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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. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000015- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
16
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000017- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
18 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
19 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
20
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000021- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
22 configure would break checking curses.h.
23
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000024- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
25 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
26
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000027- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
28
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000029- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
30
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000031- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
32
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000033- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
34 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
35
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000036- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
37 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
38 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
39
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000040- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
41 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000042 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000043
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000044- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
45 now encodes backslash correctly.
46
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000047- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
48
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000049- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
50 and long longs.
51
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000052- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
53 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
54 message in this case.
55
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000056- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
57 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
58 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
59 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
60 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
61
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +000062- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000063
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +000064- Speed up some Unicode operations.
65
66- A new AST parser implementation was completed.
67
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +000068- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +000069 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
70
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +000071- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
72
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +000073- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
74 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
75
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +000076- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
77
78- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
79
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +000080- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
81 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
82 was empty.
83
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +000084- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
85 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
86
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000087- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +000088 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +000089
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +000090- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
91 codes.
92
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +000093- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
94 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
95 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
96
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +000097- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
98 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
99
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000100- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000101 (fixes bug #1119418).
102
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000103- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
104
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000105- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
106 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
107
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000108- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
109 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
110 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
111
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000112- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
113
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000114- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
115 reference counts in some error exit cases.
116
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000117- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
118 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
119 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
120 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
121 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
122 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
123 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
124 realloc.
125
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000126- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
127 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
128
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000129- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
130 like their int counterparts.
131
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000132- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
133 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
134 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
135 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
136 for a longer write-up of the problem).
137
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000138- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
139 serializing floats.
140
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000141- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
142 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
143 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
144
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000145- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
146 278.
147
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000148- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
149 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
150 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
151 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000152 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000153 PyNumber_*().
154 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
155
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000156- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
157 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
158 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
159 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
160
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000161- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
162 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
163 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
164 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
165 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
166
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000167- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
168 disabled caused a crash.
169
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000170- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
171 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
172
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000173- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000174 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
175
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000176- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
177
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000178- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000179 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
180 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
181 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000182
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000183- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
184
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000185- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
186 returning None.
187
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000188- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000189 ('\') with a specific error message.
190
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000191- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
192
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000193- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
194 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
195
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000196- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000197 an ferror() call.
198
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000199- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
200 list.sort().
201
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000202- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
203 (2+3) --> (5).
204
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000205- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
206
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000207- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
208 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000209
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000210- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
211 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
212 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
213
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000214- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
215 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
216 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
217
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000218Extension Modules
219-----------------
220
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000221- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
222 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
223
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000224- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
225 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
226 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
227
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000228- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
229 than the system default domain.
230
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000231- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
232 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
233 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
234
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000235- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
236
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000237- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
238 before the env.
239
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000240- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
241
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000242- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
243
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000244- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
245 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
246 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
247
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000248- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
249 without prior setting of the userptr.
250
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000251- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
252
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000253- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
254
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000255- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
256 problem on AIX.
257
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000258- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
259
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000260- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
261
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000262- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
263
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000264- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
265 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
266
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000267- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
268 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
269
270- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
271
272- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000273
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000274- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
275 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
276
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000277- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
278
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000279- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
280 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
281
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000282- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
283 returns in cStringIO.c.
284
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000285- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
286 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
287
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000288- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
289
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000290- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
291
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000292- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
293 the file system encoding.
294
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000295- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
296 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000297
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000298- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
299
300- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000301 line without newlines.
302
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000303- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
304 on Windows.
305
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000306- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000307 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
308
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000309- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
310 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
311 for large or negative values.
312
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000313- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000314 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000315
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000316- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
317
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000318- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
319 if available on the platform.
320
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000321- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
322 available on the platform.
323
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000324- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
325 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
326
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000327- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
328
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000329- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
330 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
331 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
332
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000333- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
334
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000335- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
336 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
337
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000338- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000339 file size.
340
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000341- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
342
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000343- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
344 {remove_history,replace_history}
345
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000346- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
347 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000348
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000349- stat_float_times is now True.
350
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000351- array.array objects are now picklable.
352
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000353- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
354 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
355
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000356- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
357 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
358 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
359
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000360- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
361 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000362
363Library
364-------
365
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000366- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
367 unless the system is Win32.
368
Martin v. Löwisc81e3a62006-01-30 15:04:31 +0000369- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000370 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
371 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
372
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000373- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
374
375- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000376
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000377- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
378
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000379- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000380 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000381
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000382- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
383 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000384
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000385- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
386
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000387- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
388
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000389- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
390 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
391 LoadError subclasses IOError.
392
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000393- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000394 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
395 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
396 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
397 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
398
399 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
400 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
401 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
402 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
403 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000404
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000405- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
406 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
407 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
408
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000409- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
410
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000411- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
412
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000413- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
414 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
415 illegal argument)
416
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000417- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
418 is an error in the format string.
419
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000420- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
421
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000422- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000423 "parent" argument.
424
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000425- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
426 for padding.
427
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000428- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
429 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
430
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000431- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
432 to get the correct encoding.
433
434- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
435 languages.
436
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000437- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
438
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000439- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
440
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000441- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
442
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000443- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
444 functionality.
445
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000446- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
447
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000448- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
449 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
450
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000451- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
452 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
453 match the Content-Length header.
454
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000455- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
456
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000457- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
458 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000459 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000460
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000461- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
462
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000463- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
464
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000465- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
466 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
467
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000468- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
469 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
470 Tkdnd.
471
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000472- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
473 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
474
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000475- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
476 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
477
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000478- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000479 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
480
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000481- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
482 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
483
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000484- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
485 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
486
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000487- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000488 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000489
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000490- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
491
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000492- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
493 error messages.
494
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000495- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
496
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000497- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
498 Bug #1224621.
499
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000500- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
501 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
502 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
503 terminates by raising StopIteration.
504
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000505- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
506
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000507- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
508 component of the path.
509
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000510- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
511 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
512 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
513 class at all.
514
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000515- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
516 files to PyPI.
517
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000518- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
519 them to PyPI.
520
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000521- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
522 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
523 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
524 work as expected.
525
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000526- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
527 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
528
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000529- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000530 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
531
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000532- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
533
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000534- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
535 to build.
536
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000537- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
538 symbolic links on Windows.
539
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000540- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000541 profile.py if available.
542
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000543- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
544
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000545- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
546 in LWPCookieJar.
547
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000548- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
549
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000550- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
551
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000552- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
553
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000554- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
555
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000556- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
557
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000558- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
559
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000560- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
561
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000562- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
563
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000564- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
565 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
566 be exploited in various ways.
567
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000568- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000569 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
570
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000571- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
572 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
573
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000574- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000575 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
576
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000577- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
578
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000579- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
580
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000581- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
582
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000583- Enhancements to the csv module:
584
585 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000586 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000587 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000588 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
589 reporting.
590 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
591 dictates.
592 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000593 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000594 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000595 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
596 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000597 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
598 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000599 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000600 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
601 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
602 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
603 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
604 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
605 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
606 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
607 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
608 without first creating a dialect class.
609 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
610 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
611 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000612 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000613 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
614 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000615 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
616 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
617 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
618 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000619 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
620 This has been fixed.
621
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000622- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
623 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
624 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
625 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
626
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000627- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
628
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000629- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
630 (Bug #951915).
631
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000632- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
633 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
634 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000635 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000636
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000637- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
638
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000639- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
640 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
641
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000642- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
643
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000644- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
645
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000646- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
647
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000648- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
649
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000650- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
651
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000652- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
653 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
654 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
655
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000656- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000657 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000658
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000659- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
660 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
661 tokenizer with very long source lines.
662
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000663- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
664 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
665 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000666
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000667- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
668 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000669
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000670- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
671 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
672
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000673- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
674 correctly.
675
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000676- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
677 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
678 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
679 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
680 between two lines.
681
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000682- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
683 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
684 handlers.
685
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000686- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000687 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
688 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000689
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000690- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
691 considering it exactly like a '*'.
692
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000693- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
694 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000695
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000696- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
697
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000698- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
699 touch the recursion limit.
700
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000701Build
702-----
703
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000704- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
705
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000706- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
707
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000708- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
709
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000710- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
711 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
712
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000713- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
714
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000715- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
716 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
717
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000718- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
719 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
720
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000721- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
722 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
723 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000724 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000725
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000726- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
727 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
728 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
729
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000730- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
731
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000732- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
733 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
734
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000735- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
736 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
737 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
738 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
739 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
740 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
741 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
742 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
743
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000744- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
745 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
746 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
747 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
748
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000749C API
750-----
751
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000752- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
753
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000754- Removed PyRange_New().
