610- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
611 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
612 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
613 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
614 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
615 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
616 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
617 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
618
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000619- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
620 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
621 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
622 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
623
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000624
625C API
626-----
627
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000628- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
629
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000630- Removed PyRange_New().
631
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000632- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
633 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
634 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
635 mappings.
636
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000637
638Tests
639-----
640
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000641- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000642
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000643- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
644 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
645
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000646
647Documentation
648-------------
649
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000650- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
651
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000652- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
653
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000654- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
655
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000656- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
657
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000658- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
659
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000660- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
661
662- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
663
664- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
665
666- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
667
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000668- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
669 Closes bug #1166582.
670
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000671- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
672 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
673 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
674
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000675Mac
676---
677
678
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000679New platforms
680-------------
681
682- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
683
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000684
685Tools/Demos
686-----------
687
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000688- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
689 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
690 source files that need an encoding declaration.
691 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
692
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000693- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
694
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000695- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000696
697
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000698What's New in Python 2.4 final?
699===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000700
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000701*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000702
703Core and builtins
704-----------------
705
706- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
707 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
708 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
709
710
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000711What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
712==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000713
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000714*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000715
716Core and builtins
717-----------------
718
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000719- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
720 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
721 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
722
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000723
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000724Library
725-------
726
727- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
728 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
729 raised is re-raised.
730
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000731- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
732 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
733
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000734- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
735 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
736 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
737 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
738 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
739 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
740 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
741 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
742 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
743 by the slice are recomputed now.
744
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000745- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000746
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000747Build
748-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000749
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000750- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
751 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
752 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000753
754C API
755-----
756
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000757- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
758
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000759
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000760What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
761================================
762
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000763*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000764
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000765License
766-------
767
768The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
769is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
770changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
771Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
772intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
773durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
774the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
775License::
776
777 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
778
779says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
780to Python 2.1.1.
781
782The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
783License Version 2.
784
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000785Core and builtins
786-----------------
787
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000788- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
789 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
790 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
791 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
792 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
793 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
794 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000795 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000796 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
797 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
798
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000799- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000800
801Extension Modules
802-----------------
803
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000804- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
805 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
806 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
807 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000808
809Library
810-------
811
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000812- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
813 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
814 returned.
815
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000816- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
817
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000818- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
819 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
820
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000821- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
822
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000823- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
824 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000825
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000826- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
827
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000828- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
829
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000830- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000831 the source code is updated and reloaded.
832
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000833Build
834-----
835
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000836- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000837
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000838What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
839================================
840
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000841*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000842
843Core and builtins
844-----------------
845
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000846- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000847 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
848
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000849- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
850 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
851 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
852 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
853
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000854- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
855 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
856
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000857- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
858 constant.
859
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000860- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
861 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
862 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
863 large), and to anomalies such as
864 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
865 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
866 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
867 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000868
869Extension modules
870-----------------
871
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000872- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
873 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000874 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
875 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
876 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000877
878Library
879-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000880
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000881- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000882 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000883 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
884 --swig-cpp.
885
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000886- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
887 it is set.
888
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000889- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000890
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000891- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
892 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
893 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
894 Closes bug #1039270.
895
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000896- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000897
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000898 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000899 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
900 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
901 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
902 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
903 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
904 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
905 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
906 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
907 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
908 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
909 + Updates to documentation.
910
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000911- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
912 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
913 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
914 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
915
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000916- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000917
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000918- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
919 applications should use the getmember function.
920
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000921- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
922
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000923- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
924 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
925 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
926 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
927 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
928 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
929 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
930 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
931 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
932
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000933- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
934 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000935 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000936
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000937- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
938 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
939 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
940 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
941 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
942 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
943 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
944 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000945
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000946- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
947 the new public features (of which there are many).
948
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000949- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000950 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
951 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
952 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
953 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000954 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000955
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000956- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
957
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000958- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
959 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
960 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
961 options.
962
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000963- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
964 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
965 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
966 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
967 conditions under which non-string values work.
968
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000969Build
970-----
971
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000972- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
973 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
974 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
975
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000976- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
977 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
978 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
979 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
980 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000981
982C API
983-----
984
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000985- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
986 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
987
988- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
989
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000990- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
991 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
992 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
993 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
994 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
995 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
996 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
997 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
998 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
999
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001000- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1001
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001002- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1003 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1004 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001005
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001006Tests
1007-----
1008
1009- test__locale ported to unittest
1010
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001011Mac
1012---
1013
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001014- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1015 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1016 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001017
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001018Tools/Demos
1019-----------
1020
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001021- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1022 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1023 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1024 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1025 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001026
1027
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001028What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1029=================================
1030
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001031*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001032
1033Core and builtins
1034-----------------
1035
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001036- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001037 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1038
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001039- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1040 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1041 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1042 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1043 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1044 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1045 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1046 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001047 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1048 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1049 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1050 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1051 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001052
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001053- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1054 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1055 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1056 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1057 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1058
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001059- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1060
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001061- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1062 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1063
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001064- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1065 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1066 modified the list.
1067
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001068- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1069 functions is now writable.
1070
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001071- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1072 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1073 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1074 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1075
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001076- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1077 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1078 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1079 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1080 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001081
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001082- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1083 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1084
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001085Extension modules
1086-----------------
1087
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001088- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1089
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001090- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1091 data.
1092
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001093- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1094 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1095 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1096 supposed to have been truncated away.
1097
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001098- Added socket.socketpair().
1099
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001100- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1101 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1102
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001103- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001104 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1105
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001106Library
1107-------
1108
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001109- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001110 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001111
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001112- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1113 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1114
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001115- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1116 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1117
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001118- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1119
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001120- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1121 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001122
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001123- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1124 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1125
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001126- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1127
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001128- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1129
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001130- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1131
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001132- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1133 Percivall.
1134
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001135- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1136 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1137
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001138- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1139 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1140 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001141 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001142
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001143- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1144 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1145 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1146 and exponent.
1147
1148- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1149
1150- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001151 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001152 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1153
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001154- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1155 to the readline module.
1156
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001157- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001158 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1159 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001160
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001161- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1162 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1163 contains symlinks.
1164
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001165- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1166 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1167
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001168- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1169 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1170 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1171
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001172- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1173 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1174 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1175 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1176 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1177 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1178 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1179 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1180 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1181 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1182 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1183 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1184 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1185
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001186- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1187
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001188Tools/Demos
1189-----------
1190
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001191- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1192 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1193
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001194- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1195
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001196Build
1197-----
1198
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001199- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1200 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1201 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1202 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1203 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1204 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1205 plans to do so.
1206
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001207- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1208 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1209
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001210- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1211 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1212
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001213- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1214 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1215
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001216- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1217 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1218
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001219- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1220 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1221
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001222C API
1223-----
1224
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001225..
1226
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001227Documentation
1228-------------
1229
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001230- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1231 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1232
1233- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1234 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1235 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001236
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001237New platforms
1238-------------
1239
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001240- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1241
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001242Tests
1243-----
1244
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001245..
1246
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001247Windows
1248-------
1249
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001250- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1251 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1252 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1253 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1254 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1255 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1256 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1257 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1258 the problem.
1259
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001260Mac
1261---
1262
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001263..
1264
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001265
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001266What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1267=================================
1268
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001269*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001270
1271Core and builtins
1272-----------------
1273
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001274- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1275 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1276 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1277 sensitive code.
