blob: 307b359a510941474f1f76503781cf13a6345c01 [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
Georg Brandl4550b8d2005-08-26 06:43:52 +000015- Disallow keyword arguments for type constructors that don't use them
Georg Brandl02c42872005-08-26 06:42:30 +000016 (fixes bug #1119418).
17
Martin v. Löwisd35edda2005-08-24 08:39:24 +000018- Forward UnicodeDecodeError into SyntaxError for source encoding errors.
19
Barry Warsawe2eca0b2005-08-15 18:14:19 +000020- SF bug #900092: When tracing (e.g. for hotshot), restore 'return' events for
21 exceptions that cause a function to exit.
22
Raymond Hettinger9f1a6792005-07-31 01:16:36 +000023- The implementation of set() and frozenset() was revised to use its
24 own internal data structure. Memory consumption is reduced by 1/3
25 and there are modest speed-ups as well. The API is unchanged.
26
Tim Petersde7990b2005-07-17 23:45:23 +000027- SF bug #1238681: freed pointer is used in longobject.c:long_pow().
28
Michael W. Hudson0edc7a02005-07-12 10:21:19 +000029- SF bug #1229429: PyObject_CallMethod failed to decrement some
30 reference counts in some error exit cases.
31
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000032- SF bug #1185883: Python's small-object memory allocator took over
33 a block managed by the platform C library whenever a realloc specified
34 a small new size. However, there's no portable way to know then how
35 much of the address space following the pointer is valid, so no
36 portable way to copy data from the C-managed block into Python's
37 small-object space without risking a memory fault. Python's small-object
38 realloc now leaves such blocks under the control of the platform C
39 realloc.
40
Michael W. Hudsonb8963812005-07-05 15:21:58 +000041- SF bug #1232517: An overflow error was not detected properly when
42 attempting to convert a large float to an int in os.utime().
43
Raymond Hettinger3296e692005-06-29 23:29:56 +000044- SF bug #1224347: hex longs now print with lowercase letters just
45 like their int counterparts.
46
Michael W. Hudson188d4362005-06-20 16:52:57 +000047- SF bug #1163563: the original fix for bug #1010677 ("thread Module
48 Breaks PyGILState_Ensure()") broke badly in the case of multiple
49 interpreter states; back out that fix and do a better job (see
50 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-June/054258.html
51 for a longer write-up of the problem).
52
Michael W. Hudsondf888462005-06-03 14:41:55 +000053- SF patch #1180995: marshal now uses a binary format by default when
54 serializing floats.
55
Michael W. Hudsonda85a902005-06-01 11:34:22 +000056- SF patch #1181301: on platforms that appear to use IEEE 754 floats,
57 the routines that promise to produce IEEE 754 binary representations
58 of floats now simply copy bytes around.
59
Skip Montanarobbf12ba2005-05-20 03:07:06 +000060- bug #967182: disallow opening files with 'wU' or 'aU' as specified by PEP
61 278.
62
Brett Cannonc3647ac2005-04-26 03:45:26 +000063- patch #1109424: int, long, float, complex, and unicode now check for the
64 proper magic slot for type conversions when subclassed. Previously the
65 magic slot was ignored during conversion. Semantics now match the way
66 subclasses of str always behaved. int/long/float, conversion of an instance
67 to the base class has been moved the prroper nb_* magic slot and out of
68 PyNumber_*().
69 Thanks Walter Dörwald.
70
Barry Warsawc8d907c2005-04-19 23:43:40 +000071- Descriptors defined in C with a PyGetSetDef structure, where the setter is
72 NULL, now raise an AttributeError when attempting to set or delete the
73 attribute. Previously a TypeError was raised, but this was inconsistent
74 with the equivalent pure-Python implementation.
75
Michael W. Hudson774479c2005-04-18 08:46:17 +000076- It is now safe to call PyGILState_Release() before
77 PyEval_InitThreads() (note that if there is reason to believe there
78 are multiple threads around you still must call PyEval_InitThreads()
79 before using the Python API; this fix is for extension modules that
80 have no way of knowing if Python is multi-threaded yet).
81
Michael W. Hudsone3afc592005-04-07 10:11:19 +000082- Typing Ctrl-C whilst raw_input() was waiting in a build with threads
83 disabled caused a crash.
84
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +000085- Bug #1165306: instancemethod_new allowed the creation of a method
86 with im_class == im_self == NULL, which caused a crash when called.
87
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +000088- Move exception finalisation later in the shutdown process - this
Anthony Baxter12b6f6c2005-03-29 13:36:16 +000089 fixes the crash seen in bug #1165761
90
Raymond Hettinger96229b12005-03-11 06:49:40 +000091- Added two new builtins, any() and all().
92
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000093- Defining a class with empty parentheses is now allowed
Brett Cannonf4189912005-04-09 02:30:16 +000094 (e.g., ``class C(): pass`` is no longer a syntax error).
95 Patch #1176012 added support to the 'parser' module and 'compiler' package
96 (thanks to logistix for that added support).
Brett Cannon409d8f22005-03-05 06:47:57 +000097
Martin v. Löwis96d743e2005-03-03 23:00:26 +000098- Patch #1115086: Support PY_LONGLONG in structmember.
99
Raymond Hettingerb67cc802005-03-03 16:45:19 +0000100- Bug #1155938: new style classes did not check that __init__() was
101 returning None.
102
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000103- Patch #802188: Report characters after line continuation character
Martin v. Löwis4bf108d2005-03-03 11:45:45 +0000104 ('\') with a specific error message.
105
Martin v. Löwisff232d72005-03-03 09:24:38 +0000106- Bug #723201: Raise a TypeError for passing bad objects to 'L' format.
107
Michael W. Hudson8e1afab2005-02-17 14:55:21 +0000108- Bug #1124295: the __name__ attribute of file objects was
109 inadvertently made inaccessible in restricted mode.
110
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000111- Bug #1074011: closing sys.std{out,err} now causes a flush() and
Martin v. Löwis8e3ca8a2005-01-23 09:41:49 +0000112 an ferror() call.
113
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000114- min() and max() now support key= arguments with the same meaning as in
115 list.sort().
116
Raymond Hettingerc34f8672005-01-02 06:17:33 +0000117- The peephole optimizer now performs simple constant folding in expressions:
118 (2+3) --> (5).
119
Raymond Hettingera422c342005-01-11 03:03:27 +0000120- set and frozenset objects can now be marshalled. SF #1098985.
121
Michael W. Hudsonfaa76482005-01-31 17:09:25 +0000122- Bug #1077106: Poor argument checking could cause memory corruption
123 in calls to os.read().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000124
Jeremy Hyltonab630502005-02-04 18:44:06 +0000125- The parser did not complain about future statements in illegal
126 positions. It once again reports a syntax error if a future
127 statement occurs after anything other than a doc string.
128
Neil Schemenauercf52c072005-08-12 17:34:58 +0000129- Change the %s format specifier for str objects so that it returns a
130 unicode instance if the argument is not an instance of basestring and
131 calling __str__ on the argument returns a unicode instance.
132
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000133Extension Modules
134-----------------
135
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000136- Patch #756021: Special-case socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') for
137 platforms that don't have inet_aton().
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000138
Georg Brandld2e3ba72005-08-26 08:34:00 +0000139- Bug #1215928: Fix bz2.BZ2File.seek() for 64-bit file offsets.
140
141- Bug #1191043: Fix bz2.BZ2File.(x)readlines for files containing one
Georg Brandl02760f92005-08-25 13:10:41 +0000142 line without newlines.
143
Georg Brandl38387b82005-08-24 07:17:40 +0000144- Bug #728515: mmap.resize() now resizes the file on Unix as it did
145 on Windows.
146
Martin v. Löwisebd9d5b2005-08-09 15:00:59 +0000147- Patch #1180695: Add nanosecond stat resolution, and st_gen,
148 st_birthtime for FreeBSD.
149
Michael W. Hudson8137bea2005-07-27 20:24:40 +0000150- Patch #1231069: The fcntl.ioctl function now uses the 'I' code for
151 the request code argument, which results in more C-like behaviour
152 for large or negative values.
153
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000154- Bug #1234979: For the argument of thread.Lock.acquire, the Windows
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000155 implementation treated all integer values except 1 as false.
Georg Brandlaf410b52005-07-08 22:26:13 +0000156
Georg Brandl6b95f1d2005-06-03 19:47:00 +0000157- Bug #1194181: bz2.BZ2File didn't handle mode 'U' correctly.
158
Hye-Shik Chang5f937a72005-06-02 13:09:30 +0000159- Patch #1212117: os.stat().st_flags is now accessible as a attribute
160 if available on the platform.
161
Skip Montanaro5ff14922005-05-16 02:42:22 +0000162- Patch #1103951: Expose O_SHLOCK and O_EXLOCK in the posix module if
163 available on the platform.
164
Michael W. Hudsonb330adf2005-03-31 09:35:44 +0000165- Bug #1166660: The readline module could segfault if hook functions
166 were set in a different thread than that which called readline.
167
Raymond Hettinger4aec61e2005-03-18 21:20:23 +0000168- collections.deque objects now support a remove() method.
169
Raymond Hettinger984f9bb2005-03-09 16:38:48 +0000170- operator.itemgetter() and operator.attrgetter() now support retrieving
171 multiple fields. This provides direct support for sorting on multiple
172 keys (primary, secondary, etc).
173
Martin v. Löwisb60ae992005-03-08 09:10:29 +0000174- os.access now supports Unicode path names on non-Win32 systems.
175
Martin v. Löwisfd78a6f2005-03-04 14:37:01 +0000176- Patches #925152, #1118602: Avoid reading after the end of the buffer
177 in pyexpat.GetInputContext.
178
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000179- Patches #749830, #1144555: allow UNIX mmap size to default to current
Martin v. Löwis7fe60c02005-03-03 11:22:44 +0000180 file size.
181
Raymond Hettinger9c323f82005-02-28 19:39:44 +0000182- Added functional.partial(). See PEP309.
183
Martin v. Löwis9533e342005-02-27 20:33:25 +0000184- Patch #1093585: raise a ValueError for negative history items in readline.
185 {remove_history,replace_history}
186
Fred Drake9c131f22005-01-23 15:16:08 +0000187- The spwd module has been added, allowing access to the shadow password
188 database.
Martin v. Löwisc3001752005-01-23 09:27:24 +0000189
Martin v. Löwisfe33d0b2005-01-16 08:57:39 +0000190- stat_float_times is now True.
191
Raymond Hettingerb0900e62004-12-16 16:23:40 +0000192- array.array objects are now picklable.
193
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000194- the cPickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
195 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
196
Raymond Hettingerb2594052004-12-05 09:25:51 +0000197- itertools.islice() now accepts None for the start and step arguments.
198 This allows islice() to work more readily with slices:
199 islice(s.start, s.stop, s.step)
200
Skip Montanaro0af3ade2005-01-13 04:12:31 +0000201- datetime.datetime() now has a strptime class method which can be used to
202 create datetime object using a string and format.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000203
204Library
205-------
206
Martin v. Löwis5dbdc592005-08-27 10:07:56 +0000207- Bug #1167128: Fix size of a symlink in a tarfile to be 0.
208
Georg Brandl5a650a22005-08-26 08:51:34 +0000209- Patch #810023: Fix off-by-one bug in urllib.urlretrieve reporthook
210 functionality.
211
Martin v. Löwis8b595142005-08-25 11:03:38 +0000212- Bug #1163178: Make IDNA return an empty string when the input is empty.
213
Georg Brandl532efab2005-08-24 22:34:21 +0000214- Patch #848017: Make Cookie more RFC-compliant. Use CRLF as default output
215 separator and do not output trailing semicola.
216
Georg Brandlb9256022005-08-24 18:46:39 +0000217- Patch #1062060: urllib.urlretrieve() now raises a new exception, named
218 ContentTooShortException, when the actually downloaded size does not
219 match the Content-Length header.
220
Martin v. Löwis0a5d4a22005-08-24 14:55:22 +0000221- Bug #1121494: distutils.dir_utils.mkpath now accepts Unicode strings.
222
Martin v. Löwis56066d22005-08-24 07:38:12 +0000223- Bug #1178484: Return complete lines from codec stream readers
224 even if there is an exception in later lines, resulting in
225 correct line numbers for decoding errors in source code.
226
Georg Brandl6d2b3462005-08-24 07:36:17 +0000227- Bug #1192315: Disallow negative arguments to clear() in pdb.
228
Martin v. Löwisb813c532005-08-07 20:51:04 +0000229- Patch #827386: Support absolute source paths in msvccompiler.py.
230
Georg Brandl649f8e72005-08-03 07:30:12 +0000231- Patch #1105730: Apply the new implementation of commonprefix in posixpath
232 to ntpath, macpath, os2emxpath and riscospath.
233
Guido van Rossum755149f2005-07-27 00:00:44 +0000234- Fix a problem in Tkinter introduced by SF patch #869468: delete bogus
235 __hasattr__ and __delattr__ methods on class Tk that were breaking
236 Tkdnd.
237
Georg Brandl5dbda752005-07-17 20:27:41 +0000238- Bug #1015140: disambiguated the term "article id" in nntplib docs and
239 docstrings to either "article number" or "message id".
240
Georg Brandla4a8b822005-07-15 09:13:21 +0000241- Bug #1238170: threading.Thread.__init__ no longer has "kwargs={}" as a
242 parameter, but uses the usual "kwargs=None".
243
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000244- textwrap now processes text chunks at O(n) speed instead of O(n**2).
Raymond Hettinger8bfa8932005-07-15 06:53:35 +0000245 Patch #1209527 (Contributed by Connelly).
246
Georg Brandl5c5fe2f2005-07-14 06:40:47 +0000247- urllib2 has now an attribute 'httpresponses' mapping from HTTP status code
248 to W3C name (404 -> 'Not Found'). RFE #1216944.
249
Georg Brandl9e43acf2005-07-04 17:16:07 +0000250- Bug #1177468: Don't cache the /dev/urandom file descriptor for os.urandom,
251 as this can cause problems with apps closing all file descriptors.
252
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000253- Bug #839151: Fix an attempt to access sys.argv in the warnings module
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000254 it can be missing in embedded interpreters
Georg Brandl5284b532005-06-26 22:54:58 +0000255
Georg Brandl2f210b62005-06-26 22:09:06 +0000256- Bug #1155638: Fix a bug which affected HTTP 0.9 responses in httplib.
257
Georg Brandlfbff1bc2005-06-26 21:36:25 +0000258- Bug #1100201: Cross-site scripting was possible on BaseHTTPServer via
259 error messages.
260
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000261- Bug #1108948: Cookie.py produced invalid JavaScript code.
262
Raymond Hettingerda99d1c2005-06-21 07:43:58 +0000263- The tokenize module now detects and reports indentation errors.
264 Bug #1224621.
265
Raymond Hettinger68c04532005-06-10 11:05:19 +0000266- The tokenize module has a new untokenize() function to support a full
267 roundtrip from lexed tokens back to Python sourcecode. In addition,
268 the generate_tokens() function now accepts a callable argument that
269 terminates by raising StopIteration.
270
Georg Brandl9166e1a2005-06-04 09:20:03 +0000271- Bug #1196315: fix weakref.WeakValueDictionary constructor.
272
Georg Brandl268e61c2005-06-03 14:28:50 +0000273- Bug #1213894: os.path.realpath didn't resolve symlinks that were the first
274 component of the path.
275
Skip Montanaro174dd222005-05-14 20:54:16 +0000276- Patch #1120353: The xmlrpclib module provides better, more transparent,
277 support for datetime.{datetime,date,time} objects. With use_datetime set
278 to True, applications shouldn't have to fiddle with the DateTime wrapper
279 class at all.
280
Martin v. Löwis55f1bb82005-03-21 20:56:35 +0000281- distutils.commands.upload was added to support uploading distribution
282 files to PyPI.
283
Walter Dörwalda6e8a4a2005-03-31 13:57:38 +0000284- distutils.commands.register now encodes the data as UTF-8 before posting
285 them to PyPI.
286
Raymond Hettinger267b8682005-03-27 10:47:39 +0000287- decimal operator and comparison methods now return NotImplemented
288 instead of raising a TypeError when interacting with other types. This
289 allows other classes to implement __radd__ style methods and have them
290 work as expected.
291
Raymond Hettingerbea3f6f2005-03-15 04:59:17 +0000292- Bug #1163325: Decimal infinities failed to hash. Attempting to
293 hash a NaN raised an InvalidOperation instead of a TypeError.
294
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000295- Patch #918101: Add tarfile open mode r|* for auto-detection of the
Martin v. Löwis78be7df2005-03-05 12:47:42 +0000296 stream compression; add, for symmetry reasons, r:* as a synonym of r.
297
Martin v. Löwis00a73e72005-03-04 19:40:34 +0000298- Patch #1043890: Add extractall method to tarfile.
299
Martin v. Löwisc72dd382005-03-04 13:50:17 +0000300- Patch #1075887: Don't require MSVC in distutils if there is nothing
301 to build.
302
Martin v. Löwis637431b2005-03-03 23:12:42 +0000303- Patch #1103407: Properly deal with tarfile iterators when untarring
304 symbolic links on Windows.
305
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000306- Patch #645894: Use getrusage for computing the time consumption in
Martin v. Löwisa4dac402005-03-03 11:39:45 +0000307 profile.py if available.
308
Martin v. Löwisdf37c8c2005-03-03 11:08:03 +0000309- Patch #1046831: Use get_python_version where appropriate in sysconfig.py.
310
Martin v. Löwisc5574e82005-03-03 10:57:37 +0000311- Patch #1117454: Remove code to special-case cookies without values
312 in LWPCookieJar.
313
Martin v. Löwis4ea3ead2005-03-03 10:48:12 +0000314- Patch #1117339: Add cookielib special name tests.
315
Martin v. Löwise869eb12005-03-03 09:46:07 +0000316- Patch #1112812: Make bsddb/__init__.py more friendly for modulefinder.
317
Martin v. Löwisf2a8d632005-03-03 08:35:22 +0000318- Patch #1110248: SYNC_FLUSH the zlib buffer for GZipFile.flush.
319
Martin v. Löwisdf241532005-03-03 08:17:42 +0000320- Patch #1107973: Allow to iterate over the lines of a tarfile.ExFileObject.
321
Martin v. Löwis8ed338a2005-03-03 08:12:27 +0000322- Patch #1104111: Alter setup.py --help and --help-commands.
323
Martin v. Löwis4afe1542005-03-01 08:09:28 +0000324- Patch #1121234: Properly cleanup _exit and tkerror commands.
325
Martin v. Löwisc2a0ac22005-02-24 20:22:10 +0000326- Patch #1049151: xdrlib now unpacks booleans as True or False.
327
Raymond Hettingerbab41432005-02-05 01:31:19 +0000328- Fixed bug in a NameError bug in cookielib. Patch #1116583.
329
Guido van Rossumd0641422005-02-03 15:01:24 +0000330- Applied a security fix to SimpleXMLRPCserver (PSF-2005-001). This
331 disables recursive traversal through instance attributes, which can
332 be exploited in various ways.
333
Martin v. Löwis1d11de62005-01-29 13:29:23 +0000334- Bug #1110478: Revert os.environ.update to do putenv again.
335
Thomas Hellerd6c6e222005-01-20 19:20:16 +0000336- Bug #1103844: fix distutils.install.dump_dirs() with negated options.
337
Martin v. Löwis22b457e2005-01-16 08:40:58 +0000338- os.{SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END} have been added for convenience.
339
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000340- Enhancements to the csv module:
341
342 + Dialects are now validated by the underlying C code, better
Georg Brandl7eb4b7d2005-07-22 21:49:32 +0000343 reflecting its capabilities, and improving its compliance with
Tim Petersecc6e6a2005-07-10 22:30:55 +0000344 PEP 305.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000345 + Dialect parameter parsing has been re-implemented to improve error
346 reporting.
347 + quotechar=None and quoting=QUOTE_NONE now work the way PEP 305
348 dictates.
349 + the parser now removes the escapechar prefix from escaped characters.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000350 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the writer now tests for numeric
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000351 types, rather than any object than can be represented as a numeric.
Andrew McNamara0f0599d2005-01-12 09:45:18 +0000352 + when quoting=QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, the reader now casts unquoted fields
353 to floats.
Andrew McNamaraf69d94f2005-01-13 11:30:54 +0000354 + reader now allows \r characters to be quoted (previously it only allowed
355 \n to be quoted).
Andrew McNamarac89f2842005-01-12 07:44:42 +0000356 + writer doublequote handling improved.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000357 + Dialect classes passed to the module are no longer instantiated by
358 the module before being parsed (the former validation scheme required
359 this, but the mechanism was unreliable).
360 + The dialect registry now contains instances of the internal
361 C-coded dialect type, rather than references to python objects.
362 + the internal c-coded dialect type is now immutable.
363 + register_dialect now accepts the same keyword dialect specifications
364 as the reader and writer, allowing the user to register dialects
365 without first creating a dialect class.
366 + a configurable limit to the size of parsed fields has been added -
367 previously, an unmatched quote character could result in the entire
368 file being read into the field buffer before an error was reported.
Andrew McNamara31d88962005-01-12 03:45:10 +0000369 + A new module method csv.field_size_limit() has been added that sets
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000370 the parser field size limit (returning the former limit). The initial
371 limit is 128kB.
Andrew McNamara7f2053e2005-01-12 11:17:16 +0000372 + A line_num attribute has been added to the reader object, which tracks
373 the number of lines read from the source iterator. This is not
374 the same as the number of records returned, as records can span
375 multiple lines.
Andrew McNamaraa08eecb2005-01-12 03:25:27 +0000376 + reader and writer objects were not being registered with the cyclic-GC.
377 This has been fixed.
378
Brett Cannone6539c42005-01-08 02:43:53 +0000379- _DummyThread objects in the threading module now delete self.__block that is
380 inherited from _Thread since it uses up a lock allocated by 'thread'. The
381 lock primitives tend to be limited in number and thus should not be wasted on
382 a _DummyThread object. Fixes bug #1089632.
383
Raymond Hettinger97db05d2005-01-07 08:15:41 +0000384- The imghdr module now detects Exif files.
385
Raymond Hettinger6065d322004-12-20 23:51:53 +0000386- StringIO.truncate() now correctly adjusts the size attribute.
387 (Bug #951915).
388
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000389- locale.py now uses an updated locale alias table (built using
390 Tools/i18n/makelocalealias.py, a tool to parse the X11 locale
391 alias file); the encoding lookup was enhanced to use Python's
Andrew M. Kuchling88b85822005-08-23 00:57:07 +0000392 encoding alias table.
Marc-André Lemburgbb4f1bd2004-12-10 21:58:14 +0000393
Raymond Hettinger3557f422004-12-07 12:02:02 +0000394- moved deprecated modules to Lib/lib-old: whrandom, tzparse, statcache.
395
Raymond Hettingera6b45cc2004-12-07 07:05:57 +0000396- the pickle module no longer accepts the deprecated None option in the
397 args tuple returned by __reduce__().
398
Brett Cannon84667c02004-12-07 03:25:18 +0000399- optparse now optionally imports gettext. This allows its use in setup.py.
400
Raymond Hettinger3489cad2004-12-05 05:20:42 +0000401- the pickle module no longer uses the deprecated bin parameter.
402
Raymond Hettinger1bc82f82004-12-05 03:58:17 +0000403- the shelve module no longer uses the deprecated binary parameter.
404
Raymond Hettinger6c92d762004-12-05 03:28:00 +0000405- the pstats module no longer uses the deprecated ignore() method.
406
Raymond Hettingerf3fa9462004-12-05 01:58:09 +0000407- the filecmp module no longer uses the deprecated use_statcache argument.
408
Raymond Hettinger664347b2004-12-04 21:21:53 +0000409- unittest.TestCase.run() and unittest.TestSuite.run() can now be successfully
410 extended or overridden by subclasses. Formerly, the subclassed method would
411 be ignored by the rest of the module. (Bug #1078905).
412
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000413- heapq.nsmallest() and heapq.nlargest() now support key= arguments with
Raymond Hettinger3b0c7c22004-12-03 08:30:39 +0000414 the same meaning as in list.sort().
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000415
Walter Dörwald36733692004-12-22 12:50:50 +0000416- Bug #1076985: ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` now calls ``read()`` only
417 once when a size argument is given. This prevents a buffer overflow in the
418 tokenizer with very long source lines.
419
Andrew M. Kuchling3b585b32004-12-28 20:10:48 +0000420- Bug #1083110: ``zlib.decompress.flush()`` would segfault if called immediately
421 after creating the object, without any intervening ``.decompress()`` calls.
422
Skip Montanaro05885812005-01-16 20:48:27 +0000423- The reconvert.quote function can now emit triple-quoted strings. The
424 reconvert module now has some simple documentation.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000425
Walter Dörwaldaf3b39a2005-02-18 13:22:43 +0000426- ``UserString.MutableString`` now supports negative indices in
427 ``__setitem__`` and ``__delitem__``
428
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000429- Bug #1149508: ``textwrap`` now handles hyphenated numbers (eg. "2004-03-05")
430 correctly.
431
Walter Dörwaldbc8e6422005-04-21 21:32:03 +0000432- Partial fixes for SF bugs #1163244 and #1175396: If a chunk read by
433 ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` has a trailing "\r", read one more
434 character even if the user has passed a size parameter to get a proper
435 line ending. Remove the special handling of a "\r\n" that has been split
436 between two lines.
437
Walter Dörwalda47d1c02005-08-30 10:23:14 +0000438- Bug #1251300: On UCS-4 builds the "unicode-internal" codec will now complain
439 about illegal code points. The codec now supports PEP 293 style error
440 handlers.
441
Greg Ward40407942005-03-05 02:53:17 +0000442
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000443Build
444-----
445
Martin v. Löwis147fbe52005-08-07 21:09:30 +0000446- Bug #1189330: configure did not correctly determine the necessary
447 value of LINKCC if python was built with GCC 4.0.
448
Trent Mick8321b422005-07-26 02:29:21 +0000449- Upgrade Windows build to zlib 1.2.3 which eliminates a potential security
450 vulnerability in zlib 1.2.1 and 1.2.2.
451
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000452- EXTRA_CFLAGS has been introduced as an environment variable to hold compiler
453 flags that change binary compatibility. Changes were also made to
454 distutils.sysconfig to also use the environment variable when used during
Martin v. Löwisd7c795e2005-04-25 07:14:03 +0000455 compilation of the interpreter and of C extensions through distutils.
Brett Cannon08cd5982005-04-24 22:26:38 +0000456
Bob Ippolitoed233462005-03-29 13:47:59 +0000457- SF patch 1171735: Darwin 8's headers are anal about POSIX compliance,
458 and linking has changed (prebinding is now deprecated, and libcc_dynamic
459 no longer exists). This configure patch makes things right.
460
Martin v. Löwise2713be2005-03-08 15:03:08 +0000461- Bug #1158607: Build with --disable-unicode again.
462
Brett Cannon46d96232005-02-16 00:07:19 +0000463- spwdmodule.c is built only if either HAVE_GETSPNAM or HAVE_HAVE_GETSPENT is
464 defined. Discovered as a result of not being able to build on OS X.
465
Brett Cannon516592f2004-12-07 00:42:59 +0000466- setup.py now uses the directories specified in LDFLAGS using the -L option
467 and in CPPFLAGS using the -I option for adding library and include
468 directories, respectively, for compiling extension modules against. This has
469 led to the core being compiled using the values in CPPFLAGS. It also removes
470 the need for the special-casing of both DarwinPorts and Fink for darwin since
471 the proper directories can be specified in LDFLAGS (``-L/sw/lib`` for Fink,
472 ``-L/opt/local/lib`` for DarwinPorts) and CPPFLAGS (``-I/sw/include`` for
473 Fink, ``-I/opt/local/include`` for DarwinPorts).
474
Brett Cannon43802422005-02-10 20:48:03 +0000475- Test in configure.in that checks for tzset no longer dependent on tm->tm_zone
476 to exist in the struct (not required by either ISO C nor the UNIX 2 spec).
477 Tests for sanity in tzname when HAVE_TZNAME defined were also defined.
478 Closes bug #1096244. Thanks Gregory Bond.
479
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000480
481C API
482-----
483
Raymond Hettingerbeb31012005-08-16 03:47:52 +0000484- Added a C API for set and frozenset objects.
485
Raymond Hettinger66517482004-12-03 11:45:13 +0000486- Removed PyRange_New().
487
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000488
489Tests
490-----
491
Martin v. Löwis4d394df2005-01-23 09:19:22 +0000492- In test_os, st_?time is now truncated before comparing it with ST_?TIME.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000493
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000494
495Documentation
496-------------
497
Georg Brandl79c122f2005-08-24 07:31:33 +0000498- Bug #1190204: Clarify which directories are searched by site.py.
499
Georg Brandl6f2bbd32005-08-24 07:26:55 +0000500- Bug #1193849: Clarify os.path.expanduser() documentation.
501
Georg Brandlf13c4ba2005-08-02 10:28:08 +0000502- Bug #1243192: re.UNICODE and re.LOCALE affect \d, \D, \s and \S.
503
Georg Brandl150db732005-07-18 08:53:17 +0000504- Bug #755617: Document the effects of os.chown() on Windows.
505
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000506- Patch #1180012: The documentation for modulefinder is now in the library reference.
507
508- Patch #1213031: Document that os.chown() accepts argument values of -1.
509
510- Bug #1190563: Document os.waitpid() return value with WNOHANG flag.
511
512- Bug #1175022: Correct the example code for property().
513
Georg Brandl40c71652005-06-25 21:08:46 +0000514- Document the IterableUserDict class in the UserDict module.
515 Closes bug #1166582.
516
Brett Cannonced04e02005-02-13 22:53:22 +0000517- Remove all latent references for "Macintosh" that referred to semantics for
518 Mac OS 9 and change to reflect the state for OS X.
519 Closes patch #1095802. Thanks Jack Jansen.
520
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000521Mac
522---
523
524
Hye-Shik Chang4e422812005-07-17 02:36:59 +0000525New platforms
526-------------
527
528- FreeBSD 7 support is added.
529
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000530
531Tools/Demos
532-----------
533
Georg Brandl56897312005-08-24 18:32:30 +0000534- Added two new files to Tools/scripts: pysource.py, which recursively
535 finds Python source files, and findnocoding.py, which finds Python
536 source files that need an encoding declaration.
537 Patch #784089, credits to Oleg Broytmann.
538
Georg Brandl379f99d2005-06-26 21:09:38 +0000539- Bug #1072853: pindent.py used an uninitialized variable.
540
Martin v. Löwisab9ec162005-04-09 10:53:34 +0000541- Patch #1177597: Correct Complex.__init__.
Raymond Hettinger4901a1f2004-12-02 08:59:14 +0000542
543
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000544What's New in Python 2.4 final?
545===============================
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000546
Anthony Baxtere2648ee2004-11-30 01:28:55 +0000547*Release date: 30-NOV-2004*
Kurt B. Kaiser4c79a832004-11-23 18:06:08 +0000548
549Core and builtins
550-----------------
551
552- Bug 875692: Improve signal handling, especially when using threads, by
553 forcing an early re-execution of PyEval_EvalFrame() "periodic" code when
554 things_to_do is not cleared by Py_MakePendingCalls().
555
556
Anthony Baxter4277ed82004-11-30 11:53:10 +0000557What's New in Python 2.4 (release candidate 1)
558==============================================
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000559
Anthony Baxter5cc727a2004-11-18 12:32:27 +0000560*Release date: 18-NOV-2004*
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000561
562Core and builtins
563-----------------
564
Tim Petersfb1ffb02004-11-08 04:30:21 +0000565- Bug 1061968: Fixes in 2.4a3 to address thread bug 1010677 reintroduced
566 the years-old thread shutdown race bug 225673. Numeric history lesson
567 aside, all bugs in all three reports are fixed now.
568
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000569
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000570Library
571-------
572
573- Bug 1052242: If exceptions are raised by an atexit handler function an
574 attempt is made to execute the remaining handlers. The last exception
575 raised is re-raised.
576
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000577- ``doctest``'s new support for adding ``pdb.set_trace()`` calls to
578 doctests was broken in a dramatic but shallow way. Fixed.
579
Tim Petersbbc0d442004-11-13 16:18:32 +0000580- Bug 1065388: ``calendar``'s ``day_name``, ``day_abbr``, ``month_name``,
581 and ``month_abbr`` attributes emulate sequences of locale-correct
582 spellings of month and day names. Because the locale can change at
583 any time, the correct spelling is recomputed whenever one of these is
584 indexed. In the worst case, the index may be a slice object, so these
585 recomputed every day or month name each time they were indexed. This is
586 much slower than necessary in the usual case, when the index is just an
587 integer. In that case, only the single spelling needed is recomputed
588 now; and, when the index is a slice object, only the spellings needed
589 by the slice are recomputed now.
590
Tim Peters50c6bdb2004-11-08 22:07:37 +0000591- Patch 1061679: Added ``__all__`` to pickletools.py.
Tim Peters90cf2122004-11-06 23:45:48 +0000592
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000593Build
594-----
Skip Montanaro599bd5e2004-11-04 04:31:30 +0000595
Brett Cannon7d28e962004-11-07 01:19:00 +0000596- Bug 1034277 / Patch 1035255: Remove compilation of core against CoreServices
597 and CoreFoundation on OS X. Involved removing PyMac_GetAppletScriptFile()
598 which has no known users. Thanks Bob Ippolito.
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000599
600C API
601-----
602
Raymond Hettinger39e92ea2004-11-18 09:41:45 +0000603- The PyRange_New() function is deprecated.
604
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +0000605
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000606What's New in Python 2.4 beta 2?
607================================
608
Anthony Baxter9f41f3a2004-11-03 06:21:37 +0000609*Release date: 03-NOV-2004*
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000610
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000611License
612-------
613
614The Python Software Foundation changed the license under which Python
615is released, to remove Python version numbers. There were no other
616changes to the license. So, for example, wherever the license for
617Python 2.3 said "Python 2.3", the new license says "Python". The
618intent is to make it possible to refer to the PSF license in a more
619durable way. For example, some people say they're confused by that
620the Open Source Initiative's entry for the Python Software Foundation
621License::
622
623 http://www.opensource.org/licenses/PythonSoftFoundation.php
624
625says "Python 2.1.1" all over it, wondering whether it applies only
626to Python 2.1.1.
627
628The official name of the new license is the Python Software Foundation
629License Version 2.
630
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000631Core and builtins
632-----------------
633
Tim Petersead8b7a2004-10-30 23:09:22 +0000634- Bug #1055820 Cyclic garbage collection was not protecting against that
635 calling a live weakref to a piece of cyclic trash could resurrect an
636 insane mutation of the trash if any Python code ran during gc (via
637 running a dead object's __del__ method, running another callback on a
638 weakref to a dead object, or via any Python code run in any other thread
639 that managed to obtain the GIL while a __del__ or callback was running
640 in the thread doing gc). The most likely symptom was "impossible"
641 ``AttributeEror`` exceptions, appearing seemingly at random, on weakly
642 referenced objects. The cure was to clear all weakrefs to unreachable
643 objects before allowing any callbacks to run.
644
Raymond Hettinger561fbf12004-10-26 01:52:37 +0000645- Bug #1054139 _PyString_Resize() now invalidates its cached hash value.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000646
647Extension Modules
648-----------------
649
Raymond Hettinger9047c8f2004-10-24 00:10:06 +0000650- Bug #1048870: the compiler now generates distinct code objects for
651 functions with identical bodies. This was producing confusing
652 traceback messages which pointed to the function where the code
653 object was first defined rather than the function being executed.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000654
655Library
656-------
657
Barry Warsaw8c72eae2004-11-01 03:52:43 +0000658- Patch #1056967 changes the semantics of Template.safe_substitute() so that
659 no ValueError is raised on an 'invalid' match group. Now the delimiter is
660 returned.
661
Raymond Hettinger2ef7e6c2004-10-24 00:32:24 +0000662- Bug #1052503 pdb.runcall() was not passing along keyword arguments.
663
Raymond Hettingerc64aab82004-10-20 08:21:57 +0000664- Bug #902037: XML.sax.saxutils.prepare_input_source() now combines relative
665 paths with a base path before checking os.path.isfile().
666
Raymond Hettingere54e7262004-10-20 07:17:16 +0000667- The whichdb module can now be run from the command line.
668
Brett Cannon8abcc5d2004-10-18 01:37:57 +0000669- Bug #1045381: time.strptime() can now infer the date using %U or %W (week of
670 the year) when the day of the week and year are also specified.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000671
Andrew M. Kuchling0d19bae2004-10-19 19:54:41 +0000672- Bug #1048816: fix bug in Ctrl-K at start of line in curses.textpad.Textbox
673
Andrew M. Kuchling66e80ba2004-10-20 11:56:15 +0000674- Bug #1017553: fix bug in tarfile.filemode()
675
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000676- Patch #737473: fix bug that old source code is shown in tracebacks even if
Hye-Shik Chang182ac852004-10-26 09:16:42 +0000677 the source code is updated and reloaded.
678
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000679Build
680-----
681
Hye-Shik Chang33761492004-10-26 09:53:46 +0000682- Patch #1044395: --enable-shared is allowed in FreeBSD also.
Brett Cannonbe8370d2004-10-18 01:32:09 +0000683
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000684What's New in Python 2.4 beta 1?
685================================
686
Anthony Baxter6a587c12004-10-15 08:07:21 +0000687*Release date: 15-OCT-2004*
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000688
689Core and builtins
690-----------------
691
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000692- Patch #975056: Restartable signals were not correctly disabled on
Anthony Baxtere4f8a482004-10-13 14:55:56 +0000693 BSD systems. Consistently use PyOS_setsig() instead of signal().
694
Tim Peters263091e2004-10-10 01:58:44 +0000695- The internal portable implementation of thread-local storage (TLS), used
696 by the ``PyGILState_Ensure()``/``PyGILState_Release()`` API, was not
697 thread-correct. This could lead to a variety of problems, up to and
698 including segfaults. See bug 1041645 for an example.
699
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000700- Added a command line option, -m module, which searches sys.path for the
701 module and then runs it. (Contributed by Nick Coghlan.)
702
Raymond Hettinger2c31a052004-09-22 18:44:21 +0000703- The bytecode optimizer now folds tuples of constants into a single
704 constant.
705
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000706- SF bug #513866: Float/long comparison anomaly. Prior to 2.4b1, when
707 an integer was compared to a float, the integer was coerced to a float.