755
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000756- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
757 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
758 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
759 mappings.
760
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000761
762Tests
763-----
764
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000765- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000766
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000767- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
768 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
769
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000770
771Documentation
772-------------
773
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000774- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
775
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000776- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
777 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
778
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000779- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
780
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000781- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
782
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000783- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
784
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000785- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
786
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000787- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
788
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000789- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
790
791- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
792
793- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
794
795- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
796
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000797- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
798 Closes bug #1166582.
799
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000800- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
801 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
802 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
803
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000804Mac
805---
806
807
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000808New platforms
809-------------
810
811- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
812
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000813
814Tools/Demos
815-----------
816
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000817- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
818 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
819 source files that need an encoding declaration.
820 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
821
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000822- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
823
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000824- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000825
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000826- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
827 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000828
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000829What's New in Python 2.4 final?
830===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000831
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000832*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000833
834Core and builtins
835-----------------
836
837- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
838 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
839 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
840
841
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000842What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
843==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000844
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000845*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000846
847Core and builtins
848-----------------
849
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000850- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
851 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
852 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
853
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000854
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000855Library
856-------
857
858- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
859 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
860 raised is re-raised.
861
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000862- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
863 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
864
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000865- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
866 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
867 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
868 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
869 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
870 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
871 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
872 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
873 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
874 by the slice are recomputed now.
875
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000876- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000877
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000878Build
879-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000880
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000881- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
882 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
883 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000884
885C API
886-----
887
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000888- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
889
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000890
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000891What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
892================================
893
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000894*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000895
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000896License
897-------
898
899The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
900is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
901changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
902Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
903intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
904durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
905the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
906License::
907
908 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
909
910says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
911to Python 2.1.1.
912
913The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
914License Version 2.
915
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000916Core and builtins
917-----------------
918
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000919- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
920 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
921 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
922 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
923 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
924 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
925 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +0000926 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000927 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
928 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
929
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000930- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000931
932Extension Modules
933-----------------
934
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000935- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
936 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
937 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
938 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000939
940Library
941-------
942
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000943- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
944 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
945 returned.
946
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000947- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
948
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000949- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
950 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
951
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000952- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
953
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000954- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
955 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000956
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000957- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
958
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000959- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
960
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000961- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000962 the source code is updated and reloaded.
963
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000964Build
965-----
966
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000967- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000968
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000969What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
970================================
971
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000972*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000973
974Core and builtins
975-----------------
976
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000977- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000978 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
979
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000980- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
981 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
982 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
983 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
984
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000985- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
986 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
987
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000988- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
989 constant.
990
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000991- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
992 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
993 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
994 large), and to anomalies such as
995 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
996 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
997 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
998 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000999
1000Extension modules
1001-----------------
1002
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001003- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1004 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001005 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1006 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1007 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001008
1009Library
1010-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001011
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001012- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001013 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001014 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1015 --swig-cpp.
1016
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001017- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1018 it is set.
1019
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001020- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001021
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001022- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1023 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1024 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1025 Closes bug #1039270.
1026
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001027- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001028
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001029 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001030 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1031 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1032 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1033 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1034 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1035 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1036 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1037 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1038 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1039 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1040 + Updates to documentation.
1041
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001042- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1043 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1044 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1045 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1046
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001047- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001048
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001049- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1050 applications should use the getmember function.
1051
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001052- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1053
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001054- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1055 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1056 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1057 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1058 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1059 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1060 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1061 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1062 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1063
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001064- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1065 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001066 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001067
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001068- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1069 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1070 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1071 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1072 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1073 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1074 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1075 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001076
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001077- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1078 the new public features (of which there are many).
1079
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001080- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001081 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1082 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1083 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1084 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001085 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001086
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001087- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1088
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001089- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1090 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1091 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1092 options.
1093
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001094- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1095 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1096 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1097 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1098 conditions under which non-string values work.
1099
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001100Build
1101-----
1102
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001103- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1104 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1105 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1106
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001107- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1108 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1109 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1110 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1111 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001112
1113C API
1114-----
1115
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001116- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1117 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1118
1119- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1120
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001121- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1122 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1123 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1124 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1125 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1126 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1127 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1128 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1129 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1130
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001131- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1132
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001133- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1134 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1135 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001136
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001137Tests
1138-----
1139
1140- test__locale ported to unittest
1141
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001142Mac
1143---
1144
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001145- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1146 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1147 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001148
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001149Tools/Demos
1150-----------
1151
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001152- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1153 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1154 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1155 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1156 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001157
1158
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001159What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1160=================================
1161
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001162*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001163
1164Core and builtins
1165-----------------
1166
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001167- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001168 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1169
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001170- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1171 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1172 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1173 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1174 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1175 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1176 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1177 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001178 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1179 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1180 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1181 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1182 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001183
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001184- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1185 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1186 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1187 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1188 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1189
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001190- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1191
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001192- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1193 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1194
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001195- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1196 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1197 modified the list.
1198
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001199- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1200 functions is now writable.
1201
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001202- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1203 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1204 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1205 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1206
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001207- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1208 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1209 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1210 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1211 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001212
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001213- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1214 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1215
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001216Extension modules
1217-----------------
1218
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001219- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1220
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001221- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1222 data.
1223
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001224- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1225 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1226 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1227 supposed to have been truncated away.
1228
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001229- Added socket.socketpair().
1230
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001231- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1232 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1233
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001234- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001235 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1236
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001237Library
1238-------
1239
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001240- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001241 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001242
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001243- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1244 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1245
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001246- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1247 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1248
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001249- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1250
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001251- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1252 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001253
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001254- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1255 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1256
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001257- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1258
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001259- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1260
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001261- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1262
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001263- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1264 Percivall.
1265
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001266- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1267 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1268
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001269- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1270 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1271 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001272 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001273
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001274- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1275 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1276 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1277 and exponent.
1278
1279- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1280
1281- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001282 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001283 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1284
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001285- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1286 to the readline module.
1287
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001288- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001289 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1290 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001291
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001292- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1293 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1294 contains symlinks.
1295
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001296- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1297 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1298
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001299- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1300 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1301 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1302
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001303- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1304 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1305 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1306 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1307 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1308 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1309 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1310 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1311 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1312 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1313 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1314 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1315 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1316
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001317- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1318
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001319Tools/Demos
1320-----------
1321
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001322- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1323 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1324
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001325- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1326
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001327Build
1328-----
1329
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001330- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1331 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1332 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1333 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1334 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1335 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1336 plans to do so.
1337
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001338- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1339 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1340
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001341- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1342 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1343
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001344- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1345 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1346
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001347- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1348 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1349
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001350- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1351 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1352
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001353C API
1354-----
1355
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001356..
1357
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001358Documentation
1359-------------
1360
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001361- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1362 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1363
1364- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1365 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1366 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001367
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001368New platforms
1369-------------
1370
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001371- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1372
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001373Tests
1374-----
1375
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001376..
1377
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001378Windows
1379-------
1380
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001381- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1382 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1383 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1384 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1385 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1386 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1387 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1388 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1389 the problem.
1390
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001391Mac
1392---
1393
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001394..
1395
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001396
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001397What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1398=================================
1399
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001400*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001401
1402Core and builtins
1403-----------------
1404
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001405- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1406 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1407 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1408 sensitive code.
1409
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001410- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001411 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001412
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001413 @staticmethod
1414 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001415
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001416 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001417
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001418- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1419 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1420 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1421 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1422 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1423 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1424 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1425 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1426 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1427 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1428 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1429
1430 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1431 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1432 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1433 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1434 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1435 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1436 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1437
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001438- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1439 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1440
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001441- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001442 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001443
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001444- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001445 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001446 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1447
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001448- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001449 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1450 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1451
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001452- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1453 types that support garbage collection.
1454
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001455- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1456
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001457- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1458 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1459 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1460 Jython.
1461
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001462- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1463
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001464- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1465 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1466
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001467- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1468 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1469 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001470
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001471- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1472 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1473 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1474
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001475Extension modules
1476-----------------
1477
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001478- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1479
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001480Library
1481-------
1482
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001483- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1484 TIS-620
1485
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001486- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1487 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1488 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1489 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1490 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1491 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1492 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1493 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1494 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1495 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1496
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001497- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1498
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001499- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1500 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1501 same as when the argument is omitted).
1502 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1503
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001504- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1505
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001506- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1507 schemes are offered.