1278
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001279- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001280 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001281
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001282 @staticmethod
1283 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001284
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001285 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001286
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001287- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1288 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1289 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1290 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1291 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1292 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1293 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1294 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1295 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1296 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1297 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1298
1299 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1300 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1301 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1302 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1303 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1304 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1305 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1306
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001307- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1308 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1309
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001310- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001311 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001312
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001313- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001314 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001315 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1316
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001317- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001318 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1319 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1320
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001321- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1322 types that support garbage collection.
1323
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001324- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1325
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001326- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1327 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1328 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1329 Jython.
1330
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001331- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1332
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001333- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1334 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1335
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001336- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1337 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1338 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001339
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001340- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1341 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1342 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1343
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001344Extension modules
1345-----------------
1346
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001347- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1348
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001349Library
1350-------
1351
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001352- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1353 TIS-620
1354
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001355- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1356 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1357 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1358 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1359 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1360 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1361 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1362 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1363 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1364 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1365
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001366- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1367
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001368- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1369 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1370 same as when the argument is omitted).
1371 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1372
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001373- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1374
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001375- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1376 schemes are offered.
1377
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001378- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1379
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001380- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1381 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1382 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1383
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001384- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1385
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001386- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1387 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1388
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001389- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1390 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1391 when dummy_threading is being used.
1392
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001393- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1394 from a tarfile.
1395
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001396- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001397 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001398
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001399- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1400 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1401 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1402 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1403
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001404- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1405 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1406
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001407- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1408 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1409 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1410 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1411 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1412 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1413 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1414 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1415 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1416 by some other method in progress).
1417
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001418- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1419 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1420 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001421
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001422- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1423
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001424- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1425 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1426 AM Kuchling.
1427
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001428- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1429 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1430 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1431
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001432- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1433 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1434 instead of unsigned.
1435
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001436- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001437 no longer part of the public API.
1438
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001439- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1440 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1441 string methods of the same name).
1442
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001443- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001444 SF patch 945642.
1445
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001446- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1447
1448 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1449
1450 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1451 DocTestSuites.
1452
1453- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1454 that provide thread-local data.
1455
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001456- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1457 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1458
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001459- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1460
1461- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1462 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1463 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1464
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001465- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1466
1467 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1468 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1469 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001470
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001471 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1472 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1473 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1474 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1475
1476 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1477 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1478
1479 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1480 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1481 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1482 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1483
1484 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1485 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1486 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1487 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1488 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1489
1490 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1491 wrapping help output.
1492
1493 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1494 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1495 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001496
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001497C API
1498-----
1499
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001500- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1501 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1502 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1503 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1504 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1505 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1506 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1507 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1508 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1509 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1510 its visible semantics have not changed.
1511
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001512- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1513 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1514
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001515Documentation
1516-------------
1517
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001518- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001519
1520 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001521 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001522
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001523 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001524
1525 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1526
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001527- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001528
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001529Tests
1530-----
1531
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001532- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001533 platforms that use the Makefile.
1534
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001535- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1536 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1537 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1538
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001539
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001540What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1541=================================
1542
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001543*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001544
1545Core and builtins
1546-----------------
1547
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001548- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1549 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1550 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1551 objects now (one object instead of three).
1552
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001553- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1554 Windows DLLs.
1555
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001556- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1557 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001558
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001559- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1560 a new .pyc magic.
1561
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001562- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1563 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1564 be there.
1565
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001566- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1567 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1568 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1569
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001570- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1571 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1572 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1573
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001574- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1575
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001576- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1577 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1578 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001579
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001580- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1581 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1582
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001583- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1584
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001585- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001586 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001587
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001588- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1589
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001590- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1591
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001592- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1593 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1594
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001595- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1596 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1597 Fixes bug #858016 .
1598
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001599- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1600 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1601 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1602
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001603- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1604 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1605 improves their performance (about 35%).
1606
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001607- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1608 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1609 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1610
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001611- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1612 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1613 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1614 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1615
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001616- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1617 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001618 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001619 length is not known).
1620
1621- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1622 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001623 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1624 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001625 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1626
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001627- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1628 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1629
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001630- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1631 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1632 keyword arguments.
1633
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001634- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1635 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1636 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1637
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001638- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1639 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1640 cases.
1641
1642- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1643 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1644 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1645 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1646 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1647 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1648 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1649 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1650 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1651 a release build.
1652
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001653- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1654 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1655
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001656- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001657 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001658
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001659- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1660 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1661 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1662 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1663 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1664 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1665 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1666 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1667 destroyed.
1668
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001669- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1670 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1671 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1672 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1673 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1674 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1675 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1676 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1677
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001678- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1679 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1680 character other than a space.
1681
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001682- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1683 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1684 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1685 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1686 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1687 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1688 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1689 attributes with the same name.
1690
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001691- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1692 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1693 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1694 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1695 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1696 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1697 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1698 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1699 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1700 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1701 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1702 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1703 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1704 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001705
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001706- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1707 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1708 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1709 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1710 This has been repaired.
1711
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001712- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1713
1714- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1715
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001716- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1717 over a sequence.
1718
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001719- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001720 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001721
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001722- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1723
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001724- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1725 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1726 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1727 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1728 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1729 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1730 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1731 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1732
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001733- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1734 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1735 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1736
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001737- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1738 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1739 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1740 freelist.
1741
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001742- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1743 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1744
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001745- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1746 number.
1747
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001748- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1749 a TypeError exception.
1750
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001751- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1752 820195.
1753
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001754- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1755 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1756 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1757
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001758- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001759 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1760 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001761
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001762- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1763 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1764 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1765
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001766- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1767 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001768 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001769
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001770- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001771 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1772 the first call.
1773
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001774
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001775Extension modules
1776-----------------
1777
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001778- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1779 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1780
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001781- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1782 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1783 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1784 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1785 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1786 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1787 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001788
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001789- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1790
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001791- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1792
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001793- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1794 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1795
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001796- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1797 fewer false positives.
1798
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001799- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1800 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1801
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001802- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001803 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1804
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001805- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001806 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001807 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001808 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1809 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001810
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001811- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1812 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1813 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1814 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1815
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001816- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1817 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1818 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1819 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1820 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1821 #897625.
1822
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001823- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1824 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1825
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001826- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1827 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1828 and pops on either side of the deque.
1829
1830- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1831 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1832
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001833- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1834 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1835 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1836 other functions that expect a function argument.
1837
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001838- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1839
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001840- os.getsid was added.
1841
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001842- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1843 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1844 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1845
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001846- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1847
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001848- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1849
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001850- readline.clear_history was added.
1851
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001852- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1853
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001854- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1855
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001856- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1857
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001858- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1859
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001860- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1861
1862- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1863
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001864- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1865
1866- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1867
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001868- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1869 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1870 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1871
1872- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1873 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1874 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1875 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1876 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1877 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1878 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1879
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001880- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1881 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1882 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1883 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001884
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001885- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001886 iterators from a single iterable.
1887
1888- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1889 of raising a TypeError exception.
1890
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001891- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1892 as parameter.
1893
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001894Library
1895-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001896
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001897- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1898
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001899- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1900 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1901 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001902
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001903- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1904 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1905 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001906
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001907- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001908
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001909- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1910 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001911
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001912- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1913 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1914
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001915- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1916
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001917- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001918 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001919
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001920- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001921 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001922
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001923- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1924
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001925- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1926 on cygwin and mingw32.
1927
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001928- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1929
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001930- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1931 module.
1932
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001933- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1934 installation scheme for all platforms.
