blob: 920dd76e56d906d55f41695c0883ff3e7df7d48f [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +00007What's New in Python 2.5 alpha 1?
8=================================
9
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-2006*
11
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +000012Core and builtins
13-----------------
14
Brett Cannonbf364092006-03-01 04:25:17 +000015- PEP 352, patch #1104669: Make exceptions new-style objects. Introduced the
16 new exception base class, BaseException, which has a new message attribute.
17 KeyboardInterrupt and SystemExit to directly inherit from BaseException now.
18 Raising a string exception now raises a DeprecationWarning.
19
Thomas Woutersfb609f42006-02-28 16:37:25 +000020- Patch #1438387, PEP 328: relative and absolute imports. Imports can now be
21 explicitly relative, using 'from .module import name' to mean 'from the same
22 package as this module is in. Imports without dots still default to the
23 old relative-then-absolute, unless 'from __future__ import
24 absolute_import' is used.
25
Brett Cannona7446e32006-02-27 23:39:10 +000026- Properly check if 'warnings' raises an exception (usually when a filter set
27 to "error" is triggered) when raising a warning for raising string
28 exceptions.
29
Neal Norwitz0023a2f2006-02-27 23:24:48 +000030- CO_GENERATOR_ALLOWED is no longer defined, this behavior is the default.
31 The name was removed from Include/code.h.
32
Neal Norwitzeb651252006-02-27 16:47:12 +000033- PEP 308: conditional expressions were added (x if cond else y).
34
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +000035- Patch 1433928:
36 - The copy module now "copies" function objects (as atomic objects).
37 - dict.__getitem__ now looks for a __missing__ hook before raising
38 KeyError.
39
Tim Peters84ef21c2006-02-28 20:39:06 +000040- PEP 343: with statement implemented. Needs ``from __future__ import
41 with_statement``. Use of 'with' as a variable will generate a warning.
42 Use of 'as' as a variable will also generate a warning (unless it's
Neal Norwitz055ec242006-02-28 20:06:49 +000043 part of an import statement).
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +000044 The following objects have __context__ methods:
45 - The built-in file type.
46 - The thread.LockType type.
47 - The following types defined by the threading module:
48 Lock, RLock, Condition, Semaphore, BoundedSemaphore.
49 - The decimal.Context class.
Guido van Rossumc2e20742006-02-27 22:32:47 +000050
Marc-André Lemburgfe4b34c2006-02-19 15:22:22 +000051- Fix the encodings package codec search function to only search
52 inside its own package. Fixes problem reported in patch #1433198.
53
54 Note: Codec packages should implement and register their own
55 codec search function. PEP 100 has the details.
56
Martin v. Löwis18e16552006-02-15 17:27:45 +000057- PEP 353: Using ssize_t as the index type.
58
Neal Norwitzfc76d632006-01-10 06:03:13 +000059- Patch #1400181, fix unicode string formatting to not use the locale.
60 This is how string objects work. u'%f' could use , instead of .
61 for the decimal point. Now both strings and unicode always use periods.
62
Neal Norwitz671b9e32006-01-09 07:07:12 +000063- Bug #1244610, #1392915, fix build problem on OpenBSD 3.7 and 3.8.
64 configure would break checking curses.h.
65
Georg Brandlcd4d1e82005-12-27 17:37:07 +000066- Bug #959576: The pwd module is now builtin. This allows Python to be
67 built on UNIX platforms without $HOME set.
68
Neal Norwitzc10978f2005-12-19 06:07:16 +000069- Bug #1072182, fix some potential problems if characters are signed.
70
Neal Norwitz5d0ad502005-12-19 04:27:42 +000071- Bug #889500, fix line number on SyntaxWarning for global declarations.
72
Neal Norwitzdb83eb32005-12-18 05:29:30 +000073- Bug #1378022, UTF-8 files with a leading BOM crashed the interpreter.
74
Neal Norwitze7214a12005-12-18 05:03:17 +000075- Support for converting hex strings to floats no longer works.
76 This was not portable. float('0x3') now raises a ValueError.
77
Barry Warsaw2a38a862005-12-18 01:27:35 +000078- Patch #1382163: Expose Subversion revision number to Python. New C API
79 function Py_GetBuildNumber(). New attribute sys.build_number. Build number
80 is now displayed in interactive prompt banner.
81
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000082- Implementation of PEP 341 - Unification of try/except and try/finally.
83 "except" clauses can now be written together with a "finally" clause in
Neal Norwitz11ca77e2005-12-17 22:24:12 +000084 one try statement instead of two nested ones. Patch #1355913.
Georg Brandlfa166682005-12-17 21:45:17 +000085
Hye-Shik Chang835b2432005-12-17 04:38:31 +000086- Bug #1379994: Builtin unicode_escape and raw_unicode_escape codec
87 now encodes backslash correctly.
88
Martin v. Löwisb45b3152005-11-28 17:34:23 +000089- Patch #1350409: Work around signal handling bug in Visual Studio 2005.
90
Georg Brandlf06e30a2005-11-24 15:37:42 +000091- Bug #1281408: Py_BuildValue now works correct even with unsigned longs
92 and long longs.
93
Neal Norwitz67715f02005-11-09 06:59:35 +000094- SF Bug #1350188, "setdlopenflags" leads to crash upon "import"
95 It was possible dlerror() returns a NULL pointer, use a default error
96 message in this case.
97
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +000098- Replaced most Unicode charmap codecs with new ones using the
99 new Unicode translate string feature in the builtin charmap
100 codec; the codecs were created from the mapping tables available
101 at ftp.unicode.org and contain a few updates (e.g. the Mac OS
102 encodings now include a mapping for the Apple logo)
103
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000104- Added a few more codecs for Mac OS encodings
Marc-André Lemburga5bafc42005-10-23 13:43:40 +0000105
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000106- Speed up some Unicode operations.
107
Martin v. Löwisbd260da2006-02-26 19:42:26 +0000108- A new AST parser implementation was completed. The abstract
109 syntax tree is available for read-only (non-compile) access
Martin v. Löwis577b5b92006-02-27 15:23:19 +0000110 to Python code; an _ast module was added.
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000111
Neal Norwitzb6570f52005-10-21 06:26:10 +0000112- SF bug #1167751: fix incorrect code being for generator expressions.
Neal Norwitz16af7342005-10-21 06:25:33 +0000113 The following code now raises a SyntaxError: foo(a = i for i in range(10))
114
Neal Norwitz708e51a2005-10-03 04:48:15 +0000115- SF Bug #976608: fix SystemError when mtime of an imported file is -1.
116
Neal Norwitz11bd1192005-10-03 00:54:56 +0000117- SF Bug #887946: fix segfault when redirecting stdin from a directory.
118 Provide a warning when a directory is passed on the command line.
119
Neal Norwitz40d37812005-10-02 01:48:49 +0000120- Fix segfault with invalid coding.
121
122- SF bug #772896: unknown encoding results in MemoryError.
123
Raymond Hettinger6b27cda2005-09-24 21:23:05 +0000124- All iterators now have a Boolean value of true. Formerly, some iterators
125 supported a __len__() method which evaluated to False when the iterator
126 was empty.
127
Guido van Rossum630db602005-09-20 18:49:54 +0000128- On 64-bit platforms, when __len__() returns a value that cannot be
129 represented as a C int, raise OverflowError.
130
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000131- test__locale is skipped on OS X < 10.4 (only partial locale support is
Walter Dörwald6611a8b2005-10-09 19:28:35 +0000132 present).
Skip Montanarof8948ca2005-09-19 03:54:46 +0000133
Georg Brandl80bbf3f2005-09-14 19:38:29 +0000134- SF bug #893549: parsing keyword arguments was broken with a few format
135 codes.
136
Guido van Rossum8ee3e5a2005-09-14 18:09:42 +0000137- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on AIX 5.3
138 with IBM's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1284289). This also closes SF
139 bug #105470: test_pwd fails on 64bit system (Opteron).
140
Guido van Rossum539c6622005-09-14 17:49:54 +0000141- Changes donated by Elemental Security to make it work on HP-UX 11 on
142 Itanium2 with HP's 64-bit compiler (SF patch #1225212).
143
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +0000144- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +0000145 (fixes bug #1119418).
146
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +0000147- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
148
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +0000149- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
150 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
151
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +0000152- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
153 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
154 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
155
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +0000156- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
157
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +0000158- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
159 reference counts in some error exit cases.
160
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000161- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
162 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
163 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
164 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
165 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
166 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
167 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
168 realloc.
169
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +0000170- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
171 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
172
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +0000173- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
174 like their int counterparts.
175
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +0000176- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
177 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
178 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
179 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
180 for a longer write-up of the problem).
181
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +0000182- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
183 serializing floats.
184
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +0000185- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
186 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
187 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
188
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +0000189- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
190 278.
191
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000192- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
193 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
194 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
195 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000196 to the base class has been moved to the proper nb_* magic slot and out of
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +0000197 PyNumber_*().
198 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
199
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +0000200- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
201 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
202 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
203 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
204
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +0000205- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
206 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
207 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
208 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
209 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
210
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +0000211- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
212 disabled caused a crash.
213
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000214- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
215 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
216
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000217- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +0000218 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
219
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +0000220- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
221
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000222- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +0000223 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
224 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
225 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +0000226
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +0000227- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
228
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000229- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
230 returning None.
231
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000232- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000233 ('\') with a specific error message.
234
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000235- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
236
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000237- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
238 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
239
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000240- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000241 an ferror() call.
242
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000243- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
244 list.sort().
245
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000246- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
247 (2+3) --> (5).
248
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000249- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
250
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000251- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
252 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000253
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000254- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
255 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
256 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
257
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000258- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
259 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
260 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
261
Tim Petersf4e69282006-02-27 17:15:31 +0000262- Patch #1413181: changed ``PyThreadState_Delete()`` to forget about the
263 current thread state when the auto-GIL-state machinery knows about
264 it (since the thread state is being deleted, continuing to remember it
265 can't help, but can hurt if another thread happens to get created with
266 the same thread id).
267
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000268Extension Modules
269-----------------
270
Neal Norwitzb62c4332006-03-04 18:35:47 +0000271- The timing module is no longer built by default. It was deprecated
272 in PEP 4 in Python 2.0 or earlier.
273
Guido van Rossum1968ad32006-02-25 22:38:04 +0000274- Patch 1433928: Added a new type, defaultdict, to the collections module.
275 This uses the new __missing__ hook behavior added to dict (see above).
276
Georg Brandldbd83392006-02-20 09:42:33 +0000277- Bug #854823: socketmodule now builds on Sun platforms even when
278 INET_ADDRSTRLEN is not defined.
279
Georg Brandlf4f44152006-02-18 22:29:33 +0000280- Patch #1393157: os.startfile() now has an optional argument to specify
281 a "command verb" to invoke on the file.
282
Neal Norwitz082b2df2006-02-07 07:04:46 +0000283- Bug #876637, prevent stack corruption when socket descriptor
284 is larger than FD_SETSIZE.
285
Neal Norwitz0e6bc8c2006-02-05 05:45:43 +0000286- Patch #1407135, bug #1424041: harmonize mmap behavior of anonymous memory.
287 mmap.mmap(-1, size) now returns anonymous memory in both Unix and Windows.
288 mmap.mmap(0, size) should not be used on Windows for anonymous memory.
289
Martin v. Löwis57a34e82006-02-04 19:12:37 +0000290- Patch #1422385: The nis module now supports access to domains other
291 than the system default domain.
292
Martin v. Löwis14694662006-02-03 12:54:16 +0000293- Use Win32 API to implement os.stat/fstat. As a result, subsecond timestamps
294 are reported, the limit on path name lengths is removed, and stat reports
295 WindowsError now (instead of OSError).
296
Gregory P. Smithcfc4a8d2006-01-29 19:46:23 +0000297- Add bsddb.db.DBEnv.set_tx_timestamp allowing time based database recovery.