1508
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001509- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1510
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001511- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1512 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1513 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1514
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001515- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1516
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001517- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1518 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1519
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001520- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1521 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1522 when dummy_threading is being used.
1523
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001524- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1525 from a tarfile.
1526
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001527- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001528 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001529
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001530- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1531 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1532 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1533 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1534
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001535- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1536 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1537
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001538- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1539 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1540 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1541 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1542 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1543 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1544 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1545 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1546 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1547 by some other method in progress).
1548
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001549- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1550 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1551 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001552
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001553- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1554
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001555- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1556 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1557 AM Kuchling.
1558
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001559- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1560 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1561 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1562
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001563- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1564 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1565 instead of unsigned.
1566
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001567- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001568 no longer part of the public API.
1569
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001570- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1571 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1572 string methods of the same name).
1573
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001574- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001575 SF patch 945642.
1576
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001577- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1578
1579 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1580
1581 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1582 DocTestSuites.
1583
1584- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1585 that provide thread-local data.
1586
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001587- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1588 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1589
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001590- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1591
1592- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1593 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1594 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1595
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001596- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1597
1598 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1599 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1600 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001601
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001602 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1603 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1604 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1605 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1606
1607 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1608 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1609
1610 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1611 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1612 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1613 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1614
1615 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1616 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1617 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1618 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1619 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1620
1621 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1622 wrapping help output.
1623
1624 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1625 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1626 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001627
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001628C API
1629-----
1630
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001631- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1632 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1633 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1634 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1635 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1636 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1637 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1638 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1639 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1640 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1641 its visible semantics have not changed.
1642
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001643- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1644 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1645
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001646Documentation
1647-------------
1648
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001649- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001650
1651 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001652 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001653
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001654 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001655
1656 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1657
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001658- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001659
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001660Tests
1661-----
1662
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001663- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001664 platforms that use the Makefile.
1665
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001666- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1667 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1668 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1669
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001670
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001671What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1672=================================
1673
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001674*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001675
1676Core and builtins
1677-----------------
1678
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001679- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1680 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1681 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1682 objects now (one object instead of three).
1683
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001684- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1685 Windows DLLs.
1686
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001687- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1688 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001689
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001690- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1691 a new .pyc magic.
1692
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001693- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1694 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1695 be there.
1696
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001697- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1698 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1699 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1700
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001701- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1702 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1703 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1704
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001705- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1706
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001707- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1708 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1709 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001710
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001711- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1712 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1713
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001714- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1715
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001716- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001717 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001718
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001719- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1720
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001721- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1722
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001723- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1724 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1725
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001726- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1727 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1728 Fixes bug #858016 .
1729
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001730- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1731 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1732 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1733
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001734- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1735 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1736 improves their performance (about 35%).
1737
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001738- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1739 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1740 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1741
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001742- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1743 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1744 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1745 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1746
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001747- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1748 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001749 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001750 length is not known).
1751
1752- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1753 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001754 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1755 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001756 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1757
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001758- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1759 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1760
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001761- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1762 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1763 keyword arguments.
1764
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001765- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1766 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1767 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1768
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001769- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1770 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1771 cases.
1772
1773- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1774 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1775 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1776 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1777 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1778 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1779 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1780 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1781 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1782 a release build.
1783
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001784- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1785 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1786
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001787- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001788 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001789
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001790- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1791 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1792 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1793 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1794 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1795 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1796 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1797 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1798 destroyed.
1799
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001800- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1801 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1802 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1803 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1804 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1805 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1806 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1807 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1808
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001809- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1810 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1811 character other than a space.
1812
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001813- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1814 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1815 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1816 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1817 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1818 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1819 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1820 attributes with the same name.
1821
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001822- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1823 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1824 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1825 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1826 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1827 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1828 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1829 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1830 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1831 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1832 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1833 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1834 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1835 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001836
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001837- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1838 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1839 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1840 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1841 This has been repaired.
1842
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001843- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1844
1845- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1846
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001847- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1848 over a sequence.
1849
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001850- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001851 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001852
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001853- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1854
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001855- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1856 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1857 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1858 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1859 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1860 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1861 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1862 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1863
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001864- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1865 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1866 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1867
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001868- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1869 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1870 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1871 freelist.
1872
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001873- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1874 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1875
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001876- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1877 number.
1878
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001879- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1880 a TypeError exception.
1881
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001882- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1883 820195.
1884
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001885- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1886 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1887 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1888
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001889- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001890 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1891 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001892
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001893- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1894 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1895 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1896
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001897- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1898 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001899 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001900
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001901- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001902 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1903 the first call.
1904
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001905
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001906Extension modules
1907-----------------
1908
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001909- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1910 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1911
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001912- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1913 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1914 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1915 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1916 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1917 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1918 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001919
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001920- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1921
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001922- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1923
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001924- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1925 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1926
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001927- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1928 fewer false positives.
1929
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001930- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1931 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1932
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001933- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001934 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1935
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001936- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001937 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001938 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001939 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1940 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001941
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001942- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1943 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1944 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1945 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1946
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001947- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1948 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1949 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1950 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1951 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1952 #897625.
1953
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001954- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1955 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1956
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001957- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1958 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1959 and pops on either side of the deque.
1960
1961- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1962 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1963
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001964- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1965 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1966 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1967 other functions that expect a function argument.
1968
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001969- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1970
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001971- os.getsid was added.
1972
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001973- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1974 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1975 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1976
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001977- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1978
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001979- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1980
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001981- readline.clear_history was added.
1982
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001983- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1984
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001985- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1986
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001987- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1988
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001989- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1990
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001991- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1992
1993- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1994
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001995- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1996
1997- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1998
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001999- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2000 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2001 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2002
2003- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2004 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2005 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2006 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2007 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2008 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2009 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2010
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002011- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2012 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2013 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2014 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002015
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002016- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002017 iterators from a single iterable.
2018
2019- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2020 of raising a TypeError exception.
2021
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002022- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2023 as parameter.
2024
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002025Library
2026-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002027
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002028- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2029 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2030 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2031 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2032
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002033- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2034
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002035- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2036 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2037 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002038
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002039- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2040 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2041 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002042
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002043- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002044
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002045- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2046 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002047
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002048- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2049 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2050
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002051- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2052
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002053- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002054 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002055
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002056- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002057 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002058
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002059- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2060
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002061- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2062 on cygwin and mingw32.
2063
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002064- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2065
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002066- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2067 module.
2068
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002069- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2070 installation scheme for all platforms.
2071
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002072- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002073 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002074
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002075- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2076 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2077 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2078
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002079- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2080 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2081 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2082
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002083- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2084
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002085- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2086
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002087- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2088 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2089
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002090- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2091 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2092 type pattern with the same value exists.
2093
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002094- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2095 when run from the command prompt).
2096
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002097- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2098 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2099
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002100- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2101 default sort).
2102
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002103- Added global runctx function to profile module
2104
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002105- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2106
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002107- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2108
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002109- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2110
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002111- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002112 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2113 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2114 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2115 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2116 accordingly.
2117
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002118- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2119 decoding standards.
2120
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002121- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2122 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2123 called for all requests.
2124
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002125- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2126 they are passed to the compiler.
2127
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002128- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2129 indent, width and depth.
2130
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002131- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2132 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2133
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002134- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2135 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2136
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002137- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2138
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002139- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2140
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002141- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2142
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002143- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2144 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2145
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002146- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002147 for better performance.
2148
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002149- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002150
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002151- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2152 a string).
2153
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002154- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2155
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002156- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2157
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002158- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2159
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002160- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2161
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002162- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2163 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2164 list of fieldnames.
2165
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002166- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2167 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2168
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002169- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2170
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002171- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2172 empty lists.
2173
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002174- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2175 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2176 and shelves.
2177
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002178- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2179 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2180
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002181- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002182 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2183 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002184
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002185- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2186 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002187 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002188
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002189- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002190 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2191 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2192
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002193- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2194 and removed in Py2.4.
2195
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002196- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2197
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002198- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2199
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002200Tools/Demos
2201-----------
2202
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002203- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2204 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2205
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002206- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2207
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002208- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2209 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2210 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2211 destination in situations where both files are given.
2212
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002213- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2214 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2215 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2216 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2217
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002218- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2219
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002220- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2221 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2222 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2223 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2224 now.
2225
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002226- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2227 in effect
2228
2229- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2230 C-c C-h
2231
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002232- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2233 -d option was given.
2234
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002235Build
2236-----
2237
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002238- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2239 build under OS X.
2240
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002241- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2242 --enable-profiling.
2243
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002244- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2245 is configured --with-tsc.