1935
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001936- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001937 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001938
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001939- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1940 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1941 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1942
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001943- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1944 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1945 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1946
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001947- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1948
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001949- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1950
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001951- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1952 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1953
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001954- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1955 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1956 type pattern with the same value exists.
1957
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001958- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1959 when run from the command prompt).
1960
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001961- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1962 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1963
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001964- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1965 default sort).
1966
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001967- Added global runctx function to profile module
1968
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001969- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1970
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001971- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1972
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001973- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1974
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001975- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001976 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1977 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1978 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1979 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1980 accordingly.
1981
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001982- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1983 decoding standards.
1984
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001985- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1986 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1987 called for all requests.
1988
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001989- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1990 they are passed to the compiler.
1991
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001992- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1993 indent, width and depth.
1994
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001995- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1996 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1997
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001998- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1999 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2000
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002001- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2002
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002003- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2004
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002005- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2006
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002007- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2008 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2009
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002010- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002011 for better performance.
2012
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002013- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002014
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002015- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2016 a string).
2017
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002018- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2019
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002020- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2021
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002022- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2023
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002024- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2025
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002026- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2027 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2028 list of fieldnames.
2029
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002030- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2031 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2032
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002033- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2034
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002035- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2036 empty lists.
2037
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002038- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2039 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2040 and shelves.
2041
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002042- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2043 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2044
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002045- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002046 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2047 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002048
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002049- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2050 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002051 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002052
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002053- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002054 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2055 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2056
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002057- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2058 and removed in Py2.4.
2059
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002060- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2061
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002062- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2063
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002064Tools/Demos
2065-----------
2066
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002067- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2068 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2069
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002070- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2071
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002072- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2073 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2074 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2075 destination in situations where both files are given.
2076
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002077- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2078 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2079 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2080 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2081
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002082- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2083
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002084- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2085 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2086 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2087 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2088 now.
2089
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002090- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2091 in effect
2092
2093- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2094 C-c C-h
2095
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002096- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2097 -d option was given.
2098
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002099Build
2100-----
2101
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002102- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2103 build under OS X.
2104
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002105- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2106 --enable-profiling.
2107
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002108- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2109 is configured --with-tsc.
2110
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002111- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2112 on AMD64.
2113
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002114- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2115 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2116
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002117- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2118 removed.
2119
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002120- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2121 supported (see PEP 11).
2122
2123- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2124
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002125- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2126
2127- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2128 (see PEP 11).
2129
2130- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2131 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2132
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002133C API
2134-----
2135
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002136- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2137 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2138 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2139
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002140- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2141 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2142 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2143 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2144
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002145- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2146 generator objects.
2147
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002148- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2149 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002150 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2151 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002152
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002153- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2154 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2155
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002156- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2157 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2158 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2159 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2160 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2161
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002162- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2163 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2164 about 10% faster.
2165
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002166- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2167 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2168
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002169- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2170 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2171 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2172 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2173
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002174Windows
2175-------
2176
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002177- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2178 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2179 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2180 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2181
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002182- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2183 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2184 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2185
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002186
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002187What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2188===============================
2189
2190*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2191
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002192IDLE
2193----
2194
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002195- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2196 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2197 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2198 context-menu actions.
2199
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002200- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2201 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2202 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2203 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2204 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2205 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2206 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2207 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2208 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2209
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002210
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002211What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2212=============================================
2213
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002214*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002215
2216Core and builtins
2217-----------------
2218
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002219- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002220 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002221 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2222
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002223Extension modules
2224-----------------
2225
2226- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2227 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2228 than once. This has been fixed.
2229
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002230- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2231 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2232 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2233 call.
2234
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002235- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2236
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002237Library
2238-------
2239
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002240- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2241 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2242
2243- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2244 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2245 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2246 restored.
2247
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002248IDLE
2249----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002250
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002251- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002252
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002253Build
2254-----
2255
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002256- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2257 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2258
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002259C API
2260-----
2261
2262Windows
2263-------
2264
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002265- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2266 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2267
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002268- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2269
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002270Mac
2271---
2272
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002273- Various fixes to pimp.
2274
2275- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2276
2277- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2278 more problems than it solves.
2279
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002280
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002281What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2282=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002283
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002284*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2285
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002286Core and builtins
2287-----------------
2288
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002289- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2290 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2291
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002292- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2293 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002294 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002295
2296- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2297 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2298 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002299 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002300
2301- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2302 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002303
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002304- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2305 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2306 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2307
2308- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002309 770247.
2310
2311- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002312
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002313Extension modules
2314-----------------
2315
2316- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2317 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2318
2319- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2320
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002321- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2322
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002323- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2324 contained within the _strptime module.
2325
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002326- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2327 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2328
2329- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002330 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2331
2332- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2333 the find_class attribute, if present.
2334
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002335- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002336
2337 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2338 (SF bug 763298).
2339
2340 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002341 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2342 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2343 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002344
2345 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2346
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002347Library
2348-------
2349
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002350- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2351
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002352- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2353 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2354 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2355 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2356 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2357 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2358 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2359 or Tester().
2360
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002361- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2362 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2363 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2364 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2365 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2366 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2367 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2368 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2369 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002370
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002371 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002372
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002373- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2374 weren't before was an oversight.
2375
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002376- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2377 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2378
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002379- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2380 when there are no lines.
2381
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002382- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2383 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2384
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002385- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2386 to child processes.
2387
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002388- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2389
2390- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2391
2392- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2393 xmlrpclib.
2394
2395- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2396 responses.
2397
2398- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2399 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2400
2401- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2402 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2403 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2404
2405- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2406 used as patterns.
2407
2408- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2409 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2410 than Tk 8.3.
2411
2412- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2413
2414- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002415
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002416Tools/Demos
2417-----------
2418
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002419- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2420
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002421- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2422
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002423- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002424
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002425Build
2426-----
2427
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002428- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2429
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002430- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2431
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002432- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2433 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002434
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002435- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2436 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2437 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002438
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002439C API
2440-----
2441
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002442- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2443 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2444
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002445Windows
2446-------
2447
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002448- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2449 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2450 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2451 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2452 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2453 Python exception ::
2454
2455 thread.error: can't start new thread
2456
2457 is raised now.
2458
2459- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2460 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2461 instead of from DLL teardown.
2462
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002463Mac
2464---
2465
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002466- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002467 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002468 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2469 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2470 the executable in the bundle.
2471
2472- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002473
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002474- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2475
2476- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2477 on Panther.
2478
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002479What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2480================================
2481
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002482*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002483
2484Core and builtins
2485-----------------
2486
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002487- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2488 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2489 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2490 with the -i option.
2491
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002492- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2493 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2494
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002495- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2496 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2497
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002498- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2499 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2500 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2501 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2502 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2503 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2504 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2505 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2506 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2507 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2508 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2509 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2510 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002511
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002512- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2513 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2514 embedded in a lambda expression.
2515
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002516- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2517 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2518 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2519 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2520 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2521
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002522- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2523 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2524 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2525
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002526- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2527 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2528
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002529- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2530 It's writable again.
2531
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002532- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2533 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2534 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002535 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002536
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002537- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2538 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2539 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2540
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002541Extension modules
2542-----------------
2543
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002544- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2545 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2546
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002547- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2548 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2549 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2550 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2551
2552- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2553 collection.
2554
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002555- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2556 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2557 unique within a single program run.
2558
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002559- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2560 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2561
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002562- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2563 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2564
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002565- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2566 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002567
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002568- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2569
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002570- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2571 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2572
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002573- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2574 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2575 for many BSD-derived systems.