708 That could yield spurious overflow errors (if the integer was very
709 large), and to anomalies such as
710 ``long(1e200)+1 == 1e200 == long(1e200)-1``. Coercion to float is no
711 longer performed, and cases like ``long(1e200)-1 < 1e200``,
712 ``long(1e200)+1 > 1e200`` and ``(1 << 20000) > 1e200`` are computed
713 correctly now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000714
715Extension modules
716-----------------
717
Tim Peterscf8997f2004-10-01 02:13:16 +0000718- ``collections.deque`` objects didn't play quite right with garbage
719 collection, which could lead to a segfault in a release build, or
Raymond Hettingerdb29e0f2004-10-07 06:46:25 +0000720 an assert failure in a debug build. Also, added overflow checks,
721 better detection of mutation during iteration, and shielded deque
722 comparisons from unusual subclass overrides of the __iter__() method.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000723
724Library
725-------
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000726
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000727- Patch 1046644: distutils build_ext grew two new options - --swig for
Tim Petersacaffe62004-10-23 03:43:54 +0000728 specifying the swig executable to use, and --swig-opts to specify
Anthony Baxtera0240342004-10-14 10:02:08 +0000729 options to pass to swig. --swig-opts="-c++" is the new way to spell
730 --swig-cpp.
731
Anthony Baxter22dcf662004-10-13 15:54:17 +0000732- Patch 983206: distutils now obeys environment variable LDSHARED, if
733 it is set.
734
Andrew M. Kuchling518d3932004-10-12 15:32:10 +0000735- Added Peter Astrand's subprocess.py module. See PEP 324 for details.
Fredrik Lundh5b3687d2004-10-12 15:26:28 +0000736
Brett Cannon4f35c712004-10-06 02:11:37 +0000737- time.strptime() now properly escapes timezones and all other locale-specific
738 strings for regex-specific symbols. Was breaking under Japanese Windows when
739 the timezone was specified as "Tokyo (standard time)".
740 Closes bug #1039270.
741
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000742- Updates for the email package:
Brett Cannon06a30b02004-10-22 06:22:54 +0000743
Barry Warsaw418de1f2004-10-11 14:32:47 +0000744 + email.Utils.formatdate() grew a 'usegmt' argument for HTTP support.
Barry Warsawbb113862004-10-03 03:16:19 +0000745 + All deprecated APIs that in email 2.x issued warnings have been removed:
746 _encoder argument to the MIMEText constructor, Message.add_payload(),
747 Utils.dump_address_pair(), Utils.decode(), Utils.encode()
748 + New deprecations: Generator.__call__(), Message.get_type(),
749 Message.get_main_type(), Message.get_subtype(), the 'strict' argument to
750 the Parser constructor. These will be removed in email 3.1.
751 + Support for Python earlier than 2.3 has been removed (see PEP 291).
752 + All defect classes have been renamed to end in 'Defect'.
753 + Some FeedParser fixes; also a MultipartInvariantViolationDefect will be
754 added to messages that claim to be multipart but really aren't.
755 + Updates to documentation.
756
Raymond Hettinger596ba4d2004-09-24 03:41:05 +0000757- re's findall() and finditer() functions now take an optional flags argument
758 just like the compile(), search(), and match() functions. Also, documented
759 the previously existing start and stop parameters for the findall() and
760 finditer() methods of regular expression objects.
761
Raymond Hettinger0318a932004-09-22 18:03:47 +0000762- rfc822 Messages now support iterating over the headers.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000763
Martin v. Löwisf3c56112004-09-18 09:08:52 +0000764- The (undocumented) tarfile.Tarfile.membernames has been removed;
765 applications should use the getmember function.
766
Martin v. Löwis39a31782004-09-18 09:03:49 +0000767- httplib now offers symbolic constants for the HTTP status codes.
768
Tim Peters528ca532004-09-16 01:30:50 +0000769- SF bug #1028306: Trying to compare a ``datetime.date`` to a
770 ``datetime.datetime`` mistakenly compared only the year, month and day.
771 Now it acts like a mixed-type comparison: ``False`` for ``==``,
772 ``True`` for ``!=``, and raises ``TypeError`` for other comparison
773 operators. Because datetime is a subclass of date, comparing only the
774 base class (date) members can still be done, if that's desired, by
775 forcing using of the approprate date method; e.g.,
776 ``a_date.__eq__(a_datetime)`` is true if and only if the year, month
777 and day members of ``a_date`` and ``a_datetime`` are equal.
778
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000779- bdist_rpm now supports command line options --force-arch,
780 {pre,post}-install, {pre,post}-uninstall, and
Martin v. Löwis23c48a12004-09-10 06:32:54 +0000781 {prep,build,install,clean,verify}-script.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000782
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000783- SF patch #998993: The UTF-8 and the UTF-16 stateful decoders now support
784 decoding incomplete input (when the input stream is temporarily exhausted).
785 ``codecs.StreamReader`` now implements buffering, which enables proper
786 readline support for the UTF-16 decoders. ``codecs.StreamReader.read()``
787 has a new argument ``chars`` which specifies the number of characters to
788 return. ``codecs.StreamReader.readline()`` and
789 ``codecs.StreamReader.readlines()`` have a new argument ``keepends``.
790 Trailing "\n"s will be stripped from the lines if ``keepends`` is false.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000791
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000792- The documentation for doctest is greatly expanded, and now covers all
793 the new public features (of which there are many).
794
Walter Dörwald5011d0c2004-09-13 08:53:15 +0000795- ``doctest.master`` was put back in, and ``doctest.testmod()`` once again
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000796 updates it. This isn't good, because every ``testmod()`` call
797 contributes to bloating the "hidden" state of ``doctest.master``, but
798 some old code apparently relies on it. For now, all we can do is
799 encourage people to stitch doctests together via doctest's unittest
Tim Petersa80a2c82004-09-26 05:13:18 +0000800 integration features instead.
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000801
Skip Montanaro82d0eec2004-09-14 17:58:31 +0000802- httplib now handles ipv6 address/port pairs.
803
David Goodger68a1abd2004-10-03 15:40:25 +0000804- SF bug #1017864: ConfigParser now correctly handles default keys,
805 processing them with ``ConfigParser.optionxform`` when supplied,
806 consistent with the handling of config file entries and runtime-set
807 options.
808
David Goodger1cbf2062004-10-03 15:55:09 +0000809- SF bug #997050: Document, test, & check for non-string values in
810 ConfigParser. Moved the new string-only restriction added in
811 rev. 1.65 to the SafeConfigParser class, leaving existing
812 ConfigParser & RawConfigParser behavior alone, and documented the
813 conditions under which non-string values work.
814
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000815Build
816-----
817
Brett Cannonbfef8692004-09-28 04:08:11 +0000818- Building on darwin now includes /opt/local/include and /opt/local/lib for
819 building extension modules. This is so as to include software installed as
820 a DarwinPorts port <http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/>
821
Tim Peters862f0592004-09-23 19:11:32 +0000822- pyport.h now defines a Py_IS_NAN macro. It works as-is when the
823 platform C computes true for ``x != x`` if and only if X is a NaN.
824 Other platforms can override the default definition with a platform-
825 specific spelling in that platform's pyconfig.h. You can also override
826 pyport.h's default Py_IS_INFINITY definition now.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000827
828C API
829-----
830
Tim Peters7f468f22004-10-11 02:40:51 +0000831- SF patch 1044089: New function ``PyEval_ThreadsInitialized()`` returns
832 non-zero if PyEval_InitThreads() has been called.
833
834- The undocumented and unused extern int ``_PyThread_Started`` was removed.
835
Tim Peters84705582004-10-10 02:47:33 +0000836- The C API calls ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
837 are two of the very few advertised as being safe to call without holding
838 the GIL. However, this wasn't true in a debug build, as bug 1041645
839 demonstrated. In a debug build, Python redirects the ``PyMem`` family
840 of calls to Python's small-object allocator, to get the benefit of
841 its extra debugging capabilities. But Python's small-object allocator
842 isn't threadsafe, relying on the GIL to avoid the expense of doing its
843 own locking. ``PyInterpreterState_New()`` and ``PyThreadState_New()``
844 call the platform ``malloc()`` directly now, regardless of build type.
845
Tim Peters307fa782004-09-23 08:06:40 +0000846- PyLong_AsUnsignedLong[Mask] now support int objects as well.
847
Walter Dörwald69652032004-09-07 20:24:22 +0000848- SF patch #998993: ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF8Stateful`` and
849 ``PyUnicode_DecodeUTF16Stateful`` have been added, which implement stateful
850 decoding.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000851
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000852Tests
853-----
854
855- test__locale ported to unittest
856
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000857Mac
858---
859
Just van Rossumdd3c8372004-10-03 16:27:09 +0000860- ``plistlib`` now supports non-dict root objects. There is also a new
861 interface for reading and writing plist files: ``readPlist(pathOrFile)``
862 and ``writePlist(rootObject, pathOrFile)``
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000863
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000864Tools/Demos
865-----------
866
Tim Peters130e37f2004-10-03 19:03:19 +0000867- The text file comparison scripts ``ndiff.py`` and ``diff.py`` now
868 read the input files in universal-newline mode. This spares them
869 from consuming a great deal of time to deduce the useless result that,
870 e.g., a file with Windows line ends and a file with Linux line ends
871 have no lines in common.
Brett Cannon2ad68e62004-09-06 23:30:27 +0000872
873
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000874What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 3?
875=================================
876
Anthony Baxtere13943a2004-09-02 16:37:15 +0000877*Release date: 02-SEP-2004*
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000878
879Core and builtins
880-----------------
881
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000882- SF patch #1007189: ``from ... import ...`` statements now allow the name
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +0000883 list to be surrounded by parentheses.
884
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000885- Some speedups for long arithmetic, thanks to Trevor Perrin. Gradeschool
886 multiplication was sped a little by optimizing the C code. Gradeschool
887 squaring was sped by about a factor of 2, by exploiting that about half
888 the digit products are duplicates in a square. Because exponentiation
889 uses squaring often, this also speeds long power. For example, the time
890 to compute 17**1000000 dropped from about 14 seconds to 9 on my box due
891 to this much. The cutoff for Karatsuba multiplication was raised,
892 since gradeschool multiplication got quicker, and the cutoff was
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +0000893 aggressively small regardless. The exponentiation algorithm was switched
894 from right-to-left to left-to-right, which is more efficient for small
895 bases. In addition, if the exponent is large, the algorithm now does
896 5 bits (instead of 1 bit) at a time. That cut the time to compute
897 17**1000000 on my box in half again, down to about 4.5 seconds.
Tim Peters0973b992004-08-29 22:16:50 +0000898
Tim Petersc8854432004-08-25 02:14:08 +0000899- OverflowWarning is no longer generated. PEP 237 scheduled this to
900 occur in Python 2.3, but since OverflowWarning was disabled by default,
901 nobody realized it was still being generated. On the chance that user
902 code is still using them, the Python builtin OverflowWarning, and
903 corresponding C API PyExc_OverflowWarning, will exist until Python 2.5.
904
Martin v. Löwis336e85f2004-08-19 11:31:58 +0000905- Py_InitializeEx has been added.
906
Brett Cannonadd33602004-08-15 07:21:25 +0000907- Fix the order of application of decorators. The proper order is bottom-up;
908 the first decorator listed is the last one called.
909
Neal Norwitzf0769532004-08-13 03:18:29 +0000910- SF patch #1005778. Fix a seg fault if the list size changed while
911 calling list.index(). This could happen if a rich comparison function
912 modified the list.
913
Michael W. Hudson5e897952004-08-12 18:12:44 +0000914- The ``func_name`` (a.k.a. ``__name__``) attribute of user-defined
915 functions is now writable.
916
Michael W. Hudson5523c252004-08-12 18:09:00 +0000917- code_new (a.k.a new.code()) now checks its arguments sufficiently
918 carefully that passing them on to PyCode_New() won't trigger calls
919 to Py_FatalError() or PyErr_BadInternalCall(). It is still the case
920 that the returned code object might be entirely insane.
921
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +0000922- Subclasses of string can no longer be interned. The semantics of
923 interning were not clear here -- a subclass could be mutable, for
924 example -- and had bugs. Explicitly interning a subclass of string
925 via intern() will raise a TypeError. Internal operations that attempt
926 to intern a string subclass will have no effect.
Jeremy Hylton4c989dd2004-08-07 19:20:05 +0000927
Tim Peters83b57352004-08-08 07:24:22 +0000928- Bug 1003935: xrange() could report bogus OverflowErrors. Documented
929 what xrange() intends, and repaired tests accordingly.
930
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000931Extension modules
932-----------------
933
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000934- difflib now supports HTML side-by-side diff.
935
Martin v. Löwisdc3883f2004-08-29 15:46:35 +0000936- os.urandom has been added for systems that support sources of random
937 data.
938
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000939- Patch 1012740: truncate() on a writeable cStringIO now resets the
940 position to the end of the stream. This is consistent with the original
941 StringIO module and avoids inadvertently resurrecting data that was
942 supposed to have been truncated away.
943
Dave Cole331708b2004-08-09 04:51:41 +0000944- Added socket.socketpair().
945
Dave Cole3203efb2004-08-26 00:37:31 +0000946- Added CurrentByteIndex, CurrentColumnNumber, CurrentLineNumber
947 members to xml.parsers.expat.XMLParser object.
948
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000949- The mpz, rotor, and xreadlines modules, all deprecated in earlier
Andrew M. Kuchling00873432004-08-31 13:50:43 +0000950 versions of Python, have now been removed.
951
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +0000952Library
953-------
954
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000955- Patch #934356: if a module defines __all__, believe that rather than using
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +0000956 heuristics for filtering out imported names.
Johannes Gijsbers4c11f602004-08-30 14:13:04 +0000957
Johannes Gijsbersae882f72004-08-30 10:19:56 +0000958- Patch #941486: added os.path.lexists(), which returns True for broken
959 symlinks, unlike os.path.exists().
960
Raymond Hettinger356a4592004-08-30 06:14:31 +0000961- the random module now uses os.urandom() for seeding if it is available.
962 Added a new generator based on os.urandom().
963
Martin v. Löwise064b412004-08-29 16:34:40 +0000964- difflib and diff.py can now generate HTML.
965
Martin v. Löwiscae9e672004-08-25 13:04:53 +0000966- bdist_rpm now includes version and release in the BuildRoot, and
967 replaces - by ``_`` in version and release.
Martin v. Löwiscf525242004-08-25 13:00:34 +0000968
Martin v. Löwis9f5c0c42004-08-25 11:37:43 +0000969- distutils build/build_scripts now has an -e option to specify the
970 path to the Python interpreter for installed scripts.
971
Barry Warsaw8bee7612004-08-25 02:22:30 +0000972- PEP 292 classes Template and SafeTemplate are added to the string module.
973
Martin v. Löwis75b9da42004-08-18 13:57:44 +0000974- tarfile now generates GNU tar files by default.
975
Martin v. Löwisdeacce22004-08-18 12:46:26 +0000976- HTTPResponse has now a getheaders method.
977
Johannes Gijsbersc473c992004-08-18 12:40:31 +0000978- Patch #1006219: let inspect.getsource handle '@' decorators. Thanks Simon
979 Percivall.
980
Martin v. Löwis318a12e2004-08-18 12:27:40 +0000981- logging.handlers.SMTPHandler.date_time has been removed;
982 the class now uses email.Utils.formatdate to generate the time stamp.
983
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000984- A new function tkFont.nametofont was added to return an existing
985 font. The Font class constructor now has an additional exists argument
986 which, if True, requests to return/configure an existing font, rather
Tim Peters037b3ee2004-08-21 06:55:43 +0000987 than creating a new one.
Martin v. Löwisfe84d172004-08-18 11:06:45 +0000988
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000989- Updated the decimal package's min() and max() methods to match the
990 latest revision of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification.
991 Quiet NaNs are ignored and equal values are sorted based on sign
992 and exponent.
993
994- The decimal package's Context.copy() method now returns deep copies.
995
996- Deprecated sys.exitfunc in favor of the atexit module. The sys.exitfunc
Georg Brandl08c02db2005-07-22 18:39:19 +0000997 attribute will be kept around for backwards compatibility and atexit
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +0000998 will just become the one preferred way to do it.
999
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001000- patch #675551: Add get_history_item and replace_history_item functions
1001 to the readline module.
1002
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001003- bug #989672: pdb.doc and the help messages for the help_d and help_u methods
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001004 of the pdb.Pdb class gives have been corrected. d(own) goes to a newer
1005 frame, u(p) to an older frame, not the other way around.
Johannes Gijsbers34c41202004-08-14 15:19:28 +00001006
Johannes Gijsbers4ec40642004-08-14 15:01:53 +00001007- bug #990669: os.path.realpath() will resolve symlinks before normalizing the
1008 path, as normalizing the path may alter the meaning of the path if it
1009 contains symlinks.
1010
Johannes Gijsbers9d134b72004-08-14 14:03:03 +00001011- bug #851123: shutil.copyfile will raise an exception when trying to copy a
1012 file onto a link to itself. Thanks Gregory Ball.
1013
Brett Cannonb3de2e12004-08-13 18:46:24 +00001014- bug #570300: Fix inspect to resolve file locations using os.path.realpath()
1015 so as to properly list all functions in a module when the module itself is
1016 reached through a symlink. Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1017
Tim Peters3ddd60a2004-08-08 02:43:33 +00001018- doctest refactoring continued. See the docs for details. As part of
1019 this effort, some old and little- (never?) used features are now
1020 deprecated: the Tester class, the module is_private() function, and the
1021 isprivate argument to testmod(). The Tester class supplied a feeble
1022 "by hand" way to combine multiple doctests, if you knew exactly what
1023 you were doing. The newer doctest features for unittest integration
1024 already did a better job of that, are stronger now than ever, and the
1025 new DocTestRunner class is a saner foundation if you want to do it by
1026 hand. The "private name" filtering gimmick was a mistake from the
1027 start, and testmod() changed long ago to ignore it by default. If
1028 you want to filter out tests, the new DocTestFinder class can be used
1029 to return a list of all doctests, and you can filter that list by
1030 any computable criteria before passing it to a DocTestRunner instance.
1031
Matthias Klose2e829c02004-08-15 17:04:33 +00001032- Bug #891637, patch #1005466: fix inspect.getargs() crash on def foo((bar)).
1033
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001034Tools/Demos
1035-----------
1036
Raymond Hettinger9bb1f052004-08-18 02:51:32 +00001037- IDLE's shortcut keys for windows are now case insensitive so that
1038 Control-V works the same as Control-v.
1039
Matthias Klose2443d4a2004-08-16 12:10:12 +00001040- pygettext.py: Generate POT-Creation-Date header in ISO format.
1041
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001042Build
1043-----
1044
Tim Peters47e52ee2004-08-30 02:44:38 +00001045- Backward incompatibility: longintrepr.h now triggers a compile-time
1046 error if SHIFT (the number of bits in a Python long "digit") isn't
1047 divisible by 5. This new requirement allows simple code for the new
1048 5-bits-at-a-time long_pow() implementation. If necessary, the
1049 restriction could be removed (by complicating long_pow(), or by
1050 falling back to the 1-bit-at-a-time algorithm), but there are no
1051 plans to do so.
1052
Brett Cannoncc8a4f62004-08-26 01:44:07 +00001053- bug #991962: When building with --disable-toolbox-glue on Darwin no
1054 attempt to build Mac-specific modules occurs.
1055
Michael W. Hudson800ba232004-08-12 18:19:17 +00001056- The --with-tsc flag to configure to enable VM profiling with the
1057 processor's timestamp counter now works on PPC platforms.
1058
Skip Montanaroe5069012004-08-15 14:32:06 +00001059- patch #1006629: Define _XOPEN_SOURCE to 500 on Solaris 8/9 to match
1060 GCC's definition and avoid redefinition warnings.
1061
Matthias Klosea2542be2004-08-16 11:35:51 +00001062- Detect pthreads support (provided by gnu pth pthread emulation) on
1063 GNU/k*BSD systems.
1064
Hye-Shik Chang3ba5bfc2004-08-19 17:52:37 +00001065- bug #1005737, #1007249: Fixed several build problems and warnings
1066 found on old/legacy C compilers of HP-UX, IRIX and Tru64.
1067
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001068C API
1069-----
1070
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001071..
1072
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001073Documentation
1074-------------
1075
Neal Norwitz5268c392004-08-21 15:13:52 +00001076- patch #1005936, bug #1009373: fix index entries which contain
1077 an underscore when viewed with Acrobat.
1078
1079- bug #990669: os.path.normpath may alter the meaning of a path if
1080 it contains symbolic links. This has been documented in a comment
1081 since 1992, but is now in the library reference as well.
Johannes Gijsbersb112d6e2004-08-14 14:41:32 +00001082
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001083New platforms
1084-------------
1085
Hye-Shik Changf64700a2004-08-18 15:13:41 +00001086- FreeBSD 6 is now supported.
1087
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001088Tests
1089-----
1090
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001091..
1092
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001093Windows
1094-------
1095
Tim Peters79b52b72004-08-12 18:37:10 +00001096- Boosted the stack reservation for python.exe and pythonw.exe from
1097 the default 1MB to 2MB. Stack frames under VC 7.1 for 2.4 are enough
1098 bigger than under VC 6.0 for 2.3.4 that deeply recursive progams
1099 within the default sys.getrecursionlimit() default value of 1000 were
1100 able to suffer undetected C stack overflows. The standard test program
1101 test_compiler was one such program. If a Python process on Windows
1102 "just vanishes" without a trace, and without an error message of any
1103 kind, but with an exit code of 128, undetected stack overflow may be
1104 the problem.
1105
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001106Mac
1107---
1108
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001109..
1110
Andrew M. Kuchlingb34a6bc2004-08-07 14:03:33 +00001111
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001112What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 2?
1113=================================
1114
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001115*Release date: 05-AUG-2004*
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001116
1117Core and builtins
1118-----------------
1119
Raymond Hettinger52a21b82004-08-06 18:43:09 +00001120- Patch #980695: Implements efficient string concatenation for statements
1121 of the form s=s+t and s+=t. This will vary across implementations.
1122 Accordingly, the str.join() method is strongly preferred for performance
1123 sensitive code.
1124
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001125- PEP-0318, Function Decorators have been added to the language. These are
Johannes Gijsbers343cb8a2004-08-30 14:27:11 +00001126 implemented using the Java-style @decorator syntax, like so::
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001127
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001128 @staticmethod
1129 def foo(bar):
Tim Peters82076ef2004-09-13 00:52:51 +00001130
Anthony Baxterff347ca2004-08-05 07:21:01 +00001131 (The PEP needs to be updated to reflect the current state)
Anthony Baxter32083f62004-08-02 06:24:59 +00001132
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001133- When importing a module M raises an exception, Python no longer leaves M
1134 in sys.modules. Before 2.4a2 it did, and a subsequent import of M would
1135 succeed, picking up a module object from sys.modules reflecting as much
1136 of the initialization of M as completed before the exception was raised.
1137 Subsequent imports got no indication that M was in a partially-
1138 initialized state, and the importers could get into arbitrarily bad
1139 trouble as a result (the M they got was in an unintended state,
1140 arbitrarily far removed from M's author's intent). Now subsequent
1141 imports of M will continue raising exceptions (but if, for example, the
1142 source code for M is edited between import attempts, then perhaps later
1143 attempts will succeed, or raise a different exception).
1144
1145 This can break existing code, but in such cases the code was probably
1146 working before by accident. In the Python source, the only case of
1147 breakage discovered was in a test accidentally relying on a damaged
1148 module remaining in sys.modules. Cases are also known where tests
1149 deliberately provoking import errors remove damaged modules from
1150 sys.modules themselves, and such tests will break now if they do an
1151 unconditional del sys.modules[M].
1152
Marc-André Lemburgb314ce92004-07-23 16:14:57 +00001153- u'%s' % obj will now try obj.__unicode__() first and fallback to
1154 obj.__str__() if no __unicode__ method can be found.
1155
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001156- Patch #550732: Add PyArg_VaParseTupleAndKeywords(). Analogous to
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001157 PyArg_VaParse(). Both are now documented. Thanks Greg Chapman.
Brett Cannon711e7d92004-07-10 22:20:32 +00001158
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001159- Allow string and unicode return types from .encode()/.decode()
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001160 methods on string and unicode objects. Added unicode.decode()
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001161 which was missing for no apparent reason.
1162
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001163- An attempt to fix the mess that is Python's behaviour with
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001164 signal handlers and threads, complicated by readline's behaviour.
1165 It's quite possible that there are still bugs here.
1166
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001167- Added C macros Py_CLEAR and Py_VISIT to ease the implementation of
1168 types that support garbage collection.
1169
Raymond Hettinger76d962d2004-07-16 12:16:48 +00001170- Compiler now treats None as a constant.
1171
Neil Schemenauer3a313e32004-07-19 16:29:17 +00001172- The type of values returned by __int__, __float__, __long__,
1173 __oct__, and __hex__ are now checked. Returning an invalid type
1174 will cause a TypeError to be raised. This matches the behavior of
1175 Jython.
1176
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001177- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in locale module.
1178
Hye-Shik Changb5047fd2004-08-04 06:33:51 +00001179- Added a workaround for proper string operations in BSDs. str.split
1180 and str.is* methods can now work correctly with UTF-8 locales.
1181
Hye-Shik Changc81c6952004-08-04 17:40:38 +00001182- Bug #989185: unicode.iswide() and unicode.width() is dropped and
1183 the East Asian Width support is moved to unicodedata extension
1184 module.
Hye-Shik Change9ddfbb2004-08-04 07:38:35 +00001185
Hye-Shik Chang7df44b32004-08-04 17:36:41 +00001186- Patch #941229: The source code encoding in interactive mode
1187 now refers sys.stdin.encoding not just ISO-8859-1 anymore. This
1188 allows for non-latin-1 users to write unicode strings directly.
1189
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001190Extension modules
1191-----------------
1192
Martin v. Löwis544f1192004-07-27 05:22:33 +00001193- cpickle now supports the same keyword arguments as pickle.
1194
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001195Library
1196-------
1197
Marc-André Lemburgc759f072004-08-05 12:43:30 +00001198- Added new codecs and aliases for ISO_8859-11, ISO_8859-16 and
1199 TIS-620
1200
Tim Peters8485b562004-08-04 18:46:34 +00001201- Thanks to Edward Loper, doctest has been massively refactored, and
1202 many new features were added. Full docs will appear later. For now
1203 the doctest module comments and new test cases give good coverage.
1204 The refactoring provides many hook points for customizing behavior
1205 (such as how to report errors, and how to compare expected to actual
1206 output). New features include a <BLANKLINE> marker for expected
1207 output containing blank lines, options to produce unified or context
1208 diffs when actual output doesn't match expectations, an option to
1209 normalize whitespace before comparing, and an option to use an
1210 ellipsis to signify "don't care" regions of output.
1211
Martin v. Löwis1fa649f2004-08-03 18:45:31 +00001212- Tkinter now supports the wish -sync and -use options.
1213
Fred Drakef901abd2004-08-03 17:58:55 +00001214- The following methods in time support passing of None: ctime(), gmtime(),
1215 and localtime(). If None is provided, the current time is used (the
1216 same as when the argument is omitted).
1217 [SF bug 658254, patch 663482]
1218
Martin v. Löwis9513e342004-08-03 14:36:32 +00001219- nntplib does now allow to ignore a .netrc file.
1220
Martin v. Löwis65a79752004-08-03 12:59:55 +00001221- urllib2 now recognizes Basic authentication even if other authentication
1222 schemes are offered.
1223
Neal Norwitz0e67fd42004-08-01 22:48:06 +00001224- Bug #1001053. wave.open() now accepts unicode filenames.
1225
Tim Peters5cfb05e2004-07-27 21:02:02 +00001226- gzip.GzipFile has a new fileno() method, to retrieve the handle of the
1227 underlying file object (provided it has a fileno() method). This is
1228 needed if you want to use os.fsync() on a GzipFile.
1229
Martin v. Löwis7b9190b2004-07-27 05:07:19 +00001230- imaplib has two new methods: deleteacl and myrights.
1231
Martin v. Löwiscc0f9322004-07-26 12:40:50 +00001232- nntplib has two new methods: description and descriptions. They
1233 use a more RFC-compliant way of getting a newsgroup description.
1234
Brett Cannon8b3d92a2004-07-21 02:21:58 +00001235- Bug #993394. Fix a possible red herring of KeyError in 'threading' being
1236 raised during interpreter shutdown from a registered function with atexit
1237 when dummy_threading is being used.
1238
Neal Norwitza4f651a2004-07-20 22:07:44 +00001239- Bug #857297/Patch #916874. Fix an error when extracting a hard link
1240 from a tarfile.
1241
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001242- Patch #846659. Fix an error in tarfile.py when using
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001243 GNU longname/longlink creation.
Neal Norwitz0662f8a2004-07-20 21:54:18 +00001244
Tim Peters90ee7eb2004-07-18 23:58:17 +00001245- The obsolete FCNTL.py has been deleted. The builtin fcntl module
1246 has been available (on platforms that support fcntl) since Python
1247 1.5a3, and all FCNTL.py did is export fcntl's names, after generating
1248 a deprecation warning telling you to use fcntl directly.
1249
Hye-Shik Chang2bb146f2004-07-18 03:06:29 +00001250- Several new unicode codecs are added: big5hkscs, euc_jis_2004,
1251 iso2022_jp_2004, shift_jis_2004.
1252
Tim Peters5af0e412004-07-12 00:45:14 +00001253- Bug #788520. Queue.{get, get_nowait, put, put_nowait} have new
1254 implementations, exploiting Conditions (which didn't exist at the time
1255 Queue was introduced). A minor semantic change is that the Full and
1256 Empty exceptions raised by non-blocking calls now occur only if the
1257 queue truly was full or empty at the instant the queue was checked (of
1258 course the Queue may no longer be full or empty by the time a calling
1259 thread sees those exceptions, though). Before, the exceptions could
1260 also be raised if it was "merely inconvenient" for the implementation
1261 to determine the true state of the Queue (because the Queue was locked
1262 by some other method in progress).
1263
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001264- Bugs #979794 and #980117: difflib.get_grouped_opcodes() now handles the
1265 case of comparing two empty lists. This affected both context_diff() and
1266 unified_diff(),
Brett Cannond2c5b4b2004-07-10 23:54:07 +00001267
Brett Cannone6f8a892004-07-10 23:14:30 +00001268- Bug #980938: smtplib now prints debug output to sys.stderr.
1269
Brett Cannonf50299c2004-07-10 22:55:15 +00001270- Bug #930024: posixpath.realpath() now handles infinite loops in symlinks by
1271 returning the last point in the path that was not part of any loop. Thanks
1272 AM Kuchling.
1273
Brett Cannonbdc36272004-07-10 20:42:22 +00001274- Bug #980327: ntpath not handles compressing erroneous slashes between the
1275 drive letter and the rest of the path. Also clearly handles UNC addresses now
1276 as well. Thanks Paul Moore.
1277
Brett Cannone6751182004-07-10 19:13:42 +00001278- bug #679953: zipfile.py should now work for files over 2 GB. The packed data
1279 for file sizes (compressed and uncompressed) was being stored as signed
1280 instead of unsigned.
1281
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001282- decimal.py now only uses signals in the IBM spec. The other conditions are
Raymond Hettinger5aa478b2004-07-09 10:02:53 +00001283 no longer part of the public API.
1284
Marc-André Lemburg88fcca62004-07-10 16:16:06 +00001285- codecs module now has two new generic APIs: encode() and decode()
1286 which don't restrict the return types (unlike the unicode and
1287 string methods of the same name).
1288
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001289- Non-blocking SSL sockets work again; they were broken in Python 2.3.
Andrew M. Kuchling79d7e922004-07-10 21:21:55 +00001290 SF patch 945642.
1291
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001292- doctest unittest integration improvements:
1293
1294 o Improved the unitest test output for doctest-based unit tests
1295
1296 o Can now pass setUp and tearDown functions when creating
1297 DocTestSuites.
1298
1299- The threading module has a new class, local, for creating objects
1300 that provide thread-local data.
1301
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001302- Bug #990307: when keep_empty_values is True, cgi.parse_qsl()
1303 no longer returns spurious empty fields.
1304
Gustavo Niemeyer7bd33c52004-07-22 18:44:01 +00001305- Implemented bind_textdomain_codeset() in gettext module.
1306
1307- Introduced in gettext module the l*gettext() family of functions,
1308 which return translation strings encoded in the preferred encoding,
1309 as informed by locale module's getpreferredencoding().
1310
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001311- optparse module (and tests) upgraded to Optik 1.5a1. Changes:
1312
1313 - Add expansion of default values in help text: the string
1314 "%default" in an option's help string is expanded to str() of
1315 that option's default value, or "none" if no default value.
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001316
Greg Ward9c8fe1a2004-07-31 16:16:11 +00001317 - Bug #955889: option default values that happen to be strings are
1318 now processed in the same way as values from the command line; this
1319 allows generation of nicer help when using custom types. Can
1320 be disabled with parser.set_process_default_values(False).
1321
1322 - Bug #960515: don't crash when generating help for callback
1323 options that specify 'type', but not 'dest' or 'metavar'.
1324
1325 - Feature #815264: change the default help format for short options
1326 that take an argument from e.g. "-oARG" to "-o ARG"; add
1327 set_short_opt_delimiter() and set_long_opt_delimiter() methods to
1328 HelpFormatter to allow (slight) customization of the formatting.
1329
1330 - Patch #736940: internationalize Optik: all built-in user-
1331 targeted literal strings are passed through gettext.gettext(). (If
1332 you want translations (.po files), they're not included with Python
1333 -- you'll find them in the Optik source distribution from
1334 http://optik.sourceforge.net/ .)
1335
1336 - Bug #878453: respect $COLUMNS environment variable for
1337 wrapping help output.
1338
1339 - Feature #988122: expand "%prog" in the 'description' passed
1340 to OptionParser, just like in the 'usage' and 'version' strings.
1341 (This is *not* done in the 'description' passed to OptionGroup.)
Neil Schemenauer66edb622004-07-19 15:38:11 +00001342
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001343C API
1344-----
1345
Tim Peters94f9b862004-08-02 03:48:03 +00001346- PyImport_ExecCodeModule() and PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(): if an
1347 error occurs while loading the module, these now delete the module's
1348 entry from sys.modules. All ways of loading modules eventually call
1349 one of these, so this is an error-case change in semantics for all
1350 ways of loading modules. In rare cases, a module loader may wish
1351 to keep a module object in sys.modules despite that the module's
1352 code cannot be executed. In such cases, the module loader must
1353 arrange to reinsert the name and module object in sys.modules.
1354 PyImport_ReloadModule() has been changed to reinsert the original
1355 module object into sys.modules if the module reload fails, so that
1356 its visible semantics have not changed.
1357
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001358- A large pile of datetime field-extraction macros is now documented,
1359 thanks to Anthony Tuininga (patch #986010).
1360
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001361Documentation
1362-------------
1363
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001364- Improved the tutorial on creating types in C.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001365
1366 - point out the importance of reassigning data members before
Andrew M. Kuchling78d375f2004-08-07 14:00:39 +00001367 assigning their values
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001368
Andrew M. Kuchling28025ec2004-08-07 13:59:22 +00001369 - correct my misconception about return values from visitprocs. Sigh.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001370
1371 - mention the labor saving Py_VISIT and Py_CLEAR macros.
1372
Tim Peters66bb6e62004-07-24 23:00:24 +00001373- Major rewrite of the math module docs, to address common confusions.
Jim Fultone8274372004-07-14 19:08:28 +00001374
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001375Tests
1376-----
1377
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001378- The test data files for the decimal test suite are now installed on
Anthony Baxterfd4984d2004-07-12 09:33:39 +00001379 platforms that use the Makefile.
1380
Tim Petersaa1c7ff2004-07-22 00:54:37 +00001381- SF patch 995225: The test file testtar.tar accidentally contained
1382 CVS keywords (like $Id$), which could cause spurious failures in
1383 test_tarfile.py depending on how the test file was checked out.
1384
Anthony Baxter563e4492004-07-09 07:30:10 +00001385
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001386What's New in Python 2.4 alpha 1?
1387=================================
1388
Anthony Baxter3210b362004-07-08 05:59:43 +00001389*Release date: 08-JUL-2004*
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001390
1391Core and builtins
1392-----------------
1393
Fred Drake0a4dd392004-07-02 18:57:45 +00001394- weakref.ref is now the type object also known as
1395 weakref.ReferenceType; it can be subclassed like any other new-style
1396 class. There's less per-entry overhead in WeakValueDictionary
1397 objects now (one object instead of three).
1398
Thomas Heller04c673b2004-07-02 08:56:20 +00001399- Bug #951851: Python crashed when reading import table of certain
1400 Windows DLLs.
1401
Raymond Hettinger66bd2332004-08-02 08:30:07 +00001402- Bug #215126. The locals argument to eval(), execfile(), and exec now
1403 accept any mapping type.
Raymond Hettinger214b1c32004-07-02 06:41:07 +00001404
Martin v. Löwisef82d2f2004-06-27 16:51:46 +00001405- marshal now shares interned strings. This change introduces
1406 a new .pyc magic.
1407
Anthony Baxter3ecdb252004-06-11 14:41:18 +00001408- Bug #966623. classes created with type() in an exec(, {}) don't
1409 have a __module__, but code in typeobject assumed it would always
1410 be there.
1411
Martin v. Löwis737ea822004-06-08 18:52:54 +00001412- Python no longer relies on the LC_NUMERIC locale setting to be
1413 the "C" locale; as a result, it no longer tries to prevent changing
1414 the LC_NUMERIC category.
1415
Tim Peters604c0132004-06-07 23:04:33 +00001416- Bug #952807: Unpickling pickled instances of subclasses of
1417 datetime.date, datetime.datetime and datetime.time could yield insane
1418 objects. Thanks to Jiwon Seo for a fix.
1419
Thomas Heller90a764c2004-06-07 15:12:44 +00001420- Bug #845802: Python crashes when __init__.py is a directory.
1421
Hye-Shik Changbc555e32004-06-03 11:10:58 +00001422- Unicode objects received two new methods: iswide() and width().
1423 These query East Asian width information, as specified in Unicode
1424 TR11.
Hye-Shik Chang974ed7c2004-06-02 16:49:17 +00001425
Raymond Hettinger41bd0222004-06-01 06:36:24 +00001426- Improved the tuple hashing algorithm to give fewer collisions in
1427 common cases. Fixes bug #942952.