2246
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002247- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2248 on AMD64.
2249
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002250- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2251 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2252
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002253- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2254 removed.
2255
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002256- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2257 supported (see PEP 11).
2258
2259- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2260
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002261- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2262
2263- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2264 (see PEP 11).
2265
2266- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2267 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2268
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002269C API
2270-----
2271
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002272- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2273 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2274 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2275
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002276- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2277 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2278 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2279 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2280
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002281- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2282 generator objects.
2283
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002284- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2285 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002286 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2287 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002288
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002289- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2290 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2291
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002292- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2293 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2294 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2295 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2296 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2297
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002298- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2299 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2300 about 10% faster.
2301
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002302- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2303 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2304
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002305- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2306 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2307 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2308 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2309
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002310Windows
2311-------
2312
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002313- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2314 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2315 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2316 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2317
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002318- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2319 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2320 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2321
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002322
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002323What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2324===============================
2325
2326*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2327
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002328IDLE
2329----
2330
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002331- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2332 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2333 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2334 context-menu actions.
2335
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002336- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2337 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2338 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2339 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2340 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2341 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2342 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2343 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2344 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2345
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002346
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002347What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2348=============================================
2349
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002350*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002351
2352Core and builtins
2353-----------------
2354
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002355- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002356 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002357 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2358
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002359Extension modules
2360-----------------
2361
2362- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2363 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2364 than once. This has been fixed.
2365
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002366- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2367 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2368 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2369 call.
2370
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002371- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2372
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002373Library
2374-------
2375
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002376- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2377 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2378
2379- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2380 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2381 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2382 restored.
2383
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002384IDLE
2385----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002386
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002387- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002388
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002389Build
2390-----
2391
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002392- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2393 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2394
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002395C API
2396-----
2397
2398Windows
2399-------
2400
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002401- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2402 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2403
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002404- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2405
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002406Mac
2407---
2408
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002409- Various fixes to pimp.
2410
2411- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2412
2413- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2414 more problems than it solves.
2415
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002416
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002417What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2418=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002419
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002420*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2421
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002422Core and builtins
2423-----------------
2424
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002425- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2426 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2427
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002428- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2429 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002430 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002431
2432- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2433 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2434 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002435 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002436
2437- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2438 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002439
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002440- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2441 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2442 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2443
2444- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002445 770247.
2446
2447- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002448
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002449Extension modules
2450-----------------
2451
2452- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2453 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2454
2455- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2456
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002457- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2458
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002459- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2460 contained within the _strptime module.
2461
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002462- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2463 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2464
2465- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002466 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2467
2468- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2469 the find_class attribute, if present.
2470
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002471- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002472
2473 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2474 (SF bug 763298).
2475
2476 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002477 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2478 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2479 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002480
2481 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2482
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002483Library
2484-------
2485
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002486- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2487
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002488- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2489 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2490 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2491 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2492 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2493 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2494 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2495 or Tester().
2496
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002497- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2498 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2499 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2500 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2501 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2502 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2503 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2504 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2505 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002506
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002507 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002508
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002509- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2510 weren't before was an oversight.
2511
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002512- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2513 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2514
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002515- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2516 when there are no lines.
2517
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002518- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2519 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2520
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002521- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2522 to child processes.
2523
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002524- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2525
2526- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2527
2528- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2529 xmlrpclib.
2530
2531- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2532 responses.
2533
2534- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2535 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2536
2537- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2538 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2539 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2540
2541- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2542 used as patterns.
2543
2544- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2545 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2546 than Tk 8.3.
2547
2548- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2549
2550- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002551
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002552Tools/Demos
2553-----------
2554
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002555- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2556
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002557- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2558
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002559- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002560
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002561Build
2562-----
2563
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002564- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2565
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002566- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2567
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002568- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2569 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002570
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002571- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2572 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2573 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002574
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002575C API
2576-----
2577
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002578- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2579 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2580
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002581Windows
2582-------
2583
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002584- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2585 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2586 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2587 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2588 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2589 Python exception ::
2590
2591 thread.error: can't start new thread
2592
2593 is raised now.
2594
2595- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2596 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2597 instead of from DLL teardown.
2598
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002599Mac
2600---
2601
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002602- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002603 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002604 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2605 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2606 the executable in the bundle.
2607
2608- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002609
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002610- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2611
2612- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2613 on Panther.
2614
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002615What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2616================================
2617
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002618*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002619
2620Core and builtins
2621-----------------
2622
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002623- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2624 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2625 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2626 with the -i option.
2627
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002628- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2629 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2630
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002631- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2632 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2633
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002634- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2635 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2636 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2637 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2638 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2639 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2640 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2641 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2642 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2643 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2644 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2645 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2646 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002647
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002648- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2649 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2650 embedded in a lambda expression.
2651
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002652- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2653 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2654 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2655 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2656 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2657
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002658- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2659 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2660 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2661
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002662- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2663 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2664
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002665- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2666 It's writable again.
2667
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002668- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2669 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2670 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002671 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002672
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002673- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2674 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2675 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2676
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002677Extension modules
2678-----------------
2679
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002680- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2681 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2682
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002683- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2684 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2685 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2686 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2687
2688- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2689 collection.
2690
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002691- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2692 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2693 unique within a single program run.
2694
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002695- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2696 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2697
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002698- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2699 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2700
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002701- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2702 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002703
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002704- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2705
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002706- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2707 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2708
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002709- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2710 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2711 for many BSD-derived systems.
2712
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002713
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002714Library
2715-------
2716
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002717- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2718 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2719 primary ones:
2720
2721 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2722 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2723 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2724
2725 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2726 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2727 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2728 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2729 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2730 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2731
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002732- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2733 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2734 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2735 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2736 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2737 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2738 argument.
2739
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002740- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2741 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2742 in the archive.
2743
2744- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2745 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2746
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002747- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2748 569574).
2749
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002750- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2751 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2752 no more.
2753
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002754- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2755 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2756 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2757 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2758 code coverage.
2759
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002760- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2761 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2762 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002763 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2764 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002765
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002766- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2767 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2768 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002769 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002770
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002771- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2772
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002773- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2774 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2775 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2776 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2777
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002778- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2779 handling.
2780
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002781- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2782 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2783
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002784- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2785 in socket.py.
2786
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002787- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2788
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002789- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2790 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2791 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2792 opener with proxy support.
2793
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002794- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2795
2796- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2797
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002798Tools/Demos
2799-----------
2800
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002801- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2802
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002803- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2804
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002805- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2806 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002807
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002808- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2809 files.
2810
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002811Build
2812-----
2813
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002814- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002815 different root directory.
2816
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002817C API
2818-----
2819
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002820- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2821 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2822 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2823 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2824 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2825 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2826 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2827 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2828 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2829 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2830
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002831- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2832 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2833 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2834 from Python.
2835
2836
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002837New platforms
2838-------------
2839
2840None this time.
2841
2842Tests
2843-----
2844
2845- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2846 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2847
2848Windows
2849-------
2850
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002851- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2852
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002853- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2854 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2855 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2856 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2857 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2858 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2859 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2860 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2861 that's what it's for.
2862
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002863Mac
2864---
2865
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002866- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2867 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2868 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2869 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002870- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2871 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2872- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002873
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002874SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2875------------------------------------
2876
2877430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2878598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2879622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2880661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2881683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2882697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2883713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2884724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2885727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2886729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2887730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2888731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2889732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2890733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2891735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2892740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2893744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2894745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2895747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2896749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2897751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2898753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2899755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2900757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2901760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2902
2903
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002904What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2905================================
2906
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002907*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002908
2909Core and builtins
2910-----------------
2911
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002912- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2913 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2914
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002915- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2916 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2917 and cannot be strings).
2918
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002919- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2920 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2921 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2922 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2923
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002924- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2925 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2926 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2927 Python itself.
2928
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002929- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2930 the referenced object, if it has one.
2931
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002932- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2933 the thread started at
2934 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2935
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002936- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2937 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2938 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2939 placed on a list index.
2940
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002941- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2942 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2943 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2944 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2945
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002946- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2947 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2948 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2949 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2950 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2951 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2952 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2953
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002954- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2955 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2956 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2957 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2958 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2959
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002960- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2961 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002962
2963- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2964 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2965 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2966 #693195.)
2967
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002968- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2969 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002970
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002971- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002972 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002973 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2974 interpreter executions, would fail.
2975
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002976- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002977 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002978 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002979
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002980Extension modules
2981-----------------
2982
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002983- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2984 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2985 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2986 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2987
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002988- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2989 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2990
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002991- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2992 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2993 and Greg Chapman.)