2576
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002577
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002578Library
2579-------
2580
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002581- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2582 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2583 primary ones:
2584
2585 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2586 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2587 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2588
2589 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2590 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2591 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2592 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2593 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2594 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2595
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002596- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2597 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2598 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2599 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2600 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2601 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2602 argument.
2603
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002604- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2605 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2606 in the archive.
2607
2608- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2609 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2610
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002611- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2612 569574).
2613
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002614- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2615 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2616 no more.
2617
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002618- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2619 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2620 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2621 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2622 code coverage.
2623
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002624- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2625 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2626 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002627 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2628 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002629
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002630- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2631 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2632 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002633 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002634
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002635- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2636
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002637- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2638 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2639 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2640 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2641
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002642- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2643 handling.
2644
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002645- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2646 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2647
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002648- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2649 in socket.py.
2650
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002651- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2652
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002653- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2654 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2655 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2656 opener with proxy support.
2657
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002658- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2659
2660- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2661
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002662Tools/Demos
2663-----------
2664
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002665- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2666
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002667- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2668
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002669- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2670 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002671
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002672- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2673 files.
2674
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002675Build
2676-----
2677
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002678- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002679 different root directory.
2680
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002681C API
2682-----
2683
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002684- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2685 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2686 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2687 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2688 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2689 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2690 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2691 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2692 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2693 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2694
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002695- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2696 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2697 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2698 from Python.
2699
2700
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002701New platforms
2702-------------
2703
2704None this time.
2705
2706Tests
2707-----
2708
2709- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2710 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2711
2712Windows
2713-------
2714
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002715- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2716
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002717- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2718 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2719 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2720 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2721 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2722 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2723 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2724 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2725 that's what it's for.
2726
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002727Mac
2728---
2729
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002730- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2731 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2732 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2733 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002734- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2735 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2736- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002737
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002738SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2739------------------------------------
2740
2741430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2742598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2743622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2744661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2745683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2746697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2747713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2748724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2749727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2750729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2751730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2752731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2753732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2754733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2755735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2756740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2757744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2758745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2759747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2760749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2761751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2762753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2763755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2764757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2765760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2766
2767
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002768What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2769================================
2770
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002771*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002772
2773Core and builtins
2774-----------------
2775
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002776- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2777 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2778
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002779- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2780 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2781 and cannot be strings).
2782
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002783- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2784 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2785 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2786 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2787
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002788- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2789 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2790 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2791 Python itself.
2792
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002793- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2794 the referenced object, if it has one.
2795
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002796- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2797 the thread started at
2798 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2799
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002800- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2801 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2802 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2803 placed on a list index.
2804
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002805- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2806 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2807 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2808 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2809
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002810- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2811 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2812 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2813 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2814 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2815 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2816 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2817
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002818- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2819 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2820 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2821 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2822 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2823
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002824- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2825 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002826
2827- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2828 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2829 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2830 #693195.)
2831
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002832- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2833 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002834
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002835- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002836 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002837 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2838 interpreter executions, would fail.
2839
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002840- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002841 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002842 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002843
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002844Extension modules
2845-----------------
2846
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002847- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2848 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2849 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2850 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2851
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002852- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2853 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2854
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002855- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2856 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2857 and Greg Chapman.)
2858
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002859- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2860 recursively.
2861
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002862- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002863 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2864 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2865 leaks.
2866
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002867- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2868
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002869- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2870 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2871 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2872 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2873 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2874 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2875 #705836.
2876
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002877- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002878 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2879
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002880- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2881 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2882 See SF bug #692416.
2883
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002884- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2885 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2886
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002887- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2888 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2889 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002890
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002891- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002892 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2893 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2894
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002895- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2896 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2897 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2898 timeouts to work properly.
2899
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002900Library
2901-------
2902
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002903- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2904 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2905 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2906 future release.
2907
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002908- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2909 for querying platform dependent features.
2910
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002911- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002912
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002913- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2914 pickle protocol versions.
2915
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002916- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2917 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2918 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2919
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002920- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2921
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002922- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2923 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2924 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2925 modules.
2926
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002927- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2928 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2929 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2930
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002931- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2932 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2933
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002934- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2935 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2936 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2937
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002938- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002939 MS Office extensions.
2940
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002941- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2942 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2943
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002944- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2945 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2946
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002947- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2948 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2949 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2950 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2951 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2952 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2953
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002954- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2955 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2956 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002957
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002958- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2959 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2960 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2961
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002962- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2963
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002964- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2965 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2966 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2967
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002968Tools/Demos
2969-----------
2970
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002971- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2972 See the module docstring for details.
2973
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002974Build
2975-----
2976
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002977- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2978 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002979
2980C API
2981-----
2982
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002983- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2984
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002985- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2986 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2987 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2988
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002989- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2990 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002991
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002992 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2993 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2994 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002995
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002996- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002997 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2998
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002999- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3000 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3001 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003002
3003New platforms
3004-------------
3005
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003006None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003007
3008Tests
3009-----
3010
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003011- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3012 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003013
3014Windows
3015-------
3016
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003017- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3018 function.
3019
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003020- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3021 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003022
3023Mac
3024---
3025
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003026- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3027 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003028
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003029- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3030 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003031
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003032- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3033 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3034 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003035
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003036- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003037 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3038 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003039
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003040- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3041 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003042
3043
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003044What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3045=================================
3046
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003047*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003048
3049Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003050-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003051
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003052- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3053 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3054 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3055
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003056- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3057 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3058 (SF patch #664376.)
3059
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003060- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3061 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3062 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3063 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3064 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3065 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003066 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003067
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003068- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3069 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3070 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3071 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003072 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003073
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003074- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3075 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3076 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3077 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3078 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3079 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3080 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3081 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3082 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3083 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3084 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3085
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003086- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3087 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3088 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3089 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3090 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3091 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3092
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003093- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3094 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3095
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003096- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3097 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3098 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3099 case.)
3100
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003101- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3102 passed as unicode strings.
3103
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003104- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3105 See SF bug #683467.
3106
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003107- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3108 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3109
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003110- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3111
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003112- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3113
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003114- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3115 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3116 arguments.
3117
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003118- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3119 See SF bug #667147.
3120
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003121- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003122 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003123 See SF bug #676155.
3124
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003125- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003126 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003127 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3128 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3129 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3130 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3131 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3132 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003133
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003134Extension modules
3135-----------------
3136
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003137- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3138 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3139 tp_as_number pointer.
3140
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003141- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3142 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3143 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3144 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3145 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3146
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003147- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3148
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003149- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3150
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003151- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003152 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003153 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3154 patch #678531.)
3155
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003156- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3157 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3158
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003159- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3160 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3161
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003162- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3163
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003164- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3165 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3166 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3167
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003168- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3169
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003170- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3171 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3172
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003173- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003174
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003175- datetime changes:
3176
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003177 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3178
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003179 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3180 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3181 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3182 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3183 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3184 now.
3185
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003186 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003187 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3188 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003189
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003190 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003191 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003192 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3193 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3194 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3195 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003196
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003197 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3198 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3199 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003200 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3201
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003202 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3203 by a later example coded by Guido.
3204
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003205 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003206 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3207 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3208 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003209 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3210 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3211
3212 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3213 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3214 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3215 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3216 tzinfo subclass instance.
3217
3218 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3219 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3220 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3221 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3222 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3223 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3224 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3225 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003226
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003227 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3228 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3229 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3230 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3231 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003232 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3233
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003234 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003235
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003236 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3237 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3238 as a naive datetime object.