1428
Raymond Hettinger354433a2004-05-19 08:20:33 +00001429- Implemented generator expressions (PEP 289). Coded by Jiwon Seo.
1430
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001431- Enabled the profiling of C extension functions (and builtins) - check
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001432 new documentation and modified profile and bdb modules for more details
Nicholas Bastinc69ebe82004-03-24 21:57:10 +00001433
Nicholas Bastinabce8a62004-03-21 20:24:07 +00001434- Set file.name to the object passed to open (instead of a new string)
1435
Nicholas Bastina7604bf2004-03-21 18:37:23 +00001436- Moved tracebackobject into traceback.h and renamed to PyTracebackObject
1437
Raymond Hettingerff5bc502004-03-21 15:12:00 +00001438- Optimized the byte coding for multiple assignments like "a,b=b,a" and
1439 "a,b,c=1,2,3". Improves their speed by 25% to 30%.
1440
Brett Cannon4f653312004-03-20 22:52:14 +00001441- Limit the nested depth of a tuple for the second argument to isinstance()
1442 and issubclass() to the recursion limit of the interpreter.
1443 Fixes bug #858016 .
1444
Raymond Hettingerade08ea2004-03-18 09:48:12 +00001445- Optimized dict iterators, creating separate types for each
1446 and having them reveal their length. Also optimized the
1447 methods: keys(), values(), and items().
1448
Raymond Hettingerdd80f762004-03-07 07:31:06 +00001449- Implemented a newcode opcode, LIST_APPEND, that simplifies
1450 the generated bytecode for list comprehensions and further
1451 improves their performance (about 35%).
1452
Michael W. Hudsond3b33b52004-02-19 19:35:22 +00001453- Implemented rich comparisons for floats, which seems to make
1454 comparisons involving NaNs somewhat less surprising when the
1455 underlying C compiler actually implements C99 semantics.
1456
Raymond Hettingerfa7b9d82004-02-15 04:06:39 +00001457- Optimized list.extend() to save memory and no longer create
1458 intermediate sequences. Also, extend() now pre-allocates the
1459 needed memory whenever the length of the iterable is known in
1460 advance -- this halves the time to extend the list.
1461
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001462- Optimized list resize operations to make fewer calls to the system
1463 realloc(). Significantly speeds up list appends, list pops,
Walter Dörwald09515af2005-03-18 10:28:24 +00001464 list comprehensions, and the list constructor (when the input iterable
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001465 length is not known).
1466
1467- Changed the internal list over-allocation scheme. For larger lists,
1468 overallocation ranged between 3% and 25%. Now, it is a constant 12%.
Raymond Hettingerab517d22004-02-14 18:34:46 +00001469 For smaller lists (n<8), overallocation was upto eight elements. Now,
1470 the overallocation is no more than three elements -- this improves space
Raymond Hettinger4bb95402004-02-13 11:36:39 +00001471 utilization for applications that have large numbers of small lists.
1472
Raymond Hettinger0468e412004-05-05 05:37:53 +00001473- Most list bodies now get re-used rather than freed. Speeds up list
1474 instantiation and deletion by saving calls to malloc() and free().
1475
Raymond Hettinger31017ae2004-03-04 08:25:44 +00001476- The dict.update() method now accepts all the same argument forms
1477 as the dict() constructor. This now includes item lists and/or
1478 keyword arguments.
1479
Michael W. Hudsonecfeb7f2004-02-12 15:28:27 +00001480- Support for arbitrary objects supporting the read-only buffer
1481 interface as the co_code field of code objects (something that was
1482 only possible to create from C code) has been removed.
1483
Fred Drake228765b2004-02-06 04:15:22 +00001484- Made omitted callback and None equivalent for weakref.ref() and
1485 weakref.proxy(); the None case wasn't handled correctly in all
1486 cases.
1487
1488- Fixed problem where PyWeakref_NewRef() and PyWeakref_NewProxy()
1489 assumed that initial existing entries in an object's weakref list
1490 would not be removed while allocating a new weakref object. Since
1491 GC could be invoked at that time, however, that assumption was
1492 invalid. In a truly obscure case of GC being triggered during
1493 creation for a new weakref object for an referent which already
1494 has a weakref without a callback which is only referenced from
1495 cyclic trash, a memory error can occur. This consistently created a
1496 segfault in a debug build, but provided less predictable behavior in
1497 a release build.
1498
Hye-Shik Changff83c2b2004-02-02 13:39:01 +00001499- input() builtin function now respects compiler flags such as
1500 __future__ statements. SF patch 876178.
1501
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001502- Removed PendingDeprecationWarning from apply(). apply() remains
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001503 deprecated, but the nuisance warning will not be issued.
Fred Drake713ade62003-12-05 17:43:47 +00001504
Tim Peters1d7323e2003-12-01 21:35:27 +00001505- At Python shutdown time (Py_Finalize()), 2.3 called cyclic garbage
1506 collection twice, both before and after tearing down modules. The
1507 call after tearing down modules has been disabled, because too much
1508 of Python has been torn down then for __del__ methods and weakref
1509 callbacks to execute sanely. The most common symptom was a sequence
1510 of uninformative messages on stderr when Python shut down, produced
1511 by threads trying to raise exceptions, but unable to report the nature
1512 of their problems because too much of the sys module had already been
1513 destroyed.
1514
Guido van Rossum6c9e1302003-11-29 23:52:13 +00001515- Removed FutureWarnings related to hex/oct literals and conversions
1516 and left shifts. (Thanks to Kalle Svensson for SF patch 849227.)
1517 This addresses most of the remaining semantic changes promised by
1518 PEP 237, except for repr() of a long, which still shows the trailing
1519 'L'. The PEP appears to promise warnings for operations that
1520 changed semantics compared to Python 2.3, but this is not
1521 implemented; we've suffered through enough warnings related to
1522 hex/oct literals and I think it's best to be silent now.
1523
Raymond Hettinger4f8f9762003-11-26 08:21:35 +00001524- For str and unicode objects, the ljust(), center(), and rjust()
1525 methods now accept an optional argument specifying a fill
1526 character other than a space.
1527
Guido van Rossumbaf0f8f2003-11-22 23:55:50 +00001528- When method objects have an attribute that can be satisfied either
1529 by the function object or by the method object, the function
1530 object's attribute usually wins. Christian Tismer pointed out that
1531 that this is really a mistake, because this only happens for special
1532 methods (like __reduce__) where the method object's version is
1533 really more appropriate than the function's attribute. So from now
1534 on, all method attributes will have precedence over function
1535 attributes with the same name.
1536
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001537- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 839548: if a weakref with a callback,
1538 its callback, and its weakly referenced object, all became part of
1539 cyclic garbage during a single run of garbage collection, the order
1540 in which they were torn down was unpredictable. It was possible for
1541 the callback to see partially-torn-down objects, leading to immediate
1542 segfaults, or, if the callback resurrected garbage objects, to
1543 resurrect insane objects that caused segfaults (or other surprises)
1544 later. In one sense this wasn't surprising, because Python's cyclic gc
1545 had no knowledge of Python's weakref objects. It does now. When
1546 weakrefs with callbacks become part of cyclic garbage now, those
1547 weakrefs are cleared first. The callbacks don't trigger then,
1548 preventing the problems. If you need callbacks to trigger, then just
1549 as when cyclic gc is not involved, you need to write your code so
1550 that weakref objects outlive the objects they weakly reference.
Raymond Hettingera690a992003-11-16 16:17:49 +00001551
Tim Petersadd09b42003-11-12 20:43:28 +00001552- Critical bugfix, for SF bug 840829: if cyclic garbage collection
1553 happened to occur during a weakref callback for a new-style class
1554 instance, subtle memory corruption was the result (in a release build;
1555 in a debug build, a segfault occurred reliably very soon after).
1556 This has been repaired.
1557
Tim Peters403a2032003-11-20 21:21:46 +00001558- Compiler flags set in PYTHONSTARTUP are now active in __main__.
1559
1560- Added two builtin types, set() and frozenset().
1561
Raymond Hettinger85c20a42003-11-06 14:06:48 +00001562- Added a reversed() builtin function that returns a reverse iterator
1563 over a sequence.
1564
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001565- Added a sorted() builtin function that returns a new sorted list
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001566 from any iterable.
Raymond Hettinger64958a12003-12-17 20:43:33 +00001567
Martin v. Löwis01a74b22003-10-19 18:30:01 +00001568- CObjects are now mutable (on the C level) through PyCObject_SetVoidPtr.
1569
Raymond Hettinger42b1ba32003-10-16 03:41:09 +00001570- list.sort() now supports three keyword arguments: cmp, key, and reverse.
1571 The key argument can be a function of one argument that extracts a
1572 comparison key from the original record: mylist.sort(key=str.lower).
1573 The reverse argument is a boolean value and if True will change the
1574 sort order as if the comparison arguments were reversed. In addition,
1575 the documentation has been amended to provide a guarantee that all sorts
1576 starting with Py2.3 are guaranteed to be stable (the relative order of
1577 records with equal keys is unchanged).
1578
Marc-André Lemburgd7160f82003-09-22 11:14:40 +00001579- Added test whether wchar_t is signed or not. A signed wchar_t is not
1580 usable as internal unicode type base for Py_UNICODE since the
1581 unicode implementation assumes an unsigned type.
1582
Jeremy Hyltond8082792003-09-16 19:41:39 +00001583- Fixed a bug in the cache of length-one Unicode strings that could
1584 lead to a seg fault. The specific problem occurred when an earlier,
1585 non-fatal error left an uninitialized Unicode object in the
1586 freelist.
1587
Raymond Hettinger9bfe5332003-08-27 04:55:52 +00001588- The % formatting operator now supports '%F' which is equivalent to
1589 '%f'. This has always been documented but never implemented.
1590
Tim Peters465fa3d2003-08-15 01:16:37 +00001591- complex(obj) could leak a little memory if obj wasn't a string or
1592 number.
1593
Raymond Hettingereaef6152003-08-02 07:42:57 +00001594- zip() with no arguments now returns an empty list instead of raising
1595 a TypeError exception.
1596
Guido van Rossum02c58f82003-10-08 21:08:29 +00001597- obj.__contains__() now returns True/False instead of 1/0. SF patch
1598 820195.
1599
Armin Rigo2b3eb402003-10-28 12:05:48 +00001600- Python no longer tries to be smart about recursive comparisons.
1601 When comparing containers with cyclic references to themselves it
1602 will now just hit the recursion limit. See SF patch 825639.
1603
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001604- str and unicode builtin types now have an rsplit() method that is
Raymond Hettingerc0d49d82003-12-15 19:24:34 +00001605 same as split() except that it scans the string from the end
1606 working towards the beginning. See SF feature request 801847.
Hye-Shik Chang060ebed2003-12-15 18:51:19 +00001607
Jim Fulton8a1a5942004-02-08 04:21:26 +00001608- Fixed a bug in object.__reduce_ex__ when using protocol 2. Failure
1609 to clear the error when attempts to get the __getstate__ attribute
1610 fail caused intermittent errors and odd behavior.
1611
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001612- buffer objects based on other objects no longer cache a pointer to
1613 the data and the data length. Instead, the appropriate tp_as_buffer
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001614 method is called as necessary.
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001615
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001616- fixed: if a file is opened with an explicit buffer size >= 1, repeated
Andrew MacIntyre4e10ed32004-04-04 07:01:35 +00001617 close() calls would attempt to free() the buffer already free()ed on
1618 the first call.
1619
Neil Schemenauer4252a7a2004-03-11 02:42:45 +00001620
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001621Extension modules
1622-----------------
1623
Barry Warsaw11b91a02004-06-28 00:50:43 +00001624- Added socket.getservbyport(), and make the second argument in
1625 getservbyname() and getservbyport() optional.
1626
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001627- time module code that deals with input POSIX timestamps will now raise
1628 ValueError if more than a second is lost in precision when the
1629 timestamp is cast to the platform C time_t type. There's no chance
1630 that the platform will do anything sensible with the result in such
1631 cases. This includes ctime(), localtime() and gmtime(). Assorted
1632 fromtimestamp() and utcfromtimestamp() methods in the datetime module
1633 were also protected. Closes bugs #919012 and 975996.
Brett Cannonb46ed712004-06-19 20:50:47 +00001634
Martin v. Löwis77ca6c42004-06-03 12:47:26 +00001635- fcntl.ioctl now warns if the mutate flag is not specified.
1636
Martin v. Löwisd8948722004-06-02 09:57:56 +00001637- nt now properly allows to refer to UNC roots, e.g. in nt.stat().
1638
Raymond Hettinger027bb632004-05-31 03:09:25 +00001639- the weakref module now supports additional objects: array.array,
1640 sre.pattern_objects, file objects, and sockets.
1641
Raymond Hettingere2eda602004-04-04 08:51:41 +00001642- operator.isMappingType() and operator.isSequenceType() now give
1643 fewer false positives.
1644
Brett Cannon06c34792004-03-23 23:16:54 +00001645- socket.sslerror is now a subclass of socket.error . Also added
1646 socket.error to the socket module's C API.
1647
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001648- Bug #920575: A problem where the _locale module segfaults on
Hye-Shik Changc3a87b82004-03-21 19:34:30 +00001649 nl_langinfo(ERA) caused by GNU libc's illegal NULL return is fixed.
1650
Raymond Hettinger6e2ee862004-03-14 04:37:50 +00001651- array objects now support the copy module. Also, their resizing
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001652 scheme has been updated to match that used for list objects. This improves
Raymond Hettinger49f9bd12004-03-14 05:43:59 +00001653 the performance (speed and memory usage) of append() operations.
Raymond Hettinger6ab78cd2004-08-29 07:50:43 +00001654 Also, array.array() and array.extend() now accept any iterable argument
1655 for repeated appends without needing to create another temporary array.
Raymond Hettinger3aa82c02004-03-13 18:18:51 +00001656
Raymond Hettinger3e47f652004-03-08 18:22:35 +00001657- cStringIO.writelines() now accepts any iterable argument and writes
1658 the lines one at a time rather than joining them and writing once.
1659 Made a parallel change to StringIO.writelines(). Saves memory and
1660 makes suitable for use with generator expressions.
1661
Brett Cannond1080a32004-03-02 04:38:10 +00001662- time.strftime() now checks that the values in its time tuple argument
1663 are within the proper boundaries to prevent possible crashes from the
1664 platform's C library implementation of strftime(). Can possibly
1665 break code that uses values outside the range that didn't cause
1666 problems previously (such as sitting day of year to 0). Fixes bug
1667 #897625.
1668
Martin v. Löwis12af0482004-01-31 12:34:17 +00001669- The socket module now supports Bluetooth sockets, if the
1670 system has <bluetooth/bluetooth.h>
1671
Raymond Hettinger756b3f32004-01-29 06:37:52 +00001672- Added a collections module containing a new datatype, deque(),
1673 offering high-performance, thread-safe, memory friendly appends
1674 and pops on either side of the deque.
1675
1676- Several modules now take advantage of collections.deque() for
1677 improved performance: Queue, mutex, shlex, threading, and pydoc.
1678
Raymond Hettinger166958b2003-12-01 13:18:39 +00001679- The operator module has two new functions, attrgetter() and
1680 itemgetter() which are useful for creating fast data extractor
1681 functions for map(), list.sort(), itertools.groupby(), and
1682 other functions that expect a function argument.
1683
Martin v. Löwis94681fc2003-11-27 19:40:22 +00001684- socket.SHUT_{RD,WR,RDWR} was added.
1685
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001686- os.getsid was added.
1687
Guido van Rossum16b9fa82003-10-23 23:54:57 +00001688- The pwd module incorrectly advertised its struct type as
1689 struct_pwent; this has been renamed to struct_passwd. (The old name
1690 is still supported for backwards compatibility.)
1691
Fred Drakede050322003-10-21 15:41:59 +00001692- The xml.parsers.expat module now provides Expat 1.95.7.
1693
Martin v. Löwis3bbd6542003-10-03 13:57:37 +00001694- socket.IPPROTO_IPV6 was added.
1695
Martin v. Löwise7a97962003-09-20 16:08:33 +00001696- readline.clear_history was added.
1697
Brett Cannon62dba4c2003-09-10 19:37:42 +00001698- select.select() now accepts sequences for its first three arguments.
1699
Raymond Hettinger5475f232003-08-08 12:20:03 +00001700- cStringIO now supports the f.closed attribute.
1701
Anthony Baxter83f52912003-08-05 06:33:56 +00001702- The signal module now exposes SIGRTMIN and SIGRTMAX (if available).
1703
Andrew M. Kuchling69f31eb2003-08-13 23:11:04 +00001704- curses module now supports use_default_colors(). [patch #739124]
1705
Anthony Baxter5c68ef02003-10-04 08:04:04 +00001706- Bug #811028: ncurses.h breakage on FreeBSD/MacOS X
1707
1708- Bug #814613: INET_ADDRSTRLEN fix needed for all compilers on SGI
1709
Gustavo Niemeyerad3fc442003-10-17 22:13:16 +00001710- Implemented non-recursive SRE matching scheme (#757624).
1711
1712- Implemented (?(id/name)yes|no) support in SRE (#572936).
1713
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001714- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
1715 seed. Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
1716 that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
1717
1718- random.Random has a new method, getrandbits(k), which returns an int
1719 with k random bits. This method is now an optional part of the API
1720 for user defined generators. Any generator that defines genrandbits()
1721 can now use randrange() for ranges with a length >= 2**53. Formerly,
1722 randrange would return only even numbers for ranges that large (see
1723 SF bug #812202). Generators that do not define genrandbits() now
1724 issue a warning when randrange() is called with a range that large.
1725
Raymond Hettingerd25c1c62003-12-06 16:23:06 +00001726- itertools has a new function, groupby() for aggregating iterables
1727 into groups sharing the same key (as determined by a key function).
1728 It offers some of functionality of SQL's groupby keyword and of
1729 the Unix uniq filter.
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001730
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001731- itertools now has a new tee() function which produces two independent
Raymond Hettinger6a5b0272003-10-24 08:45:23 +00001732 iterators from a single iterable.
1733
1734- itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
1735 of raising a TypeError exception.
1736
Gustavo Niemeyera6e436e2004-02-14 00:02:45 +00001737- Fixed #853061: allow BZ2Compressor.compress() to receive an empty string
1738 as parameter.
1739
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001740Library
1741-------
Tim Peters183dabc2004-07-11 19:26:19 +00001742
Georg Brandlf0de6a12005-08-22 18:02:59 +00001743- Bug #1266283: The new function "lexists" is now in os.path.__all__.
1744
Guido van Rossum5124b4a2004-07-06 17:52:32 +00001745- Bug #981530: Fix UnboundLocalError in shutil.rmtree(). This affects
1746 the documented behavior: the function passed to the onerror()
1747 handler can now also be os.listdir.
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001748
Brett Cannon41d13f62004-07-03 03:54:54 +00001749- Bug #754449: threading.Thread objects no longer mask exceptions raised during
1750 interpreter shutdown with another exception from attempting to handle the
1751 original exception.
Brett Cannoncc4e9352004-07-03 03:52:35 +00001752
Raymond Hettinger21f9fce2004-07-10 16:11:03 +00001753- Added decimal.py per PEP 327.
Raymond Hettinger7c85fa42004-07-01 11:01:35 +00001754
Brett Cannon46d4ff22004-06-29 04:08:23 +00001755- Bug #981299: rsync is now a recognized protocol in urlparse that uses a
1756 "netloc" portion of a URL.
Brett Cannonfbac2942004-06-29 04:02:40 +00001757
Brett Cannon1c3fa182004-06-19 21:11:35 +00001758- Bug #919012: shutil.move() will not try to move a directory into itself.
1759 Thanks Johannes Gijsbers.
1760
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001761- Bug #934282: pydoc.stripid() is now case-insensitive. Thanks Robin Becker.
1762
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001763- Bug #823209: cmath.log() now takes an optional base argument so that its
Brett Cannonc6c1f472004-06-19 01:02:51 +00001764 API matches math.log().
Raymond Hettingerb67ad7e2004-06-14 07:40:10 +00001765
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001766- Bug #957381: distutils bdist_rpm no longer fails on recent RPM versions
Anthony Baxter1a4ddae2004-08-31 10:07:13 +00001767 that generate a -debuginfo.rpm
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001768
Martin v. Löwisbdec50f2004-06-08 08:29:33 +00001769- os.path.devnull has been added for all supported platforms.
1770
Hye-Shik Chang2400e932004-06-05 18:37:53 +00001771- Fixed #877165: distutils now picks the right C++ compiler command
1772 on cygwin and mingw32.
1773
Hye-Shik Chang39aef792004-06-05 13:30:56 +00001774- urllib.urlopen().readline() now handles HTTP/0.9 correctly.
1775
Brett Cannon0096e262004-06-05 01:12:51 +00001776- refactored site.py into functions. Also wrote regression tests for the
1777 module.
1778
Fred Drakeec6229e2004-06-25 23:02:59 +00001779- The distutils install command now supports the --home option and
1780 installation scheme for all platforms.
1781
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001782- asyncore.loop now has a repeat count parameter that defaults to
Michael W. Hudson7db865a2004-06-30 09:09:38 +00001783 looping forever.
Michael W. Hudsonc30ba842004-06-30 09:06:29 +00001784
Tim Peters2f50e902004-05-31 19:27:59 +00001785- The distutils sdist command now ignores all .svn directories, in
1786 addition to CVS and RCS directories. .svn directories hold
1787 administrative files for the Subversion source control system.
1788
Martin v. Löwis2a6ba902004-05-31 18:22:40 +00001789- Added a new module: cookielib. Automatic cookie handling for HTTP
1790 clients. Also, support for cookielib has been added to urllib2, so
1791 urllib2.urlopen() can transparently handle cookies.
1792
Raymond Hettinger059e1702004-05-19 19:56:44 +00001793- stringprep.py now uses built-in set() instead of sets.Set().
1794
Thomas Heller2e7c8322004-05-11 15:10:59 +00001795- Bug #876278: Unbounded recursion in modulefinder
1796
Martin v. Löwis456ab1d2004-05-06 01:54:36 +00001797- Bug #780300: Swap public and system ID in LexicalHandler.startDTD.
1798 Applications relying on the wrong order need to be corrected.
1799
Hye-Shik Chang0f5bf1e2004-04-20 21:11:11 +00001800- Bug #926075: Fixed a bug that returns a wrong pattern object
1801 for a string or unicode object in sre.compile() when a different
1802 type pattern with the same value exists.
1803
Skip Montanarod0c0c412004-04-07 16:03:02 +00001804- Added countcallers arg to trace.Trace class (--trackcalls command line arg
1805 when run from the command prompt).
1806
Brett Cannon21beb4c2004-03-25 16:55:12 +00001807- Fixed a caching bug in platform.platform() where the argument of 'terse' was
1808 not taken into consideration when caching value.
1809
Nicholas Bastin824b1b22004-03-23 18:44:39 +00001810- Added two new command-line arguments for profile (output file and
1811 default sort).
1812
Nicholas Bastin1eb4bfc2004-03-22 20:12:56 +00001813- Added global runctx function to profile module
1814
Martin v. Löwis347c30d2004-03-21 15:29:41 +00001815- Add hlist missing entryconfigure and entrycget methods.
1816
Hye-Shik Chang4a7ad1a2004-03-19 08:11:56 +00001817- The ptcp154 codec was added for Kazakh character set support.
1818
Martin v. Löwisa79449e2004-02-15 21:19:18 +00001819- Support non-anonymous ftp URLs in urllib2.
1820
Andrew M. Kuchling81e3fb42004-07-04 15:41:59 +00001821- The encodings package will now apply codec name aliases
Marc-André Lemburg57cb68f2004-01-20 18:24:34 +00001822 first before starting to try the import of the codec module.
1823 This simplifies overriding built-in codecs with external
1824 packages, e.g. the included CJK codecs with the JapaneseCodecs
1825 package, by adjusting the aliases dictionary in encodings.aliases
1826 accordingly.
1827
Barry Warsaw30ff12f2004-01-04 01:13:43 +00001828- base64 now supports RFC 3548 Base16, Base32, and Base64 encoding and
1829 decoding standards.
1830
Jeremy Hylton37c5f2a2003-12-14 05:29:45 +00001831- urllib2 now supports processors. A processor is a handler that
1832 implements an xxx_request or xxx_response method. These methods are
1833 called for all requests.
1834
Thomas Hellerc7501d52003-12-05 20:28:07 +00001835- distutils compilers now compile source files in the same order as
1836 they are passed to the compiler.
1837
Walter Dörwaldc8de4582003-12-03 20:26:05 +00001838- pprint.pprint() and pprint.pformat() now have additional parameters
1839 indent, width and depth.
1840
Walter Dörwald7a7ede52003-12-03 20:15:28 +00001841- Patch #750542: pprint now will pretty print subclasses of list, tuple
1842 and dict too, as long as they don't overwrite __repr__().
1843
Thomas Hellerb3105912003-11-28 19:42:56 +00001844- Bug #848614: distutils' msvccompiler fails to find the MSVC6
1845 compiler because of incomplete registry entries.
1846
Martin v. Löwisaf7dc8d2003-11-19 19:51:55 +00001847- httplib.HTTP.putrequest now offers to omit the implicit Accept-Encoding.
1848
Thomas Hellercf0005b2003-11-14 10:33:20 +00001849- Patch #841977: modulefinder didn't find extension modules in packages
1850
Martin v. Löwisd8921372003-11-10 06:44:44 +00001851- imaplib.IMAP4.thread was added.
1852
Guido van Rossum967b0632003-11-10 02:27:19 +00001853- Plugged a minor hole in tempfile.mktemp() due to the use of
1854 os.path.exists(), switched to using os.lstat() directly if possible.
1855
Raymond Hettinger0c410272004-01-05 10:13:35 +00001856- bisect.py and heapq.py now have underlying C implementations
Raymond Hettinger33ecffb2004-06-10 05:03:17 +00001857 for better performance.
1858
Anthony Baxterc982bbd2004-06-11 17:16:46 +00001859- heapq.py has two new functions, nsmallest() and nlargest().
Raymond Hettingerb3af1812003-11-08 10:24:38 +00001860
Neil Schemenauerf607fc52003-11-05 23:03:00 +00001861- traceback.format_exc has been added (similar to print_exc but it returns
1862 a string).
1863
Martin v. Löwis45394c22003-10-31 13:49:36 +00001864- xmlrpclib.MultiCall has been added.
1865
Martin v. Löwis48440b72003-10-31 12:52:35 +00001866- poplib.POP3_SSL has been added.
1867
Martin v. Löwisd6625482003-10-12 17:37:01 +00001868- tmpfile.mkstemp now returns an absolute path even if dir is relative.
1869
Brett Cannon5d9ca4e2003-10-12 04:38:48 +00001870- urlparse is RFC 2396 compliant.
1871
Skip Montanarodef99342003-10-03 14:07:07 +00001872- The fieldnames argument to the csv module's DictReader constructor is now
1873 optional. If omitted, the first row of the file will be used as the
1874 list of fieldnames.
1875
Raymond Hettinger9a80c5d2003-09-23 20:21:01 +00001876- encodings.bz2_codec was added for access to bz2 compression
1877 using "a long string".encode('bz2')
1878
Guido van Rossum0e5a51d2003-09-22 15:03:11 +00001879- Various improvements to unittest.py, realigned with PyUnit CVS.
1880
Martin v. Löwisc6bb6c02003-09-20 15:52:21 +00001881- dircache now passes exceptions to the caller, instead of returning
1882 empty lists.
1883
Raymond Hettingerdeadbf52003-09-12 06:33:37 +00001884- The bsddb module and dbhash module now support the iterator and
1885 mapping protocols which make them more substitutable for dictionaries
1886 and shelves.
1887
Skip Montanaro3f7a9482003-09-06 19:52:12 +00001888- The csv module's DictReader and DictWriter classes now accept keyword
1889 arguments. This was an omission in the initial implementation.
1890
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001891- The email package handles some RFC 2231 parameters with missing
Barry Warsaw2f5bf172003-09-03 04:09:49 +00001892 CHARSET fields better. It also includes a patch to parameter
1893 parsing when semicolons appear inside quotes.
Barry Warsawd24a2a42003-08-19 03:59:09 +00001894
Raymond Hettinger6a180122003-08-17 08:34:09 +00001895- sets.py now runs under Py2.2. In addition, the argument restrictions
1896 for most set methods (but not the operators) have been relaxed to
Raymond Hettinger70b9f492003-11-19 15:52:14 +00001897 allow any iterable.
Raymond Hettingeree562fc2003-08-15 21:17:04 +00001898
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001899- _strptime.py now has a behind-the-scenes caching mechanism for the most
Brett Cannonb7150a22003-08-05 06:27:04 +00001900 recent TimeRE instance used along with the last five unique directive
1901 patterns. The overall module was also made more thread-safe.
1902
Raymond Hettingerbeb35f42003-08-05 12:32:41 +00001903- random.cunifvariate() and random.stdgamma() were deprecated in Py2.3
1904 and removed in Py2.4.
1905
Anthony Baxter92bee362003-11-04 14:35:49 +00001906- Bug #823328: urllib2.py's HTTP Digest Auth support works again.
1907
Hye-Shik Chang84a99312004-01-17 14:59:36 +00001908- Patch #873597: CJK codecs are imported into rank of default codecs.
1909
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001910Tools/Demos
1911-----------
1912
Skip Montanarod5a21fd2004-01-27 14:49:04 +00001913- A hotshotmain script was added to the Tools/scripts directory that
1914 makes it easy to run a script under control of the hotshot profiler.
1915
Skip Montanaro030f68a2003-10-28 16:24:00 +00001916- The db2pickle and pickle2db scripts can now dump/load gdbm files.
1917
Skip Montanaroe2b61e02004-03-03 17:42:08 +00001918- The file order on the command line of the pickle2db script was reversed.
1919 It is now [ picklefile ] dbfile. This provides better symmetry with
1920 db2pickle. The file arguments to both scripts are now source followed by
1921 destination in situations where both files are given.
1922
Skip Montanarofd4fa882003-09-10 19:04:13 +00001923- The pydoc script will display a link to the module documentation for
1924 modules determined to be part of the core distribution. The documentation
1925 base directory defaults to http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/ but can
1926 be changed by setting the PYTHONDOCS environment variable.
1927
Raymond Hettingere41d4c82003-08-25 04:39:55 +00001928- texcheck.py now detects double word errors.
1929
Tim Peters1a3abcb2003-08-18 23:52:09 +00001930- md5sum.py mistakenly opened input files in text mode by default, a
1931 silent and dangerous change from previous releases. It once again
1932 opens input files in binary mode by default. The -t and -b flags
1933 remain for compatibility with the 2.3 release, but -b is the default
1934 now.
1935
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001936- py-electric-colon now works when pending-delete/delete-selection mode is
1937 in effect
1938
1939- py-help-at-point is no longer bound to the F1 key - it's still bound to
1940 C-c C-h
1941
Barry Warsaw6ec58ca2003-09-03 03:20:37 +00001942- Pynche was fixed to not crash when there is no ~/.pynche file and no
1943 -d option was given.
1944
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001945Build
1946-----
1947
Brett Cannonf6af76d2004-06-26 04:03:06 +00001948- Bug #978645: Modules/getpath.c now builds properly in --disable-framework
1949 build under OS X.
1950
Skip Montanaro56f6a4f2004-06-18 02:47:22 +00001951- Profiling using gprof is now available if Python is configured with
1952 --enable-profiling.
1953
Martin v. Löwisf30d60e2004-06-08 08:17:44 +00001954- Profiling the VM using the Pentium TSC is now possible if Python
1955 is configured --with-tsc.
1956
Martin v. Löwis642c8a12004-06-04 13:55:13 +00001957- In order to find libraries, setup.py now also looks in /lib64, for use
1958 on AMD64.
1959
Hye-Shik Chang54f94392004-04-14 07:55:31 +00001960- Bug #934635: Fixed a bug where the configure script couldn't detect
1961 getaddrinfo() properly if the KAME stack had SCTP support.
1962
Skip Montanaro7befb992004-02-10 16:50:21 +00001963- Support for missing ANSI C header files (limits.h, stddef.h, etc) was
1964 removed.
1965
Skip Montanarodb608052004-02-07 13:53:46 +00001966- Systems requiring the D4, D6 or D7 variants of pthreads are no longer
1967 supported (see PEP 11).
1968
1969- Universal newline support can no longer be disabled (see PEP 11).
1970
Skip Montanarocd1f7432004-01-17 14:22:44 +00001971- Support for DGUX, SunOS 4, IRIX 4 and Minix was removed (see PEP 11).
1972
1973- Support for systems requiring --with-dl-dld or --with-sgi-dl was removed
1974 (see PEP 11).
1975
1976- Tests for sizeof(char) were removed since ANSI C mandates that
1977 sizeof(char) must be 1.
1978
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00001979C API
1980-----
1981
Tim Peters9ddf40b2004-06-20 22:41:32 +00001982- Thanks to Anthony Tuininga, the datetime module now supplies a C API
1983 containing type-check macros and constructors. See new docs in the
1984 Python/C API Reference Manual for details.
1985
Tim Peters1b6f7a92004-06-20 02:50:16 +00001986- Private function _PyTime_DoubleToTimet added, to convert a Python
1987 timestamp (C double) to platform time_t with some out-of-bounds
1988 checking. Declared in new header file timefuncs.h. It would be
1989 good to expose some other internal timemodule.c functions there.
1990
Martin v. Löwise440e472004-06-01 15:22:42 +00001991- New public functions PyEval_EvaluateFrame and PyGen_New to expose
1992 generator objects.
1993
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001994- New public functions Py_IncRef() and Py_DecRef(), exposing the
1995 functionality of the Py_XINCREF() and Py_XDECREF macros. Useful for
Thomas Hellercc10a852004-04-22 17:28:25 +00001996 runtime dynamic embedding of Python. See patch #938302, by Bob
1997 Ippolito.
Thomas Heller1328b522004-04-22 17:23:49 +00001998
Raymond Hettingerc1e4f9d2004-03-12 08:04:00 +00001999- Added a new macro, PySequence_Fast_ITEMS, which retrieves a fast sequence's
2000 underlying array of PyObject pointers. Useful for high speed looping.
2001
Raymond Hettinger8f5cdaa2003-12-13 11:26:12 +00002002- Created a new method flag, METH_COEXIST, which causes a method to be loaded
2003 even if already defined by a slot wrapper. This allows a __contains__
2004 method, for example, to co-exist with a defined sq_contains slot. This
2005 is helpful because the PyCFunction can take advantage of optimized calls
2006 whenever METH_O or METH_NOARGS flags are defined.
2007
Raymond Hettingerbc0f2ab2003-11-25 21:12:14 +00002008- Added a new function, PyDict_Contains(d, k) which is like
2009 PySequence_Contains() but is specific to dictionaries and executes
2010 about 10% faster.
2011
Brett Cannon26b3a7b2003-10-19 21:31:43 +00002012- Added three new macros: Py_RETURN_NONE, Py_RETURN_TRUE, and Py_RETURN_FALSE.
2013 Each return the singleton they mention after Py_INCREF()ing them.
2014
Raymond Hettingercb2da432003-10-12 18:24:34 +00002015- Added a new function, PyTuple_Pack(n, ...) for constructing tuples from a
2016 variable length argument list of Python objects without having to invoke
2017 the more complex machinery of Py_BuildValue(). PyTuple_Pack(3, a, b, c)
2018 is equivalent to Py_BuildValue("(OOO)", a, b, c).
2019
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002020Windows
2021-------
2022
Guido van Rossumfd25aca2003-11-30 22:10:15 +00002023- The _winreg module could segfault when reading very large registry
2024 values, due to unchecked alloca() calls (SF bug 851056). The fix is
2025 uses either PyMem_Malloc(n) or PyString_FromStringAndSize(NULL, n),
2026 as appropriate, followed by a size check.
2027
Tim Petersf1827cf2003-09-07 03:30:18 +00002028- file.truncate() could misbehave if the file was open for update
2029 (modes r+, rb+, w+, wb+), and the most recent file operation before
2030 the truncate() call was an input operation. SF bug 801631.
2031
Skip Montanarocb3988c2003-08-01 05:01:54 +00002032
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002033What's New in Python 2.3 final?
2034===============================
2035
2036*Release date: 29-Jul-2003*
2037
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002038IDLE
2039----
2040
Tim Peters36c1afc2003-07-29 17:22:57 +00002041- Bug 778400: IDLE hangs when selecting "Edit with IDLE" from explorer.
2042 This was unique to Windows, and was fixed by adding an -n switch to
2043 the command the Windows installer creates to execute "Edit with IDLE"
2044 context-menu actions.
2045
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002046- IDLE displays a new message upon startup: some "personal firewall"
2047 kinds of programs (for example, ZoneAlarm) open a dialog of their
2048 own when any program opens a socket. IDLE does use sockets, talking
2049 on the computer's internal loopback interface. This connection is not
2050 visible on any external interface and no data is sent to or received
2051 from the Internet. So, if you get such a dialog when opening IDLE,
2052 asking whether to let pythonw.exe talk to address 127.0.0.1, say yes,
2053 and rest assured no communication external to your machine is taking
2054 place. If you don't allow it, IDLE won't be able to start.
2055
Tim Peters09638032003-07-29 00:10:29 +00002056
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002057What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 2?
2058=============================================
2059
Tim Peters6560a252003-07-24 00:15:46 +00002060*Release date: 24-Jul-2003*
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002061
2062Core and builtins
2063-----------------
2064
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002065- It is now possible to import from zipfiles containing additional
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002066 data bytes before the zip compatible archive. Zipfiles containing a
Thomas Heller354e3d92003-07-22 18:10:15 +00002067 comment at the end are still unsupported.
2068
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002069Extension modules
2070-----------------
2071
2072- A longstanding bug in the parser module's initialization could cause
2073 fatal internal refcount confusion when the module got initialized more
2074 than once. This has been fixed.
2075
Fred Drake01a43122003-07-21 17:17:10 +00002076- Fixed memory leak in pyexpat; using the parser's ParseFile() method
2077 with open files that aren't instances of the standard file type
2078 caused an instance of the bound .read() method to be leaked on every
2079 call.
2080
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002081- Fixed some leaks in the locale module.