2994
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002995- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2996 recursively.
2997
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002998- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002999 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3000 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3001 leaks.
3002
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003003- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3004
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003005- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3006 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3007 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3008 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3009 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3010 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3011 #705836.
3012
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003013- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003014 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3015
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003016- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3017 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3018 See SF bug #692416.
3019
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003020- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3021 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3022
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003023- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3024 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3025 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003026
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003027- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003028 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3029 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3030
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003031- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3032 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3033 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3034 timeouts to work properly.
3035
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003036Library
3037-------
3038
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003039- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3040 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3041 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3042 future release.
3043
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003044- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3045 for querying platform dependent features.
3046
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003047- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003048
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003049- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3050 pickle protocol versions.
3051
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003052- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3053 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3054 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3055
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003056- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3057
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003058- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3059 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3060 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3061 modules.
3062
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003063- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3064 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3065 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3066
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003067- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3068 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3069
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003070- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3071 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3072 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3073
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003074- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003075 MS Office extensions.
3076
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003077- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3078 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3079
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003080- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3081 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3082
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003083- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3084 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3085 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3086 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3087 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3088 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3089
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003090- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3091 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3092 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003093
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003094- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3095 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3096 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3097
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003098- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3099
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003100- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3101 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3102 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3103
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003104Tools/Demos
3105-----------
3106
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003107- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3108 See the module docstring for details.
3109
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003110Build
3111-----
3112
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003113- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3114 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003115
3116C API
3117-----
3118
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003119- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3120
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003121- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3122 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3123 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3124
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003125- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3126 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003127
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003128 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3129 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3130 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003131
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003132- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003133 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3134
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003135- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3136 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3137 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003138
3139New platforms
3140-------------
3141
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003142None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003143
3144Tests
3145-----
3146
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003147- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3148 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003149
3150Windows
3151-------
3152
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003153- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3154 function.
3155
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003156- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3157 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003158
3159Mac
3160---
3161
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003162- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3163 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003164
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003165- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3166 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003167
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003168- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3169 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3170 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003171
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003172- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003173 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3174 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003175
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003176- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3177 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003178
3179
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003180What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3181=================================
3182
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003183*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003184
3185Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003186-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003187
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003188- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3189 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3190 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3191
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003192- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3193 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3194 (SF patch #664376.)
3195
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003196- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3197 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3198 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3199 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3200 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3201 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003202 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003203
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003204- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3205 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3206 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3207 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003208 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003209
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003210- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3211 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3212 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3213 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3214 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3215 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3216 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3217 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3218 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3219 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3220 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3221
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003222- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3223 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3224 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3225 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3226 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3227 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3228
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003229- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3230 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3231
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003232- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3233 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3234 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3235 case.)
3236
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003237- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3238 passed as unicode strings.
3239
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003240- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3241 See SF bug #683467.
3242
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003243- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3244 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3245
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003246- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3247
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003248- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3249
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003250- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3251 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3252 arguments.
3253
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003254- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3255 See SF bug #667147.
3256
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003257- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003258 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003259 See SF bug #676155.
3260
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003261- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003262 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003263 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3264 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3265 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3266 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3267 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3268 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003269
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003270Extension modules
3271-----------------
3272
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003273- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3274 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3275 tp_as_number pointer.
3276
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003277- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3278 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3279 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3280 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3281 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3282
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003283- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3284
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003285- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3286
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003287- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003288 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003289 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3290 patch #678531.)
3291
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003292- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3293 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3294
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003295- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3296 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3297
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003298- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3299
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003300- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3301 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3302 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3303
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003304- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3305
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003306- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3307 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3308
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003309- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003310
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003311- datetime changes:
3312
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003313 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3314
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003315 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3316 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3317 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3318 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3319 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3320 now.
3321
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003322 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003323 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3324 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003325
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003326 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003327 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003328 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3329 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3330 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3331 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003332
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003333 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3334 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3335 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003336 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3337
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003338 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3339 by a later example coded by Guido.
3340
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003341 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003342 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3343 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3344 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003345 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3346 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3347
3348 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3349 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3350 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3351 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3352 tzinfo subclass instance.
3353
3354 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3355 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3356 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3357 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3358 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3359 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3360 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3361 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003362
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003363 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3364 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3365 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3366 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3367 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003368 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3369
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003370 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003371
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003372 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3373 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3374 as a naive datetime object.
3375
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003376 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3377 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3378 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3379
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003380 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3381 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3382 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3383 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3384 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3385 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3386 comparison.
3387
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003388 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3389 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3390 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3391 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003392 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003393
3394 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003395
3396 and ::
3397
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003398 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3399
3400 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3401 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3402 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3403 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3404
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003405 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3406 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3407 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3408 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3409 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3410
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003411 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3412 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003413 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3414 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003415
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003416Library
3417-------
3418
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003419- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3420 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3421
3422- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3423 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3424 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3425 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3426 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3427 See PEP 307 for details.
3428
3429- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3430 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3431
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003432- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3433 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003434 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003435 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3436 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003437 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003438
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003439- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3440 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3441
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003442- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3443 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3444 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3445
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003446- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3447
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003448- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3449 exception.
3450
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003451- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3452 class.
3453
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003454- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3455 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3456 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3457
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003458- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3459 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3460
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003461- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003462 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3463 See SF bug #659228.
3464
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003465- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3466 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3467 See SF patch #651082.
3468
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003469- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003470
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003471- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3472 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3473
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003474- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003475 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003476
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003477- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3478 DOS paths from other platforms.
3479
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003480Tools/Demos
3481-----------
3482
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003483- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3484 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3485 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3486 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3487 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3488 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3489 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3490 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3491 example:
3492
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003493 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3494 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003495
3496 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3497
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003498
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003499Build
3500-----
3501
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003502- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3503 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3504 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003505 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3506
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003507 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3508
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003509- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3510 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3511 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3512 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3513 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3514 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3515 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3516 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3517 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3518
3519- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3520 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3521 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3522 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3523
3524- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3525 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3526
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003527C API
3528-----
3529
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003530- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3531 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003532
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003533- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3534 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3535 tp_as_number pointer.
3536
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003537- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3538 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3539 (SF #681367)
3540
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003541- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3542 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3543 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3544 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003545
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003546Tests
3547-----
3548
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003549- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003550 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3551 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3552 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3553 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3554 pydoc.)
3555
3556- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3557
3558- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003559
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003560Windows
3561-------
3562
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003563- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3564 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3565 time).
3566
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003567- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3568 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3569
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003570- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3571 release without strong cryptography.
3572
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003573- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003574 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003575
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003576- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3577 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3578
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003579Mac
3580---
3581
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003582- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3583 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003584
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003585- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3586 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3587 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003588
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003589- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3590 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003591
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003592- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3593 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3594 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3595 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003596
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003597- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003598 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3599 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3600 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003601
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003602
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003603What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003604=================================
3605
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003606*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003607
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003608Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003609--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003610
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003611- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3612
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003613- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3614 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003615 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003616 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003617 a different meaning than before.
3618
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003619- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003620 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003621 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003622
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003623- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003624 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003625 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003626
3627- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3628 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3629 and deallocation.
3630
3631- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3632 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3633
3634- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3635 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3636 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3637 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3638 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3639
3640- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3641 now detected by the garbage collector.
3642
3643- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3644 [SF bug 519621]
3645
3646- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3647 identifier.
3648
3649- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3650 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3651 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3652 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3653 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3654 [SF bug 563060]
3655
3656- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3657 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3658 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3659 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3660 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3661
3662- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3663 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3664 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3665
3666- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3667
3668- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3669 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3670 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3671 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3672 state of the slots would be lost.)
3673
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003674Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003675-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003676
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003677- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003678 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3679 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3680 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3681 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003682 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3683 Jython 2.1.
3684
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003685- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003686 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003687 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3688 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3689 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3690 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3691 these, see PEP 302.
3692
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003693- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3694 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3695 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3696
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003697- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3698 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3699 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3700
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003701- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3702 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3703 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3704
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003705- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3706 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3707 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3708 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3709 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3710 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3711 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3712 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3713 releases or implementations.
3714
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003715- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003716 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3717 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003718
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003719- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3720 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3721
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003722- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3723 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3724 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3725
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003726- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3727 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3728
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003729- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3730 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003731 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3732 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003733
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003734- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3735 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3736 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3737 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3738 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3739
3740 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3741 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3742 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3743 pattern.