298
Neal Norwitz62a21122006-01-25 05:21:55 +0000299- Bug #1413192, fix seg fault in bsddb if a transaction was deleted
300 before the env.
301
Martin v. Löwis11017b12006-01-14 18:12:57 +0000302- Patch #1103116: Basic AF_NETLINK support.
303
Neal Norwitz3b4fff82006-01-11 08:54:45 +0000304- Bug #1402308, (possible) segfault when using mmap.mmap(-1, ...)
305
Neal Norwitz88bbd732006-01-10 07:05:44 +0000306- Bug #1400822, _curses over{lay,write} doesn't work when passing 6 ints.
307 Also fix ungetmouse() which did not accept arguments properly.
308 The code now conforms to the documented signature.
309
Neal Norwitz5e3d8622006-01-09 06:24:35 +0000310- Bug #1400115, Fix segfault when calling curses.panel.userptr()
311 without prior setting of the userptr.
312
Neal Norwitz40c6b472006-01-05 05:43:35 +0000313- Fix 64-bit problems in bsddb.
314
Neal Norwitz8856fb72005-12-18 03:34:22 +0000315- Patch #1365916: fix some unsafe 64-bit mmap methods.
316
Hye-Shik Changc5c57e62005-12-12 11:48:32 +0000317- Bug #1290333: Added a workaround for cjkcodecs' _codecs_cn build
318 problem on AIX.
319
Georg Brandla13c2442005-11-22 19:30:31 +0000320- Bug #869197: os.setgroups rejects long integer arguments
321
Neal Norwitz0f46bbf2005-11-03 05:00:25 +0000322- Bug #1346533, select.poll() doesn't raise an error if timeout > sys.maxint
323
Neal Norwitz7b631792005-11-02 05:26:07 +0000324- Bug #1344508, Fix UNIX mmap leaking file descriptors
325
Neal Norwitzf3396542005-10-28 05:52:22 +0000326- Patch #1338314, Bug #1336623: fix tarfile so it can extract
327 REGTYPE directories from tarfiles written by old programs.
328
Gregory P. Smithe101df92006-01-24 20:09:45 +0000329- Patch #1407992, fixes broken bsddb module db associate when using
330 BerkeleyDB 3.3, 4.0 or 4.1.
331
332- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 4.4
333
334- Get bsddb module to build with BerkeleyDB version 3.2
Neal Norwitzfed9b3e2005-10-21 06:32:02 +0000335
Neal Norwitz484d9a42005-09-30 04:46:49 +0000336- Patch #1309009, Fix segfault in pyexpat when the XML document is in latin_1,
337 but Python incorrectly assumes it is in UTF-8 format
338
Georg Brandle677adc2005-09-29 13:40:49 +0000339- Fix parse errors in the readline module when compiling without threads.
340
Hye-Shik Chang9ceebd52005-09-24 14:58:47 +0000341- Patch #1288833: Removed thread lock from socket.getaddrinfo on
342 FreeBSD 5.3 and later versions which got thread-safe getaddrinfo(3).
343
Michael W. Hudson10402a32005-09-22 09:19:01 +0000344- Patches #1298449 and #1298499: Add some missing checks for error
345 returns in cStringIO.c.
346
Neal Norwitz058bde12005-09-21 06:44:25 +0000347- Patch #1297028: fix segfault if call type on MultibyteCodec,
348 MultibyteStreamReader, or MultibyteStreamWriter
349
Neal Norwitzcfe7dd92005-09-19 06:49:27 +0000350- Fix memory leak in posix.access().
351
Martin v. Löwis8b291e22005-09-18 08:17:56 +0000352- Patch #1213831: Fix typo in unicodedata._getcode.
353
Georg Brandlfb1ef852005-09-14 20:53:32 +0000354- Bug #1007046: os.startfile() did not accept unicode strings encoded in
355 the file system encoding.
356
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000357- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
358 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000359
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000360- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
361
362- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000363 line without newlines.
364
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000365- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
366 on Windows.
367
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000368- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000369 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
370
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000371- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
372 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
373 for large or negative values.
374
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000375- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000376 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000377
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000378- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
379
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000380- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
381 if available on the platform.
382
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000383- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
384 available on the platform.
385
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000386- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
387 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
388
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000389- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
390
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000391- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
392 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
393 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
394
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000395- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
396
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000397- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
398 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
399
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000400- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000401 file size.
402
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000403- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
404
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000405- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
406 {remove_history,replace_history}
407
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000408- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
409 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000410
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000411- stat_float_times is now True.
412
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000413- array.array objects are now picklable.
414
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000415- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
416 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
417
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000418- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
419 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
420 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
421
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000422- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
423 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000424
425Library
426-------
427
Martin v. Löwisfbab90e2006-03-05 13:36:04 +0000428- A library msilib to generate Windows Installer files, and a distutils
429 command bdist_msi have been added.
430
Guido van Rossum1a5e21e2006-02-28 21:57:43 +0000431- PEP 343: new module contextlib.py defines decorator @contextmanager
432 and helpful context managers nested() and closing().
433
Martin v. Löwis415ed932006-02-27 19:56:30 +0000434- The compiler package now supports future imports after the module docstring.
435
Georg Brandl8f7c54e2006-02-20 08:40:38 +0000436- Bug #1413790: zipfile now sanitizes absolute archive names that are
437 not allowed by the specs.
438
Georg Brandlc98eeed2006-02-19 14:57:47 +0000439- Patch #1215184: FileInput now can be given an opening hook which can
440 be used to control how files are opened.
441
Georg Brandlc029f872006-02-19 14:12:34 +0000442- Patch #1212287: fileinput.input() now has a mode parameter for
443 specifying the file mode input files should be opened with.
444
Georg Brandl67e9fb92006-02-19 13:56:17 +0000445- Patch #1215184: fileinput now has a fileno() function for getting the
446 current file number.
447
Georg Brandl602b9ba2006-02-19 13:26:36 +0000448- Patch #1349274: gettext.install() now optionally installs additional
449 translation functions other than _() in the builtin namespace.
450
Georg Brandle4662172006-02-19 09:51:27 +0000451- Patch #1337756: fileinput now accepts Unicode filenames.
452
Georg Brandl7b4e7c22006-02-18 21:10:56 +0000453- Patch #1373643: The chunk module can now read chunks larger than
454 two gigabytes.
455
Georg Brandl21dd1af2006-02-17 13:35:13 +0000456- Patch #1417555: SimpleHTTPServer now returns Last-Modified headers.
457
Georg Brandlbd3bc4d2006-02-17 09:52:53 +0000458- Bug #1430298: It is now possible to send a mail with an empty
459 return address using smtplib.
460
Georg Brandl0e1abe22006-02-17 09:48:14 +0000461- Bug #1432260: The names of lambda functions are now properly displayed
462 in pydoc.
Georg Brandl501dd0d2006-02-17 09:45:40 +0000463
Martin v. Löwis00756902006-02-05 17:09:41 +0000464- Patch #1412872: zipfile now sets the creator system to 3 (Unix)
465 unless the system is Win32.
466
Tim Petersda1329b2006-02-27 16:50:01 +0000467- Patch #1349118: urllib now supports user:pass@ style proxy
Martin v. Löwis3e865952006-01-24 15:51:21 +0000468 specifications, raises IOErrors when proxies for unsupported protocols
469 are defined, and uses the https proxy on https redirections.
470
Georg Brandl531ceba2006-01-21 07:20:56 +0000471- Bug #902075: urllib2 now supports 'host:port' style proxy specifications.
472
473- Bug #1407902: Add support for sftp:// URIs to urlparse.
Georg Brandl89f35ac2006-01-20 17:24:23 +0000474
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000475- Bug #1371247: Update Windows locale identifiers in locale.py.
476
Neal Norwitzf60cd472006-01-14 07:05:13 +0000477- Bug #1394565: SimpleHTTPServer now doesn't choke on query parameters
Georg Brandl45ab2332006-01-13 17:05:56 +0000478 any more.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000479
Georg Brandl4edd9892006-01-13 16:59:46 +0000480- Bug #1403410: The warnings module now doesn't get confused
481 when it can't find out the module name it generates a warning for.
Georg Brandlb709c2c2006-01-20 09:07:35 +0000482
Martin v. Löwis412ed3b2006-01-08 10:45:39 +0000483- Patch #1177307: Added a new codec utf_8_sig for UTF-8 with a BOM signature.
484
Neal Norwitzab86f8e2005-12-23 21:44:36 +0000485- Patch #1157027: cookielib mishandles RFC 2109 cookies in Netscape mode
486
Neal Norwitz338e7862005-12-23 21:27:46 +0000487- Patch #1117398: cookielib.LWPCookieJar and .MozillaCookieJar now raise
488 LoadError as documented, instead of IOError. For compatibility,
489 LoadError subclasses IOError.
490
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000491- Added the hashlib module. It provides secure hash functions for MD5 and
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000492 SHA1, 224, 256, 384, and 512. Note that recent developments make the
493 historic MD5 and SHA1 unsuitable for cryptographic-strength applications.
494 In <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-December/058850.html>
495 Ronald L. Rivest offered this advice for Python:
496
497 "The consensus of researchers in this area (at least as
498 expressed at the NIST Hash Function Workshop 10/31/05),
499 is that SHA-256 is a good choice for the time being, but
500 that research should continue, and other alternatives may
501 arise from this research. The larger SHA's also seem OK."
Brett Cannon3cbd0382005-12-16 22:49:23 +0000502
Fredrik Lundh7e0aef02005-12-12 18:54:55 +0000503- Added a subset of Fredrik Lundh's ElementTree package. Available
504 modules are xml.etree.ElementTree, xml.etree.ElementPath, and
505 xml.etree.ElementInclude, from ElementTree 1.2.6.
506
Martin v. Löwis307021f2005-11-27 16:59:04 +0000507- Patch #1162825: Support non-ASCII characters in IDLE window titles.
508
Georg Brandl1f663572005-11-26 16:50:44 +0000509- Bug #1365984: urllib now opens "data:" URLs again.
510
Brett Cannonad07ff22005-11-23 02:15:50 +0000511- Patch #1314396: prevent deadlock for threading.Thread.join() when an exception
512 is raised within the method itself on a previous call (e.g., passing in an
513 illegal argument)
514
Brett Cannon5d0bf942005-11-02 23:04:26 +0000515- Bug #1340337: change time.strptime() to always return ValueError when there
516 is an error in the format string.
517
Georg Brandle8f24432005-10-03 14:16:44 +0000518- Patch #754022: Greatly enhanced webbrowser.py (by Oleg Broytmann).
519
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000520- Bug #729103: pydoc.py: Fix docother() method to accept additional
Georg Brandl8b813db2005-10-01 16:32:31 +0000521 "parent" argument.
522
Georg Brandlaa935172005-09-29 20:49:16 +0000523- Patch #1300515: xdrlib.py: Fix pack_fstring() to really use null bytes
524 for padding.
525
Georg Brandl80ba8e82005-09-29 20:16:07 +0000526- Bug #1296004: httplib.py: Limit maximal amount of data read from the
527 socket to avoid a MemoryError on Windows.
528
Matthias Klosef3f231f2005-09-20 07:02:49 +0000529- Patch #1166948: locale.py: Prefer LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LANG over LANGUAGE
530 to get the correct encoding.
531
532- Patch #1166938: locale.py: Parse LANGUAGE as a colon separated list of
533 languages.
534
Martin v. Löwis4ed67382005-09-18 08:34:39 +0000535- Patch #1268314: Cache lines in StreamReader.readlines for performance.
536
Brett Cannona783d062005-09-15 02:34:56 +0000537- Bug #1290505: Fix clearing the regex cache for time.strptime().
538
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000539- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
540
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000541- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
542 functionality.