2082
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002083Library
2084-------
2085
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002086- Lib/encodings/rot_13.py when used as a script, now more properly
2087 uses the first Python interpreter on your path.
2088
2089- Removed caching of TimeRE (and thus LocaleTime) in _strptime.py to
2090 fix a locale related bug in the test suite. Although another patch
2091 was needed to actually fix the problem, the cache code was not
2092 restored.
2093
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002094IDLE
2095----
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002096
Tim Petersc794a1c2003-07-27 20:23:49 +00002097- Calltips patches.
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002098
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002099Build
2100-----
2101
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002102- For MacOSX, added -mno-fused-madd to BASECFLAGS to fix test_coercion
2103 on Panther (OSX 10.3).
2104
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002105C API
2106-----
2107
2108Windows
2109-------
2110
Tim Peters291f14e2003-07-22 02:50:01 +00002111- The tempfile module could do insane imports on Windows if PYTHONCASEOK
2112 was set, making temp file creation impossible. Repaired.
2113
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002114- Add a patch to workaround pthread_sigmask() bugs in Cygwin.
2115
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002116Mac
2117---
2118
Barry Warsaw0517c9a2003-07-25 01:09:40 +00002119- Various fixes to pimp.
2120
2121- Scripts runs with pythonw no longer had full window manager access.
2122
2123- Don't force boot-disk-only install, for reasons unknown it causes
2124 more problems than it solves.
2125
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002126
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002127What's New in Python 2.3 release candidate 1?
2128=============================================
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002129
Jeremy Hylton0ed18c22003-07-18 20:10:02 +00002130*Release date: 18-Jul-2003*
2131
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002132Core and builtins
2133-----------------
2134
Tim Peterse5e065b2003-07-06 18:36:54 +00002135- The new function sys.getcheckinterval() returns the last value set
2136 by sys.setcheckinterval().
2137
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002138- Several bugs in the symbol table phase of the compiler have been
2139 fixed. Errors could be lost and compilation could fail without
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002140 reporting an error. SF patch 763201.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002141
2142- The interpreter is now more robust about importing the warnings
2143 module. In an executable generated by freeze or similar programs,
2144 earlier versions of 2.3 would fail if the warnings module could
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002145 not be found on the file system. Fixes SF bug 771097.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002146
2147- A warning about assignments to module attributes that shadow
2148 builtins, present in earlier releases of 2.3, has been removed.
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002149
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002150- It is not possible to create subclasses of builtin types like str
2151 and tuple that define an itemsize. Earlier releases of Python 2.3
2152 allowed this by mistake, leading to crashes and other problems.
2153
2154- The thread_id is now initialized to 0 in a non-thread build. SF bug
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002155 770247.
2156
2157- SF bug 762891: "del p[key]" on proxy object no longer raises SystemError.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002158
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002159Extension modules
2160-----------------
2161
2162- weakref.proxy() can now handle "del obj[i]" for proxy objects
2163 defining __delitem__. Formerly, it generated a SystemError.
2164
2165- SSL no longer crashes the interpreter when the remote side disconnects.
2166
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002167- On Unix the mmap module can again be used to map device files.
2168
Brett Cannon20def8b2003-07-01 05:16:08 +00002169- time.strptime now exclusively uses the Python implementation
2170 contained within the _strptime module.
2171
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002172- The print slot of weakref proxy objects was removed, because it was
2173 not consistent with the object's repr slot.
2174
2175- The mmap module only checks file size for regular files, not
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002176 character or block devices. SF patch 708374.
2177
2178- The cPickle Pickler garbage collection support was fixed to traverse
2179 the find_class attribute, if present.
2180
Tim Peters6a627252003-07-21 14:25:23 +00002181- There are several fixes for the bsddb3 wrapper module.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002182
2183 bsddb3 no longer crashes if an environment is closed before a cursor
2184 (SF bug 763298).
2185
2186 The DB and DBEnv set_get_returns_none function was extended to take
Barry Warsawd71a5512003-07-20 18:00:54 +00002187 a level instead of a boolean flag. The new level 2 means that in
2188 addition, cursor.set()/.get() methods return None instead of raising
2189 an exception.
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002190
2191 A typo was fixed in DBCursor.join_item(), preventing a crash.
2192
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002193Library
2194-------
2195
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002196- distutils now supports MSVC 7.1
2197
Raymond Hettinger71adf7e2003-07-16 19:25:22 +00002198- doctest now examines all docstrings by default. Previously, it would
2199 skip over functions with private names (as indicated by the underscore
2200 naming convention). The old default created too much of a risk that
2201 user tests were being skipped inadvertently. Note, this change could
2202 break code in the unlikely case that someone had intentionally put
2203 failing tests in the docstrings of private functions. The breakage
2204 is easily fixable by specifying the old behavior when calling testmod()
2205 or Tester().
2206
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002207- There were several fixes to the way dumbdbms are closed. It's vital
2208 that a dumbdbm database be closed properly, else the on-disk data
2209 and directory files can be left in mutually inconsistent states.
2210 dumbdbm.py's _Database.__del__() method attempted to close the
2211 database properly, but a shutdown race in _Database._commit() could
2212 prevent this from working, so that a program trusting __del__() to
2213 get the on-disk files in synch could be badly surprised. The race
2214 has been repaired. A sync() method was also added so that shelve
2215 can guarantee data is written to disk.
Tim Peters7a6c7332003-07-13 17:21:10 +00002216
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002217 The close() method can now be called more than once without complaint.
Tim Petersd7472ec2003-07-13 02:22:03 +00002218
Tim Peters59aba122003-07-01 20:01:55 +00002219- The classes in threading.py are now new-style classes. That they
2220 weren't before was an oversight.
2221
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002222- The urllib2 digest authentication handlers now define the correct
2223 auth_header. The earlier versions would fail at runtime.
2224
Neal Norwitze7dfe212003-07-01 14:59:46 +00002225- SF bug 763023: fix uncaught ZeroDivisionError in difflib ratio methods
2226 when there are no lines.
2227
Neal Norwitz3c0f2c92003-07-01 21:12:47 +00002228- SF bug 763637: fix exception in Tkinter with after_cancel
2229 which could occur with Tk 8.4
2230
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002231- SF bug 770601: CGIHTTPServer.py now passes the entire environment
2232 to child processes.
2233
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002234- SF bug 765238: add filter to fnmatch's __all__.
2235
2236- SF bug 748201: make time.strptime() error messages more helpful.
2237
2238- SF patch 764470: Do not dump the args attribute of a Fault object in
2239 xmlrpclib.
2240
2241- SF patch 549151: urllib and urllib2 now redirect POSTs on 301
2242 responses.
2243
2244- SF patch 766650: The whichdb module was fixed to recognize dbm files
2245 generated by gdbm on OS/2 EMX.
2246
2247- SF bugs 763047 and 763052: fixes bug of timezone value being left as
2248 -1 when ``time.tzname[0] == time.tzname[1] and not time.daylight``
2249 is true when it should only when time.daylight is true.
2250
2251- SF bug 764548: re now allows subclasses of str and unicode to be
2252 used as patterns.
2253
2254- SF bug 763637: In Tkinter, change after_cancel() to handle tuples
2255 of varying sizes. Tk 8.4 returns a different number of values
2256 than Tk 8.3.
2257
2258- SF bug 763023: difflib.ratio() did not catch zero division.
2259
2260- The Queue module now has an __all__ attribute.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002261
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002262Tools/Demos
2263-----------
2264
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002265- See Lib/idlelib/NEWS.txt for IDLE news.
2266
Neal Norwitz592c4cc2003-07-01 04:14:28 +00002267- SF bug 753592: webchecker/wsgui now handles user supplied directories.
2268
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002269- The trace.py script has been removed. It is now in the standard library.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002270
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002271Build
2272-----
2273
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002274- Python now compiles with -fno-strict-aliasing if possible (SF bug 766696).
2275
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002276- The socket module compiles on IRIX 6.5.10.
2277
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002278- An irix64 system is treated the same way as an irix6 system (SF
2279 patch 764560).
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002280
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002281- Several definitions were missing on FreeBSD 5.x unless the
2282 __BSD_VISIBLE symbol was defined. configure now defines it as
2283 needed.
Jeremy Hyltonca9e21c2003-07-17 17:57:58 +00002284
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002285C API
2286-----
2287
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002288- Unicode objects now support mbcs as a built-in encoding, so the C
2289 API can use it without deferring to the encodings package.
2290
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002291Windows
2292-------
2293
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002294- The Windows implementation of PyThread_start_new_thread() never
2295 checked error returns from Windows functions correctly. As a result,
2296 it could claim to start a new thread even when the Microsoft
2297 _beginthread() function failed (due to "too many threads" -- this is
2298 on the order of thousands when it happens). In these cases, the
2299 Python exception ::
2300
2301 thread.error: can't start new thread
2302
2303 is raised now.
2304
2305- SF bug 766669: Prevent a GPF on interpreter exit when sockets are in
2306 use. The interpreter now calls WSACleanup() from Py_Finalize()
2307 instead of from DLL teardown.
2308
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002309Mac
2310---
2311
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002312- Bundlebuilder now inherits default values in the right way. It was
Walter Dörwald73a8a4b2003-07-30 12:14:02 +00002313 previously possible for app bundles to get a type of "BNDL" instead
Jeremy Hylton8aca4172003-07-17 19:19:05 +00002314 of "APPL." Other improvements include, a --build-id option to
2315 specify the CFBundleIdentifier and using the --python option to set
2316 the executable in the bundle.
2317
2318- Fixed two bugs in MacOSX framework handling.
Raymond Hettingerd693a812003-06-30 04:18:48 +00002319
Jack Jansene0040412003-07-23 22:17:28 +00002320- pythonw did not allow user interaction in 2.3rc1, this has been fixed.
2321
2322- Python is now compiled with -mno-fused-madd, making all tests pass
2323 on Panther.
2324
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002325What's New in Python 2.3 beta 2?
2326================================
2327
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002328*Release date: 29-Jun-2003*
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002329
2330Core and builtins
2331-----------------
2332
Barry Warsaw883f2232003-06-29 17:10:11 +00002333- A program can now set the environment variable PYTHONINSPECT to some
2334 string value in Python, and cause the interpreter to enter the
2335 interactive prompt at program exit, as if Python had been invoked
2336 with the -i option.
2337
Raymond Hettingerd05abde2003-06-17 05:05:49 +00002338- list.index() now accepts optional start and stop arguments. Similar
2339 changes were made to UserList.index(). SF feature request 754014.
2340
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002341- SF patch 751998 fixes an unwanted side effect of the previous fix
2342 for SF bug 742860 (the next item).
2343
Tim Peters50d8b8b2003-05-25 17:44:31 +00002344- SF bug 742860: "WeakKeyDictionary __delitem__ uses iterkeys". This
2345 wasn't threadsafe, was very inefficient (expected time O(len(dict))
2346 instead of O(1)), and could raise a spurious RuntimeError if another
2347 thread mutated the dict during __delitem__, or if a comparison function
2348 mutated it. It also neglected to raise KeyError when the key wasn't
2349 present; didn't raise TypeError when the key wasn't of a weakly
2350 referencable type; and broke various more-or-less obscure dict
2351 invariants by using a sequence of equality comparisons over the whole
2352 set of dict keys instead of computing the key's hash code to narrow
2353 the search to those keys with the same hash code. All of these are
2354 considered to be bugs. A new implementation of __delitem__ repairs all
2355 that, but note that fixing these bugs may change visible behavior in
2356 code relying (whether intentionally or accidentally) on old behavior.
Tim Peters886128f2003-05-25 01:45:11 +00002357
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002358- SF bug 734869: Fixed a compiler bug that caused a fatal error when
2359 compiling a list comprehension that contained another list comprehension
2360 embedded in a lambda expression.
2361
Tim Peterse87568d2003-05-24 20:18:24 +00002362- SF bug 705231: builtin pow() no longer lets the platform C pow()
2363 raise -1.0 to integer powers, because (at least) glibc gets it wrong
2364 in some cases. The result should be -1.0 if the power is odd and 1.0
2365 if the power is even, and any float with a sufficiently large exponent
2366 is (mathematically) an exact even integer.
2367
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002368- SF bug 759227: A new-style class that implements __nonzero__() must
2369 return a bool or int (but not an int subclass) from that method. This
2370 matches the restriction on classic classes.
2371
Martin v. Löwis5467d4c2003-05-10 07:10:12 +00002372- The encoding attribute has been added for file objects, and set to
2373 the terminal encoding on Unix and Windows.
2374
Tim Peters015dd822003-05-04 04:16:52 +00002375- The softspace attribute of file objects became read-only by oversight.
2376 It's writable again.
2377
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002378- Reverted a 2.3 beta 1 change to iterators for subclasses of list and
2379 tuple. By default, the iterators now access data elements directly
2380 instead of going through __getitem__. If __getitem__ access is
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002381 preferred, then __iter__ can be overridden.
Raymond Hettinger686b14d2003-05-07 01:28:47 +00002382
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002383- SF bug 735247: The staticmethod and super types participate in
2384 garbage collection. Before this change, it was possible for leaks to
2385 occur in functions with non-global free variables that used these types.
2386
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002387Extension modules
2388-----------------
2389
Raymond Hettinger643bcec2003-06-29 03:29:42 +00002390- the socket module has a new exception, socket.timeout, to allow
2391 timeouts to be handled separately from other socket errors.
2392
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002393- SF bug 751276: cPickle has fixed to propagate exceptions raised in
2394 user code. In earlier versions, cPickle caught and ignored any
2395 exception when it performed operations that it expected to raise
2396 specific exceptions like AttributeError.
2397
2398- cPickle Pickler and Unpickler objects now participate in garbage
2399 collection.
2400
Tim Peterscda32b72003-06-15 23:13:35 +00002401- mimetools.choose_boundary() could return duplicate strings at times,
2402 especially likely on Windows. The strings returned are now guaranteed
2403 unique within a single program run.
2404
Brett Cannon4e64d782003-06-13 23:44:35 +00002405- thread.interrupt_main() raises KeyboardInterrupt in the main thread.
2406 dummy_thread has also been modified to try to simulate the behavior.
2407
Walter Dörwald9e46abe2003-05-18 03:15:10 +00002408- array.array.insert() now treats negative indices as being relative
2409 to the end of the array, just like list.insert() does. (SF bug #739313)
2410
Tim Petersb0c854d2003-05-17 15:57:00 +00002411- The datetime module classes datetime, time, and timedelta are now
2412 properly subclassable.
Tim Petersa98924a2003-05-17 05:55:19 +00002413
Martin v. Löwis28e9ce92003-05-09 08:19:48 +00002414- _tkinter.{get|set}busywaitinterval was added.
2415
Raymond Hettinger834f4632003-05-02 20:24:56 +00002416- itertools.islice() now accepts stop=None as documented.
2417 Fixes SF bug #730685.
2418
Skip Montanaro8c044d82003-05-06 20:42:37 +00002419- the bsddb185 module is built in one restricted instance -
2420 /usr/include/db.h exists and defines HASHVERSION to be 2. This is true
2421 for many BSD-derived systems.
2422
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002423
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002424Library
2425-------
2426
Tim Petersdb3756d2003-06-29 05:30:48 +00002427- Some happy doctest extensions from Jim Fulton have been added to
2428 doctest.py. These are already being used in Zope3. The two
2429 primary ones:
2430
2431 doctest.debug(module, name) extracts the doctests from the named object
2432 in the given module, puts them in a temp file, and starts pdb running
2433 on that file. This is great when a doctest fails.
2434
2435 doctest.DocTestSuite(module=None) returns a synthesized unittest
2436 TestSuite instance, to be run by the unittest framework, which
2437 runs all the doctests in the module. This allows writing tests in
2438 doctest style (which can be clearer and shorter than writing tests
2439 in unittest style), without losing unittest's powerful testing
2440 framework features (which doctest lacks).
2441
Tim Peters6ebe61f2003-06-27 20:48:05 +00002442- For compatibility with doctests created before 2.3, if an expected
2443 output block consists solely of "1" and the actual output block
2444 consists solely of "True", it's accepted as a match; similarly
2445 for "0" and "False". This is quite un-doctest-like, but is practical.
2446 The behavior can be disabled by passing the new doctest module
2447 constant DONT_ACCEPT_TRUE_FOR_1 to the new optionflags optional
2448 argument.
2449
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002450- ZipFile.testzip() now only traps BadZipfile exceptions. Previously,
2451 a bare except caught to much and reported all errors as a problem
2452 in the archive.
2453
2454- The logging module now has a new function, makeLogRecord() making
2455 LogHandler easier to interact with DatagramHandler and SocketHandler.
2456
Skip Montanaro364ca402003-06-17 12:58:31 +00002457- The cgitb module has been extended to support plain text display (SF patch
2458 569574).
2459
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002460- A brand new version of IDLE (from the IDLEfork project at
2461 SourceForge) is now included as Lib/idlelib. The old Tools/idle is
2462 no more.
2463
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002464- Added a new module: trace (documentation missing). This module used
2465 to be distributed in Tools/scripts. It uses sys.settrace() to trace
2466 code execution -- either function calls or individual lines. It can
2467 generate tracing output during execution or a post-mortem report of
2468 code coverage.
2469
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002470- The threading module has new functions settrace() and setprofile()
2471 that cooperate with the functions of the same name in the sys
2472 module. A function registered with the threading module will
Jeremy Hyltonb752c272003-06-29 17:25:39 +00002473 be used for all threads it creates. The new trace module uses this
2474 to provide tracing for code running in threads.
Jeremy Hyltone0c31122003-06-16 20:38:15 +00002475
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002476- copy.py: applied SF patch 707900, fixing bug 702858, by Steven
2477 Taschuk. Copying a new-style class that had a reference to itself
2478 didn't work. (The same thing worked fine for old-style classes.)
Martin v. Löwisba8f5ff2003-06-14 07:10:06 +00002479 Builtin functions are now treated as atomic, fixing bug #746304.
Guido van Rossum99d2c252003-06-13 19:28:47 +00002480
Raymond Hettingerc24d7672003-06-08 19:42:33 +00002481- difflib.py has two new functions: context_diff() and unified_diff().
2482
Guido van Rossumfa19f7c2003-05-16 01:46:51 +00002483- More fixes to urllib (SF 549151): (a) When redirecting, always use
2484 GET. This is common practice and more-or-less sanctioned by the
2485 HTTP standard. (b) Add a handler for 307 redirection, which becomes
2486 an error for POST, but a regular redirect for GET and HEAD
2487
Guido van Rossumbf1bef82003-05-13 18:01:19 +00002488- Added optional 'onerror' argument to os.walk(), to control error
2489 handling.
2490
Martin v. Löwise59e2ba2003-05-03 09:09:02 +00002491- inspect.is{method|data}descriptor was added, to allow pydoc display
2492 __doc__ of data descriptors.
2493
Skip Montanaro4a7751c2003-04-29 21:07:16 +00002494- Fixed socket speed loss caused by use of the _socketobject wrapper class
2495 in socket.py.
2496
Raymond Hettinger22952a32003-05-20 04:59:56 +00002497- timeit.py now checks the current directory for imports.
2498
Gustavo Niemeyer9556fba2003-06-07 17:53:08 +00002499- urllib2.py now knows how to order proxy classes, so the user doesn't
2500 have to insert it in front of other classes, nor do dirty tricks like
2501 inserting a "dummy" HTTPHandler after a ProxyHandler when building an
2502 opener with proxy support.
2503
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002504- Iterators have been added for dbm keys.
2505
2506- random.Random objects can now be pickled.
2507
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002508Tools/Demos
2509-----------
2510
Martin v. Löwisb8c084e2003-06-14 09:03:46 +00002511- pydoc now offers help on keywords and topics.
2512
Guido van Rossumce74f8a2003-06-13 20:37:23 +00002513- Tools/idle is gone; long live Lib/idlelib.
2514
Tim Peters27409442003-06-29 16:18:08 +00002515- diff.py prints file diffs in context, unified, or ndiff formats,
2516 providing a command line interface to difflib.py.
Raymond Hettinger2f3c74a2003-06-08 23:10:15 +00002517
Raymond Hettinger71e00332003-05-10 03:30:13 +00002518- texcheck.py is a new script for making a rough validation of Python LaTeX
2519 files.
2520
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002521Build
2522-----
2523
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002524- Setting DESTDIR during 'make install' now allows specifying a
Martin v. Löwis3b8ee082003-05-11 20:25:35 +00002525 different root directory.
2526
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002527C API
2528-----
2529
Tim Peters3cfe7542003-05-21 21:29:48 +00002530- PyType_Ready(): If a type declares that it participates in gc
2531 (Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC), and its base class does not, and its base class's
2532 tp_free slot is the default _PyObject_Del, and type does not define
2533 a tp_free slot itself, _PyObject_GC_Del is assigned to type->tp_free.
2534 Previously _PyObject_Del was inherited, which could at best lead to a
2535 segfault. In addition, if even after this magic the type's tp_free
2536 slot is _PyObject_Del or NULL, and the type is a base type
2537 (Py_TPFLAGS_BASETYPE), TypeError is raised: since the type is a base
2538 type, its dealloc function must call type->tp_free, and since the type
2539 is gc'able, tp_free must not be NULL or _PyObject_Del.
2540
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002541- PyThreadState_SetAsyncExc(): A new API (deliberately accessible only
2542 from C) to interrupt a thread by sending it an exception. It is
2543 intentional that you have to write your own C extension to call it
2544 from Python.
2545
2546
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002547New platforms
2548-------------
2549
2550None this time.
2551
2552Tests
2553-----
2554
2555- test_imp rewritten so that it doesn't raise RuntimeError if run as a
2556 side effect of being imported ("import test.autotest").
2557
2558Windows
2559-------
2560
Tim Petersfaa697a2003-06-22 01:42:20 +00002561- The Windows installer ships with Tcl/Tk 8.4.3 (upgraded from 8.4.1).
2562
Tim Petersc4607da2003-05-08 18:13:59 +00002563- The installer always suggested that Python be installed on the C:
2564 drive, due to a hardcoded "C:" generated by the Wise installation
2565 wizard. People with machines where C: is not the system drive
2566 usually want Python installed on whichever drive is their system drive
2567 instead. We removed the hardcoded "C:", and two testers on machines
2568 where C: is not the system drive report that the installer now
2569 suggests their system drive. Note that you can always select the
2570 directory you want in the "Select Destination Directory" dialog --
2571 that's what it's for.
2572
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002573Mac
2574---
2575
Just van Rossum99bc1fc2003-05-09 15:01:25 +00002576- There's a new module called "autoGIL", which offers a mechanism to
2577 automatically release the Global Interpreter Lock when an event loop
2578 goes to sleep, allowing other threads to run. It's currently only
2579 supported on OSX, in the Mach-O version.
Jack Jansenf5e23ff2003-06-16 13:53:40 +00002580- The OSA modules now allow direct access to properties of the
2581 toplevel application class (in AppleScript terminology).
2582- The Package Manager can now update itself.
Tim Peters49311302003-04-26 14:53:01 +00002583
Raymond Hettinger562a8552003-06-30 03:35:06 +00002584SourceForge Bugs and Patches Applied
2585------------------------------------
2586
2587430160, 471893, 501716, 542562, 549151, 569574, 595837, 596434,
2588598163, 604210, 604716, 610332, 612627, 614770, 620190, 621891,
2589622042, 639139, 640236, 644345, 649742, 649742, 658233, 660022,
2590661318, 661676, 662807, 662923, 666219, 672855, 678325, 682347,
2591683486, 684981, 685773, 686254, 692776, 692959, 693094, 696777,
2592697989, 700827, 703666, 708495, 708604, 708901, 710733, 711902,
2593713722, 715782, 718286, 719359, 719367, 723136, 723831, 723962,
2594724588, 724767, 724767, 725942, 726150, 726446, 726869, 727051,
2595727719, 727719, 727805, 728277, 728563, 728656, 729096, 729103,
2596729293, 729297, 729300, 729317, 729395, 729622, 729817, 730170,
2597730296, 730594, 730685, 730826, 730963, 731209, 731403, 731504,
2598731514, 731626, 731635, 731643, 731644, 731644, 731689, 732124,
2599732143, 732234, 732284, 732284, 732479, 732761, 732783, 732951,
2600733667, 733781, 734118, 734231, 734869, 735051, 735293, 735527,
2601735613, 735694, 736962, 736962, 737970, 738066, 739313, 740055,
2602740234, 740301, 741806, 742126, 742741, 742860, 742860, 742911,
2603744041, 744104, 744238, 744687, 744877, 745055, 745478, 745525,
2604745620, 746012, 746304, 746366, 746801, 746953, 747348, 747667,
2605747954, 748846, 748849, 748973, 748975, 749191, 749210, 749759,
2606749831, 749911, 750008, 750092, 750542, 750595, 751038, 751107,
2607751276, 751451, 751916, 751941, 751956, 751998, 752671, 753451,
2608753602, 753617, 753845, 753925, 754014, 754340, 754447, 755031,
2609755087, 755147, 755245, 755683, 755987, 756032, 756996, 757058,
2610757229, 757818, 757821, 757822, 758112, 758910, 759227, 759889,
2611760257, 760703, 760792, 761104, 761337, 761519, 761830, 762455
2612
2613
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002614What's New in Python 2.3 beta 1?
2615================================
2616
Guido van Rossumfa1eddf2003-04-25 19:19:52 +00002617*Release date: 25-Apr-2003*
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002618
2619Core and builtins
2620-----------------
2621
Thomas Heller5eccabc2003-04-23 19:35:25 +00002622- New format codes B, H, I, k and K have been implemented for
2623 PyArg_ParseTuple and PyBuild_Value.
2624
Alex Martellia70b1912003-04-22 08:12:33 +00002625- New builtin function sum(seq, start=0) returns the sum of all the
2626 items in iterable object seq, plus start (items are normally numbers,
2627 and cannot be strings).
2628
Guido van Rossumaa86e352003-04-19 18:15:10 +00002629- bool() called without arguments now returns False rather than
2630 raising an exception. This is consistent with calling the
2631 constructors for the other builtin types -- called without argument
2632 they all return the false value of that type. (SF patch #724135)
2633
Guido van Rossumcf8d2852003-04-17 16:53:26 +00002634- In support of PEP 269 (making the pgen parser generator accessible
2635 from Python), some changes to the pgen code structure were made; a
2636 few files that used to be linked only with pgen are now linked with
2637 Python itself.
2638
Guido van Rossumc1f6e8c2003-04-16 21:13:23 +00002639- The repr() of a weakref object now shows the __name__ attribute of
2640 the referenced object, if it has one.
2641
Guido van Rossum76ba09f2003-04-16 19:40:58 +00002642- super() no longer ignores data descriptors, except __class__. See
2643 the thread started at
2644 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-April/034338.html
2645
Guido van Rossum3a3cca52003-04-14 20:58:14 +00002646- list.insert(i, x) now interprets negative i as it would be
2647 interpreted by slicing, so negative values count from the end of the
2648 list. This was the only place where such an interpretation was not
2649 placed on a list index.
2650
Guido van Rossumefbbb1c2003-04-11 18:43:06 +00002651- range() now works even if the arguments are longs with magnitude
2652 larger than sys.maxint, as long as the total length of the sequence
2653 fits. E.g., range(2**100, 2**101, 2**100) is the following list:
2654 [1267650600228229401496703205376L]. (SF patch #707427.)
2655
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002656- Some horridly obscure problems were fixed involving interaction
2657 between garbage collection and old-style classes with "ambitious"
2658 getattr hooks. If an old-style instance didn't have a __del__ method,
2659 but did have a __getattr__ hook, and the instance became reachable
2660 only from an unreachable cycle, and the hook resurrected or deleted
2661 unreachable objects when asked to resolve "__del__", anything up to
2662 a segfault could happen. That's been repaired.
2663
Raymond Hettingera3e1e4c2003-03-06 23:54:28 +00002664- dict.pop now takes an optional argument specifying a default
2665 value to return if the key is not in the dict. If a default is not
2666 given and the key is not found, a KeyError will still be raised.
2667 Parallel changes were made to UserDict.UserDict and UserDict.DictMixin.
2668 [SF patch #693753] (contributed by Michael Stone.)
2669
Martin v. Löwis73d538b2003-03-05 15:13:47 +00002670- sys.getfilesystemencoding() was added to expose
2671 Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding.
Guido van Rossum46d3dc32003-03-01 03:20:41 +00002672
2673- New function sys.exc_clear() clears the current exception. This is
2674 rarely needed, but can sometimes be useful to release objects
2675 referenced by the traceback held in sys.exc_info()[2]. (SF patch
2676 #693195.)
2677
Neal Norwitzd5a65a72003-02-23 23:11:41 +00002678- On 64-bit systems, a dictionary could contain duplicate long/int keys
2679 if the key value was larger than 2**32. See SF bug #689659.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002680
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002681- Fixed SF bug #663074. The codec system was using global static
Walter Dörwaldfa86bf52003-03-31 16:15:13 +00002682 variables to store internal data. As a result, any attempts to use the
Gustavo Niemeyer5ddd4c32003-03-19 00:35:36 +00002683 unicode system with multiple active interpreters, or successive
2684 interpreter executions, would fail.
2685
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002686- "%c" % u"a" now returns a unicode string instead of raising a
Walter Dörwald44f527f2003-04-02 16:37:24 +00002687 TypeError. u"%c" % 0xffffffff now raises a OverflowError instead
Walter Dörwald1e469c52003-04-02 16:57:59 +00002688 of a ValueError to be consistent with "%c" % 256. See SF patch #710127.
Walter Dörwald43440a62003-03-31 18:07:50 +00002689
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002690Extension modules
2691-----------------
2692
Guido van Rossume7adda92003-04-25 05:52:37 +00002693- The socket module now provides the functions inet_pton and inet_ntop
2694 for converting between string and packed representation of IP
2695 addresses. There is also a new module variable, has_ipv6, which is
2696 True iff the current Python has IPv6 support. See SF patch #658327.
2697
Martin v. Löwisbfe175c2003-04-16 19:42:51 +00002698- Tkinter wrappers around Tcl variables now pass objects directly
2699 to Tcl, instead of first converting them to strings.
2700
Guido van Rossum41c99e72003-04-14 17:59:34 +00002701- The .*? pattern in the re module is now special-cased to avoid the
2702 recursion limit. (SF patch #720991 -- many thanks to Gary Herron
2703 and Greg Chapman.)
2704
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002705- New function sys.call_tracing() allows pdb to debug code
2706 recursively.
2707
Tim Peters730f5532003-04-08 17:17:17 +00002708- New function gc.get_referents(obj) returns a list of objects
Tim Peters0f81ab62003-04-08 16:39:48 +00002709 directly referenced by obj. In effect, it exposes what the object's
2710 tp_traverse slot does, and can be helpful when debugging memory
2711 leaks.
2712
Martin v. Löwis7fb697b2003-04-03 04:49:12 +00002713- The iconv module has been removed from this release.
2714
Tim Petersd50ade62003-03-20 18:32:13 +00002715- The platform-independent routines for packing floats in IEEE formats
2716 (struct.pack's <f, >f, <d, and >d codes; pickle and cPickle's protocol 1
2717 pickling of floats) ignored that rounding can cause a carry to
2718 propagate. The worst consequence was that, in rare cases, <f and >f
2719 could produce strings that, when unpacked again, were a factor of 2
2720 away from the original float. This has been fixed. See SF bug
2721 #705836.
2722
Andrew M. Kuchling6c733d32003-07-16 20:11:34 +00002723- New function time.tzset() provides access to the C library tzset()
Guido van Rossumd11b62e2003-03-14 21:51:36 +00002724 function, if supported. (SF patch #675422.)
2725
Neal Norwitz12e22172003-03-03 21:16:39 +00002726- Using createfilehandler, deletefilehandler, createtimerhandler functions
2727 on Tkinter.tkinter (_tkinter module) no longer crashes the interpreter.
2728 See SF bug #692416.
2729
Michael W. Hudsonf0089982003-03-03 12:29:42 +00002730- Modified the fcntl.ioctl() function to allow modification of a passed
2731 mutable buffer (for details see the reference documentation).
2732
Raymond Hettinger61fe64d2003-02-23 04:40:07 +00002733- Made user requested changes to the itertools module.
2734 Subsumed the times() function into repeat().
2735 Added chain() and cycle().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002736
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002737- The rotor module is now deprecated; the encryption algorithm it uses
Andrew M. Kuchlingfb5f4852003-04-24 13:19:56 +00002738 is not believed to be secure, and including crypto code with Python
2739 has implications for exporting and importing it in various countries.
2740
Skip Montanaro89feabc2003-03-30 04:54:24 +00002741- The socket module now always uses the _socketobject wrapper class, even on
2742 platforms which have dup(2). The makefile() method is built directly
2743 on top of the socket without duplicating the file descriptor, allowing
2744 timeouts to work properly.
2745
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002746Library
2747-------
2748
Tim Petersc4e09402003-04-25 07:11:48 +00002749- New generator function os.walk() is an easy-to-use alternative to
2750 os.path.walk(). See os module docs for details. os.path.walk()
2751 isn't deprecated at this time, but may become deprecated in a
2752 future release.
2753
Marc-André Lemburg246d8472003-04-24 11:36:11 +00002754- Added new module "platform" which provides a wide range of tools
2755 for querying platform dependent features.
2756
Andrew M. Kuchling4e42b312003-04-24 16:45:05 +00002757- netrc now allows ASCII punctuation characters in passwords.
Raymond Hettinger1d877862003-04-23 19:06:08 +00002758
Martin v. Löwis153c9e42003-04-19 20:59:03 +00002759- shelve now supports the optional writeback argument, and exposes
2760 pickle protocol versions.
2761
Guido van Rossuma2685402003-04-19 18:04:57 +00002762- Several methods of nntplib.NNTP have grown an optional file argument
2763 which specifies a file where to divert the command's output
2764 (already supported by the body() method). (SF patch #720468)
2765
Martin v. Löwis281b2c62003-04-18 21:04:39 +00002766- The self-documenting XML server library DocXMLRPCServer was added.
2767
Martin v. Löwis2548c732003-04-18 10:39:54 +00002768- Support for internationalized domain names has been added through
2769 the 'idna' and 'punycode' encodings, the 'stringprep' module, the
2770 'mkstringprep' tool, and enhancements to the socket and httplib
2771 modules.
2772
Walter Dörwald5688b7a2003-04-16 09:46:13 +00002773- htmlentitydefs has two new dictionaries: name2codepoint maps
2774 HTML entity names to Unicode codepoints (as integers).
2775 codepoint2name is the reverse mapping. See SF patch #722017.
2776
Guido van Rossuma12fe4e2003-04-09 19:06:21 +00002777- pdb has a new command, "debug", which lets you step through
2778 arbitrary code from the debugger's (pdb) prompt.
2779
Raymond Hettingerc377cbf2003-04-04 22:56:42 +00002780- unittest.failUnlessEqual and its equivalent unittest.assertEqual now
2781 return 'not a == b' rather than 'a != b'. This gives the desired
2782 result for classes that define __eq__ without defining __ne__.
2783
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002784- sgmllib now supports SGML marked sections, in particular the
Martin v. Löwis3163a3b2003-03-30 14:25:40 +00002785 MS Office extensions.
2786
Raymond Hettinger42182eb2003-03-09 05:33:33 +00002787- The urllib module now offers support for the iterator protocol.
2788 SF patch 698520 contributed by Brett Cannon.
2789
Guido van Rossum9589a252003-03-06 01:56:12 +00002790- New module timeit provides a simple framework for timing the
2791 execution speed of expressions and statements.
2792
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002793- sets.Set objects now support mixed-type __eq__ and __ne__, instead
2794 of raising TypeError. If x is a Set object and y is a non-Set object,
2795 x == y is False, and x != y is True. This is akin to the change made
2796 for mixed-type comparisons of datetime objects in 2.3a2; more info
2797 about the rationale is in the NEWS entry for that. See also SF bug
2798 report <http://www.python.org/sf/693121>.
2799
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002800- On Unix platforms, if os.listdir() is called with a Unicode argument,
2801 it now returns Unicode strings. (This behavior was added earlier
2802 to the Windows NT/2k/XP version of os.listdir().)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002803
Andrew M. Kuchling6f177d42003-02-28 22:09:33 +00002804- Distutils: both 'py_modules' and 'packages' keywords can now be specified
2805 in core.setup(). Previously you could supply one or the other, but
2806 not both of them. (SF patch #695090 from Bernhard Herzog)
2807
Skip Montanaro64a839e2003-03-20 23:36:55 +00002808- New csv package makes it easy to read/write CSV files.
2809
Gustavo Niemeyer68d8cef2003-04-17 21:31:33 +00002810- Module shlex has been extended to allow posix-like shell parsings,
2811 including a split() function for easy spliting of quoted strings and
2812 commands. An iterator interface was also implemented.
2813
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002814Tools/Demos
2815-----------
2816
Tim Peters21d7d4d2003-04-18 00:45:59 +00002817- New script combinerefs.py helps analyze new PYTHONDUMPREFS output.
2818 See the module docstring for details.
2819
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002820Build
2821-----
2822
Neal Norwitz35892b92003-02-23 23:45:35 +00002823- Fix problem building on OSF1 because the compiler only accepted
2824 preprocessor directives that start in column 1. (SF bug #691793.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002825
2826C API
2827-----
2828
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002829- Added PyGC_Collect(), equivalent to calling gc.collect().
2830
Guido van Rossum0fc8f002003-04-15 15:12:39 +00002831- PyThreadState_GetDict() was changed not to raise an exception or
2832 issue a fatal error when no current thread state is available. This
2833 makes it possible to print dictionaries when no thread is active.
2834
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002835- LONG_LONG was renamed to PY_LONG_LONG. Extensions that use this and
2836 need compatibility with previous versions can use this:
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002837
Guido van Rossume13ddc92003-04-17 17:29:22 +00002838 #ifndef PY_LONG_LONG
2839 #define PY_LONG_LONG LONG_LONG
2840 #endif
Martin v. Löwisb9a0f912003-03-29 10:06:18 +00002841
Raymond Hettinger1da1dbf2003-03-17 19:46:11 +00002842- Added PyObject_SelfIter() to fill the tp_iter slot for the
Raymond Hettinger01538262003-03-17 08:24:35 +00002843 typical case where the method returns its self argument.
2844
Guido van Rossume5c691a2003-03-07 15:13:17 +00002845- The extended type structure used for heap types (new-style
2846 classes defined by Python code using a class statement) is now
2847 exported from object.h as PyHeapTypeObject. (SF patch #696193.)