3239
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003240 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3241 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3242 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3243
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003244 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3245 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3246 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3247 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3248 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3249 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3250 comparison.
3251
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003252 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3253 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3254 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3255 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003256 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003257
3258 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003259
3260 and ::
3261
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003262 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3263
3264 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3265 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3266 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3267 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3268
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003269 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3270 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3271 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3272 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3273 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3274
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003275 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3276 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003277 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3278 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003279
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003280Library
3281-------
3282
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003283- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3284 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3285
3286- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3287 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3288 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3289 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3290 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3291 See PEP 307 for details.
3292
3293- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3294 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3295
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003296- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3297 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003298 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003299 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3300 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003301 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003302
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003303- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3304 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3305
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003306- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3307 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3308 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3309
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003310- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3311
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003312- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3313 exception.
3314
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003315- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3316 class.
3317
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003318- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3319 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3320 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3321
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003322- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3323 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3324
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003325- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003326 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3327 See SF bug #659228.
3328
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003329- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3330 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3331 See SF patch #651082.
3332
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003333- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003334
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003335- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3336 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3337
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003338- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003339 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003340
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003341- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3342 DOS paths from other platforms.
3343
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003344Tools/Demos
3345-----------
3346
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003347- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3348 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3349 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3350 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3351 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3352 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3353 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3354 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3355 example:
3356
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003357 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3358 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003359
3360 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3361
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003362
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003363Build
3364-----
3365
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003366- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3367 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3368 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003369 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3370
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003371 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3372
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003373- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3374 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3375 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3376 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3377 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3378 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3379 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3380 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3381 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3382
3383- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3384 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3385 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3386 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3387
3388- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3389 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3390
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003391C API
3392-----
3393
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003394- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3395 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003396
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003397- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3398 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3399 tp_as_number pointer.
3400
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003401- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3402 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3403 (SF #681367)
3404
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003405- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3406 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3407 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3408 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003409
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003410Tests
3411-----
3412
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003413- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003414 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3415 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3416 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3417 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3418 pydoc.)
3419
3420- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3421
3422- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003423
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003424Windows
3425-------
3426
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003427- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3428 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3429 time).
3430
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003431- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3432 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3433
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003434- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3435 release without strong cryptography.
3436
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003437- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003438 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003439
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003440- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3441 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3442
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003443Mac
3444---
3445
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003446- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3447 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003448
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003449- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3450 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3451 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003452
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003453- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3454 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003455
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003456- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3457 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3458 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3459 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003460
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003461- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003462 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3463 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3464 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003465
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003466
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003467What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003468=================================
3469
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003470*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003471
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003472Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003473--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003474
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003475- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3476
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003477- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3478 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003479 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003480 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003481 a different meaning than before.
3482
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003483- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003484 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003485 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003486
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003487- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003488 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003489 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003490
3491- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3492 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3493 and deallocation.
3494
3495- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3496 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3497
3498- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3499 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3500 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3501 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3502 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3503
3504- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3505 now detected by the garbage collector.
3506
3507- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3508 [SF bug 519621]
3509
3510- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3511 identifier.
3512
3513- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3514 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3515 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3516 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3517 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3518 [SF bug 563060]
3519
3520- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3521 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3522 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3523 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3524 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3525
3526- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3527 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3528 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3529
3530- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3531
3532- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3533 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3534 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3535 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3536 state of the slots would be lost.)
3537
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003538Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003539-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003540
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003541- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003542 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3543 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3544 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3545 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003546 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3547 Jython 2.1.
3548
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003549- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003550 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003551 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3552 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3553 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3554 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3555 these, see PEP 302.
3556
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003557- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3558 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3559 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3560
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003561- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3562 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3563 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3564
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003565- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3566 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3567 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3568
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003569- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3570 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3571 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3572 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3573 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3574 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3575 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3576 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3577 releases or implementations.
3578
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003579- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003580 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3581 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003582
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003583- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3584 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3585
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003586- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3587 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3588 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3589
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003590- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3591 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3592
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003593- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3594 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003595 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3596 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003597
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003598- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3599 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3600 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3601 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3602 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3603
3604 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3605 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3606 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3607 pattern.
3608
3609 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3610 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3611 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3612 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3613
3614 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3615 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3616 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3617 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3618 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3619 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3620
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003621- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3622 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3623 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3624 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3625 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3626 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3627 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3628 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003629
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003630- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3631 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3632 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3633 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3634 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003635 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3636 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3637 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3638 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3639 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3640 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3641 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003642
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003643- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3644 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3645
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003646- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3647 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3648 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3649 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3650 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3651 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3652 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3653 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3654 to Zack Weinberg!
3655
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003656- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3657 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3658 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3659 type. This has been fixed now.
3660
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003661- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3662 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3663 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3664
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003665- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3666 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3667 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3668 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3669 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3670 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3671 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3672 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003673 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003674
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003675- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3676 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3677 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003678
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003679- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3680 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3681 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3682 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3683 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3684 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3685 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3686 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003687 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003688 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3689 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3690
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003691- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3692 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3693 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3694 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3695 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3696 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3697 this.)
3698
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003699- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3700 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003701 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003702 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003703 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3704 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003705 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3706 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003707
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003708- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3709 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3710 currently running.
3711
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003712- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3713 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3714 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3715 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3716
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003717- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3718 as directory names.
3719
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003720- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3721 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3722
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003723- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3724 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3725
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003726- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003727 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3728 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003729
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003730- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3731 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3732 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3733 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3734 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3735
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003736- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3737 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3738 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3739 removed.
3740
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003741- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3742 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3743 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3744
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003745- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3746 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3747 to __debug__.
3748
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003749- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3750 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3751 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3752
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003753- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3754 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3755 deprecated now.
3756
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003757- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3758 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3759 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003760
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003761- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3762 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3763 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3764 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3765 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003766
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003767- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3768 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3769
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003770- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3771 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3772 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003773 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003774 is backward compatible.
3775
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003776- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3777 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3778 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3779 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3780 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3781
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003782- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3783 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3784 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3785 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3786 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3787 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003788
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003789- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3790 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3791
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003792- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3793 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3794
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003795- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3796 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3797 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3798 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3799 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3800
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003801- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3802 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3803 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3804
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003805- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003806 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3807
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003808- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3809 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3810 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003811
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003812- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3813 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3814
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003815- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3816 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3817 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3818
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003819- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3820
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003821Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003822-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003823
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003824- Added three operators to the operator module:
3825 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3826 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3827 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3828
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003829- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3830
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003831- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3832 archives.
3833
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003834- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3835 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3836 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3837
3838 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3839
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003840- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3841 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3842 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003843 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003844
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003845- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3846 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3847 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3848 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003849 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3850 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3851 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3852 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003853
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003854- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3855 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003856
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003857- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3858
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003859- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3860 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3861
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003862- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3863 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3864 supported.
3865
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003866- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3867
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003868- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3869 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003870
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003871- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3872 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3873
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003874- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3875
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003876- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3877 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3878
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003879- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3880 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3881 functions but callable type objects.
3882
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003883- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003884 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003885 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003886
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003887- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3888 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003889
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003890- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3891 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003892
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003893- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3894 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3895 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3896 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3897
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003898- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3899 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003900
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003901- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3902 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3903 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3904 and __imul__.
3905
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003906- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003907 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3908 is called.
3909
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003910- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3911 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3912 interpreter was compiled.