543
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000544- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
545
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000546- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
547 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
548
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000549- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
550 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
551 match the Content-Length header.
552
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000553- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
554
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000555- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
556 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
Walter Dörwalda05834e2005-10-09 19:38:21 +0000557 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000558
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000559- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
560
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000561- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
562
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000563- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
564 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
565
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000566- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
567 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
568 Tkdnd.
569
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000570- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
571 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
572
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000573- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
574 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
575
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000576- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000577 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
578
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000579- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
580 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
581
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000582- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
583 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
584
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000585- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000586 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000587
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000588- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
589
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000590- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
591 error messages.
592
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000593- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
594
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000595- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
596 Bug #1224621.
597
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000598- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
599 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
600 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
601 terminates by raising StopIteration.
602
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000603- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
604
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000605- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
606 component of the path.
607
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000608- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
609 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
610 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
611 class at all.
612
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000613- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
614 files to PyPI.
615
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000616- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
617 them to PyPI.
618
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000619- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
620 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
621 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
622 work as expected.
623
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000624- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
625 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
626
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000627- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000628 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
629
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000630- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
631
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000632- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
633 to build.
634
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000635- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
636 symbolic links on Windows.
637
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000638- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000639 profile.py if available.
640
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000641- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
642
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000643- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
644 in LWPCookieJar.
645
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000646- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
647
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000648- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
649
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000650- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
651
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000652- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
653
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000654- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
655
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000656- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
657
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000658- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
659
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000660- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
661
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000662- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
663 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
664 be exploited in various ways.
665
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000666- Bug #1222790: in SimpleXMLRPCServer, set the reuse-address and close-on-exec
Andrew M. Kuchling3a976052005-12-04 15:07:41 +0000667 flags on the HTTP listening socket.
668
Andrew M. Kuchlinge63fde72005-12-04 15:36:57 +0000669- Bug #792570: SimpleXMLRPCServer had problems if the request grew too large.
670 Fixed by reading the HTTP body in chunks instead of one big socket.read().
671
Tim Peterse3547fd2005-12-16 23:13:57 +0000672- Patches #893642, #1039083: add allow_none, encoding arguments to constructors of
Andrew M. Kuchling10a16de2005-12-04 16:34:40 +0000673 SimpleXMLRPCServer and CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler.
674
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000675- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
676
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000677- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
678
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000679- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
680
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000681- Enhancements to the csv module:
682
683 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000684 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000685 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000686 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
687 reporting.
688 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
689 dictates.
690 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000691 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000692 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000693 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
694 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000695 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
696 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000697 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000698 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
699 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
700 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
701 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
702 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
703 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
704 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
705 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
706 without first creating a dialect class.
707 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
708 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
709 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000710 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000711 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
712 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000713 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
714 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
715 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
716 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000717 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
718 This has been fixed.
719
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000720- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
721 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
722 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
723 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
724
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000725- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
726
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000727- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
728 (Bug #951915).
729
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000730- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
731 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
732 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000733 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000734
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000735- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
736
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000737- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
738 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
739
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000740- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
741
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000742- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
743
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000744- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
745
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000746- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
747
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000748- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
749
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000750- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
751 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
752 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
753
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000754- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000755 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000756
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000757- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
758 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
759 tokenizer with very long source lines.
760
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000761- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called
762 immediately after creating the object, without any intervening
763 ``.decompress()`` calls.
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000764
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000765- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
766 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000767
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000768- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
769 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
770
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000771- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
772 correctly.
773
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000774- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
775 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
776 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
777 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
778 between two lines.
779
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000780- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
781 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
782 handlers.
783
Walter Dörwald78a78b02005-09-01 12:04:29 +0000784- Bug #1235646: ``codecs.StreamRecoder.next()`` now reencodes the data it reads
Walter Dörwaldc5238b82005-09-01 11:56:53 +0000785 from the input stream, so that the output is a byte string in the correct
786 encoding instead of a unicode string.
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000787
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000788- Bug #1202493: Fixing SRE parser to handle '{}' as perl does, rather than
789 considering it exactly like a '*'.
790
Walter Dörwald007f8df2005-10-09 19:42:27 +0000791- Bug #1245379: Add "unicode-1-1-utf-7" as an alias for "utf-7" to
792 ``encodings.aliases``.
Gustavo Niemeyer6fa0c5a2005-09-14 08:54:39 +0000793
Walter Dörwald09f0dd52005-11-21 19:10:07 +0000794- ` uu.encode()`` and ``uu.decode()`` now support unicode filenames.
795
Gustavo Niemeyer548148812006-01-31 18:34:13 +0000796- Patch #1413711: Certain patterns of differences were making difflib
797 touch the recursion limit.
798
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000799Build
800-----
801
Martin v. Löwis86d66262006-02-17 08:40:11 +0000802- Patch #1432345: Make python compile on DragonFly.
803
Martin v. Löwis856bf9a2006-02-14 20:42:55 +0000804- Build support for Win64-AMD64 was added.
805
Martin v. Löwisa55e55e2006-02-11 15:55:14 +0000806- Patch #1428494: Prefer linking against ncursesw over ncurses library.
807
Martin v. Löwisfd9a72a2006-01-08 10:07:33 +0000808- Patch #881820: look for openpty and forkpty also in libbsd.
809
Martin v. Löwis64c33dd2006-01-03 07:42:14 +0000810- The sources of zlib are now part of the Python distribution (zlib 1.2.3).
811 The zlib module is now builtin on Windows.
812
Martin v. Löwisd5845ec2005-12-30 12:31:38 +0000813- Use -xcode=pic32 for CCSHARED on Solaris with SunPro.
814
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000815- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
816 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
817
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000818- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
819 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
820
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000821- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
822 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
823 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000824 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000825
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000826- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
827 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
828 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
829
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000830- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
831
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000832- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
833 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
834
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000835- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
836 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
837 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
838 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
839 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
840 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
841 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
842 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
843
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000844- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
845 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
846 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
847 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
848
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000849C API
850-----
851
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000852- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
853
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000854- Removed PyRange_New().
855
Walter Dörwaldd1c1e102005-10-06 20:29:57 +0000856- Patch #1313939: PyUnicode_DecodeCharmap() accepts a unicode string as the
857 mapping argument now. This string is used as a mapping table. Byte values
858 greater than the length of the string and 0xFFFE are treated as undefined
859 mappings.
860
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000861
862Tests
863-----
864
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000865- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000866
Hye-Shik Changaaa2f1d2005-12-10 17:44:27 +0000867- Patch #1276356: New resource "urlfetch" is implemented. This enables
868 even impatient people to run tests that require remote files.
869
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000870
871Documentation
872-------------
873
Georg Brandl8cb30772006-01-20 09:34:29 +0000874- Bug #1402224: Add warning to dl docs about crashes.
875
Georg Brandla3a93ae2006-01-20 09:14:36 +0000876- Bug #1396471: Document that Windows' ftell() can return invalid
877 values for text files with UNIX-style line endings.
878
Georg Brandl32252422005-09-14 20:42:00 +0000879- Bug #1274828: Document os.path.splitunc().
880
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000881- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
882
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000883- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
884
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000885- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
886
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000887- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
888
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000889- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
890
891- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
892
893- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
894
895- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
896
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000897- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
898 Closes bug #1166582.
899
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000900- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
901 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
902 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
903
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000904Mac
905---
906
907
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000908New platforms
909-------------
910
911- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
912
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000913
914Tools/Demos
915-----------
916
Brett Cannonacde7342006-03-01 04:28:00 +0000917- Created Misc/Vim/vim_syntax.py to auto-generate a python.vim file in that
918 directory for syntax highlighting in Vim. Vim directory was added and placed
919 vimrc to it (was previous up a level).
920
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000921- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
922 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
923 source files that need an encoding declaration.
924 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
925
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000926- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
927
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000928- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000929
Barry Warsaw538561e2006-01-01 21:48:54 +0000930- Fixed a display glitch in Pynche, which could cause the right arrow to
931 wiggle over by a pixel.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000932
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000933What's New in Python 2.4 final?
934===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000935
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000936*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000937
938Core and builtins
939-----------------
940
941- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
942 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
943 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
944
945
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000946What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
947==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000948
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000949*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000950
951Core and builtins
952-----------------
953
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000954- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
955 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
956 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
957
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000958
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000959Library
960-------
961
962- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
963 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
964 raised is re-raised.
965
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000966- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
967 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
968
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000969- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
970 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
971 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
972 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
973 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
974 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
975 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
976 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
977 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
978 by the slice are recomputed now.
979
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000980- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000981
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000982Build
983-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000984
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000985- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
986 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
987 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000988
989C API
990-----
991
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000992- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
993
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000994
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000995What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
996================================
997
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000998*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000999
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001000License
1001-------
1002
1003The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
1004is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
1005changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
1006Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
1007intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
1008durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
1009the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
1010License::
1011
1012 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
1013
1014says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
1015to Python 2.1.1.
1016
1017The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
1018License Version 2.
1019
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001020Core and builtins
1021-----------------
1022
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001023- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
1024 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
1025 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
1026 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
1027 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
1028 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
1029 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
Andrew M. Kuchlingb2a739d2005-11-22 15:14:44 +00001030 ``AttributeError`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +00001031 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
1032 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
1033
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +00001034- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001035
1036Extension Modules
1037-----------------
1038
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +00001039- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
1040 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
1041 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
1042 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001043
1044Library
1045-------
1046
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +00001047- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
1048 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
1049 returned.
1050
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +00001051- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
1052
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +00001053- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
1054 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
1055
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +00001056- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
1057
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +00001058- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
1059 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001060
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +00001061- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
1062
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +00001063- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
1064
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001065- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +00001066 the source code is updated and reloaded.
1067
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001068Build
1069-----
1070
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +00001071- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +00001072
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001073What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
1074================================
1075
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +00001076*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001077
1078Core and builtins
1079-----------------
1080
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001081- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +00001082 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
1083
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +00001084- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
1085 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
1086 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
1087 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
1088
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001089- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
1090 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
1091
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +00001092- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
1093 constant.
1094
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001095- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
1096 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
1097 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
1098 large), and to anomalies such as
1099 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
1100 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
1101 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
1102 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001103
1104Extension modules
1105-----------------
1106
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +00001107- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
1108 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +00001109 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
1110 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
1111 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001112
1113Library
1114-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001115
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001116- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +00001117 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +00001118 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
1119 --swig-cpp.
1120
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +00001121- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
1122 it is set.
1123
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +00001124- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +00001125
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +00001126- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
1127 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
1128 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
1129 Closes bug #1039270.
1130
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001131- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +00001132
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +00001133 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +00001134 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
1135 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
1136 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
1137 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
1138 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
1139 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
1140 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
1141 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
1142 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
1143 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
1144 + Updates to documentation.
1145
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +00001146- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
1147 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
1148 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
1149 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
1150
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +00001151- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001152
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +00001153- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
1154 applications should use the getmember function.
1155
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +00001156- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
1157
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +00001158- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
1159 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
1160 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
1161 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
1162 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
1163 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
1164 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
1165 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
1166 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
1167
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001168- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
1169 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +00001170 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001171
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001172- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
1173 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
1174 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
1175 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
1176 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
1177 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
1178 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
1179 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001180
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001181- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
1182 the new public features (of which there are many).
1183
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +00001184- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001185 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
1186 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
1187 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
1188 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +00001189 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001190
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +00001191- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
1192
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +00001193- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
1194 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
1195 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
1196 options.
1197
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +00001198- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
1199 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
1200 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
1201 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
1202 conditions under which non-string values work.