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002848
2849New platforms
2850-------------
2851
Guido van Rossumecf0f022003-04-26 00:21:31 +00002852None this time.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002853
2854Tests
2855-----
2856
Neal Norwitz55b61d22003-02-28 19:57:03 +00002857- test_timeout now requires -u network to be passed to regrtest to run.
2858 See SF bug #692988.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002859
2860Windows
2861-------
2862
Tim Peters11b23062003-04-23 02:39:17 +00002863- os.fsync() now exists on Windows, and calls the Microsoft _commit()
2864 function.
2865
Guido van Rossumf4050642003-04-09 19:39:06 +00002866- New function winsound.MessageBeep() wraps the Win32 API
2867 MessageBeep().
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002868
2869Mac
2870---
2871
Just van Rossum96b1c902003-03-03 17:32:15 +00002872- os.listdir() now returns Unicode strings on MacOS X when called with
2873 a Unicode argument. See the general news item under "Library".
Just van Rossum46c97842003-02-25 21:42:15 +00002874
Jack Jansendeac2ac2003-02-24 11:04:17 +00002875- A new method MacOS.WMAvailable() returns true if it is safe to access
2876 the window manager, false otherwise.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00002877
Jack Jansencf76be02003-03-24 12:13:54 +00002878- EasyDialogs dialogs are now movable-modal, and if the application is
2879 currently in the background they will ask to be moved to the foreground
2880 before displaying.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002881
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002882- OSA Scripting support has improved a lot, and gensuitemodule.py can now
Jack Jansende354b72003-04-11 15:37:20 +00002883 be used by mere mortals. The documentation is now also more or less
2884 complete.
Tim Petersf6b80452003-04-07 19:21:15 +00002885
Jack Jansena02b7a82003-04-01 22:33:37 +00002886- The IDE (in a framework build) now includes introductory documentation
2887 in Apple Help Viewer format.
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00002888
2889
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002890What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 2?
2891=================================
2892
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00002893*Release date: 19-Feb-2003*
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002894
2895Core and builtins
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002896-----------------
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002897
Walter Dörwald2ffec022003-02-19 16:34:11 +00002898- Negative positions returned from PEP 293 error callbacks are now
2899 treated as being relative to the end of the input string. Positions
2900 that are out of bounds raise an IndexError.
2901
Guido van Rossum162e38c2003-02-19 15:25:10 +00002902- sys.path[0] (the directory from which the script is loaded) is now
2903 turned into an absolute pathname, unless it is the empty string.
2904 (SF patch #664376.)
2905
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002906- Finally fixed the bug in compile() and exec where a string ending
2907 with an indented code block but no newline would raise SyntaxError.
2908 This would have been a four-line change in parsetok.c... Except
2909 codeop.py depends on this behavior, so a compilation flag had to be
2910 invented that causes the tokenizer to revert to the old behavior;
2911 this required extra changes to 2 .h files, 2 .c files, and 2 .py
Guido van Rossum1442dc12003-02-13 22:19:20 +00002912 files. (Fixes SF bug #501622.)
Guido van Rossum4b499dd32003-02-13 22:07:59 +00002913
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002914- If a new-style class defines neither __new__ nor __init__, its
2915 constructor would ignore all arguments. This is changed now: the
2916 constructor refuses arguments in this case. This might break code
2917 that worked under Python 2.2. The simplest fix is to add a no-op
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00002918 __init__: ``def __init__(self, *args, **kw): pass``.
Guido van Rossum298e4212003-02-13 16:30:16 +00002919
Guido van Rossum48035eb2003-02-12 17:05:26 +00002920- Through a bytecode optimizer bug (and I bet you didn't even know
2921 Python *had* a bytecode optimizer :-), "unsigned" hex/oct constants
2922 with a leading minus sign would come out with the wrong sign.
2923 ("Unsigned" hex/oct constants are those with a face value in the
2924 range sys.maxint+1 through sys.maxint*2+1, inclusive; these have
2925 always been interpreted as negative numbers through sign folding.)
2926 E.g. 0xffffffff is -1, and -(0xffffffff) is 1, but -0xffffffff would
2927 come out as -4294967295. This was the case in Python 2.2 through
2928 2.2.2 and 2.3a1, and in Python 2.4 it will once again have that
2929 value, but according to PEP 237 it really needs to be 1 now. This
2930 will be backported to Python 2.2.3 a well. (SF #660455)
2931
Guido van Rossum47710652003-02-12 20:48:22 +00002932- int(s, base) sometimes sign-folds hex and oct constants; it only
2933 does this when base is 0 and s.strip() starts with a '0'. When the
2934 sign is actually folded, as in int("0xffffffff", 0) on a 32-bit
2935 machine, which returns -1, a FutureWarning is now issued; in Python
2936 2.4, this will return 4294967295L, as do int("+0xffffffff", 0) and
2937 int("0xffffffff", 16) right now. (PEP 347)
2938
Guido van Rossuma89d10e2003-02-12 03:58:38 +00002939- super(X, x): x may now be a proxy for an X instance, i.e.
2940 issubclass(x.__class__, X) but not issubclass(type(x), X).
2941
Guido van Rossum03bc7d32003-02-12 03:32:58 +00002942- isinstance(x, X): if X is a new-style class, this is now equivalent
2943 to issubclass(type(x), X) or issubclass(x.__class__, X). Previously
2944 only type(x) was tested. (For classic classes this was already the
2945 case.)
2946
Just van Rossum73ffb4a2003-02-10 09:57:08 +00002947- compile(), eval() and the exec statement now fully support source code
2948 passed as unicode strings.
2949
Neal Norwitzde8b94c2003-02-10 02:12:43 +00002950- int subclasses can be initialized with longs if the value fits in an int.
2951 See SF bug #683467.
2952
Tim Petersbf2674b2003-02-02 07:51:32 +00002953- long(string, base) takes time linear in len(string) when base is a power
2954 of 2 now. It used to take time quadratic in len(string).
2955
Martin v. Löwis8afd7572003-01-25 22:46:11 +00002956- filter returns now Unicode results for Unicode arguments.
2957
Martin v. Löwisaf6a27a2003-01-03 19:16:14 +00002958- raw_input can now return Unicode objects.
2959
Skip Montanaro4abd5f02003-01-02 20:51:08 +00002960- List objects' sort() method now accepts None as the comparison function.
2961 Passing None is semantically identical to calling sort() with no
2962 arguments.
2963
Neal Norwitz1a997502003-01-13 20:13:12 +00002964- Fixed crash when printing a subclass of str and __str__ returned self.
2965 See SF bug #667147.
2966
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002967- Fixed an invalid RuntimeWarning and an undetected error when trying
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00002968 to convert a long integer into a float which couldn't fit.
Neal Norwitzabcb0c02003-01-28 19:21:24 +00002969 See SF bug #676155.
2970
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002971- Function objects now have a __module__ attribute that is bound to
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002972 the name of the module in which the function was defined. This
Guido van Rossum26507db2003-02-06 16:16:50 +00002973 applies for C functions and methods as well as functions and methods
2974 defined in Python. This attribute is used by pickle.whichmodule(),
2975 which changes the behavior of whichmodule slightly. In Python 2.2
2976 whichmodule() returns "__main__" for functions that are not defined
2977 at the top-level of a module (examples: methods, nested functions).
2978 Now whichmodule() will return the proper module name.
Jeremy Hylton0253d6e2003-02-06 16:00:15 +00002979
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00002980Extension modules
2981-----------------
2982
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00002983- operator.isNumberType() now checks that the object has a nb_int or
2984 nb_float slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
2985 tp_as_number pointer.
2986
Guido van Rossumc4f4ca92003-02-12 21:46:11 +00002987- The imp module now has ways to acquire and release the "import
2988 lock": imp.acquire_lock() and imp.release_lock(). Note: this is a
2989 reentrant lock, so releasing the lock only truly releases it when
2990 this is the last release_lock() call. You can check with
2991 imp.lock_held(). (SF bug #580952 and patch #683257.)
2992
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00002993- Change to cPickle to match pickle.py (see below and PEP 307).
2994
Neal Norwitz9caf9c02003-02-10 01:54:06 +00002995- Fix some bugs in the parser module. SF bug #678518.
2996
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002997- Thanks to Scott David Daniels, a subtle bug in how the zlib
Walter Dörwald28d81962003-02-03 20:53:14 +00002998 extension implemented flush() was fixed. Scott also rewrote the
Guido van Rossum7d9ea502003-02-03 20:45:52 +00002999 zlib test suite using the unittest module. (SF bug #640230 and
3000 patch #678531.)
3001
Raymond Hettinger96ef8112003-02-01 00:10:11 +00003002- Added an itertools module containing high speed, memory efficient
3003 looping constructs inspired by tools from Haskell and SML.
3004
Guido van Rossum99d4abf2003-01-27 22:22:50 +00003005- The SSL module now handles sockets with a timeout set correctly (SF
3006 patch #675750, fixing SF bug #675552).
3007
Barry Warsawf8ba39c2003-01-07 20:55:26 +00003008- os/posixmodule has grown the sysexits.h constants (EX_OK and friends).
3009
Guido van Rossum6d0d3652003-01-07 20:34:19 +00003010- Fixed broken threadstate swap in readline that could cause fatal
3011 errors when a readline hook was being invoked while a background
3012 thread was active. (SF bugs #660476 and #513033.)
3013
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003014- fcntl now exposes the strops.h I_* constants.
3015
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003016- Fix a crash on Solaris that occurred when calling close() on
3017 an mmap'ed file which was already closed. (SF patch #665913)
3018
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003019- Fixed several serious bugs in the zipimport implementation.
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003020
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003021- datetime changes:
3022
Guido van Rossum8b7a9a32003-04-14 22:01:58 +00003023 The date class is now properly subclassable. (SF bug #720908)
3024
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00003025 The datetime and datetimetz classes have been collapsed into a single
3026 datetime class, and likewise the time and timetz classes into a single
3027 time class. Previously, a datetimetz object with tzinfo=None acted
3028 exactly like a datetime object, and similarly for timetz. This wasn't
3029 enough of a difference to justify distinct classes, and life is simpler
3030 now.
3031
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003032 today() and now() now round system timestamps to the closest
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003033 microsecond <http://www.python.org/sf/661086>. This repairs an
3034 irritation most likely seen on Windows systems.
Tim Peters01231392003-01-02 19:10:19 +00003035
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003036 In dt.astimezone(tz), if tz.utcoffset(dt) returns a duration,
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003037 ValueError is raised if tz.dst(dt) returns None (2.3a1 treated it
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003038 as 0 instead, but a tzinfo subclass wishing to participate in
3039 time zone conversion has to take a stand on whether it supports
3040 DST; if you don't care about DST, then code dst() to return 0 minutes,
3041 meaning that DST is never in effect).
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003042
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003043 The tzinfo methods utcoffset() and dst() must return a timedelta object
3044 (or None) now. In 2.3a1 they could also return an int or long, but that
3045 was an unhelpfully redundant leftover from an earlier version wherein
Tim Peters397301e2003-01-02 21:28:08 +00003046 they couldn't return a timedelta. TOOWTDI.
3047
Tim Peters77023042003-01-03 22:35:24 +00003048 The example tzinfo class for local time had a bug. It was replaced
3049 by a later example coded by Guido.
3050
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003051 datetime.astimezone(tz) no longer raises an exception when the
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003052 input datetime has no UTC equivalent in tz. For typical "hybrid" time
3053 zones (a single tzinfo subclass modeling both standard and daylight
3054 time), this case can arise one hour per year, at the hour daylight time
Tim Petersf196a0a2003-01-22 04:45:50 +00003055 ends. See new docs for details. In short, the new behavior mimics
3056 the local wall clock's behavior of repeating an hour in local time.
3057
3058 dt.astimezone() can no longer be used to convert between naive and aware
3059 datetime objects. If you merely want to attach, or remove, a tzinfo
3060 object, without any conversion of date and time members, use
3061 dt.replace(tzinfo=whatever) instead, where "whatever" is None or a
3062 tzinfo subclass instance.
3063
3064 A new method tzinfo.fromutc(dt) can be overridden in tzinfo subclasses
3065 to give complete control over how a UTC time is to be converted to
3066 a local time. The default astimezone() implementation calls fromutc()
3067 as its last step, so a tzinfo subclass can affect that too by overriding
3068 fromutc(). It's expected that the default fromutc() implementation will
3069 be suitable as-is for "almost all" time zone subclasses, but the
3070 creativity of political time zone fiddling appears unbounded -- fromutc()
3071 allows the highly motivated to emulate any scheme expressible in Python.
Tim Petersadf64202003-01-04 06:03:15 +00003072
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003073 datetime.now(): The optional tzinfo argument was undocumented (that's
3074 repaired), and its name was changed to tz ("tzinfo" is overloaded enough
3075 already). With a tz argument, now(tz) used to return the local date
3076 and time, and attach tz to it, without any conversion of date and time
3077 members. This was less than useful. Now now(tz) returns the current
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003078 date and time as local time in tz's time zone, akin to ::
3079
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003080 tz.fromutc(datetime.utcnow().replace(tzinfo=utc))
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003081
Tim Peters10cadce2003-01-23 19:58:02 +00003082 where "utc" is an instance of a tzinfo subclass modeling UTC. Without
3083 a tz argument, now() continues to return the current local date and time,
3084 as a naive datetime object.
3085
Tim Peters2a44a8d2003-01-23 20:53:10 +00003086 datetime.fromtimestamp(): Like datetime.now() above, this had less than
3087 useful behavior when the optional tinzo argument was specified. See
3088 also SF bug report <http://www.python.org/sf/660872>.
3089
Tim Peters8d81a012003-01-24 22:36:34 +00003090 date and datetime comparison: In order to prevent comparison from
3091 falling back to the default compare-object-addresses strategy, these
3092 raised TypeError whenever they didn't understand the other object type.
3093 They still do, except when the other object has a "timetuple" attribute,
3094 in which case they return NotImplemented now. This gives other
3095 datetime objects (e.g., mxDateTime) a chance to intercept the
3096 comparison.
3097
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003098 date, time, datetime and timedelta comparison: When the exception
3099 for mixed-type comparisons in the last paragraph doesn't apply, if
3100 the comparison is == then False is returned, and if the comparison is
3101 != then True is returned. Because dict lookup and the "in" operator
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003102 only invoke __eq__, this allows, for example, ::
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003103
3104 if some_datetime in some_sequence:
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003105
3106 and ::
3107
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003108 some_dict[some_timedelta] = whatever
3109
3110 to work as expected, without raising TypeError just because the
3111 sequence is heterogeneous, or the dict has mixed-type keys. [This
3112 seems like a good idea to implement for all mixed-type comparisons
3113 that don't want to allow falling back to address comparison.]
3114
Tim Peters75a6e3b2003-01-04 18:17:36 +00003115 The constructors building a datetime from a timestamp could raise
3116 ValueError if the platform C localtime()/gmtime() inserted "leap
3117 seconds". Leap seconds are ignored now. On such platforms, it's
3118 possible to have timestamps that differ by a second, yet where
3119 datetimes constructed from them are equal.
3120
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003121 The pickle format of date, time and datetime objects has changed
3122 completely. The undocumented pickler and unpickler functions no
Tim Petersb57f8f02003-02-01 02:54:15 +00003123 longer exist. The undocumented __setstate__() and __getstate__()
3124 methods no longer exist either.
Tim Peters506be282003-01-31 22:27:17 +00003125
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003126Library
3127-------
3128
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003129- The logging module was updated slightly; the WARN level was renamed
3130 to WARNING, and the matching function/method warn() to warning().
3131
3132- The pickle and cPickle modules were updated with a new pickling
3133 protocol (documented by pickletools.py, see below) and several
3134 extensions to the pickle customization API (__reduce__, __setstate__
3135 etc.). The copy module now uses more of the pickle customization
3136 API to copy objects that don't implement __copy__ or __deepcopy__.
3137 See PEP 307 for details.
3138
3139- The distutils "register" command now uses http://www.python.org/pypi
3140 as the default repository. (See PEP 301.)
3141
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003142- the platform dependent path related variables sep, altsep, extsep,
3143 pathsep, curdir, pardir and defpath are now defined in the platform
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003144 dependent path modules (e.g. ntpath.py) rather than os.py, so these
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003145 variables are now available via os.path. They continue to be
3146 available from the os module.
Michael W. Hudson9e5d87f2003-02-17 12:26:23 +00003147 (see <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
Andrew MacIntyre251b8162003-02-17 09:20:23 +00003148
Tim Peters6ee04802003-02-05 18:29:34 +00003149- array.array was added to the types repr.py knows about (see
3150 <http://www.python.org/sf/680789>).
3151
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003152- The new pickletools.py contains lots of documentation about pickle
3153 internals, and supplies some helpers for working with pickles, such as
3154 a symbolic pickle disassembler.
3155
Skip Montanaro9a7c96a2003-01-22 18:17:25 +00003156- Xmlrpclib.py now supports the builtin boolean type.
3157
Martin v. Löwis0c6774d2003-01-15 11:51:06 +00003158- py_compile has a new 'doraise' flag and a new PyCompileError
3159 exception.
3160
Martin v. Löwisd69663d2003-01-15 11:37:23 +00003161- SimpleXMLRPCServer now supports CGI through the CGIXMLRPCRequestHandler
3162 class.
3163
Guido van Rossum50e92232003-01-14 16:45:04 +00003164- The sets module now raises TypeError in __cmp__, to clarify that
3165 sets are not intended to be three-way-compared; the comparison
3166 operators are overloaded as subset/superset tests.
3167
Guido van Rossumcd0c0472003-01-07 23:03:05 +00003168- Bastion.py and rexec.py are disabled. These modules are not safe in
3169 Python 2.2. or 2.3.
3170
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003171- realpath is now exported when doing ``from poxixpath import *``.
Neal Norwitzbb0246a2003-01-03 18:12:28 +00003172 It is also exported for ntpath, macpath, and os2emxpath.
3173 See SF bug #659228.
3174
Neal Norwitzb9ef4ae2003-01-05 23:19:43 +00003175- New module tarfile from Lars Gustäbel provides a comprehensive interface
3176 to tar archive files with transparent gzip and bzip2 compression.
3177 See SF patch #651082.
3178
Neal Norwitz4f442372003-01-06 06:51:36 +00003179- urlparse can now parse imap:// URLs. See SF feature request #618024.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003180
Neal Norwitze931ed52003-01-10 23:24:32 +00003181- Tkinter.Canvas.scan_dragto() provides an optional parameter to support
3182 the gain value which is passed to Tk. SF bug# 602259.
3183
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003184- Fix logging.handlers.SysLogHandler protocol when using UNIX domain sockets.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003185 See SF patch #642974.
Neal Norwitze4c40da2003-01-26 02:45:47 +00003186
Skip Montanaro12fe72e2003-02-25 17:46:20 +00003187- The dospath module was deleted. Use the ntpath module when manipulating
3188 DOS paths from other platforms.
3189
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003190Tools/Demos
3191-----------
3192
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003193- Two new scripts (db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py) were added to the
3194 Tools/scripts directory to facilitate conversion from the old bsddb module
3195 to the new one. While the user-visible API of the new module is
3196 compatible with the old one, it's likely that the version of the
3197 underlying database library has changed. To convert from the old library,
3198 run the db2pickle.py script using the old version of Python to convert it
3199 to a pickle file. After upgrading Python, run the pickle2db.py script
3200 using the new version of Python to reconstitute your database. For
3201 example:
3202
Skip Montanaro621f0552003-02-03 15:48:10 +00003203 % python2.2 db2pickle.py -h some.db > some.pickle
3204 % python2.3 pickle2db.py -h some.db.new < some.pickle
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003205
3206 Run the scripts without any args to get a usage message.
3207
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003208
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003209Build
3210-----
3211
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003212- The audio driver tests (test_ossaudiodev.py and
3213 test_linuxaudiodev.py) are no longer run by default. This is
3214 because they don't always work, depending on your hardware and
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003215 software. To run these tests, you must use an invocation like ::
3216
Guido van Rossum4507ec72003-02-14 19:29:22 +00003217 ./python Lib/test/regrtest.py -u audio test_ossaudiodev
3218
Skip Montanarodecc6a42003-01-01 20:07:49 +00003219- On systems which build using the configure script, compiler flags which
3220 used to be lumped together using the OPT flag have been split into two
3221 groups, OPT and BASECFLAGS. OPT is meant to carry just optimization- and
3222 debug-related flags like "-g" and "-O3". BASECFLAGS is meant to carry
3223 compiler flags that are required to get a clean compile. On some
3224 platforms (many Linux flavors in particular) BASECFLAGS will be empty by
3225 default. On others, such as Mac OS X and SCO, it will contain required
3226 flags. This change allows people building Python to override OPT without
3227 fear of clobbering compiler flags which are required to get a clean build.
3228
3229- On Darwin/Mac OS X platforms, /sw/lib and /sw/include are added to the
3230 relevant search lists in setup.py. This allows users building Python to
3231 take advantage of the many packages available from the fink project
3232 <http://fink.sf.net/>.
3233
3234- A new Makefile target, scriptsinstall, installs a number of useful scripts
3235 from the Tools/scripts directory.
3236
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003237C API
3238-----
3239
David Goodgerdd83cce2003-02-19 23:31:51 +00003240- PyEval_GetFrame() is now declared to return a ``PyFrameObject *``
3241 instead of a plain ``PyObject *``. (SF patch #686601.)
Guido van Rossum6297a7a2003-02-19 15:53:17 +00003242
Guido van Rossum6921eca2003-02-18 16:36:28 +00003243- PyNumber_Check() now checks that the object has a nb_int or nb_float
3244 slot, rather than simply checking whether it has a non-NULL
3245 tp_as_number pointer.
3246
Guido van Rossumeea47182003-02-11 20:39:59 +00003247- A C type that inherits from a base type that defines tp_as_buffer
3248 will now inherit the tp_as_buffer pointer if it doesn't define one.
3249 (SF #681367)
3250
Neil Schemenauer5042da62003-02-04 20:59:40 +00003251- The PyArg_Parse functions now issue a DeprecationWarning if a float
3252 argument is provided when an integer is specified (this affects the 'b',
3253 'B', 'h', 'H', 'i', and 'l' codes). Future versions of Python will
3254 raise a TypeError.
Neil Schemenauercd63e612003-01-24 22:15:53 +00003255
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003256Tests
3257-----
3258
Walter Dörwald11cfbd62003-03-26 16:03:16 +00003259- Several tests weren't being run from regrtest.py (test_timeout.py,
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003260 test_tarfile.py, test_netrc.py, test_multifile.py,
3261 test_importhooks.py and test_imp.py). Now they are. (Note to
3262 developers: please read Lib/test/README when creating a new test, to
3263 make sure to do it right! All tests need to use either unittest or
3264 pydoc.)
3265
3266- Added test_posix.py, a test suite for the posix module.
3267
3268- Added test_hexoct.py, a test suite for hex/oct constant folding.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003269
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003270Windows
3271-------
3272
Guido van Rossum22e2f732003-02-19 18:18:47 +00003273- The timeout code for socket connect() didn't work right; this has
3274 now been fixed. test_timeout.py should pass (at least most of the
3275 time).
3276
Thomas Hellerdda583d2003-01-31 20:45:41 +00003277- distutils' msvccompiler class now passes the preprocessor options to
3278 the resource compiler. See SF patch #669198.
3279
Tim Peters00640262003-01-24 15:31:31 +00003280- The bsddb module now ships with Sleepycat's 4.1.25.NC, the latest
3281 release without strong cryptography.
3282
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003283- sys.path[0], if it contains a directory name, is now always an
Guido van Rossuma0032902003-02-20 01:38:31 +00003284 absolute pathname. (SF patch #664376.)
Thomas Heller6c64fa72003-01-08 15:14:55 +00003285
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003286- The new logging package is now installed by the Windows installer. It
3287 wasn't in 2.3a1 due to oversight.
3288
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003289Mac
3290---
3291
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003292- There are new dialogs EasyDialogs.AskFileForOpen, AskFileForSave
3293 and AskFolder. The old macfs.StandardGetFile and friends are deprecated.
Tim Peters07534a62003-02-07 22:50:28 +00003294
Jack Jansenc9296362003-02-06 23:10:45 +00003295- Most of the standard library now uses pathnames or FSRefs in preference
3296 of FSSpecs, and use the underlying Carbon.File and Carbon.Folder modules
3297 in stead of macfs. macfs will probably be deprecated in the future.
Tim Peters8ecfc8e2003-01-27 18:51:48 +00003298
Jack Jansen1a1b6e42003-01-27 15:21:39 +00003299- Type Carbon.File.FSCatalogInfo and supporting methods have been implemented.
3300 This also makes macfs.FSSpec.SetDates() work again.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003301
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003302- There is a new module pimp, the package install manager for Python, and
3303 accompanying applet PackageManager. These allow you to easily download
3304 and install pretested extension packages either in source or binary
3305 form. Only in MacPython-OSX.
Tim Peters44f14b02003-03-02 00:19:49 +00003306
Jack Jansen9f70aab2003-02-16 23:00:53 +00003307- Applets are now built with bundlebuilder in MacPython-OSX, which should make
Jack Jansen5d44b342003-02-18 23:32:47 +00003308 them more robust and also provides a path towards BuildApplication. The
3309 downside of this change is that applets can no longer be run from the
3310 Terminal window, this will hopefully be fixed in the 2.3b1.
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003311
Martin v. Löwis14e73b12003-01-01 09:51:12 +00003312
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003313What's New in Python 2.3 alpha 1?
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003314=================================
3315
Guido van Rossumae548862002-12-31 15:47:36 +00003316*Release date: 31-Dec-2002*
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003317
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003318Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003319--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003320
Michael W. Hudson96bc3b42002-11-26 14:48:23 +00003321- One can now assign to __bases__ and __name__ of new-style classes.
3322
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003323- dict() now accepts keyword arguments so that dict(one=1, two=2)
3324 is the equivalent of {"one": 1, "two": 2}. Accordingly,
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003325 the existing (but undocumented) 'items' keyword argument has
Guido van Rossum8b1e74b2002-11-23 16:28:12 +00003326 been eliminated. This means that dict(items=someMapping) now has
Just van Rossuma797d812002-11-23 09:45:04 +00003327 a different meaning than before.
3328
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003329- int() now returns a long object if the argument is outside the
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00003330 integer range, so int("4" * 1000), int(1e200) and int(1L<<1000) will
Walter Dörwaldf1715402002-11-19 20:49:15 +00003331 all return long objects instead of raising an OverflowError.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003332
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003333- Assignment to __class__ is disallowed if either the old or the new
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003334 class is a statically allocated type object (such as defined by an
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003335 extension module). This prevents anomalies like 2.__class__ = bool.
Guido van Rossume3438782002-08-12 03:42:03 +00003336
3337- New-style object creation and deallocation have been sped up
3338 significantly; they are now faster than classic instance creation
3339 and deallocation.
3340
3341- The __slots__ variable can now mention "private" names, and the
3342 right thing will happen (e.g. __slots__ = ["__foo"]).
3343
3344- The built-ins slice() and buffer() are now callable types. The
3345 types classobj (formerly class), code, function, instance, and
3346 instancemethod (formerly instance-method), which have no built-in
3347 names but are accessible through the types module, are now also
3348 callable. The type dict-proxy is renamed to dictproxy.
3349
3350- Cycles going through the __class__ link of a new-style instance are
3351 now detected by the garbage collector.
3352
3353- Classes using __slots__ are now properly garbage collected.
3354 [SF bug 519621]
3355
3356- Tightened the __slots__ rules: a slot name must be a valid Python
3357 identifier.
3358
3359- The constructor for the module type now requires a name argument and
3360 takes an optional docstring argument. Previously, this constructor
3361 ignored its arguments. As a consequence, deriving a class from a
3362 module (not from the module type) is now illegal; previously this
3363 created an unnamed module, just like invoking the module type did.
3364 [SF bug 563060]
3365
3366- A new type object, 'basestring', is added. This is a common base type
3367 for 'str' and 'unicode', and can be used instead of
3368 types.StringTypes, e.g. to test whether something is "a string":
3369 isinstance(x, basestring) is True for Unicode and 8-bit strings. This
3370 is an abstract base class and cannot be instantiated directly.
3371
3372- Changed new-style class instantiation so that when C's __new__
3373 method returns something that's not a C instance, its __init__ is
3374 not called. [SF bug #537450]
3375
3376- Fixed super() to work correctly with class methods. [SF bug #535444]
3377
3378- If you try to pickle an instance of a class that has __slots__ but
3379 doesn't define or override __getstate__, a TypeError is now raised.
3380 This is done by adding a bozo __getstate__ to the class that always
3381 raises TypeError. (Before, this would appear to be pickled, but the
3382 state of the slots would be lost.)
3383
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003384Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003385-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003386
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003387- Import from zipfiles is now supported. The name of a zipfile placed
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003388 on sys.path causes the import statement to look for importable Python
3389 modules (with .py, pyc and .pyo extensions) and packages inside the
3390 zipfile. The zipfile import follows the specification (though not
3391 the sample implementation) of PEP 273. The semantics of __path__ are
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003392 compatible with those that have been implemented in Jython since
3393 Jython 2.1.
3394
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003395- PEP 302 has been accepted. Although it was initially developed to
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00003396 support zipimport, it offers a new, general import hook mechanism.
Just van Rossum01875eb2002-12-31 10:22:38 +00003397 Several new variables have been added to the sys module:
3398 sys.meta_path, sys.path_hooks, and sys.path_importer_cache; these
3399 make extending the import statement much more convenient than
3400 overriding the __import__ built-in function. For a description of
3401 these, see PEP 302.
3402
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003403- A frame object's f_lineno attribute can now be written to from a
3404 trace function to change which line will execute next. A command to
3405 exploit this from pdb has been added. [SF patch #643835]
3406
Marc-André Lemburg20b91352002-12-12 18:01:43 +00003407- The _codecs support module for codecs.py was turned into a builtin
3408 module to assure that at least the builtin codecs are available
3409 to the Python parser for source code decoding according to PEP 263.
3410
Walter Dörwaldd9a6ad32002-12-12 16:41:44 +00003411- issubclass now supports a tuple as the second argument, just like
3412 isinstance does. ``issubclass(X, (A, B))`` is equivalent to
3413 ``issubclass(X, A) or issubclass(X, B)``.
3414
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003415- Thanks to Armin Rigo, the last known way to provoke a system crash
3416 by cleverly arranging for a comparison function to mutate a list
3417 during a list.sort() operation has been fixed. The effect of
3418 attempting to mutate a list, or even to inspect its contents or
3419 length, while a sort is in progress, is not defined by the language.
3420 The C implementation of Python 2.3 attempts to detect mutations,
3421 and raise ValueError if one occurs, but there's no guarantee that
3422 all mutations will be caught, or that any will be caught across
3423 releases or implementations.
3424
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003425- Unicode file name processing for Windows (PEP 277) is implemented.
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003426 All platforms now have an os.path.supports_unicode_filenames attribute,
3427 which is set to True on Windows NT/2000/XP, and False elsewhere.
Martin v. Löwisa844f2d2002-10-05 09:46:48 +00003428
Walter Dörwald3aeb6322002-09-02 13:14:32 +00003429- Codec error handling callbacks (PEP 293) are implemented.
3430 Error handling in unicode.encode or str.decode can now be customized.
3431
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00003432- A subtle change to the semantics of the built-in function intern():
3433 interned strings are no longer immortal. You must keep a reference
3434 to the return value intern() around to get the benefit.
3435
Guido van Rossumf808b892002-08-16 03:38:10 +00003436- Use of 'None' as a variable, argument or attribute name now
3437 issues a SyntaxWarning. In the future, None may become a keyword.
3438
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003439- SET_LINENO is gone. co_lnotab is now consulted to determine when to
3440 call the trace function. C code that accessed f_lineno should call
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003441 PyCode_Addr2Line instead (f_lineno is still there, but only kept up
3442 to date when there is a trace function set).
Michael W. Hudsondd32a912002-08-15 14:59:02 +00003443
Guido van Rossum9be89462002-08-14 16:11:30 +00003444- There's a new warning category, FutureWarning. This is used to warn
3445 about a number of situations where the value or sign of an integer
3446 result will change in Python 2.4 as a result of PEP 237 (integer
3447 unification). The warnings implement stage B0 mentioned in that
3448 PEP. The warnings are about the following situations:
3449
3450 - Octal and hex literals without 'L' prefix in the inclusive range
3451 [0x80000000..0xffffffff]; these are currently negative ints, but
3452 in Python 2.4 they will be positive longs with the same bit
3453 pattern.
3454
3455 - Left shifts on integer values that cause the outcome to lose
3456 bits or have a different sign than the left operand. To be
3457 precise: x<<n where this currently doesn't yield the same value
3458 as long(x)<<n; in Python 2.4, the outcome will be long(x)<<n.
3459
3460 - Conversions from ints to string that show negative values as
3461 unsigned ints in the inclusive range [0x80000000..0xffffffff];
3462 this affects the functions hex() and oct(), and the string
3463 formatting codes %u, %o, %x, and %X. In Python 2.4, these will
3464 show signed values (e.g. hex(-1) currently returns "0xffffffff";
3465 in Python 2.4 it will return "-0x1").
3466
Guido van Rossum9a2eda52002-12-31 02:12:42 +00003467- The bits manipulated under the cover by sys.setcheckinterval() have
3468 been changed. Both the check interval and the ticker used to be
3469 per-thread values. They are now just a pair of global variables.
3470 In addition, the default check interval was boosted from 10 to 100
3471 bytecode instructions. This may have some effect on systems that
3472 relied on the old default value. In particular, in multi-threaded
3473 applications which try to be highly responsive, response time will
3474 increase by some (perhaps imperceptible) amount.
Skip Montanaro979c74b2002-09-03 21:25:14 +00003475
Tim Petersd64c1de2002-08-12 17:36:03 +00003476- When multiplying very large integers, a version of the so-called
3477 Karatsuba algorithm is now used. This is most effective if the
3478 inputs have roughly the same size. If they both have about N digits,
3479 Karatsuba multiplication has O(N**1.58) runtime (the exponent is
3480 log_base_2(3)) instead of the previous O(N**2). Measured results may
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003481 be better or worse than that, depending on platform quirks. Besides
3482 the O() improvement in raw instruction count, the Karatsuba algorithm
3483 appears to have much better cache behavior on extremely large integers
3484 (starting in the ballpark of a million bits). Note that this is a
3485 simple implementation, and there's no intent here to compete with,
3486 e.g., GMP. It gives a very nice speedup when it applies, but a package
3487 devoted to fast large-integer arithmetic should run circles around it.
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003488
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00003489- u'%c' will now raise a ValueError in case the argument is an
3490 integer outside the valid range of Unicode code point ordinals.
3491
Guido van Rossumdeb09362002-08-09 17:16:30 +00003492- The tempfile module has been overhauled for enhanced security. The
3493 mktemp() function is now deprecated; new, safe replacements are
3494 mkstemp() (for files) and mkdtemp() (for directories), and the
3495 higher-level functions NamedTemporaryFile() and TemporaryFile().
3496 Use of some global variables in this module is also deprecated; the
3497 new functions have keyword arguments to provide the same
3498 functionality. All Lib, Tools and Demo modules that used the unsafe
3499 interfaces have been updated to use the safe replacements. Thanks
3500 to Zack Weinberg!
3501
Guido van Rossumd81a9832002-08-09 15:57:34 +00003502- When x is an object whose class implements __mul__ and __rmul__,
3503 1.0*x would correctly invoke __rmul__, but 1*x would erroneously
3504 invoke __mul__. This was due to the sequence-repeat code in the int
3505 type. This has been fixed now.
3506
Barry Warsawd79f6832002-08-06 17:01:51 +00003507- Previously, "str1 in str2" required str1 to be a string of length 1.
3508 This restriction has been relaxed to allow str1 to be a string of
3509 any length. Thus "'el' in 'hello world'" returns True now.
3510
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003511- File objects are now their own iterators. For a file f, iter(f) now
3512 returns f (unless f is closed), and f.next() is similar to
3513 f.readline() when EOF is not reached; however, f.next() uses a
3514 readahead buffer that messes up the file position, so mixing
3515 f.next() and f.readline() (or other methods) doesn't work right.
3516 Calling f.seek() drops the readahead buffer, but other operations
3517 don't. It so happens that this gives a nice additional speed boost
3518 to "for line in file:"; the xreadlines method and corresponding
Guido van Rossumbffb2ef2002-08-09 17:17:07 +00003519 module are now obsolete. Thanks to Oren Tirosh!
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003520
Guido van Rossumde392d32002-08-05 14:17:20 +00003521- Encoding declarations (PEP 263, phase 1) have been implemented. A
3522 comment of the form "# -*- coding: <encodingname> -*-" in the first
3523 or second line of a Python source file indicates the encoding.
Martin v. Löwis00f1e3f2002-08-04 17:29:52 +00003524
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003525- list.sort() has a new implementation. While cross-platform results
3526 may vary, and in data-dependent ways, this is much faster on many
3527 kinds of partially ordered lists than the previous implementation,
3528 and reported to be just as fast on randomly ordered lists on
3529 several major platforms. This sort is also stable (if A==B and A
3530 precedes B in the list at the start, A precedes B after the sort too),
3531 although the language definition does not guarantee stability. A
3532 potential drawback is that list.sort() may require temp space of
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00003533 len(list)*2 bytes (``*4`` on a 64-bit machine). It's therefore possible
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00003534 for list.sort() to raise MemoryError now, even if a comparison function
3535 does not. See <http://www.python.org/sf/587076> for full details.
3536
Guido van Rossum2d5389c2002-07-23 03:44:35 +00003537- All standard iterators now ensure that, once StopIteration has been
3538 raised, all future calls to next() on the same iterator will also
3539 raise StopIteration. There used to be various counterexamples to
3540 this behavior, which could caused confusion or subtle program
3541 breakage, without any benefits. (Note that this is still an
3542 iterator's responsibility; the iterator framework does not enforce
3543 this.)
3544
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003545- Ctrl+C handling on Windows has been made more consistent with
3546 other platforms. KeyboardInterrupt can now reliably be caught,
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00003547 and Ctrl+C at an interactive prompt no longer terminates the
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003548 process under NT/2k/XP (it never did under Win9x). Ctrl+C will
Tim Peters5af4e6c2002-08-12 02:31:19 +00003549 interrupt time.sleep() in the main thread, and any child processes
3550 created via the popen family (on win2k; we can't make win9x work
Mark Hammond8f3afc72002-08-10 06:26:31 +00003551 reliably) are also interrupted (as generally happens on for Linux/Unix.)