3913
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003914- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3915 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3916 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003917 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003918 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3919 1, not 2.
3920
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003921- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3922 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3923 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3924 limit.
3925
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003926- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3927 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3928 bug #623464.
3929
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003930- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3931 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3932 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3933 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3934
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003935Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003936-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003937
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003938- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3939
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003940- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3941 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3942 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3943 with Python 2.3a2.
3944
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003945- os.path exposes getctime.
3946
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003947- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003948 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003949 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003950 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003951 unit tests of floating point results.
3952
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003953- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3954 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3955 has been increased.
3956
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003957- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3958 executed.
3959
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003960- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3961 postinstallation script.
3962
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003963- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3964 test the current module.
3965
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003966- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003967 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3968 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3969 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3970 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3971
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003972- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003973 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003974 Ward's Optik package.
3975
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003976- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3977 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3978 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3979 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3980
3981- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3982 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003983 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003984
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003985- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3986 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3987 shelf are binary pickles.
3988
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003989- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3990 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3991
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003992- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3993 modules are iterators now.
3994
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003995- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3996 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3997 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3998 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3999 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4000 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004001
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004002- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4003 with their entity value.
4004
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004005- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4006
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004007- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4008 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004009
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004010- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4011 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004012 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004013
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004014- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4015 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4016 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4017 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4018 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4019 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4020 main():
4021
4022 import locale
4023 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4024
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004025- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4026 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4027
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004028- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4029 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4030 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4031 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4032 to the new standard.
4033
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004034- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4035 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4036 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4037 an extension to the database.
4038
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004039- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4040 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4041 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4042 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004043 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004044
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004045- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004046 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004047
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004048- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4049 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4050 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4051 bounded integers.
4052
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004053- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4054 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4055 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4056 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4057 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4058 in existence.
4059
4060 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4061 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4062 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4063 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4064 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4065 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4066
4067 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4068 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4069 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4070 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4071
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004072- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4073 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4074 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4075
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004076- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4077
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004078- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4079 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4080 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4081 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4082
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004083- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4084 argument.
4085
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004086- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4087 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4088 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4089 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4090 [SF patch 560794].
4091
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004092- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4093 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4094 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004095 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4096 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4097 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004098
4099- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4100 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004101
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004102- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4103 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4104 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4105 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004106
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004107- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4108 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4109 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4110 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4111 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4112
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004113- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004114
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004115- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4116
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004117- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4118 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4119 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4120 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4121 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4122 identical to None.
4123
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004124- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4125 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4126 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4127 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4128 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4129 results now.
4130
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004131- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4132 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4133
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004134- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4135 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4136 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4137 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4138 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4139 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4140 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4141 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4142
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004143- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4144
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004145- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4146 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4147
4148- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4149 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4150 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4151 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4152 and other systems.
4153
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004154- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4155 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4156 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4157 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 +00004158 work well with these.
4159
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004160- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4161
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004162- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004163 connections.
4164
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004165- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4166 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4167 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4168
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004169- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4170 sets
4171
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004172- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4173 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4174 name.
4175
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004176- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4177 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4178 passed in.
4179
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004180- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004181 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004182 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4183 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004184
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004185- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4186
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004187- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4188
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004189- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4190 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4191 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4192
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004193- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4194 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4195 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4196 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004197 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004198
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004199- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004200 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004201 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004202
4203- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4204 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4205 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4206
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004207- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004208 the value of its expression argument.
4209
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004210- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4211 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4212 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4213
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004214- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4215 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4216 skipstone browser was included.
4217
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004218- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4219 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4220
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004221Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004222-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004223
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004224- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4225 names in addition to accepting file names.
4226
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004227- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4228 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4229 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4230 still used and useful.)
4231
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004232- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4233 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4234 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4235 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004236
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004237- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4238 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4239 the generated binary.
4240
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004241Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004242-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004243
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004244- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4245
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004246- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4247 except in the hands of experts.
4248
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004249- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004250 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4251 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4252 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004253
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004254- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4255 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4256 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4257 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4258 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4259 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4260 builds.
4261
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004262- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4263 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4264 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4265 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4266 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4267 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4268 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4269 new type.
4270
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004271- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004272
4273 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4274 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4275 positive infinities.
4276
4277 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4278 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4279 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4280 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4281 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4282 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4283 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4284
4285 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4286
4287 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4288
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004289- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4290 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4291 size of the executable.
4292
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004293- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4294 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4295 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4296 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004297
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004298- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4299
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004300- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4301 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4302 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004303
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004304- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4305 well as Unix.
4306
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004307- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4308 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4309 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4310 modules in the README file for details.
4311
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004312C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004313-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004314
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004315- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4316 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004317 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004318 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004319 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004320
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004321- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4322 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4323 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4324 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4325 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4326 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004327 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004328 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4329 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4330 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4331 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4332 aligned.)
4333
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004334- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4335 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4336 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4337
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004338- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4339 level.
4340
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004341- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4342 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4343 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4344 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4345 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4346
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004347- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4348 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4349 code.
4350
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004351- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4352 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4353 adjusting for negative indices.
4354
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004355- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4356 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4357 object.
4358
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004359- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4360 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4361 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4362
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004363- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4364 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004365
4366- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4367
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004368- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4369 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4370 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4371 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4372
4373- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4374
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004375- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004376
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004377- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004378 without going through the buffer API.
4379
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004380- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004381
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004382- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4383 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4384 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4385 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4386
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004387- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4388 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4389
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004390- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004391 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4392
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004393New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004394-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004395
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004396- OpenVMS is now supported.
4397
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004398- AtheOS is now supported.
4399
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004400- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4401
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004402- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4403
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004404Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004405-----
4406
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004407- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4408 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4409 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004410
4411Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004412-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004413
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004414- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4415 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4416 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4417 bugs.
4418 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004419 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004420 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4421 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004422 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004423
4424- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004425 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004426
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004427- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4428 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4429
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004430- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4431 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004432 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004433 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4434
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004435- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4436 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4437 use files" uninstall option).
4438
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004439- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4440
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004441- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4442 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4443
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004444- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4445 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4446 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4447
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004448- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4449 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4450 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4451 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4452 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004453 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4454 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4455 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004456
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004457- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004458 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004459 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4460 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4461 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4462 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4463 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4464 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4465 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4466 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4467 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4468 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4469 work around.
4470
4471- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4472 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4473 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4474 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4475 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4476 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4477 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4478 specified with O_CREAT too).
4479
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004480Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004481----
4482
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004483- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004484
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004485- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4486 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4487 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4488
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004489- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4490 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4491 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4492
4493- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4494 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4495 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4496 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4497 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4498 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4499 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4500 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004501
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004502- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4503 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4504 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004505
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004506- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4507 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4508 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4509 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4510 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004511
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004512- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4513 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4514 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004515
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004516- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4517 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004518
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004519- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4520 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4521 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4522 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4523 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004524
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004525- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4526 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4527 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4528
4529- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4530 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4531 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004532
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004533- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4534 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4535 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4536 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004537 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004538
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004539- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4540 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004541
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004542- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4543 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004544
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004545- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004546 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004547 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4548 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004549
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004550
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004551What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004552===============================
4553
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004554*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4555
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004556Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004557--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004558
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004559- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4560 with a custom metaclass.
4561
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004562Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004563-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004564
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004565- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4566 are proxies.
4567
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004568Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004569-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004570
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004571- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4572 very short strings.
4573
4574- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4575 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4576 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4577 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4578 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4579
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004580Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004581-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004582
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004583- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4584 close or delete time).