1203
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001204Build
1205-----
1206
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +00001207- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
1208 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
1209 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
1210
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +00001211- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
1212 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
1213 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
1214 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
1215 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001216
1217C API
1218-----
1219
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +00001220- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
1221 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
1222
1223- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
1224
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +00001225- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1226 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
1227 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
1228 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
1229 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
1230 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
1231 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
1232 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
1233 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
1234
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +00001235- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
1236
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +00001237- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
1238 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
1239 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001240
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001241Tests
1242-----
1243
1244- test__locale ported to unittest
1245
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001246Mac
1247---
1248
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +00001249- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
1250 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
1251 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001252
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001253Tools/Demos
1254-----------
1255
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +00001256- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
1257 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
1258 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
1259 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
1260 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +00001261
1262
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001263What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
1264=================================
1265
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +00001266*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001267
1268Core and builtins
1269-----------------
1270
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001271- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001272 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
1273
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001274- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
1275 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
1276 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
1277 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
1278 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
1279 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
1280 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
1281 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001282 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
1283 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
1284 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
1285 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
1286 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +00001287
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +00001288- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
1289 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
1290 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
1291 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
1292 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
1293
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +00001294- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
1295
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +00001296- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
1297 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
1298
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +00001299- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
1300 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
1301 modified the list.
1302
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +00001303- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
1304 functions is now writable.
1305
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +00001306- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
1307 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
1308 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
1309 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
1310
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001311- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
1312 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
1313 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
1314 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
1315 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +00001316
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +00001317- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
1318 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
1319
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001320Extension modules
1321-----------------
1322
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001323- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
1324
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +00001325- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
1326 data.
1327
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001328- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
1329 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
1330 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
1331 supposed to have been truncated away.
1332
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +00001333- Added socket.socketpair().
1334
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +00001335- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
1336 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
1337
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001338- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +00001339 versions of Python, have now been removed.
1340
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001341Library
1342-------
1343
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001344- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001345 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +00001346
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +00001347- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
1348 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
1349
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +00001350- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
1351 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
1352
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +00001353- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
1354
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +00001355- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
1356 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +00001357
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +00001358- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
1359 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
1360
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +00001361- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
1362
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +00001363- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
1364
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +00001365- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
1366
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +00001367- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
1368 Percivall.
1369
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +00001370- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
1371 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
1372
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001373- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
1374 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
1375 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +00001376 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +00001377
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001378- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
1379 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
1380 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
1381 and exponent.
1382
1383- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
1384
1385- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +00001386 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001387 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
1388
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001389- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1390 to the readline module.
1391
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001392- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001393 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1394 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001395
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001396- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1397 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1398 contains symlinks.
1399
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001400- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1401 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1402
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001403- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1404 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1405 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1406
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001407- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1408 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1409 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1410 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1411 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1412 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1413 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1414 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1415 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1416 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1417 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1418 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1419 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1420
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001421- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1422
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001423Tools/Demos
1424-----------
1425
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001426- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1427 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1428
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001429- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1430
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001431Build
1432-----
1433
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001434- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1435 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1436 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1437 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1438 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1439 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1440 plans to do so.
1441
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001442- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1443 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1444
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001445- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1446 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1447
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001448- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1449 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1450
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001451- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1452 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1453
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001454- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1455 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1456
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001457C API
1458-----
1459
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001460..
1461
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001462Documentation
1463-------------
1464
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001465- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1466 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1467
1468- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1469 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1470 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001471
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001472New platforms
1473-------------
1474
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001475- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1476
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001477Tests
1478-----
1479
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001480..
1481
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001482Windows
1483-------
1484
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001485- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1486 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1487 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1488 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1489 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1490 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1491 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1492 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1493 the problem.
1494
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001495Mac
1496---
1497
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001498..
1499
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001500
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001501What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1502=================================
1503
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001504*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001505
1506Core and builtins
1507-----------------
1508
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001509- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1510 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1511 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1512 sensitive code.
1513
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001514- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001515 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001516
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001517 @staticmethod
1518 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001519
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001520 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001521
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001522- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1523 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1524 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1525 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1526 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1527 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1528 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1529 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1530 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1531 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1532 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1533
1534 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1535 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1536 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1537 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1538 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1539 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1540 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1541
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001542- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1543 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1544
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001545- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001546 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001547
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001548- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001549 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001550 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1551
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001552- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001553 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1554 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1555
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001556- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1557 types that support garbage collection.
1558
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001559- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1560
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001561- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1562 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1563 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1564 Jython.
1565
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001566- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1567
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001568- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1569 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1570
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001571- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1572 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1573 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001574
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001575- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1576 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1577 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1578
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001579Extension modules
1580-----------------
1581
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001582- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1583
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001584Library
1585-------
1586
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001587- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1588 TIS-620
1589
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001590- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1591 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1592 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1593 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1594 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1595 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1596 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1597 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1598 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1599 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1600
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001601- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1602
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001603- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1604 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1605 same as when the argument is omitted).
1606 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1607
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001608- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1609
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001610- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1611 schemes are offered.
1612
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001613- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1614
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001615- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1616 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1617 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1618
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001619- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1620
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001621- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1622 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1623
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001624- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1625 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1626 when dummy_threading is being used.
1627
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001628- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1629 from a tarfile.
1630
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001631- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001632 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001633
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001634- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1635 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1636 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1637 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1638
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001639- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1640 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1641
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001642- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1643 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1644 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1645 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1646 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1647 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1648 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1649 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1650 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1651 by some other method in progress).
1652
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001653- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1654 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1655 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001656
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001657- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1658
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001659- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1660 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1661 AM Kuchling.
1662
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001663- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1664 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1665 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1666
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001667- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1668 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1669 instead of unsigned.
1670
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001671- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001672 no longer part of the public API.
1673
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001674- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1675 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1676 string methods of the same name).
1677
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001678- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001679 SF patch 945642.
1680
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001681- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1682
1683 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1684
1685 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1686 DocTestSuites.
1687
1688- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1689 that provide thread-local data.
1690
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001691- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1692 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1693
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001694- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1695
1696- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1697 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1698 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1699
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001700- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1701
1702 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1703 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1704 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001705
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001706 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1707 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1708 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1709 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1710
1711 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1712 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1713
1714 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1715 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1716 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1717 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1718
1719 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1720 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1721 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1722 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1723 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1724
1725 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1726 wrapping help output.
1727
1728 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1729 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1730 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001731
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001732C API
1733-----
1734
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001735- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1736 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1737 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1738 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1739 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1740 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1741 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1742 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1743 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1744 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1745 its visible semantics have not changed.
1746
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001747- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1748 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1749
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001750Documentation
1751-------------
1752
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001753- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001754
1755 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001756 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001757
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001758 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001759
1760 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1761
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001762- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001763
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001764Tests
1765-----
1766
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001767- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001768 platforms that use the Makefile.
1769
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001770- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1771 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1772 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1773
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001774
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001775What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1776=================================
1777
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001778*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001779
1780Core and builtins
1781-----------------
1782
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001783- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1784 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1785 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1786 objects now (one object instead of three).
1787
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001788- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1789 Windows DLLs.
1790
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001791- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1792 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001793
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001794- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1795 a new .pyc magic.
1796
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001797- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1798 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1799 be there.
1800
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001801- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1802 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1803 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1804
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001805- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1806 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1807 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1808
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001809- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1810
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001811- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1812 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1813 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001814
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001815- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1816 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1817
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001818- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1819
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001820- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001821 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001822
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001823- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1824
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001825- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1826
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001827- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1828 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1829
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001830- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1831 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1832 Fixes bug #858016 .
1833
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001834- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1835 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1836 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1837
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001838- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1839 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1840 improves their performance (about 35%).
1841
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001842- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1843 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1844 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1845
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001846- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1847 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1848 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1849 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1850
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001851- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1852 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001853 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001854 length is not known).
1855
1856- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1857 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001858 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1859 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001860 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1861
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001862- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1863 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1864
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001865- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1866 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1867 keyword arguments.
1868
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001869- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1870 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1871 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1872
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001873- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1874 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1875 cases.
1876
1877- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1878 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1879 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1880 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1881 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1882 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1883 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1884 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1885 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1886 a release build.
1887
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001888- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1889 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1890
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001891- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001892 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001893
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001894- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1895 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1896 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1897 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1898 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1899 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1900 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1901 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1902 destroyed.
1903
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001904- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1905 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1906 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1907 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1908 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1909 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1910 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1911 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1912
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001913- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1914 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1915 character other than a space.
1916
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001917- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1918 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1919 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1920 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1921 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1922 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1923 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1924 attributes with the same name.
1925
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001926- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1927 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1928 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1929 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1930 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1931 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1932 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1933 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1934 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1935 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1936 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1937 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1938 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1939 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001940
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001941- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1942 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1943 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1944 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1945 This has been repaired.
1946
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001947- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1948
1949- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1950
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001951- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1952 over a sequence.
1953
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001954- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001955 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001956
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001957- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1958
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001959- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1960 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1961 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1962 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1963 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1964 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1965 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1966 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1967
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001968- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1969 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1970 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1971
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001972- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1973 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1974 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1975 freelist.
1976
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001977- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1978 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1979
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001980- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1981 number.
1982
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001983- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1984 a TypeError exception.
1985
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001986- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1987 820195.
1988
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001989- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1990 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1991 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1992
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001993- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001994 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1995 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001996
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001997- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1998 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1999 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
2000
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002001- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
2002 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002003 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002004
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002005- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00002006 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
2007 the first call.
2008
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00002009
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002010Extension modules
2011-----------------
2012
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00002013- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
2014 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
2015
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002016- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
2017 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
2018 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
2019 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
2020 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
2021 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
2022 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00002023
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00002024- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
2025
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00002026- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
2027
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00002028- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
2029 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
2030
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00002031- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
2032 fewer false positives.
2033
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00002034- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
2035 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
2036
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002037- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00002038 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
2039
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00002040- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002041 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00002042 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00002043 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
2044 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00002045
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00002046- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
2047 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
2048 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
2049 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
2050
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00002051- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
2052 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
2053 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
2054 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
2055 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
2056 #897625.
2057
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00002058- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
2059 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
2060
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00002061- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
2062 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
2063 and pops on either side of the deque.
2064
2065- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
2066 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
2067
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00002068- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
2069 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
2070 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
2071 other functions that expect a function argument.
2072
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00002073- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
2074
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002075- os.getsid was added.
2076
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00002077- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
2078 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
2079 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
2080
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00002081- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
2082
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00002083- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
2084
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00002085- readline.clear_history was added.
2086
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00002087- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
2088
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00002089- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
2090
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00002091- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
2092
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00002093- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
2094
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00002095- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
2096
2097- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
2098
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00002099- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
2100
2101- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
2102
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002103- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
2104 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
2105 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
2106
2107- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
2108 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
2109 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
2110 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
2111 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
2112 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
2113 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
2114
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00002115- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
2116 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
2117 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
2118 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002119
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002120- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00002121 iterators from a single iterable.
2122
2123- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
2124 of raising a TypeError exception.
2125
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00002126- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
2127 as parameter.
2128
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002129Library
2130-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00002131
Armin Rigoa871ef22006-02-08 12:53:56 +00002132- Added a new module: cProfile, a C profiler with the same interface as the
2133 profile module. cProfile avoids some of the drawbacks of the hotshot
2134 profiler and provides a bit more information than the other two profilers.
2135 Based on "lsprof" (patch #1212837).
2136
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00002137- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
2138
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00002139- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
2140 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
2141 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002142
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00002143- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
2144 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
2145 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00002146
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00002147- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00002148
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00002149- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
2150 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00002151
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00002152- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
2153 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
2154
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002155- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
2156
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002157- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00002158 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00002159
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002160- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00002161 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002162
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00002163- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
2164
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00002165- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
2166 on cygwin and mingw32.
2167
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00002168- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
2169
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00002170- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
2171 module.
2172
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00002173- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
2174 installation scheme for all platforms.
2175
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002176- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00002177 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00002178
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00002179- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
2180 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
2181 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
2182
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00002183- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
2184 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
2185 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
2186
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00002187- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
2188
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00002189- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
2190
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00002191- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
2192 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
2193
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00002194- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
2195 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
2196 type pattern with the same value exists.