3552 [SF bugs 231273, 439992 and 581232]
Mark Hammondc0e35152002-07-16 01:32:30 +00003553
Mark Hammond8696ebc2002-10-08 02:44:31 +00003554- sys.getwindowsversion() has been added on Windows. This
3555 returns a tuple with information about the version of Windows
3556 currently running.
3557
Raymond Hettinger5a04aec2002-06-25 00:25:30 +00003558- Slices and repetitions of buffer objects now consistently return
3559 a string. Formerly, strings would be returned most of the time,
3560 but a buffer object would be returned when the repetition count
3561 was one or when the slice range was all inclusive.
3562
Walter Dörwald3430d702002-06-17 10:43:59 +00003563- Unicode objects in sys.path are no longer ignored but treated
3564 as directory names.
3565
Neal Norwitz1f68fc72002-06-14 00:50:42 +00003566- Fixed string.startswith and string.endswith builtin methods
3567 so they accept negative indices. [SF bug 493951]
3568
Guido van Rossumc5fe5eb2002-06-12 03:45:21 +00003569- Fixed a bug with a continue inside a try block and a yield in the
3570 finally clause. [SF bug 567538]
3571
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003572- Most builtin sequences now support "extended slices", i.e. slices
Guido van Rossum2e82e712002-06-13 11:41:07 +00003573 with a third "stride" parameter. For example, "hello world"[::-1]
3574 gives "dlrow olleh".
Michael W. Hudson5efaf7e2002-06-11 10:55:12 +00003575
Neal Norwitzd68f5172002-05-29 15:54:55 +00003576- A new warning PendingDeprecationWarning was added to provide
3577 direction on features which are in the process of being deprecated.
3578 The warning will not be printed by default. To see the pending
3579 deprecations, use -Walways::PendingDeprecationWarning::
3580 as a command line option or warnings.filterwarnings() in code.
3581
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00003582- Deprecated features of xrange objects have been removed as
3583 promised. The start, stop, and step attributes and the tolist()
3584 method no longer exist. xrange repetition and slicing have been
3585 removed.
3586
Guido van Rossum7dab2422002-04-26 19:40:56 +00003587- New builtin function enumerate(x), from PEP 279. Example:
3588 enumerate("abc") is an iterator returning (0,"a"), (1,"b"), (2,"c").
3589 The argument can be an arbitrary iterable object.
3590
Neil Schemenauer89e3ee02002-04-26 01:58:53 +00003591- The assert statement no longer tests __debug__ at runtime. This means
3592 that assert statements cannot be disabled by assigning a false value
3593 to __debug__.
3594
Walter Dörwald068325e2002-04-15 13:36:47 +00003595- A method zfill() was added to str and unicode, that fills a numeric
3596 string to the left with zeros. For example,
3597 "+123".zfill(6) -> "+00123".
3598
Guido van Rossum862fe3c2002-04-15 12:36:47 +00003599- Complex numbers supported divmod() and the // and % operators, but
3600 these make no sense. Since this was documented, they're being
3601 deprecated now.
3602
Guido van Rossum26dd8302002-04-26 20:11:29 +00003603- String and unicode methods lstrip(), rstrip() and strip() now take
3604 an optional argument that specifies the characters to strip. For
3605 example, "Foo!!!?!?!?".rstrip("?!") -> "Foo".
Guido van Rossum49042042002-04-13 00:59:05 +00003606
Guido van Rossumc0d3f4e2002-11-27 13:10:40 +00003607- There's a new dictionary constructor (a class method of the dict
3608 class), dict.fromkeys(iterable, value=None). It constructs a
3609 dictionary with keys taken from the iterable and all values set to a
3610 single value. It can be used for building sets and for removing
3611 duplicates from sequences.
Raymond Hettingere33d3df2002-11-27 07:29:33 +00003612
Guido van Rossumc69343b2002-04-12 19:22:48 +00003613- Added a new dict method pop(key). This removes and returns the
3614 value corresponding to key. [SF patch #539949]
3615
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003616- A new built-in type, bool, has been added, as well as built-in
3617 names for its two values, True and False. Comparisons and sundry
3618 other operations that return a truth value have been changed to
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003619 return a bool instead. Read PEP 285 for an explanation of why this
Guido van Rossum47834462002-04-04 15:21:33 +00003620 is backward compatible.
3621
Guido van Rossum95b62a62002-03-29 01:07:24 +00003622- Fixed two bugs reported as SF #535905: under certain conditions,
3623 deallocating a deeply nested structure could cause a segfault in the
3624 garbage collector, due to interaction with the "trashcan" code;
3625 access to the current frame during destruction of a local variable
3626 could access a pointer to freed memory.
3627
Guido van Rossumfe0ca4a2002-06-18 21:20:13 +00003628- The optional object allocator ("pymalloc") has been enabled by
3629 default. The recommended practice for memory allocation and
3630 deallocation has been streamlined. A header file is included,
3631 Misc/pymemcompat.h, which can be bundled with 3rd party extensions
3632 and lets them use the same API with Python versions from 1.5.2
3633 onwards.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00003634
Martin v. Löwiscfeb3b62002-03-03 21:30:27 +00003635- PyErr_Display will provide file and line information for all exceptions
3636 that have an attribute print_file_and_line, not just SyntaxErrors.
3637
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00003638- The UTF-8 codec will now encode and decode Unicode surrogates
3639 correctly and without raising exceptions for unpaired ones.
3640
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00003641- Universal newlines (PEP 278) is implemented. Briefly, using 'U'
3642 instead of 'r' when opening a text file for reading changes the line
3643 ending convention so that any of '\r', '\r\n', and '\n' is
3644 recognized (even mixed in one file); all three are converted to
3645 '\n', the standard Python line end character.
3646
Neal Norwitz649b7592002-01-01 19:07:13 +00003647- file.xreadlines() now raises a ValueError if the file is closed:
3648 Previously, an xreadlines object was returned which would raise
3649 a ValueError when the xreadlines.next() method was called.
3650
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00003651- sys.exit() inadvertently allowed more than one argument.
Neal Norwitz0c766a02002-03-27 13:03:09 +00003652 An exception will now be raised if more than one argument is used.
3653
Gustavo Niemeyer17c5a332002-12-16 14:09:22 +00003654- Changed evaluation order of dictionary literals to conform to the
3655 general left to right evaluation order rule. Now {f1(): f2()} will
3656 evaluate f1 first.
Gustavo Niemeyer78429a62002-12-16 13:54:02 +00003657
Gustavo Niemeyer786ddb22002-12-16 18:12:53 +00003658- Fixed bug #521782: when a file was in non-blocking mode, file.read()
3659 could silently lose data or wrongly throw an unknown error.
3660
Neil Schemenauerb983aa02002-12-30 20:22:23 +00003661- The sq_repeat, sq_inplace_repeat, sq_concat and sq_inplace_concat
3662 slots are now always tried after trying the corresponding nb_* slots.
3663 This fixes a number of minor bugs (see bug #624807).
3664
Neal Norwitz74a032e2003-01-10 23:29:48 +00003665- Fix problem with dynamic loading on 64-bit AIX (see bug #639945).
3666
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003667Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003668-----------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003669
Raymond Hettinger9543b342003-01-18 23:22:20 +00003670- Added three operators to the operator module:
3671 operator.pow(a,b) which is equivalent to: a**b.
3672 operator.is_(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is b.
3673 operator.is_not(a,b) which is equivalent to: a is not b.
3674
Martin v. Löwis24a880b2002-12-31 12:55:15 +00003675- posix.openpty now works on all systems that have /dev/ptmx.
3676
Guido van Rossuma3b89532002-12-30 22:59:32 +00003677- A module zipimport exists to support importing code from zip
3678 archives.
3679
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00003680- The new datetime module supplies classes for manipulating dates and
3681 times. The basic design came from the Zope "fishbowl process", and
3682 favors practical commercial applications over calendar esoterica. See
3683
3684 http://www.zope.org/Members/fdrake/DateTimeWiki/FrontPage
3685
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003686- _tkinter now returns Tcl objects, instead of strings. Objects which
3687 have Python equivalents are converted to Python objects, other objects
3688 are wrapped. This can be configured through the wantobjects method,
Martin v. Löwis8c8aa5d2002-11-26 21:39:48 +00003689 or Tkinter.wantobjects.
Martin v. Löwisffad6332002-11-26 09:28:05 +00003690
Barry Warsawc27f4bd2002-12-30 21:03:26 +00003691- The PyBSDDB wrapper around the Sleepycat Berkeley DB library has
3692 been added as the package bsddb. The traditional bsddb module is
3693 still available in source code, but not built automatically anymore,
3694 and is now named bsddb185. This supports Berkeley DB versions from
Skip Montanaro13b29102003-02-03 15:17:25 +00003695 3.0 to 4.1. For help converting your databases from the old module (which
3696 probably used an obsolete version of Berkeley DB) to the new module, see
3697 the db2pickle.py and pickle2db.py scripts described in the Tools/Demos
3698 section above.
Martin v. Löwisef546b32002-11-19 08:12:57 +00003699
Martin v. Löwis677bde22002-11-23 22:08:15 +00003700- unicodedata was updated to Unicode 3.2. It supports normalization
3701 and names for Hangul syllables and CJK unified ideographs.
Martin v. Löwis7d41e292002-11-23 12:22:32 +00003702
Neal Norwitz94a83fd2002-11-02 17:46:24 +00003703- resource.getrlimit() now returns longs instead of ints.
3704
Martin v. Löwis080689c2002-10-26 14:42:02 +00003705- readline now dynamically adjusts its input/output stream if
3706 sys.stdin/stdout changes.
3707
Guido van Rossumba602972002-10-01 18:18:58 +00003708- The _tkinter module (and hence Tkinter) has dropped support for
3709 Tcl/Tk 8.0 and 8.1. Only Tcl/Tk versions 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4 are
3710 supported.
3711
Martin v. Löwis658009a2002-09-16 17:26:24 +00003712- cPickle.BadPickleGet is now a class.
3713
Martin v. Löwisa19bfe02002-10-16 18:28:36 +00003714- The time stamps in os.stat_result are floating point numbers
3715 after stat_float_times has been called.
Martin v. Löwis94717ed2002-09-09 14:24:16 +00003716
Neal Norwitzb5673922002-09-05 21:48:07 +00003717- If the size passed to mmap.mmap() is larger than the length of the
3718 file on non-Windows platforms, a ValueError is raised. [SF bug 585792]
3719
Guido van Rossumb57089c2002-08-06 16:20:26 +00003720- The xreadlines module is slated for obsolescence.
3721
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003722- The strptime function in the time module is now always available (a
3723 Python implementation is used when the C library doesn't define it).
3724
Guido van Rossum9562bcf2002-06-14 21:31:18 +00003725- The 'new' module is no longer an extension, but a Python module that
3726 only exists for backwards compatibility. Its contents are no longer
3727 functions but callable type objects.
3728
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003729- The bsddb.*open functions can now take 'None' as a filename.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003730 This will create a temporary in-memory bsddb that won't be
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003731 written to disk.
Anthony Baxter83888952002-04-23 02:11:05 +00003732
Martin v. Löwisb96152c2002-12-31 13:20:15 +00003733- posix.getloadavg, posix.lchown, posix.killpg, posix.mknod, and
3734 posix.getpgid have been added where available.
Martin v. Löwis06a83e92002-04-14 10:19:44 +00003735
Martin v. Löwisf0a46682002-11-03 17:20:12 +00003736- The locale module now exposes the C library's gettext interface. It
3737 also has a new function getpreferredencoding.
Martin v. Löwis2e64c342002-03-27 18:49:02 +00003738
Tim Petersfbf74f22002-03-14 19:06:01 +00003739- A security hole ("double free") was found in zlib-1.1.3, a popular
3740 third party compression library used by some Python modules. The
3741 hole was quickly plugged in zlib-1.1.4, and the Windows build of
3742 Python now ships with zlib-1.1.4.
3743
Martin v. Löwis688357e2002-04-08 21:28:20 +00003744- pwd, grp, and resource return enhanced tuples now, with symbolic
3745 field names.
Martin v. Löwis29001ff2002-03-01 10:47:37 +00003746
Martin v. Löwis99866332002-03-01 10:27:01 +00003747- array.array is now a type object. A new format character
3748 'u' indicates Py_UNICODE arrays. For those, .tounicode and
3749 .fromunicode methods are available. Arrays now support __iadd__
3750 and __imul__.
3751
Neal Norwitze790eae2002-01-01 21:14:12 +00003752- dl now builds on every system that has dlfcn.h. Failure in case
Martin v. Löwis93227272002-01-01 20:18:30 +00003753 of sizeof(int)!=sizeof(long)!=sizeof(void*) is delayed until dl.open
3754 is called.
3755
Skip Montanaro8e790e72002-09-03 13:25:17 +00003756- The sys module acquired a new attribute, api_version, which evaluates
3757 to the value of the PYTHON_API_VERSION macro with which the
3758 interpreter was compiled.
3759
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003760- Fixed bug #470582: sre module would return a tuple (None, 'a', 'ab')
3761 when applying the regular expression '^((a)c)?(ab)$' on 'ab'. It now
3762 returns (None, None, 'ab'), as expected. Also fixed handling of
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00003763 lastindex/lastgroup match attributes in similar cases. For example,
Gustavo Niemeyer4e7be062002-11-06 14:06:53 +00003764 when running the expression r'(a)(b)?b' over 'ab', lastindex must be
3765 1, not 2.
3766
Gustavo Niemeyerc523b042002-11-07 03:28:56 +00003767- Fixed bug #581080: sre scanner was not checking the buffer limit
3768 before increasing the current pointer. This was creating an infinite
3769 loop in the search function, once the pointer exceeded the buffer
3770 limit.
3771
Thomas Heller95cb7e42002-11-07 16:23:55 +00003772- The os.fdopen function now enforces a file mode starting with the
3773 letter 'r', 'w' or 'a', otherwise a ValueError is raised. This fixes
3774 bug #623464.
3775
Greg Ward6c58d462003-01-03 18:02:15 +00003776- The linuxaudiodev module is now deprecated; it is being replaced by
3777 ossaudiodev. The interface has been extended to cover a lot more of
3778 OSS (see www.opensound.com), including most DSP ioctls and the
3779 OSS mixer API. Documentation forthcoming in 2.3a2.
3780
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003781Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00003782-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00003783
Guido van Rossum747f8062003-01-03 16:33:49 +00003784- imaplib.py now supports SSL (Tino Lange and Piers Lauder).
3785
Just van Rossum5e156ad2002-12-31 16:38:01 +00003786- Freeze's modulefinder.py has been moved to the standard library;
3787 slightly improved so it will issue less false missing submodule
3788 reports (see sf path #643711 for details). Documentation will follow
3789 with Python 2.3a2.
3790
Martin v. Löwis96a60e42002-12-31 13:11:54 +00003791- os.path exposes getctime.
3792
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003793- unittest.py now has two additional methods called assertAlmostEqual()
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003794 and failIfAlmostEqual(). They implement an approximate comparison
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003795 by rounding the difference between the two arguments and comparing
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003796 the result to zero. Approximate comparison is essential for
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00003797 unit tests of floating point results.
3798
Raymond Hettingere11b5102002-12-25 16:37:19 +00003799- calendar.py now depends on the new datetime module rather than
3800 the time module. As a result, the range of allowable dates
3801 has been increased.
3802
Michael W. Hudsoncfd38842002-12-17 16:15:34 +00003803- pdb has a new 'j(ump)' command to select the next line to be
3804 executed.
3805
Thomas Heller1b3b49d2002-12-12 19:13:44 +00003806- The distutils created windows installers now can run a
3807 postinstallation script.
3808
Martin v. Löwis4581cfa2002-11-22 08:23:09 +00003809- doctest.testmod can now be called without argument, which means to
3810 test the current module.
3811
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00003812- When canceling a server that implemented threading with a keyboard
Martin v. Löwisf86e8ef2002-11-22 08:08:44 +00003813 interrupt, the server would shut down but not terminate (waiting on
3814 client threads). A new member variable, daemon_threads, was added to
3815 the ThreadingMixIn class in SocketServer.py to make it explicit that
3816 this behavior needs to be controlled.
3817
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003818- A new module, optparse, provides a fancy alternative to getopt for
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003819 command line parsing. It is a slightly modified version of Greg
Guido van Rossum545c2502002-11-15 13:19:58 +00003820 Ward's Optik package.
3821
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003822- UserDict.py now defines a DictMixin class which defines all dictionary
3823 methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface.
3824 This greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable
3825 for dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
3826
3827- shelve.py now subclasses from UserDict.DictMixin. Now shelve supports
3828 all dictionary methods. This eases the transition to persistent
Andrew M. Kuchlinge0373f82002-11-15 14:42:34 +00003829 storage for scripts originally written with dictionaries in mind.
Raymond Hettinger79947162002-11-15 06:46:14 +00003830
Skip Montanaro3bf99e32002-12-08 18:36:24 +00003831- shelve.open and the various classes in shelve.py now accept an optional
3832 binary flag, which defaults to False. If True, the values stored in the
3833 shelf are binary pickles.
3834
Guido van Rossumfda06742002-11-13 16:29:18 +00003835- A new package, logging, implements the logging API defined by PEP
3836 282. The code is written by Vinay Sajip.
3837
Walter Dörwald4dbf1922002-11-06 16:53:44 +00003838- StreamReader, StreamReaderWriter and StreamRecoder in the codecs
3839 modules are iterators now.
3840
Tim Peters9288f952002-11-05 20:38:55 +00003841- gzip.py now handles files exceeding 2GB. Files over 4GB also work
3842 now (provided the OS supports it, and Python is configured with large
3843 file support), but in that case the underlying gzip file format can
3844 record only the least-significant 32 bits of the file size, so that
3845 some tools working with gzipped files may report an incorrect file
3846 size.
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003847
Martin v. Löwis74b51ac2002-10-26 14:50:45 +00003848- xml.sax.saxutils.unescape has been added, to replace entity references
3849 with their entity value.
3850
Martin v. Löwis77ac4292002-10-15 15:11:13 +00003851- Queue.Queue.{put,get} now support an optional timeout argument.
3852
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003853- Various features of Tk 8.4 are exposed in Tkinter.py. The multiple
3854 option of tkFileDialog is exposed as function askopenfile{,name}s.
Martin v. Löwis2ec36272002-10-13 10:22:08 +00003855
Martin v. Löwisb24e3472002-10-13 10:28:04 +00003856- Various configure methods of Tkinter have been stream-lined, so that
3857 tag_configure, image_configure, window_configure now return a
Tim Petersfb0ea522002-11-04 19:50:11 +00003858 dictionary when invoked with no argument.
Martin v. Löwis6ce13152002-10-10 14:36:13 +00003859
Guido van Rossum2b492b62002-10-09 21:40:48 +00003860- Importing the readline module now no longer has the side effect of
3861 calling setlocale(LC_CTYPE, ""). The initial "C" locale, or
3862 whatever locale is explicitly set by the user, is preserved. If you
3863 want repr() of 8-bit strings in your preferred encoding to preserve
3864 all printable characters of that encoding, you have to add the
3865 following code to your $PYTHONSTARTUP file or to your application's
3866 main():
3867
3868 import locale
3869 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_CTYPE, "")
3870
Martin v. Löwise9ce0b02002-10-07 13:23:24 +00003871- shutil.move was added. shutil.copytree now reports errors as an
3872 exception at the end, instead of printing error messages.
3873
Marc-André Lemburg97047e22002-10-04 11:55:21 +00003874- Encoding name normalization was generalized to not only
3875 replace hyphens with underscores, but also all other non-alphanumeric
3876 characters (with the exception of the dot which is used for Python
3877 package names during lookup). The aliases.py mapping was updated
3878 to the new standard.
3879
Walter Dörwald5ccaf8f2002-09-06 16:15:58 +00003880- mimetypes has two new functions: guess_all_extensions() which
3881 returns a list of all known extensions for a mime type, and
3882 add_type() which adds one mapping between a mime type and
3883 an extension to the database.
3884
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003885- New module: sets, defines the class Set that implements a mutable
3886 set type using the keys of a dict to represent the set. There's
3887 also a class ImmutableSet which is useful when you need sets of sets
3888 or when you need to use sets as dict keys, and a class BaseSet which
Raymond Hettingeref8b9c62002-12-09 08:56:06 +00003889 is the base class of the two.
Guido van Rossumd8ab35c2002-08-19 16:25:46 +00003890
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003891- Added random.sample(population,k) for random sampling without replacement.
Tim Petersb9099c32002-11-12 22:08:10 +00003892 Returns a k length list of unique elements chosen from the population.
Raymond Hettingerf24eb352002-11-12 17:41:57 +00003893
Tim Peters012c0a32002-08-16 03:40:07 +00003894- random.randrange(-sys.maxint-1, sys.maxint) no longer raises
3895 OverflowError. That is, it now accepts any combination of 'start'
3896 and 'stop' arguments so long as each is in the range of Python's
3897 bounded integers.
3898
Raymond Hettinger40f62172002-12-29 23:03:38 +00003899- Thanks to Raymond Hettinger, random.random() now uses a new core
3900 generator. The Mersenne Twister algorithm is implemented in C,
3901 threadsafe, faster than the previous generator, has an astronomically
3902 large period (2**19937-1), creates random floats to full 53-bit
3903 precision, and may be the most widely tested random number generator
3904 in existence.
3905
3906 The random.jumpahead(n) method has different semantics for the new
3907 generator. Instead of jumping n steps ahead, it uses n and the
3908 existing state to create a new state. This means that jumpahead()
3909 continues to support multi-threaded code needing generators of
3910 non-overlapping sequences. However, it will break code which relies
3911 on jumpahead moving a specific number of steps forward.
3912
3913 The attributes random.whseed and random.__whseed have no meaning for
3914 the new generator. Code using these attributes should switch to a
3915 new class, random.WichmannHill which is provided for backward
3916 compatibility and to make an alternate generator available.
3917
Guido van Rossum4a57c332002-08-02 18:05:20 +00003918- New "algorithms" module: heapq, implements a heap queue. Thanks to
3919 Kevin O'Connor for the code and François Pinard for an entertaining
3920 write-up explaining the theory and practical uses of heaps.
3921
Marc-André Lemburg58e2ff22002-07-12 14:40:04 +00003922- New encoding for the Palm OS character set: palmos.
3923
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00003924- binascii.crc32() and the zipfile module had problems on some 64-bit
3925 platforms. These have been fixed. On a platform with 8-byte C longs,
3926 crc32() now returns a signed-extended 4-byte result, so that its value
3927 as a Python int is equal to the value computed a 32-bit platform.
3928
Martin v. Löwis7d650ca2002-06-30 15:05:00 +00003929- xml.dom.minidom.toxml and toprettyxml now take an optional encoding
3930 argument.
3931
Guido van Rossum9f7549b2002-06-10 21:39:42 +00003932- Some fixes in the copy module: when an object is copied through its
3933 __reduce__ method, there was no check for a __setstate__ method on
3934 the result [SF patch 565085]; deepcopy should treat instances of
3935 custom metaclasses the same way it treats instances of type 'type'
3936 [SF patch 560794].
3937
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003938- Sockets now support timeout mode. After s.settimeout(T), where T is
3939 a float expressing seconds, subsequent operations raise an exception
3940 if they cannot be completed within T seconds. To disable timeout
Guido van Rossum79f0a102002-07-23 03:32:08 +00003941 mode, use s.settimeout(None). There's also a module function,
3942 socket.setdefaulttimeout(T), which sets the default for all sockets
3943 created henceforth.
Guido van Rossum5033c8e2002-06-07 12:40:52 +00003944
3945- getopt.gnu_getopt was added. This supports GNU-style option
3946 processing, where options can be mixed with non-option arguments.
Martin v. Löwis446a25f2002-06-06 10:58:36 +00003947
Michael W. Hudsonb0dc1a32002-06-04 18:27:35 +00003948- Stop using strings for exceptions. String objects used for
3949 exceptions are now classes deriving from Exception. The objects
3950 changed were: Tkinter.TclError, bdb.BdbQuit, macpath.norm_error,
3951 tabnanny.NannyNag, and xdrlib.Error.
Neal Norwitzb5b5a262002-06-04 17:14:07 +00003952
Walter Dörwald474458d2002-06-04 15:16:29 +00003953- Constants BOM_UTF8, BOM_UTF16, BOM_UTF16_LE, BOM_UTF16_BE,
3954 BOM_UTF32, BOM_UTF32_LE and BOM_UTF32_BE that represent the Byte
3955 Order Mark in UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 encodings for little and
3956 big endian systems were added to the codecs module. The old names
3957 BOM32_* and BOM64_* were off by a factor of 2.
3958
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00003959- Added conversion functions math.degrees() and math.radians().
Raymond Hettinger87f59ee2002-05-13 04:17:32 +00003960
Raymond Hettinger866964c2002-12-14 19:51:34 +00003961- math.log() now takes an optional argument: math.log(x[, base]).
3962
Raymond Hettinger9b1df1d2002-05-12 06:07:21 +00003963- ftplib.retrlines() now tests for callback is None rather than testing
3964 for False. Was causing an error when given a callback object which
3965 was callable but also returned len() as zero. The change may
3966 create new breakage if the caller relied on the undocumented behavior
3967 and called with callback set to [] or some other False value not
3968 identical to None.
3969
Tim Peters46c04e12002-05-05 20:40:00 +00003970- random.gauss() uses a piece of hidden state used by nothing else,
3971 and the .seed() and .whseed() methods failed to reset it. In other
3972 words, setting the seed didn't completely determine the sequence of
3973 results produced by random.gauss(). It does now. Programs repeatedly
3974 mixing calls to a seed method with calls to gauss() may see different
3975 results now.
3976
Fred Drake7f781c92002-05-01 20:33:53 +00003977- The pickle.Pickler class grew a clear_memo() method to mimic that
3978 provided by cPickle.Pickler.
3979
Tim Peters81b92512002-04-29 01:37:32 +00003980- difflib's SequenceMatcher class now does a dynamic analysis of
3981 which elements are so frequent as to constitute noise. For
3982 comparing files as sequences of lines, this generally works better
3983 than the IS_LINE_JUNK function, and function ndiff's linejunk
3984 argument defaults to None now as a result. A happy benefit is
3985 that SequenceMatcher may run much faster now when applied
3986 to large files with many duplicate lines (for example, C program
3987 text with lots of repeated "}" and "return NULL;" lines).
3988
Guido van Rossum256705b2002-04-23 13:29:43 +00003989- New Text.dump() method in Tkinter module.
3990
Marc-André Lemburg1ec71ea2002-04-17 20:33:40 +00003991- New distutils commands for building packagers were added to
3992 support pkgtool on Solaris and swinstall on HP-UX.
3993
3994- distutils now has a new abstract binary packager base class
3995 command/bdist_packager, which simplifies writing packagers.
3996 This will hopefully provide the missing bits to encourage
3997 people to submit more packagers, e.g. for Debian, FreeBSD
3998 and other systems.
3999
Guido van Rossumf9257822002-06-18 20:43:18 +00004000- The UTF-16, -LE and -BE stream readers now raise a
4001 NotImplementedError for all calls to .readline(). Previously, they
4002 used to just produce garbage or fail with an encoding error --
4003 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 +00004004 work well with these.
4005
Martin v. Löwis5c137c22002-03-18 12:44:08 +00004006- compileall now supports quiet operation.
4007
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004008- The BaseHTTPServer now implements optional HTTP/1.1 persistent
Martin v. Löwis587c98c2002-03-17 18:37:22 +00004009 connections.
4010
Marc-André Lemburga5d2b4c2002-02-16 18:23:30 +00004011- socket module: the SSL support was broken out of the main
4012 _socket module C helper and placed into a new _ssl helper
4013 which now gets imported by socket.py if available and working.
4014
Marc-André Lemburg37aa5802002-02-10 21:42:47 +00004015- encodings package: added aliases for all supported IANA character
4016 sets
4017
Guido van Rossum606fe4e2001-12-28 20:57:14 +00004018- ftplib: to safeguard the user's privacy, anonymous login will use
4019 "anonymous@" as default password, rather than the real user and host
4020 name.
4021
Fred Drake36736122002-01-10 13:50:31 +00004022- webbrowser: tightened up the command passed to os.system() so that
4023 arbitrary shell code can't be executed because a bogus URL was
4024 passed in.
4025
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004026- gettext.translation has an optional fallback argument, and
Martin v. Löwisa55ffae2002-01-11 06:58:49 +00004027 gettext.find an optional all argument. Translations will now fallback
Martin v. Löwisd8996052002-11-21 21:45:32 +00004028 on a per-message basis. The module supports plural forms, by means
4029 of gettext.[d]ngettext and Translation.[u]ngettext.
Martin v. Löwis1be64192002-01-11 06:33:28 +00004030
Martin v. Löwis9668b932002-01-12 11:27:42 +00004031- distutils bdist commands now offer a --skip-build option.
4032
Walter Dörwaldb25c2b02002-03-21 10:38:40 +00004033- warnings.warn now accepts a Warning instance as first argument.
4034
Fred Drakefed7e852002-04-04 19:36:15 +00004035- The xml.sax.expatreader.ExpatParser class will no longer create
4036 circular references by using itself as the locator that gets passed
4037 to the content handler implementation. [SF bug #535474]
4038
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004039- The email.Parser.Parser class now properly parses strings regardless
4040 of their line endings, which can be any of \r, \n, or \r\n (CR, LF,
4041 or CRLF). Also, the Header class's constructor default arguments
4042 has changed slightly so that an explicit maxlinelen value is always
Barry Warsaw497e5c42002-12-30 19:27:08 +00004043 honored, and so unicode conversion error handling can be specified.
Barry Warsaw47f3e2c2002-05-20 00:14:24 +00004044
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004045- distutils' build_ext command now links C++ extensions with the C++
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004046 compiler available in the Makefile or CXX environment variable, if
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004047 running under \*nix.
Gustavo Niemeyerf8ca8362002-11-05 16:50:05 +00004048
4049- New module bz2: provides a comprehensive interface for the bz2 compression
4050 library. It implements a complete file interface, one-shot (de)compression
4051 functions, and types for sequential (de)compression.
4052
David Goodgerf349e262003-01-03 03:30:21 +00004053- New pdb command 'pp' which is like 'p' except that it pretty-prints
Barry Warsaw5d8d6182002-11-05 22:41:33 +00004054 the value of its expression argument.
4055
Gustavo Niemeyerfbceb012002-11-06 18:44:26 +00004056- Now bdist_rpm distutils command understands a verify_script option in
4057 the config file, including the contents of the referred filename in
4058 the "%verifyscript" section of the rpm spec file.
4059
Gustavo Niemeyer1456fde2002-11-25 17:25:04 +00004060- Fixed bug #495695: webbrowser module would run graphic browsers in a
4061 unix environment even if DISPLAY was not set. Also, support for
4062 skipstone browser was included.
4063
Gustavo Niemeyerd5ae01a2002-12-16 13:11:57 +00004064- Fixed bug #636769: rexec would run unallowed code if subclasses of
4065 strings were used as parameters for certain functions.
4066
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004067Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004068-----------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004069
Martin v. Löwis0d1fdea2002-11-22 08:36:54 +00004070- pygettext.py now supports globbing on Windows, and accepts module
4071 names in addition to accepting file names.
4072
Guido van Rossum923e4ef2002-09-17 20:58:59 +00004073- The SGI demos (Demo/sgi) have been removed. Nobody thought they
4074 were interesting any more. (The SGI library modules and extensions
4075 are still there; it is believed that at least some of these are
4076 still used and useful.)
4077
Fred Drake40813b12002-08-05 15:24:19 +00004078- IDLE supports the new encoding declarations (PEP 263); it can also
4079 deal with legacy 8-bit files if they use the locale's encoding. It
4080 allows non-ASCII strings in the interactive shell and executes them
4081 in the locale's encoding.
Martin v. Löwis98ce7b72002-08-05 15:11:26 +00004082
Marc-André Lemburg46260092002-04-04 16:17:11 +00004083- freeze.py now produces binaries which can import shared modules,
4084 unlike before when this failed due to missing symbol exports in
4085 the generated binary.
4086
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004087Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004088-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004089
Martin v. Löwisdc461752002-11-06 21:59:33 +00004090- On Unix, IDLE is now installed automatically.
4091
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004092- The fpectl module is not built by default; it's dangerous or useless
4093 except in the hands of experts.
4094
Tim Petersf47630f2002-08-01 02:34:51 +00004095- The public Python C API will generally be declared using PyAPI_FUNC
Guido van Rossum6b3db552002-09-25 15:02:44 +00004096 and PyAPI_DATA macros, while Python extension module init functions
4097 will be declared with PyMODINIT_FUNC. DL_EXPORT/DL_IMPORT macros
4098 are deprecated.
Neal Norwitz1389f3e2002-07-22 13:21:10 +00004099
Tim Petersc6a3ff62002-07-08 22:11:52 +00004100- A bug was fixed that could cause COUNT_ALLOCS builds to segfault, or
4101 get into infinite loops, when a new-style class got garbage-collected.
4102 Unfortunately, to avoid this, the way COUNT_ALLOCS works requires
4103 that new-style classes be immortal in COUNT_ALLOCS builds. Note that
4104 COUNT_ALLOCS is not enabled by default, in either release or debug
4105 builds, and that new-style classes are immortal only in COUNT_ALLOCS
4106 builds.
4107
Tim Peters943382c2002-07-07 03:59:34 +00004108- Compiling out the cyclic garbage collector is no longer an option.
4109 The old symbol WITH_CYCLE_GC is now ignored, and Python.h arranges
4110 that it's always defined (for the benefit of any extension modules
4111 that may be conditionalizing on it). A bonus is that any extension
4112 type participating in cyclic gc can choose to participate in the
4113 Py_TRASHCAN mechanism now too; in the absence of cyclic gc, this used
4114 to require editing the core to teach the trashcan mechanism about the
4115 new type.
4116
Martin v. Löwis0cec0ff2002-07-28 16:33:45 +00004117- According to Annex F of the current C standard,
Tim Peters1de41bf2002-07-03 03:31:20 +00004118
4119 The Standard C macro HUGE_VAL and its float and long double analogs,
4120 HUGE_VALF and HUGE_VALL, expand to expressions whose values are
4121 positive infinities.
4122
4123 Python only uses the double HUGE_VAL, and only to #define its own symbol
4124 Py_HUGE_VAL. Some platforms have incorrect definitions for HUGE_VAL.
4125 pyport.h used to try to worm around that, but the workarounds triggered
4126 other bugs on other platforms, so we gave up. If your platform defines
4127 HUGE_VAL incorrectly, you'll need to #define Py_HUGE_VAL to something
4128 that works on your platform. The only instance of this I'm sure about
4129 is on an unknown subset of Cray systems, described here:
4130
4131 http://www.cray.com/swpubs/manuals/SN-2194_2.0/html-SN-2194_2.0/x3138.htm
4132
4133 Presumably 2.3a1 breaks such systems. If anyone uses such a system, help!
4134
Martin v. Löwisa3fb4f72002-06-09 13:33:54 +00004135- The configure option --without-doc-strings can be used to remove the
4136 doc strings from the builtin functions and modules; this reduces the
4137 size of the executable.
4138
Guido van Rossumadd88062002-08-15 14:01:14 +00004139- The universal newlines option (PEP 278) is on by default. On Unix
4140 it can be disabled by passing --without-universal-newlines to the
4141 configure script. On other platforms, remove
4142 WITH_UNIVERSAL_NEWLINES from pyconfig.h.
Tim Peters639295f2002-04-21 07:30:30 +00004143
Martin v. Löwis1142de32002-03-29 16:28:31 +00004144- On Unix, a shared libpython2.3.so can be created with --enable-shared.
4145
Tim Peters8deda702002-03-30 10:06:07 +00004146- All uses of the CACHE_HASH, INTERN_STRINGS, and DONT_SHARE_SHORT_STRINGS
4147 preprocessor symbols were eliminated. The internal decisions they
4148 controlled stopped being experimental long ago.
Tim Peters1f7df352002-03-29 03:29:08 +00004149
Fred Drake7d28b732002-05-02 21:17:00 +00004150- The tools used to build the documentation now work under Cygwin as
4151 well as Unix.
4152
Skip Montanaro57454e52002-06-14 20:30:31 +00004153- The bsddb and dbm module builds have been changed to try and avoid version
4154 skew problems and disable linkage with Berkeley DB 1.85 unless the
4155 installer knows what s/he's doing. See the section on building these
4156 modules in the README file for details.
4157
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004158C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004159-----
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004160
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004161- PyNumber_Check() now returns true for string and unicode objects.
4162 This is a result of these types having a partially defined
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004163 tp_as_number slot. (This is not a feature, but an indication that
Walter Dörwalda1a61f92002-11-19 21:20:25 +00004164 PyNumber_Check() is not very useful to determine numeric behavior.
Guido van Rossum1d267402002-11-18 16:27:16 +00004165 It may be deprecated.)
Neil Schemenauer6c194762002-11-18 16:19:39 +00004166
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004167- The string object's layout has changed: the pointer member
4168 ob_sinterned has been replaced by an int member ob_sstate. On some
4169 platforms (e.g. most 64-bit systems) this may change the offset of
4170 the ob_sval member, so as a precaution the API_VERSION has been
4171 incremented. The apparently unused feature of "indirect interned
4172 strings", supported by the ob_sinterned member, is gone. Interned
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004173 strings are now usually mortal; there is a new API,
Guido van Rossum45ec02a2002-08-19 21:43:18 +00004174 PyString_InternImmortal() that creates immortal interned strings.
4175 (The ob_sstate member can only take three values; however, while
4176 making it a char saves a few bytes per string object on average, in
4177 it also slowed things down a bit because ob_sval was no longer
4178 aligned.)
4179
Guido van Rossumfdb86482002-08-14 21:20:32 +00004180- The Py_InitModule*() functions now accept NULL for the 'methods'
4181 argument. Modules without global functions are becoming more common
4182 now that factories can be types rather than functions.
4183
Marc-André Lemburgcc8764c2002-08-11 12:23:04 +00004184- New C API PyUnicode_FromOrdinal() which exposes unichr() at C
4185 level.