4585
4586- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4587 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4588
4589- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4590
4591- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004592 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004593
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004594Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004595-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004596
4597Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004598-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004599
4600C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004601-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004602
4603New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004604-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004605
4606Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004607-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004608
4609Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004610-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004611
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004612- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4613
4614- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4615 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4616
4617- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4618 deleted at process exit time.
4619
4620- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4621 in backslash.
4622
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004623Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004624----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004625
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004626- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4627 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4628 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4629
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004630
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004631What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004632===========================
4633
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4635
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004636Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004637--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004638
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004639- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4640 been extensively updated. See
4641
4642 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4643
4644 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4645
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004646- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4647 deleted!
4648
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004649- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4650 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4651 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4652 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4653 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4654
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004655- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4656
4657 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4658 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4659
4660 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4661 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4662 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4663 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4664 supported anyway.
4665
4666 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4667 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4668
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004669- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4670 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4671 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4672 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4673 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004674
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004675- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4676 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4677 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4678
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004679Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004680-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004681
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004682- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4683 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4684 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4685 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4686 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4687 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004688 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4689 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4690 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4691 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004692
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004693- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4694 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4695 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4696
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004697Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004698-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004699
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004700- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4701
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004702Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004704
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004705- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4706 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4707 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4708 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4709 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4710 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4711
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004712- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4713
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004714- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4715
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004716- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4717
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004718- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4719 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4720 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4721
4722- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4723
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004724Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004725-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004726
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004727- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4728 off a search on Google.
4729
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004730Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004732
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004733- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4734 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4735 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4736 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4737 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4738 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4739 other platforms should do likewise.
4740
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004741- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4742 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4743 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4744
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004745C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004746-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004747
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004748- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4749 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4750 producing key-value pairs.
4751
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004752- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004753 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004754 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4755 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4756 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4757 previously went unchallenged.
4758
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004759New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004760-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004761
4762Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004763-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004764
4765Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004766-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004767
4768Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004769----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004770
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004771- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4772 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004773
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004774- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4775 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4776 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4777 home.
4778
4779
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004780What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004781===========================
4782
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004783*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4784
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004785Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004786--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004787
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004788- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4789 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004790
4791 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004792 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004793
4794 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4795 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004796 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004797 This needs to be documented.
4798
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004799- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4800 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4801
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004802- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4803 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4804 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4805
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004806- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4807 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4808
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004809- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4810 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4811 class forbids it).
4812
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004813- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4814 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4815 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4816
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004817- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4818
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004819Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004820-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004821
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004822- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4823 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004824 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004825
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004826- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4827 (like 1 + '').
4828
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004829Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004830-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004831
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004832- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4833 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4834 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4835 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004836 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004837 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4838
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004839- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4840 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4841 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4842 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4843
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004844- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4845 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004846 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4847 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4848 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004849
4850- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4851 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004852
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004853- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4854 bytes on its input.
4855
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004856Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004857-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004858
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004859- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004860 convenience function.
4861
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004862- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4863 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4864 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004865 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4866 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4867 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4868 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4869 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4870 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004871
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004872- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4873 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4874 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4875 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4876
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004877- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4878 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4879 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4880
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004881- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4882 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4883 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4884 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4885
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004886- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4887 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004888 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004889 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4890 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4891 new -l and -e options.
4892
4893- statcache is now deprecated.
4894
4895- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4896 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004897 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004898 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4899 time properly taken into account.
4900
4901- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4902 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4903 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4904 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4905
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004906Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004907-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004908
4909Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004910-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004911
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004912- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4913 is built with libdb3 if available.
4914
4915- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4916
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004917C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004918-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004919
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004920- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4921 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4922 PySequence_Size().
4923
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004924- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4925
4926- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4927 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4928 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4929
4930- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4931 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4932
4933- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4934 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4935
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004936New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004937-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004938
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004939- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4940 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4941
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004942- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4943 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4944
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004945- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4946
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004947Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004948-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004949
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004950- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4951 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4952
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004953Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004954-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004955
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004956Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004957----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004958
4959- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4960 removed completely in the next release.
4961
4962- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4963 OSX.
4964
4965- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4966 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4967
4968- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4969
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004970
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004971What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004972===========================
4973
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004974*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4975
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004976Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004977--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004978
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004979- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004980 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004981 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004982 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4983 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004984 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4985 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004986 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4987 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004988
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004989- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4990 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4991
4992- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4993 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4994
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004995Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004996-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004997
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004998- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4999 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5000 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5001 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5002 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5003 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5004 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5005 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5006
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005007- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5008 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5009 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5010 example).
5011
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005012- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005013 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005014 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005015 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005016
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005017- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5018 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5019 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005020 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005021
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005022- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5023 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5024 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5025 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5026 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5027 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5028
5029 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5030
5031 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5032
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005033Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005034-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005035
5036- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5037
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005038- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5039
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005040- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5041 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005042
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005043- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5044 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5045 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5046 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5047 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5048 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005049 attributes.
5050
5051- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5052 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5053 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005054
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005055- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5056 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5057 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005058
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005059- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5060 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5061 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005062 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5063 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5064
5065- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5066 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005067
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005068Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005069-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005070
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005071- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5072 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5073
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005074- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5075 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5076 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5077 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5078
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005079- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5080 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5081 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5082 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5083
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005084 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5085 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5086 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5087 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5088 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5089 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5090 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5091 without losing information).
5092
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005093- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005094 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5095 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5096 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5097 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5098 module).
5099
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005100 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005101 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5102 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5103 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5104 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005105
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005106- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005107 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5108 encoding.
5109
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005110- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5111 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5112
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005113- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005114 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5115
5116- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5117 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5118 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5119 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5120
5121- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5122
5123- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5124 ON, and OFF.
5125
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005126- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5127 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5128
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005129Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005130-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005131
5132- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5133 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5134 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005135
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005136- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5137 been added: -X and -E.
5138
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005139Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005140-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005141
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005142- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5143 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5144
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005145C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005146-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005147
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005148- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5149 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5150 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5151 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5152 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5153
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005154- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5155 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5156 as long) arguments.
5157
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005158- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5159 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5160 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5161 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5162 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5163 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5164
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005165- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5166 input.
5167
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005168New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005169-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005170
5171Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005172-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005173
5174Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005175-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005176
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005177- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5178 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5179 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5180
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005181- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5182 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5183 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005184 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005185
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005186 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5187 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5188 import signal
5189 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005190
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005191 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005192 while 1:
5193 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005194 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005195 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5196 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5197 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5198 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005199
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005200
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005201What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5202===========================
5203
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005204*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5205
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005206Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005207--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005208
5209- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5210 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5211 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5212
5213- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5214 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5215 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5216 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5217 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5218 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5219 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005220
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005221- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005222 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005223 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5224 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5225 associate a docstring with a property.
5226
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005227- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5228 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5229 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5230 other built-in object types.
5231
5232- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5233 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5234 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5235 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5236 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5237
5238- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5239 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5240
5241- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5242 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005243 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005244 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5245 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5246 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5247 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5248 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5249
5250- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5251 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5252 class.
5253
5254- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5255 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5256 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5257 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5258
5259- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5260 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5261 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5262 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5263
5264- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5265 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5266
5267- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5268 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5269 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5270 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5271 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005272 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005273 with the same value as s.
5274
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005275- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5276
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005277Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005278----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005279
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005280- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5281
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005282- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5283 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5284 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5285 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5286 objects.