2197
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00002198- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
2199 when run from the command prompt).
2200
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00002201- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
2202 not taken into consideration when caching value.
2203
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00002204- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
2205 default sort).
2206
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00002207- Added global runctx function to profile module
2208
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00002209- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
2210
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00002211- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
2212
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00002213- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
2214
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00002215- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00002216 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
2217 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
2218 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
2219 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
2220 accordingly.
2221
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00002222- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
2223 decoding standards.
2224
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00002225- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
2226 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
2227 called for all requests.
2228
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00002229- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
2230 they are passed to the compiler.
2231
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00002232- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
2233 indent, width and depth.
2234
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00002235- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
2236 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
2237
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00002238- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
2239 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
2240
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00002241- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
2242
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00002243- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
2244
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00002245- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
2246
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00002247- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
2248 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
2249
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00002250- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00002251 for better performance.
2252
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00002253- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00002254
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00002255- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
2256 a string).
2257
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00002258- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
2259
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00002260- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
2261
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00002262- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
2263
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00002264- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
2265
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00002266- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
2267 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
2268 list of fieldnames.
2269
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00002270- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
2271 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
2272
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00002273- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
2274
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00002275- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
2276 empty lists.
2277
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00002278- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
2279 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
2280 and shelves.
2281
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00002282- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
2283 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
2284
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002285- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00002286 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
2287 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00002288
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00002289- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
2290 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00002291 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00002292
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002293- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00002294 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
2295 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
2296
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00002297- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
2298 and removed in Py2.4.
2299
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00002300- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
2301
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00002302- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
2303
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002304Tools/Demos
2305-----------
2306
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00002307- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
2308 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
2309
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00002310- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
2311
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00002312- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
2313 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
2314 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
2315 destination in situations where both files are given.
2316
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00002317- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
2318 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
2319 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
2320 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
2321
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00002322- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
2323
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00002324- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
2325 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
2326 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
2327 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
2328 now.
2329
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002330- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
2331 in effect
2332
2333- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
2334 C-c C-h
2335
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00002336- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
2337 -d option was given.
2338
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002339Build
2340-----
2341
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00002342- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
2343 build under OS X.
2344
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00002345- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
2346 --enable-profiling.
2347
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00002348- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
2349 is configured --with-tsc.
2350
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00002351- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
2352 on AMD64.
2353
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00002354- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
2355 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
2356
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00002357- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
2358 removed.
2359
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00002360- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
2361 supported (see PEP 11).
2362
2363- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
2364
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00002365- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
2366
2367- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
2368 (see PEP 11).
2369
2370- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
2371 sizeof(char) must be 1.
2372
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002373C API
2374-----
2375
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00002376- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
2377 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
2378 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
2379
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00002380- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
2381 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
2382 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
2383 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
2384
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00002385- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
2386 generator objects.
2387
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002388- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
2389 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00002390 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
2391 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00002392
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00002393- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2394 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2395
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002396- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2397 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2398 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2399 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2400 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2401
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002402- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2403 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2404 about 10% faster.
2405
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002406- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2407 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2408
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002409- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2410 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2411 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2412 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2413
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002414Windows
2415-------
2416
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002417- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2418 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2419 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2420 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2421
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002422- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2423 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2424 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2425
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002426
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002427What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2428===============================
2429
2430*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2431
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002432IDLE
2433----
2434
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002435- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2436 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2437 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2438 context-menu actions.
2439
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002440- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2441 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2442 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2443 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2444 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2445 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2446 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2447 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2448 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2449
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002450
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002451What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2452=============================================
2453
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002454*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002455
2456Core and builtins
2457-----------------
2458
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002459- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002460 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002461 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2462
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002463Extension modules
2464-----------------
2465
2466- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2467 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2468 than once. This has been fixed.
2469
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002470- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2471 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2472 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2473 call.
2474
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002475- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2476
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002477Library
2478-------
2479
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002480- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2481 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2482
2483- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2484 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2485 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2486 restored.
2487
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002488IDLE
2489----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002490
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002491- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002492
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002493Build
2494-----
2495
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002496- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2497 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2498
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002499C API
2500-----
2501
2502Windows
2503-------
2504
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002505- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2506 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2507
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002508- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2509
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002510Mac
2511---
2512
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002513- Various fixes to pimp.
2514
2515- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2516
2517- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2518 more problems than it solves.
2519
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002520
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002521What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2522=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002523
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002524*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2525
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002526Core and builtins
2527-----------------
2528
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002529- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2530 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2531
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002532- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2533 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002534 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002535
2536- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2537 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2538 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002539 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002540
2541- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2542 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002543
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002544- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2545 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2546 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2547
2548- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002549 770247.
2550
2551- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002552
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002553Extension modules
2554-----------------
2555
2556- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2557 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2558
2559- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2560
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002561- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2562
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002563- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2564 contained within the _strptime module.
2565
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002566- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2567 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2568
2569- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002570 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2571
2572- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2573 the find_class attribute, if present.
2574
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002575- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002576
2577 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2578 (SF bug 763298).
2579
2580 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002581 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2582 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2583 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002584
2585 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2586
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002587Library
2588-------
2589
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002590- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2591
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002592- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2593 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2594 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2595 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2596 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2597 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2598 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2599 or Tester().
2600
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002601- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2602 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2603 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2604 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2605 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2606 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2607 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2608 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2609 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002610
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002611 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002612
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002613- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2614 weren't before was an oversight.
2615
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002616- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2617 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2618
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002619- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2620 when there are no lines.
2621
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002622- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2623 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2624
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002625- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2626 to child processes.
2627
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002628- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2629
2630- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2631
2632- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2633 xmlrpclib.
2634
2635- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2636 responses.
2637
2638- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2639 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2640
2641- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2642 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2643 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2644
2645- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2646 used as patterns.
2647
2648- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2649 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2650 than Tk 8.3.
2651
2652- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2653
2654- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002655
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002656Tools/Demos
2657-----------
2658
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002659- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2660
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002661- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2662
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002663- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002664
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002665Build
2666-----
2667
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002668- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2669
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002670- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2671
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002672- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2673 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002674
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002675- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2676 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2677 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002678
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002679C API
2680-----
2681
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002682- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2683 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2684
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002685Windows
2686-------
2687
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002688- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2689 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2690 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2691 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2692 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2693 Python exception ::
2694
2695 thread.error: can't start new thread
2696
2697 is raised now.
2698
2699- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2700 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2701 instead of from DLL teardown.
2702
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002703Mac
2704---
2705
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002706- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002707 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002708 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2709 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2710 the executable in the bundle.
2711
2712- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002713
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002714- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2715
2716- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2717 on Panther.
2718
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002719What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2720================================
2721
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002722*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002723
2724Core and builtins
2725-----------------
2726
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002727- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2728 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2729 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2730 with the -i option.
2731
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002732- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2733 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2734
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002735- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2736 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2737
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002738- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2739 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2740 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2741 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2742 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2743 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2744 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2745 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2746 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2747 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2748 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2749 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2750 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002751
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002752- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2753 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2754 embedded in a lambda expression.
2755
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002756- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2757 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2758 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2759 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2760 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2761
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002762- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2763 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2764 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2765
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002766- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2767 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2768
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002769- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2770 It's writable again.
2771
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002772- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2773 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2774 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002775 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002776
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002777- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2778 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2779 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2780
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002781Extension modules
2782-----------------
2783
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002784- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2785 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2786
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002787- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2788 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2789 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2790 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2791
2792- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2793 collection.
2794
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002795- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2796 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2797 unique within a single program run.
2798
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002799- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2800 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2801
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002802- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2803 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2804
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002805- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2806 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002807
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002808- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2809
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002810- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2811 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2812
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002813- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2814 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2815 for many BSD-derived systems.
2816
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002817
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002818Library
2819-------
2820
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002821- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2822 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2823 primary ones:
2824
2825 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2826 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2827 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2828
2829 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2830 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2831 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2832 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2833 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2834 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2835
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002836- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2837 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2838 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2839 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2840 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2841 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2842 argument.
2843
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002844- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2845 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2846 in the archive.
2847
2848- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2849 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2850
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002851- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2852 569574).
2853
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002854- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2855 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2856 no more.
2857
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002858- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2859 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2860 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2861 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2862 code coverage.
2863
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002864- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2865 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2866 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002867 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2868 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002869
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002870- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2871 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2872 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002873 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002874
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002875- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2876
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002877- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2878 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2879 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2880 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2881
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002882- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2883 handling.
2884
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002885- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2886 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2887
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002888- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2889 in socket.py.
2890
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002891- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2892
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002893- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2894 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2895 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2896 opener with proxy support.
2897
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002898- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2899
2900- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2901
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002902Tools/Demos
2903-----------
2904
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002905- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2906
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002907- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2908
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002909- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2910 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002911
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002912- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2913 files.
2914
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002915Build
2916-----
2917
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002918- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002919 different root directory.
2920
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002921C API
2922-----
2923
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002924- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2925 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2926 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2927 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2928 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2929 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2930 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2931 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2932 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2933 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2934
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002935- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2936 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2937 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2938 from Python.
2939
2940
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002941New platforms
2942-------------
2943
2944None this time.
2945
2946Tests
2947-----
2948
2949- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2950 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2951
2952Windows
2953-------
2954
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002955- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2956
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002957- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2958 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2959 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2960 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2961 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2962 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2963 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2964 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2965 that's what it's for.
2966
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002967Mac
2968---
2969
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002970- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2971 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2972 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2973 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002974- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2975 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2976- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002977
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002978SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2979------------------------------------
2980
2981430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2982598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2983622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2984661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2985683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2986697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2987713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2988724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2989727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2990729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2991730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2992731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2993732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2994733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2995735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2996740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2997744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2998745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2999747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
3000749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
3001751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
3002753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
3003755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
3004757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
3005760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
3006
3007
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003008What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
3009================================
3010
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00003011*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003012
3013Core and builtins
3014-----------------
3015
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00003016- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
3017 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
3018
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00003019- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
3020 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
3021 and cannot be strings).
3022
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00003023- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
3024 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
3025 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
3026 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
3027
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00003028- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
3029 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
3030 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
3031 Python itself.
3032
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00003033- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
3034 the referenced object, if it has one.
3035
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00003036- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
3037 the thread started at
3038 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
3039
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00003040- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
3041 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
3042 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
3043 placed on a list index.
3044
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00003045- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
3046 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
3047 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
3048 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
3049
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003050- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
3051 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
3052 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
3053 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
3054 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
3055 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
3056 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
3057
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00003058- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
3059 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
3060 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
3061 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
3062 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
3063
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00003064- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
3065 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00003066
3067- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
3068 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
3069 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
3070 #693195.)
3071
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00003072- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
3073 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003074
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003075- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00003076 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00003077 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
3078 interpreter executions, would fail.
3079
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003080- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00003081 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00003082 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00003083
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003084Extension modules
3085-----------------
3086
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00003087- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
3088 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
3089 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
3090 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
3091
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00003092- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
3093 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
3094
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00003095- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
3096 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
3097 and Greg Chapman.)
3098
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003099- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
3100 recursively.
3101
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00003102- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00003103 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
3104 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
3105 leaks.
3106
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00003107- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
3108
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00003109- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
3110 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
3111 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
3112 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
3113 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
3114 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
3115 #705836.
3116
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00003117- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00003118 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
3119
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00003120- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
3121 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
3122 See SF bug #692416.
3123
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00003124- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
3125 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
3126
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00003127- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
3128 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
3129 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003130
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003131- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00003132 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
3133 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
3134
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00003135- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
3136 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
3137 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
3138 timeouts to work properly.
3139
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003140Library
3141-------
3142
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00003143- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
3144 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
3145 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
3146 future release.
3147
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00003148- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
3149 for querying platform dependent features.