4186
Thomas Heller085358a2002-07-29 14:27:41 +00004187- New functions PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErr() and
4188 PyErr_SetExcFromWindowsErrWithFilename(). Similar to
4189 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErrWithFilename() and
4190 PyErr_SetFromWindowsErr(), but they allow to specify
4191 the exception type to raise. Available on Windows.
4192
Tim Peters7c321a82002-07-09 02:57:01 +00004193- Py_FatalError() is now declared as taking a const char* argument. It
4194 was previously declared without const. This should not affect working
4195 code.
4196
Martin v. Löwis01f94bd2002-05-08 08:44:21 +00004197- Added new macro PySequence_ITEM(o, i) that directly calls
4198 sq_item without rechecking that o is a sequence and without
4199 adjusting for negative indices.
4200
Fred Draked0ba6362002-05-02 21:28:26 +00004201- PyRange_New() now raises ValueError if the fourth argument is not 1.
4202 This is part of the removal of deprecated features of the xrange
4203 object.
4204
Guido van Rossum517c7d42002-04-26 02:49:14 +00004205- PyNumber_Coerce() and PyNumber_CoerceEx() now also invoke the type's
4206 coercion if both arguments have the same type but this type has the
4207 CHECKTYPES flag set. This is to better support proxies.
4208
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00004209- The type of tp_free has been changed from "``void (*)(PyObject *)``" to
4210 "``void (*)(void *)``".
Neil Schemenauer9344b142002-04-12 23:00:08 +00004211
4212- PyObject_Del, PyObject_GC_Del are now functions instead of macros.
4213
Guido van Rossum0986d822002-04-08 01:38:42 +00004214- A type can now inherit its metatype from its base type. Previously,
4215 when PyType_Ready() was called, if ob_type was found to be NULL, it
4216 was always set to &PyType_Type; now it is set to base->ob_type,
4217 where base is tp_base, defaulting to &PyObject_Type.
4218
4219- PyType_Ready() accidentally did not inherit tp_is_gc; now it does.
4220
Neil Schemenauerc9abc1d2002-05-08 14:14:41 +00004221- The PyCore_* family of APIs have been removed.
Neil Schemenauer9d50d132002-03-22 17:06:59 +00004222
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004223- The "u#" parser marker will now pass through Unicode objects as-is
Marc-André Lemburg3e3eacb2002-01-09 16:21:27 +00004224 without going through the buffer API.
4225
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004226- The enumerators of cmp_op have been renamed to use the prefix ``PyCmp_``.
Martin v. Löwis7198a522002-01-01 19:59:11 +00004227
Tim Peters10a3bb52001-12-25 19:07:38 +00004228- An old #define of ANY as void has been removed from pyport.h. This
4229 hasn't been used since Python's pre-ANSI days, and the #define has
4230 been marked as obsolete since then. SF bug 495548 says it created
4231 conflicts with other packages, so keeping it around wasn't harmless.
4232
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004233- Because Python's magic number scheme broke on January 1st, we decided
4234 to stop Python development. Thanks for all the fish!
4235
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004236- Some of us don't like fish, so we changed Python's magic number
Marc-André Lemburge92e0a92002-02-09 11:28:43 +00004237 scheme to a new one. See Python/import.c for details.
4238
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004239New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004240-------------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004241
Martin v. Löwis79acb9e2002-12-06 12:48:53 +00004242- OpenVMS is now supported.
4243
Martin v. Löwisf90ae202002-06-11 06:22:31 +00004244- AtheOS is now supported.
4245
Andrew MacIntyre161ad0e2002-08-04 07:25:58 +00004246- the EMX runtime environment on OS/2 is now supported.
4247
Martin v. Löwisa6e97582002-01-01 18:41:33 +00004248- GNU/Hurd is now supported.
4249
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004250Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004251-----
4252
Fred Drake4dd0f7e2002-11-26 21:44:56 +00004253- The regrtest.py script's -u option now provides a way to say "allow
4254 all resources except this one." For example, to allow everything
4255 except bsddb, give the option '-uall,-bsddb'.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004256
4257Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004258-------
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004259
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004260- The Windows distribution now ships with version 4.0.14 of the
4261 Sleepycat Berkeley database library. This should be a huge
4262 improvement over the previous Berkeley DB 1.85, which had many
4263 bugs.
4264 XXX What are the licensing issues here?
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004265 XXX If a user has a database created with a previous version of
Tim Peters84c7a3f2002-11-23 18:48:06 +00004266 XXX Python, what must they do to convert it?
4267 XXX I'm still not sure how to link this thing (see PCbuild/readme.txt).
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004268 XXX The version # is likely to change before 2.3a1.
Tim Peterse820cb62002-12-16 20:57:22 +00004269
4270- The Windows distribution now ships with a Secure Sockets Library (SLL)
Mark Hammondc3de0082002-12-03 06:16:08 +00004271 module (_ssl.pyd)
Tim Peters19cf4ee2002-11-23 03:49:08 +00004272
Tim Peters857fb4c2002-11-14 23:31:58 +00004273- The Windows distribution now ships with Tcl/Tk version 8.4.1 (it
4274 previously shipped with Tcl/Tk 8.3.2).
4275
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004276- When Python is built under a Microsoft compiler, sys.version now
4277 includes the compiler version number (_MSC_VER). For example, under
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004278 MSVC 6, sys.version contains the substring "MSC v.1200 ". 1200 is
Tim Peters37dfb012002-11-11 19:51:33 +00004279 the value of _MSC_VER under MSVC 6.
4280
Tim Peters08e72952002-04-16 20:48:01 +00004281- Sometimes the uninstall executable (UNWISE.EXE) vanishes. One cause
4282 of that has been fixed in the installer (disabled Wise's "delete in-
4283 use files" uninstall option).
4284
Guido van Rossum181e41a2002-04-06 00:23:25 +00004285- Fixed a bug in urllib's proxy handling in Windows. [SF bug #503031]
4286
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004287- The installer now installs Start menu shortcuts under (the local
4288 equivalent of) "All Users" when doing an Admin install.
4289
Tim Petersfb05db22002-03-11 00:24:00 +00004290- file.truncate([newsize]) now works on Windows for all newsize values.
4291 It used to fail if newsize didn't fit in 32 bits, reflecting a
4292 limitation of MS _chsize (which is no longer used).
4293
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004294- os.waitpid() is now implemented for Windows, and can be used to block
4295 until a specified process exits. This is similar to, but not exactly
4296 the same as, os.waitpid() on POSIX systems. If you're waiting for
4297 a specific process whose pid was obtained from one of the spawn()
4298 functions, the same Python os.waitpid() code works across platforms.
Tim Peters33187922002-04-04 20:02:04 +00004299 See the docs for details. The docs were changed to clarify that
4300 spawn functions return, and waitpid requires, a process handle on
4301 Windows (not the same thing as a Windows process id).
Tim Petersab034fa2002-02-01 11:27:43 +00004302
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004303- New tempfile.TemporaryFile implementation for Windows: this doesn't
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004304 need a TemporaryFileWrapper wrapper anymore, and should be immune
Tim Peters11bd9942002-02-01 00:52:29 +00004305 to a nasty problem: before 2.3, if you got a temp file on Windows, it
4306 got wrapped in an object whose close() method first closed the
4307 underlying file, then deleted the file. This usually worked fine.
4308 However, the spawn family of functions on Windows create (at a low C
4309 level) the same set of open files in the spawned process Q as were
4310 open in the spawning process P. If a temp file f was among them, then
4311 doing f.close() in P first closed P's C-level file handle on f, but Q's
4312 C-level file handle on f remained open, so the attempt in P to delete f
4313 blew up with a "Permission denied" error (Windows doesn't allow
4314 deleting open files). This was surprising, subtle, and difficult to
4315 work around.
4316
4317- The os module now exports all the symbolic constants usable with the
4318 low-level os.open() on Windows: the new constants in 2.3 are
4319 O_NOINHERIT, O_SHORT_LIVED, O_TEMPORARY, O_RANDOM and O_SEQUENTIAL.
4320 The others were also available in 2.2: O_APPEND, O_BINARY, O_CREAT,
4321 O_EXCL, O_RDONLY, O_RDWR, O_TEXT, O_TRUNC and O_WRONLY. Contrary
4322 to Microsoft docs, O_SHORT_LIVED does not seem to imply O_TEMPORARY
4323 (so specify both if you want both; note that neither is useful unless
4324 specified with O_CREAT too).
4325
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004326Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004327----
4328
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004329- Mac/Relnotes is gone, the release notes are now here.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004330
Just van Rossume1ebd802003-02-10 10:06:18 +00004331- Python (the OSX-only, unix-based version, not the OS9-compatible CFM
4332 version) now fully supports unicode strings as arguments to various file
4333 system calls, eg. open(), file(), os.stat() and os.listdir().
4334
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004335- The current naming convention for Python on the Macintosh is that MacPython
4336 refers to the unix-based OSX-only version, and MacPython-OS9 refers to the
4337 CFM-based version that runs on both OS9 and OSX.
4338
4339- All MacPython-OS9 functionality is now available in an OSX unix build,
4340 including the Carbon modules, the IDE, OSA support, etc. A lot of this
4341 will only work correctly in a framework build, though, because you cannot
4342 talk to the window manager unless your application is run from a .app
4343 bundle. There is a command line tool "pythonw" that runs your script
4344 with an interpreter living in such a .app bundle, this interpreter should
4345 be used to run any Python script using the window manager (including
4346 Tkinter or wxPython scripts).
Tim Petersbbc5d162003-01-02 16:02:27 +00004347
Jack Jansen8bb80db2002-12-30 22:42:43 +00004348- Most of Mac/Lib has moved to Lib/plat-mac, which is again used both in
4349 MacPython-OSX and MacPython-OS9. The only modules remaining in Mac/Lib
4350 are specifically for MacPython-OS9 (CFM support, preference resources, etc).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004351
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004352- A new utility PythonLauncher will start a Python interpreter when a .py or
4353 .pyw script is double-clicked in the Finder. By default .py scripts are
4354 run with a normal Python interpreter in a Terminal window and .pyw
4355 files are run with a window-aware pythonw interpreter without a Terminal
4356 window, but all this can be customized.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004357
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004358- MacPython-OS9 is now Carbon-only, so it runs on Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and
4359 possibly on Mac OS 8.6 with the right CarbonLib installed, but not on earlier
4360 releases.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004361
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004362- Many tools such as BuildApplet.py and gensuitemodule.py now support a command
4363 line interface too.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004364
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004365- All the Carbon classes are now PEP253 compliant, meaning that you can
4366 subclass them from Python. Most of the attributes have gone, you should
4367 now use the accessor function call API, which is also what Apple's
4368 documentation uses. Some attributes such as grafport.visRgn are still
4369 available for convenience.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004370
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004371- New Carbon modules File (implementing the APIs in Files.h and Aliases.h)
4372 and Folder (APIs from Folders.h). The old macfs builtin module is
4373 gone, and replaced by a Python wrapper around the new modules.
4374
4375- Pathname handling should now be fully consistent: MacPython-OSX always uses
4376 unix pathnames and MacPython-OS9 always uses colon-separated Mac pathnames
4377 (also when running on Mac OS X).
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004378
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004379- New Carbon modules Help and AH give access to the Carbon Help Manager.
4380 There are hooks in the IDE to allow accessing the Python documentation
4381 (and Apple's Carbon and Cocoa documentation) through the Help Viewer.
4382 See Mac/OSX/README for converting the Python documentation to a
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004383 Help Viewer compatible form and installing it.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004384
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004385- OSA support has been redesigned and the generated Python classes now
4386 mirror the inheritance defined by the underlying OSA classes.
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00004387
Jack Jansenae3cb6c2002-12-23 11:25:49 +00004388- MacPython no longer maps both \r and \n to \n on input for any text file.
4389 This feature has been replaced by universal newline support (PEP278).
Tim Peters0bf60bd2003-01-08 20:40:01 +00004390
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004391- The default encoding for Python sourcefiles in MacPython-OS9 is no longer
Guido van Rossum16c85172003-02-20 01:52:48 +00004392 mac-roman (or whatever your local Mac encoding was) but "ascii", like on
Jack Jansen05d284b2003-01-08 16:29:17 +00004393 other platforms. If you really need sourcefiles with Mac characters in them
4394 you can change this in site.py.
Tim Petersaf8446f2001-12-21 21:36:50 +00004395
Guido van Rossum351a7dd2003-02-20 01:56:17 +00004396
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004397What's New in Python 2.2 final?
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004398===============================
4399
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004400*Release date: 21-Dec-2001*
4401
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004402Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004403--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004404
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004405- pickle.py, cPickle: allow pickling instances of new-style classes
4406 with a custom metaclass.
4407
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004408Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004409-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004410
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004411- weakref proxy object: when comparing, unwrap both arguments if both
4412 are proxies.
4413
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004414Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004415-----------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004416
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004417- binascii.b2a_base64(): fix a potential buffer overrun when encoding
4418 very short strings.
4419
4420- cPickle: the obscure "fast" mode was suspected of causing stack
4421 overflows on the Mac. Hopefully fixed this by setting the recursion
4422 limit much smaller. If the limit is too low (it only affects
4423 performance), you can change it by defining PY_CPICKLE_FAST_LIMIT
4424 when compiling cPickle.c (or in pyconfig.h).
4425
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004426Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004427-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004428
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004429- dumbdbm.py: fixed a dumb old bug (the file didn't get synched at
4430 close or delete time).
4431
4432- rfc822.py: fixed a bug where the address '<>' was converted to None
4433 instead of an empty string (also fixes the email.Utils module).
4434
4435- xmlrpclib.py: version 1.0.0; uses precision for doubles.
4436
4437- test suite: the pickle and cPickle tests were not executing any code
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004438 when run from the standard regression test.
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004439
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004440Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004441-----------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004442
4443Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004444-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004445
4446C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004447-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004448
4449New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004450-------------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004451
4452Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004453-----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004454
4455Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004456-------
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004457
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004458- distutils package: fixed broken Windows installers (bdist_wininst).
4459
4460- tempfile.py: prevent mysterious warnings when TemporaryFileWrapper
4461 instances are deleted at process exit time.
4462
4463- socket.py: prevent mysterious warnings when socket instances are
4464 deleted at process exit time.
4465
4466- posixmodule.c: fix a Windows crash with stat() of a filename ending
4467 in backslash.
4468
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004469Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004470----
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004471
Barry Warsaw52acb492001-12-21 20:04:22 +00004472- The Carbon toolbox modules have been upgraded to Universal Headers
4473 3.4, and experimental CoreGraphics and CarbonEvents modules have
4474 been added. All only for framework-enabled MacOSX.
4475
Tim Peters909c0912001-12-14 23:16:18 +00004476
Tim Peters6272dfd2001-12-13 19:34:00 +00004477What's New in Python 2.2c1?
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004478===========================
4479
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004480*Release date: 14-Dec-2001*
4481
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004482Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004483--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004484
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004485- Guido's tutorial introduction to the new type/class features has
4486 been extensively updated. See
4487
4488 http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html
4489
4490 That remains the primary documentation in this area.
4491
Guido van Rossum33bab012001-12-05 22:45:48 +00004492- Fixed a leak: instance variables declared with __slots__ were never
4493 deleted!
4494
Guido van Rossum4b800852001-12-03 00:54:52 +00004495- The "delete attribute" method of descriptor objects is called
4496 __delete__, not __del__. In previous releases, it was mistakenly
4497 called __del__, which created an unfortunate overloading condition
4498 with finalizers. (The "get attribute" and "set attribute" methods
4499 are still called __get__ and __set__, respectively.)
4500
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004501- Some subtle issues with the super built-in were fixed:
4502
4503 (a) When super itself is subclassed, its __get__ method would still
4504 return an instance of the base class (i.e., of super).
4505
4506 (b) super(C, C()).__class__ would return C rather than super. This
4507 is confusing. To fix this, I decided to change the semantics of
4508 super so that it only applies to code attributes, not to data
4509 attributes. After all, overriding data attributes is not
4510 supported anyway.
4511
4512 (c) The __get__ method didn't check whether the argument was an
4513 instance of the type used in creation of the super instance.
4514
Guido van Rossumcd7b7d62001-12-04 21:02:07 +00004515- Previously, hash() of an instance of a subclass of a mutable type
4516 (list or dictionary) would return some value, rather than raising
4517 TypeError. This has been fixed. Also, directly calling
4518 dict.__hash__ and list.__hash__ now raises the same TypeError
4519 (previously, these were the same as object.__hash__).
Guido van Rossumcdbbd0a2001-12-03 15:46:59 +00004520
Guido van Rossumd331cb52001-12-05 19:46:42 +00004521- New-style objects now support deleting their __dict__. This is for
4522 all intents and purposes equivalent to assigning a brand new empty
4523 dictionary, but saves space if the object is not used further.
4524
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004525Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004526-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004527
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004528- -Qnew now works as documented in PEP 238: when -Qnew is passed on
4529 the command line, all occurrences of "/" use true division instead
4530 of classic division. See the PEP for details. Note that "all"
4531 means all instances in library and 3rd-party modules, as well as in
4532 your own code. As the PEP says, -Qnew is intended for use only in
4533 educational environments with control over the libraries in use.
Tim Petersbf72fe22001-12-11 21:43:14 +00004534 Note that test_coercion.py in the standard Python test suite fails
4535 under -Qnew; this is expected, and won't be repaired until true
4536 division becomes the default (in the meantime, test_coercion is
4537 testing the current rules).
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00004538
Fred Drake6c01e252001-12-14 17:08:12 +00004539- complex() now only allows the first argument to be a string
4540 argument, and raises TypeError if either the second arg is a string
4541 or if the second arg is specified when the first is a string.
4542
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004543Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004544-----------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004545
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00004546- gc.get_referents was renamed to gc.get_referrers.
4547
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004548Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004549-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004550
Tim Peters25059d32001-12-07 20:35:43 +00004551- Functions in the os.spawn() family now release the global interpreter
4552 lock around calling the platform spawn. They should always have done
4553 this, but did not before 2.2c1. Multithreaded programs calling
4554 an os.spawn function with P_WAIT will no longer block all Python threads
4555 until the spawned program completes. It's possible that some programs
4556 relies on blocking, although more likely by accident than by design.
4557
Martin v. Löwis3a89b2b2001-11-25 14:35:58 +00004558- webbrowser defaults to netscape.exe on OS/2 now.
4559
Martin v. Löwis652e1912001-11-25 14:50:56 +00004560- Tix.ResizeHandle exposes detach_widget, hide, and show.
4561
Martin v. Löwis714d2e22001-12-02 12:26:03 +00004562- The charset alias windows_1252 has been added.
4563
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004564- types.StringTypes is a tuple containing the defined string types;
4565 usually this will be (str, unicode), but if Python was compiled
4566 without Unicode support it will be just (str,).
4567
4568- The pulldom and minidom modules were synchronized to PyXML.
4569
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004570Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004571-----------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004572
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004573- A new script called Tools/scripts/google.py was added, which fires
4574 off a search on Google.
4575
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004576Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004577-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004578
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004579- Note that release builds of Python should arrange to define the
4580 preprocessor symbol NDEBUG on the command line (or equivalent).
4581 In the 2.2 pre-release series we tried to define this by magic in
4582 Python.h instead, but it proved to cause problems for extension
4583 authors. The Unix, Windows and Mac builds now all define NDEBUG in
4584 release builds via cmdline (or equivalent) instead. Ports to
4585 other platforms should do likewise.
4586
Jack Jansen1999ef42001-12-06 21:47:20 +00004587- It is no longer necessary to use --with-suffix when building on a
4588 case-insensitive file system (such as Mac OS X HFS+). In the build
4589 directory an extension is used, but not in the installed python.
4590
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004591C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004592-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004593
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004594- New function PyDict_MergeFromSeq2() exposes the builtin dict
4595 constructor's logic for updating a dictionary from an iterable object
4596 producing key-value pairs.
4597
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004598- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() requires that the number of entries in
Tim Petersf582b822001-12-11 18:51:08 +00004599 the keyword list equal the number of argument specifiers. This
Tim Peterscffed4b2001-11-29 03:26:37 +00004600 wasn't checked correctly, and PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords could even
4601 dump core in some bad cases. This has been repaired. As a result,
4602 PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords may raise RuntimeError in bad cases that
4603 previously went unchallenged.
4604
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004605New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004606-------------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004607
4608Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004609-----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004610
4611Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004612-------
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004613
4614Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004615----
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004616
Jack Jansenffa260f2001-12-06 21:14:00 +00004617- In unix-Python on Mac OS X (and darwin) sys.platform is now "darwin",
4618 without any trailing digits.
Tim Petersb3c9af12001-11-17 00:21:57 +00004619
Barry Warsaw06557452001-12-14 20:47:12 +00004620- Changed logic for finding python home in Mac OS X framework Pythons.
4621 Now sys.executable points to the executable again, in stead of to
4622 the shared library. The latter is used only for locating the python
4623 home.
4624
4625
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004626What's New in Python 2.2b2?
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004627===========================
4628
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004629*Release date: 16-Nov-2001*
4630
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004631Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004632--------------------------------------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004633
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004634- Multiple inheritance mixing new-style and classic classes in the
4635 list of base classes is now allowed, so this works now:
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004636
4637 class Classic: pass
Guido van Rossum3d27df02001-11-15 20:27:54 +00004638 class Mixed(Classic, object): pass
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004639
4640 The MRO (method resolution order) for each base class is respected
4641 according to its kind, but the MRO for the derived class is computed
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004642 using new-style MRO rules if any base class is a new-style class.
Tim Peters76f7fe32001-11-15 20:02:21 +00004643 This needs to be documented.
4644
Tim Petersa427a2b2001-10-29 22:25:45 +00004645- The new builtin dictionary() constructor, and dictionary type, have
4646 been renamed to dict. This reflects a decade of common usage.
4647
Guido van Rossum3fc08d22001-11-15 20:33:10 +00004648- dict() now accepts an iterable object producing 2-sequences. For
4649 example, dict(d.items()) == d for any dictionary d. The argument,
4650 and the elements of the argument, can be any iterable objects.
4651
Guido van Rossum7ad2d1e2001-10-29 22:11:00 +00004652- New-style classes can now have a __del__ method, which is called
4653 when the instance is deleted (just like for classic classes).
4654
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004655- Assignment to object.__dict__ is now possible, for objects that are
4656 instances of new-style classes that have a __dict__ (unless the base
4657 class forbids it).
4658
Guido van Rossumc8e56452001-10-22 00:43:43 +00004659- Methods of built-in types now properly check for keyword arguments
4660 (formerly these were silently ignored). The only built-in methods
4661 that take keyword arguments are __call__, __init__ and __new__.
4662
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004663- The socket function has been converted to a type; see below.
4664
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004665Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004666-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004667
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004668- Assignment to __debug__ raises SyntaxError at compile-time. This
4669 was promised when 2.1c1 was released as "What's New in Python 2.1c1"
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004670 (see below) says.
Jeremy Hylton249aaed2001-11-09 21:06:24 +00004671
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004672- Clarified the error messages for unsupported operands to an operator
4673 (like 1 + '').
4674
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004675Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004676-----------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004677
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004678- mmap has a new keyword argument, "access", allowing a uniform way for
4679 both Windows and Unix users to create read-only, write-through and
4680 copy-on-write memory mappings. This was previously possible only on
4681 Unix. A new keyword argument was required to support this in a
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00004682 uniform way because the mmap() signatures had diverged across
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004683 platforms. Thanks to Jay T Miller for repairing this!
4684
Tim Peters169ded02001-11-03 19:57:21 +00004685- By default, the gc.garbage list now contains only those instances in
4686 unreachable cycles that have __del__ methods; in 2.1 it contained all
4687 instances in unreachable cycles. "Instances" here has been generalized
4688 to include instances of both new-style and old-style classes.
4689
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004690- The socket module defines a new method for socket objects,
4691 sendall(). This is like send() but may make multiple calls to
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004692 send() until all data has been sent. Also, the socket function has
4693 been converted to a subclassable type, like list and tuple (etc.)
4694 before it; socket and SocketType are now the same thing.
Guido van Rossum12d955c2001-10-26 14:56:06 +00004695
4696- Various bugfixes to the curses module. There is now a test suite
4697 for the curses module (you have to run it manually).
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004698
Guido van Rossum692adf12001-10-30 03:03:03 +00004699- binascii.b2a_base64 no longer places an arbitrary restriction of 57
4700 bytes on its input.
4701
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004702Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004703-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004704
Tim Peters5ebfd362001-11-13 23:11:19 +00004705- tkFileDialog exposes a Directory class and askdirectory
Martin v. Löwis25ee87c2001-11-07 22:38:08 +00004706 convenience function.
4707
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004708- Symbolic group names in regular expressions must be unique. For
4709 example, the regexp r'(?P<abc>)(?P<abc>)' is not allowed, because a
4710 single name can't mean both "group 1" and "group 2" simultaneously.
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004711 Python 2.2 detects this error at regexp compilation time;
4712 previously, the error went undetected, and results were
4713 unpredictable. Also in sre, the pattern.split(), pattern.sub(), and
4714 pattern.subn() methods have been rewritten in C. Also, an
4715 experimental function/method finditer() has been added, which works
4716 like findall() but returns an iterator.
Tim Peters75335872001-11-03 19:35:43 +00004717
Martin v. Löwisb7b32602001-11-02 23:48:20 +00004718- Tix exposes more commands through the classes DirSelectBox,
4719 DirSelectDialog, ListNoteBook, Meter, CheckList, and the
4720 methods tix_addbitmapdir, tix_cget, tix_configure, tix_filedialog,
4721 tix_getbitmap, tix_getimage, tix_option_get, and tix_resetoptions.
4722
Tim Peters98791af2001-10-23 01:59:54 +00004723- Traceback objects are now scanned by cyclic garbage collection, so
4724 cycles created by casual use of sys.exc_info() no longer cause
4725 permanent memory leaks (provided garbage collection is enabled).
4726
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004727- os.extsep -- a new variable needed by the RISCOS support. It is the
4728 separator used by extensions, and is '.' on all platforms except
4729 RISCOS, where it is '/'. There is no need to use this variable
4730 unless you have a masochistic desire to port your code to RISCOS.
4731
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004732- mimetypes.py has optional support for non-standard, but commonly
4733 found types. guess_type() and guess_extension() now accept an
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004734 optional 'strict' flag, defaulting to true, which controls whether
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004735 recognize non-standard types or not. A few non-standard types we
4736 know about have been added. Also, when run as a script, there are
4737 new -l and -e options.
4738
4739- statcache is now deprecated.
4740
4741- email.Utils.formatdate() now produces the preferred RFC 2822 style
4742 dates with numeric timezones (it used to produce obsolete dates
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004743 hard coded to "GMT" timezone). An optional 'localtime' flag is
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004744 added to produce dates in the local timezone, with daylight savings
4745 time properly taken into account.
4746
4747- In pickle and cPickle, instead of masking errors in load() by
4748 transforming them into SystemError, we let the original exception
4749 propagate out. Also, implement support for __safe_for_unpickling__
4750 in pickle, as it already was supported in cPickle.
4751
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004752Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004753-----------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004754
4755Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004756-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004757
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004758- The dbm module is built using libdb1 if available. The bsddb module
4759 is built with libdb3 if available.
4760
4761- Misc/Makefile.pre.in has been removed by BDFL pronouncement.
4762
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004763C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004764-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004765
Tim Peters1fc240e2001-10-26 05:06:50 +00004766- New function PySequence_Fast_GET_SIZE() returns the size of a non-
4767 NULL result from PySequence_Fast(), more quickly than calling
4768 PySequence_Size().
4769
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004770- New argument unpacking function PyArg_UnpackTuple() added.
4771
4772- New functions PyObject_CallFunctionObjArgs() and
4773 PyObject_CallMethodObjArgs() have been added to make it more
4774 convenient and efficient to call functions and methods from C.
4775
4776- PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords() no longer masks errors, so it's
4777 possible that this will propagate errors it didn't before.
4778
4779- New function PyObject_CheckReadBuffer(), which returns true if its
4780 argument supports the single-segment readable buffer interface.
4781
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004782New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004783-------------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004784
Guido van Rossum86443212001-10-27 22:28:54 +00004785- We've finally confirmed that this release builds on HP-UX 11.00,
4786 *with* threads, and passes the test suite.
4787
Tim Peters7a33d8b2001-11-05 02:51:07 +00004788- Thanks to a series of patches from Michael Muller, Python may build
4789 again under OS/2 Visual Age C++.
4790
Guido van Rossum49192142001-10-24 20:51:44 +00004791- Updated RISCOS port by Dietmar Schwertberger.
4792
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004793Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004794-----
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004795
Andrew M. Kuchling15e03532001-10-22 16:37:10 +00004796- Added a test script for the curses module. It isn't run automatically;
4797 regrtest.py must be run with '-u curses' to enable it.
4798
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004799Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004800-------
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004801
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004802Mac
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004803----
Barry Warsaw012852b2001-11-16 16:17:27 +00004804
4805- PythonScript has been moved to unsupported and is slated to be
4806 removed completely in the next release.
4807
4808- It should now be possible to build applets that work on both OS9 and
4809 OSX.
4810
4811- The core is now linked with CoreServices not Carbon; as a side
4812 result, default 8bit encoding on OSX is now ASCII.
4813
4814- Python should now build on OSX 10.1.1
4815
Tim Peters84362bc2001-10-19 17:55:30 +00004816
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004817What's New in Python 2.2b1?
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004818===========================
4819
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004820*Release date: 19-Oct-2001*
4821
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004822Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004823--------------------------------------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004824
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004825- New-style classes are now always dynamic (except for built-in and
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004826 extension types). There is no longer a performance penalty, and I
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004827 no longer see another reason to keep this baggage around. One relic
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004828 remains: the __dict__ of a new-style class is a read-only proxy; you
4829 must set the class's attribute to modify it. As a consequence, the
Guido van Rossum687ae002001-10-15 22:03:32 +00004830 __defined__ attribute of new-style types no longer exists, for lack
4831 of need: there is once again only one __dict__ (although in the
Guido van Rossum3eea25c2001-10-16 00:46:57 +00004832 future a __cache__ may be resurrected with a similar function, if I
4833 can prove that it actually speeds things up).
Guido van Rossum50fda3b2001-10-04 19:46:06 +00004834
Tim Peters1c9ca872001-10-04 06:43:12 +00004835- C.__doc__ now works as expected for new-style classes (in 2.2a4 it
4836 always returned None, even when there was a class docstring).
4837
4838- doctest now finds and runs docstrings attached to new-style classes,
4839 class methods, static methods, and properties.
4840
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004841Core and builtins
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004842-----------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004843
Guido van Rossuma8bcf802001-10-15 15:53:58 +00004844- A very subtle syntactical pitfall in list comprehensions was fixed.
4845 For example: [a+b for a in 'abc', for b in 'def']. The comma in
4846 this example is a mistake. Previously, this would silently let 'a'
4847 iterate over the singleton tuple ('abc',), yielding ['abcd', 'abce',
4848 'abcf'] rather than the intended ['ad', 'ae', 'af', 'bd', 'be',
4849 'bf', 'cd', 'ce', 'cf']. Now, this is flagged as a syntax error.
4850 Note that [a for a in <singleton>] is a convoluted way to say
4851 [<singleton>] anyway, so it's not like any expressiveness is lost.
4852
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004853- getattr(obj, name, default) now only catches AttributeError, as
4854 documented, rather than returning the default value for all
4855 exceptions (which could mask bugs in a __getattr__ hook, for
4856 example).
4857
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004858- Weak reference objects are now part of the core and offer a C API.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004859 A bug which could allow a core dump when binary operations involved
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00004860 proxy reference has been fixed. weakref.ReferenceError is now a
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004861 built-in exception.
Fred Drake934d2a42001-10-18 18:18:06 +00004862
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004863- unicode(obj) now behaves more like str(obj), accepting arbitrary
4864 objects, and calling a __unicode__ method if it exists.
4865 unicode(obj, encoding) and unicode(obj, encoding, errors) still
Marc-André Lemburgb5507ec2001-10-19 12:02:29 +00004866 require an 8-bit string or character buffer argument.
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00004867
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004868- isinstance() now allows any object as the first argument and a
4869 class, a type or something with a __bases__ tuple attribute for the
4870 second argument. The second argument may also be a tuple of a
4871 class, type, or something with __bases__, in which case isinstance()
4872 will return true if the first argument is an instance of any of the
4873 things contained in the second argument tuple. E.g.
4874
4875 isinstance(x, (A, B))
4876
4877 returns true if x is an instance of A or B.
4878
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004879Extension modules
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004880-----------------
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004881
4882- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
4883
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004884- binascii has now two quopri support functions, a2b_qp and b2a_qp.
4885
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004886- readline now supports setting the startup_hook and the
4887 pre_event_hook, and adds the add_history() function.
Martin v. Löwis0daad592001-09-30 21:09:59 +00004888
Guido van Rossumc524d952001-10-19 01:31:59 +00004889- os and posix supports chroot(), setgroups() and unsetenv() where
4890 available. The stat(), fstat(), statvfs() and fstatvfs() functions
4891 now return "pseudo-sequences" -- the various fields can now be
4892 accessed as attributes (e.g. os.stat("/").st_mtime) but for
4893 backwards compatibility they also behave as a fixed-length sequence.
4894 Some platform-specific fields (e.g. st_rdev) are only accessible as
Guido van Rossum98bf58f2001-10-18 20:34:25 +00004895 attributes.
4896
4897- time: localtime(), gmtime() and strptime() now return a
4898 pseudo-sequence similar to the os.stat() return value, with
4899 attributes like tm_year etc.
Martin v. Löwis16628c92001-10-04 22:46:41 +00004900
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004901- Decompression objects in the zlib module now accept an optional
4902 second parameter to decompress() that specifies the maximum amount
4903 of memory to use for the uncompressed data.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004904
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004905- optional SSL support in the socket module now exports OpenSSL
4906 functions RAND_add(), RAND_egd(), and RAND_status(). These calls
4907 are useful on platforms like Solaris where OpenSSL does not
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004908 automatically seed its PRNG. Also, the keyfile and certfile
4909 arguments to socket.ssl() are now optional.
4910
4911- posixmodule (and by extension, the os module on POSIX platforms) now
4912 exports O_LARGEFILE, O_DIRECT, O_DIRECTORY, and O_NOFOLLOW.
Jeremy Hyltoncb441432001-10-19 03:40:19 +00004913
Guido van Rossum9074ef62001-10-16 21:34:49 +00004914Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004915-------
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00004916
Tim Peters7402f792001-10-02 03:53:41 +00004917- doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
4918 being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
4919
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004920- HotShot, a new profiler implemented using a C-based callback, has
4921 been added. This substantially reduces the overhead of profiling,
4922 but it is still quite preliminary. Support modules and
4923 documentation will be added in upcoming releases (before 2.2 final).
4924
Guido van Rossumc4b09b42001-10-04 10:19:00 +00004925- profile now produces correct output in situations where an exception
4926 raised in Python is cleared by C code (e.g. hasattr()). This used
4927 to cause wrong output, including spurious claims of recursive
4928 functions and attribution of time spent to the wrong function.
4929
Tim Peters0a1fc4e2001-10-07 03:12:08 +00004930 The code and documentation for the derived OldProfile and HotProfile
4931 profiling classes was removed. The code hasn't worked for years (if
4932 you tried to use them, they raised exceptions). OldProfile
4933 intended to reproduce the behavior of the profiler Python used more
4934 than 7 years ago, and isn't interesting anymore. HotProfile intended
4935 to provide a faster profiler (but producing less information), and
4936 that's a worthy goal we intend to meet via a different approach (but
4937 without losing information).
4938
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004939- Profile.calibrate() has a new implementation that should deliver
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004940 a much better system-specific calibration constant. The constant can
4941 now be specified in an instance constructor, or as a Profile class or
4942 instance variable, instead of by editing profile.py's source code.
4943 Calibration must still be done manually (see the docs for the profile
4944 module).
4945
Raymond Hettingerd65ec372003-03-11 21:43:55 +00004946 Note that Profile.calibrate() must be overridden by subclasses.
Tim Peters659a6032001-10-09 20:51:19 +00004947 Improving the accuracy required exploiting detailed knowledge of
4948 profiler internals; the earlier method abstracted away the details
4949 and measured a simplified model instead, but consequently computed
4950 a constant too small by a factor of 2 on some modern machines.
Tim Peterscce092d2001-10-09 05:31:56 +00004951
Martin v. Löwis16dc7f42001-09-30 20:32:11 +00004952- quopri's encode and decode methods take an optional header parameter,
Jeremy Hylton6f543b62001-10-16 20:42:52 +00004953 which indicates whether output is intended for the header 'Q'
4954 encoding.
4955
Guido van Rossuma5343cc2001-10-18 18:02:07 +00004956- The SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn class now closes the request after
4957 finish_request() returns. (Not when it errors out though.)
4958
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004959- The nntplib module's NNTP.body() method has grown a 'file' argument
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004960 to allow saving the message body to a file.
4961
4962- The email package has added a class email.Parser.HeaderParser which
4963 only parses headers and does not recurse into the message's body.
4964 Also, the module/class MIMEAudio has been added for representing
4965 audio data (contributed by Anthony Baxter).
4966
4967- ftplib should be able to handle files > 2GB.
4968
4969- ConfigParser.getboolean() now also interprets TRUE, FALSE, YES, NO,
4970 ON, and OFF.
4971
Fred Drakecb7a6b52001-10-22 18:41:51 +00004972- xml.dom.minidom NodeList objects now support the length attribute
4973 and item() method as required by the DOM specifications.
4974
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004975Tools/Demos
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004976-----------
Guido van Rossumed554f62001-10-02 23:15:37 +00004977
4978- Demo/dns was removed. It no longer serves any purpose; a package
4979 derived from it is now maintained by Anthony Baxter, see
4980 http://PyDNS.SourceForge.net.
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004981
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004982- The freeze tool has been made more robust, and two new options have
4983 been added: -X and -E.
4984
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004985Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004986-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004987
Barry Warsawf6fb1712001-10-19 05:35:40 +00004988- configure will use CXX in LINKCC if CXX is used to build main() and
4989 the system requires to link a C++ main using the C++ compiler.
4990
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004991C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00004992-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00004993
Guido van Rossum6c4bce32001-10-18 19:20:25 +00004994- The documentation for the tp_compare slot is updated to require that
4995 the return value must be -1, 0, 1; an arbitrary number <0 or >0 is
4996 not correct. This is not yet enforced but will be enforced in
4997 Python 2.3; even later, we may use -2 to indicate errors and +2 for
4998 "NotImplemented". Right now, -1 should be used for an error return.