5287
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005288- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5289 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005290 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5291 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5292
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005293- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5294 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5295 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5296
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005297Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005298-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005299
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005300- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5301 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5302 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5303 by the instances.
5304
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005305- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5306 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5307 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5308
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005309- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5310 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5311 before the entire comparison is complete.
5312
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005313- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5314 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5315 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5316
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005317- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5318 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5319 getwriter().
5320
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005321- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5322 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5323
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005324- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005325 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5326 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5327
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005328- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5329 iterable object.
5330
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005331- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5332 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005333
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005334- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5335 authentication.
5336
5337- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5338 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005339
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005340- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005341 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5342 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5343 a sample driver.)
5344
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005345Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005346-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005347
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005348- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5349 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5350 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5351 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5352 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5353 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5354 kernel has large file support.
5355
5356- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5357 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5358 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5359 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5360 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5361
5362- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5363 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5364 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5365
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005366C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005367-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005368
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005369- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5370 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5371
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005372New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005373-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005374
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005375- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5376 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5377
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005378Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005379-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005380
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005381- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5382 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5383 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5384 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5385 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5386
5387- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5388 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5389 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5390 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5391
5392- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5393 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5394
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005395Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005396-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005397
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005398- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005399 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5400 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005401
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005402
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005403What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5404===========================
5405
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005406*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5407
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005408Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005409----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005410
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005411- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5412 big to represent as a C double.
5413
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005414- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5415 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5416 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5417 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5418 restriction).
5419
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005420- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5421 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5422 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5423 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5424 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5425
5426 >>> dir([])
5427 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5428 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5429 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5430 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5431 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5432 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5433 'reverse', 'sort']
5434
5435 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5436
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005437- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005438 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5439 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5440 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5441 OverflowError exception.
5442
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005443- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005444 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005445 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5446 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5447 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5448 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5449 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005450 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005451 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5452 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5453
5454 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5455 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5456 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5457 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005458
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005459- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005460 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5461 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5462 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5463 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5464 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5465 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5466 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5467 once it is created.
5468
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005469- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5470 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5471 (key, value) pairs.
5472
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005473- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005474 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5475 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5476
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005477- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5478 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5479 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5480 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5481 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005482
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005483- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005484 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5485 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5486
5487 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5488
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005489- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005490 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5491
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005492Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005493-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005494
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005495- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005496 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5497 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005498
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005499- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5500 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5501 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5502 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5503 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5504 in this area anymore).
5505
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005506- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5507 threading.Timer.
5508
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005509- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5510 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5511
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005512- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005513 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5514
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005515- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005516 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5517 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5518 converted to Python longs.
5519
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005520- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005521 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5522
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005523- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5524 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5525 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5526
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005527Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005528-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005529
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005530- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5531 division operators as per PEP 238.
5532
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005533Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005534-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005535
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005536- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5537 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5538 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5539 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5540
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005541C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005542-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005543
5544- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005545
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005546- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5547 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005548 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005549
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005550 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5551 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005552 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005553 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005554
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005555- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005556 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5557 module:
5558
5559 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005560
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005561 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5562 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005563
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005564 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5565 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005566
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005567 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5568
5569 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5570
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005571- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005572 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5573 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5574 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005575
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005576New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005577-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005578
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005579- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5580 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5581 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5582 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5583 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005584
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005585Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005586-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005587
5588Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005589-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005590
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005591- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5592 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5593 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5594 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005595 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5596 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5597 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5598 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5599 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005600
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005601- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005602 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5603
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005604
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005605What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5606===========================
5607
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005608*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5609
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005610Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005611-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005612
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005613- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5614 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5615
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005616- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5617 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5618 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005619
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005620- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5621 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5622 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5623 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005624
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005625- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5626
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005627- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005628
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005629Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005630-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005631
5632- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005633 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005634 the module docstring for details.
5635
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005636Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005637-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005638
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005639- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005640 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5641 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5642 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005643
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005644- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5645 Nick Mathewson.
5646
5647Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005648----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005649
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005650- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5651 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5652 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5653 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5654 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5655 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5656 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5657 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5658
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005659- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5660 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5661 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5662 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5663
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005664- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5665 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5666 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5667 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5668 come a long way).
5669
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005670- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5671 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5672 write filters for these warnings).
5673
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005674- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5675 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5676 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5677 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5678 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5679
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005680- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5681 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5682 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5683 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5684 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5685 older distribution.
5686
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005687Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005688-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005689
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005690- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5691 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005692 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005693
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005694- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5695 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5696 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5697
5698- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5699
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005700- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5701
5702- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5703
5704- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5705
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005706- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005707
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005708- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5709
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005710New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005711-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005712
5713C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005714-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005715
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005716- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5717 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5718 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5719 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5720 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5721 against buffer overruns.
5722
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005723- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005724 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5725 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005726 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5727 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5728 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5729
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005730- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5731 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5732 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5733 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5734 deprecated.
5735
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005736Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005737-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005738
5739- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5740 relevant is found.
5741
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005742
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005743What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005744===========================
5745
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005746*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5747
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005748Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005749----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005750
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005751- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5752 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5753 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5754 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5755 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5756 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5757 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5758 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005759 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005760 repaired.
5761
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005762- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005763 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005764 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5765 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5766 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5767 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5768 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5769 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5770 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5771 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5772
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005773- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5774 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5775 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5776 leading BMO character).
5777
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005778- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5779 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5780 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5781
5782 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5783 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5784 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005785
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005786 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5787 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5788 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5789 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5790 for various simple to use conversions.
5791
5792 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5793 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5794
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005795 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5796 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5797 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5798 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5799 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5800 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5801 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5802 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5803 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5804 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5805 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5806 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5807 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5808 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5809 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005810
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005811- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5812 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5813 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005814 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005815 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005816
5817 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005818 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5819 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5820 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5821 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5822 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005823 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5824 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005825
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005826 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5827 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5828 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005829 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005830
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005831- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5832 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5833 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5834 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5835 floating arithmetic,
5836
5837 x = 9007199254740992.0
5838 print long(x)
5839
5840 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5841 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5842 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5843 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5844 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5845 functions are of good quality).
5846
5847 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5848 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5849 algorithms to break.
5850
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005851- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5852 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5853 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5854 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5855 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5856 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5857 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5858 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5859 order.
5860
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005861- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5862 operation along the most common code paths.
5863
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005864- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5865 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5866
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005867- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5868 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5869 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5870 {}.update(UserDict())
5871
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005872- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5873 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5874 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5875 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5876 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5877 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5878 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5879 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5880
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005881- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005882 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005883
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005884 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005885 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5886 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005887 join() method of strings
5888 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005889 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5890 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005891 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005892 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005893
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005894- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5895 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5896
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005897- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5898 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5899
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005900- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5901 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5902 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5903 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5904
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005905- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5906 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005907 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005908 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5909 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005910
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005911- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5912
5913
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005914Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005915-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005916
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005917- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005918 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005919 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5920 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5921
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005922- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5923 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5924
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005925- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5926 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5927 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5928 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5929
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005930- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5931 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5932 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5933
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005934- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5935
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005936- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5937
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005938- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5939 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5940 that are still imported into string.py).
5941
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005942- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5943
5944- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5945 Now it does.
5946
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005947- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5948
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005949- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5950 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5951 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5952 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5953 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005954 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5955 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005956
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005957- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5958 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5959 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5960 'help(object)'.
5961
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005962Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005963-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005964
5965- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005966 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005967 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5968 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5969
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005970- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005971 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5972 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005973
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005974C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005975-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005976
5977- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5978 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005979
5980----
5981
5982**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**