3150
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00003151- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00003152
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00003153- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
3154 pickle protocol versions.
3155
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00003156- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
3157 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
3158 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
3159
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00003160- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
3161
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00003162- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
3163 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
3164 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
3165 modules.
3166
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00003167- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
3168 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
3169 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
3170
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00003171- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
3172 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
3173
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00003174- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
3175 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
3176 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
3177
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003178- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00003179 MS Office extensions.
3180
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00003181- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
3182 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
3183
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00003184- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
3185 execution speed of expressions and statements.
3186
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003187- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
3188 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
3189 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
3190 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
3191 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
3192 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
3193
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003194- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
3195 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
3196 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003197
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00003198- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
3199 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
3200 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
3201
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00003202- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
3203
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00003204- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
3205 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
3206 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
3207
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003208Tools/Demos
3209-----------
3210
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00003211- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
3212 See the module docstring for details.
3213
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003214Build
3215-----
3216
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00003217- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
3218 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003219
3220C API
3221-----
3222
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003223- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
3224
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00003225- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
3226 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
3227 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
3228
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003229- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
3230 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003231
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00003232 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
3233 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
3234 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00003235
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00003236- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00003237 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
3238
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00003239- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
3240 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
3241 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003242
3243New platforms
3244-------------
3245
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00003246None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003247
3248Tests
3249-----
3250
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00003251- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
3252 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003253
3254Windows
3255-------
3256
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00003257- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
3258 function.
3259
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00003260- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
3261 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003262
3263Mac
3264---
3265
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00003266- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
3267 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00003268
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00003269- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
3270 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003271
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00003272- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
3273 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
3274 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003275
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003276- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00003277 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
3278 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00003279
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00003280- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
3281 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00003282
3283
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003284What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
3285=================================
3286
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003287*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003288
3289Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003290-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003291
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00003292- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
3293 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
3294 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
3295
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00003296- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
3297 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
3298 (SF patch #664376.)
3299
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003300- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
3301 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
3302 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
3303 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
3304 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
3305 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00003306 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00003307
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003308- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
3309 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
3310 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
3311 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003312 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00003313
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00003314- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
3315 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
3316 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
3317 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
3318 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
3319 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
3320 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
3321 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
3322 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
3323 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
3324 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
3325
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00003326- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
3327 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
3328 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
3329 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
3330 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
3331 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
3332
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00003333- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
3334 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
3335
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00003336- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
3337 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
3338 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
3339 case.)
3340
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00003341- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
3342 passed as unicode strings.
3343
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00003344- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
3345 See SF bug #683467.
3346
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00003347- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
3348 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
3349
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00003350- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
3351
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00003352- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
3353
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00003354- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
3355 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
3356 arguments.
3357
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00003358- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
3359 See SF bug #667147.
3360
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003361- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003362 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00003363 See SF bug #676155.
3364
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003365- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003366 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00003367 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
3368 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
3369 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
3370 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
3371 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
3372 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00003373
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003374Extension modules
3375-----------------
3376
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003377- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
3378 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3379 tp_as_number pointer.
3380
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00003381- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
3382 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
3383 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
3384 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
3385 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
3386
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003387- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
3388
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00003389- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
3390
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003391- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00003392 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00003393 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3394 patch #678531.)
3395
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003396- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3397 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3398
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003399- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3400 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3401
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003402- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3403
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003404- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3405 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3406 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3407
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003408- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3409
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003410- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3411 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3412
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003413- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003414
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003415- datetime changes:
3416
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003417 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3418
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003419 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3420 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3421 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3422 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3423 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3424 now.
3425
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003426 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003427 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3428 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003429
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003430 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003431 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003432 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3433 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3434 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3435 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003436
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003437 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3438 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3439 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003440 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3441
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003442 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3443 by a later example coded by Guido.
3444
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003445 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003446 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3447 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3448 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003449 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3450 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3451
3452 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3453 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3454 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3455 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3456 tzinfo subclass instance.
3457
3458 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3459 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3460 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3461 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3462 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3463 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3464 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3465 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003466
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003467 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3468 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3469 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3470 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3471 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003472 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3473
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003474 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003475
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003476 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3477 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3478 as a naive datetime object.
3479
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003480 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3481 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3482 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3483
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003484 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3485 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3486 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3487 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3488 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3489 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3490 comparison.
3491
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003492 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3493 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3494 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3495 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003496 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003497
3498 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003499
3500 and ::
3501
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003502 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3503
3504 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3505 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3506 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3507 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3508
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003509 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3510 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3511 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3512 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3513 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3514
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003515 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3516 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003517 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3518 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003519
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003520Library
3521-------
3522
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003523- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3524 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3525
3526- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3527 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3528 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3529 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3530 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3531 See PEP 307 for details.
3532
3533- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3534 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3535
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003536- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3537 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003538 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003539 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3540 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003541 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003542
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003543- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3544 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3545
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003546- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3547 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3548 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3549
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003550- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3551
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003552- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3553 exception.
3554
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003555- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3556 class.
3557
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003558- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3559 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3560 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3561
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003562- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3563 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3564
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003565- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003566 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3567 See SF bug #659228.
3568
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003569- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3570 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3571 See SF patch #651082.
3572
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003573- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003574
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003575- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3576 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3577
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003578- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003579 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003580
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003581- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3582 DOS paths from other platforms.
3583
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003584Tools/Demos
3585-----------
3586
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003587- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3588 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3589 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3590 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3591 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3592 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3593 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3594 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3595 example:
3596
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003597 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3598 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003599
3600 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3601
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003602
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003603Build
3604-----
3605
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003606- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3607 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3608 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003609 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3610
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003611 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3612
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003613- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3614 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3615 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3616 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3617 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3618 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3619 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3620 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3621 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3622
3623- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3624 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3625 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3626 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3627
3628- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3629 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3630
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003631C API
3632-----
3633
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003634- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3635 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003636
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003637- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3638 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3639 tp_as_number pointer.
3640
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003641- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3642 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3643 (SF #681367)
3644
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003645- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3646 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3647 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3648 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003649
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003650Tests
3651-----
3652
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003653- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003654 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3655 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3656 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3657 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3658 pydoc.)
3659
3660- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3661
3662- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003663
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003664Windows
3665-------
3666
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003667- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3668 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3669 time).
3670
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003671- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3672 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3673
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003674- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3675 release without strong cryptography.
3676
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003677- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003678 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003679
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003680- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3681 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3682
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003683Mac
3684---
3685
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003686- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3687 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003688
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003689- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3690 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3691 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003692
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003693- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3694 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003695
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003696- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3697 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3698 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3699 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003700
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003701- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003702 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3703 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3704 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003705
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003706
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003707What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003708=================================
3709
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003710*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003711
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003712Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003713--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003714
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003715- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3716
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003717- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3718 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003719 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003720 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003721 a different meaning than before.
3722
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003723- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003724 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003725 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003726
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003727- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003728 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003729 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003730
3731- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3732 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3733 and deallocation.
3734
3735- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3736 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3737
3738- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3739 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3740 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3741 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3742 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3743
3744- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3745 now detected by the garbage collector.
3746
3747- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3748 [SF bug 519621]
3749
3750- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3751 identifier.
3752
3753- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3754 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3755 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3756 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3757 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3758 [SF bug 563060]
3759
3760- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3761 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3762 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3763 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3764 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3765
3766- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3767 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3768 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3769
3770- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3771
3772- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3773 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3774 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3775 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3776 state of the slots would be lost.)
3777
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003778Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003779-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003780
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003781- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003782 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3783 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3784 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3785 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003786 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3787 Jython 2.1.
3788
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003789- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003790 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003791 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3792 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3793 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3794 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3795 these, see PEP 302.
3796
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003797- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3798 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3799 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3800
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003801- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3802 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3803 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3804
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003805- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3806 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3807 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3808
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003809- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3810 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3811 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3812 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3813 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3814 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3815 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3816 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3817 releases or implementations.
3818
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003819- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003820 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3821 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003822
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003823- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3824 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3825
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003826- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3827 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3828 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3829
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003830- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3831 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3832
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003833- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3834 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003835 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3836 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003837
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003838- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3839 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3840 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3841 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3842 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3843
3844 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3845 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3846 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3847 pattern.
3848
3849 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3850 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3851 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3852 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3853
3854 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3855 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3856 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3857 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3858 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3859 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3860
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003861- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3862 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3863 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3864 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3865 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3866 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3867 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3868 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003869
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003870- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3871 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3872 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3873 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3874 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003875 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3876 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3877 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3878 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3879 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3880 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3881 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003882
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003883- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3884 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3885
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003886- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3887 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3888 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3889 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3890 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3891 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3892 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3893 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3894 to Zack Weinberg!
3895
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003896- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3897 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3898 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3899 type. This has been fixed now.
3900
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003901- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3902 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3903 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3904
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003905- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3906 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3907 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3908 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3909 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3910 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3911 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3912 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003913 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003914
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003915- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3916 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3917 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003918
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003919- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3920 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3921 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3922 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3923 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3924 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3925 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3926 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003927 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003928 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3929 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3930
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003931- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3932 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3933 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3934 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3935 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3936 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3937 this.)
3938
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003939- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3940 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003941 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003942 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003943 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3944 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003945 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3946 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003947
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003948- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3949 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3950 currently running.
3951
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003952- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3953 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3954 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3955 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3956
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003957- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3958 as directory names.
3959
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003960- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3961 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3962
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003963- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3964 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3965
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003966- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003967 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3968 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003969
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003970- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3971 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3972 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3973 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3974 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3975
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003976- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3977 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3978 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3979 removed.
3980
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003981- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3982 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3983 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3984
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003985- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3986 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3987 to __debug__.
3988
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003989- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3990 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3991 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3992
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003993- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3994 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3995 deprecated now.
3996
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003997- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3998 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3999 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00004000
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00004001- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
4002 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
4003 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
4004 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
4005 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00004006
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00004007- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
4008 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
4009
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004010- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
4011 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
4012 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004013 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00004014 is backward compatible.
4015
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00004016- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
4017 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
4018 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
4019 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
4020 could access a pointer to freed memory.
4021
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00004022- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
4023 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
4024 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
4025 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
4026 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
4027 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004028
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00004029- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
4030 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
4031
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004032- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
4033 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
4034
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004035- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
4036 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
4037 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
4038 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
4039 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
4040
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00004041- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
4042 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
4043 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
4044
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004045- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00004046 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
4047
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00004048- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
4049 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
4050 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00004051
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00004052- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
4053 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
4054
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00004055- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
4056 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
4057 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
4058
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00004059- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
4060
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004061Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004062-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004063
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00004064- Added three operators to the operator module:
4065 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
4066 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
4067 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
4068
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00004069- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
4070
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00004071- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
4072 archives.
4073
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004074- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
4075 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
4076 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
4077
4078 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
4079
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004080- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
4081 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
4082 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00004083 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00004084
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00004085- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
4086 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
4087 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
4088 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00004089 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
4090 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
4091 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
4092 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00004093
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00004094- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
4095 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00004096
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00004097- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
4098
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00004099- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
4100 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
4101
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00004102- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
4103 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
4104 supported.
4105
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00004106- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
4107
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00004108- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
4109 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00004110
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00004111- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
4112 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
4113
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00004114- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
4115
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004116- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
4117 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
4118
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00004119- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
4120 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
4121 functions but callable type objects.
4122
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004123- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004124 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004125 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00004126
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00004127- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
4128 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00004129
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00004130- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
4131 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00004132
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00004133- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
4134 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
4135 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
4136 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
4137
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00004138- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
4139 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00004140
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00004141- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
4142 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
4143 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
4144 and __imul__.
4145
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00004146- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00004147 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
4148 is called.
4149
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00004150- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
4151 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
4152 interpreter was compiled.
4153
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004154- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
4155 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
4156 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004157 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00004158 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
4159 1, not 2.