3744
3745 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3746 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3747 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3748 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3749
3750 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3751 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3752 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3753 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3754 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3755 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3756
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003757- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3758 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3759 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3760 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3761 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3762 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3763 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3764 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003765
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003766- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3767 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3768 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3769 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3770 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003771 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3772 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3773 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3774 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3775 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3776 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3777 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003778
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003779- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3780 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3781
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003782- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3783 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3784 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3785 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3786 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3787 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3788 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3789 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3790 to Zack Weinberg!
3791
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003792- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3793 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3794 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3795 type. This has been fixed now.
3796
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003797- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3798 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3799 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3800
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003801- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3802 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3803 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3804 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3805 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3806 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3807 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3808 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003809 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003810
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003811- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3812 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3813 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003814
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003815- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3816 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3817 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3818 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3819 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3820 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3821 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3822 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003823 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003824 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3825 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3826
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003827- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3828 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3829 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3830 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3831 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3832 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3833 this.)
3834
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003835- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3836 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003837 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003838 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003839 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3840 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003841 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3842 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003843
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003844- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3845 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3846 currently running.
3847
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003848- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3849 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3850 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3851 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3852
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003853- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3854 as directory names.
3855
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003856- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3857 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3858
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003859- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3860 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3861
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003862- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003863 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3864 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003865
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003866- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3867 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3868 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3869 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3870 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3871
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003872- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3873 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3874 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3875 removed.
3876
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003877- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3878 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3879 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3880
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003881- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3882 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3883 to __debug__.
3884
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003885- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3886 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3887 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3888
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003889- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3890 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3891 deprecated now.
3892
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003893- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3894 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3895 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003896
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003897- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3898 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3899 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3900 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3901 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003902
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003903- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3904 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3905
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003906- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3907 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3908 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003909 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003910 is backward compatible.
3911
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003912- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3913 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3914 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3915 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3916 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3917
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003918- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3919 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3920 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3921 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3922 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3923 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003924
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003925- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3926 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3927
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003928- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3929 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3930
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003931- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3932 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3933 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3934 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3935 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3936
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003937- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3938 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3939 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3940
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003941- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003942 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3943
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003944- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3945 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3946 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003947
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003948- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3949 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3950
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003951- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3952 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3953 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3954
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003955- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3956
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003957Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003958-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003959
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003960- Added three operators to the operator module:
3961 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3962 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3963 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3964
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003965- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3966
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003967- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3968 archives.
3969
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003970- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3971 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3972 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3973
3974 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3975
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003976- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3977 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3978 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003979 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003980
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003981- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3982 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3983 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3984 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003985 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3986 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3987 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3988 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003989
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003990- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3991 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003992
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003993- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3994
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003995- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3996 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3997
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003998- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3999 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4000 supported.
4001
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004002- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4003
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004004- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4005 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004006
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004007- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4008 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4009
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004010- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4011
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004012- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4013 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4014
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004015- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4016 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4017 functions but callable type objects.
4018
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004019- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004020 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004021 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004022
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004023- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4024 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004025
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004026- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4027 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004028
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004029- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4030 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4031 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4032 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4033
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004034- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4035 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004036
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004037- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4038 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4039 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4040 and __imul__.
4041
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004042- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004043 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4044 is called.
4045
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004046- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4047 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4048 interpreter was compiled.
4049
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004050- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4051 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4052 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004053 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004054 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4055 1, not 2.
4056
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004057- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4058 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4059 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4060 limit.
4061
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004062- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4063 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4064 bug #623464.
4065
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004066- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4067 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4068 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4069 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4070
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004071Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004072-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004073
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004074- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4075
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004076- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4077 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4078 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4079 with Python 2.3a2.
4080
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004081- os.path exposes getctime.
4082
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004083- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004084 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004085 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004086 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004087 unit tests of floating point results.
4088
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004089- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4090 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4091 has been increased.
4092
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004093- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4094 executed.
4095
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004096- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4097 postinstallation script.
4098
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004099- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4100 test the current module.
4101
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004102- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004103 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4104 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4105 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4106 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4107
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004108- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004109 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004110 Ward's Optik package.
4111
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004112- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4113 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4114 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4115 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4116
4117- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4118 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004119 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004120
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004121- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4122 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4123 shelf are binary pickles.
4124
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004125- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4126 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4127
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004128- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4129 modules are iterators now.
4130
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004131- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4132 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4133 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4134 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4135 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4136 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004137
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004138- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4139 with their entity value.
4140
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004141- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4142
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004143- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4144 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004145
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004146- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4147 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004148 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004149
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004150- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4151 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4152 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4153 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4154 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4155 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4156 main():
4157
4158 import locale
4159 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4160
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004161- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4162 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4163
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004164- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4165 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4166 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4167 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4168 to the new standard.
4169
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004170- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4171 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4172 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4173 an extension to the database.
4174
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004175- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4176 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4177 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4178 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004179 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004180
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004181- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004182 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004183
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004184- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4185 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4186 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4187 bounded integers.
4188
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004189- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4190 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4191 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4192 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4193 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4194 in existence.
4195
4196 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4197 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4198 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4199 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4200 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4201 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4202
4203 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4204 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4205 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4206 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4207
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004208- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4209 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4210 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4211
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004212- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4213
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004214- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4215 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4216 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4217 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4218
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004219- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4220 argument.
4221
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004222- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4223 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4224 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4225 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4226 [SF patch 560794].
4227
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004228- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4229 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4230 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004231 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4232 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4233 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004234
4235- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4236 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004237
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004238- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4239 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4240 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4241 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004242
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004243- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4244 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4245 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4246 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4247 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4248
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004249- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004250
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004251- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4252
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004253- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4254 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4255 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4256 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4257 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4258 identical to None.
4259
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004260- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4261 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4262 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4263 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4264 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4265 results now.
4266
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004267- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4268 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4269
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004270- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4271 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4272 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4273 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4274 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4275 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4276 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4277 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4278
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004279- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4280
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004281- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4282 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4283
4284- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4285 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4286 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4287 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4288 and other systems.
4289
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004290- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4291 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4292 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4293 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 +00004294 work well with these.
4295
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004296- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4297
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004298- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004299 connections.
4300
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004301- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4302 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4303 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4304
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004305- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4306 sets
4307
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004308- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4309 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4310 name.
4311
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004312- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4313 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4314 passed in.
4315
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004316- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004317 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004318 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4319 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004320
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004321- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4322
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004323- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4324
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004325- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4326 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4327 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4328
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004329- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4330 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4331 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4332 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004333 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004334
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004335- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004336 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004337 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004338
4339- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4340 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4341 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4342
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004343- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004344 the value of its expression argument.
4345
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004346- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4347 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4348 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4349
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004350- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4351 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4352 skipstone browser was included.
4353
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004354- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4355 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4356
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004357Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004358-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004359
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004360- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4361 names in addition to accepting file names.
4362
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004363- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4364 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4365 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4366 still used and useful.)
4367
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004368- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4369 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4370 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4371 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004372
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004373- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4374 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4375 the generated binary.
4376
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004377Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004378-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004379
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004380- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4381
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004382- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4383 except in the hands of experts.
4384
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004385- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004386 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4387 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4388 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004389
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004390- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4391 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4392 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4393 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4394 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4395 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4396 builds.
4397
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004398- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4399 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4400 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4401 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4402 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4403 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4404 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4405 new type.
4406
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004407- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004408
4409 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4410 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4411 positive infinities.
4412
4413 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4414 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4415 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4416 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4417 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4418 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4419 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4420
4421 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4422
4423 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4424
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004425- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4426 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4427 size of the executable.
4428
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004429- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4430 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4431 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4432 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004433
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004434- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4435
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004436- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4437 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4438 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004439
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004440- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4441 well as Unix.
4442
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004443- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4444 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4445 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4446 modules in the README file for details.
4447
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004448C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004449-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004450
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004451- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4452 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004453 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004454 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004455 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004456
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004457- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4458 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4459 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4460 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4461 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4462 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004463 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004464 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4465 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4466 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4467 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4468 aligned.)
4469
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004470- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4471 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4472 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4473
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004474- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4475 level.
4476
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004477- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4478 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4479 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4480 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4481 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4482
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004483- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4484 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4485 code.
4486
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004487- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4488 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4489 adjusting for negative indices.
4490
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004491- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4492 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4493 object.
4494
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004495- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4496 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4497 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4498
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004499- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4500 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004501
4502- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4503
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004504- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4505 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4506 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4507 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4508
4509- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4510
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004511- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004512
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004513- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004514 without going through the buffer API.