4999
Tim Petersd38b1c72001-09-30 05:09:37 +00005000- PyLong_AsLongLong() now accepts int (as well as long) arguments.
5001 Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
5002 as long) arguments.
5003
Guido van Rossum3c288632001-10-16 21:13:49 +00005004- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
5005 ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
5006 thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
5007 the thread module used this API). This code has only really been
5008 tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
5009 report any bugs or strange behavior).
5010
Guido van Rossum1c486092001-10-19 02:05:35 +00005011- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() no longer accepts Unicode objects as
5012 input.
5013
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005014New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005015-------------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005016
5017Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005018-----
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005019
5020Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005021-------
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005022
Tim Peters04cf1d32001-10-09 22:39:40 +00005023- Installer: If you install IDLE, and don't disable file-extension
5024 registration, a new "Edit with IDLE" context (right-click) menu entry
5025 is created for .py and .pyw files.
5026
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005027- The signal module now supports SIGBREAK on Windows, thanks to Steven
5028 Scott. Note that SIGBREAK is unique to Windows. The default SIGBREAK
5029 action remains to call Win32 ExitProcess(). This can be changed via
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005030 signal.signal(). For example::
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005031
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005032 # Make Ctrl+Break raise KeyboardInterrupt, like Python's default Ctrl+C
5033 # (SIGINT) behavior.
5034 import signal
5035 signal.signal(signal.SIGBREAK, signal.default_int_handler)
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005036
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005037 try:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005038 while 1:
5039 pass
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005040 except KeyboardInterrupt:
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005041 # We get here on Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Break now; if we had not changed
5042 # SIGBREAK, only on Ctrl+C (and Ctrl+Break would terminate the
5043 # program without the possibility for any Python-level cleanup).
5044 print "Clean exit"
Tim Peters1ce3cf72001-10-01 17:58:40 +00005045
Tim Petersabf925f2001-09-28 21:53:42 +00005046
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005047What's New in Python 2.2a4?
5048===========================
5049
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005050*Release date: 28-Sep-2001*
5051
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005052Type/class unification and new-style classes
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005053--------------------------------------------
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005054
5055- pydoc and inspect are now aware of new-style classes;
5056 e.g. help(list) at the interactive prompt now shows proper
5057 documentation for all operations on list objects.
5058
5059- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
5060 be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
5061 Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
5062 examples also work again. It is hoped that Gtk and Boost also work
5063 with 2.2a4 and beyond. (If you can confirm this, please write
5064 webmaster@python.org; if there are still problems, please open a bug
5065 report on SourceForge.)
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005066
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005067- property() now takes 4 keyword arguments: fget, fset, fdel and doc.
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005068 These map to read-only attributes 'fget', 'fset', 'fdel', and '__doc__'
Tim Peters66c1a522001-09-24 21:17:50 +00005069 in the constructed property object. fget, fset and fdel weren't
5070 discoverable from Python in 2.2a3. __doc__ is new, and allows to
5071 associate a docstring with a property.
5072
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005073- Comparison overloading is now more completely implemented. For
5074 example, a str subclass instance can properly be compared to a str
5075 instance, and it can properly overload comparison. Ditto for most
5076 other built-in object types.
5077
5078- The repr() of new-style classes has changed; instead of <type
5079 'M.Foo'> a new-style class is now rendered as <class 'M.Foo'>,
5080 *except* for built-in types, which are still rendered as <type
5081 'Foo'> (to avoid upsetting existing code that might parse or
5082 otherwise rely on repr() of certain type objects).
5083
5084- The repr() of new-style objects is now always <Foo object at XXX>;
5085 previously, it was sometimes <Foo instance at XXX>.
5086
5087- For new-style classes, what was previously called __getattr__ is now
5088 called __getattribute__. This method, if defined, is called for
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005089 *every* attribute access. A new __getattr__ hook more similar to the
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005090 one in classic classes is defined which is called only if regular
5091 attribute access raises AttributeError; to catch *all* attribute
5092 access, you can use __getattribute__ (for new-style classes). If
5093 both are defined, __getattribute__ is called first, and if it raises
5094 AttributeError, __getattr__ is called.
5095
5096- The __class__ attribute of new-style objects can be assigned to.
5097 The new class must have the same C-level object layout as the old
5098 class.
5099
5100- The builtin file type can be subclassed now. In the usual pattern,
5101 "file" is the name of the builtin type, and file() is a new builtin
5102 constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
5103 file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
5104
5105- Previously, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to
5106 the type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential
5107 and keyword arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
5108 now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
5109
5110- Previously, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or
5111 unicode always returned 0. This has been repaired.
5112
5113- Previously, an operation on an instance of a subclass of an
5114 immutable type (int, long, float, complex, tuple, str, unicode),
5115 where the subtype didn't override the operation (and so the
5116 operation was handled by the builtin type), could return that
5117 instance instead a value of the base type. For example, if s was of
Andrew M. Kuchling21b23b02002-05-07 20:58:03 +00005118 a str subclass type, s[:] returned s as-is. Now it returns a str
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005119 with the same value as s.
5120
Barry Warsaw86fbaf82001-09-28 15:26:12 +00005121- Provisional support for pickling new-style objects has been added.
5122
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005123Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005124----
Guido van Rossum808eea72001-09-25 04:15:41 +00005125
Tim Peters2c9aa5e2001-09-23 04:06:05 +00005126- file.writelines() now accepts any iterable object producing strings.
5127
Marc-André Lemburgaefd7662001-09-20 12:59:37 +00005128- PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject() now works very much like
5129 PyObject_Str(obj) in that it tries to use __str__/tp_str
5130 on the object if the object is not a string or buffer. This
5131 makes unicode() behave like str() when applied to non-string/buffer
5132 objects.
5133
Andrew M. Kuchling51c18162001-10-22 01:47:26 +00005134- PyFile_WriteObject now passes Unicode objects to the file's write
5135 method. As a result, all file-like objects which may be the target
Martin v. Löwis2777c022001-09-19 13:47:32 +00005136 of a print statement must support Unicode objects, i.e. they must
5137 at least convert them into ASCII strings.
5138
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005139- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
5140 necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
5141 to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
5142
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005143Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005144-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005145
Marc-André Lemburgbf990172001-09-27 14:17:33 +00005146- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5147 read character buffer compatible objects for their .write() methods.
5148 These objects are converted to strings and then handled as such
5149 by the instances.
5150
Barry Warsaw2f600732001-09-24 04:28:10 +00005151- The "email" package has been added. This is basically a port of the
5152 mimelib package <http://sf.net/projects/mimelib> with API changes
5153 and some implementations updated to use iterators and generators.
5154
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005155- difflib.ndiff() and difflib.Differ.compare() are generators now. This
5156 restores the ability of Tools/scripts/ndiff.py to start producing output
5157 before the entire comparison is complete.
5158
Barry Warsaw58b072d2001-09-22 04:44:21 +00005159- StringIO.StringIO instances and cStringIO.StringIO instances support
5160 iteration just like file objects (i.e. their .readline() method is
5161 called for each iteration until it returns an empty string).
5162
Marc-André Lemburg494f2ae2001-09-19 11:33:31 +00005163- The codecs module has grown four new helper APIs to access
5164 builtin codecs: getencoder(), getdecoder(), getreader(),
5165 getwriter().
5166
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005167- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
5168 simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
5169
Barry Warsaw647d5e82001-09-28 17:01:02 +00005170- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absolute pathname
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005171 after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
5172 is an alias for os.path.abspath().
5173
Tim Peters16a77ad2001-09-08 04:00:12 +00005174- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
5175 iterable object.
5176
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005177- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
5178 the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005179
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005180- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
5181 authentication.
5182
5183- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
5184 same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Guido van Rossumd8185ca2001-09-14 16:35:16 +00005185
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005186- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
Guido van Rossumc9ed5dc2001-09-20 05:30:24 +00005187 Python 2.2 bytecode generation. It has also been promoted from a
5188 Tool to a standard library package. (Tools/compiler still exists as
5189 a sample driver.)
5190
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005191Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005192-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005193
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005194- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
5195 it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
5196 least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
5197 files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
5198 still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
5199 kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
5200 kernel has large file support.
5201
5202- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
5203 cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
5204 values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
5205 flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
5206 autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
5207
5208- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
5209 generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
5210 using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
5211
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005212C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005213-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005214
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005215- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
5216 and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
5217
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005218New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005219-------------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005220
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005221- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
5222 (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
5223
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005224Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005225-----
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005226
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005227- The "classic" standard tests, which work by comparing stdout to
5228 an expected-output file under Lib/test/output/, no longer stop at
5229 the first mismatch. Instead the test is run to completion, and a
5230 variant of ndiff-style comparison is used to report all differences.
5231 This is much easier to understand than the previous style of reporting.
5232
5233- The unittest-based standard tests now use regrtest's test_main()
5234 convention, instead of running as a side-effect of merely being
5235 imported. This allows these tests to be run in more natural and
5236 flexible ways as unittests, outside the regrtest framework.
5237
5238- regrtest.py is much better integrated with unittest and doctest now,
5239 especially in regard to reporting errors.
5240
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005241Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005242-------
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005243
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005244- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
Tim Peters8a9c2842001-09-22 21:30:22 +00005245 that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000). See "What's New in
5246 Python 2.2a3" for more detail.
Guido van Rossum624c8af2001-09-18 15:21:04 +00005247
Tim Petersb07352e2001-09-08 01:25:47 +00005248
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005249What's New in Python 2.2a3?
5250===========================
5251
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005252*Release Date: 07-Sep-2001*
5253
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005254Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005255----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005256
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005257- Conversion of long to float now raises OverflowError if the long is too
5258 big to represent as a C double.
5259
Tim Peters32f453e2001-09-03 08:35:41 +00005260- The 3-argument builtin pow() no longer allows a third non-None argument
5261 if either of the first two arguments is a float, or if both are of
5262 integer types and the second argument is negative (in which latter case
5263 the arguments are converted to float, so this is really the same
5264 restriction).
5265
Tim Peters5d2b77c2001-09-03 05:47:38 +00005266- The builtin dir() now returns more information, and sometimes much
5267 more, generally naming all attributes of an object, and all attributes
5268 reachable from the object via its class, and from its class's base
5269 classes, and so on from them too. Example: in 2.2a2, dir([]) returned
5270 an empty list. In 2.2a3,
5271
5272 >>> dir([])
5273 ['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__',
5274 '__eq__', '__ge__', '__getattr__', '__getitem__', '__getslice__',
5275 '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__le__',
5276 '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__repr__',
5277 '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__setslice__', '__str__',
5278 'append', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove',
5279 'reverse', 'sort']
5280
5281 dir(module) continues to return only the module's attributes, though.
5282
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005283- Overflowing operations on plain ints now return a long int rather
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005284 than raising OverflowError. This is a partial implementation of PEP
5285 237. You can use -Wdefault::OverflowWarning to enable a warning for
5286 this situation, and -Werror::OverflowWarning to revert to the old
5287 OverflowError exception.
5288
Guido van Rossum61c345f2001-09-04 03:26:15 +00005289- A new command line option, -Q<arg>, is added to control run-time
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005290 warnings for the use of classic division. (See PEP 238.) Possible
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005291 values are -Qold, -Qwarn, -Qwarnall, and -Qnew. The default is
5292 -Qold, meaning the / operator has its classic meaning and no
5293 warnings are issued. Using -Qwarn issues a run-time warning about
5294 all uses of classic division for int and long arguments; -Qwarnall
5295 also warns about classic division for float and complex arguments
Tim Peters3caca232001-12-06 06:23:26 +00005296 (for use with fixdiv.py).
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005297 [Note: the remainder of this item (preserved below) became
5298 obsolete in 2.2c1 -- -Qnew has global effect in 2.2] ::
5299
5300 Using -Qnew is questionable; it turns on new division by default, but
5301 only in the __main__ module. You can usefully combine -Qwarn or
5302 -Qwarnall and -Qnew: this gives the __main__ module new division, and
5303 warns about classic division everywhere else.
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005304
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005305- Many built-in types can now be subclassed. This applies to int,
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005306 long, float, str, unicode, and tuple. (The types complex, list and
5307 dictionary can also be subclassed; this was introduced earlier.)
5308 Note that restrictions apply when subclassing immutable built-in
5309 types: you can only affect the value of the instance by overloading
5310 __new__. You can add mutable attributes, and the subclass instances
5311 will have a __dict__ attribute, but you cannot change the "value"
5312 (as implemented by the base class) of an immutable subclass instance
5313 once it is created.
5314
Guido van Rossumaaf80c82001-09-02 13:44:35 +00005315- The dictionary constructor now takes an optional argument, a
5316 mapping-like object, and initializes the dictionary from its
5317 (key, value) pairs.
5318
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005319- A new built-in type, super, has been added. This facilitates making
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005320 "cooperative super calls" in a multiple inheritance setting. For an
5321 explanation, see http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#cooperation
5322
Guido van Rossum8d7234d2001-09-06 22:02:58 +00005323- A new built-in type, property, has been added. This enables the
5324 creation of "properties". These are attributes implemented by
5325 getter and setter functions (or only one of these for read-only or
5326 write-only attributes), without the need to override __getattr__.
5327 See http://www.python.org/2.2/descrintro.html#property
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005328
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005329- The syntax of floating-point and imaginary literals has been
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005330 liberalized, to allow leading zeroes. Examples of literals now
5331 legal that were SyntaxErrors before:
5332
5333 00.0 0e3 0100j 07.5 00000000000000000008.
5334
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005335- An old tokenizer bug allowed floating point literals with an incomplete
Tim Petersc6d95812001-08-28 20:56:27 +00005336 exponent, such as 1e and 3.1e-. Such literals now raise SyntaxError.
5337
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005338Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005339-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005340
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005341- telnetlib includes symbolic names for the options, and support for
Martin v. Löwis1da9c572002-11-04 09:56:00 +00005342 setting an option negotiation callback. It also supports processing
5343 of suboptions.
Martin v. Löwiscb227c92001-09-06 08:54:16 +00005344
Tim Petersa40c7932001-09-05 22:36:56 +00005345- The new C standard no longer requires that math libraries set errno to
5346 ERANGE on overflow. For platform libraries that exploit this new
5347 freedom, Python's overflow-checking was wholly broken. A new overflow-
5348 checking scheme attempts to repair that, but may not be reliable on all
5349 platforms (C doesn't seem to provide anything both useful and portable
5350 in this area anymore).
5351
Martin v. Löwis44f86962001-09-05 13:44:54 +00005352- Asynchronous timeout actions are available through the new class
5353 threading.Timer.
5354
Tim Peters78526162001-09-05 00:53:45 +00005355- math.log and math.log10 now return sensible results for even huge
5356 long arguments. For example, math.log10(10 ** 10000) ~= 10000.0.
5357
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005358- A new function, imp.lock_held(), returns 1 when the import lock is
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005359 currently held. See the docs for the imp module.
5360
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005361- pickle, cPickle and marshal on 32-bit platforms can now correctly read
Tim Peters82112372001-08-29 02:28:42 +00005362 dumps containing ints written on platforms where Python ints are 8 bytes.
5363 When read on a box where Python ints are 4 bytes, such values are
5364 converted to Python longs.
5365
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005366- In restricted execution mode (using the rexec module), unmarshalling
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005367 code objects is no longer allowed. This plugs a security hole.
5368
Steve Purcell6091cd62001-09-06 16:05:17 +00005369- unittest.TestResult instances no longer store references to tracebacks
5370 generated by test failures. This prevents unexpected dangling references
5371 to objects that should be garbage collected between tests.
5372
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005373Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005374-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005375
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005376- Tools/scripts/fixdiv.py has been added which can be used to fix
5377 division operators as per PEP 238.
5378
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005379Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005380-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005381
Barry Warsawd6c8ca62001-09-07 18:13:44 +00005382- If you are an adventurous person using Mac OS X you may want to look at
5383 Mac/OSX. There is a Makefile there that will build Python as a real Mac
5384 application, which can be used for experimenting with Carbon or Cocoa.
5385 Discussion of this on pythonmac-sig, please.
5386
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005387C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005388-----
Tim Peters7eea37e2001-09-04 22:08:56 +00005389
5390- New function PyObject_Dir(obj), like Python __builtin__.dir(obj).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005391
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005392- Note that PyLong_AsDouble can fail! This has always been true, but no
5393 callers checked for it. It's more likely to fail now, because overflow
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005394 errors are properly detected now. The proper way to check::
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005395
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005396 double x = PyLong_AsDouble(some_long_object);
5397 if (x == -1.0 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
Raymond Hettingeraf72d522002-12-29 20:14:11 +00005398 /* The conversion failed. */
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005399 }
Tim Peters9fffa3e2001-09-04 05:14:19 +00005400
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005401- The GC API has been changed. Extensions that use the old API will still
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005402 compile but will not participate in GC. To upgrade an extension
5403 module:
5404
5405 - rename Py_TPFLAGS_GC to PyTPFLAGS_HAVE_GC
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005406
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005407 - use PyObject_GC_New or PyObject_GC_NewVar to allocate objects and
5408 PyObject_GC_Del to deallocate them
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005409
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005410 - rename PyObject_GC_Init to PyObject_GC_Track and PyObject_GC_Fini
5411 to PyObject_GC_UnTrack
Tim Petersd507dab2001-08-30 20:51:59 +00005412
Neil Schemenauer4042c692001-08-30 15:38:01 +00005413 - remove PyGC_HEAD_SIZE from object size calculations
5414
5415 - remove calls to PyObject_AS_GC and PyObject_FROM_GC
5416
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005417- Two new functions: PyString_FromFormat() and PyString_FromFormatV().
Guido van Rossumae457142001-08-31 18:31:35 +00005418 These can be used safely to construct string objects from a
5419 sprintf-style format string (similar to the format string supported
5420 by PyErr_Format()).
Tim Peters69232342001-08-30 05:16:13 +00005421
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005422New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005423-------------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005424
Tim Petersb7da0902001-09-02 23:01:43 +00005425- Stephen Hansen contributed patches sufficient to get a clean compile
5426 under Borland C (Windows), but he reports problems running it and ran
5427 out of time to complete the port. Volunteers? Expect a MemoryError
5428 when importing the types module; this is probably shallow, and
5429 causing later failures too.
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005430
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005431Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005432-----
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005433
5434Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005435-------
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005436
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005437- Large file support is now enabled on Win32 platforms as well as on
5438 Win64. This means that, for example, you can use f.tell() and f.seek()
5439 to manipulate files larger than 2 gigabytes (provided you have enough
5440 disk space, and are using a Windows filesystem that supports large
Tim Peters9a9471c2001-09-11 23:18:51 +00005441 partitions). Windows filesystem limits: FAT has a 2GB (gigabyte)
5442 filesize limit, and large file support makes no difference there.
5443 FAT32's limit is 4GB, and files >= 2GB are easier to use from Python now.
5444 NTFS has no practical limit on file size, and files of any size can be
5445 used from Python now.
Tim Peters6e13a562001-09-06 00:32:15 +00005446
Tim Petersbdee63f2001-09-02 03:40:59 +00005447- The w9xpopen hack is now used on Windows NT and 2000 too when COMPSPEC
Tim Peters402d5982001-08-27 06:37:48 +00005448 points to command.com (patch from Brian Quinlan).
5449
Tim Petersedc99312001-08-22 21:36:50 +00005450
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005451What's New in Python 2.2a2?
5452===========================
5453
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005454*Release Date: 22-Aug-2001*
5455
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005456Build
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005457-----
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005458
Barry Warsaw18b2ecf2001-08-22 20:26:56 +00005459- Tim Peters developed a brand new Windows installer using Wise 8.1,
5460 generously donated to us by Wise Solutions.
5461
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005462- configure supports a new option --enable-unicode, with the values
5463 ucs2 and ucs4 (new in 2.2a1). With --disable-unicode, the Unicode
5464 type and supporting code is completely removed from the interpreter.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005465
Jack Jansen32ce0cd2001-08-21 19:28:20 +00005466- A new configure option --enable-framework builds a Mac OS X framework,
5467 which "make frameworkinstall" will install. This provides a starting
5468 point for more mac-like functionality, join pythonmac-sig@python.org
5469 if you are interested in helping.
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005470
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005471- The NeXT platform is no longer supported.
5472
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005473- The 'new' module is now statically linked.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005474
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005475Tools
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005476-----
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005477
5478- The new Tools/scripts/cleanfuture.py can be used to automatically
Andrew M. Kuchlingb0532092001-08-15 15:54:56 +00005479 edit out obsolete future statements from Python source code. See
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005480 the module docstring for details.
5481
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005482Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005483-----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005484
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005485- regrtest.py now knows which tests are expected to be skipped on some
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005486 platforms, allowing to give clearer test result output. regrtest
5487 also has optional --use/-u switch to run normally disabled tests
5488 which require network access or consume significant disk resources.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005489
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005490- Several new tests in the standard test suite, with special thanks to
5491 Nick Mathewson.
5492
5493Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005494----
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005495
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005496- The floor division operator // has been added as outlined in PEP
5497 238. The / operator still provides classic division (and will until
5498 Python 3.0) unless "from __future__ import division" is included, in
5499 which case the / operator will provide true division. The operator
5500 module provides truediv() and floordiv() functions. Augmented
5501 assignment variants are included, as are the equivalent overloadable
5502 methods and C API methods. See the PEP for a full discussion:
5503 <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0238.html>
5504
Tim Peters6cd6a822001-08-17 22:11:27 +00005505- Future statements are now effective in simulated interactive shells
5506 (like IDLE). This should "just work" by magic, but read Michael
5507 Hudson's "Future statements in simulated shells" PEP 264 for full
5508 details: <http://python.sf.net/peps/pep-0264.html>.
5509
Guido van Rossumf86ddd22001-08-17 21:21:04 +00005510- The type/class unification (PEP 252-253) was integrated into the
5511 trunk and is not so tentative any more (the exact specification of
5512 some features is still tentative). A lot of work has done on fixing
5513 bugs and adding robustness and features (performance still has to
5514 come a long way).
5515
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005516- Warnings about a mismatch in the Python API during extension import
5517 now use the Python warning framework (which makes it possible to
5518 write filters for these warnings).
5519
Barry Warsaw9b3be7f2001-08-14 18:35:02 +00005520- A function's __dict__ (aka func_dict) will now always be a
5521 dictionary. It used to be possible to delete it or set it to None,
5522 but now both actions raise TypeErrors. It is still legal to set it
5523 to a dictionary object. Getting func.__dict__ before any attributes
5524 have been assigned now returns an empty dictionary instead of None.
5525
Guido van Rossum32aa5d22001-09-05 18:43:35 +00005526- A new command line option, -E, was added which disables the use of
5527 all environment variables, or at least those that are specifically
5528 significant to Python. Usually those have a name starting with
5529 "PYTHON". This was used to fix a problem where the tests fail if
5530 the user happens to have PYTHONHOME or PYTHONPATH pointing to an
5531 older distribution.
5532
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005533Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005534-------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005535
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005536- New class Differ and new functions ndiff() and restore() in difflib.py.
5537 These package the algorithms used by the popular Tools/scripts/ndiff.py,
Tim Peters0afb6092001-08-15 06:06:44 +00005538 for programmatic reuse.
Tim Peters5e824c32001-08-12 22:25:01 +00005539
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005540- New function xml.sax.saxutils.quoteattr(): Quote an XML attribute
5541 value using the minimal quoting required for the value; more
5542 reliable than using xml.sax.saxutils.escape() for attribute values.
5543
5544- Readline completion support for cmd.Cmd was added.
5545
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005546- Calling os.tempnam() or os.tmpnam() generate RuntimeWarnings.
5547
5548- Added function threading.BoundedSemaphore()
5549
5550- Added Ka-Ping Yee's cgitb.py module.
5551
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005552- The 'new' module now exposes the CO_xxx flags.
Barry Warsaw6f3410d2001-08-22 04:08:41 +00005553
Martin v. Löwis560da622001-11-24 09:24:51 +00005554- The gc module offers the get_referents function.
5555
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005556New platforms
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005557-------------
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005558
5559C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005560-----
Marc-André Lemburgd6277912001-07-31 14:42:42 +00005561
Marc-André Lemburg888fac02001-07-31 14:24:31 +00005562- Two new APIs PyOS_snprintf() and PyOS_vsnprintf() were added
5563 which provide a cross-platform implementations for the
5564 relatively new snprintf()/vsnprintf() C lib APIs. In contrast to
5565 the standard sprintf() and vsprintf() C lib APIs, these versions
5566 apply bounds checking on the used buffer which enhances protection
5567 against buffer overruns.
5568
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005569- Unicode APIs now use name mangling to assure that mixing interpreters
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005570 and extensions using different Unicode widths is rendered next to
5571 impossible. Trying to import an incompatible Unicode-aware extension
Marc-André Lemburg48dbfe92001-07-31 14:37:40 +00005572 will result in an ImportError. Unicode extensions writers must make
5573 sure to check the Unicode width compatibility in their extensions by
5574 using at least one of the mangled Unicode APIs in the extension.
5575
Martin v. Löwis339d0f72001-08-17 18:39:25 +00005576- Two new flags METH_NOARGS and METH_O are available in method definition
5577 tables to simplify implementation of methods with no arguments and a
5578 single untyped argument. Calling such methods is more efficient than
5579 calling corresponding METH_VARARGS methods. METH_OLDARGS is now
5580 deprecated.
5581
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005582Windows
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005583-------
Tim Petersc1731372001-08-04 08:12:36 +00005584
5585- "import module" now compiles module.pyw if it exists and nothing else
5586 relevant is found.
5587
Tim Peters20f51a72001-07-21 02:31:40 +00005588
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005589What's New in Python 2.2a1?
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005590===========================
5591
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005592*Release date: 18-Jul-2001*
5593
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005594Core
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005595----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005596
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005597- TENTATIVELY, a large amount of code implementing much of what's
5598 described in PEP 252 (Making Types Look More Like Classes) and PEP
5599 253 (Subtyping Built-in Types) was added. This will be released
5600 with Python 2.2a1. Documentation will be provided separately
5601 through http://www.python.org/2.2/. The purpose of releasing this
5602 with Python 2.2a1 is to test backwards compatibility. It is
5603 possible, though not likely, that a decision is made not to release
5604 this code as part of 2.2 final, if any serious backwards
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005605 incompatibilities are found during alpha testing that cannot be
Tim Peters6d6c1a32001-08-02 04:15:00 +00005606 repaired.
5607
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005608- Generators were added; this is a new way to create an iterator (see
Tim Peters11a0d102001-07-17 18:48:00 +00005609 below) using what looks like a simple function containing one or
Guido van Rossum55a78992001-07-17 17:22:32 +00005610 more 'yield' statements. See PEP 255. Since this adds a new
5611 keyword to the language, this feature must be enabled by including a
5612 future statement: "from __future__ import generators" (see PEP 236).
5613 Generators will become a standard feature in a future release
5614 (probably 2.3). Without this future statement, 'yield' remains an
5615 ordinary identifier, but a warning is issued each time it is used.
5616 (These warnings currently don't conform to the warnings framework of
5617 PEP 230; we intend to fix this in 2.2a2.)
5618
Marc-André Lemburg12e74b32001-05-22 08:58:23 +00005619- The UTF-16 codec was modified to be more RFC compliant. It will now
5620 only remove BOM characters at the start of the string and then
5621 only if running in native mode (UTF-16-LE and -BE won't remove a
5622 leading BMO character).
5623
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005624- Strings now have a new method .decode() to complement the already
5625 existing .encode() method. These two methods provide direct access
5626 to the corresponding decoders and encoders of the registered codecs.
5627
5628 To enhance the usability of the .encode() method, the special
5629 casing of Unicode object return values was dropped (Unicode objects
5630 were auto-magically converted to string using the default encoding).
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005631
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005632 Both methods will now return whatever the codec in charge of the
5633 requested encoding returns as object, e.g. Unicode codecs will
5634 return Unicode objects when decoding is requested ("äöü".decode("latin-1")
5635 will return u"äöü"). This enables codec writer to create codecs
5636 for various simple to use conversions.
5637
5638 New codecs were added to demonstrate these new features (the .encode()
5639 and .decode() columns indicate the type of the returned objects):
5640
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005641 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5642 |Name | .encode() | .decode() | Description |
5643 +=========+===========+===========+=============================+
5644 |uu | string | string | UU codec (e.g. for email) |
5645 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5646 |base64 | string | string | base64 codec |
5647 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5648 |quopri | string | string | quoted-printable codec |
5649 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5650 |zlib | string | string | zlib compression |
5651 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5652 |hex | string | string | 2-byte hex codec |
5653 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
5654 |rot-13 | string | Unicode | ROT-13 Unicode charmap codec|
5655 +---------+-----------+-----------+-----------------------------+
Marc-André Lemburgfab96cc2001-05-15 18:38:45 +00005656
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005657- Some operating systems now support the concept of a default Unicode
5658 encoding for file system operations. Notably, Windows supports 'mbcs'
5659 as the default. The Macintosh will also adopt this concept in the medium
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005660 term, although the default encoding for that platform will be other than
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005661 'mbcs'.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005662
5663 On operating system that support non-ASCII filenames, it is common for
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005664 functions that return filenames (such as os.listdir()) to return Python
5665 string objects pre-encoded using the default file system encoding for
5666 the platform. As this encoding is likely to be different from Python's
5667 default encoding, converting this name to a Unicode object before passing
5668 it back to the Operating System would result in a Unicode error, as Python
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005669 would attempt to use its default encoding (generally ASCII) rather than
5670 the default encoding for the file system.
Guido van Rossum1bd797a2001-05-14 13:53:38 +00005671
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005672 In general, this change simply removes surprises when working with
5673 Unicode and the file system, making these operations work as you expect,
5674 increasing the transparency of Unicode objects in this context.
Mark Hammond2a0af792001-05-14 03:09:36 +00005675 See [????] for more details, including examples.
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005676
Tim Peters61dff2b2001-05-08 15:43:37 +00005677- Float (and complex) literals in source code were evaluated to full
5678 precision only when running from a .py file; the same code loaded from a
5679 .pyc (or .pyo) file could suffer numeric differences starting at about the
5680 12th significant decimal digit. For example, on a machine with IEEE-754
5681 floating arithmetic,
5682
5683 x = 9007199254740992.0
5684 print long(x)
5685
5686 printed 9007199254740992 if run directly from .py, but 9007199254740000
5687 if from a compiled (.pyc or .pyo) file. This was due to marshal using
5688 str(float) instead of repr(float) when building code objects. marshal
5689 now uses repr(float) instead, which should reproduce floats to full
5690 machine precision (assuming the platform C float<->string I/O conversion
5691 functions are of good quality).
5692
5693 This may cause floating-point results to change in some cases, and
5694 usually for the better, but may also cause numerically unstable
5695 algorithms to break.
5696
Tim Peters2f228e72001-05-13 00:19:31 +00005697- The implementation of dicts suffers fewer collisions, which has speed
5698 benefits. However, the order in which dict entries appear in dict.keys(),
5699 dict.values() and dict.items() may differ from previous releases for a
5700 given dict. Nothing is defined about this order, so no program should
5701 rely on it. Nevertheless, it's easy to write test cases that rely on the
5702 order by accident, typically because of printing the str() or repr() of a
5703 dict to an "expected results" file. See Lib/test/test_support.py's new
5704 sortdict(dict) function for a simple way to display a dict in sorted
5705 order.
5706
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005707- Many other small changes to dicts were made, resulting in faster
5708 operation along the most common code paths.
5709
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005710- Dictionary objects now support the "in" operator: "x in dict" means
5711 the same as dict.has_key(x).
5712
Barry Warsaw51acc8d2001-06-26 20:12:50 +00005713- The update() method of dictionaries now accepts generic mapping
5714 objects. Specifically the argument object must support the .keys()
5715 and __getitem__() methods. This allows you to say, for example,
5716 {}.update(UserDict())
5717
Guido van Rossum10315822001-05-01 20:54:30 +00005718- Iterators were added; this is a generalized way of providing values
5719 to a for loop. See PEP 234. There's a new built-in function iter()
5720 to return an iterator. There's a new protocol to get the next value
5721 from an iterator using the next() method (in Python) or the
5722 tp_iternext slot (in C). There's a new protocol to get iterators
5723 using the __iter__() method (in Python) or the tp_iter slot (in C).
5724 Iterating (i.e. a for loop) over a dictionary generates its keys.
5725 Iterating over a file generates its lines.
5726
Tim Petersf553f892001-05-01 20:45:31 +00005727- The following functions were generalized to work nicely with iterator
Skip Montanaroa2a07bc2002-09-30 15:23:01 +00005728 arguments::
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005729
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005730 map(), filter(), reduce(), zip()
Tim Peters8572b4f2001-05-06 01:05:02 +00005731 list(), tuple() (PySequence_Tuple() and PySequence_Fast() in C API)
5732 max(), min()
Tim Peters1af03e92001-05-26 19:37:54 +00005733 join() method of strings
5734 extend() method of lists
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005735 'x in y' and 'x not in y' (PySequence_Contains() in C API)
5736 operator.countOf() (PySequence_Count() in C API)
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005737 right-hand side of assignment statements with multiple targets, such as ::
Tim Petersd6d010b2001-06-21 02:49:55 +00005738 x, y, z = some_iterable_object_returning_exactly_3_values
Tim Peters75f8e352001-05-05 11:33:43 +00005739
Tim Petersd85e1022001-05-11 21:51:48 +00005740- Accessing module attributes is significantly faster (for example,
5741 random.random or os.path or yourPythonModule.yourAttribute).
5742
Tim Peterse63415e2001-05-08 04:38:29 +00005743- Comparing dictionary objects via == and != is faster, and now works even
5744 if the keys and values don't support comparisons other than ==.
5745
Tim Peters95bf9392001-05-10 08:32:44 +00005746- Comparing dictionaries in ways other than == and != is slower: there were
5747 insecurities in the dict comparison implementation that could cause Python
5748 to crash if the element comparison routines for the dict keys and/or
5749 values mutated the dicts. Making the code bulletproof slowed it down.
5750
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005751- Collisions in dicts are resolved via a new approach, which can help
5752 dramatically in bad cases. For example, looking up every key in a dict
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005753 d with d.keys() == [i << 16 for i in range(20000)] is approximately 500x
Tim Peterseb28ef22001-06-02 05:27:19 +00005754 faster now. Thanks to Christian Tismer for pointing out the cause and
5755 the nature of an effective cure (last December! better late than never).
Tim Peters15d49292001-05-27 07:39:22 +00005756
Tim Peters52e155e2001-06-16 05:42:57 +00005757- repr() is much faster for large containers (dict, list, tuple).
5758
5759
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005760Library
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005761-------
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005762
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005763- The constants ascii_letters, ascii_lowercase. and ascii_uppercase
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005764 were added to the string module. These a locale-independent
Fred Drake960fdf92001-07-20 18:38:26 +00005765 constants, unlike letters, lowercase, and uppercase. These are now
5766 use in appropriate locations in the standard library.
5767
Martin v. Löwisf0473d52001-07-18 16:17:16 +00005768- The flags used in dlopen calls can now be configured using
5769 sys.setdlopenflags and queried using sys.getdlopenflags.
5770
Guido van Rossumc7e4aca2001-07-12 11:54:37 +00005771- Fredrik Lundh's xmlrpclib is now a standard library module. This
5772 provides full client-side XML-RPC support. In addition,
5773 Demo/xmlrpc/ contains two server frameworks (one SocketServer-based,
5774 one asyncore-based). Thanks to Eric Raymond for the documentation.
5775
Guido van Rossum643d3912001-07-05 14:46:25 +00005776- The xrange() object is simplified: it no longer supports slicing,
5777 repetition, comparisons, efficient 'in' checking, the tolist()
5778 method, or the start, stop and step attributes. See PEP 260.
5779
Martin v. Löwisebf94db2001-06-06 06:25:40 +00005780- A new function fnmatch.filter to filter lists of file names was added.
5781
Barry Warsawffd674d2001-05-22 16:00:10 +00005782- calendar.py uses month and day names based on the current locale.
5783
Guido van Rossum2e0a6542001-05-15 02:14:44 +00005784- strop is now *really* obsolete (this was announced before with 1.6),
5785 and issues DeprecationWarning when used (except for the four items
5786 that are still imported into string.py).
5787
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005788- Cookie.py now sorts key+value pairs by key in output strings.
5789
5790- pprint.isrecursive(object) didn't correctly identify recursive objects.
5791 Now it does.
5792
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005793- pprint functions now much faster for large containers (tuple, list, dict).
5794
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005795- New 'q' and 'Q' format codes in the struct module, corresponding to C
5796 types "long long" and "unsigned long long" (on Windows, __int64). In
5797 native mode, these can be used only when the platform C compiler supports
5798 these types (when HAVE_LONG_LONG is #define'd by the Python config
5799 process), and then they inherit the sizes and alignments of the C types.
Tim Peters7a3bfc32001-06-12 01:22:22 +00005800 In standard mode, 'q' and 'Q' are supported on all platforms, and are
5801 8-byte integral types.
Tim Peters7b9542a2001-06-10 23:40:19 +00005802
Guido van Rossum83213cc2001-06-12 16:48:52 +00005803- The site module installs a new built-in function 'help' that invokes
5804 pydoc.help. It must be invoked as 'help()'; when invoked as 'help',
5805 it displays a message reminding the user to use 'help()' or
5806 'help(object)'.
5807
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005808Tests
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005809-----
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005810
5811- New test_mutants.py runs dict comparisons where the key and value
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005812 comparison operators mutate the dicts randomly during comparison. This
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005813 rapidly causes Python to crash under earlier releases (not for the faint
5814 of heart: it can also cause Win9x to freeze or reboot!).
5815
Raymond Hettingerf2f2a2c2002-08-19 14:25:03 +00005816- New test_pprint.py verifies that pprint.isrecursive() and
Tim Peters95b3f782001-05-14 18:39:41 +00005817 pprint.isreadable() return sensible results. Also verifies that simple
5818 cases produce correct output.
Tim Petersa814db52001-05-14 07:05:58 +00005819
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005820C API
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005821-----
Tim Peters4324aa32001-05-28 22:30:08 +00005822
5823- Removed the unused last_is_sticky argument from the internal
5824 _PyTuple_Resize(). If this affects you, you were cheating.
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00005825
5826----
5827
5828**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**