4160
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00004161- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
4162 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
4163 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
4164 limit.
4165
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00004166- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
4167 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
4168 bug #623464.
4169
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00004170- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
4171 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
4172 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
4173 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
4174
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004175Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004176-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004177
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00004178- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
4179
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00004180- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
4181 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
4182 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
4183 with Python 2.3a2.
4184
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00004185- os.path exposes getctime.
4186
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004187- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004188 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004189 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004190 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004191 unit tests of floating point results.
4192
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00004193- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
4194 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
4195 has been increased.
4196
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00004197- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
4198 executed.
4199
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00004200- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
4201 postinstallation script.
4202
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00004203- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
4204 test the current module.
4205
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004206- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00004207 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
4208 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
4209 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
4210 this behavior needs to be controlled.
4211
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004212- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004213 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00004214 Ward's Optik package.
4215
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004216- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
4217 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
4218 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
4219 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
4220
4221- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
4222 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00004223 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00004224
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00004225- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
4226 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
4227 shelf are binary pickles.
4228
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00004229- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
4230 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
4231
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00004232- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
4233 modules are iterators now.
4234
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00004235- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
4236 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
4237 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
4238 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
4239 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
4240 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004241
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00004242- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
4243 with their entity value.
4244
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00004245- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
4246
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004247- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
4248 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00004249
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00004250- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
4251 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00004252 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00004253
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00004254- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
4255 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
4256 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
4257 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
4258 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
4259 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
4260 main():
4261
4262 import locale
4263 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
4264
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00004265- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
4266 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
4267
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00004268- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
4269 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
4270 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
4271 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
4272 to the new standard.
4273
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00004274- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
4275 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
4276 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
4277 an extension to the database.
4278
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004279- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
4280 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
4281 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
4282 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00004283 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00004284
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004285- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00004286 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00004287
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00004288- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
4289 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
4290 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
4291 bounded integers.
4292
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00004293- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
4294 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
4295 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
4296 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
4297 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
4298 in existence.
4299
4300 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
4301 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
4302 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
4303 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
4304 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
4305 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
4306
4307 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
4308 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
4309 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
4310 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
4311
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00004312- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
4313 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
4314 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
4315
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00004316- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
4317
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004318- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
4319 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
4320 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
4321 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
4322
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00004323- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
4324 argument.
4325
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00004326- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
4327 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
4328 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
4329 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
4330 [SF patch 560794].
4331
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004332- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
4333 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
4334 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00004335 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
4336 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
4337 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00004338
4339- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
4340 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00004341
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00004342- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
4343 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
4344 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
4345 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00004346
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00004347- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
4348 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
4349 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
4350 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
4351 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
4352
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004353- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00004354
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00004355- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
4356
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00004357- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
4358 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
4359 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
4360 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
4361 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
4362 identical to None.
4363
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00004364- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
4365 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
4366 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
4367 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
4368 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
4369 results now.
4370
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00004371- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
4372 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
4373
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00004374- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
4375 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
4376 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
4377 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
4378 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
4379 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
4380 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
4381 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
4382
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00004383- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
4384
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00004385- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
4386 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
4387
4388- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
4389 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
4390 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
4391 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
4392 and other systems.
4393
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004394- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4395 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4396 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4397 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 +00004398 work well with these.
4399
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004400- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4401
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004402- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004403 connections.
4404
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004405- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4406 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4407 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4408
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004409- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4410 sets
4411
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004412- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4413 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4414 name.
4415
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004416- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4417 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4418 passed in.
4419
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004420- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004421 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004422 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4423 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004424
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004425- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4426
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004427- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4428
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004429- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4430 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4431 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4432
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004433- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4434 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4435 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4436 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004437 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004438
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004439- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004440 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004441 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004442
4443- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4444 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4445 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4446
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004447- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004448 the value of its expression argument.
4449
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004450- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4451 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4452 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4453
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004454- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4455 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4456 skipstone browser was included.
4457
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004458- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4459 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4460
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004461Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004462-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004463
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004464- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4465 names in addition to accepting file names.
4466
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004467- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4468 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4469 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4470 still used and useful.)
4471
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004472- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4473 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4474 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4475 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004476
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004477- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4478 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4479 the generated binary.
4480
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004481Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004482-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004483
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004484- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4485
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004486- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4487 except in the hands of experts.
4488
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004489- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004490 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4491 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4492 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004493
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004494- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4495 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4496 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4497 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4498 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4499 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4500 builds.
4501
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004502- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4503 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4504 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4505 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4506 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4507 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4508 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4509 new type.
4510
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004511- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004512
4513 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4514 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4515 positive infinities.
4516
4517 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4518 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4519 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4520 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4521 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4522 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4523 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4524
4525 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4526
4527 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4528
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004529- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4530 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4531 size of the executable.
4532
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004533- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4534 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4535 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4536 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004537
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004538- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4539
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004540- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4541 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4542 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004543
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004544- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4545 well as Unix.
4546
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004547- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4548 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4549 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4550 modules in the README file for details.
4551
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004552C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004553-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004554
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004555- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4556 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004557 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004558 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004559 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004560
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004561- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4562 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4563 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4564 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4565 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4566 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004567 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004568 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4569 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4570 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4571 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4572 aligned.)
4573
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004574- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4575 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4576 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4577
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004578- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4579 level.
4580
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004581- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4582 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4583 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4584 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4585 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4586
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004587- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4588 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4589 code.
4590
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004591- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4592 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4593 adjusting for negative indices.
4594
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004595- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4596 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4597 object.
4598
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004599- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4600 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4601 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4602
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004603- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4604 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004605
4606- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4607
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004608- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4609 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4610 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4611 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4612
4613- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4614
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004615- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004616
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004617- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004618 without going through the buffer API.
4619
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004620- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004621
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004622- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4623 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4624 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4625 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4626
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004627- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4628 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4629
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004630- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004631 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4632
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004633New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004634-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004635
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004636- OpenVMS is now supported.
4637
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004638- AtheOS is now supported.
4639
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004640- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4641
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004642- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4643
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004644Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004645-----
4646
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004647- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4648 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4649 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004650
4651Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004652-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004653
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004654- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4655 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4656 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4657 bugs.
4658 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004659 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004660 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4661 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004662 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004663
4664- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004665 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004666
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004667- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4668 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4669
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004670- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4671 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004672 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004673 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4674
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004675- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4676 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4677 use files" uninstall option).
4678
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004679- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4680
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004681- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4682 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4683
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004684- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4685 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4686 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4687
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004688- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4689 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4690 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4691 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4692 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004693 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4694 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4695 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004696
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004697- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004698 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004699 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4700 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4701 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4702 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4703 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4704 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4705 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4706 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4707 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4708 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4709 work around.
4710
4711- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4712 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4713 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4714 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4715 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4716 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4717 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4718 specified with O_CREAT too).
4719
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004720Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004721----
4722
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004723- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004724
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004725- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4726 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4727 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4728
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004729- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4730 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4731 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4732
4733- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4734 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4735 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4736 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4737 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4738 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4739 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4740 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004741
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004742- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4743 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4744 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004745
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004746- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4747 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4748 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4749 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4750 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004751
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004752- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4753 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4754 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004755
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004756- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4757 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004758
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004759- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4760 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4761 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4762 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4763 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004764
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004765- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4766 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4767 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4768
4769- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4770 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4771 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004772
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004773- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4774 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4775 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4776 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004777 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004778
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004779- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4780 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004781
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004782- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4783 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004784
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004785- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004786 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004787 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4788 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004789
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004790
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004791What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004792===============================
4793
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4795
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004796Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004797--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004798
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004799- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4800 with a custom metaclass.
4801
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004802Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004804
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004805- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4806 are proxies.
4807
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004808Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004809-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004810
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004811- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4812 very short strings.
4813
4814- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4815 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4816 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4817 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4818 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4819
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004820Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004821-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004822
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004823- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4824 close or delete time).
4825
4826- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4827 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4828
4829- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4830
4831- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004832 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004833
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004834Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004835-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004836
4837Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004838-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004839
4840C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004841-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004842
4843New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004844-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004845
4846Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004847-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004848
4849Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004850-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004851
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004852- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4853
4854- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4855 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4856
4857- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4858 deleted at process exit time.
4859
4860- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4861 in backslash.
4862
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004863Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004864----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004865
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004866- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4867 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4868 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4869
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004870
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004871What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004872===========================
4873
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004874*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4875
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004876Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004877--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004878
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004879- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4880 been extensively updated. See
4881
4882 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4883
4884 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4885
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004886- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4887 deleted!
4888
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004889- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4890 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4891 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4892 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4893 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4894
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004895- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4896
4897 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4898 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4899
4900 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4901 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4902 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4903 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4904 supported anyway.
4905
4906 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4907 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4908
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004909- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4910 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4911 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4912 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4913 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004914
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004915- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4916 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4917 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4918
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004919Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004920-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004921
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004922- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4923 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4924 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4925 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4926 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4927 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004928 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4929 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4930 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4931 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004932
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004933- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4934 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4935 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4936
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004937Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004938-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004939
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004940- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4941
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004942Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004943-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004944
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004945- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4946 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4947 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4948 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4949 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4950 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4951
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004952- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4953
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004954- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4955
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004956- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4957
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004958- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4959 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4960 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4961
4962- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4963
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004964Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004965-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004966
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004967- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4968 off a search on Google.
4969
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004970Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004971-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004972
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004973- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4974 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4975 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4976 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4977 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4978 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4979 other platforms should do likewise.
4980
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004981- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4982 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4983 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4984
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004985C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004987
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004988- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4989 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4990 producing key-value pairs.
4991
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004992- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004993 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004994 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4995 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4996 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4997 previously went unchallenged.
4998
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004999New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005000-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005001
5002Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005003-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005004
5005Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005006-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005007
5008Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005009----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005010
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00005011- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
5012 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00005013
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00005014- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
5015 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
5016 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
5017 home.
5018
5019
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005020What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005021===========================
5022
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005023*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
5024
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005025Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005026--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005027
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005028- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
5029 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005030
5031 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00005032 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005033
5034 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
5035 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005036 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00005037 This needs to be documented.
5038
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00005039- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
5040 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
5041
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00005042- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
5043 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
5044 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
5045
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00005046- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
5047 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
5048
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005049- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
5050 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
5051 class forbids it).
5052
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00005053- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
5054 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
5055 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
5056
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005057- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
5058
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005059Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005060-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005061
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005062- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
5063 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005064 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00005065
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005066- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
5067 (like 1 + '').
5068
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005069Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005070-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005071
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005072- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
5073 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
5074 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
5075 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005076 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005077 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
5078
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00005079- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
5080 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
5081 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
5082 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
5083
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005084- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
5085 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005086 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
5087 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
5088 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00005089
5090- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
5091 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005092
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00005093- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
5094 bytes on its input.
5095
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005096Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005097-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005098
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00005099- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00005100 convenience function.
5101
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005102- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
5103 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
5104 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005105 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
5106 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
5107 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
5108 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
5109 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
5110 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00005111
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00005112- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
5113 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
5114 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
5115 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
5116
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00005117- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
5118 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
5119 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
5120
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005121- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
5122 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
5123 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
5124 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
5125
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005126- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
5127 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005128 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005129 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
5130 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
5131 new -l and -e options.
5132
5133- statcache is now deprecated.
5134
5135- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
5136 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005137 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005138 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
5139 time properly taken into account.
5140
5141- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
5142 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
5143 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
5144 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
5145
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005146Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005147-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005148
5149Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005150-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005151
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005152- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
5153 is built with libdb3 if available.
5154
5155- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
5156
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005157C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005158-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005159
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00005160- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
5161 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
5162 PySequence_Size().
5163
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005164- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
5165
5166- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
5167 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
5168 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
5169
5170- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
5171 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
5172
5173- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
5174 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
5175
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005176New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005177-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005178
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00005179- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
5180 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
5181
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00005182- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
5183 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
5184
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00005185- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
5186
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005187Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005188-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005189
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00005190- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
5191 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
5192
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005193Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005194-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005195
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005196Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005197----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00005198
5199- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
5200 removed completely in the next release.