4515
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004516- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004517
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004518- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4519 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4520 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4521 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4522
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004523- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4524 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4525
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004526- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004527 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4528
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004529New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004530-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004531
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004532- OpenVMS is now supported.
4533
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004534- AtheOS is now supported.
4535
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004536- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4537
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004538- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4539
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004540Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004541-----
4542
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004543- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4544 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4545 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004546
4547Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004548-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004549
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004550- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4551 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4552 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4553 bugs.
4554 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004555 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004556 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4557 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004558 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004559
4560- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004561 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004562
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004563- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4564 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4565
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004566- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4567 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004568 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004569 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4570
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004571- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4572 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4573 use files" uninstall option).
4574
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004575- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4576
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004577- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4578 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4579
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004580- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4581 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4582 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4583
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004584- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4585 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4586 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4587 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4588 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004589 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4590 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4591 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004592
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004593- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004594 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004595 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4596 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4597 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4598 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4599 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4600 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4601 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4602 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4603 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4604 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4605 work around.
4606
4607- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4608 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4609 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4610 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4611 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4612 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4613 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4614 specified with O_CREAT too).
4615
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004616Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004617----
4618
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004619- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004620
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004621- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4622 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4623 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4624
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004625- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4626 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4627 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4628
4629- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4630 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4631 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4632 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4633 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4634 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4635 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4636 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004637
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004638- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4639 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4640 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004641
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004642- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4643 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4644 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4645 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4646 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004647
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004648- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4649 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4650 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004651
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004652- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4653 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004654
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004655- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4656 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4657 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4658 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4659 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004660
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004661- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4662 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4663 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4664
4665- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4666 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4667 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004668
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004669- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4670 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4671 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4672 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004673 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004674
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004675- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4676 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004677
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004678- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4679 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004680
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004681- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004682 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004683 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4684 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004685
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004686
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004687What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004688===============================
4689
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004690*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4691
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004692Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004693--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004694
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004695- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4696 with a custom metaclass.
4697
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004698Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004699-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004700
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004701- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4702 are proxies.
4703
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004704Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004705-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004706
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004707- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4708 very short strings.
4709
4710- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4711 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4712 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4713 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4714 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4715
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004716Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004717-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004718
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004719- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4720 close or delete time).
4721
4722- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4723 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4724
4725- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4726
4727- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004728 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004729
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004730Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004731-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004732
4733Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004734-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004735
4736C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004737-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004738
4739New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004740-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004741
4742Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004743-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004744
4745Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004746-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004747
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004748- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4749
4750- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4751 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4752
4753- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4754 deleted at process exit time.
4755
4756- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4757 in backslash.
4758
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004759Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004760----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004761
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004762- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4763 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4764 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4765
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004766
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004767What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004768===========================
4769
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004770*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4771
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004772Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004773--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004774
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004775- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4776 been extensively updated. See
4777
4778 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4779
4780 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4781
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004782- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4783 deleted!
4784
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004785- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4786 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4787 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4788 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4789 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4790
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004791- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4792
4793 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4794 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4795
4796 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4797 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4798 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4799 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4800 supported anyway.
4801
4802 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4803 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4804
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004805- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4806 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4807 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4808 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4809 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004810
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004811- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4812 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4813 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4814
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004815Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004816-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004817
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004818- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4819 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4820 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4821 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4822 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4823 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004824 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4825 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4826 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4827 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004828
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004829- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4830 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4831 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4832
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004833Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004834-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004835
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004836- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4837
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004838Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004839-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004840
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004841- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4842 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4843 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4844 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4845 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4846 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4847
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004848- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4849
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004850- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4851
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004852- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4853
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004854- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4855 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4856 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4857
4858- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4859
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004860Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004861-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004862
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004863- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4864 off a search on Google.
4865
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004866Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004867-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004868
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004869- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4870 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4871 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4872 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4873 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4874 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4875 other platforms should do likewise.
4876
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004877- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4878 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4879 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4880
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004881C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004882-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004883
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004884- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4885 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4886 producing key-value pairs.
4887
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004888- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004889 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004890 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4891 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4892 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4893 previously went unchallenged.
4894
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004895New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004896-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004897
4898Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004899-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004900
4901Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004902-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004903
4904Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004905----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004906
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004907- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4908 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004909
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004910- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4911 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4912 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4913 home.
4914
4915
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004916What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004917===========================
4918
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004919*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4920
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004921Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004922--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004923
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004924- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4925 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004926
4927 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004928 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004929
4930 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4931 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004932 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004933 This needs to be documented.
4934
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004935- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4936 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4937
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004938- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4939 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4940 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4941
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004942- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4943 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4944
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004945- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4946 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4947 class forbids it).
4948
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004949- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4950 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4951 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4952
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004953- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4954
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004955Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004956-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004957
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004958- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4959 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004960 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004961
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004962- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4963 (like 1 + '').
4964
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004965Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004966-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004967
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004968- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4969 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4970 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4971 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004972 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004973 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4974
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004975- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4976 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4977 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4978 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4979
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004980- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4981 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004982 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4983 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4984 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004985
4986- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4987 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004988
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004989- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4990 bytes on its input.
4991
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004992Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004993-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004994
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004995- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004996 convenience function.
4997
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004998- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4999 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5000 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005001 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5002 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5003 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5004 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5005 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5006 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005007
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005008- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5009 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5010 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5011 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5012
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005013- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5014 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5015 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5016
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005017- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5018 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5019 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5020 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5021
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005022- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5023 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005024 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005025 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5026 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5027 new -l and -e options.
5028
5029- statcache is now deprecated.
5030
5031- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5032 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005033 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005034 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5035 time properly taken into account.
5036
5037- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5038 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5039 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5040 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5041
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005042Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005043-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005044
5045Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005046-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005047
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005048- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5049 is built with libdb3 if available.
5050
5051- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5052
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005053C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005054-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005055
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005056- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5057 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5058 PySequence_Size().
5059
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005060- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5061
5062- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5063 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5064 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5065
5066- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5067 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5068
5069- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5070 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5071
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005072New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005073-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005074
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005075- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5076 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5077
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005078- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5079 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5080
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005081- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5082
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005083Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005084-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005085
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005086- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5087 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5088
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005089Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005090-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005091
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005092Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005093----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005094
5095- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5096 removed completely in the next release.
5097
5098- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5099 OSX.
5100
5101- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5102 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5103
5104- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5105
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005106
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005107What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005108===========================
5109
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005110*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5111
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005112Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005113--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005114
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005115- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005116 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005117 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005118 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5119 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005120 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5121 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005122 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5123 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005124
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005125- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5126 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5127
5128- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5129 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5130
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005131Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005132-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005133
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005134- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5135 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5136 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5137 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5138 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5139 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5140 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5141 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5142
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005143- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5144 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5145 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5146 example).
5147
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005148- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005149 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005150 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005151 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005152
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005153- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5154 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5155 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005156 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005157
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005158- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5159 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5160 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5161 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5162 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5163 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5164
5165 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5166
5167 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5168
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005169Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005170-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005171
5172- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5173
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005174- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5175
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005176- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5177 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005178
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005179- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5180 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5181 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5182 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5183 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5184 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005185 attributes.
5186
5187- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5188 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5189 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005190
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005191- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5192 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5193 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005194
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005195- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5196 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5197 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005198 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5199 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5200
5201- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5202 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005203
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005204Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005205-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005206
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005207- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5208 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5209
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005210- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5211 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5212 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5213 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5214
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005215- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5216 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5217 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5218 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5219
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005220 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5221 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5222 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5223 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5224 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5225 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5226 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5227 without losing information).
5228
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005229- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005230 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5231 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5232 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5233 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5234 module).
5235
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005236 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005237 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5238 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5239 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5240 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005241
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005242- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005243 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5244 encoding.
5245
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005246- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5247 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5248
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005249- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005250 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5251
5252- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5253 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5254 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5255 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5256
5257- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5258
5259- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5260 ON, and OFF.
5261
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005262- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5263 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5264
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005265Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005266-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005267
5268- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5269 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5270 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005271
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005272- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5273 been added: -X and -E.
5274
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005275Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005276-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005277
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005278- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5279 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5280
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005281C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005282-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005283
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005284- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5285 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5286 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5287 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5288 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5289
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005290- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5291 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5292 as long) arguments.
5293
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005294- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5295 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5296 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5297 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5298 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5299 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5300
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005301- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5302 input.