5201
5202- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
5203 OSX.
5204
5205- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
5206 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
5207
5208- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
5209
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00005210
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005211What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005212===========================
5213
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005214*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
5215
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005216Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005217--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005218
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005219- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005220 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005221 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005222 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
5223 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00005224 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
5225 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00005226 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
5227 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00005228
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00005229- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
5230 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
5231
5232- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
5233 class methods, static methods, and properties.
5234
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005235Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005236-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005237
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00005238- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
5239 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
5240 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
5241 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
5242 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
5243 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
5244 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
5245 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
5246
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005247- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
5248 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
5249 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
5250 example).
5251
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005252- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005253 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005254 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005255 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00005256
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005257- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
5258 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
5259 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00005260 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005261
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005262- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
5263 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
5264 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
5265 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
5266 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
5267 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
5268
5269 isinstance(x, (A, B))
5270
5271 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
5272
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005273Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005274-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005275
5276- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
5277
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005278- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
5279
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005280- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
5281 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00005282
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00005283- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
5284 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
5285 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
5286 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
5287 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
5288 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00005289 attributes.
5290
5291- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
5292 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
5293 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00005294
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005295- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
5296 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
5297 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005298
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005299- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
5300 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
5301 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005302 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
5303 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
5304
5305- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
5306 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00005307
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00005308Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005309-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005310
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00005311- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
5312 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
5313
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005314- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
5315 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
5316 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
5317 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
5318
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00005319- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
5320 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
5321 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
5322 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
5323
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00005324 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
5325 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
5326 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
5327 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
5328 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
5329 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
5330 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
5331 without losing information).
5332
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005333- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005334 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
5335 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
5336 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
5337 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
5338 module).
5339
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00005340 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00005341 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
5342 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
5343 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
5344 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00005345
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00005346- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00005347 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
5348 encoding.
5349
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00005350- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
5351 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
5352
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005353- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005354 to allow saving the message body to a file.
5355
5356- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
5357 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
5358 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
5359 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
5360
5361- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
5362
5363- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
5364 ON, and OFF.
5365
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00005366- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
5367 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
5368
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005369Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005370-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00005371
5372- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
5373 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
5374 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005375
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005376- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
5377 been added: -X and -E.
5378
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005379Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005380-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005381
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00005382- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
5383 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
5384
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005385C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005386-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005387
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00005388- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
5389 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
5390 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
5391 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
5392 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
5393
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005394- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5395 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5396 as long) arguments.
5397
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005398- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5399 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5400 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5401 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5402 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5403 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5404
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005405- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5406 input.
5407
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005408New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005409-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005410
5411Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005412-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005413
5414Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005415-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005416
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005417- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5418 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5419 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5420
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005421- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5422 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5423 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005424 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005425
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005426 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5427 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5428 import signal
5429 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005430
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005431 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005432 while 1:
5433 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005434 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005435 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5436 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5437 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5438 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005439
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005440
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005441What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5442===========================
5443
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005444*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5445
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005446Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005447--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005448
5449- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5450 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5451 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5452
5453- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5454 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5455 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5456 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5457 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5458 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5459 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005460
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005461- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005462 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005463 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5464 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5465 associate a docstring with a property.
5466
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005467- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5468 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5469 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5470 other built-in object types.
5471
5472- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5473 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5474 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5475 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5476 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5477
5478- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5479 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5480
5481- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5482 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005483 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005484 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5485 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5486 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5487 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5488 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5489
5490- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5491 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5492 class.
5493
5494- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5495 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5496 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5497 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5498
5499- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5500 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5501 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5502 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5503
5504- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5505 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5506
5507- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5508 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5509 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5510 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5511 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005512 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005513 with the same value as s.
5514
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005515- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5516
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005517Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005518----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005519
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005520- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5521
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005522- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5523 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5524 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5525 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5526 objects.
5527
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005528- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5529 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005530 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5531 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5532
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005533- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5534 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5535 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5536
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005537Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005538-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005539
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005540- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5541 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5542 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5543 by the instances.
5544
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005545- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5546 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5547 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5548
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005549- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5550 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5551 before the entire comparison is complete.
5552
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005553- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5554 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5555 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5556
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005557- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5558 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5559 getwriter().
5560
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005561- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5562 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5563
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005564- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005565 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5566 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5567
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005568- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5569 iterable object.
5570
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005571- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5572 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005573
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005574- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5575 authentication.
5576
5577- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5578 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005579
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005580- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005581 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5582 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5583 a sample driver.)
5584
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005585Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005586-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005587
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005588- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5589 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5590 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5591 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5592 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5593 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5594 kernel has large file support.
5595
5596- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5597 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5598 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5599 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5600 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5601
5602- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5603 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5604 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5605
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005606C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005607-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005608
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005609- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5610 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5611
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005612New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005613-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005614
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005615- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5616 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5617
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005618Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005619-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005620
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005621- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5622 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5623 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5624 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5625 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5626
5627- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5628 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5629 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5630 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5631
5632- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5633 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5634
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005635Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005636-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005637
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005638- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005639 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5640 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005641
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005642
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005643What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5644===========================
5645
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005646*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5647
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005648Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005649----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005650
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005651- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5652 big to represent as a C double.
5653
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005654- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5655 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5656 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5657 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5658 restriction).
5659
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005660- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5661 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5662 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5663 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5664 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5665
5666 >>> dir([])
5667 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5668 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5669 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5670 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5671 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5672 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5673 'reverse', 'sort']
5674
5675 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5676
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005677- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005678 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5679 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5680 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5681 OverflowError exception.
5682
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005683- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005684 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005685 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5686 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5687 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5688 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5689 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005690 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005691 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5692 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5693
5694 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5695 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5696 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5697 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005698
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005699- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005700 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5701 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5702 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5703 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5704 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5705 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5706 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5707 once it is created.
5708
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005709- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5710 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5711 (key, value) pairs.
5712
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005713- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005714 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5715 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5716
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005717- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5718 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5719 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5720 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5721 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005722
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005723- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005724 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5725 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5726
5727 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5728
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005729- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005730 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5731
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005732Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005733-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005734
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005735- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005736 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5737 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005738
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005739- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5740 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5741 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5742 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5743 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5744 in this area anymore).
5745
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005746- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5747 threading.Timer.
5748
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005749- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5750 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5751
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005752- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005753 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5754
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005755- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005756 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5757 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5758 converted to Python longs.
5759
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005760- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005761 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5762
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005763- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5764 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5765 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5766
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005767Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005768-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005769
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005770- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5771 division operators as per PEP 238.
5772
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005773Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005774-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005775
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005776- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5777 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5778 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5779 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5780
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005781C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005782-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005783
5784- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005785
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005786- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5787 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005788 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005789
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005790 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5791 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005792 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005793 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005794
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005795- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005796 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5797 module:
5798
5799 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005800
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005801 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5802 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005803
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005804 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5805 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005806
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005807 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5808
5809 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5810
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005811- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005812 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5813 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5814 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005815
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005816New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005817-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005818
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005819- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5820 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5821 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5822 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5823 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005824
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005825Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005826-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005827
5828Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005829-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005830
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005831- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5832 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5833 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5834 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005835 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5836 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5837 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5838 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5839 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005840
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005841- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005842 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5843
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005844
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005845What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5846===========================
5847
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005848*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5849
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005850Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005851-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005852
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005853- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5854 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5855
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005856- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5857 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5858 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005859
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005860- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5861 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5862 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5863 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005864
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005865- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5866
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005867- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005868
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005869Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005870-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005871
5872- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005873 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005874 the module docstring for details.
5875
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005876Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005877-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005878
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005879- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005880 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5881 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5882 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005883
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005884- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5885 Nick Mathewson.
5886
5887Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005888----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005889
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005890- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5891 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5892 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5893 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5894 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5895 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5896 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5897 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5898
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005899- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5900 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5901 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5902 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5903
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005904- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5905 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5906 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5907 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5908 come a long way).
5909
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005910- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5911 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5912 write filters for these warnings).
5913
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005914- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5915 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5916 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5917 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5918 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5919
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005920- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5921 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5922 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5923 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5924 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5925 older distribution.
5926
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005927Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005928-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005929
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005930- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5931 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005932 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005933
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005934- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5935 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5936 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5937
5938- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5939
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005940- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5941
5942- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5943
5944- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5945
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005946- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005947
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005948- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5949
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005950New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005951-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005952
5953C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005954-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005955
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005956- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5957 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5958 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5959 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5960 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5961 against buffer overruns.
5962
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005963- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005964 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5965 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005966 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5967 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5968 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5969
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005970- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5971 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5972 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5973 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5974 deprecated.
5975
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005976Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005977-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005978
5979- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5980 relevant is found.
5981
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005982
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005983What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005984===========================
5985
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005986*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5987
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005988Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005989----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005990
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005991- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5992 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5993 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5994 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5995 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5996 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5997 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5998 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005999 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00006000 repaired.
6001
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006002- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00006003 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00006004 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
6005 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
6006 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
6007 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
6008 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
6009 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
6010 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
6011 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
6012
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00006013- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
6014 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
6015 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
6016 leading BMO character).
6017
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006018- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
6019 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
6020 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
6021
6022 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
6023 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
6024 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006025
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006026 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
6027 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
6028 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
6029 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
6030 for various simple to use conversions.
6031
6032 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
6033 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
6034
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006035 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6036 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
6037 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
6038 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
6039 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6040 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
6041 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6042 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
6043 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6044 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
6045 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6046 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
6047 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
6048 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
6049 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00006050
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006051- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
6052 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
6053 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006054 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006055 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006056
6057 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006058 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
6059 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
6060 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
6061 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
6062 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006063 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
6064 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00006065
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006066 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
6067 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
6068 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00006069 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006070
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00006071- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
6072 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
6073 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
6074 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
6075 floating arithmetic,
6076
6077 x = 9007199254740992.0
6078 print long(x)
6079
6080 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
6081 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
6082 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
6083 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
6084 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
6085 functions are of good quality).
6086
6087 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
6088 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
6089 algorithms to break.
6090
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00006091- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
6092 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
6093 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
6094 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
6095 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
6096 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
6097 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
6098 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
6099 order.
6100
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006101- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
6102 operation along the most common code paths.
6103
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006104- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
6105 the same as dict.has_key(x).
6106
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00006107- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
6108 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
6109 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
6110 {}.update(UserDict())
6111
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00006112- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
6113 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
6114 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
6115 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
6116 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
6117 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
6118 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
6119 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
6120
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00006121- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00006122 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006123
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006124 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00006125 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
6126 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00006127 join() method of strings
6128 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006129 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
6130 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006131 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00006132 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00006133
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00006134- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
6135 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
6136
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00006137- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
6138 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
6139
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00006140- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
6141 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
6142 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
6143 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
6144
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006145- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
6146 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006147 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00006148 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
6149 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00006150
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00006151- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
6152
6153
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006154Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006155-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006156
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006157- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006158 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00006159 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
6160 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
6161
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00006162- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
6163 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
6164
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00006165- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
6166 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
6167 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
6168 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
6169
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00006170- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
6171 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
6172 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
6173
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00006174- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
6175
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00006176- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
6177
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00006178- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
6179 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
6180 that are still imported into string.py).
6181
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006182- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
6183
6184- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
6185 Now it does.
6186
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006187- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
6188
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006189- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
6190 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
6191 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
6192 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
6193 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00006194 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
6195 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00006196
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00006197- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
6198 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
6199 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
6200 'help(object)'.
6201
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006202Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006203-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006204
6205- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006206 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006207 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
6208 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
6209
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00006210- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00006211 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
6212 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00006213
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006214C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006215-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00006216
6217- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
6218 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00006219
6220----
6221
6222**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**