5303
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005304New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005305-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005306
5307Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005308-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005309
5310Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005311-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005312
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005313- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5314 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5315 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5316
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005317- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5318 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5319 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005320 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005321
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005322 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5323 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5324 import signal
5325 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005326
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005327 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005328 while 1:
5329 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005330 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005331 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5332 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5333 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5334 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005335
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005336
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005337What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5338===========================
5339
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005340*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5341
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005342Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005343--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005344
5345- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5346 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5347 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5348
5349- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5350 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5351 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5352 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5353 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5354 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5355 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005356
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005357- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005358 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005359 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5360 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5361 associate a docstring with a property.
5362
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005363- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5364 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5365 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5366 other built-in object types.
5367
5368- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5369 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5370 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5371 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5372 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5373
5374- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5375 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5376
5377- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5378 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005379 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005380 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5381 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5382 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5383 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5384 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5385
5386- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5387 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5388 class.
5389
5390- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5391 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5392 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5393 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5394
5395- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5396 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5397 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5398 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5399
5400- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5401 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5402
5403- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5404 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5405 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5406 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5407 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005408 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005409 with the same value as s.
5410
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005411- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5412
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005413Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005414----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005415
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005416- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5417
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005418- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5419 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5420 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5421 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5422 objects.
5423
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005424- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5425 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005426 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5427 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5428
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005429- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5430 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5431 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5432
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005433Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005434-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005435
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005436- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5437 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5438 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5439 by the instances.
5440
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005441- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5442 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5443 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5444
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005445- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5446 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5447 before the entire comparison is complete.
5448
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005449- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5450 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5451 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5452
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005453- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5454 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5455 getwriter().
5456
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005457- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5458 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5459
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005460- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005461 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5462 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5463
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005464- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5465 iterable object.
5466
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005467- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5468 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005469
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005470- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5471 authentication.
5472
5473- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5474 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005475
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005476- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005477 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5478 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5479 a sample driver.)
5480
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005481Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005482-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005483
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005484- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5485 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5486 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5487 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5488 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5489 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5490 kernel has large file support.
5491
5492- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5493 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5494 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5495 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5496 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5497
5498- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5499 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5500 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5501
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005502C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005503-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005504
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005505- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5506 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5507
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005508New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005509-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005510
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005511- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5512 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5513
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005514Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005515-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005516
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005517- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5518 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5519 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5520 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5521 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5522
5523- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5524 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5525 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5526 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5527
5528- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5529 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5530
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005531Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005532-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005533
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005534- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005535 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5536 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005537
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005538
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005539What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5540===========================
5541
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005542*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5543
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005544Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005545----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005546
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005547- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5548 big to represent as a C double.
5549
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005550- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5551 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5552 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5553 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5554 restriction).
5555
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005556- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5557 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5558 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5559 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5560 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5561
5562 >>> dir([])
5563 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5564 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5565 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5566 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5567 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5568 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5569 'reverse', 'sort']
5570
5571 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5572
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005573- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005574 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5575 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5576 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5577 OverflowError exception.
5578
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005579- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005580 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005581 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5582 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5583 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5584 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5585 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005586 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005587 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5588 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5589
5590 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5591 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5592 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5593 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005594
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005595- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005596 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5597 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5598 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5599 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5600 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5601 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5602 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5603 once it is created.
5604
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005605- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5606 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5607 (key, value) pairs.
5608
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005609- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005610 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5611 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5612
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005613- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5614 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5615 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5616 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5617 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005618
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005619- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005620 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5621 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5622
5623 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5624
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005625- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005626 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5627
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005628Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005629-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005630
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005631- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005632 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5633 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005634
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005635- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5636 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5637 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5638 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5639 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5640 in this area anymore).
5641
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005642- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5643 threading.Timer.
5644
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005645- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5646 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5647
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005648- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005649 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5650
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005651- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005652 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5653 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5654 converted to Python longs.
5655
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005656- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005657 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5658
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005659- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5660 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5661 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5662
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005663Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005664-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005665
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005666- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5667 division operators as per PEP 238.
5668
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005669Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005670-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005671
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005672- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5673 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5674 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5675 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5676
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005677C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005678-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005679
5680- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005681
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005682- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5683 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005684 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005685
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005686 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5687 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005688 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005689 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005690
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005691- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005692 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5693 module:
5694
5695 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005696
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005697 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5698 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005699
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005700 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5701 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005702
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005703 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5704
5705 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5706
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005707- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005708 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5709 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5710 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005711
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005712New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005713-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005714
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005715- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5716 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5717 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5718 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5719 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005720
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005721Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005722-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005723
5724Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005725-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005726
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005727- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5728 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5729 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5730 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005731 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5732 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5733 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5734 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5735 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005736
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005737- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005738 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5739
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005740
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005741What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5742===========================
5743
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005744*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5745
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005746Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005747-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005748
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005749- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5750 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5751
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005752- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5753 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5754 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005755
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005756- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5757 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5758 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5759 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005760
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005761- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5762
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005763- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005764
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005765Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005766-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005767
5768- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005769 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005770 the module docstring for details.
5771
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005772Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005773-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005774
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005775- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005776 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5777 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5778 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005779
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005780- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5781 Nick Mathewson.
5782
5783Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005784----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005785
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005786- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5787 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5788 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5789 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5790 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5791 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5792 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5793 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5794
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005795- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5796 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5797 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5798 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5799
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005800- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5801 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5802 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5803 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5804 come a long way).
5805
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005806- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5807 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5808 write filters for these warnings).
5809
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005810- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5811 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5812 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5813 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5814 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5815
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005816- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5817 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5818 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5819 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5820 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5821 older distribution.
5822
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005823Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005824-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005825
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005826- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5827 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005828 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005829
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005830- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5831 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5832 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5833
5834- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5835
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005836- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5837
5838- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5839
5840- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5841
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005842- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005843
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005844- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5845
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005846New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005847-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005848
5849C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005850-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005851
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005852- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5853 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5854 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5855 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5856 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5857 against buffer overruns.
5858
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005859- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005860 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5861 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005862 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5863 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5864 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5865
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005866- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5867 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5868 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5869 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5870 deprecated.
5871
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005872Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005873-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005874
5875- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5876 relevant is found.
5877
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005878
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005879What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005880===========================
5881
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005882*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5883
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005884Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005885----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005886
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005887- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5888 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5889 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5890 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5891 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5892 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5893 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5894 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005895 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005896 repaired.
5897
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005898- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005899 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005900 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5901 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5902 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5903 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5904 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5905 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5906 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5907 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5908
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005909- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5910 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5911 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5912 leading BMO character).
5913
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005914- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5915 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5916 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5917
5918 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5919 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5920 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005921
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005922 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5923 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5924 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5925 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5926 for various simple to use conversions.
5927
5928 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5929 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5930
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005931 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5932 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5933 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5934 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5935 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5936 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5937 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5938 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5939 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5940 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5941 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5942 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5943 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5944 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5945 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005946
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005947- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5948 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5949 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005950 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005951 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005952
5953 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005954 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5955 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5956 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5957 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5958 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005959 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5960 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005961
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005962 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5963 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5964 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005965 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005966
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005967- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5968 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5969 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5970 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5971 floating arithmetic,
5972
5973 x = 9007199254740992.0
5974 print long(x)
5975
5976 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5977 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5978 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5979 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5980 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5981 functions are of good quality).
5982
5983 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5984 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5985 algorithms to break.
5986
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005987- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5988 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5989 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5990 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5991 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5992 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5993 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5994 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5995 order.
5996
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005997- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5998 operation along the most common code paths.
5999
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006000- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6001 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6002
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006003- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6004 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6005 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6006 {}.update(UserDict())
6007
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006008- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6009 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6010 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6011 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6012 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6013 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6014 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6015 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6016
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006017- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006018 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006019
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006020 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006021 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6022 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006023 join() method of strings
6024 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006025 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6026 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006027 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006028 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006029
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006030- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6031 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6032
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006033- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6034 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6035
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006036- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6037 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6038 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6039 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6040
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006041- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6042 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006043 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006044 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6045 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006046
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006047- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6048
6049
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006050Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006051-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006052
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006053- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006054 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006055 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6056 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6057
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006058- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6059 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6060
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006061- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6062 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6063 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6064 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6065
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006066- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6067 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6068 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6069
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006070- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6071
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006072- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6073
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006074- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6075 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6076 that are still imported into string.py).
6077
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006078- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6079
6080- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6081 Now it does.
6082
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006083- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6084
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006085- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6086 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6087 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6088 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6089 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006090 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6091 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006092
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006093- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6094 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6095 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6096 'help(object)'.
6097
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006098Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006099-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006100
6101- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006102 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006103 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6104 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6105
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006106- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006107 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6108 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006109
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006110C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006111-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006112
6113- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6114 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006115
6116----
6117
6118**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**